Episodes

  • 👰 Pride and Prejudice plays the marriage plot straight
    May 19 2025

    Augie, Audrey, Keller, and Zeke read Pride and Prejudice with an open mind.

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    46 mins
  • 🤐 The Secret History - pass it on, or pass on it?
    May 19 2025

    Wait, did Donna Tartt just fail the Bechdel test? Mabel, Porter, Mateo, and Didi discuss how her '90s classic holds up. Full spoilers!

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    1 hr and 1 min
  • 🌐 In THIS Brave New World, it's called the Gulf of America
    May 16 2025

    Brave New World, same old canon. Caroline, Connor, Claire, and Olivia discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian classic, touching on politics, economics, psychology, philosophy, and (briefly) geography.

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    1 hr and 6 mins
  • 😭 Two the Lighthouse! DouBell (Jar) Episode!
    May 16 2025

    Liz, Evy, and Alex read TWO books! Both fairly depressing! Like a sad hat on a sad hat.


    They also settle the age-old question of who would win in a fight between Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath.


    Content warning: discussion of plotlines involving attempted and completed suicide in The Bell Jar.

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    1 hr and 1 min
  • 🚿 Keep calm and Carrie on.
    May 9 2025

    Sammy, Ava, Fiona, Mae, and Noelle discuss how Stephen King's first novel handles adolescence, mean girls, and high school drama.

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    48 mins
  • 🕴️Lincoln in the Bardo / Vollman in the Sheets
    May 9 2025

    Ash, Drew, Rafi, and Quinn ride the wave of (so many) narrative voices in George Saunders's Booker Prize-winning novel.


    CONTENT WARNINGS: brief discussion of suicide, mentions of pedophilia, talking about death and racism characteristic of the time period.

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    59 mins
  • 🩸Is Blood Meridian canceled? You be the Judge. 👨‍⚖️
    May 9 2025

    Aaron, Millie, Levi, Ella, and Sam discuss all the things that make Cormac McCarthy's capacious anti-western a tough read... and why that's not necessarily a bad thing.

    CONTENT WARNING: Blood Meridian is chock-full of upsetting imagery and language, including detailed portrayals of sadistic violence, racially offensive language, and intentionally provocative depictions of racial bigotry. In order to discuss the novel critically, this group refers to or reads aloud several such passages.

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    1 hr and 5 mins
  • 🕳️Heart of Darkness: accidentally racist on purpose?
    Apr 3 2025

    Xander, Raja, Hudson, Leo, and James do their best to untangle Joseph Conrad's point of view from his narrator's, looking at his novel that famously critiques colonialism while repeating some of the same dehumanizing stereotypes that were used to justify it.

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    44 mins