The Joy of Beach Reads

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 27 August 2021

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Our guest host, Vinson Cunningham, looks at the joys of the beach read, hitting Brighton Beach on a hot, muggy day to peer over readers’ shoulders. He relates his own fortuitous encounter with Lawrence Otis Graham’s “Our Kind of People,” after finding the book in a rented house on Martha’s Vineyard. Plus, Rachel Syme feels that “books have a season that they tell you to read them in,” and “summer is the season of the classic Hollywood memoir”; she shares three favorites with David Remnick.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:14.7	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Vincent Cunningham, and I'm filling in today for David Remnick.
0:22.6	Today I'm going to be talking about something very near and dear to my heart, which is the pleasure, especially in the summer, of stepping away from your device, from your phone, and indulging in the pleasure of reading.
0:34.6	We're going to be hearing today from several of my colleagues at the New Yorker,
0:39.3	but we wanted to start here at the beach, because really what better place to open up a book?
0:49.3	Yeah, Brighton Beach is basically the southernmost point of Brooklyn.
0:55.8	Unlike many other beaches in New York, which feel very, like, destination-y.
1:00.6	This feels like it's like a neighborhood beach where, like, somebody who lives two blocks
1:03.5	away would come here to take a dip and then go back home.
1:07.7	And there are people out having a great time. in the water some with their coolers um some hopefully
1:16.5	with some books oh there's a book
1:21.2	sir i'm so sorry sorry to start all you.
1:28.3	Can I ask you what you're reading?
1:30.3	Is it?
1:31.3	Yeah, I'm reading Mononga by David McAer.
1:36.3	I'm not sure if I pronounced his name correctly, but it's a history of the Mononga mine explosion
1:42.3	in West Virginia in 1907, which was the worst workplace disaster
1:49.3	in American history.
1:51.4	So light reading then, you would say?
1:54.0	I guess not.
1:57.6	Thank you so much for letting us intrude for a bit.
2:00.2	Thank you so much for letting us intrude for a bit.
	...

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