Meditating in midst of the Coronavirus pandemic is not easy. It can be particularly difficult because many traditional meditations rely on the breath as an anchor, or focal point, for your attention. So the breath becomes the place you return to when the mind inevitably wanders. 

When we meditate on the breath, we settle on a place where we feel the breath moving (such as the nostrils, the chest or the abdomen), or we follow the whole breath in and out. Many will continue to find the breath a great solace and support at this time. But for some people, the breath may be a relatively uncertain anchor: the sensations of the breath don’t feel quite strong enough to hold their attention. This is especially true if you have an asthmatic condition, or a history of panic attacks, or are experiencing symptoms of Covid-19. 

To help you deal with such issues, we have produced a new collection of meditations that will help you explore alternative anchors for your attention; the feet, seat or hands. There are three versions of the Finding Your Ground meditation of different lengths..... Read more here http://franticworld.com/coronavirus/

Frantic World 2.0

Bells only - every 5'

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

Don't know about you, but we've really felt the need for a little more joy around here lately. We miss it, and as the world continues to turn upside down, we’re learning how to find it in new ways and in new places. So, Minisode Fifteen is dedicated to JOY, and the best thing about joy is that once you have a little of it you can find ways to pass it on, like a paper chain of joy spreading out across communities virtual and real. What's bringing you joy right now? Is reading a joyful act? Can finding joy be a practice? And as we get into what brings us joy, hopefully we’ll spread a little of that joy to you, and finally as usual give a few recommendations of things we’ve been into lately. This is our last show before we take our summer break in August, so we wish you all good things, and may you go to your joy.

Minisode Fifteen: Joy

Review contributor Sandeep Parmar talks to Mary Jean Chan, guest co-editor with Will Harris of the spring 2020 issue of The Poetry Review. Sandeep reads her poem, ‘The Nineties’, and reflects on its origins – growing up in California at the time of the L.A. riots, which followed the arrest and beating of Rodney King, the trial of O.J. Simpson and the 1994 Northridge earthquake – and their relevance now, following the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement as a catalyst for change. In an exhilarating conversation Sandeep and Mary Jean discuss race and contemporary literature, the lyric 'I' and, post-Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric, the fluidities and opportunities of the second-person ‘you’, and changing the critical context of BAME writing with the Ledbury Emerging Critics scheme, which Sandeep co-founded with Sarah Howe.

Sandeep Parmar talks to Mary Jean Chan

From bestselling author and NYU Business School professor Scott Galloway comes a keenly insightful, urgent analysis of who stands to win and who's at risk to lose in a post-pandemic world The COVID-19 outbreak has turned bedrooms into offices, pitted young against old, and widened the gaps between rich and poor, red and blue, the mask wearers and the mask haters. Some businesses--like home exercise company Peloton, video conference software maker Zoom, and Amazon--woke up to find themselves crushed under an avalanche of consumer demand. Others--like the restaurant, travel, hospitality, and live entertainment industries--scrambled to escape obliteration. But as New York Times bestselling author Scott Galloway argues, the pandemic has not been a change agent so much as an accelerant of trends already well underway. In Post Corona, he outlines the contours of the crisis and the opportunities that lie ahead. Some businesses, like the powerful tech monopolies, will thrive as a result of the disruption. Other industries, like higher education, will struggle to maintain a value proposition that no longer makes sense when we can't stand shoulder to shoulder. And the pandemic has accelerated deeper trends in government and society, exposing a widening gap between our vision of America as a land of opportunity, and the troubling realities of our declining wellbeing. Combining his signature humor and brash style with sharp business insights and the occasional dose of righteous anger, Galloway offers both warning and hope in equal measure. As he writes, "Our commonwealth didn't just happen, it was shaped. We chose this path--no trend is permanent and can't be made worse or corrected." Available for purchase at: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08HL8JYZN?tag=randohouseinc7911-20">Amazon</a><a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/?ean=9780593332221">Barnes & Noble</a><a href="http://www.tkqlhce.com/click-8373827-10747236?SID=PRHD39095A662--9780593332221&url=http://www.booksamillion.com/p/9780593332221">Books A Million</a><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/2186/9780593332214?prhc=PRHD39095A662">Bookshop.org</a><a href="http://www.hudsonbooksellers.com/book/9780593332214?utm_source=prh&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_term=301&utm_content=PRHD39095A662--9780593332214&utm_campaign=9780593332214">Hudson Booksellers</a><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780593332214?aff=penguinrandom">IndieBound</a><a href="http://www.powells.com/book/-9780593332214?utm_source=randomhouse&utm_campaign=randomhouse&utm_content=PRHD39095A662--9780593332214">Powell's</a><a href="http://goto.target.com/c/128773/81938/2092?subId1=PRHD39095A662--9780593332214&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.target.com%2Fs%3FsearchTerm%3D9780593332214">Target</a><a href="https://www.walmart.com/search/?query=9780593332214">Walmart</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1530728487?at=11l3IH&ct=PRHD39095A662--9780593332221">Apple Books</a><a href="https://google.prf.hn/click/camref:1011ld4r/pubref:PRHD39095A662--9780593332221/destination:https://play.google.com/store/search?q=9780593332221&c=books">Google Play Store</a><a href="http://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=VD9*lkiWNd8&offerid=258185.12829781935712206&type=2&u1=PRHD39095A662--9780593332221}&murl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kobo.com%2Fsearch%3FQuery%3D9780593332221">Kobo</a>

Post Corona by Scott Galloway, read by Scott Galloway

From the author of the bestselling More Beautiful Than Before comes an inspiring book about loss based on his most popular sermon. As the senior rabbi of one of the largest synagogues in the world, Steve Leder has learned over and over again the many ways death teaches us how to live and love more deeply by showing us not only what is gone but also the beauty of what remains. This inspiring and comforting book takes us on a journey through the experience of loss that is fundamental to everyone. Yet even after having sat beside thousands of deathbeds, Steve Leder the rabbi was not fully prepared for the loss of his own father. It was only then that Steve Leder the son truly learned how loss makes life beautiful by giving it meaning and touching us with love that we had not felt before. Enriched by Rabbi Leder's irreverence, vulnerability, and wicked sense of humor, this heartfelt narrative is filled with laughter and tears, the wisdom of millennia and modernity, and, most of all, an unfolding of the profound and simple truth that in loss we gain more than we ever imagined. Available for purchase at: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08D8J4D8Z?tag=randohouseinc7911-20">Amazon</a><a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/?ean=9780593187562">Barnes & Noble</a><a href="http://www.tkqlhce.com/click-8373827-10747236?SID=PRHD39095A662--9780593187562&url=http://www.booksamillion.com/p/9780593187562">Books A Million</a><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/2186/9780593187555?prhc=PRHD39095A662">Bookshop.org</a><a href="http://www.hudsonbooksellers.com/book/9780593187555?utm_source=prh&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_term=301&utm_content=PRHD39095A662--9780593187555&utm_campaign=9780593187555">Hudson Booksellers</a><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780593187555?aff=penguinrandom">IndieBound</a><a href="http://www.powells.com/book/-9780593187555?utm_source=randomhouse&utm_campaign=randomhouse&utm_content=PRHD39095A662--9780593187555">Powell's</a><a href="http://goto.target.com/c/128773/81938/2092?subId1=PRHD39095A662--9780593187555&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.target.com%2Fs%3FsearchTerm%3D9780593187555">Target</a><a href="https://www.walmart.com/search/?query=9780593187555">Walmart</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1524211087?at=11l3IH&ct=PRHD39095A662--9780593187562">Apple Books</a><a href="https://google.prf.hn/click/camref:1011ld4r/pubref:PRHD39095A662--9780593187562/destination:https://play.google.com/store/search?q=9780593187562&c=books">Google Play Store</a><a href="http://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=VD9*lkiWNd8&offerid=258185.12829781935712206&type=2&u1=PRHD39095A662--9780593187562}&murl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kobo.com%2Fsearch%3FQuery%3D9780593187562">Kobo</a>

The Beauty of What Remains by Steve Leder, read by Steve Leder

A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family, about a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for--and everything she feared Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting, supportive mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had. But in the thick of motherhood's exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter--Violet rejects her mother, screams uncontrollably, and becomes a disturbing, disruptive presence at her preschool. Or is it all in Blythe's head? Her husband, Fox, says she's imagining things. What he sees is an overwhelmed wife who can't cope with the day-to-day grind. The more Fox dismisses her fears, the more Blythe begins to question her own sanity, and the more we begin to question what Blythe is telling us about her life as well. Then their son Sam is born--and with him, Blythe has the natural, blissful connection she'd always imagined with her child. Even Violet seems to love her little brother. But when life as they know it is changed in an instant, the devastating fall-out forces Blythe to face the truth. Here, we see the making and breaking of a family in crystalline detail, and what it feels like when women are not believed. The Push is a tour de force you will read in a sitting, an utterly immersive pageturner that will challenge everything you think you know about motherhood, about our children, and about what happens behind the doors of even the most perfect-looking families. . . Available for purchase at: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B087BL9MML?tag=randohouseinc7911-20">Amazon</a><a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/?ean=9781984881670">Barnes & Noble</a><a href="http://www.tkqlhce.com/click-8373827-10747236?SID=PRHD39095A662--9781984881670&url=http://www.booksamillion.com/p/9781984881670">Books A Million</a><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/2186/9781984881663?prhc=PRHD39095A662">Bookshop.org</a><a href="http://www.hudsonbooksellers.com/book/9781984881663?utm_source=prh&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_term=301&utm_content=PRHD39095A662--9781984881663&utm_campaign=9781984881663">Hudson Booksellers</a><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781984881663?aff=penguinrandom">IndieBound</a><a href="http://www.powells.com/book/-9781984881663?utm_source=randomhouse&utm_campaign=randomhouse&utm_content=PRHD39095A662--9781984881663">Powell's</a><a href="http://goto.target.com/c/128773/81938/2092?subId1=PRHD39095A662--9781984881663&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.target.com%2Fs%3FsearchTerm%3D9781984881663">Target</a><a href="https://www.walmart.com/search/?query=9781984881663">Walmart</a><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1508884455?at=11l3IH&ct=PRHD39095A662--9781984881670">Apple Books</a><a href="https://google.prf.hn/click/camref:1011ld4r/pubref:PRHD39095A662--9781984881670/destination:https://play.google.com/store/search?q=9781984881670&c=books">Google Play Store</a><a href="http://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=VD9*lkiWNd8&offerid=258185.12829781935712206&type=2&u1=PRHD39095A662--9781984881670}&murl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kobo.com%2Fsearch%3FQuery%3D9781984881670">Kobo</a>

The Push by Ashley Audrain, read by Marin Ireland

Twelve early pieces never before collected that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of Joan Didion. Mostly drawn from the earliest part of her astonishing five-decade career, the wide-ranging pieces in this collection include Didion writing about a Gamblers Anonymous meeting, a visit to San Simeon, and a reunion of WWII veterans in Las Vegas, and about topics ranging from Nancy Reagan to Robert Mapplethorpe to Martha Stewart. Here are subjects Didion has long written about -- the press, politics, California robber barons, women, the act of writing, and her own self-doubt. Each piece is classic Didion: incisive and, in new light, stunningly prescient.

Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion, read by Kimberly Farr

"The Liar's Dictionary is the book I was longing for. So eudaemonical, so felicific and habile! A harlequinade of cachinnation! It's hilarious and smart and charming and I loved it. Read it. It's the book you're longing for." --Andrew Sean Greer, 2018 Pulitzer Prize winner for Less An exhilarating and laugh-out-loud debut novel from a prize-winning new talent which chronicles the misadventures of a lovelorn Victorian lexicographer and the young woman put on his trail a century later to root out his misdeeds while confronting questions of her own sexuality and place in the world. Mountweazel n. the phenomenon of false entries within dictionaries and works of reference. Often used as a safeguard against copyright infringement. Peter Winceworth, Victorian lexicographer, is toiling away at the letter S for Swansby's multivolume Encyclopaedic Dictionary. His disaffection compels him to insert unauthorized fictitious entries into the dictionary in an attempt to assert some sense of individual purpose and artistic freedom. In the present day, Mallory, a young intern employed by the publisher, is tasked with uncovering these mountweazels before the work is digitized. She also has to contend with threatening phone calls from an anonymous caller. Is the change in the definition of marriage really that upsetting? And does the caller really intend for the Swansby's staff to 'burn in hell'? As these two narratives combine, both Winceworth and Mallory discover how they might negotiate the complexities of the often nonsensical, relentless, untrustworthy, hoax-strewn, and undefinable path we call life. An exhilarating debut novel from a formidably brilliant young writer, The Liar's Dictionary celebrates the rigidity, fragility, absurdity, and joy of language.

The Liar's Dictionary by Eley Williams

Listen to an excerpt from STAR TREK: PICARD: THE DARK VEIL by James Swallow, read by Robert Petkoff.

STAR TREK: PICARD: THE DARK VEIL Audiobook Excerpt

Penguin Audiobooks presents Roald Dahl's The BFG, read by actor, writer, and Britain's Got Talent judge David Walliams. This audiobook features original music and sound design by Pinewood film studios.

The BFG is a nice and jumbly giant. In fact, he is the only big friendly giant in Giant Country.

All the other giants are big bonecrunching brutes, and now the BFG and his friend Sophie must stop them guzzling up little human beans - with some help from Her Majester, the Queen.

David Walliams is a multi-award winning British comedian, actor and writer, best known for the comedy series Little Britain; but his acting work includes plays, dramas and films. He is also the author of five hugely successful children's books, including two illustrated by Quentin Blake - Roald Dahl's favourite illustrator.

Roald Dahl: The BFG (Audiobook Extract) read by David Walliams

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

Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion, read by Kimberly Farr

PRH Audio

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