Book Exploder: Susan Orlean - The Library Book

Song Exploder

Hrishikesh Hirway

Music

4.8 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 3 August 2022

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Introducing a new miniseries: Book Exploder, where authors break down a passage from one of their books, and discuss the creative process that went into writing it. Every other week, in between episodes of Song Exploder, you’ll hear from a new author, in conversation with host Susan Orlean. But for this first episode of the series, Susan is interviewed by Hrishikesh Hirway about her own book, The Library Book.

Susan Orlean is the author of twelve books, including The Orchid Thief (which inspired the Oscar-award winning film Adaptation), a staff writer at The New Yorker . Published in 2018, The Library Book became a New York Times Best Seller and named a Washington Post Top 10 Book of the Year. The book tells the story of the 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Central Library. In this inaugural episode, Susan discusses a passage from her book, which details the blaze itself.

For more, visit bookexploder.com/episodes/susan-orlean.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Book Exploder, where authors break down a passage from their work
0:06.2	to show us how they write.
0:07.6	I'm Rishi Keishirui.
0:09.2	And I'm Susan Orleen.
0:13.6	I've been making song-explotors since 2014, talking to other musicians about the creative
0:18.7	process that went into the making of one of their songs.
0:21.9	And a few years ago, I thought these kinds of conversations could be extended outside
0:25.6	of music.
0:26.8	And I brought this idea to Susan to help me bring it to the world of literature.
0:30.8	So on Book Exploder, each episode features an author delving into one small section
0:35.6	from one of their books.
0:37.4	There's so much to talk about in a book, and there's so much that goes into writing
0:40.6	one, years of work often.
0:43.2	But by zooming in on one passage in detail, you can really learn something about how
0:47.4	an author approaches their work and solves problems.
0:50.7	Those granular decisions that they make really let you learn something concrete about
0:54.7	how their creative mind thinks.
0:57.2	Susan's a New York Times best-selling author herself, and a staff writer for The New Yorker.
1:02.4	And for this mini-series, she's interviewed an incredible set of authors.
1:06.4	These are some of my favorite writers in the world.
1:10.0	Hi, my name is Minjin Lee, and I'm the author of Pachinko.
1:13.2	Hi, I'm James McBride, author of Deakin King Kong.
	...

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