NPR's Book of the Day Folgen

There was a time when the kind of music you listened to could fully define the kind of lifestyle you led, says Dawnie Walton, author of The Final Revival of Opal and Nev. It's less restricting now, but your taste in music can still say quite a bit about who you are. In her book and in Tiphanie Yanique's novel Monster in the Middle, music plays at the center of its characters' stories, as they wrestle with figuring out who they are in their relationships, with significant others and their families. NPR's Scott Simon talks with each author about it in today's episode.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Parks and Rec actor Nick Offerman is famous for playing an outdoorsman on TV, but it turns out he actually is one in real life, too — albeit considerably less gruff than his character Ron Swanson. NPR's Scott Simon met up with him in the wilds of Central Park to discuss Offerman's new book Where the Deer and the Antelope Play. A testament to the pastoral takes a philosophical look at the vast wilderness of America and how open lands affect our approach to recreation, conservation, farming, and more.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Poet Laureate Joy Harjo says she loved poetry as a kid, but didn't feel like it belonged to her. "It wasn't until I heard Native poets," she tells NPR's Michel Martin, "that I realized that, wow, this is a powerful tool of understanding and affirmation. And I don't know, I just started writing." Harjo had been studying medicine, she says, and she knew her people needed doctors — but what about poets? Her new memoir Poet Warrior is a chronicle of pain and injustice, of growing up poor with an abusive stepfather — but also of poetry and discovery, of taking that pain and using it to make art.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy