Ep 063 - King Lear, by William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare's reputation is basically secure at this point. He was hugely influential, his works are widely studied, and although he's over 400 years old he remains a part of the liberal arts canon to this day. 

That doesn't necessarily mean that his works are easy to parse. This week, we stumble a bit through the epic tragedy King Lear, a play that has all the hallmarks of a Shakespearian tragedy—death, madness, people running around in disguise—but a big cast of characters that isn't easy to keep track of if you're a Shakespeare newbie.

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Ep 062 - The Giver, By Lois Lowry

Lois Lowry's The Giver imagines a world without color, without hills, without difference and most importantly without memory. 

Winner of the 1994 Newberry Award, The Giver shares thematic DNA with classic "Kid Who Is More Special Than Anyone Else Ever" literature like The Hunger Games, Ender's Game, and Harry Potter.

So naturally we take a big old swing at Quidditch. Other targets of our (perhaps misplaced ire) include Nebraska, bachelor weekends, and dreams.

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Ep 061 - The Lorax/Oh the Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss

In honor of Children's Book Week, we each decided to read a Dr. Seuss book for this episode—that's right, Andrew had somehow managed to avoid the Lorax, and Craig knew nothing about the Places He'll Go. 

Seuss himself is a fascinating guy, a prolific and long-lived artist who put a lot of good into the world but was by no means perfect. In some ways he's a product of his time, even if his work is timeless. 

Also on tap: old Subway ads, a couple of The Wire references because Craig is finally watching The Wire, and a discussion of the latest rash of Hop on Pop-inspired violence.

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The Lorax
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Oh, The Places You’ll Go
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Ep 060 - Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

What if superheroes were real? Would we still revere them so much? Or would they be too frightening for us to handle, too unstable for us to control?

What if they didn't want to save us?

These are the questions that kick off Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, a classic revered by comic fans for its deconstruction of superhero imagery, its compelling Cold War conspiracies, and its engrossing art and characters. Join us this week as we debate "comic" vs. "graphical novel," gripe about origin stories, and outright spoil the end of Watchmen.*

* No seriously, we talk about the end of this one explicitly from roughly 50:00 to 1:01:30. As always, caveat lector.

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Ep 059 - The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, by Mark Twain

Mark Twain is an incredibly prolific, incredibly distinctive author. This week's read is just a short story and it's one of Twain's first major successes, but it manages to convey why he remains vital over 100 years after his death. It's great for a few laughs, too.

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Ep 058 - The Passage, by Justin Cronin

Justin Cronin got his start publishing quiet but moving "literary" fiction. In 2010, he blew up North America (in a manner of speaking) with his post-apocalyptic don't-call-them-vampires "genre" novel The Passage.

We can't hope to cover every plot point or character in Cronin's 766-page genre epic, but we try to at least touch on a few reasons for its mainstream appeal: rich characters, an unrelenting plot, and lots of sweet jargon.

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Ep 057 - Tell the Wolves I'm Home, by Carol Rifka Brunt

Tell the Wolves I'm Home, author Carol Rifka Brunt's first novel, is multi-faceted: it's about different kinds of love. It's about siblinghood, and growing up. It's about the early stages of the AIDS epidemic in the US. There's a lot going on here, to which we add the requisite discussion about pizza-making, podcasting, and how actors remember all those lines.

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Ep 056 - The Misanthrope, by Molière

Molière's The Misanthrope is a three-and-a-half centuries old play about something as old as time: dishing on your people behind their back. It's also full of great zingers about man's duplicitous nature, all written by a guy who loved theater so much he ended up nearly dying onstage in his final performance.

Join us as Richard Wilbur's delightful translation makes us laugh out loud, as we butcher French, Italian, and any other language we can get our hands on, and as Andrew shares his disconcertingly assured plans for Craig's eventual demise. 

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Ep 055 - To Kill a Mockingbird, By Harper Lee

A true classic, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is one of those books we should have read years ago. For the two of you who aren't familiar, it's a story about a lot of things: the trial of an innocent black man; growing up in small-town Alabama during the Depression; and growing up. It's made all the more interesting by Lee herself, who to date has never written another novel.

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Ep 054 - In the Woods, by Tana French

Why do we keep trying to solve murders in small towns? What is it like for an American author to set a story in a sleepy Irish suburb? Will our amnesiac protagonists ever regain this memory? What's the best way to interrogate a suspect?

We try to solve these mysteries and more on this week's episode as we discuss Tana French's award-winning crime novel In the Woods.

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