RNZ: The NEW Torchlight List Podcast
1) The New Torchlight List: Best Books & Authors
It's Jim's final countdown and he rates the authors from the very best, through to those he wants to read more of, promising authors, those not quite good enough, the unpromising - and the just plain ...Show More
2) The New Torchlight List - Asia and the Middle East
This chapter of The New Torchlight List takes in a big geographical area and a variety of cultures.
3) The New Torchlight List: Africa
Jim agrees with Wallace's love for Disgrace, by South African writer J.M. Coetzee - though Jim says Coetzee's "not brilliant". He describes the Cairo trilogy by Egyptian Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahf...Show More
4) The New Torchlight List: New Zealand & Australia
Jim Flynn and Wallace Chapman discuss Australasian literature. Wallace takes on Jim over Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries - too long, says Jim. Not so, says Wallace. Jim says Catton can write but she ...Show More
5) The New Torchlight List: Europe
Jim Flynn tells Wallace Chapman that Italian Umberto Eco's best work is The Name of the Rose but this comes with a warning as Eco "loves to demonstrate his learning. The plot is interrupted by long es...Show More
6) The New Torchlight List: Ireland
Jim Flynn and Wallace Chapman discuss modern Irish literature. Jim rates John Banville's "wonderful style", but is less enamoured with John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. The sex in Edna O'Br...Show More
7) The New Torchlight List: Britain
Some of Jim's favourite writers feature in this episode - V.S. Naipaul and Kazuo Ishiguro who, he says, is "perhaps the greatest novelist of our generation. His work is going to make him one of few no...Show More
8) The New Torchlight List: South America
Jim and Wallace discuss South American writers, including the politics and the passion reflected in the great writing of Gabriel Garcia Marquez - recommending the memorable Love in the Time of Cholera...Show More
9) The New Torchlight List: North America
Jim Flynn discusses North American authors and tells Wallace Chapman that everyone must read Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. He also highly rates Philip Roth and Toni Morrison, but Wallace and Jim agre...Show More
10) The New Torchlight List: The Need to Read
Jim Flynn is a world expert on human intelligence, and the author of many ground-breaking books on intelligence, philosophy and politics. He came from a poor family and owes all his success to reading...Show More