Crack The Book: A Beginner's Guide to Reading the Great Books

America's 250th is just behind us, but I didn't want to let the holiday go by unnoticed--it's a big one! This is a repeat of Week 36 from last year, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America. Never read them? Neither had I--but they aren't long and, wow, are they worth the time. And what better time than now? If you'd like to listen to other episodes that...

Back for more Shakespeare! This week it's Henry IV Part 2 (following up last month's Part 1 )--but with the addition of the book Year of the Fat Knight by Shakespearean actor Antony Sher. Part One 's pairings of characters give way to one central relationship in Part 2 : fathers and sons. It's much more serious as Prince Hal moves closer to assuming the throne: how much will he follow his father's...

If you're like me, England always seemed to emerge from the mists of history more or less fully formed and with Henry VIII as king. Obviously, I was mistaken! And this week, with Venerable Bede, I found out what was really lurking back in those mists. Our friend (because he definitely becomes our friend) Bede writes his Ecclesiatical History of the English People in 731. Long before most people's...

Finally—the first unit of reading this year! We are reading all kinds of English literature, from histories to plays, and even some poetry, and this is the episode I share with you what’s on the list. When we decided to go on this trip to England, I thought this was a great time to combine an old routine of “pre-vacation reading” with my newfound enjoyment of old, classic, and even “great” books....

This week we take a look at two novels that were on last year’s reading list. Why are we revisiting them? Because we only read a couple of chapters of each one, and that wasn’t enough! First up, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I shared last year that this was one I only had bad memories of from high school, but rediscovering it as an adult was a real treat. In particular, we talk abou...

This week is a treat! A few weeks ago I joined Fr. Brian McGreevy for a talk at St. Philip’s Theology on Tuesdays, a biweekly group of young adults who meet at Henry’s on the Market in Charleston. Most weeks they talk about aspects of Christian living or theology—this week is was books and the WHY of reading. Fr. Brian shares some interesting statistics on reading, and the benefits it has for your...

We kick off our once-a-month Shakespeare series with one of my favorites from last year, Henry IV, Part One . The trilogy of Henry IV, Parts One and Two, and Henry V form The Henriad and are a great way to learn about the way England thinks about its own history. I review my method of reading Shakespeare (see last season's Week 26 for more information), and then we move on to the actual history of...

Welcome to Season 3 of Crack the Book! In this episode: A quick review of big events that happened during the break— Ted Gioia agreed to an interview! I share some of our back-and-forth from our email “interview”/exchange. The podcast What Should I Read Next invited me to be a guest. As a long-time listener to this podcast, it was incredibly exciting. I gave an in-person talk (my first!) with a fr...

While we are on a break, enjoy this episode from Season 2. Season 3 starts May 19! This week, we take on Apuleius’ The Golden Ass , a hilarious surprise from Ted Gioia’s Immersive Humanities Course. Written in the mid-300s A.D., this is the very first Latin prose novel, penned by Algerian-born Apuleius. Lucius, our hero, is a young man who meddles in magic, transforms into a donkey, and embarks on...

While we are on a break, enjoy this episode from Season 2. Season 3 starts May 19! Week 39 of Ted Gioia’s Immersive Humanities Course takes on nineteenth-century American literature. To my surprise, this became one of the most enjoyable weeks so far. I went in dreading familiar names and old high-school resentments, but came out newly energized. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (cha...

While we are on a break, enjoy this episode from Season 2. Season 3 starts May 19! My son Jack is back as we discuss Paradiso, Jack's favorite part of Dante's Divine Comedy. I absolutely love getting to chat with him again (see a couple of earlier episodes linked below). We talk about why he loves Dante in general, and Paradiso in particular. Highlights include: Dante's bravery (or chutzpah!) in w...

While we are on a break, enjoy this episode from Season 2. Season 3 starts May 19!

While we are on a break, enjoy this episode from Season 2! This week we pair two early-modern comedies that show how laughter can reveal truth. But first, we do a quick review of European history, looking at France, Spain, Italy and England, trying to place the things we're reading inside history. (I knew next to nothing about Spain at this time so it was really helpful for me!) This is a replay o...

After a year of reading through Ted Gioia’s Immersive Humanities list, I’ve finally reached the end. How surprising that it doesn’t feel like an ending at all! This final episode is less about individual books and more about what the project revealed over time: how we read, how we think, and how we change. Having finished, I genuinely believe in occasional deep projects, for a variety of reasons....

***Please fill out my podcast questionnaire !! Thank You!!*** Week 52 and, somehow, the end of Ted Gioia’s Immersive Humanities project. We've got time to process all the emotions next week. For now, on to the readings! This final week brings together a really cool set of 20th and 21st century works—Octavia Butler, Joan Didion, Tim O'Brien, the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book, and David Foster Walla...

Please answer our SHORT questionnaire ! We have a treat this week: My husband Bill read Brave New World shortly after I did, so today we discuss it together! BNW presents a dystopian world that feels less like oppression and more like a perfectly engineered system. In this world, humans are no longer born but manufactured, sorted into castes, and conditioned for their roles. The goal is “community...

Week 50 of Ted Gioia’s Immersive Humanities List brings us to three mid-20th-century thinkers wrestling with art, media, and the modern world: Susan Sontag, Walter Benjamin, and José Ortega y Gasset. I begin with Susan Sontag’s famous essay “In Plato’s Cave” from On Photography . Writing in 1972, she asks how photography changes our relationship to memory and experience. At the time, photographs w...

Week 49 of Ted Gioia’s Immersive Humanities list brings three modern French thinkers into conversation: Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, and René Girard. Unlike many earlier weeks in this project, these readings aren’t novels or unified texts—they’re philosophical excerpts that stand largely on their own. So rather than forcing a single theme, I consider how each of these writers might still b...

For Week 48 of Ted Gioia’s Immersive Humanities List, I step into the strange, shimmering world of Kafka's Metamorphosis , Borges' Ficciones , and Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude . We start with a review of myth, fantasy, fairy stories, and magic: why we need them and what purpose they can serve in our lives (aside from being really fun). Kafka’s tragic insect-turned-son is an isolat...

With only five weeks left in this year-long journey, I can feel the end approaching—less like a high-wire act and more like gathering momentum toward something unknown. Week 47 of Ted Gioia’s Immersive Humanities course explores twentieth-century American fiction through short stories and novel excerpts, revealing a distinctly American voice: sharp dialogue, vivid settings, and an experimental edg...

Week 46 of Ted Gioia’s Immersive Humanities List brought me to two works by Sigmund Freud : An Outline of Psycho-Analysis and Beyond the Pleasure Principle . I finished reading a few days early but needed time to let these ideas settle—and disturb me. What struck me first was Freud’s immense influence. What followed was a growing discomfort with how fully his ideas have saturated modern thought. F...

Week 45 of Ted Gioia’s Immersive Humanities List brought me fully into the early 20th century—and, to my surprise, it wasn’t an easy transition. I don’t dislike these works, but I find myself missing the older books and trying to name what feels absent. The shadow of World War I certainly looms, but there’s something more elusive at work. This week’s readings were Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthous...

Week 44 takes us firmly into the 20th century, with a strong Irish lineup: James Joyce’s “ The Dead" from The Dubliners , the opening of Ulysses, and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Joyce surprised me—in the very best way. “ The Dead ” is rich, intimate, and beautifully written, capturing married love, memory, and Dublin itself as if the city were another character. The opening of Ulysses was...

This week’s reading was heavy—emotionally and intellectually. We paired Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) with W.E.B. DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk (1903), and the contrast was striking. Douglass’ firsthand account of slavery is harrowing, beautifully written, and unforgettable. From his stolen childhood to his carefully guarded escape, his story exposes not only the cruelty of...

This week’s readings on Ted Gioia’s Immersive Humanities List felt unexpectedly thin and disjointed. We stepped backward in time to Gustave Flaubert and Charles Baudelaire , which made me keenly aware of how much I’ve come to rely on the list’s chronological momentum. I also continue to struggle with “selections,” especially in poetry, where I suspect I shortchange the material when time and energ...