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.