Ten minutes with… is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they’re reading right now and what’s getting them through these difficult times.

Today Jonathan spends ten minutes chatting with Kate Elliott, who calls in from her home high on a hillside overlooking the Pacific to talk about her love of reading history, Alexander the Great, the naval history of the Second World War, the importance of reading what works for you at a time like this, and her forthcoming novel, Unconquerable Sun.

Books mentioned include:

• Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott
• Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great by A. B. Bosworth
• Æthelstan: The First King of England by Sarah Foot
• Women and the Making of the Mongol Empire by Anne F. Broadbridge
• Neptune’s Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal by James D. Hornfischer
• The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy’s Finest Hour by James D. Hornfischer
• The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

Ten minutes with… is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they’re reading right now and what’s getting them through these difficult times.

Gary chats with World Fantasy Award-winner Mary Rickert on being cautious during the lockdown, reading Dracula for the first time, the rewards of contemplating individual words and their etymologies, revisiting Ray Bradbury, and Mary’s own forthcoming work.

Books mentioned include:

• You Have Never Been Here: New and Selected Stories by M. Rickert
• The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie by M. Rickert (forthcoming)
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
• The Stories of Ray Bradbury by Ray Bradbury
• Thin Places by Kay Chronister

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Ten minutes with… is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they’re reading right now and what’s getting them through these difficult times.

This time out, Gary talks with PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author Karen Joy Fowler, about the challenges of concentrating in times of stress, but also the value of collective co-operation and respect for scientific evidence and the question of whether the current situation might encourage us to think more broadly about our responsibilities as co-inhabitants of this planet.

Books mentioned include:

• The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

• Eye of the Whale by Douglas Carlton Abrams

• The Widowed Warlock by Helen Sanders

• Burning Girls and Other Stories by Veronica Schanoes (short story at Tor.com)

• The Overstory by Richard Powers

• Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard by Douglas W. Tallamy 

Ten minutes with… is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they’re reading right now and what’s getting them through these difficult times.

Ten minutes with… is a special series presented by Coode Street that sees readers and booklovers from around the world talk about what they’re reading right now and what’s getting them through these difficult times.

Gary chats for ten minutes (okay, more like 17 minutes) with Paul McAuley, author of some of the most engaging and provocative series of the past few decades, including the Confluence, Quiet War, and “Jackaroo novels and stories, and whose newest novel is the epic War of the Maps, which combines hard-SF ideas with a classic quest narrative.

Books mentioned include:

• War of the Maps by Paul McAuley
• Bone Silence  by Alastair Reynolds
• By Force Alone by Lavie Tidhar
• The Once and Future King by T.H. White
• I Have Waited, and You Have Come by Martine McDonagh
• The Long Drop by Denise Mina
• The Big Sky by Kate Atkinson
• Tropic of Kansas by Christopher Brown
• The Harry Bosch novels by Michael Connelly
• Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis by George Monbiot
• An Ecotopian Lexicon edited by Matthew Schneider-Mayerson & Brent Ryan Bellamy

And not mentioned, but advised: If you can, try to find the time and space to read a little poetry every day.