Markus Zusak's breakthrough novel The Book Thief is the story of a young girl in 1940s Germany told by Death itself. It is equal parts heartening and heartbreaking in its depiction of people just trying to live, and it doesn't shy away from showing how "just trying to live" can create a slippery moral slope.
Talking points include Star Wars "spoilers," other books that Death should narrate, the power of literature, and Oscar-bait WW2 stories.
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On this week’s show, we ponder the meaning of life, the universe, and everything via Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a radio-play-turned-book that has been adapted to just about every audiovisual medium known to humankind. We also ponder how becoming millionaires would change our walking habits.
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Our "November" bonus episode, the final entry in "stuff we've read month," is Ray Bradbury's old high school lit class standby Fahrenheit 451. Needless to say, it's hitting us differently now than it did when we originally read it.
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Grab your tissues everyone! Wilson Rawls' first novel Where the Red Fern Grows is notorious for how sad it is, and the reputation is well-deserved. It's a story of a boy, his dogs, and "death in its saddest form." You do the math.
Also up for discussion this week are our own pet histories, the savagery of the trapping lifestyle, Andrew's new favorite dog magazine, and Providence.
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For this week’s show, we attempt to figure out what we can add to a conversation about one of the most-discussed books in all of modern literature! Join us for a chat about what JK Rowling’s first book does well, how useful we find the concept of “sorting” real-world people in different contexts, and the nature of fandom.
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Strap in and blast off to space with us Ender Wiggin, the pint-sized protagonist of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game.
It's the story of an ultra-talented youth pushed to the limit as he fights to save humanity. The book's chockablock with laser tag, future school, and telepathic aliens! It's also written by an author who has put in substantial time and effort to oppose same-sex marriage, as well as espouse some other harmful views that seem to run counter to the lessons at the core of Ender's Game.
Join us for a discussion about tolerance, the limits thereof, and whether or not we can ever truly separate art from the artist.
This week we put on our flapper outfits and dance back to the Roaring Twenties! F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby bears us ceaselessly back into the past, and we use the Jazz Age as a backdrop for a conversation about the American Dream and also the cartoon Rugrats.
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Travel through time and space with us to the planet Camazotz and beyond! Learn about love, dictatorships, and cosmic Christian centaurs with us and Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.
Other topics include meeting your husband on Broadway, Grand Moff IT, and the worst government job ever: Tesseract Tester.
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Trick or Treat! We tricked you - it's a treat! Here's an all-new batch of spooky stories and educational hauntings.
The podcast is coming from inside the house! We have camping trip guidelines, the Highgate Chicken Ghost, Harry and the Woman in the Toilet, and tales about Haunted Ohio and Robert Johnson.
This week's penultimate Spooktober entry is Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire, a first-person vampire story that has spawned nearly two dozen sequels, spin-offs, and connected stories. The actual interview gimmick doesn't add much, but that doesn't mean the book doesn't have interesting things to say about the nature of morality and immortality.
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