Big Book Club Podcast

Big Book Podcast: The Chosen and the Beautiful

Revisting Gatsby with Nghi Vo

Season 3, Ep. 3: The Chosen and the Beautiful

Reminder: this is a spoiler-filled podcast. So if you’re not into that kind of thing, read the book first and come back later.

Nghi Vo’s “The Chosen and the Beautiful” is a retelling of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 classic, “The Great Gatsby,” told from the perspective of Jordan Baker, a side character in Fitzgerald’s novel. The Jazz Age Nghi Vo creates is both brighter and darker – it's magical and queer, and Jay Gatsby has literally sold his soul to the devil.

Share your thoughts about this book, or anything else you’re reading, in our GoodReads or Facebook groups, or on twitter using the #BigBookPodcast hashtag.

If you’d like to make a suggestion for future reading send us your recommendations on the Big Book Club Podcast page.

Episode Links

“Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald and “The Chosen and the Beautiful” by Nghi Vo

We're Reading

Jennie – “Enchanted Warrior” by Sharon Ashwood
Pete – “Hip Hop and Other Things” by Shea Serrano

Upcoming Books:

“Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë - December
“The Eyre Affair” by Jaspar Fforde - January

Great Britain circa 1985: time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. Baconians are trying to convince the world that Francis Bacon really wrote Shakespeare, there are riots between the Surrealists and Impressionists, and thousands of men are named John Milton, an homage to the real Milton and a very confusing situation for the police. Amidst all this, Acheron Hades, Third Most Wanted Man In the World, steals the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit and kills a minor character, who then disappears from every volume of the novel ever printed! But that's just a prelude . . . Hades' real target is the beloved Jane Eyre, and it's not long before he plucks her from the pages of Bronte's novel. Enter Thursday Next. She's the Special Operative's renowned literary detective, and she drives a Porsche. With the help of her uncle Mycroft's Prose Portal, Thursday enters the novel to rescue Jane Eyre from this heinous act of literary homicide. It's tricky business, all these interlopers running about Thornfield, and deceptions run rampant as their paths cross with Jane, Rochester, and Miss Fairfax. Can Thursday save Jane Eyre and Bronte's masterpiece? And what of the Crimean War? Will it ever end? And what about those annoying black holes that pop up now and again, sucking things into time-space voids . . .

Big Book Podcast: The Ballad of Black Tom

Revisting Lovecraft with Victor LaValle.

Season 3, Ep. 2: Lavalle and Lovecraft

Victor LaValle’s 2016 fantasy-horror novella “The Ballad of Black Tom,” which revisits H.P. Lovecraft’s 1925 short story “The Horror at Red Hook,” is an excellent example of an author not only building upon but surpassing the foundations of a literary genre.

Reminder: this is a spoiler-filled podcast. So if you’re not into that kind of thing, read the book first and come back later.

Episode Links

"The Ballad of Black Tom" by Victor LaValle and "The Horror at Red Hook" by H.P. Lovecraft.

Kintsugi, or golden joinery, also known as "golden repair (kintsukuroi) is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. Wikipedia entry.

Reading

Pete – "Beetlejuice" and "The Thing"
Jennie - “Before the Coffee Gets Cold” by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Megan – “One Last Stop” by Casey McQuiston

Tell us what YOU think about this book, or anything else you’re reading, in our GoodReads or Facebook groups, or talk to us on twitter using the #BigBookPodcast hashtag.

If you’d like to make a suggestion for future reading send us your recommendations on the Big Book Club Podcast page on the Arlington Public Library website.

Upcoming Books:

“Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald and “The Chosen and the Beautiful” by Nghi Vo

Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society—she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She’s also queer and Asian, a Vietnamese adoptee treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her. But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how. Nghi Vo’s debut novel, "The Chosen and the Beautiful," reinvents this classic of the American canon as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess, and introduces a major new literary voice.

The Anatomy of Desire

This is the first episode of our third season, and “The Anatomy of Desire” by L.R. Dorn is the perfect book to introduce our fall reading theme and schedule. In season two we tackled a variety of western classics and foundational texts. With this book we’re beginning to explore the work built on those foundations. Published in May, 2021, “The Anatomy of Desire” is a modern reimagining of Theodore Dreiser’s classic crime drama, “An American Tragedy,” which we read earlier this year.

Reminder: this is a spoiler-filled podcast. So if you’re not into that kind of thing, read the book first and come back later.

https://bigbookclubarlington.libsyn.com/the-anatomy-of-desire-by-lr-dorn

The Big Sleep

And Then There Were None

True Grit

Rebecca

Read with the Big Book Club Podcast

Welcome back! Over the next six weeks, or three episodes of the podcast, we’ll be reading – and librarianing the heck out of – the first book in Frank Herbert’s epic Sci-Fi series, “Dune.” We chose “Dune” in part because it’s getting a lot of buzz, first-reads, and rereads this year, due to the new feature film coming out in 2021.

In part one, Megan can’t pronounce any of the made-up names, Pete reminisces about his dad reading “Dune” when he was a kid, and Jenny muses on Cold War politics.

Listen now!