Tea or Books?

#136: Does Reading Make Us Better People? and And Then There Were None vs The Invisible Host


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Agatha Christie, Gwen Bristow, Bruce Manning and reading morality – welcome to episode 136 of Tea or Books?!

https://www.stuckinabook.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/tea-or-books-136.mp3

In the first half of this episode, we discuss whether or not we take moral instruction from the books we read – does reading make us better people? In the second half, we compare two very similarly plotted books – And Then There Are None by Agatha Christie and The Invisible Host by Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning. Many thanks to Susan for suggesting this (and sorry for forgetting your name when we recorded!)

You can get in touch with suggestions, comments, questions etc (please do!) at teaorbooks[at]gmail.com – we’d love to hear from you, even if I’m quite bad at replying quickly. Find us at Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. If you’re able to, we’d really appreciate any reviews and ratings you can leave us. And you can support the podcast at Patreon.

FYI Hargreaves gets very noisy in this episode!

The books and authors we mention in this episode are:

Stasiland by Anna Funder

Mrs Dalloway: A Biography of the Novel by Mark Hussey
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
On Reading Well by Karen Swallow Prior
Book Girl by Sarah Clarkson
Emma by Jane Austen
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Jack by Marilynne Robinson
The Bird in the Tree by Elizabeth Goudge
The Warden by Anthony Trollope
How To Know A Person by David Brooks
Ghosted by Nancy French
Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
Walkable City by Jeff Speck
Pioneer Girl by Laura Ingalls Wilder and Pamela Smith
Brink of Being by Julia Bueno
Shaun Bythell
A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie
A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence
Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico
The Diviners by Margaret Laurence
Catherine Carter by Pamela Hansford Johnson

...more
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