Every book has two stories: the one it tells, and the one it hides.The Secret Life of Books is a fascinating, addictive, often shocking, occasionally hilarious ...
Please Sir, may we have some more? Oliver Twist, sex work and criminal underclasses in Victorian London
Let’s Twist Again! Not the dance, of course, but Charles Dickens’ incendiary second novel, which he began writing at the tender age of 24. With Oliver Twist, Dickens found his voice - a style simultaneously intimate and epic, funny but terrifying, exaggerated but true to life. Millions fell in love with his characters, shared their misfortunes and triumphs, and had their eyes opened to the plight of society’s outcasts. To write it, Dickens drew on his own experiences as a child of London, including the year he spent as a child labourer in a factory, mentored by an older boy called Bob Fagin. He also filled it with the outrage he developed as a parliamentary reporter, watching the great and good fail to tackle inequality in Britain. In so doing, he created some of the most beloved (and hated) characters in literary history - the Artful Dodger, Fagin, Nancy, Bill Sykes. He invented the first detective double-act Blathers and Duff (move over Starsky & Hutch - these guys beat you by a century) and captured London as no writer had before, earning the approval of none other than Queen Victoria. Her verdict: ‘excessively interesting’. Join Sophie and Jonty as they discover that the real enemy isn’t the criminal underworld, but ‘the system’ (Dickens’ term), come to grips with the awful, snivelling and bullying Mr Claypole (not Jonty, but Noah - one of Dickens’ most despicable villains), and - for reasons only passingly related to Oliver Twist - reveal the cruel nicknames they were tormented by at school. Hardly Oliver levels of suffering, of course, but enough to nurse a lifelong grudge.-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org-- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio and get bonus content: patreon.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast-- Follow us on our socials:youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@secretlifeofbookspodcast/shortsinsta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/bluesky: @slobpodcast.bsky.socialFurther Reading:Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, Oxford Worlds Classics, 2003.Claire Tomalin, Charles Dickens: A Life, 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/oct/02/charles-dickens-life-tomalin-reviewThe Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens, 2022.https://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Handbook-Charles-Dickens-Handbooks/dp/0192855719/ref=sr_1_1?crid=37E72VMAQVSUI&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.fnQOHbtdzGpLOEmAFjoj_ZVCVdw3tuuFEQoIP7ARHHsV064k9gkbHPU4h28v-qyvW4yRvrCvFpmelrkipRpWwgshRB_XB7vEVsyre-sBfgzzWjLdSt56PCWjL-p6A4cQ1jxHS24BLyNGp83L-sQQ4w.YGLIBW2Rlqa2PI2jK3jo9TG-I-QLDmBgFobMjHbeH84&dib_tag=se&keywords=Oxford+Handbook+charles+dickens&qid=1733096684&s=books&sprefix=oxford+handbook+charles+dicke%2Cstripbooks%2C360&sr=1-1Lee Jackson, Dickensland: A Curious History of Dickens' London, 2023.https://www.amazon.com/Dickensland-Curious-History-Dickenss-London/dp/0300266200/ref=pd_lpo_d_sccl_1/133-3551518-8907113?pd_rd_w=z2d83&content-id=amzn1.sym.4c8c52db-06f8-4e42-8e56-912796f2ea6c&pf_rd_p=4c8c52db-06f8-4e42-8e56-912796f2ea6c&pf_rd_r=KFQPNN521TYGS56SRCWV&pd_rd_wg=XOtzg&pd_rd_r=48fe60bb-dd16-45f4-b1a6-5cd7577619b1&pd_rd_i=0300266200&psc=1Judith Flanders, The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London, 2015.https://www.amazon.com/Victorian-City-Everyday-Dickens-London/dp/1250068266/ref=asc_df_1250068266?mcid=789f73a5e274313391651fd60922739e&hvocijid=8362640346023649414-1250068266-&hvexpln=73&tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=692875362841&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=8362640346023649414&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9007527&Support the showProducer: Boyd BrittonDigital Content Coordinator: Olivia di CostanzoDesigner: Peita JacksonOur thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.
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1:06:18
The world's most famous classicist on the world's most famous classic: Mary Beard and The Odyssey
The Odyssey - where stories began. Probably written down around 7th century BC - give or take a few centuries either way - by somebody or somebodies who may or may not have been called Homer. Leaving aside these mysteries, what is the Odyssey really about, why is it so violent and why is Odysseus himself - the lord of the lies - such an unlikeable hero? Who better to navigate this intellectual Scylla and historical Charybdis than the world’s best-loved classicist Mary Beard? Sophie and Jonty listen in admiration as Mary describes discovering The Odyssey aged 14 - a self-proclaimed swot with aspirations to be scruffy and cool (or, in Sophie’s parlance, a ‘dag’). How it - or at least the several incidents in which Odysseus’ wife Penelope is told to shut up and go to her room by her own son - inspired Mary’s best-selling book Women and Power. And how the whole poem, which begins with the word ἄνδρα (man), is a riff on toxic masculinity millennia before Andrew Tate was even in a twinkle in Zeus’ eye. And listen, pithy mortals, to Jonty as he repeatedly mangles Ancient Greek names, particularly the ‘Laestrygonians’, to Sophie as she - for the first time in this podcast - tries and fails to make a convincing link to The Reformation, and to all of us as we advocate the benefits of an oil rubdown every evening.-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org-- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio and get bonus content: https://patreon.com/SecretLifeofBooks528?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLinkyoutube: https://www.youtube.com/@secretlifeofbookspodcast/shortsinsta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/bluesky: @slobpodcast.bsky.socialFurther Reading:Emily Wilson, trans, The OdysseyMary Beard books:Women & Power: A Manifesto by Mary Beard (Profile Books, 2019)Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures and Innovations by Mary Beard (Profile Books, 2013) The Parthenon by Mary Beard (Harvard University Press, 2002)Support the showProducer: Boyd BrittonDigital Content Coordinator: Olivia di CostanzoDesigner: Peita JacksonOur thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.
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Bonus Live Ep: hosts' secrets revealed and the classics stripped bare!
Co-hosts Sophie and Jonty bare all in a bonus SLoB live ep! After months of rummaging through the dirty laundry of the great writers, it is only fair that we turn a critical eye back upon ourselves - and reveal the secret life of the Secret Life of Books. In this bonus episode, recorded to mark our official launch before a live audience in Sydney’s iconic Gleebooks, Sophie and Jonty get raw. After briefly discussing why we started SLoB and why the classics matter, we get down to the serious questions: which literary character do we most fancy? Who would we least like to be stuck in a lift with? And who, out of Jonty and Sophie, makes the best bolognese?Discover why, despite being published by Penguin ‘Classics’, Morrissey’s Autobiography is not and never will be a classic. While Sophie admits to a reading gap so embarrassing it will surely - SURELY - end her career as an English professor. Which book will it be? Listen to find out. This episode - unashamedly, nay proudly, self-indulgent - is the closest to a mission statement we’ll ever do, so strap yourselves in to discover (drum-roll) the secret life of the Secret Life of Books. -- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org-- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio and get bonus content: https://patreon.com/SecretLifeofBooks528?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLinkinsta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@secretlifeofbookspodcast/shortsinsta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/bluesky: @secretlifeofbookspodcastRecommended reading: Henry James, Wings of the DoveSpenser’s Faerie Queene Support the showProducer: Boyd BrittonDigital Content Coordinator: Olivia di CostanzoDesigner: Peita JacksonOur thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.
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Jane Austen does gothic horror with insta-ready clothes and great interiors: Northanger Abbey
Henry Tilney: is he yet another of Jane Austen’s Bad Men, or the stealth MVP with his interest in dress fabrics and interior decorating? Northanger Abbey is Austen’s funniest, most unabashedly joyful and silly novel. It’s also where Jane gets meta – with lots of speeches about what novels are and why we love reading them. Sophie makes the case that Catherine Morland is the most under-rated heroine in the Austen canon, an upbeat Fanny Price without the sad backstory. Jonty enthuses about the hero Henry Tilney’s interest in gothic fiction, and admits to having a soft spot for the ghastly John Thorpe, the fast-driving, hard-drinking braggart who gets in the way of Catherine’s path to happiness. Despite this, Sophie and Jonty wish him well and will indulge in a side-argument about the likely name of his future wife.And there’s more! Austen was a secret revolutionary, embedding all sorts of ideas about world revolutions and slave rebellions into this charming novel. We talk about whether Austen's famous satire on gothic novels, the massive bestsellers of the 1790s, is in fact the greatest, and most bestselling gothic novel of them all.-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org-- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio: https://patreon.com/SecretLifeofBooks528?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLinkinsta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@secretlifeofbookspodcast/shortsX: @SLOBpodcast@sophieggee@ClaypoleJontyinsta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/Further Reading:Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, intro. Claudia Johnson (Oxford, 2003)Clare Tomalin, Jane Austen: A Life, (1997)Claudia Johnson, Equivocal Beings, (1995). A great book about the female novelists who influenced Austen, discussed in this episode.Rachel Cohen, Austen Years: A Memoir in Five Novels, (FSG, 2020)Tom Keymer, Jane Austen: Writing, Society, Politics (Oxford, 2020)Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick, “Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl,” (Critical Inquiry 1991)Support the showProducer: Boyd BrittonDigital Content Coordinator: Olivia di CostanzoDesigner: Peita JacksonOur thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.
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1:04:36
James: National Book Award global hit; a Huck Finn rewrite the world needed; plot twists you'll never guess
It took 140 years for someone to write back to Mark Twain’s brilliant but troubling masterpiece The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Now the celebrated American novelist Percival Everett has done it with James, a daring, provocative, retelling of Huck Finn through the eyes, mind and heart of Huck’s friend Jim, a runaway slave. What are the untold secrets of Mark Twain’s novel, that Everett brings to light with James? And what should we make of the small but crucial fact that Everett once owned a pet crow, also named Jim?Everett didn’t train as a literary innovator. He studied biochemistry, philosophy and mathematical logic. And after that he was a horse and mule trainer. Sophie and Jonty speculate about how these career moves provide crucial clues to the secret life of James itself — and why the most important secret of all might be that Everett watched the 1960s TV version of Mission: Impossible while he wrote.Sophie takes a crack at explaining Everett’s cryptic but alluring statement that all of his work is about “the fact that A is A is not the same thing as A equals A, and even as I say it, it gives me a headache.” And Jonty puts Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained in its place once and for all.-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org-- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio: https://patreon.com/SecretLifeofBooks528?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLinkinsta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@secretlifeofbookspodcast/shortsX: @SLOBpodcast@sophieggee@ClaypoleJontyinsta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/Further Reading:Percival Everett, James (Doubleday 2024)Percival Everett, The Trees (Graywolf 2021)Quentin Tarantino Django Unchained (2012)Support the showProducer: Boyd BrittonDigital Content Coordinator: Olivia di CostanzoDesigner: Peita JacksonOur thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.
Every book has two stories: the one it tells, and the one it hides.The Secret Life of Books is a fascinating, addictive, often shocking, occasionally hilarious weekly podcast starring Sophie Gee, an English professor at Princeton University, and Jonty Claypole, formerly director of arts at the BBC. Every week these virtuoso critics and close friends take an iconic book and reveal the hidden story behind the story: who made it, their clandestine motives, the undeclared stakes, the scandalous backstory and above all the secret, mysterious meanings of books we thought we knew.-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org-- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio: https://patreon.com/SecretLifeofBooks528?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLinkinsta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@secretlifeofbookspodcast/shorts
Ireland