Nerdette Book Club: Maggie Shipstead On ‘Great Circle’

Nerdette Recaps With Peter Sagal

WBEZ

Tv & Film, Books, Self, Improvement, Pop, Tv, Wbez, Culture, Technology, Society & Culture, Nerds, Nerd, Nerdette

4.6 • 924 Ratings

🗓️ 8 June 2021

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welcome back to the Nerdette Book Club! It’s just like a regular book club only we never have to know if you actually read the book! This month our pick is ‘Great Circle’ by Maggie Shipstead. At just over 600 pages, it’s a hefty read but SO worth it. The story follows Marian Graves, a 20th century aviatrix who disappears during an attempt at circumnavigating the Earth, and Hadley Baxter, a modern day movie star who ends up playing Marian in a movie. It’s also about planes, WWII, bootlegging, untouched places, fame, celebrity gossip, love, Alaska, and so much more. Listen to this spoiler-free discussion with the author, and if you’re reading along make sure to send us your thoughts before our panel chat later this month! Just record yourself on your smartphone and send the file to [email protected]. We can’t wait to hear from you!

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Natalie Moore. I fell in love with soap operas when I was just five years old, and I still
0:06.1	watch them. Their television's longest scripted series and have zero reruns. Now let me tell you,
0:12.7	soap operas aren't just some silly art form. They are significant. In this season of making,
0:18.0	Stories Without End from WBEZ Chicago.
0:25.7	Join me as I share how the genre began, their social impact, and why these stories endure.
0:28.3	Listen, wherever you get your podcast.
0:37.0	From WBEZ Chicago, I'm Greta Johnson, and this is the Nerdat Book Club.
0:37.9	It's just like a regular book club, except we really have no idea if you have read the book. This month's pick is Maggie
0:43.0	Shipstead's newest novel. It's called Great Circle, and it has two interwoven stories. One is about
0:48.6	Marion Graves, who's a pilot who disappears in the 50s while flying around the world from pole to
0:53.7	pole. And we also have
0:55.6	Hadley Baxter, who's an actor who plays her in a biopic in modern day times. She lives in Los Angeles.
1:01.7	We have a panel chat all about this book coming up in a couple of weeks. Today is the spoiler-free
1:07.6	author discussion, which means Maggie Shippstead is with us now. Maggie, welcome to
1:11.8	internet. Oh, thanks for having me, Greta. So I feel weird about using the word sweeping, but here we are.
1:18.5	This book has so much scope. It is about so many things. You have geological history. You beautifully
1:26.1	described the complete exhaustion of being a young woman in the
1:29.7	spotlight. You talk about World War II. There are bootleggers. There are landscape artists in the
1:34.1	Pacific Northwest. There's like beautiful scenes in Alaska. It's about aviation history.
1:39.8	Was there ever a point when you were writing this book where you were like, what is this weird
1:43.4	monster that I have created?
1:45.0	Oh my gosh.
	...

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