Charlotte Brontë Makes the List with Her Gothic Classic Jane Eyre
This week's entry on the 100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language is Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (listen to the pod to learn her pen name for initial publication), which Jay and Stacey discuss...
15 Jul 202546min
A Fable of Colonial Power in J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the. Barbarians
J.M. Coetzee’s 1980 novel still has insight and meaning for us today as it grapples with how colonial power trickles down and through the individuals who administer it. Jay talks about how he selected...
8 Jul 202536min
Atwood’s Dystopian Novel Makes the List
This week, Jay shares in-depth why the disturbing dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a lovable book, even as it envisions a future for the United States that is peak patriarchy....
1 Jul 202546min
The Wonderful World of Wodehouse’s Woosters
Jay’s List of the 100 Most Lovable Novels in English finally gets to one of his favorite writers when he discusses P.G. Wodehouse’s The Code of the Woosters, from which our culture gets the well-known...
24 Jun 202538min
A Timeless War Novel from More than a Century Ago
This week’s 100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language entry is Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, which Stacey knew was about a war, but not which war. Jay shares why it made his list and...
17 Jun 202536min
Kingsolver’s Conversation with Dickens: Demon Copperhead
This week’s entry on the 100 Most Lovable Books in the English Language List is Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead… This beloved instant classic is popular for a reason. While it updates the eterna...
10 Jun 202537min
Jane Austen’s Emma, with a Healthy Dose of Movie Talk Thrown In
Jane Austen set out to write a novel with an anti-hero: “A heroine whom no one but myself will much like,” she wrote about her goals for the book, so why is Emma so lovable? Of course, we couldn’t dis...
3 Jun 202544min
Philip Pullman's Subversive Fantasy
This week, Jay goes rogue and chooses a whole trilogy of books as the next entry on his list of the 100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series. He and ...
27 Mai 202533min
