Between The Covers

Muriel Spark’s iconoclastic education novel is Jay’s pick this week for his list of the 100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language. Set in 1930s Edinburgh, the novel focuses on six girls who are assigned to Miss Brodie, and her radical teaching style makes a mark on them at 10 years old and well beyond. Chaos Reader shares her final update on the Ian McEwan novel she’s been reading.

This week Jay’s entry on the list of the 100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language is Ken Kesey’s seminal novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which grapples with the power of systems against the individual human mind and various responses to the forces of the powers that be. Chaos Reader doesn’t achieve her goal, and checks in on Trollope.

But not this week! Jay names The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor to his list of the 100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language, and—spoiler alert!—he LOVES talking about them. Stacey won’t let him spoil them all for you, though, dear listener. Chaos Reader makes a promise.

It’s fitting for Jay to follow up last week’s pick of A Passage to India with Paul Scott’s novel The Jewel in the Crown, as this first novel of Scott’s Raj Quartet has definite references to Forster’s earlier work as Scott chronicles the friction among people of differing races and classes in mid-century India. Chaos Reader updates her progress reading Ian McEwan’s latest novel.

E.M. Forster’s 1924 novel A Passage to India is Jay’s pick this week for his list of the 100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language. The nuance and opacity of this unflinching look at interpersonal relationships when empires are involved feels particularly relevant today. Chaos Reader shares a TV show she’s reading… in French.

Jay kicks off Season 3 of Between the Sheets with William Golding’s 1954 novel about boys stranded on a remote island, and their collective and individual responses to their situation. The novel’s themes are timeless. Chaos Reader checks in with Ian McEwan’s newest novel.

In the final episode of Season 2, Jay names Mary Shelley’s 19th century gothic-horror novel FRANKENSTEIN to his list of the 100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language, and Chaos Reader checks in AGAIN with Gerald Ford’s biography, in which the author has entered the chat.

Saul Bellow’s comic, yet philosophical novel Henderson the Rain King is Jay’s most lovable novel this week for his list of the 100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language. Henderson’s mid-life crisis and the resulting international journey leads to a greater exploration of his own inner self. Chaos Reader checks in on her progress reading a biography of Gerald Ford (still).

Jay’s lovable novel this episode is AMERICAN PASTORAL by Philip Roth, in which the hero, Seymour “Swede” Levov, struggles to understand his life in late 20th  century America, and how the 1960s still reach into his family to trouble and unsettle him and those he loves. Chaos Reader introduces a new book she’s just picked up, one of Trollope’s Victorian-era Palliser novels, to fulfill her goal of having a long-book reading year.

NOTE: Jay erred when he called Swede’s wife, “Donna.” Her name in the novel is “Dawn.”

Jay makes his case that The Crying of Lot 49 is the most lovable of Thomas Pynchon’s novels as he dives into the plot of the 1966 conspiracy-theory, suspenseful novel. (It’s also Pynchon’s shortest novel.) Chaos Reader checks in on the progress she’s making in Kawabata’s The Sound of the Mountain.