Well shiver me timbers, it's a live show! They say that dead men tell no tales, but Robert Louis Stevenson sure told a great tale in Treasure Island.
Things reach a fever pitch (literally) during our live show at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Topics include pirate radio, Jimbo and Mr. Hands, the game Desert Island, and our favorite entry in the Pirates of the Caribbean series.
Support the show by buying the book!
Bookshop.org · Kobo · Nook
This week, we return to the works of Gabriel García Márquez (“Gabo” to his friends) for the first time since our second-ever episode. This time around we get to dive deeper into “magical realism,” the sort of dreamy heightened reality that Marquez employs so successfully, and we also touch on the book’s relationship with Colombian history and our relationship with our own hometowns.
Support the show by buying the book!
Bookshop.org · Kobo · Nook
It's time to travel to the magical land of Narnia! It's Craig's first time journeying through C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and it's EVERYONE's first time eating Turkish Delight!
Find out what the opposite of delight is, how a lion can be Jesus, and just what happens to Susan when she reaches the Narnia equivalent of the pearly gates.
Support the show by buying the book!
Bookshop.org · Kobo · Nook
This week we bring you The World According to Garp according to Andrew - we breeze through John Irving’s best-known “middlebrow” novel, touching on its feminist leanings, its surprising progressivism as it regards the transgendered, and both the dark humor and the just-plain-darkness lurking around every corner.
Support the show by buying the book!
Bookshop.org · Kobo · Nook
This week we're joined by social media maven (and friend of the show) Margaret H. Willison to talk about Christopher Pike's Last Act, an early entry from the author's prolific career writing YA thrillers.
We're here to solve the mystery of a murder in a high school drama club, but our conversation ranges far and wide. Talking points include Margaret's mispronunciations, Andrew's career as a stage performer, and Craig's new favorite book Skateboard Tough.
This week, we tackle Audre Lorde's autobiographical Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. It's an account of Lorde's childhood and early adulthood, focusing specifically on her experiences as a black, out, gay woman in New York City in the 1950s.
Support the show by buying the book!
Bookshop.org · Kobo · Nook
Mark Haddon's book about a teenager with "Behavioral Problems" is notable less for what happens in it and more for its perspective. It's an affecting study of human thought and behavior that we can't ruin even by talking about Subway for five minutes!
Support the show by buying the book!
Bookshop.org · Kobo · Nook
"I am an invisible man," says the unnamed narrator at the beginning of Ralph Ellison's masterpiece Invisible Man. He then walks the reader through the painful journey that led to this realization, from the Jim Crow South to a less explicitly divided New York City.
When we aren't discussing the narrator's struggle to fight for racial justice through and within a Communist party analog, we spend time chatting about the Pigskin Classic, dragging Harold Bloom, and unpacking stereo equipment.
Support the show by buying the book!
Bookshop.org · Kobo · Nook
Who has the conch? Somebody find the glasses! We're trapped on a podcast island with the amazing Gwen Glazer and Frank Collerius of the New York Public Library's show The Librarian Is In.
Actually, Gwen and Frank were kind enough to have us in their studio to chat about William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies.
Possible television-related tangents include LOST, Kid Nation, and Kids Say the Darnedest Things!
Support the show by buying the book!
Bookshop.org · Kobo · Nook
What will you remember? What will you be remembered for? Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven asks these questions of most of its characters as they struggle to survive before and after an apocalyptic flu outbreak.
We also talk Mandel's work crunching data on novels, National Days, Corporate Speak, and what we won't miss when we lose the Internet.
Don't forget to book tickets to our live show at bit.ly/libraryshow!
Support the show by buying the book!
Bookshop.org · Kobo · Nook
