On today’s Bookworm on KCRW, Russell Banks stops by to talk about The Reserve.

Bookworm calls him “one of the great living American novelists.” In the book, “he uses the 1930’s novel of passion and betrayal–with its allied seductions, madness, and adultery–to explore America’s class system; the relationships between art, politics and wealth; and the despoiling of the American Landscape. Although these are classic Russell Banks themes, this novel explodes with a passionate intensity that is exceptional for him.”

Set before the second World War, the book follows Vanessa Cole in a story of love, drama, and suspense. From Barnes and Nobel: “Vanessa Cole is a stunningly beautiful and wild heiress, her parents’ adopted only daughter. Twice-married, she has been scandalously linked to rich and famous men. On the night of July 4, 1936, inside the Cole family’s remote Adirondack Mountain enclave, known as the Reserve, Vanessa will lose her father to a heart attack–and meet Jordan Groves, a seductively carefree local artist whose leftist political loyalties to his working class neighbors are undercut by his wealth and his clientele. Jordan is easy prey for Vanessa’s electrifying charm. But the heiress carries a dark family secret. Unhinged by her father’s unexpected death, she begins to spin out of control, manipulating and destroying the lives of all who cross her path. Moving from the secluded beauty of the Adirondacks to war-torn Spain and fascist Germany, filled with characters that pierce the heart, The Reserve is a passionately romantic novel of suspense and drama that adds a new dimension to this acclaimed author’s extraordinary repertoire.”

You can listen to the interview here.

According to Variety, Charlize Theron and Viggo Mortensen (of The Lord of the Rings fame) will star in the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Theron, who won an Oscar for her role in Monster, will play Mortensen’s wife, a small role in which she appears only in the flashback scenes. The story is about a man who takes a nightmarish road trip after a nuclear explosion in order to get his son to safety and away from cannibals. The film will be directed by John Hillcoat and produced by Nick Wechsler (who worked with Theron on The Yards).

All Things Considered gave a review of Lloyd Jones’ Mister Pip during yesterday’s show. The novel, which ATC calls a “brilliant and compelling work of fiction,” was on the short list for this year’s Booker Prize for Fiction. “Set on a remote South Pacific island called Bougainvill, it’s narrated by an eloquent 13-year-old island native named Matilda. As civil war breaks out, she tells of how a local copper-mining enterprise arranges for the evacuation of nearly all the white residents, leaving the islanders to the mercy of indigenous rebels and the ravages of soldiers flown in by helicopter from nearby Port Moresby.” The one white resident who stayed behind takes it upon himself to educate the children by reading to them each day from Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations.

Also on the show, Robert Siegel speaks to Cathy Wilkerson, a former member of the Weatherman, a faction of the 1960s radical group Students for a Democratic Society. She is also the author of the memoir, Flying Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman. “In her book, Wilkerson is apologetic for Weatherman’s tactics, but not for her radical politics: She is still a radical, but one who prizes the right to vote, which she regained several years ago. In March 1970, Wilkerson and four others were using her father’s townhouse on West 11th Street in Greenwich Village as a bomb factory. Wilkerson was cleaning up when a box of dynamite sticks downstairs accidentally went off. One of two survivors of the explosion, Wilkerson went underground for 10 years. Eventually she served a prison sentence, got out and now trains math teachers.”

Listen to both segments here.

We knew it’d be sooner than later, that Sue Monk Kidd’s best-selling novel, The Secret Life of Bees, would get turned into a movie with big-name actors. Variety has confirmed that Queen Latifah, Sophie Okonedo, and Jennifer Hudson will star in the Fox Searchlight picture, which will begin filming in January and be released sometime next year. The paper also reported that Dakota Fanning and Alicia Keys are in negotiations to join the film, and that Gina Prince-Bythewood of Love & Basketball will direct.

The story centers around a South Carolina girl in the 1960s, who runs away from her troubled life and ends up in the home of three beekeeping sisters. Fanning would star as the young girl, Lily Owens, with Hudson as her friend and caregiver and Latifah, Keys, and Okonedo will play the sisters.

Can’t think of what book to give this holiday season? On today’s Brian Lehrer Show, Amy Eddings talks to Dwight Garner of the New York Times Book Review, Susan McHenry of Black Issues Book Review, and Sarah McNally of the McNally Robinson NYC bookstore about some of their recommendations and why. Suggestions from Garner include Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas, Out Stealing Horses by Per Patterson, and Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris.

Listen below for the rest of the suggestions, and also tips on how to buy various types of books.

On KCRW’s Design and Architecture (DNA), Frances Anderton speaks with actress and architecture preservationist Diane Keaton and D.J. Waldie, authors of California Romantica, about what they see as the ideal Southern California home: the Romantic Spanish style. “I was a California kid, and we took a lot of trips throughout California, and I remember specifically when we went to San Juan Capistrano and found myself in this enchanted world, to see the colonnade arches and the light passing through,” said Keaton. “They thought they were inventing a brand new architecture…they may look like medieval Spain, but they were working with 20th-century materials and 20th-century issues,” said Waldie.

You can listen to the interview here.

On this morning’s Leonard Lopate Show, the authors of America and the Islamic Bomb: The Deadly Compromise talk about nuclear arsenal in Pakistan and the Middle East. According to David Armstrong and Joseph Trento, although the issue is getting some attention now, “it’s a little bit too late. The time to be worry about this was 30 years ago, when the United States was condoning Pakistan’s development of these weapons.” Armstrong and Trento give a scary outlook on how far-reaching the problem is, and “that there are repercussions we have begun to faced, yet.”

Listen to this interview below.

On a less scary topic, Graham Robb, author of The Discovery of France, joins Lopate to talk about how “as recently as 1890, large parts of France were divided by tribal allegiances; pre-Christian beliefs remained widespread; and French was even a minority language.”

Listen to this interview below.

On this week’s Bookwork, Michael Silverblatt talks to Robert Alter about his book, The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary.

From the Bookwork site: “Biblical scholar Robert Alter faces a barrage of questions: What are psalms? Who wrote them? If they are prayers, why does he consider them poems? If they are poems, why are they so repetitive? If repetition is crucial to psalms, how does it go beyond the rhythms of ancient Hebrew to address God and achieve solace?”

You can listen to the interview here.

On this morning’s Diane Rehm Show, Rehm talks to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich about the phrase she coined, “well-behaved women seldom make history,” which is also the title of Ulrich’s new book. Rehm and Ulrich discuss “how different groups have tried to appropriate it, and why certain women make history and why some get left behind.”

“I felt like it just happened,” said Ulrich about where the phrase came from. “I was working on an article on Puritan funeral sermons, called Virtuous Women Found, and I was trying to give these virtuous women a history. I was thinking about women that fit the sterotypes of the 17th century… went to church even when it snowed, never spoke up, did the right things… the stereotypical kind of thing that were celebrated in those sermons, and what i say is when people who really hold up the world–literally–are celebrated they are idealized into anynomity. They have no history beacuse they have no individuality, they just become icons. And a lot of my work has been devoted to break through those stereotypes and find real women.”

Rehm also talks to Ulrich about changes at Harvard regarding the role women now play at the university. Ulrich is the 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard and the author of the Pulitzer-prize winning A Midwife’s Tale.

You can listen to the interview at WAMU’s Web site.