Story Archives of 'Books'

Call us nostalgic, sentimental, or maybe just old, but there’s just something about the thoughtfully crafted mix tape. Jason Bitner, co-creator of Found Magazine, gets this. He helped create an online space to share the songs and the stories behind the cassettes that have been hiding in a shoebox all these years. CassetteFromMyEx.com is the place to revisit your magnetic tape memories. Some of the stories collected there are now compiled in a book -- Cassette From My Ex: Stories and Soundtracks of Lost Loves.

Jason Bitner joins us to explain the project, and then we hear Bitner and others from the site break down the anatomy of the mix tape. Chicago Public radio producer Joe DeCeault spoke with some of the contributors and put together this piece, which weaves together the soundtracks and memories of lost love.

(Photo by leah lockhart via Flickr/Creative Commons)

The acclaimed author of The Poisonwood Bible, The Bean Trees, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was at the Music Hall in Portsmouth to take part in our Writers On A New England Stage series. Kingsolver reads from her new book The Lacuna, talks with Laura Knoy and takes questions from the audience. Today we play back the highlights from the evening’s event.

New York City voters gave Michael Bloomberg a narrow win in yesterday’s mayoral election. Bloomberg spent an estimated $100 million to beat Comptroller William Thompson. Much of that money paid for mailers, ads, and robocalls boasting about Bloomberg’s record on crime and education.

Bloomberg made education a priority in his first mayoral run, back in 2001. He vowed to do for public schools what Rudy Giuliani had done for public safety.

Today we’re going to learn about three kids who slipped through the cracks of New York’s educational system. Beth Fertig is a DuPont award-winning senior reporter for WNYC Radio in New York City. In 2006, she met Yamilka, a young woman who graduated from a South Bronx high school knowing only eight letters of the alphabet. At 22 years old, Yamilka would get lost because she couldn’t read the subway signs.

Fertig found other graduates who were completely illiterate, and in the process, uncovered deep divisions in education policy and expensive attempts to compensate for a failing system. She tells those stories in her new book Why Can't U Teach Me 2 Read?: Three Students and a Mayor Put Our Schools to the Test. Beth Fertig joins us from WNYC Radio in New York.