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- [00:01]
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- [00:30]
Charlie Gibson
Foreign.
- [00:37]
Kate Gibson
Welcome to the bookcase. I am the Kate Gibson part. And welcome to the part two of two, David K. Shipler, the sequel. Who is my co host.
- [00:48]
Charlie Gibson
Oh, Charlie Gibson. I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm so used to waiting in the wings while you talk. Yes, it is David K. Shipler. We talked to David last week about the book, which is called the Interpreter. And we really talked about how interesting the role of the interpreter is for a reporter who comes into a country and does not speak the native language. The interpreter he had in Vietnam in the latter days of the Vietnam War. And the book is largely based on that interpreter, but it is a fictionalized version. And it's a really, really good book, I think. And Kate does, too. I don't mean to speak for you, but yeah, I do mean to speak for you.
- [01:28]
Kate Gibson
Sometimes you do that and I just kind of sit and smile and say, uh, huh.
- [01:31]
Charlie Gibson
No, you don't usually say huh. You say you're. You normally say, dad, shut up. But anyway, it's a. It is a wonderful book. But we also talked to David Shipler about writing, about making the transition from nonfiction, which has been all of his writing so far, to writing his first book at the age of 83, his first fiction book, which is the Interpreter. And I found the conversation really interesting. And we did go on.
- [01:58]
Kate Gibson
Yeah, we did. It was like the first show. We really talked about the nuances of the story because it's a complex story. And I think you and I wanted to talk about sort of why it was important to write the fictionalized story of an interpreter right now about a war that took place so many years ago. Although not that many of you're as old as we are. But. But at least you didn't say as.
- [02:23]
Charlie Gibson
Old as dad is.
- [02:26]
Kate Gibson
I didn't. You see how I did that. I'm so politically correct, I still want to be in the will. So we talked last week about the nuances and the complexities of the story and why the Story is important to tell right now. And this week we're really going to talk about the writing and the process. And I love when we get to have conversations that go in a couple of different directions and we have the opportunity to split them into two shows every once in a while, we get the luxury of doing that. I'm amazed that you hadn't met David Shipler before we spoke, because in some ways, you guys come from this same school of journalism. And so talking to him about how to make the switch from nonfiction to fiction was, in some ways, I felt like almost talking to you if you had written a fiction book. You guys come from similar backgrounds.
- [03:09]
Charlie Gibson
Well, I don't know enough words to write a fiction book, but I would be miserable at it. But anyway, he's done a wonderful job. And also we talked to him about why being in journalism now is important. And it really is more important than ever. Although the number of newspapers is shrinking, television stations are cutting back. There really is not much radio journalism now other than you get in your car with Sirius or the, you know, the news is boiled down to five minutes on radio.
- [03:40]
Kate Gibson
So it's important not only that journalists, I think, have a funny love hate relationship right now, not just with politicians, but with the public at large. And it can be hard to go into a profession where, you know, you're gonna struggle, you're gonna struggle to get the story, you're gonna maybe struggle to get recognition, and you're gonna struggle to get appreciation. Like, it's a tough. It's a tough racket right now, but as you say, never been more important. I think it's never been more important to define the truth and to defend it.
- [04:08]
Charlie Gibson
And so many people who are going to journalism now do it with web news sources. That seems to be the growth area. And I'm hopeful for video and for television news that streaming is going to be the savior. And streaming tends to get a younger audience. And you want a younger audience. The older audience for on air television and even cable television is getting too old. And so streaming, I think, is really important. And that's a way to get into journalism. But we're off the subject now. The subject is David Shipler. The book is the Interpreter. And this is the second part of our conversation.
- [04:50]
Kate Gibson
So you've won a few prizes for your nonfiction. You've got some game. So you sit down, you're gonna write fiction. What was the hardest part? Was it dialogue? Was it creating the sense of place? Was it the character without the what, where, when, guidance? What was the hardest part, from going from one to the other.
- [05:09]
David K. Shipler
For me, I think there were a couple of very hard parts. Creating the scene was less difficult because I like to write vividly about scenes and what I see visually. Not explaining everything was a challenge because I'm a journalist or, you know, that's basically what I am. Journalists have to explain everything. And I think a lot of journalists who turn to fiction fall into the pitfall of over explaining because good literature, and I'm not saying this is great or anything, but good literature requires the reader to come or the viewer, if it's film, to come part way toward the creator. I mean, it's a, it's a two way street. You're not, you don't want to spoon feed people. The characters in this novel, I think that people will not like particularly. I mean, there's some elements of, of the people, especially the Americans, who as I say, are absolutely nothing like me, who, you know, a little bit annoying to say the least. So I mean, it's not that there's overt conflict, but there a kind of a subtle nuanced tension there, which I did deliberately because it's more interesting and also because it's true at a certain level about Americans coming into a place like Vietnam and you know, thinking they know it all, but trying to figure out at the same time and evolving. I think these American characters evolve. I mean, the other part of it is I had a little trouble with dialogue. Actually. My editor suggested that I read Tolstoy's Resurrection as I was revising the book. As much Russian literature as I've read, I hadn't ever read that. What Tolstoy does in that book is to use a lot of description of dialogue rather than, I mean, he uses direct quotes, but he also describes dialogue. He describes interactions and conversations. And of course Tolstoy can do it and it helped me in my revisions, but I'm still not that great at it. In dialogue, you need to make your characters sound different from one another. I mean, people don't all talk the same way. So that's all a challenge. And if I continue with fiction, I have to work at that.
- [07:27]
Kate Gibson
Are all journalists interpreters?
- [07:30]
David K. Shipler
Yes, of course we are, because we have to select. You can't write stories that have 10,000 word transcripts of the entire interview that you've done. If you, even if you record it. I mean, if you take notes, as I did most of the time, the process of taking notes is an interpretation. You're selecting, you're picking out some things that you think are important. Then there's the problem of, for me, my handwriting, which I have trouble reading. So I always had to type up my notes right afterwards. But I think that. And then you. And then when you sit down with your notes, of course you have 700 words or 800 words from maybe days of reporting. And you're selecting, you're picking, you're choosing, and you are seeing things through your own lens. And you have to be self aware. You have to be conscious of your own perceptions that you bring from your culture. And be a very good listener. You really have to be a good listener. I find that when I'm working on something nonfiction, I had this experience. I wrote a book on race called A Country of Strangers, about race in the US And I had this really amazing experience. I taped all my interviews with blacks and whites, but it took me a long time to transcribe them. I, you know, a couple of years went by and I would then go back and I would be listening to the interview and I'd transcribe it. And I realized I was hearing things in that interview as I listened two years later, that I had just not heard the first time as it was happening because I'd learned so much. It was like going into, and I think this is true going into any foreign country, too. It's like going into a dark movie theater. Gradually, your eyes adjust. At first you can see shapes, but you can't see facial features. And gradually your eyes adjust until you begin to see a lot of things and details that you never saw before. That's why going to a foreign country and working with a very good interpreter who can explain, not just translate, helps your eyes adjust.
- [09:44]
Kate Gibson
I want to ask one last question, and it's going to make my father really uncomfortable because I'm going to ask it of him, too. There is a quote in this book that I loved that made me think of what my father did differently as well. So I want to ask you both this question. The quote is. It is the privilege of a journalist Penn had always known to harvest profit from every encounter, no matter how unpleasant. Do you agree, dad?
- [10:07]
Charlie Gibson
Sure. Sure. What David said, I think is absolutely right. You learn from everybody that you talk to in putting together a story. Now, he talked about 7 or 800 words. What a luxury to have 7 or 800 words.
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David K. Shipler
Yes, yes. From a television guy. I can understand that.
- [10:29]
Charlie Gibson
I had a minute 40, and I used to say to my friends at the New York Times, you have such a luxury, and that you have a couple of paragraphs to make a point, I get a clause. And that requires a precision. And so you're constantly thinking when you talk to somebody, how do I properly reflect what this person is saying to me? If this person is going to be critical to a story, how can I be true to what they're saying? So I think what you said is very true. You learn from everybody you talk to, but your obligation is to be as accurate or fair to them as you can be. David Brinkley had one of my favorite quotes of all time. There is no such thing as objectivity. There's just lesser degrees of subjectivity. So you're trying always to see things through as clear a prism as you can, but it's not always possible.
- [11:21]
Kate Gibson
David, same question to you.
- [11:24]
David K. Shipler
My mother taught me that you can learn something from everybody. She also said, and this was, I guess, when I got into my twenties, I raised you to be comfortable in an embassy or a hut. So that's my philosophy. I think curiosity drives the spirit of listening, because if you're curious, then obviously you learn something from every encounter, no matter how unpleasant. I once met a young woman in Rwanda who as a child had survived an attack on her parents and the militia who came into their home with machetes. One of the people in the militia yelled at her and her siblings run. As they were slashing her parents to pieces. This woman became a facilitator of dialogues between Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda, where my daughter worked. This is why I met her. And she made an amazing statement at one point to me when I was asking her about this. And she said, you know, it took a long time for me to be able to tell my story. I began to tell it only in pieces. And then finally, when I was able to tell the whole story, I had gained the power to listen. The power to listen. Think about that. And so to me, the critical characteristic of a good reporter or a fiction writer, I've discovered, is the power to.
- [13:11]
Charlie Gibson
Listen, to listen to your own characters.
- [13:15]
David K. Shipler
Yes, you do listen to your own character. And to go back to Alfred Urie when he was writing the screenplay for Driving Miss Daisy and he had written a play. First he won the Pulitzer for the play, then he won an Oscar for the screenplay. The director called him, kept calling him up and said, alfred, would. Would Daisy do this? Would Daisy do that? So the character, of course the character was based on his grandmother. So it wasn't entirely made up that she was. She had a real elements, but, you know, fictionalized. So he would have to answer the question of whether one scene or one comment or another would be true to the character. And I've experienced that in my fiction writing. My. I'm a novice at this, but fiction writing? Yeah, I mean that there are things that I would think that the character might do or say that didn't ring true because of what I had already established. So that that needs to be a gyroscope, you know, kind of an internal compass. As you're doing this, you know, you have to keep in mind the qualities of the person that you've created.
- [14:24]
Kate Gibson
Thank you so much. Thank you for sitting with us. The name of the book is the Interpreter. And this was really, this was fun. I have the world's greatest job. Just saying.
- [14:34]
David K. Shipler
Well, we all do, don't we? We're all listeners. That's the whole idea.
- [14:38]
Charlie Gibson
We'll take a pause with our conversation with David Shipler and when we come back we will have the rapid fire questions that we gave David. Although as usual, they don't turn out to be too rapid.
- [14:55]
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- [15:10]
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- [15:41]
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- [16:16]
Kate Gibson
Rapid fire questions for David Shipley. Do you read more fiction or nonfiction?
- [16:21]
David K. Shipler
It's about half and half.
- [16:24]
Charlie Gibson
Where and how do you get your news?
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David K. Shipler
I get my news from the New York Times, the Washington Post the PBS NewsHour and NPR, primarily with some forays into Politico and other online sources.
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Kate Gibson
News nerd.
- [16:46]
Charlie Gibson
Do you think you could be a good interpreter?
- [16:50]
David K. Shipler
If I spoke fluent language, another fluent language, I could. I mean, I spoke Russian, but not well enough to be an interpreter. I would add on this that to be a good interpreter you have to have a very quick brain. You can't just sit there and contemplate for a while because you're in a conversation with someone. So you need to be able to translate accurately, quickly. It takes a particular skill to do that. I don't. I don't think I have that.
- [17:21]
Kate Gibson
Best book in your mind about Vietnam?
- [17:23]
David K. Shipler
Oh, my heavens. That's a really hard question. Well, I don't think this is necessarily the best book, but I'll mention two books that I think are really good. My Brother in Law, and this is Biased, whose name is Arnold Isaacs, wrote a book about the end of the Vietnam War, non fiction, called Without Honor. It is superb. It's been reissued. It is really excellent. It informed me a great deal because I was not there at the very end. I left in January of 75. The war ended in April of 75. I left to go back to study Russian in New York. So that's one. The other is Tim O'Brien's the Things, which is just lyrical and so deep. But there are many, many others. I mean, there's so many others, I can't even enumerate them. And each one is different. I mean, you get a different take on the situation. So Bernard Fall, the Street Without Joy about the French war.
- [18:26]
Kate Gibson
Did you ever read Shrapnel in the Heart?
- [18:29]
David K. Shipler
No.
- [18:30]
Kate Gibson
If you ever get a chance, Shrapnel in the Heart is a book that Karen Jacobus, my AP History teacher, made us all read. And it was letters. It's just letters left at the memorial. That's all it is. Letters, poetry left by the memorial, by nurses, friends. And it is. It's hard.
- [18:49]
David K. Shipler
You know, there's some very good books by Vietnamese writers. You know, earlier on we had only the American view. And so Laylee Hayslip wrote a book called When Heaven and Earth Changed Places.
- [19:02]
Kate Gibson
I've read it.
- [19:03]
David K. Shipler
It was made into a movie. And then there are books that about, you know, they're kind of semi fictionalized, I think Dust Child is one, the Mountains Sing is another. These. And there's some North Vietnamese literature as well, whose names, titles don't come to mind right away. But I read a bunch of them when they became available shortly after the war and were translated. So there are a lot of ways to get different facets of the war now in literature.
- [19:41]
Charlie Gibson
Now, when I picked up the interpreter, I thought it was just 50 years ago this war ended. What more new is there to say about Vietnam? Or are there still new lessons to be learned?
- [19:54]
David K. Shipler
I think the lessons might have begun to evaporate in the collective conscience of the country. I say conscience, I meant conscious. But conscience is also a good word because it was an immoral war. I think in the end it was driven by our fear of communism and our assumption that global communism would spread throughout the world and particularly Southeast Asia. You know, there was the domino theory which held that if South Vietnamese fell to the communists, so would other countries. Well, Cambodia did, Laos did, but Thailand didn't. That was the big one. Malaysia didn't, Singapore didn't. So there was a fallacy in our perceptions. And I think that we, we did not pay attention to certain big red flags about Vietnam, beginning with the names of the streets in Saigon, many of which were based on Vietnamese heroes who fought the Chinese a thousand years ago. I mean, their history was right there. The nationalism was right there on every street sign. And I think what happens very often is that Americans go into other places thinking they know more than they do and not doing what we just talked about a few minutes ago. Listening, listening. So that's the lesson, and that carries through into lots of other situations, certainly Iraq, Afghanistan and whatever future wars we get entangled in.
- [21:30]
Kate Gibson
Advice for young journalists, please go into.
- [21:34]
David K. Shipler
The profession if you can weather the uncertainties and if your parents won't get upset that you're doing something that's professionally risky because there's a lot of job security in it. I taught a course I've taught for a week at Anatugaloo Black College in Mississippi and, and I had five students in a workshop, all women, all having come from not such great secondary schools in Mississippi and Alabama, but all of them really good writers. They're all put through remedial writing courses when they arrive. And these five students were excellent writers. And I asked them at the end, well, how many of you are going to go into journalism? And they looked at me as if they, I had just said, how many of you are going to become mass murderers? I mean, I all said, you know, our parents would kill us. You know, they were like upwardly mobile immigrants, even though they were, you know, native born Americans. They were black kids from the south, probably, I think the first in their generation, first in their families, I should say, to go to college and their parents wanted them to go to law school or med school, or one of them did say she might become a public relations officer in a corporation. So all of that means that if you're looking for financial security, journalism is not a very safe place, unfortunately. And the number of newspapers has declined. Journalism has become less fair minded than it was. We have many more political and biased news organizations than we did when I was reporting for the Times, which is more typical of other countries, actually. I mean, the United States has been unusual in that regard. You know, I've worked in countries like in Israel, for example. You wanted to cover a political campaign, you had to read five different newspapers because everyone would take a diff, take a different political party's view on things. So I think that the American journalism structure and tradition is under real stress. But that means that good people, smart people, people devoted to ferreting out the truth, really ought to go into it to save it, to help save it.
- [23:52]
Kate Gibson
I think we start the campaign right here. It used to be save the whales. We say save the reporters. Same sort of extinction.
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David K. Shipler
I remember when I got up to be a reporter and I was on general assignment traveling all over New York City every day, not knowing from one day to the next what I was going to do. I ran into an editor I'd gotten to know on the foreign desk where I had been a clerk. We were riding in the subway together. He said, well, how is it going? I said, I love it. Every day is completely different. I don't know where I'm going to be. He said, yeah, that's what I hated about reporting. I like what I do. Comes in, sits at the desk, does the same thing every day.
- [24:23]
Charlie Gibson
Every day.
- [24:24]
David K. Shipler
But you know lawyers. I know a lot of lawyers. I know, I've written several books on civil liberties. I got to know a lot of lawyers, and a lot of them are unhappy in their work. I had a friend from college who was the son of a minister, and he was not from a wealthy family. And he went to law school and then he clerked for a federal judge and then he got a job in a fancy Washington law firm. I called him up one day, actually, I went to see him and he showed me all around his office, his fancy office. This is where my secretary sits. And it was very luxurious. And a few weeks later I called him and I said, well, how's it going? And he sounded down and he said. I said, what's the matter? I said, what are you working on? He said, I'm working on the Alaska pipeline case. I said, well, that's really interesting. He says, yeah, but I'm on the wrong side. Well, a journalist doesn't have to be on any side. I mean, that's what's beautiful about it.
- [25:18]
Charlie Gibson
That's right. That's right, exactly.
- [25:20]
David K. Shipler
We listen to everybody, all sides.
- [25:27]
Charlie Gibson
David Shipler again, the book is the interpreter. I think both and I, Kate, and I think it's worth your time. We have a bookstore this week, Kate, but it's not really a store. What is it?
- [25:39]
Kate Gibson
No, I love this. You know, I'm in library school and when we read about the history of libraries, inevitably bookmobiles come up and you think, oh, how quaint. Well, by gosh, these people have a bookmobile. They are people with full time jobs and they're full time moms and they're part time booksellers. By gosh, if they haven't fitted out a bizarre van and driving around upstate Washington offering romance out of the back of their mobile, I guess is the best way to describe it.
- [26:10]
Charlie Gibson
They're in the tri cities area of the state of Washington, which is on the eastern side of Washington, not far from Spokane, Richland, Washington. Olivia Pierce is one of the owners of this mobile van. They just sort of decide, we'll get in the van today and we'll go out and sell some books. Drop the side of the van and you can get the get the books. The name of their operation is Bag Books. B period, A period, G period, G period. And she'll tell you why. Olivia Pierce, I must say of all the bookstore owners that we've talked to, Bag Books has the most unusual business plan of any group we've talked to. So what is it you're doing?
- [26:56]
Olivia Pierce
Well, we are a mobile bookstore and we specialize in romance books only. So we have all types of different romance books. But there's so many different sub genres of romance that we try to make sure that we have a little bit of everything and that we highlight different independent authors as well as we reach out to different. Sometimes it's coffee houses, sometimes it's breweries, wineries. We go park down where we are at. There's a little downtown area that has like a nice little shopping area and like food truck that we really love. And we'll go park down there, you know, at least once a month. So there is a method to the madness. We do schedule ahead of time, but my business partner, I are also full time employees as well as full time mothers. So we don't necessarily have the opportunity to park consistently and have consistent hours. But it kind of makes it more exciting because, you know, you're like, when do I get to catch the next pop up?
- [27:54]
Kate Gibson
So how did this come about and how did you decide that this business model was for you?
- [28:01]
Olivia Pierce
We love reading, obviously, and we love reading romance books specifically. We'd always kind of read the same books together so we could chat about it. And we really loved it. But you know, brick and mortars, they're not the cheapest, you know, and like I said, being full time moms and full time employees, we didn't have necessarily the time to open a brick and mortar store. So it was just kind of a dream that we'd be like, oh, it'd be so fun to do this. And then one day we were just like, well, we can't do the brick and mortar, but there are lots of mobile bookshops. I think that's something that we could, you know, achieve. We shopped for a vehicle, we looked around. We actually found one that was fairly unique compared to a lot of different trailers out there. We bought it from someone that actually used it as a mobile stage for like, concerts and like, for bands and stuff. So they had already completely welded it and cut it open so that the whole side opens up and is flat for a stage that's really cool. Like, that's so, like, unique. And we thought, well, it's, you know, colder weather, bad weather, we can have it closed up. But once it gets really nice out, it expands and it allows us to have more space to be able to do more things with.
- [29:19]
Charlie Gibson
So where did the name come from? B period, A period G period G period. Bag. Books.
- [29:25]
Olivia Pierce
Bag. Books. Bag stands for be a good girl. And it's a. It's a very popular phrase within like romance books is good girl or be a good girl. And so that's where that came from.
- [29:38]
Charlie Gibson
I noticed that some of your slogans border on the risque.
- [29:44]
Olivia Pierce
Yes, well, most of the. Most of our books border or pass the risque.
- [29:50]
Kate Gibson
So he started reading them to me and I was like, stop, stop. I don't even want to hear these words come out of your mouth. I don't like. At one point he started talking about genres and romance and he said erotica. And I was like, don't even say the word erotic. I don't even want to hear you say that word.
- [30:07]
Charlie Gibson
How do you choose where you're going to go?
- [30:11]
Olivia Pierce
Part of it is, you know, legwork. We'll go and we'll meet with different owners of different establishments. And ask if it's something that they'd be interested in, us coming to park in front of them, their establishment, or around it. Sometimes people will reach out to us. You know, we've had some wineries reach out and ask if they'd like us to come out and park there. But normally it's just kind of. We kind of think we really love visiting local spots and, and supporting local businesses. And so we'll go to all these different establishments and we'll think, oh, I think this would be a fun spot to come park.
- [30:48]
Charlie Gibson
What percentage of your customers are women?
- [30:52]
Olivia Pierce
I say 80%.
- [30:56]
Charlie Gibson
That's all you got? 20% men reading romance novels?
- [31:00]
Olivia Pierce
Yeah. Oh, yeah. There's a lot of men out there that like romance novels and a lot of people will read them or a lot of men will read them with their partners so that they, you know, they have something to talk about. We've even had, you know, parents come and be like, oh, my daughter really wanted me to read this, this series. And that's how they got into reading romance. And there's all different levels of romance. There's the closed door romance or YA romance, all the way up to the. It's gonna make you blush. Romance. Right.
- [31:36]
Kate Gibson
Where is some of the best writing in this genre? Who are your favorite writers in this genre?
- [31:41]
Olivia Pierce
Oh, that's, that's a hard one. We really love, like Brynn Weaver. She does the Ruinous Love trilogy, which is Blackbird Leather and Lark and Scythe and Sparrow. We also really like Nevesa Allen. She's written a few books, but she just had one that like, really just blew up in popularity this past, like, year called Lights Out. Love that one. Obviously there's the main queens of Romance or Romanasy, really, which is Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros. They do like the A Court of Thorns and Roses series, Throne of Glass, that's Sarah J. Maas. And then like the Fourth Wing series, which is, you know, extremely popular.
- [32:25]
Kate Gibson
Your stock, I mean, like, are you too deep on what you carry? Are you only one deep on what you carry and you stock for what you sell? What's your stocking strategy? If, if you can have one in, in a mobile, in a book mobile.
- [32:37]
Olivia Pierce
It'S a little difficult. Some of the books that we know will sell better. We'll make sure to have a few backups. You know, some of the books that we're not sure how they'll sell or, you know, we'll just have one at a time just to gauge like the interest in it and then from there, if it gets a lot of engagement, then we'll make sure and like stock more of it. We keep our main stock in the trailer itself, but we do have like a backstock in personal bookshelves, like in the home that we have a backstock of books there so that we can either rotate so that every time we go out we're not showing the same exact books.
- [33:16]
Charlie Gibson
How big is this trailer?
- [33:18]
Olivia Pierce
7 by 16.
- [33:19]
Kate Gibson
I love this.
- [33:20]
Charlie Gibson
So if somebody's listening and thinks this is, gee, this is a neat idea. I don't know where I find a mobile trailer like that, but yeah, this is kind of a neat idea. What would you tell them is the pitfall?
- [33:32]
Olivia Pierce
It's going to consume your life for a while. I think that's the biggest one is like you are going to have to find a really good work life balance because this is going to take over for a while and you're going to need a lot of support. We've both been extremely lucky in terms of support from our families and friends and you know, they help us and really it's something that I think if it was just us two and no one else, it would have been a lot harder to get this thing up and running without everyone that's pitched in to help. Like Katie's dad and her husband basically renovated the whole inside for us. They renovated the inside of the trailer. Her dad built custom shelves for the trailer. Her husband painted a mural on the walls inside the trailer. Like they put in a lot of work and you know, they were a lot of help and super supportful that way. And then we've got a lot of friends that help us in bouncing ideas back and forth on like how we could approach this or how we might do this.
- [34:29]
Kate Gibson
So your first piece of advice that somebody wanted to go into this business would be to hunt down Katie's father and make him do the whole thing again. And that helps. I think what you're doing is terrific. When my father me about the bookmobile and that it was genre specific, that made me happy on so many levels. Congratulations on your opening. I hope it flourishes like heck. You guys give me hope.
- [34:52]
Olivia Pierce
Awesome. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it.
- [34:59]
Charlie Gibson
Bag Books in Richland, Washington, but mobile, moving around. Call them up, maybe they'll come to your place and drop the side of the van and sell some books.
- [35:11]
Kate Gibson
Yeah, I mean, when do we ever get to end an interview with the bookstore where you say bag Books? Maybe coming to a theater near, you know, who knows? We have a terrific coda today from the great David K. Shipler, which I would encourage you to stay tuned for. But first, a reminder of the folks that make the podcast possible.
- [35:31]
Charlie Gibson
The Bookcase with Kate and Charlie Gibson is a joint production of Good Morning America and ABC Audio. Our Executive producer is Simone Swink. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions, and we want to make mention of Amanda McMaster, Sabrina Colberg and Ariel Chester of Good Morning America, as well as Josh Cohan from ABC Audio. We hope you will listen some more in future weeks and rate and review this podcast. And we want to mention that all of the books that are mentioned in the podcast you can find in the.
- [36:01]
David K. Shipler
Episode description There are many levels of truth doesn't mean there are many truths plural, but there are many levels of truth and writing nonfiction gets at one level. It's very important. The facts have to be accurate, they have to be documented. But there are deeper and richer levels to truth which only literature can discover and provide. That would be my my own discovery.
- [36:33]
Brad Milkey
Hey, I'm Brad Milkey. You may know me as the host of ABC Audio's daily news podcast Start Here, but I'd like to add aspiring true crime expert to my resume and here's how I'm going to make it happen. Every week I'm going to unpack the biggest true crime story that everyone is talking about. ABC's got some unique access here, so I'll talk to the report. Reporters and producers who have followed these cases for months, sometimes years, will bring you the latest developments and the larger context on the true crime stories you've been hearing about. Follow the crime scene for special access to the people who know these stories best.