This week, Morgan and Gavia cap off the podcast's summer book club with a discussion of Elizabeth Gaskell's Victorian romance North and South. They compare the novel to other nineteenth century marriage novels and evaluate its depiction of the industrial revolution and overwrought male emotions.
Read MoreThis week, Gavia and Morgan convene their first book club of the year to discuss Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, first published in 1818. Topics include Shelley's storied personal history, the novel's themes of parenthood and colonialism, and its long legacy of dramatic and cinematic adaptations.
Read MoreThis week, Gavia and Morgan discuss their summer book club pick, Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch. They reflect on the book’s unusual treatment of policing, break down time travel tropes, and situate Night Watch in the larger context of the Discworld series.
Read MoreThis week, Gavia and Morgan revisit their childhoods with Philip Pullman's new novel La Belle Sauvage, the first installment of his new trilogy The Book of Dust, a companion to His Dark Materials. They discuss this book's relationship to Pullman's earlier trilogy, earnest children, frightening villains, Oxford, and—for some reason—Edmund Spenser's living situation.
Read MoreThis week, Gavia and Morgan change it up by diving into the latest novel by master spy novelist John le Carré, A Legacy of Spies, which marks his final return to the world of George Smiley and the Circus. Topics discussed include the novel's relationship to its predecessors, le Carré's difficulties writing women, Morgan's le Carré fandom, and Brexit.
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