Unfortunately Required Reading

This week Amanda and Victoria do an unnecessary deep dive into Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott and discuss how he created Scottish tourism.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss the massive historical inaccuracies of John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and real-life drama.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss the god Dionysus and the play The Bacchae by Euripides.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss the novella The Vampyre by John Polidori (NOT LORD BYRON), and how it helped create the vampire genre we know today.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss another book that probably should have been a trauma indicator, Dicey's Song by Cynthia Voight...also Anime Horse Girls

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss the epic poem by Virgil (or Vergil), The Aeneid. Also, our weird obsession with bunt cakes.

Welcome to our first "Book Club" episode, as Amanda and Victoria discuss Sinners, Conclave and the atrocious Lilo and Stitch live action. Fair warning: there's no outline, no script, and plenty of tangents. Back to our regularly scheduled programming in July!

This week Amanda and Victoria explore Simone de Beauvoir's exploration of women, The Second Sex, and discuss intersectionality and a whole blend of modern-day f**kery.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss Uncle Tom's Cabin and its enduring (and destructive) legacy.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss the possible series finale of the US by talking about Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America and his accurate, and not so accurate, talking points.

This week Amanda and Victoria celebrate Victoria's birthday month with A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, and the legacy of New Orleans.

Somehow in this economy we get Baron Von Cheeseplate back on the show to discuss William Goldman's The Princess Bride , as well as how much we all hate that weird Evangelical puppet, Douglas.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss Henry James' novella, The Turn of the Screw. After Daddy's Little Harbinger shows up (Mothman) our audio started to have some problems, the episode crashing twice. The rest of his death story is posted on UnfortunatelyRequiredReading.com for the curious.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss the Daniel Quinn book of Socratic dialogue with a gorilla, Ishmael .

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss Robert Graves' epic I, Claudius , and immediately questioning Graves' concepts of history.

Happy Birthday Month to Amanda! This month, we discuss Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird (and Victoria actually does the shortest short story long.)

This month Amanda and Victoria discuss City of Night by John Rechy for Pride Month and discuss the old ways and the new of Queer community and acceptance.

Baron Von Cheeseplate joins Amanda and Victoria to discuss Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, and the impact of this work on pop culture.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie , Manifest Destiny, the Minnesota Massacre, the lie of Westward expansion and why neither host can spell prairie.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss Lady Chatterley's Lover, sex politics, and what DH Lawrence means by a "crisis."

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, and the myth of typical femininity.

This month Amanda and Victoria discuss Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis , traumatic childhood abuse, and the utterly depressing life of Franz Kafka.

Baron Von Cheeseplate returns to discuss 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne with Amanda and Victoria.

For Spooky Month Amanda and Victoria discuss Stephen King's infamous work The Shining , alcoholism, hotels, and Stanley Kubrick.