Save Me From My Shelf

Daniel and Abby answer listener questions about how they make the podcast, the best literary decades, overrated authors, giant ducks, and when to throw a drink in your mother-in-law's face (always). Cover art © Catherine Wu. Episode themes: Mozart's 'Overture' to Don Giovanni . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In our forty-fourth episode, we look at Mark Twain's satire on systematic racism and childhood trauma, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). It's full of bad southern accents, men painted weird colours, identity theft, and bounty (both financial and chocolate). We also learn that Abby is from Grade-A dirtbag stoc...

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In our forty-third episode, we go back to ancient epics and probably the earliest text we can cover on this show: the Epic of Gilgamesh (circa 2100-1200 BC). In this episode, Daniel finds religion, Abby repents her punning ways, we see a glorious return of MeasuringWorth, and our hosts make way for the real star of th...

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In our forty-second episode, we get dark and dirty with Matthew Lewis's 1796 'Male Gothic' masterpiece, The Monk . Abby shows off her Bible learnin', Daniel speaks (and slurps) in tongues, and both of them scream forever into the void. Cover art © Catherine Wu. Episode Theme: Hector Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique, op....

Daniel's homework on the blind prophet Tiresias got cut from our episode on Homer's The Odyssey, Part One. Please find the segment resuscitated here, for all your Greek mythology needs. Cover art © Catherine Wu. Episode themes: Mozart's 'Overture' to Don Giovanni . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In the second half of our forty-first episode, we cover the last twelve books of Homer's The Odyssey (circa 800 BC). It's a delicious world, full of roast goat stomach, pig spine, and onion-peel cloaks. It's a sexy world, with plenty of Groundskeeper Willy nudity. It's an emotional world, full of crying naps and rage...

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. Sing, O Muse!, of our forty-first episode, the first twelve books of Homer's The Odyssey (circa 800 BC). Sing, of oil baths and endless sobbing! Sing, of sex and monsters and sex-monsters! Sing, of potty-humour and MILF Manor ! Sing, of two exhausted academics who pinball from Olympus to Hades and all around the Aegea...

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In our fortieth episode, we make our first foray across la Manche in order to recap Voltaire's satirical picaresque, Candide, ou l'Optimisme (1759). In this episode, Daniel trots out his feeble/ faible Franglais, Abby discerns a preoccupation with derrières lying at the bottom of an otherwise highly varied narrative,...

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In out thirty-ninth episode, our Audience Pick from Season Three, and Queer Con 2023, we recap our first Decadent text, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). In this episode, we throw a hate party for Lord Alfred Douglas, discover that Abby is both already a queer icon AND knows what music is, and see if Os...

Following on from our coverage of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower (1993), we have a bit of a roundtable chat with local hellscape expert, Liam Knight (AKA 'DystopiaJunkie'). In this bonus episode we discuss the differences and interactions between dystopian and postapocalyptic literature, explore these genres' preoccupations and their history, and explain why no budding survivalist should be...

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In out thirty-eighth episode, we recap our first apocalyptic novel, Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower (1994). In this episode, Daniel redefines male fashion (monocles, Keith-core) and Abby traces real-world allegories, and both of them end the text shaking and traumatised under one of those tinfoil blankets. Cover...

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In out thirty-seventh episode, we look at a candidate for first-ever English language novel: Daniel Defoe's shipwreck narrative, Robinson Crusoe (1719). In this episode, Daniel creates a TikTok challenge, witness G.O.A.T. husbandry, and learn to see the Face of God (by watching barley grow or getting violent, turtle-i...

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In out thirty-sixth episode, we journey back to Revolutionary France with Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (1859). We learn all about the historical novel, but are less certain about gay iconography, what constitutes clinical depression, and precisely what Dr Manette was up to with all those shoes. Cover art © C...

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In our Season Four opener, Valentine's Day special, and thirty-fifth episode, we recap D.H. Lawrence's controversial, court case-launching novel full of weird sex and four-letter words, Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). The episode teaches us many things: the difference between the normal West and exotic East Midlands,...

Yet another sequence of brief clips that have been rescued from oblivion. Thematically we're getting a bit thin on the ground here, and dressing it up as a hodgepodge, salmagundi, macédoine , zibaldone - or any other pompous way of describing a mishmash - would be to everyone's discredit. Cover art © Catherine Wu. Episode themes: Cliff Carlisle, 'Columbus Stockade Blues' (1930), and Anton Bruckner...

A new, eagerly-awaited installment in the much-loved series of outtakes and bloopers. Bald eagle-eared listeners may have noticed that the co-hosts of Save Me From My Shelf hail from different co(u)ntries, and that this is occasinally the so(u)rce of some acrimony. This bonus program(me) compiles those numero(u)s clips from the cutting room floor in which our transatlantic contretemps came to a he...

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In our thirty-fourth episode and Christmas special/end-of-season finale, we recap C.S. Lewis's wintry Christian allegory, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950). Daniel gives us the gift of 'Measuringworth: Biblical Hermeneutics Edition' and Abby renames the Pevensie and Daniel's hypothetical pet beaver. This is...

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In our thirty-third episode, the Pedants' Revolt keeps waging on with a series of rebuking letters. We also discover the villain origin story for villain origin stories in Jean Rhys's postcolonial modernist/postmodernist Jane Eyre -fan fiction masterpiece, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966). Cover art © Catherine Wu. Episode th...

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In Part Two of our thirty-second episode, we keep the bawdy scatological humour up in the second half of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (1400). It's all farts, penned-in sex-yards, and apologies to Jesus. Cover art © Catherine Wu. Episode theme: Anonymous, 'Weltliche Musik um 1300', performed by the Studio de...

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In Part One of our thirty-second episode, we experience a whole lot of firsts: the first substantial work of English literature, our podcast's first guest spot, and the first time we gave up on an episode halfway through. Brace yourself for a bawdy, boozy, scatological good time with the first half of Geoffrey Chaucer...

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In our thirty-first episode and the second of two Halloween specials, we get properly scary with a ghost story full of ambiguous trauma, creepy children, and isolated country mansions: Henry James's The Turn of the Screw (1898). We also investigate the 'obscure hurt' a young Henry James did to his balls, speculate abo...

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In our thirtieth episode and first of two Halloween specials, we cover the world's first (?) Gothic novel, Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764). It's got more gigantic sabres, private caves, disembodied ghost parts, and lists of soldiers than you can shake a stick at. Cover art © Catherine Wu. Episode themes:...

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In our twenty-ninth episode, we answer the age-old question, 'What if socialism were a cop?' when we look at JB Priestley's 1945 anti-capitalist (Jean-Paul Sartre knock-off) play, An Inspector Calls . Today, we put our PhDs to work like never before, have a go at CSI: Miami stingers, and yearn for sexier content. Cove...

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In our twenty-eighth episode, we court controversy with Vladimir Nabokov's surreal paedophile road trip, Lolita (1955). It's got more unreliable narration, 1950s consumerism, and untranslated French than you can stomach. Cover art © Catherine Wu. Episode theme: Tchaikovsky's 'Serenade for Strings', covered by Freddy M...

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In our twenty-seventh episode, we return to Shakespeare--but with a comedy this time: the classic tale of twins, mistaken identity, and classic cis-direction, Twelfth Night (1601). In it, Daniel gives listeners of a particular SMFMS episode a scolding, Abby has a lot of anger and gender puns, and we make more than one...