Left Shelf

It does not matter that you do not understand the reason. You are the Beloved Child of the House. Be comforted.

Strange and comforting, eerie and delightful - in her latest fantasy novel Susanna Clarke makes it possible to hold both contradictory feelings about the house at the same time. In this week’s episode, we go a little bit more philosophical and talk about the ontology of the house and the dimensions of its existence. 

Read Piranesi (free): here

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With very delicate brushstrokes, E. Lily Yu creates a complicated world of map-making wasps and anarchist bees in a world filled with power struggles within societies and nature. In this episode, we sit down with the hosts of Works in Theory podcast to dissect the intricacies of the characters in this short story - the humans, wasps and bees - how they related to each other, and what we can learn from their successes and failures. 

Read The Cartographer Wasps and Anarchist Bees: here

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Hi all! We ran into some technical difficulties, so had to delay the publication of the next episode. But in the meantime, I hope you enjoy this extra content!

In June's special episode for Patrons, Ethan and Nino talk about what, if anything, we can get out of being active on social media. 

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Let’s admit it: we’ve all seen Lord of the Rings at least five times and held Game of Thrones watch parties. Why? Because fantasy is just that damned good of a genre, allowing for magic and the fantastical to ignite our imaginations and take us off into another world. In this week’s episode, while swooning over fantasy, we also discuss the political elements that make up traditional high fantasy stories, tear apart the tropes and talk about ways in which this genre could become even better. 

Read The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien: here
Read Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson: here
Read A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin: here

Find Man Carrying Thing:

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To cut straight to the chase: Kevin Nguyen’s book New Waves is good but it could’ve been so much butter. In his debut book, Kevin Nguyen tackles many issues - racism in the workplace, big tech, the grief from the loss of a friend, interracial dating and the difference between the real and virtual lives. While the book takes on a lot of heavy subjects, it seems to just throw them to the wall and never quite connect the dots. In this episode, the hosts talk about all the interesting parts to this novel - the friendship between Lucas and Margo, the tech world and the role of race while complaining (lovingly) about things they wished had been included. 

You can read New Waves here.

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If reading Dead Men’s Path by Chinua Achebe felt familiar to you, it’s because this three-page short story so accurately captures histories of colonialism. Even through its brevity, it attacks the notions of “out with the old, in with the new”, juxtaposing education and spirituality. In this Left Shelf episode, we discuss the history of Nigeria n conjunction with this short story as Chinua Achebe’s writing is rife with politics and his life was spent in pursuit of forming a more equitable Nigeria. The hosts talk about how the British instituted their infamous “indirect rule”, christianized the country while aiming to extinguish native spiritualities, and left in their wake fault lines still present to this day. 

You can read Dead Men’s Path (free) here.

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“If this world is going to be a better place for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, it will be women who make it so” - Isabelle Allende

This - our lives, the lives of our ancestors and the lives of our descendants - is the story. What happens now, what we do now, is history and makes history. In this Left Shelf episode, we discuss The House of Spirits by Isabelle Allende, which centers the lives of four generations of women and how the fabric of history stretches, changes and, sometimes, resiliently stays the same. The hosts, with their guest Tomás, talk about how this novel fits into the greater political events happening in Chile at the time, the role of magical realism, and, of course, gender and race. 

You can read The House of Spirits (free) here.

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If your boss asks you to do anything at work today, respond with “I would prefer not to” because what is work these days if not an act devoid of meaning yet ripe with repetition and mechanization. In this week’s episode, we’ll be talking about Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street, a tragic yet humorous short novella by Herman Melville. The piece deals with how work in the modern sense makes us desolate, both in terms of extinguishing our inner lives as well as our external relationships, leaving us lonely and trapped. Ah, Bartleby. Ah, Humanity. Is there hope for us yet?

You can read Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street (free) here.
You can listen to the short story (free) here.

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Does the title of this episode sound familiar? That’s because The Ones Who Stay and Fight by N.K. Jemisin is a story in response to the very first Left Shelf episode The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. LeGuin. Jemisin’s story begins in the same way as Le Guin’s, with descriptions of a Utopian city’s beauty and happy citizens. However, there’s a twist. In this episode, we discuss how Jemisin might have interpreted LeGuin’s story and what she is asking the reader when she says “stay and fight”.  

You can read the story The Ones Who Stay and Fight (free) here.
You can listen to the short story (free) here.

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Did you ever imagine yourself wearing a trenchcoat, walking through the silent streets of Berlin at night, a lonely man who has seen too much and who knows little of love? A man who is too skilled with a bottle of whiskey, too forlorn and just too darn familiar with the cold? Well, lucky, you no longer have to imagine because Le Carré’s most famous spy novel The Spy Who Came In From The Cold depicts all those elements among an intricate web of spies and lies. In Part 2 of this episode series, we’ll be diving into the piece and offering up some more complaints about why men can’t write convincing female characters. Sigh.

You can watch the movie The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (free) here.
You can listen to the book (free) here.

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