You are about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about what goes into making one.

I'm Sadata Sese, an assistant commissioner of podcasts for BBC Sounds.

I pull a lot of levers to support a diverse range of podcasts on all sorts of subjects,

relationships, identity, comedy, even one that mixes poetry, music and inner city life.

So one day I'll be helping host develop their ideas, the next fact-checking, a feature,

and the next looking at how a podcast connects with its audience, and maybe that's you.

So if you like this podcast, check out some others on BBC Sounds.

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

Hello, today's open book has a distinctly youthful zeal

as we enter the world of a student at an Ivy League university,

learn how TikTok is changing the literary scene,

and go back to school in truly unconventional style thanks to this week's editor's recommendation.

First though, it's back to 1996.

Turkish-American novelist Elif Bateman has turned her own years at college into two works

of auto-fiction.

Her first, The Idiot, was a wry, philosophical

coming-of-age novel about a witty and inquisitive overthinker, Selin, who compares herself to

literary characters and spends her days decoding her identity as a would-be writer and the world

around her. It's a novel that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Now, Selin,

her straight talking friend, Svetlana, and the object of many of Scyllin's intellectual daydreams,

Yvonne, are back in the sequel, Either Or, which finds Selin pondering heartbreak and the choice

between ethics and aesthetics. And I'm pleased to say that Elif Bateman joins me now. Welcome to open book,

...