Show Notes
Episode 6 takes on one little known book and one very, very well-known book. Pandora finally reads A Visit from the Goon Squad and falls in love with Jennifer Egan's entire canon, while Bobby has mixed feelings about one of Pandora's absolute favourite books of recent times, When I Hit You, about a woman's violent marriage to a communist professor in South India.
You can get in touch [email protected] Sound by Joel Grove and production by Pandora Sykes
Books/articles mentioned: When I Hit You, The Gypsy Goddess and Exquisite Cadavers by Meena Kandasamy A Visit from the Goon Squad, Emerald City, Look At Me and The Candy House by Jennifer Egan Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton Burning Questions by Margaret Atwood Girlfriend on Mars by Deborah Willis Open Throat by Henry Hoke On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee Jennifer Egan on Radio 4 Book Club Stephanie Sy-Quia reviews Meena Kandasamy for LARB
Books for episode 7: Close Range by Annie Proulx A Girl’s Story by Annie Ernaux
Please note, we will be taking a seasonal break for June, and will be back on July 1st. 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.