Summer 2012 Books

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

And I’m Grant Barrett. Martha, it’s time to share our summer books.

Okay.

You know, I’ve been spending a lot of time lately, bear with me, thinking about female comedians in Hollywood and on television.

Yeah.

It turns out that you can follow these wonderful women on Twitter, and they’re hilarious, right? And you can watch their shows, and you’re like, they’re great. They’re like the Fanny Brices of our age, right?

Oh, yeah. Great stuff.

Or even better, the Tallulah Bankheads of our age.

Tallulah.

I’m reading her 1952 biography, and I’m finding these amazing correspondences between Tallulah Bankhead, and she was an odd duck in ways, and she had kind of a manly voice, and beautiful in her own way, and kind of crass, but at the same time incredibly hilarious.

Witty, witty, yeah.

What a life she led.

And then I’m reading Mindy Kaling’s book and Tina Fey’s book.

Mindy Kaling is one of the writers and actors on The Office. Tina Fey, of course, is from 30 Rock.

And these three women have this great kind of overlapping in the way that they handled Hollywood, the way that they’ve handled success.

And that’s my summer reading.

Tina Fey’s Bossy Pants, Mindy Kaling’s book, which is called Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? And then Tallulah Bankhead’s 1952 biography called Tallulah.

Love it.

Yeah, good stuff.

I highly recommend that.

Are you reading them on your phone or?

I’m reading them in paper.

What?

Yeah.

Since when?

Well, Tallulah’s is not on e-book yet.

Okay.

Okay.

Grant, the reason I asked what you were reading it on is that I’m reading my first novel ever on a Kindle. I finally broke down and got one.

Oh, what are you reading?

Well, of all things, I’m reading Moby Dick by Herman Melville. You know, we were forced to read it back in the day. But I saw a production of Moby Dick the Opera at the San Diego Opera recently that was just terrific. And it inspired me to go back and read the book. And I am just loving Herman Melville’s voice. I just, I love his confidence. He’s such a confident writer from the very first sentence, you know, call me Ishmael. And I’m sort of dreading all the parts. Oh, the 12 pages where he talks about processing the carcass, right?

Yeah, yeah. Because I have a different consciousness now about those great majestic creatures. But he’s such a confident storyteller. And you know, if you know anything about the story at all, you already have this great fun of emotion that he draws on because it’s taking so long even to get on the ships to go out there. But I just really feel like I’m in the presence of a great storyteller.

He is indeed. And I love the way he captures the history of New York and of sailing and whaling. It is a historical document as well as great literature.

Right. And he deals with matters of race and class and culture. And in fact, there was a great article in Vanity Fair in November by Nathaniel Philbrick, who writes about why Moby Dick really is the great American novel. And I read it years ago, but I am just delighting in going back through it again. I may skip those 12 pages, but we will link on our website to that Vanity Fair article. It’s great.

And we’ll list and link to all four books that we’re reading this summer. That’s Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Bossy Pants by Tina Fey, Tallulah Bankhead’s 1952 autobiography called Tallulah, and Minnie Kaling’s book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?