WPR

Chapter A Day

Started in 1931, “Chapter a Day” is WPR’s longest-running program. Jim Fleming, Norman Gilliland, Michele Good, Melvin Hinton, Baron Kelly and Susan Sweeney read a chapter from a book for a half hour each weekday. Genres are predominately contemporary and range from works of fiction, history and biography.

Schedule

WPR Music, 7 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., WPR News, 9:30 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Cover of Heritage by Miguel Bonnefoy, featuring a portrait of a person partially obscured by lemon branches with leaves and flowers.
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CURRENTLY READING


Heritage by Miguel Bonnefoy

Monday, April 21 through Friday, May 9, 2025

Read by Norman Gilliland


The house in Santiago de Chile, with its lush lemon trees, has sheltered three generations of the Lonsonier family. Having arrived from France’s Jura region with a single grape vine in his pocket, the patriarch put down roots there in the late nineteenth century. His son, Lazare, back from World War I’s hellish trenches, would build in their garden the most beautiful aviary in the Andes. The granddaughter Margot, a pioneering aviator, would first dream of flying, and where she would raise her son, the revolutionary Ilario Da. Like Lazare before them, they will bravely face the conflicts of their day, fighting against dictatorship on both sides of the Atlantic. A dazzling family saga, brimming with poetry and passion, that skillfully weaves together the private lives of individuals and major historical events in South America and Europe.

THEME: “Iberia”, Claude Debussy, Orchestre National de Lyon, Jum Markl

(Other Press; ISBN 10: 1635421829 / ISBN 13 978-1635421828)


Readings are archived for one week following the broadcast day of the last chapter due to publisher 
copyright restrictions.


Latest Episodes

Chapter A Day Booklist

View information about every book we’ve read in the past 30 years!

Coming Next

Book cover titled Sitting Pretty by Rebekah Taussig, featuring a woman in a wheelchair against an orange background. Subheading reads: The View From My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body.
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Sitting Pretty by Rebekah Taussig

monday, may 12 through friday, may 23, 2025
Read by michele good


UW Madison’s 2024-2025 Go Big Read! Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Rebekah Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). None of this felt right; and as she got older, she longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling. Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one some point or another in our lives. By exploring this truth in poignant and lyrical essays, Taussig illustrates the need for more stories and more voices to understand the diversity of humanity. Sitting Pretty challenges us as a society to be patient and vigilant, practical and imaginative, kind and relentless, as we set to work to write an entirely different story.

NPR’s Book Concierge

NPR Book Concierge