60 Weeks 60 Books

This book was inspiring enough to make me try my hand at my first YouTube book review. And rereading it made me angrier than ever about the way our world is going: the materialism, the populism, the trivialisation and banality, the excessive worship of money and hectoring charlatans. I could go on, but I urge you instead to read Ordine's book which is an impassioned plea to preserve what is best a...

The penultimate book of this series dates from 2018, but I am still urging it on friends and students for the bridge it provides to timeless ideas. Edith Hall is an eminent academic specialising primarily in Greek theatre, but here explored her devotion to Aristotle despite his less than complimentary approach to women. His ideas about self-knowledge, values and virtues, and of course, about the t...

This week, a big fat book full of wonderful stories, dragons, magical birds and super-strong heroes with equally powerful horses. One of the books that makes me think that in school, we really ought to be teaching myth and legend from across the world - there would be enough to keep us busy for all 15 years of formal school. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For this week, I almost chose another book, but then I could not - Solnit's exploration of ice, of Arctic Dreams, the subject of one my own earlier podcasts, of Frankenstein and her account of her stay in the Library of Water on an Icelandic peninsula are so compelling, that I found myself reading and rereading. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Elizabeth Bishop's artistic reputation and legacy seem, rightly, to grow and grow. She won a Pulitzer Prize in the early 1950s, and was a challenging teacher of writing and literature at Harvard and MIT. She died of a brain aneurysm at 68 in 1979, no doubt a product of the booze and fags she packed away during the course of her life. She was also intrepid, insatiably curious about the world around...

Somehow, although the play is called Othello, it often ends up being all about Iago, arguably the most malevolent of all Shakespeare's villains. For a look at the best filmed versions of this terrific play head to ThatReadingWritingThing, where there are links galore. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, a book that is 99 years old and grows in stature and authority with every passing year, as its satirical depiction of the super-rich and their destructive impulses gathers authority. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Conrad's 1898 novella, based on his own experiences as a riverboat captain on his only voyage to the Congo, is today a contested book. Two particular attacks, by Chinua Achebe and Edward Said, level accusations of racism and imperialism at Conrad himself, invoking his regular use of the N-word and his depiction of the Africans that Marlow encounters throughout. Regarding the n-word, that is purely...

This week marks a year since I began this podcast with one of the most troubling books I have read, a book and documentary that revealed at the end of 2016 just how deep racism runs in the United States. Eight years later, I am even more troubled as we see the rise of divisive, discriminatory populism not just with the resurgence of Trump in the US but in sectarian clashes in India, and the low le...

This week, as I raced to finish Adam Nicolson's book about his deep love of Homer, discovered 20 years ago on a sea voyage, I kept dipping into a recent translation of The Iliad and getting sidetracked. Homer's impact is strong, and here I take a look at how I started loving the Odyssey, but thanks in part to Nicolson, have ended up still more in love with the Iliad. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com...

Passion makes fools of us all, and nowhere does Shakespeare better display this than in Antony & Cleopatra. What I love about this play is the clash between the public and the personal, the political and the private. It's a sharp, bitter, witty play, full of gossip and black humour. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Azar Nafisi is an impressive woman, and it is interesting to note that the relatively few dismissive critics of this wonderful book were from a masculine perspective. Women reading, thinking and generating their own ideas and perspectives have always been a threat to the established order. Nafisi's critical memoir explores the how and the why during the 18 years she spent trying to raise a family,...

Rory Stewart is nine years younger than me, and about ninety-nine times more adventurous. In this week's episode, I am amazed by his courage, foolhardiness, stamina, determination and also fall in love with his dog Babur. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Set on a Dutch trading post built on an artificial island off the coast by Nagasaki, David Mitchell's novel explores what brings us together and what separates us in our cultures, morals and choices. On the surface a straightforward chronological narrative of the first years spent in the East by a young Dutch clerk, Mitchell explores darker stories of corruption, exploitation and cruelty embedded...

Hamlet or The Winter's Tale. I suppose it depends on mood and emotion. Hamlet has a brilliantly high body count and some of the best repartee ever, it has Horatio and flights of angels, ghosts and of course, the prince of charisma, Hamlet himself. But The Winter's Tale is different. It too deals with insanity, gardens, dreams and illusions, but where there is nothing but death and the special prov...

This book as been deeply influential and deserves its place as it seeks to encourage us to rethink the nature of economic and social development, putting humans and humanity at the heart of what it means to be a thriving, healthy society. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cannibalism, castration, crime, confusion, what could I have left out of this summary of James Meek's terrific novel? Oh, yes, communism. It truly has it all and is well worth reading. Find out why in this week's pod. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amy Bloom's second novel is set in 1920s America. The protagonist, Lillian Leyb, sets off from New York, ending up in Alaska, battling her own past as well as a variety of predators. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Of Sarah Waters's six novels, this is my favourite. An elegant and witty pastiche of Victorian melodrama and mystery, it is full of sinister twists and savage irony. A great read. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This book was amazing on first read, and it seems even better on this subsequent re-read. Just as in 2005, I was inspired all over again to visit Patagonia - the difference being that now I live in Brazil, this seems a much more plausible possibility. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mapp & Lucia brings together two of EF Benson's most tricky customers, Miss Elizabeth Mapp and Mrs Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas in a series of skirmishes and battles to decide who will control the upper circles of Tilling. First published in 1931, it remains in print - whether in spite of the trivial underpinnings of the feuds or because these may be slight, but they carry their own significance. Th...

It's time for another comedy by Shakespeare - we go into the woods with Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena and explore just how it was possible to reclaim A Midsummer Night's Dream from the curse of being a set text. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lionel Shriver's pathway to becoming a public controversialist began with this book - and it still resonates today, in a world where school shootings in the US continue and the gun lobby's agenda dominates public discourse. This podcast also features an original song by Sebby Clarke, Susan. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jennifer Crusie is one of the finest romance writers of all. Welcome to Temptation consistently delivers on the Crusieverse key ingredients: snarky heroine, wary hero, cute kid, slightly odd but affectionate hound, small-town antics and surreal friends and neighbours. The recipe varies, but Crusie consistently delivers wit, weirdness and wonderful pay-off. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy fo...

A look at Marmite academic Steven Pinker's 2002 book, The Blank Slate, challenging our long held beliefs about human nature with an exploration of how biology just might be more influential than anything else in determining how and we humans behave in the ways we do. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.