Lincoln City Libraries director Pat Leach is the current host of All About Books, a weekly book-review and discussion program on NET Radio (91.1 FM in the Lincoln area, and on various other stations across Nebraska) to discuss contemporary and classic literature.
Although it dates back over 40 years, in a variety of formats and venues, since 1991 All About Books has run on NET-Radio. For many years, Charles Stephen and Otis Young co-hosted, until Young’s passing in 2009, after which Stephen was the lone host. Since August 2015, Pat Leach has served as host, with regular appearances by guest reviewers and interviews with regional authors. New episodes air every Thursday at 12:04 p.m. local time, following the NPR news.
The following is a listing of books discussed on episodes of All About Books during 2014. Episodes of All About Books are also available to be downloaded as audio Podcasts, via iTunes and various other web sources. All books owned by Lincoln City Libraries are hotlinked to their entries in our library catalog, so that you may check on their current availability. If you see a title on this list that is not hotlinked to our collection, please consider suggesting it as a purchase via our Suggest-a-Title online form, or ordering it through our Interlibrary Loan department.
Click here to visit the official NET: All About Books web site!
Title Discussed: Splitting an Order
by Ted Kooser
Additional Participants: Ted Kooser, poet
Charles Stephen looks back at 2014 and selects his favorite books in various categories like biography, fiction, history and science. A handy list for book-lovers at gift-giving season
Additional Participants: Guest reader Mary Pipher of Lincoln picks up books she last read as a teenager. Her return to a neighborhood in Brooklyn, the small town of Maycomb Alabama and an attic hiding place in Amsterdam reminded her of the power of seeing the world through young eyes
Title Discussed: The Dinner
by Herman Koch
Additional Participants: Guest reviewer Pat Leach
Title Discussed: The Immortal Evening: a Legendary Dinner with Keats, Wordsworth and Lamb
by Stanley Plumly
Title Discussed: Brief Encounters
by Dick Cavett
Title Discussed: South Pass: Gateway to a Continent
by Will Bagley
Title Discussed: Maisie Dobbs
by Jacqueline Winspear
Additional Participants: Guest reviewer Jane Hood
Title Discussed: My Struggle
by Karl Ove Knausegaard
Title Discussed: The Calamities of Kalamity Kate
by Leta Powell Drake
Additional Participants: Guest reviewer David Williams
Title Discussed: Books That Cook: The Making of a Literary Meal
by Melissa Goldthwaite and Jennifer Cognard-Black
Title Discussed: The Wheeling Year
by Ted Kooser
Additional Participants: Guest reader Mandy Gray shares her experience of feeling like an outsider. How reading about another person’s experiences in a foreign country can be very different from yours
Title Discussed: Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia
by Thant Myint-U
Additional Participants: Guest reviewer Jane Hood
Title Discussed: Michelangelo: A Life in Six Masterpieces
by Miles Unger
Title Discussed: The Capitalism Papers
by Jerry Mander
Additional Participants: Guest reviewer Don Hanway
Additional Participants: Guest reader Sydney Kohl is a middle school student and one of the Nebraska winners in the annual “Letters About Literature” contest. She’ll share her work that made it to the national short-list of outstanding young writers
Title Discussed: The Spanish Armada
by Robert Hutchinson
Title Discussed: But Enough About You: Essays
by Christopher Buckley
Title Discussed: Cockroaches
by Jo Nesbo
Additional Participants: Guest reviewer Jane Hood
Title Discussed: Russian Roulette: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin’s Plot for Global Revolution
by Giles Milton
Title Discussed: The Director
by David Ignatius
Title Discussed: The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression
by John Kasson
Title Discussed: The Adventures of Henry Thoreau: A Young Man’s Unlikely Path to Walden Pond
by Michael Sims and David Rapkin
Additional Participants: Guest reviewer Pat Stephen
Title Discussed: American Soul: A Cultural Narrative
by Ronald Schenk
Additional Participants: Guest reviewer Don Hanway
Title Discussed: Denali’s Howl: The Deadliest Climbing Disaster on America’s Wildest Peak
by Andy Hall
Title Discussed: The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Additional Participants: Sharon Bishop, who chose this title for her High School English students
Title Discussed: Hotel Florida: Truth, Love and Death in the Spanish Civil War
by Amanda Vaill
Title Discussed: The Twelfth Victim: the Innocence of Caril Fugate in the Starkweather Murder Rampage
by Linda M. Battisti and John Stevens Berry
Additional Participants: John Stevens Berry, attorney and author
Title Discussed: D-Day: Illustrated Edition
by Stephen Ambrose [libraries own only the original 1994 edition, not this illustrated edition]
Additional Participants: Clay Naff on books changing your view of the world.
Title Discussed: American Romantic
by Ward Just
Title Discussed: Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War
by Max Hastings
Additional Participants: Guest reviewer Curt Donaldson
Title Discussed: Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life
by Dorothy Gallagher
Title Discussed: How About Never? Is Never Good For You? My Life in Cartoons
by Bob Mankoff
Additional Participants: Guest reviewer Jane Hood
Additional Participants: Kwakiutl Dreher on rethinking the music of your past.
Title Discussed: Shoeless Joe
by W.P. Kinsella
Additional Participants: Journalist George Ayoub of Grand Island
Title Discussed: The Goldfinch
by Donna Tartt
Additional Participants: Guest reviewer David Williams
Title Discussed: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
by Todd Purdom
Title Discussed: The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
by Elizabeth Kolbert [576.84 Kol or YA PB (Non-Fiction) Kol]
Additional Participants: Aja Martin — Giving a book to a child is for many families an act so common most wouldn’t think twice about it. But Aja Martin explains how the gift of books to a child can in fact have a profound impact on their lives.
Title Discussed: The Faraway Nearby
by Rebecca Solnit [Biography Solnit]
Additional Participants: Pat Leach
Title Discussed: The Black-Eyed Blonde: A Philip Marlowe Novel
by Benjamin Black
Title Discussed: And Short the Season
by Maxine Kumin
Title Discussed: The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism
by Doris Kerns Goodwin [973.911 Goo]
Title Discussed: Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English, 1500-2001
edited by Carolyn Forche and Duncan Wu
Title Discussed: Sorry!: The English and Their Manners
by Henry Hitchings
Title Discussed: The Meaning of Names
by Karen Gettert Shoemaker
Additional Participants: Charles Stephen, Karen Gettert Shoemaker
Title Discussed: Under the Wide and Starry Sky
by Nancy Horan
Title Discussed: The Swan Gondola
by Timothy Shaffert
Additional Participants: Charles Stephen, Timothy Shaffert
Title Discussed: Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World
by Leo Damrosch
Title Discussed: Love in a Headscarf
by Shelina Jammohamed
Title Discussed: The Boy Detective
by Roger Rosenblatt [Biography Rosenblatt]
Additional Participants: Stephen Griffith
Title Discussed: American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell
by Deborah Solomon [Biography Rockwell]
Title Discussed: The Last Days of the Rainbelt
by David Wishart [978.032 Wis]
Title Discussed: Standup Guy
by Stuart Woods
Additional Participants: Bruce Stephenson
Title Discussed: Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade
by Rachel Cohen
Title Discussed: Bad Monkey
by Carl Hiaasen
Title Discussed: The Good Lord Bird
by James McBride
Additional Participants: Jane Hood
This page last updated February 2019 sdc