Show Notes
It's episode 3 of Book Chat! And this month we are travelling hundreds of years back, to a book Pandora's always wanted to read (Orlando, by Virginia Woolf) and one of Bobby's all-time favourites (Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte.) Last episode, Pandora groaned at the prospect of Wuthering Heights, which she read - and loathed - for GCSE. So has she changed her mind? We discuss the two books and also the culture around the two authors: the upper-class, sexually liberal art collective, the Bloomsbury group, which Virginia Woolf was part of, and 'the Bronte myth' which has become part of the Wuthering Heights lore. How were the books received at the time - and do they stand up as modern reads?
Other books/ articles mentioned: You Be Mother, by Meg Mason Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte Mrs Dalloway, Jacob's Room, A Room of One's Own, The Waves and To The Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf Terrible literary wigs that I have known and loved, by Maddie Rodriquez for Book Riot https://bookriot.com/terrible-literary-wigs-i-have-known-and-loved/ Who's Virginia Woolf afraid of? by Stephen Unwin for Byline Times https://bylinetimes.com/2022/12/22/whos-virginia-woolf-afraid-of/ Emily, 2022 film https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.985aca68-2553-4b7e-83de-1b6465a3a8e4?autoplay=0&ref_=atv_cf_strg_wb Orlando, a play directed by Michael Grandage, on now at The Garrick
Our books for Episode 4 are: The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid All That Man Is, by David Szalay
You can get in touch [email protected]
Sound by Joel Grove and production by Pandora Sykes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Book Chat
A bittersweet episode of Book Chat has Pandora and Bobby discussing two fittingly bittersweet books: Stoner by John Williams and The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. Also, “some news”, a hearty goodbye, and a look back on some of our Book Chat faves from episodes past.
We bring two books both published in 1970 to the table. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by “the poet laureate of puberty” Judy Blume, and The Bluest Eye, by the legendary Toni Morrison.
After last month’s crowd-pleasers, Bobby and Pandora sink their teeth into two very different, equally meaty books. In Augustown by Kei Miller, a “dismal little valley” in Jamaica becomes a boiling pot of tension when a young boy’s dreadlocks are cut off. And in Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin, the boiling pots are a little more literal – and Pandora shares an all-timer of a kitchen horror story.
It’s a bumper episode 8, with Pandora and Bobby tackling two million-copy-bestselling, much-loved-movie-inspiring titans of the nineties. In Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding, Pandora finds a surprisingly feminist heroine who’s no less funny 25 years on. And in Nick Hornby’s beloved High Fidelity, Bobby meets his match in a perpetually depressed man-boy who needs to love himself before anyone else can love him back.
Book Chat is back, and episode 7 pits a Pulitzer-winning author against a Nobel-winning author. But not really: in the battle of the Annies whose name ends in ‘X’, both Bobby and Pandora are winners. Discussing Close Range by Annie Proulx, Bobby feels the need to make apologies for the unapologetic bleakness of rural Wyoming – while Pandora is transported back to the excruciating experience of Catholic boarding school girlhood in Annie Ernaux’s A Girl’s Story.