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Evan Thomas has written many books, but he was still wary before embarking on his latest project, “First,” a biography of Sandra Day O’Connor.

“Judicial biographies are boring,” he says on this week’s podcast. “They’re a boring march of cases. I’ve never read a really interesting one; there have been some well-done ones, but not really interesting. It’s highly technical, the law. I left the law for a reason. So I had a lot of trepidation about all of that. The challenge was to bring her to life, and to make the law part interesting.”

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Mitchell S. Jackson visits us this week to discuss “Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family.” The book tells the story of Jackson’s upbringing in Oregon, a place he wants to continue writing about, even if in a less transparently personal way. “I want to stick with Oregon,” Jackson says. “I don’t know if I’ve exhausted my and my family’s personal experience, but I don’t think that I’ll ever focus on it in the way that I have done in these last two books.”

Also on this week’s episode, Alexandra Alter has news from the publishing world; and Gregory Cowles, Carolyn Ryan and John Williams talk about what people are reading. Pamela Paul is the host.

Here are the books discussed in this week’s “What We’re Reading”:

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to books@nytimes.com.

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