outside of a dog

Welcome to Halloween in December, when we discuss Mary Shelley's classic horror tale, its take on science and queerness, and why we wouldn't want to snuggle up to Lord Byron.

Things are getting craaaazy in corona lockdown as we discuss depictions of mental illness, horror and bad ideas for a date.

A little pandemic doesn't keep us from podcasting! Other stuff did. But we're back, discussing last year's Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk's most celebrated novel Flights. We talk about its obession with human bodies, traveling and the rights of the orcish worker. Apologies for the bad audio quality! Recommendations: EM Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex Hans Scholz, Am grünen Strand der Spree

To end the year on a festive note we discuss a Christmas classic by one of the most highly esteemed writers in the English language. We talk religion, politics and corpse eating rats, so basically the same topics as at Christmas dinner with your family. Permalink

We live in the end times, so it's only fitting that we talk to dytopian fiction scholar Annika (https://twitter.com/mydystopias) about Margaret Atwood's groundbreaking novel, its chilling realism, its flaws, and why some merch is just in bad taste. Recommendations: Priya Nair, “Get Out of Gilead” Tillie Walden, On a Sunbeam It Could Happen Here (podcast) Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

Many people call Fitzgerald's magnum opus THE Great American Novel. Reason enough for us to talk about its treatment of its female characters, the American Dream and why we can’t stop saying “old sport”, old sport. Recommendations: Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway Nathaniel West, The Day of the Locust

We discuss whether Ripley is evil, and if yes why Highsmith’s portrayal of his evil is so remarkable. We also talk about queerness, la dolce vita and Boris Johnson.

We discuss the book that kept Jonas away from the podcast for two years. It features Henry VIII, rises to power, falls from grace and fluids from unspecified orifices.

After a very, very minute break, we are back to discuss Emily Brontë's storm-tossed novel and the unreliability and unlikability of its characters. Recommendations: John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In S-Town (podcast) Stephen Sondheim, Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

In our next minisode, we talk about Oscar Wilde's fairy tales, their sadness, their indebtedness to H.C. Andersen, and their autobiographical nature.

As we are reunited in Dublin's fair city, we discuss the works of one of its most famous literary sons, its morals, its aestheticism and why Wilde rulez.

A brief appraisal of Edgar Allan Poe's classic spooky poem.Special Musical Appearance by SONICONOCLASM: http://www.soniconoclasm.net

We dive into Pynchon's paranoid world of conspiracy, madness and of course... mail delivery.

Making America great again is not a novel idea, as we see in Ayn Rand's gigantic tome. We talk about its merits (few), its fans (lots) and why we personally never found out who John Galt actually was.

Belated Halloween greetings from us, as we discuss the grandfather of modern vampire literature, its documentary style and its deep-seated fear of foreigners, women, homosexuality and basically everything else.

Unfortunately not able to give you a proper episode on Zadie Smith's novel, we still talk about it a bit, do a bit of housekeeping and tackle the two most blighted things we could imagine: technical issues and the Irish *shudder*

Following countless teenagers over the past 65 years, we talk about JD Salinger's only novel, its unique voice, its New York setting and wanting to slap the whiny out of Holden Caulfield.

We discuss Rabelais' satirical masterpiece, in all its gross, fascinating and surprisingly relatable aspects.

The most mature and most challenging play by contemporary drama's most prominent voice, Crave gives us opportunity to talk about character identification, the definition of drama and whether Aleister Crowley was a Satanist.

While you might say we talk about nothing every time, this episode we discuss it as a parable, as a book for adolescents and whether nihilists have to be assholes.