Lynne Truss would never say “Talk to the hand”

Lynne Truss is, if nothing else, highly entertaining. To prove it, I give you this offering: a charming author podcast, featuring Truss, who talks about and reads from Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door. The reading, which is a part of the Authors on Tour series that is produced and distributed by the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Colorado, had me chuckling with the painful recall of socially inconsiderate encounters.

That Truss makes it to the bestseller lists by writing nonfiction books on subjects on which she has little-to-no expertise is one of her greatest charms. That she acknowledges that lack of expertise and keeps us coming back to read more of it is another. That she does so in a charming reading voice bubbling with laughter and mild irony is something that can only be discovered by hearing her read live.

Having read—and enjoyed—both Eats, Shoots & Leaves and Talk to the Hand, I will tell you now that listening to Truss read her work makes me want to go back and read it all again. There is a lightness to her curmudgeonly complaints, a lilt to her anecdotes that, as the best author readings do, make flat pages take on delightful new dimensions.

One of the joys of the new Web (and the easy, popularized access to production tools that have come along with it) is the fact that anyone, including the independent bookstores that so many of us continue to value, can publicly archive pieces of the bookshop culture that make us love to read. Truss’s Authors n Tour podcast is one of those cultural artifacts.