outside of a dog

Moving on to Sonnet 53, we see how Shakespeare chafes against the rigid formality of classical ideals.

One of the saddest sonnets, 89 showcases Shakespeare's ability to find beauty in breakups.

Discussing Sonnet 23, we find out that even Shakespeare sometimes didn't find the right words.

In our next mini episode, we see why Sonnet 20 is "so gay" and "so dirty".

To mark the 400th year of his passing, we discuss our 14 favourite Shakespeare Sonnets, starting with the classic: Sonnet 18 "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day".

The next mini episodes you can find in our RSS feed and under the following links:

Sonnet 20
Sonnet 23
Sonnet 53
Sonnet 64
Sonnet 65
Sonnet 78
Sonnet 89
Sonnet 116
Sonnet 56
Sonnet 129
Sonnet 130
Sonnet 144

Discussing a more recent must-read book, we enter Emma Donoghue's Room, where we talk about its surprising intellectualism, its heartbreaking family relations and why Jonas loves God so much.

Recommendations:

Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees

Emma Donoghue, The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits

The Fall (dir. Tarsim Singh)

It gets dark, mysterious and cynical as we investigate Raymond Chandler's legendary debut novel, discuss whether Philip Marlowe is like Batman and solve the case of the blatant misogyny.

Recommendations:

Brick (dir. Rian Johnson)

Robert Coover, Noir

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sherlock Holmes stories

We discuss what is often described as the First Novel in English and try to unravel what this moniker means culturally, socially, spritually and boredom-ly.

Recommendations:

Edgar Allan Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (again)

Jules Verne, Around the World in 80 Days

William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Robinson Crusoe (dir. George Miller; though not really)

Castaway (dir. Robert Zemeckis)

One year of Outside of a Dog! This demands a celebration - and we celebrate by looking back, self-referentially discussing our past episodes, add what we neglected to talk about so far and generally pat our backs while smoking figurative cigars.

We hitch a ride to Douglas Adams' sci-fi classic, discussing its absurdity, its humour, and unavoidably the life, the universe and everything.

Recommendations:

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow

David Wong, John Dies at the End