Welcome to the (first?) Circulating Ideas Summer Reading Spectacular! 🎉
I considered this “summer reading” concept for the podcast last summer but did not get around to organizing it in time. I got on the ball earlier this year, contacting authors and publishers, and here we are: 8 (maybe 9?) weeks of podcasts featuring 8 (maybe 9?) authors!
Cory Doctorow is the first featured author, and he is one of the returning authors that will be part of the series (stay tuned to discover who the other returning author is!). He was the guest for Episode 28 in 2013 (!) when Allison Tran and I were collaborating on a podcasting project. Now, he returns to talk about the second book in his Martin Hench series: The Bezzle! The novel delves deep into the topics that Doctorow knows so well, digging into the depths that greed has descended to in the name of capitalism. If you read Doctorow’s daily Pluralistic writings, none of the topics will be new to you, but how he weaves them into an exciting thriller will intrigue you.
Check out my interview with him now, either as a podcast or the transcript!
New York Times bestseller Cory Doctorow's The Bezzle is a high stakes thriller where the lives of the hundreds of thousands of inmates in California’s prisons are traded like stock shares.
The year is 2006. Martin Hench is at the top of his game as a self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerrilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. He spends his downtime on Catalina Island, where scenic, imported bison wander the bluffs and frozen, reheated fast food burgers cost 25$. Wait, what? When Marty disrupts a seemingly innocuous scheme during a vacation on Catalina Island, he has no idea he’s kicked off a chain of events that will overtake the next decade of his life.
Martin has made his most dangerous mistake yet: trespassed into the playgrounds of the ultra-wealthy and spoiled their fun. To them, money is a tool, a game, and a way to keep score, and they’ve found their newest mark—California’s Department of Corrections. Secure in the knowledge that they’re living behind far too many firewalls of shell companies and investors ever to be identified, they are interested not in the lives they ruin, but only in how much money they can extract from the government and the hundreds of thousands of prisoners they have at their mercy.
A seething rebuke of the privatized prison system that delves deeply into the arcane and baroque financial chicanery involved in the 2008 financial crash, The Bezzle is a sizzling follow-up to Red Team Blues.
Summer Reading List
One of the things I’m enjoying is putting together a Summer Reading List, with each guest author adding a book or two of their choosing. I’ll update the list with each episode until we have our complete list at the end of the summer!
The Steerswoman (Cory Doctorow’s pick)
Ready Reference
Mentioned on the podcast:
Circulating Ideas 28: Cory Doctorow - Librarians are ROCKSTARS!
Cory on X / Twitter (with a non-consensual blue tick)
“Mercedes locks faster acceleration behind a $1,200 annual paywall”
Emancipation on the Ballet: Why Slavery is Still Legal in America – And How Voters Can Take Action
U.S. Copyright Office defends artists’ rights to terminate their copyright transfers
“George Clinton’s Legal Troubles Are A Mystery Wrapped In A Pandora’s Box”
What’s Really Going On In Marvel’s Copyright Termination Lawsuits
“Why None of My Books Are Available on Audible” - Kindle / Audible Exclusive
“Transparency Rights” [excerpt from Chokepoint Capitalism] - Kindle / Audible Exclusive
The Circ Desk
This episode features the debut of a new segment on the show: The Circ Desk, featuring Rebecca Vnuk from Library Reads and Yaika Sabat from NoveList. In this episode, they chat about cyber- and techno-thrillers, including The Bezzle and its “vacation interrupted” appeal factor!
The Circ Desk recommends:
Steve Thomas is a public library manager who lives in the suburbs of Atlanta with his wife, two kids, and one dog. He has worked in libraries since the year 2000 and has hosted the Circulating Ideas podcast since 2011. He really likes Coke Zero.
Currently Reading: The Bourne Evolution by Brian Freeman