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Big Book Club Podcast

Big Book Podcast: Things Fall Apart

Back to High School with Chinua Achebe

Reminder: this is a spoiler-filled podcast. 

Season 4, Ep.2: "Things Fall Apart"

For this episode we read the 1958 novel by debut novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. The novel became the first work published in Heinemann's African Writers Series in the UK, starting in 1962. “Things Fall Apart” is the first book in Achebe’s trilogy about African history, and has been read by high schoolers for generations as the archetypal modern African novel in English. It is a staple book in schools throughout Africa, is widely read and studied in English-speaking countries around the world, and continues to be listed on included on “most important books” lists whenever they’re published.

Episode Links

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.

We're Reading

Big Book Podcast: Pride & Prejudice

Back to High School with Jane Austen

Reminder: this is a spoiler-filled podcast. 

Season 4, Ep.1: "Pride & Prejudice"

For season four we're going back to school with books we read - or didn't read - in high school. We started with "Pride & Prejudice," by Jane Austen. Reminder: this is a spoiler-filled podcast. So if you’re not into that kind of thing, read the text first and come back later.

Episode Links

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.

We're Reading

Big Book Podcast: Holmes Trio

Revisting Sherlock Holmes with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Sherry Thomas

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

Ep.9: "Holmes Trio"

For this episode we read both Maria Headley’s translation of the Old English epic poem "Beowulf" and “The Mere Wife,” Headley's 2015 retelling of Beowulf, which is set in present-day New York.

Share your thoughts about this book, or anything else you’re reading, in our Facebook group, 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

We're Reading

Big Book Podcast: Beowulf / The Mere Wife

Revisting Beowulf with Maria Headley

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

Ep.8: "Beowulf & The Mere Wife"

For this episode we read both Maria Headley’s translation of the Old English epic poem "Beowulf" and “The Mere Wife,” Headley's 2015 retelling of Beowulf, which is set in present-day New York.

Share your thoughts about this book, or anything else you’re reading, in our Facebook group, 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

We're Reading

Upcoming Books:

Big Book Podcast: King Lear / Fool

Revisting Shakespeare with Christopher Moore

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

Ep.7: "King Lear" & "Fool"

For this episode we read both the play "King Lear," written by William Shakespeare, and the 2009 book “Fool,” by Christopher Moore. King Lear is one of Shakespeare’s tragic plays, and is based on a legendary 8th Century BCE king of Britain (which would have been around the founding of Rome), as recounted in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s pseudohistorical 12th-century History of the Kings of Britain. “Fool,” on the other hand, is a comedy. Reminder: this is a spoiler-filled podcast. So if you’re not into that kind of thing, read the books first and come back later.

Share your thoughts about this book, or anything else you’re reading, in our Facebook group, 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

We're Reading

Upcoming Books:

"Beowulf: a New Translation” by Maria Headley and “The Mere Wife” by Maria Headley

Big Book Podcast: A Room with a View / Sex and Vanity

Revisting "A Room with a View" with Kevin Kwan

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

Ep.6: "Room with a View" & "Sex and Vanity"

For this episode we read both the 1908 novel “A Room with a View,” by E.M. Forster, and Kevin Kwan’s 2020 novel “Sex and Vanity.” As foundational texts go, "A Room with a View" is an Edwardian era novel – there are trains, and horses and carriages – setting it later than our recent foundational texts. 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.

Share your thoughts about this book, or anything else you’re reading, in our Facebook group, 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

We're Reading

Upcoming Books*:

“Fool” by Christopher Moore and “King Lear” by William Shakespeare

*Note: this is a change from the original schedule; "Beowolf" and "The Merewife" will now be in May.

Big Book Podcast: Jane Eyre / The Eyre Affair

Revisting Jane Eyre with Jasper Fforde

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

Ep.4: "Jane Eyre"

For December we read the 1847 novel by Charlotte Brontë, “Jane Eyre.” Originally published under the pen name Currer Bell, as “Jane Eyre: An Autobiography,” the novel follows the experiences of the eponymous heroine, including her growth into adulthood and love for the brooding Mr. Rochester.

Ep.5: "The Eyre Affair"

The Eyre Affair, by English author Jasper Fforde, was first published in 2001. It takes place in an alternative 1985, where literary detective Thursday Next pursues a master criminal through the world of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel Jane Eyre.

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

 

We're Reading

 

Upcoming Books:

“Sex and Vanity” by Kevin Kwan and “Room with a View” by E.M. Forester

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

 

Upcoming Books:

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

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.

Big Book Podcast: The Anatomy of Desire

The Anatomy of Desire by L.R. Dorn

This is the first episode of our third season, and “The Anatomy of Desire” 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.

Episode Links

“Anatomy of Desire” by L.R. Dorn

Reading

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:

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

“The Balled of Black Tom” has been described as “a novella of sorcery and skullduggery in Jazz Age New York.”

From the publisher: People move to New York looking for magic and nothing will convince them it isn’t there. Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father’s head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic, and earns the attention of things best left sleeping.A storm that might swallow the world is building in Brooklyn. Will Black Tom live to see it break?

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