Listen to an excerpt of Andrea Marcum's CLOSE TO OM audiobook, read by the author.

Andrea Marcum's Close to Om is a practical and philosophical yoga audiobook that promotes and teaches mindfulness in both your yoga practice and your everyday life.

Before Marcum was a sought after celebrity yoga teacher, she was someone who thought she couldn’t do yoga because she couldn’t be still. Now after sixteen years of teaching yoga, she works with network executives, global brands, Hollywood actresses, and everyone in between.

Yoga is the yoke of body, mind, and spirit, and in Close to Om, Marcum offers a guide to teach all three aspects of yoga showcasing Marcum’s signature unique style, this program combines the teaching of poses with the exploration of yoga philosophy and insight into meditation and mindfulness.

By the end of Close to Om, listeners will not only know a lot about yoga and its poses, but they’ll also know more about themselves: who they are, what they want, and how to get there—on and off their mat. The progression in Close to Om is the architecture of every yoga practice—and will show listeners that how they do their yoga is how they do their life.

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Close to Om by Andrea Marcum | Meditation 1

This is an excerpt from the audiobook EDUCATED by Tara Westover, narrated by Julia Whelan.

Learn more about EDUCATED here: https://bit.ly/2H4QypA

An unforgettable memoir about a young girl who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University &ldquo;Tara&rsquo;s story will find a place alongside modern classic memoirs like Wild and The Glass Castle. It&rsquo;s that special.&rdquo;&mdash;Susannah Cahalan, author of Brain on Fire Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her &ldquo;head-for-the-hills&rdquo; bag. In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged metal in her father&rsquo;s junkyard. Her father distrusted the medical establishment, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when an older brother became violent. When another brother got himself into college and came back with news of the world beyond the mountain, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. She taught herself enough mathematics, grammar, and science to take the ACT and was admitted to Brigham Young University. There, she studied psychology, politics, philosophy, and history, learning for the first time about pivotal world events like the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she&rsquo;d traveled too far, if there was still a way home. Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty, and of the grief that comes from severing ties with those closest to you. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one&rsquo;s life through new eyes, and the will to change it. &ldquo;A punch to the gut, a slow burn, a savage indictment, a love letter: Educated somehow contrives to be all these things at once. Tara Westover guides us through the extraordinary Western landscape of her coming of age, and in clear, tender prose makes us feel what she felt, growing up among fanatics.&rdquo;&mdash;Claire Dederer, author of Love and Trouble

Educated by Tara Westover, read by Julia Whelan

Narrated by the authors, Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth A. Silvers.

Two friends on opposite sides of the aisle provide a practical guide to grace-filled political conversation while challenging readers to put relationship before policy and understanding before argument.

More than ever, politics seems driven by conflict and anger. People sitting together in pews every Sunday have started to feel like strangers, loved ones at the dinner table like enemies. Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers say there is a better way.       

As working moms on opposite ends of the political spectrum and hosts of a fast-growing politics podcast, Holland and Silvers have learned how to practice engaging conversation while disagreeing. In I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening), they share principles on how to give grace and be vulnerable when discussing issues that affect families, churches, the country, and the world. They provide practical tools to move past frustration and into productive dialogue, emphasizing that faith should inform the way people engage more than it does the outcome of that engagement. This urgently needed new book reveals how to talk about politics in a way that inspires rather than angers and that pays spiritual dividends far past election day.

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I THINK YOU'RE WRONG (BUT I'M LISTENING) by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth A. Silvers

From the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids and M Train, a profound, beautifully realized memoir in which dreams and reality are vividly woven into a tapestry of one transformative year. Following a run of New Year's concerts at San Francisco's legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland with no design, yet heeding signs--including a talking sign that looms above her, prodding and sparring like the Cheshire Cat. In February, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing with it unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. In a stranger's words, "Anything is possible: after all, it's the Year of the Monkey." For Smith--inveterately curious, always exploring, tracking thoughts, writing--the year evolves as one of reckoning with the changes in life's gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America. Smith melds the western landscape with her own dreamscape. Taking us from California to the Arizona desert; to a Kentucky farm as the amanuensis of a friend in crisis; to the hospital room of a valued mentor; and by turns to remembered and imagined places, this haunting memoir blends fact and fiction with poetic mastery. The unexpected happens; grief and disillusionment set in. But as Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the reader: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye, and above all, a rugged hope for a better world. Riveting, elegant, often humorous, illustrated by Smith's signature Polaroids, Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times.

Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith, read by Patti Smith

Introduced by Peter Donaldson, Recorded by John Braden, WOMR, Edited and Mixed at dBs Music'I have written a blasphemous book', said Melville when his novel was first published in 1851, 'and I feel as spotless as the lamb'. Deeply subversive, in almost every way imaginable, Moby-Dick is a virtual, alternative bible - and as such, ripe for reinterpretation in this new world of new media. Out of Dominion was born its bastard child - or perhaps its immaculate conception - the Moby-Dick Big Read: an online version of Melville's magisterial tome: each of its 135 chapters read out aloud, by a mixture of the celebrated and the unknown, to be broadcast online, one new chapter each day, in a sequence of 135 downloads, publicly and freely accessible.Starting 16 September 2012!For more info please go to: www.mobydickbigread.com

Epilogue - Read by Mary Oliver - http://mobydickbigread.com

From the most successful Republican political operative of his generation, a searing, unflinching, and deeply personal expos&eacute; of how his party became what it is today Stuart Stevens spent decades electing Republicans at every level, from presidents to senators to local officials. He knows the GOP as intimately as anyone in America, and in this new book he offers a devastating portrait of a party that has lost its moral and political compass. This is not a book about how Donald J. Trump hijacked the Republican Party and changed it into something else. Stevens shows how Trump is in fact the natural outcome of five decades of hypocrisy and self-delusion, dating all the way back to the civil rights legislation of the early 1960s. Stevens shows how racism has always lurked in the modern GOP's DNA, from Goldwater's opposition to desegregation to Ronald Reagan's welfare queens and states' rights rhetoric. He gives an insider's account of the rank hypocrisy of the party's claims to embody "family values," and shows how the party's vaunted commitment to fiscal responsibility has been a charade since the 1980s. When a party stands for nothing, he argues, it is only natural that it will be taken over by the loudest and angriest voices in the room. It Was All a Lie is not just an indictment of the Republican Party, but a candid and often lacerating mea culpa. Stevens is not asking for pity or forgiveness; he is simply telling us what he has seen firsthand. He helped to create the modern party that kneels before a morally bankrupt con man and now he wants nothing more than to see what it has become burned to the ground.

It Was All a Lie by Stuart Stevens, read by Dan John Miller

Like a lot of people, lockdown has made us think about intimacy. As separation from our loved ones drags on, we're all having to find different ways to connect, and in this socially distant reality, intimacy feels more necessary than ever - however we can get it (hot tip: books are good!). Writing and reading can be intimate acts, so for this episode we'll be discussing what intimacy means in literature, which writers - from Henry James to Sally Rooney to Maggie Nelson - have been able to capture it, and what it means to write in an intimate way. Our guest this month is Garth Greenwell, a writer whose work chronicles and explores intimacy in many forms, so he couldn't be a better person to talk to. His second book, Cleanness, follows an American teacher living in Sofia, Bulgaria as he navigates relationships with his students, love and sex. Listen in for our interview with Garth, our thoughts about intimacy in literature, and all the usual recommendations. Come closer, let us put our arms around you, and get enveloped for the next hour by Literary Friction. 

Recommendations on the theme, Intimacy: 
Octavia: The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/argonauts
Carrie: Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/573/57368/giovanni-s-room/9780141186351.html

General Recommendations:
Octavia: This Brutal House by Niven Govinden https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/niven-govinden/this-brutal-house/9780349700687/
Garth: Where Reasons End by Yiyun Li https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/594959/where-reasons-end-by-yiyun-li/
Carrie: The Years by Annie Ernaux https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/the-years

Email us: litfriction@gmail.com
Tweet us & find us on Instagram: @litfriction 
This episode is sponsored by Picador https://www.panmacmillan.com/picador

Literary Friction - Intimacy With Garth Greenwell

We're still on our summer break, so we wanted to use this chance to bring you a re-run of one of our favourite shows from our archive. In 2018, we spoke to Thomas Page McBee about his book Amateur, which tells the true story of his quest to become the first trans man to box at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The theme of the show is Masculinity: what makes a man? Why do men fight? Is there a crisis of masculinity? These are some of the questions that authors from Ernest Hemingway to Grayson Perry have asked, and questions that Thomas Page McBee addresses head on in his searching, beautiful and wise book.

Literary Friction - RE-RUN: Masculinity with Thomas Page McBee

OPRAH&rsquo;S BOOK CLUB PICK &bull;&#160;The Pulitzer Prize&ndash;winning, bestselling author of&#160;The Warmth of Other Suns&#160;examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions. &#160; &ldquo;An instant American classic.&rdquo;&mdash;Dwight Garner, The New York Times &ldquo;As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power&mdash;which groups have it and which do not.&rdquo; &#160; In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. &#160; Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people&rsquo;s lives and behavior and the nation&rsquo;s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people&mdash;including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball&rsquo;s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others&mdash;she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity. Beautifully written, original, and revealing,&#160;Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents&#160;is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

Caste (Oprah's Book Club) by Isabel Wilkerson, read by Robin Miles

Will Harris and Nick Makoha, prizewinning poets both, talk about Nick’s poems in the spring 2020 issue of The Poetry Review and how these poems exemplify his interest in song, story and myth, the parameters of self, reconfiguring the problem of the white lens, and how the act of writing poems produces unlooked-for discoveries. Nick gives electrifying readings of his poems ‘Codex 1’ and Codex 2, both published in the Review, and ‘Bird In Flames’ from his Forward-shortlisted debut Kingdom of Gravity.

Nick Makoha talks to Will Harris

Listen to an excerpt from THE GIFT by Edith Eva Eger and read by Tovah Feldshuh

THE GIFT Audiobook Excerpt

Penguin Random House Audio is the market leader for adult and children's audiobook publishing. Follow us on Twitter @PRHAudio.

It Was All a Lie by Stuart Stevens, read by Dan John Miller

PRH Audio