Plain Reading

Molecular and cellular biologist Roya Huang joins us to talk about studying another language by discussing its poetry, reading in different disciplines, the benefits of small-group study, and more!

Intro and outro music: "Your Love Hip Hop" courtesy Music_Unlimited on Pixabay

Episode artwork: A leaf from a Farsi manuscript of poetry (cropped). Public domain image courtesy San Diego Museum of Art and Wikimedia Commons.

Want to learn more about the books—and films!—we talked about on this episode? Check out the list below. You can also find us on LibraryThing, Goodreads, and Mastodon—and show your support at Liberapay!

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah Friday Black

Anna Akhmatova

Refaat Alareer

Nick Bantock Griffin and Sabine

Italo Calvino Why Read the Classics?

Aimé Césaire

Suzanne Césaire

Jacques Derrida The Gift of Death

Jacques Derrida Speech and Phenomena: And Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs

Junot Díaz The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

William Empson Seven Types of Ambiguity

Forough Farroukhzad "The Wind-up Doll" (and others!)

Homer The Iliad

Homer The Odyssey

James Joyce Ulysses

Abbas Kiarostami

Stieg Larsson The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (transl. Reg Keeland)

Else Lasker-Schüler

Jasbir K. Puar The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability

Alexander Pushkin Eugene Onegin (transl. Vladimir Nabokov)

George Saunders

Elaine Scarry The Body in Pain

Peter-Klaus Schuster Franz Marc: Postcards to Prince Jussuf

Wallace Stevens

Helen Vendler Wallace Stevens: Words Chosen Out of Desire

Helen Vendler On Extended Wings: Wallace Stevens' Longer Poems

Hollis Phelps joins us to talk about the importance of exploration, pleasure, and taking a break—and tells us about psilocybin!

Episode artwork: Pestonji Bomanjee, At Rest (cropped). Public domain image courtesy National Gallery of Modern Art (India) and Wikimedia Commons.

Intro and outro music: "Your Love Hip Hop" courtesy Music_Unlimited on Pixabay

Want to learn more about the books—and shows!—we talked about on this episode? Check out the list below. You can also find us on LibraryThing, Goodreads, and Mastodon—and show your support at Liberapay!

Nicolas/Maria Abraham/Torok The Wolf Man's Magic Word

Augustine of Hippo

Karl Barth

Emily Chase The Girls of Canby Hall

James Davies Cracked: Why Psychiatry Is Doing More Harm than Good

James Davies Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis

Osamu Dazai No Longer Human

Gilles Deleuze

Jacques Derrida

Fyodor Dostoevsky The Brothers Karamazov

Micha Frazer-Carroll Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health

Jean Genet

Greta Gerwig / Noah Baumbach Barbie

Vince Gilligan Breaking Bad

Soren Kierkegaard Fear and Trembling

Stephen King

Jack Kirby/Stan Lee/Chris Claremont X-Men

Kevin Lambert Querelle of Roberval

Emily Martin Bipolar Expeditions: Mania and Depression in American Culture

James Michener Poland

Hiroko Oyamada The Hole

Hiroko Oyamada The Factory

Walter N. Pahnke The Good Friday Experiment

Francine Pascal Sweet Valley High

Robert Penn Warren

Larry Rubin All My Mirrors Lie

Andrew Scull Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry's Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness

W. G. Sebald

William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet

Edward Shorter How Everyone Became Depressed

Upton Sinclair

Juan Gabriel Vásquez The Shape of the Ruins

Robert Whitaker Anatomy of an Epidemic

Owen Whooley On the Heels of Ignorance: Psychiatry and the Politics of Not Knowing

Katy and Matt are joined by Kay White and Jovita Scrogin, who fill us in on reading while parenting, parenting while reading, the joys of audiobooks and fantasy, and so much more!

Episode image: Amy Carter and Jimmy Carter participate in a speed reading course at the White House, 1977 (cropped). Public domain image courtesy National Archives and Records Administration and Wikimedia Commons.

Intro and outro music: "Your Love Hip Hop" courtesy Music_Unlimited on Pixabay

Want to learn more about the books, authors, shows, and films we talked about on this episode? Check out the list below. You can also find us on LibraryThing, Goodreads, and Mastodon—and show your support at Liberapay!

Hanif Abdurraqib

Sherman Alexie

Isabel Allende

V. C. Andrews Flowers in the Attic

Fredrik Backman

James Baldwin Giovanni's Room

Judy Blume Blubber

Judy Blume Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great

Judy Blume Superfudge

Angeline Boulley Firekeeper's Daughter

Angeline Boulley Warrior Girl Unearthed

Carl B. Boyer A History of Mathematics

Betsy Byars The Pinballs

Emily Chase The Girls of Canby Hall

David Crane & Marta Kauffman Friends

Franklin W. Dixon The Hardy Boys series

Fyodor Dostoevsky The Brothers Karamazov

Driven Lifestyle duPont REGISTRY

Louise Erdrich

Walter Farley The Black Stallion

William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury

Louise Fitzhugh Harriet the Spy

David Foster Wallace Infinite Jest

Bette Greene Summer of My German Soldier

Marguerite Henry Brighty of the Grand Canyon

Robin Hobb Assassin's Apprentice

Heinrich Hoffmann Struwwelpeter: Merry Stories and Funny Pictures (English translation)

James Howe Bunnicula

John Irving

James Joyce Ulysses

Tony Judt Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century

Carolyn Keene Nancy Drew series

Stephen King The Dark Tower series

Stephen King The Eyes of the Dragon

Stephen King Holly

Stephen King Misery

Barbara Kingsolver Demon Copperhead

Jon Krakauer

Harper Lee Go Set a Watchman

C. S. Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia

Laurie Lico Albanese Hester

Sarah J. Maas A Court of Thorns and Roses series

Christopher Maclehose, ed. Leopard II: Turning the Page

Gemma Marino Das wasserscheue Krokodil

George R. R. Martin A Game of Thrones

Ramón Menéndez & Tom Musca Stand and Deliver

Daniel Nayeri Everything Sad Is Untrue (A True Story)

Celeste Ng Little Fires Everywhere

Sigrid Nunez A Feather on the Breath of God

Sigrid Nunez The Friend

Christopher Paolini The Inheritance Cycle

Francine Pascal Sweet Valley High

Solveig Paulson Russell Jan und sein Zahn

Dav Pilkey Dogman series

The Princeton Review Princeton Grammar Smart

Annie Proulx Fen, Bog and Swamp

Rick Riordan Percy Jackson and the Olympians series

J. K. Rowling Harry Potter series

J. D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye

Philippe Sands The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice, and Courage

Cilly Schmitt Teichmann Die Struwelliese

Maurice Sendak Where the Wild Things Are

A. F. Steadman Skandar and the Unicorn Thief series

Bernie Taupin Scattershot: Life, Music, Elton and Me

J. R. R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings series

Sybille von Flüe Pingu e un bisogno urgente

Margery Williams The Velvetine Rabbit

Margaret Wise-Brown & Clement Hurd Goodnight Moon

Housing and tenants rights advocate Jay Forth comes on to talk about why reading both critical theory and poetry are so helpful in thinking about and interacting with the world around you.

Intro and outro music: "Your Love Hip Hop" courtesy Music_Unlimited on Pixabay

Episode artwork: Frantz Fanon at a press conference during a writers' conference in Tunis, 1959 (cropped). Public domain image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Want to learn more about the books we talked about on this episode? Check out the list below. You can also find us on LibraryThing, Goodreads, and Mastodon—and show your support at Liberapay!

Grace Lee Boggs

Hélène Cixous

Greg Daniels, Ricky Gervais, & Stephen Merchant The Office

Jacques Derrida

Rikki Ducornet The Fountains of Neptune

Frantz Fanon

Julian Forth "Jean-Luc Nancy"

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Rumepstiltskin

Richard Hofstadter Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

Max Horkheimer & Theodor Adorno Dialectic of Enlightenment

Henri Lefebvre Hegel, Marx, Nietszsche: or the Realm of Shadows

Herman Melville Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street

Jean-Luc Nancy Sexistence

Patrick Radden Keefe Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

Slavoj Žižek On Belief

We explore with writer and journalist Juan Carlos Hernández the nature of memoir, the connections made over cooking, and the importance of staying grounded.

Episode artwork: Footballer André Roosenburg in Florence, 1953. Image with no known copyright restrictions courtesy Nationaal Archief and Wikimedia Commons.

Intro and outro music: "Your Love Hip Hop" courtesy Music_Unlimited on Pixabay

Want to learn more about the books—and films!—we talked about on this episode? Check out the list below. You can also find us on LibraryThing, Goodreads, and Mastodon—and show your support at Liberapay!

Anthony Bourdain Kitchen Confidential

Anna Burns Milkman

Mary Karr The Liars' Club

Mary Karr The Art of Memoir

Rachel Cusk The Outline Trilogy

Lisa Dordal Next Time You Come Home

Xuan Carlos Hernández Lost and Found on the Camino de Santiago

Norton Juster The Phantom Tollbooth

Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Karl Ove Knausgaard My Struggle series

Mario Levrero The Luminous Novel

Valeria Luiselli Lost Children Archive

Alejandra Márquez Abella A Million Miles Away

Rigoberta Menchú I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala

Tim O'Brien The Things They Carried

Tim O'Brien In the Lake of the Woods

Jordan B. Peterson Twelve Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

Thomas Piketty Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Sally Rooney Beautiful World, Where Are You

Maurice Sendak Where the Wild Things Are

Michelle Zahner Crying in H Mart: A Memoir

Scholar and philosopher Wesley Barker talks about living your life when you deal every day with complex thought—as well as the importance of getting out of your head and embracing being a beginner.

Episode artwork: Władysław Czachórski, Zadumana (Deep in Thought), 1883. US public domain image courtesy The National Museum in Warsaw and Wikimedia Commons.

Intro and outro music: "Your Love Hip Hop" courtesy Music_Unlimited on Pixabay

Want to learn more about the books—and shows!—we talked about on this episode? Check out the list below. You can also find us on LibraryThing, Goodreads, and Mastodon—and show your support at Liberapay!

Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy Augustine of Hippo Robert B. Brandom A Spirit of Trust: A Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology Jasmine Cobb New Growth: The Art and Texture of Black Hair Simon Critchley Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance

Larry David Curb Your Enthusiasm

Michel Foucault The History of Sexuality Michel Foucault Confessions of the Flesh

Michel Foucault "About the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of the Self" in Religion and Culture (ed. Jeremy R. Carrette)

Witold Gombrowicz A Kind of Testament

Witold Gombrowicz Ferdydurke G. W. F. Hegel The Phenomenology of Spirit Luce Irigaray Mark. D. Jordan

Norton Juster The Phantom Tollbooth Jean-François Lyotard The Confession of Augustine

Herman Melville Moby Dick Tom Nichols The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters Boris Pasternak Doctor Zhivago Philip Roth The Human Stain Antonio Zadra and Robert Stickgold When Brains Dream: Understanding the Science and Mystery of Our Dreaming Minds

Pastor and author Ben Dueholm drops by to talk about the value of bleak reading, the intrigue of magic, and even Lou Reed!

Episode artwork: Magician Paul LePaul, 1937. Public domain image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Intro and outro music: "Your Love Hip Hop" courtesy Music_Unlimited on Pixabay

Want to learn more about the books, authors—and films!—we talked about on this episode? Check out the list below. You can also find us on LibraryThing, Goodreads, and Mastodon—and show your support at Liberapay!

Adonis Concerto al-Quds

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Letters and Papers from Prison

Louis Paul Boon My Little War

Joe Brainard The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard

John Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress

Tara Isabella Burton Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from da Vinci to the Kardashians

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

David Chase The Sopranos

Hélène Cixous Double Oblivion of the Ourang-Outang

Robertson Davies The Cornish Trilogy

Robertson Davies The Deptford Trilogy

Fredrik deBoer How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement

Joan Didion "Self-Respect: Its Source, Its Power"

Louise Fitzhugh Harriet the Spy

David Foster Wallace Infinite Jest

Michel Foucault The Archaeology of Knowledge

Thomas Hardy Tess of the D'urbervilles

Will Hermes Lou Reed: The King of New York

Andrew Hineraker The Magic Play

Norton Juster The Phantom Tollbooth

John LeCarré A Perfect Spy

John LeCarré A Private Spy

John LeCarré Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Cormac McCarthy All the Pretty Horses

Cormac McCarthy Blood Meridian

Cormac McCarthy The Border Trilogy

Cormac McCarthy Cities of the Plain

Cormac McCarthy The Crossing

Cormac McCarthy No Country for Old Men

Cormac McCarthy The Passenger

Cormac McCarthy The Road

Cormac McCarthy Stella Maris

Herman Melville Moby Dick

Toni Morrison Sula

Toni Morrison Song of Solomon

Vladimir Nabokov Pale Fire

George Orwell " "Politics and the English Language"

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Marilynne Robinson Reading Genesis

Salman Rushdie Haroun and the Sea of Stories

Salman Rushdie Midnight's Children

Salman Rushdie The Satanic Verses

David Simon The Wire

Jonathan D. Spence The Death of Woman Wang

Sam Tanenhouse Whitaker Chambers: A Biography

Christian Wiman He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art

Christian Wiman My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer

Christian Wiman "The Preacher Addresses the Seminarians"

Evolutionary biologist Zachary Blount tells us why you have to read widely to be a good scientist, as well as what makes for good horror and great bookstores.

Intro and outro music: "Your Love Hip Hop" courtesy Music_Unlimited on Pixabay

Episode artwork: Kathleen Mary Drew-Baker, image with no known copyright restrictions courtesy Smithsonian Institution and Wikimedia Commons

Want to learn more about the books, authors—and films!—we talked about on this episode? Check out the list below. You can also find us on LibraryThing, Goodreads, and Mastodon!

Mary Beard Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient Roman World

Walter Benjamin "Unpacking My Library"

Barbara Butcher What the Dead Know: Learning about Life as a New York City Death Investigator

Hélène Cixous Double Oblivion of the Ourang-Outang

Johnny Compton The Spite House

Mark Z. Danielewski House of Leaves

Adrian Goldworthy Rome and Persia: The Seven Hundred Year Rivalry

Kathleen Hale Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls

Grady Hendrix Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

Dave Hickey Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy

Tom Holland Pax: War and Peace in Rome's Golden Age

Nick Hornby High Fidelity

Brad J. Kallenberg By Design: Ethics, Theology, and the Practice of Engineering

Stephen King The Dark Tower

Stephen King Holly

Victor Klemperer The Language of the Third Reich

James Merrill From the First Nine. Poems 1946–1976

David Robert Mitchell It Follows

David Morrell Thomas DeQuincy Series

Jordan Peele Get Out

Thomas Pynchon The Crying of Lot 49

Thomas Pynchon Mason & Dixon

Paul Tremblay The Beast You Are

Harry Turtledove

Gore Vidal Kalki

Anna Wiener Uncanny Valley: A Memoir

Journalist, writer, and podcaster Wes Ferguson talks to us about what makes a good story—and how in telling others' stories, you often have to reflect on your own.

Episode artwork: CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED imagae courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Intro and outro music: "Your Love Hip Hop" courtesy Music_Unlimited on Pixabay

Want to learn more about the books we talked about on this episode? Check out the list below. You can also find us on LibraryThing, Goodreads, and Mastodon!

Hilton Als My Pinup

Hilton Als White Girls

Louis Paul Boon My Little War

Joel Ebert and Erik Schelzig Welcome to Capitol Hill: Fifty Years of Scandal in Tennessee Politics

John R . Erickson Hank the Cowdog

Wes Ferguson The Blanco River

Wes Ferguson Devil Town

Wes Ferguson Running the River

Wes Ferguson Standoff

Wes Ferguson "When Angels in America Came to East Texas"

William T. Harper Eleven Days in Hell: The 1974 Carrasco Prison Siege at Hunstville, Texas

Elmer Kelton The Time It Never Rained

Tony Kushner Angels in America

Geert Mak In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century

James McBride The Good Lord Bird

Annie van den Oever Life Itself: Louis Paul Boon as Innovator of the Novel

How does poetry help both writers and readers heal, and how does it build community? Ohio's poet laureate, Kari Gunter-Seymour, stops by with fellow Women of Appalachia Project member Kristi Stephens Walker to talk about how essential poetry is.

Find Kari at https://www.karigunterseymourpoet.com/.

And the Women of Appalachia at https://www.womenofappalachia.com/about.

Kristi shared with us a list of Barbara Kingsolver's recommendations for Appalachia-related reading—which has generated a great deal of feeling! Find it at the New York Times.

Episode image: Henri-Jean Guilliame Martin, "Poetesses on a Lake Shore" (cropped). Public domain image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Intro and outro music: "Your Love Hip Hop" courtesy Music_Unlimited on Pixabay

Want to find out more about the books we talked about on the show? Here's a list! You can also find us on LibraryThing, Goodreads, and Mastodon!

Roy Bentley My Mother's Red Ford: New & Selected Poems 1986–2020

Svetlana Boym Death in Quotation Marks: Cultural Myths of the Modern Poet

Susanna Connelly Holstein, Cheryl Denise, Kirk Judd, and Sherrell Runnion Wigal Porch Poems

Boubacar Boris Diop Murambi, The Book of Bones

Ellis Elliott Break in the Field

Barbara Kingsolver Demon Copperhead

Kinsgsolver reading list (Kristi!)

Geert Mak In Europe: Travels Throuogh the Twentieth Century

Linda Parsons Valediction: Poems and Prose

Catherine Pritchard Childress Outside the Frame

Jamie Quatro Fire Sermon

Jamie Quatro I Want to Show You More

Margaret Renkl Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss

Shawna Kay Rodenberg Kin: A Memoir

Paul Seabright The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life

Ng'ang'a Wahu-Muchiri Writing on the Soil: Land and Landscape in Literature from Easter and Southern Africa