Episode 55 - Competitive Reading with Austin Waters

On this episode, Austin Waters, a friend of mine from high school, describes how he has had lots of experience with many different types of reading and writing. We discuss reading plays, how we read so many good books in high school, and how competition in reading can be detrimental.    Books mentioned in this episode:    What Betsy’s reading:  West With Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge  There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak    Books Highlighted by Austin: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut  Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie  In Cold Blood by Truman Capote Assata: an Autobiography by Assata Shakur  Everyone’s a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too by Jomny Sun There are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America by Alex Kotlowitz  Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes  The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien Blue Highways: A Journey into America by William Least Heat-Moon Someone Like You by Roald Dahl My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist by Mark Leyner Never Home Alone: From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets, and Honeybees, the Natural History of Where We Live by Rob Dunn    All books available on my Bookshop.org episode page.   Other books mentioned in this episode: Educated by Tara Westover  Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson & GB Trudeau  A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole Redwall by Brian Jacques  Great Expectations by Charles Dickens Animal Farm by George Orwell  The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkein  The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz  Decoded by Jay-Z  The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald  The Banshees of Inisherin by Martin McDonagh  Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri by Martin McDonagh  On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong  The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong  Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders  Yellowface by R.F. Kuang  The Epic of Gilgamesh trans. Andrew George  Nothing to Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes  The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes  Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez  Let This Radicalize You by Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba  Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut  To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee  The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan  The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver  Hamlet by William Shakespeare  The Tempest by William Shakespeare  Macbeth by William Shakespeare  The Odyssey by Homer  No More Dead Dogs by Gordon Korman  Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon  Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton  On The Calculation of Volume Book I by Solvej Balle, trans. Barbara J. Haveland  House of Fury by Evelio Rosero, trans. Victor Meadowcroft  On The Clock by Claire Baglin, trans. Jordan Stump