Show Notes
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.
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Sound by Joel Grove and production by Pandora Sykes
Books/articles mentioned:
Close Range and The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
A Girl’s Story, The Years, A Man’s Place, A Woman’s Story, Happening, Getting Lost and Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Ordinary Human Failings and Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan
Different Seasons by Stephen King
Stoner and Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir 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.
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.