Dear Reader

By Michael Collins and Emily Gushue WhalenArts Books

Dear Reader episodes

September 04, 2020 11. W, or The Memory of Childhood / Trust Exercise.
Michael struggles with an unconventional mashup of holocaust memoir and
sports-based dystopia in Georges Perec’s W, or The Memory of
Childhood, while Emily is captivated by the sexual
politics of Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise, yet
frustrated by its open-ended narrative. They talk about trauma, memory, age
gaps in dating, and visualizing the things you read.
Show Notes.
Georges Perec: W, or The Memory of Childhood.
Susan Choi: Trust Exercise.
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54 min
November 28, 2019 10. The Innocents / French Exit.
Michael is captivated by the brutality and isolation of pre-modern
Newfoundland in Michael Crummey’s The
Innocents, while Emily delights in the “tragedy of
manners” and the woes of bored rich people fallen on hard times in Patrick
deWitt’s French Exit. They talk about puberty,
death, forgiveness, the neuroses of the wealthy, and how to be friends in the
21st century.
Show Notes.
Michael Crummey: The Innocents.
Patrick deWitt: French Exit.
Michael's bodybuilding
routine (his
show happened!).
Support Dear Reader on Patreon and chat with
us about books on our members-only Slack!
1 hr 4 min
October 17, 2019 9. My Sister, the Serial Killer / Middlemarch.
Michael posits that George Eliot’s Middlemarch
(“the most Victorian of Victorian novels”) is the anti-Atlas Shrugged, while
Emily considers just how much thicker blood is than water with Oyinkan
Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer.
They talk about sibling bonds, literary awards, adolescent reading habits, and
trying to be a good person.
Show Notes.
Oyinkan Braithwaite: My Sister, the Serial Killer.
George Eliot: Middlemarch.
The Spouter-Inn’s episode on Middlemarch
and bonus episode with Michael!
Brittany Runs a Marathon
[trailer].
Virginia Woolf: Orlando.
Megan Gail Coles: Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun
Club.
Michael discusses Megan Gail Coles’s novel in episode
7.
Michael Crummey: The Innocents.
Support Dear Reader on Patreon and chat
about books with us in a members-only Slack!
49 min
August 26, 2019 8. Carrying the Fire / City of Girls.
Michael joins his name-twin on the greatest adventure undertaken by humankind
and finds him companionable, warm, and wise in Carrying the
Fire, while Emily breaks down the walls of the
“chick lit” ghetto to revel in City of Girls, a
surprising story of feminine sexual liberation. They talk about utopian
projects, the curse of popularity, non-traditional chosen families, and the
value of blending the sciences and the humanities.
Show Notes.
Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins.
City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert.
Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner.
Dear Columbia, Michael Collins’s short
personal reflection on Columbia, the command module he piloted in orbit around
the moon.
Michael Collins narrates a Google
Doodle
for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar mission.
Support Dear Reader on Patreon.
46 min
July 13, 2019 7. Blindness / Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club.
Emily strongly recommends an encounter with the disorienting bleakness and
collapse of Nobel Laureate José Saramago’s
Blindness, while Michael strongly recommends an
encounter with the soul-wracking cruelty and violence of Megan Gail Coles’s
Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun
Club. They talk about a relentless duty of care
forced on women, social breakdowns, Portugal, misogyny, and vulnerability.
Show Notes.
Blindness by José Saramago.
Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club by
Megan Gail Coles.
The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang.
Michael’s essay At the Back of the
Closet.
Agnes Ayer’s ABCs of Amazing Women by Jenny Higgins.
Support Dear Reader on Patreon and chat
about books with us on a members-only Slack.
1 hr 2 min
May 31, 2019 6. Newfoundland Portfolio / Convenience Store Woman.
Michael thinks about history and community through reading Newfoundland
Portfolio, a collection of obituaries by J.M.
Sullivan, while Emily considers the abnormality of the hypernormal and
different ways of being happy in Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store
Woman. They talk about Newfoundland, independent
bookstores, summer reading, the service industry, and problematic attitudes
toward low-prestige jobs.
Show Notes.
Newfoundland Portfolio: A History in Portraits by
J.M. Sullivan.
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata.
Lanier Phillips, the
African-American sailor who was rescued from a shipwreck by Newfoundlanders in
the 1940s.
Our twitter account
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access bonus bits, a members-only Slack group, and more!
1 hr 2 min
April 30, 2019 5. An Artist of the Floating World / The House of the Spirits.
Michael picks at the banality of evil portrayed in Kazuo Ishiguro’s An
Artist of the Floating World, while Emily
desperately wants to finish Isabel Allende’s enchanting work of magical
realism, The House of the Spirits, but is
prevented from it by living on a windswept rock in the North Atlantic. They
talk about art that depicts difficult and unpleasant things, spoilers, moral
culpability, second-guessing your tastes, and history repeating itself.
Show Notes.
An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro.
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende.
1 hr 3 min
March 30, 2019 4. Kid Gloves / The Thin Place.
Emily thinks the world would be a better place if everyone read Lucy Knisley’s
graphic novel account of her difficult pregnancy, Kid
Gloves, while Michael rhapsodizes about
experiments in empathy and postmodern mysticism spurred on by Kathryn Davis’s
The Thin Place. They talk about myths and
misconceptions of pregnancy, pain, sex ed, medieval mysticism, and whether
reading teaches empathy.
Show Notes.
Kid Gloves by Lucy Knisley.
The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis.
The Dollop’s “Childbirth in
America” podcast (in part about
twilight sleep).
Lucy Knisley’s Instagram.
Judy Blume by Amanda Palmer.
56 min
February 26, 2019 3. literally show me a healthy person / The Wife.
Michael found the formal experiments and wild content of Darcie Wilder’s
literally show me a healthy person to be
compelling but not without knots, while Emily enjoys the nuance of Meg
Wolitzer’s novel The Wife. They talk about
delayed adolescence, the unacknowledged genius of the wives of ‘great’ men,
representation and appropriation, and the twitter aesthetic. Also, Dear Reader
observes Michael’s birthday!
Show Notes.
literally show me a healthy person by Darcie
Wilder.
The Wife by Meg Wolitzer.
Transcription by Kate Atkinson.
44 min
February 01, 2019 2. The Penelopiad / Circe / The Lonesome Bodybuilder.
Emily found Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad to
be a missed opportunity, especially when compared to Madeline Miller’s
Circe, while Michael was delighted by Yukiko
Motoya’s unsettling and strange short stories in The Lonesome
Bodybuilder. They talk about the characters on the
margins of great stories, what book to bring to the hospital, adaptating the
classics, and what to do with novellas. Emily’s new baby (hooray!) makes a
brief cameo.
Show Notes.
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood.
Circe by Madeline Miller.
The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya.
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E.
Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg.
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn.
Persuasion by Jane Austen.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.
Middlemarch by George Eliot.
43 min