NPR's Book of the Day Folgen

Author Azar Nafisi has written a love letter to literature and reading in Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times. She does this in a series of letters to her late father who passed on in 2004. Nafisi says that reading can help us really live and also help us, and has helped her, survive challenging times. Nafisi told NPR's Scott Simon that literature's purpose is to let us experience new worlds: "to come out of yourself, and join the other."Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

From Notting Hill to the real-life relationships of several SNL writers with Hollywood starlets – to even the new Barbie movie tagline ("She's everything. He's just Ken.") – there's a recurring storyline in pop culture of ordinary guys dating up, falling in love with glamorous women who are seemingly out of their league. In her new book, Romantic Comedy, Curtis Sittenfeld shakes up these gender dynamics. She tells NPR's Juana Summers why she wanted her career-focused heroine – a comedy writer – to stumble into a romance with a global pop star.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Amina Al-Sirafi, the protagonist of Shannon Chakraborty's new novel, commanded the Indian Ocean as one of its most notorious pirates during the 12th century. But when the story kicks off, Al-Sirafi is focused on raising her daughter, trying to live a peaceful life with her pirate days far behind her. The tale pulls Chakraborty's character back to her heyday in the waters – and as the author tells Here & Now's Kalyani Saxena, Al-Sirafi's Islamic faith plays a much bigger role this time around.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy