Marlon and Jake explore the books that have helped define who they are, choosing four that capture different parts of their personalities and lives. They unpack how reading can shape our understanding of identity, community, and growing up—and change the way we see ourselves and each other. Tune in as they reflect on books they encountered at exactly the right (or wrong) time and the stories that made the world around them feel a little bigger.

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Marlon and Jake dive into one of literature's trickiest subjects: sex. Why do some writers capture intimacy with honesty while others veer into the unintentionally hilarious? Along the way, they discuss why writing about sex is really writing about people, the differences between American and French attitudes toward sexuality in fiction, ghost stories as a vehicle for taboo desires, and the delicate balance between telling the truth and keeping readers engaged. Tune in for a conversation about why the best writing on sex is rarely just about sex.

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Marlon and Jake tackle the writers they have no interest in revisiting, asking when it's worth giving a beloved (or notorious) author another chance and when it's perfectly fine to walk away for good. Tune in as they debate literary canon, books that simply aren't for them, the difference between a difficult author and a difficult book, and why sometimes the most honest review is, "Nobody needs to go back to that"

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Marlon and Jake explore why we're so eager to revisit the worlds of our favorite stories, asking whether great characters are better left where their authors left them—or if there's value in imagining what came before or after. Tune in as they unpack the appeal of sequels, the pitfalls of origin stories, and why some fictional worlds are more powerful when they remain a mystery.

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Marlon and Jake dive into the world of dystopian fiction, unpacking what truly makes a dystopia—and whether some of the genre’s biggest ideas hold up under closer scrutiny. Along the way, they discuss why some dystopias feel more believable than others, how our understanding of these stories changes over time, and the real-world parallels that make them resonate long after the final page. Tune in as they explore how history, power, and human nature shape the worlds we imagine.

Subscribe to our River-herd digital newsletter and our print newspaper, The Eddy, for sneak peeks of our upcoming books, free giveaways, and exclusive content: https://sites.prh.com/the-eddy-newspaper. 

Welcome back for a new season! Marlon and Jake catch up on what they’ve been reading, writing, and working on, including Marlon’s new novel, and explore the books they return to when it’s time to create. They discuss the stories that inspire rather than intimidate, the surprising value of giving up on a book, and the writers they revisit to clear the cobwebs from their minds. Tune in to hear how reading shapes their creative process, from finding the right voice to discovering what makes great dialogue.

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In the final episode of the season, Marlon and Jake weigh in on their favorite vacation reads, including the ones they started but never finished. Tune in to find out which classic novels Jake took to the beach and which ones Marlon says should have been thrown in the ocean. 

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• The Goodbye Look by Ross McDonald
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
• Chances by Jackie Collins
• The Year of the French by Thomas Flanagan
• All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
• The Golden Bowl by Henry James
• The Ambassadors by Henry James
• Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
• Pronto by Elmore Leonard
• Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
• Smallbone Deceased by Michael Gilbert
• The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot by Robert Arthur, Jr.
• Persuasion by Jane Austen

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times—it was school. In this episode, Marlon and Jake discuss books where school is the setting or going to school is central to the plot. They debate which authors got school right and which got school wrong, what makes an inspiring teacher, and what the closed universe of a schoolyard or college campus can feel like. Tune in to hear Marlon and Jake reminisce over their own college experiences and what they were like as students.

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• Tom Brown’s School Days by Thomas Hughes
• The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling by Henry Fielding
• Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
• Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
• Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
• Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
• The Crime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
• A Separate Peace by John Knowles
• Look back in Anger by John Osborne
• Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
• Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
• Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
• Absalom, Absalom! By William Faulkner
• Love Story by Erich Segal
• The Miracle Worker by William Gibson
• Stoner by John Williams
• Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
• The Corn is Green by Emlyn Williams

In this episode, Marlon and Jake talk about cities in books. Books set in memorable cities, books set in cities you're glad you've never been to and books where the city itself is nearly a character. They talk about the specificity of London of the 19th century British novel, the New York novel, entirely fictional cities in Sci-Fi and Fantasy, and don’t miss Marlon’s personal experience with Bloomsday in Dublin!

Subscribe to our River-herd newsletter for sneak peeks of our upcoming books, free giveaways, and exclusive content. https://sites.prh.com/riverhead-reader-newsletterUlysses by James Joyce 

• Ulysses by James Joyce
• Portrait of the Artist by James Joyce
• Dubliners by James Joyce
• The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe 
• The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
• The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton 
• The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
• Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
• Palace of Desire by Naguib Mahfouz
• Sugar Street by Naguib Mahfouz
• Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino 
• Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Doblin
• In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust 
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
• Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice 
• Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
• The Young Unicorns by Madeleine L’Engle

In this episode, Marlon and Jake talk about the bad characters we’re not meant to like but do and the good characters we’re meant to like but annoy us. From Dracula to Daisy Buchanan to Oliver Twist and Bambi, the good-to-evil spectrum is vast and no character is safe from commentary. Tune in to find out which classic villain the duo unanimously hate, and which villain gives Marlon the chills and scares Jake to this day. 

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• The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
• A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
• The Flashman series by George MacDonald Fraser
• Tom Brown’s School Days by Thomas Hughes
• King Solomon’s Mines by Sir H. Rider Haggard
• Raiders of the Lost Arc by Campbell Black
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelly
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• The Awakening by Kate Chopin
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Good Morning Midnight by Jean Rhys
• Bambi by Felix Salten
• Watership Down by Richard Adams
• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• Railway Children by E. Nesbit
• Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
• The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
• Emma by Jane Austen
• Mansfield Park by Jane Austen