This month we took a break from bonkers books to read just a very solid novel, Kindred by Octavia Butler.Works mentioned include:* Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall* Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead* Harriet Tubman's Daring Raid:  https://thenib.com/harriet-tubman-s-daring-civil-war-raid/ * The Thirteenth film by Ava Duvernay* Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James* Gateway to Freedom by Eric Foner* The End of Policing by Alex Vitale* The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander* Texas Tough: The Rise of Americas Prison Empire by Robert Perkison

That Book was BONKERS

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Should you read North and South without seeing Richard Armitage play Mr. Thornton first? Our hosts say: mmmmmmaybe not. But we still (mostly) enjoyed reading it, and giving a hearty middle finger to Charles Dickens, whose fault it is that the book ends so abruptly.Other works mentioned: E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class; Sven Beckert  Empire of Cotton: A Global History Mary Brinker Post, Annie JordanBlood Brothers musical.Death Comes to Pemberly miniseriesBabylon Berlinhttps://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-unjustly-overlooked-victorian-novelist-elizabeth-gaskell

North and South

We read one of the best books of modern fairy tale retellings: The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter.Mentioned in this ep:Snow White, Blood Red edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri WindlingMovie: ApostleThe Girl from Raw Blood and Little Eve by Catriona WardThe Blue Salt Road  and  A Pocketful of Crows by   M Joanne Harris  " Snow Glass Apples " by  Neil GaimanThe Perilous Gard  by  Elizabeth Marie PopeThe romance novels of Elizabeth Hoyt

The Bloody Chamber

We drank some drinks, read some Shakespeare, became a little audience-hostile, while still loving every single one of you! Yes, it's Love's Labour's Lost, a lesser Shakespeare play with questionable pacing, but still some charming moments.Mentioned in this ep:Jessica is not sure if it’s aged well, but has fond memories of Complete Works of Shakespeare Abridged.Movie: Stage BeautyShakepeare After All by Majorie GarberMuch Ado About Nothing, esp the Branagh versionNational Theater Live

Love's Labour's Lost

Fanny Parkes was a middle class British woman who kept a diary of her years in India, and was one of the first white women ever allowed within a zenana (harem). We discussed her perceptions of Indian culture, the British East India company, sexy wrestling in Bollywood movies, and whether you should go for a hike with Fanny.Mentioned in this episode...Indian cinema:Mangal Pandey: The UprisingAsokaManikarnika Thugs of HindustanBooks:Incarnations: India in 50 Lives  by  Sunil Khilnani From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty

The Diary of Fanny Parkes

CONTENT WARNING: Byron's poetry contains lots of Orientalist language. He may have experienced and perpetrated sexual abuse and we discuss that all in this episode. We read "Mazeppa" by Lord Byron, along with some of his other poetry, and discussed him and the young and foolish second generation of English Romantic poets. We're all extremely on-brand in this episode. Linnea is obsessed with the Romantics' obsession with incest. Manik is obsessed with Germans. Jessica has a novel idea, and Reidan discovers the genesis of horse-girls.Mentioned in this episode:* How Byron invented the wild horse trope:  https://lithub.com/how-lord-byron-invented-the-wild-horse/ * Spoken word Mazeppa  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4Jc4-vjjcE * Cats in black  https://i.pinimg.com/originals/46/69/26/4669262769189837a77de36fc26d1ea8.jpg * Lizst's "Mazeppa"* Young Romantics by Daisy Hay*The Shadow of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón* Greta Gerwig's Little Women* Persuasion by Jane Austen* Puskin's "Poltava" and Eugene Onegin

Byron! Literary ****boi extroaordinaire

With giant cats, the Devil as a stage magician, and a lot of concern about Pontius Pilates' migraines, we've never read a book that fulfilled the brief of this show more than this Russian novel written in the 1930s but not published until the 60s. It's also Daniel Radcliffe' s favorite book!Recommendations:* The film The Death of Stalin* Sabriel and its sequels by Garth Nix* The current HBO miniseries about Catherine the Great starring Helen Mirren* The Heart of a Dog also by Mikhail Bulgakov

The Master and Margarita

This month we did something a little different. Linnea and Reidan read On Witchcraft by Cotton Mather, and Jessica and Manik read Malleus Maleficarum by Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger.We discussed Cotton Mather's interminable sentences (and sermons!), Malleus's more metal moments, including a tree full of dongs (I kid you not), and the surprising origins of inoculation in the American Colonies.Recommendations and stuff we mentioned:* The King Missile song Detachable Penis  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIUk08iYZKE * The CW show Reign, now on Netflix* Brookland by Emily Barton* A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness*  The VVitch (A24 films) (2015) * Season 1 of the Unobscured podcastPhotos of an early printing of On Witchcraft are available at bonkersbook.com

Witches for Spooky Season

Is it a classic? Yes. Is it well-written? Ehhhhhhhhh, not as such. Is it worth reading? If you are well-warned for homophobic language, fatophobia, ageism, and ableism.Valley of the Dolls was one of the first Trashy Novels, and like many trashy novels there's more to it than meets the eye. Join Linnea and Jessica as they talk about the dawn of the modern book tour, dolls (pills), Hollywood, shitty men, and wig-snatching scene for the ages.Recommendations and books mentioned:Rich and Pretty by Rumaan AlamMillenium Girl by Coerte FelskeFirst Wives Club and others by Olivia GoldsmithPeyton Place by Grace Metalious

Valley of the Dolls

We love gender-bending protagonists around here, and Orlando is the mother of them all. We talk Bloomsbury, whether Orlando is a self-insert of Virginia Woolf or her lover Vita Sackville-West (Or Lobelia Sackville-Bagins), a new Cumberbatch-esque name, and frankly the best fanfic idea we've had yet. RecommendationsRead Orlando!The web comic Oglaf (very NSFW)Gentleman Jack on NetflixBig Little Lies on HBO

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

For July, Bastille Day, and in recognition of the tragic fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral, we read the architecture treatise with a little plot known as Notre Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo.Along the way Linnea rants about Baroque (or maybe Rococo) decor, and we have a good healthy debate over who is worse, Phoebus or Frollo. Recommendations:Disney's The Hunchback of Notre DameThe French rock opera of sameThe movie The Story of Adele H, about Victor Hugo's daughter

Notre Dame de Paris

WARNING: This episode contains mentions of sexual assault right from the jump because there's a lot of it in this book.This month we discuss Candide by Voltaire. SPOILER ALERT: We hated it! Listen to find out more about the death of one-name superstar Voltaire, red sheep, and why we need Nick Cage for a project.Also, this is the first time we've tried editing in a musical cue ( Camille Saint-Saëns Danse Macabre, for reasons that will become evident) so apologies if it sounds sloppy.Recommendations:  Don't read Candide if you can avoid it The Work of the Dead by Thomas LaquerThis Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom by Martin HagglundNancy Collins’s Sonja Blue novelsThe Good PlacePet Semetary by Stephen King (and the I Don’t Even Own a Television Podcast on the book)

Candide

We're back this month with the second half of Vanity Fair, rejoining Becky, Amelia, Dobbin, and some new faces, the Marquis of Steyne and some children being raised more and less well. We discuss shawls, colonialism, sex and shopping novels, how Becky has receipts, and Thackery: Secret Marxist?Recommendations:An 1865 review of Vanity Fair in Atlantic Magazine  https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/classrev/vanityfa.htm The romance novels of Courtney Milan and Tessa DareMillenium Girl by Coerte Felske (I cannot vouch for how well or not this has aged, but it is a sex and shopping novel)The Road to Vindaloo by David Burnett and Helen SaberiThe Last Mughal by William Dalrymple, also this essay about the East India Company as the original corporate raiders  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/04/east-india-company-original-corporate-raiders 

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray Part 2

For April and May, we are reading William Makepeace Thackeray's doorstop of a serial novel, Vanity Fair. Part 1 follows Becky Sharp and her frenemies from the beginning of the novel to their time in Brussels (after that pesky Corsican dug his way out of jail, we're assuming with an early prototype of the Spork). We discuss Thackeray's literary influences, the influence of the Regency period on romance novels today, and the historical impact of the Napoleonic era through to World War One. We also, importantly, dig into Thackeray's racist opinions and how they unfortunately come through in this novel and his other work. There were some technical difficulties while recording, so we thank you for your patience, and we thank co-host Manik Hinchey for her deep dive into the Napoleonic Era. Fascinating stuff! Recommendations to come next month, but the BBC miniseries and the 2000s Reese Witherspoon adaptation are both good.

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray Part 1

Beware the Ides of March! In this extra-adult episode we discuss 6 of the 12 Caesars, Roman superstitions and modern, HBO's Rome, and was Suetonius a scandal monger? (Yes.)Recommendations:The History of Rome podcast by Mike DuncanBBC History Extra podcast, had an excellent recent episode about Agrppina the YoungerEmma Southon book on Agrippina (Most biographies on Roman women are written by men, so this is neat) Hardcore History podcast one off episode on Caesar’s war in Gaul titled “Celtic Holocaust” Fiction: Augustus, by John Williams; Non-fiction: The Death of Caesar, by Barry Strauss (he has a very interesting theory on Caesar’s death)Mysteries writers Steven Saylor and Lindsey Davis

The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius

A podcast about literature and history. Every week Linnea Hartsuyker, Jessica Hatch, Manik Hinchey, and Reidan Fredstrom read a piece of literature and discuss its literary merits and historical context.

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That Book was BONKERS

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