It’s the end of summer, so Kate and Laura are looking back over their holiday reading, the books they loved, the ones that disappointed them, and the unexpected discoveries that made their reading lists longer rather than shorter.
We talk about Alex E. Harrow’s huge fantasy novel The Everlasting, and why it turned out to be a surprisingly divisive read. Kate reports back on her pick from the Booker longlist, The Palm House by Gwendolyn Riley. She's also recently completed The Power Broker, Robert Caro's iconic book on New York master-builder Robert Moses, but was it worth the read?She's also discussing The Silver Book, Olivia Laing's most recent work of fiction. In Pankaj Mishra’s The Romantics, Laura found an interesting book club choice, while Kate's flagging up Vladimir by Julia May Jonas, and while on the campus novel theme she also read Joanna Miller’s The Eights, set in 1920s Oxford. Laura wraps things up with the wonderfully atmospheric The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo.
But there’s more as pod-regular Phil Chaffee joins us with two of his favourite summer reads, Sue Prideaux’s Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin and Bret Easton Ellis’s The Shards.
As summer comes to an end, we’re also looking ahead to Booker season, with the shortlist just around the corner and plenty more reading on the horizon.
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Complete booklist
The Power Broker by Robert Caro
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
The Everlasting by Alex E. Harrow
The Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle
Starling House by Alex E. Harrow
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
The Palm House by Gwendolyn Riley
Famesick by Lena Dunham
My Phantoms by Gwendolyn Riley
The Silver Book by Olivia Laing
The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing
Crudo by Olivia Laing
The Romantics by Pankaj Mishra
The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon
Fathers & Sons by Ivan Turgenev
The Heart of the Nhaga by Lee Young-do (Anton Hur)
Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinnerman
Land by Maggie O’Farrell
The Chair (Netflix)
Monsters by Claire Dederer
Vladimir by Julia May Jonas
The Eights by Joanna Miller
The Night Tiger and The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo
The Digital Critic: Literary Culture Online (Houman Barekat, Robert Barry and David Winters, eds.)
When We Talk About Love by Carl Wilson
Timecodes for the time-poor
00:00 — Welcome & summer reading
02:00 — What did we actually read this summer?
Holiday reading plans, library books and the perennial problem of taking too many books away with you.
04:00 — The Everlasting by Alex E. Harrow
Time loops, quests and a very divided reaction.
15:30 — The End of the Power Broker by Robert Caro
Kate tackles another Booker longlist book and asks: why is this on the longlist?
20:00 — The Booker longlist pick
A frank discussion of Gwendolyn Riley's The Palm House and the pleasures (and pains) of reading for the Booker.
22:20 — The Silver Book by Olivia Laing
A surprise for Kate after her mixed reaction to Laing’s Crudo.
27:30 — An accidental book-club adventure
Laura's brilliant idea: abandon the overheated book-club meeting and send everyone into Foyles to choose books.
28:40 — The Romantics by Pankaj Mishra
A chance discovery — and a Hilary Mantel endorsement that seals the deal.
35:50 — Vladimir by Julia May Jonas
Sex, power, academia and the deliciously murky moral territory of a campus novel.
40:00 — The Eights by Joanna Miller
Women in academia, 1920s Oxford and coming-of-age just after World War I
42:40 — The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo
Mystery, folklore, tigers and colonial Malaysia, Laura's perfect summer read
50:45 — Phil’s summer reading
Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux and The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis
54:20 — Booker season begins
The shortlist is coming, and summer reading gives way to required reading.
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