
Its The Stacks Book Club day, and we’re discussing the 2019 National Book Award winner in fiction, Trust Exercise by Susan Choi. Our guest is Brandon Taylor, author of Real Life, and if you missed Brandon’s first episode you can hear it here. Trust Exercise looks at fiction, perspective, and truth as it ventures back to a 1980’s performing arts high school. On this episode we discuss the many twists and turns we experienced as readers and our takes on the characters. We dive deep today, and that means lots of spoilers. You’ve been warned.
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Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon.
- Trust Exercise by Susan Choi
- Real Life by Brandon Taylor
- The Giver by Lois Lowry
- National Book Award
- Fame (Alan Parker, 1980)
- American Horror Story (FX)
- Guy and Dolls (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1955)
- Meisner Technique
- Konstantin Stanislavski
- Stella Adler
- Lee Strasberg

- Al Pacino
- Sade
- Zendaya
- Euphoria (HBO)
- How I Met Your Mother (CBS)
- The Affair (Showtime)
- Harvey Weinstein
- PEN American Literary Awards
- The Overstory by Richard Powers
- The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
- There There by Tommy Orange
- A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley
- The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
- Less by Andrew Sean Greer
- The Idiot by Elif Batuman
- “Ep. 26 Less by Andrew Sean Greer — The Stacks Book Club (Zeke Smith)” (The Stacks)
- Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
- Marilynne Robinson
- Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gysai
- The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
- The Mothers by Brit Bennett
- Homegoing by Yaa Gysai
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