By The Book

International Men’s Day falls each year on Nov 19, and to mark the occasion, we look at how men and masculinity are portrayed in literature - and how these ideas are evolving. Joining us for the conversation is reader and occasional book reviewer Vijay Dorai, and we talk our way through books by Irving Wallace, Chuck Palahniuk, Michael Chabon, and many more.

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In this episode of our monthly Book Club, we're resuming our sojourn through the world of Morpheus and the Endless, as imagined and told by Neil Gaiman and a host of artists. These two volumes, Fables and Reflections, and Brief Lives, each expand on the mythology, while telling stories both small and short, and wide-ranging and devastating. In Footnotes, we talk about some other graphic novel recommendations.

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In this decidedly different year of 2020, we’ve had to reconfigure and reimagine how to do many of the things we’re used to - and the George Town Literary Festival (GTLF) is no exception. With physical proximity and travel being such a challenge, the festival has gone virtual this year with a series of podcasts and online events - and for a topsy-turvy year where most of life seems to revolve around screens, the festival is aptly themed “Through the Looking Glass”. We speak with GTLF co-directors Pauline Fan and Sharaad Kuttan, about the process of presenting a vastly different version of the festival this year. And to wrap things up, in Footnotes, we look at how the Singapore Writers Festival 2020 too, has gone digital.

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The man that brought us Jurassic Park, Sphere and Andromeda Strain, Michael Crichton was many things. The father of the techno-thriller, he was also a deeply educated man who chose not to pursue medicine or anthropology, in lieu of becoming a writer. In this episode of Bibliography, we talk about the stories, the style, and the screenplays that resulted from Crichton's work.

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Last year’s Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo’s “Girl, Woman, Other” intertwines the stories of 12 characters in the UK over the course of several decades - and has been making waves specifically for shedding light on the lives of people rarely heard from in literature, specifically people of colour. Writer and fellow reader Sumitra Selvaraj joins us to dissect the book and discuss why it’s such a powerful snapshot of contemporary life, people of colour, and their histories. We wrap things up in Footnotes with a discussion on novels that experiment with form, inspired by Evaristo’s non-traditional style in “Girl, Woman, Other”.

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Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all? The story of Snow White is so familiar to many of us, and part of our earliest experiences with fairytales, and what we know of it is shaped in no small part by Disney. But around the world, this story of a girl, her jealous stepmother, and a prince who saves the day (sometimes), takes various forms. Professor Maria Tatar's The Fairest of Them All: Snow White and 21 Tales of Mothers and Daughters, collects these stories - so we wanted to get her take on the role of fairytales and Snow White in understanding our society, femininity and why this story has endured. And then in Footnotes, we speak about our favourite books that feature girls, in light of the International Day of the Girl Child.

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Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all? The story of Snow White is so familiar to many of us, and part of our earliest experiences with fairytales, and what we know of it is shaped in no small part by Disney. But around the world, this story of a girl, her jealous stepmother, and a prince who saves the day (sometimes), takes various forms. Professor Maria Tatar's The Fairest of Them All: Snow White and 21 Tales of Mothers and Daughters, collects these stories - so we wanted to get her take on the role of fairytales and Snow White in understanding our society, femininity and why this story has endured. And then in Footnotes, we speak about our favourite books that feature girls, in light of the International Day of the Girl Child.

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With World Animal Day falling on the 4th of October, we pay tribute to the many books and stories that feature animals, and talk about the way these books emphasise our complex relationships with them. Joining us is Macaranga editor Wong Siew Lyn, and the books we discuss include the Panchatantra, folk tales from East Malaysia, Charlotte’s Web, Moby Dick, White Fang, and Black Beauty. In Footnotes, we discuss the recently announced change of date for this year’s Booker Prize, and what it says about the dynamics of the English-language publishing industry today.

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In this month's episode of Bibliography, we look at the life and works of George Orwell, the man whose works continue to inform political thinking today, and who introduced terms such as Big Brother and doublethink into culture. We discuss his non-fiction work, the novels that have defined his legacy, and the lengths he went to in order to write a truthful account of experiencing life as a tramp. And then in Footnotes, we look at adaptations of his work and the difficulty of adapting 1984 in an Orwellian world.

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In this month's episode of Bibliography, we look at the life and works of George Orwell, the man whose works continue to inform political thinking today, and who introduced terms such as Big Brother and doublethink into culture. We discuss his non-fiction work, the novels that have defined his legacy, and the lengths he went to in order to write a truthful account of experiencing life as a tramp. And then in Footnotes, we look at adaptations of his work and the difficulty of adapting 1984 in an Orwellian world.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.