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Of course every edition of Open Book celebrates reading, but in this week's programme, Octavia Bright explores wider and sometimes less comfortable versions of the experience.

Her guest in the studio is Ross Raisin, who talks about his new novel, A Hunger. It tells the story of Anita, a middle-aged woman who is trying to achieve her goal as a top-end chef while also caring for her husband who has early-onset dementia and processing emotions which cover both childhood grief and maternal guilt.

Octavia also talks with the American-Filipina writer, Elaine Castillo, about her radical call for a more expansive definition of what both reading and writing might involve in her new book of essays entitled How To Read Now. In it, she calls for new readings of received classics by authors from Homer to Joan Didion, while also suggesting how contemporary writers might examine their own preconceptions about who will read their books.

And Joanna Lee provides an Editor's Pick recommendation in the new novel by French-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, The Pachinko Parlour.

Producer Beaty Rubens

Book List – Sunday 14 August and Thursday 18 August

A Hunger by Ross Raisin
God’s Own Country by Ross Raisin
The Natural by Ross Raisin
Waterline by Ross Raisin
The Pachinko Parlour by Elisa Shua Dusapin: Translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins
How to Read Now by Elaine Castillo
Playing in the Dark by Toni Morrison