The Avid Reader Show

Episode 788: Keza MacDonald - Super Nintendo: The Game-Changing Company That Unlocked the Power of Play

An exuberant, behind-the-scenes look at the designers and the company that brought us Mario, Zelda, Pokémon, and so much more, illuminating Nintendo's singular ethos, its massive cultural impact, and the innovative solutions behind its creative triumphs What magical mushroom could have turned an unassuming playing card company into one of the dominant cultural forces of the twenty-first century? In Super Nintendo, lifelong gamer and a renowned video games journalist Keza MacDonald traces Nintendo back to its quirky beginnings in 1889. Leaping from game to game, she tells the remarkable story of the people who brought us Super Mario Bros., Zelda, Pokémon, Animal Crossing, Splatoon, and more—not to mention the SNES, N64, Game Boy, Wii, Switch, and a host of other wacky gizmos—and charts the delights they’ve offered over the decades.  MacDonald draws on private interviews with icons like Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario, who continues to leave his stamp on the company, and takes readers on a trip to the secretive Nintendo HQ—making her one of the few Western journalists to have set foot inside the building. Along the way, she provides a close-up look at the company's willingness to take risks and place long-term success over short-term profits. A carousel of wonders, Super Nintendo whisks you back to the couch in the den, a controller in your hands for the very first time, staring up at a screen of infinite possibilities.

Episode 787: Ancient Algorithms - Katrine ØGaard Jensen

In Ancient Algorithms, Katrine gaard Jensen mistranslates, rewrites, and remixes her award-winning translations of Danish Ursula Andkj r Olsen's poetry based on a series of self-imposed rules and rituals in collaboration with poets Sawako Nakayasu, Aditi Machado, CAConrad, Baba Badji, Paul Cunningham, and Ursula Andkj r Olsen herself. Envisioned as a shared debut, this collection of collaborative poems is equal parts exercise and exorcism, a haunting of literary influences that repositions translation as the very act of writing--exploring what it means for something to be an original, a translation, a poem. Katrine Øgaard Jensen is a Danish poet and translator based in New York. She is a recipient of several fellowships and awards, including the National Translation Award in Poetry, the Kenyon Review's Peter Taylor Fellowship, and the Danish Arts Foundation's Young Artistic Elite Fellowship. Her translations include Third-Millennium Heart (Action Books 2017), Outgoing Vessel (Action Books 2021), and My Jewel Box (Action Books 2022) by Ursula Andkjær Olsen, as well as To The Most Beautiful by Mette Moestrup (co-im-press 2024). Since 2016, she has taught Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Columbia University, where she served as Acting Director of Literary Translation at Columbia (LTAC) from 2019-2020. Buy the book from Wellington Square Bookshop - https://wellingtonsquarebooks.com/book/9781956046434

Episode 786: Elegy in Blue - Mark Helprin

Told in an exceptional literary voice, mixing comedy and tragedy, Elegy in Blue is a hymn to New York, memory, loyalty, and love. High in a subsidized studio apartment, the unnamed 82-year-old narrator of Elegy in Blue looks out across the rooftops of Brooklyn all the way to the sea. His distinguished career on Wall Street is in ruins, his mansion in Brooklyn Heights has been burned to the ground, and most of all, his father, his son, and his wife—the stunningly beautiful and equally kind Clare—have been taken from him, one by one, over the decades, by war and an act of violence. Now his “allegiance is to his ghosts.” He’s almost lost to memory, reflection, and a purposeful letting go of life. But when violence threatens to destroy another family, he takes drastic action in hope of restoring a portion of justice to the world. Can he fashion his life into an elegy, one that heals a broken heart and relieves the sting of death? Mark Helprin is the internationally acclaimed, bestselling author of Paris in the Present Tense, Winter’s Tale, In Sunlight and in Shadow, A Soldier of the Great War, Freddy and Fredericka, The Pacific, Swan Lake, Ellis Island, Memoir from Antproof Case, and numerous other works. Buy the book from Wellington Square Bookshop - https://wellingtonsquarebooks.com/book/9781419786082

Episode 785: Marcus Hall - Our Bodies, Our Planet: A Parasite's History of Us

In praise of parasites, a surprising exploration of the profound impact of biological freeloaders on human history and our daily lives.   Parasites and parasitic relationships are fundamental to life on Earth and to human history. Our Bodies, Our Planet explores how vital they are. Unlike harmful pathogens, parasites may produce no ill effects and may even improve our well-being and the lives of the creatures that surround us. Marcus Hall shows how our fellow travelers have evolved to help keep us alive, or else they themselves will perish. Parasitism is a phenomenon of partnership, and the association of parasite and host has had far-ranging cultural, biological, and possibly geophysical consequences. From Ascaris to Zika, we are instinctively repulsed by these little freeloaders, but what collateral effects do they have on our lives, lifestyles, or even our imagination? As Hall demonstrates, we disregard our parasites at our peril. Marcus Hall is professor of environmental history at the University of Zurich. His books include Earth Repair, Restoration and History, and Mosquitopia. Buy the book from Wellington Square Bookshop - https://wellingtonsquarebooks.com/book/9781836391074

Episode 784: Andreas Marks - Japan's Manga Revolution: From Painted Scrolls to Comic Books 1680-1920

Manga didn’t begin in the 20th century — it emerged from a rich, inventive world of illustrated books in early Japan. 🇯🇵📚 In Japan’s Manga Revolution, art historian Andreas Marks takes us through the playful, dramatic, and groundbreaking works that defined Japanese visual storytelling: Hokusai’s sketchbooks, Utamaro’s creature studies, serialized adventure sagas, and the first publication to ever use the word manga. Discover how these early innovations set the stage for the global manga culture we know today. Dr. Andreas Marks is the Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese and Korean Art and Director of the Clark Center for Japanese Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. From 2008 to 2013 he was the director and chief curator of the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture in California. He received a Ph.D. from Leiden University and a master's degree in East Asian Art History from the University of Bonn. A specialist in Japanese woodblock prints, he is the author of over 20 books. In 2014 he received the International Ukiyo-e Society Award in recognition of his research, and in 2018 and 2022 the top book award from the International Fine Print Dealers Association. Buy the book from Wellington Square Bookshop - https://wellingtonsquarebooks.com/book/9784805319017