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Ep. 435 Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo — The Stacks Book Club (Julianna Haubner)
It’s The Stacks Book Club day, and we're joined by nonfiction editor Julianna Haubner to discuss our July pick, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo. This book follows the families of Annawadi, a makeshift settlement near the Mumbai airport, as they strive toward a better life amidst tragedy, global recessions, economic upheaval, and social issues. Julianna and I chat about a journalist’s responsibility to their audience, what it means for a work of nonfiction to read “like a novel,” and how we think this book would be received if it we...
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are educating a reader rather than just delivering that kind of action. The context is so important
. , . ,
Tracy Thomas, and it is The Stacks Book Club Day. We have got nonfiction editor Juliana Hobner
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Is this episode right for you?
B1 · Intermediate
Fine if you can follow simple news
- 82% of the words are B1 or easier.
- 180 words a minute: natural, fairly fast speech.
- 203 harder words (B2 and up) in the whole episode.
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there were moments where I felt myself mentally putting a pen down as if I were marking a draft to be like, say more. There were a lot of moments where I was like leaning in being like, oh yeah, like this actually like has caught my eye is something I'm not familiar with. And then it kind of just moved on. Yeah. And I think as an editor, I would have been, I mean, and that's
why some of the books I work on are like, you know, 400 plus pages rather than 244. But like, I think that those opportunities like should be taken a ton because that's actually how you are educating a reader rather than just delivering that kind of action. The context is so important too. Welcome to The Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I'm your host,
Tracy Thomas, and it is The Stacks Book Club Day. We have got nonfiction editor Juliana Hobner back to discuss our July pick, Behind the Beautiful Forever's Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Catherine Boo. This intimate feat of reportage follows the families of Anawadi, a makeshift settlement near the Mumbai airport, as they strive toward a better life amidst tragedies,
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