Reading for our times

There’s humour to be found in so much literature. And then there’s humour that is literature. This episode, curated by Kaivalya Dasu, brings together a set of readings that will remind us that literature is not just for quietly sinking into with our minds, but also for diving into joyously so that we can bubble up with laughter, or float back up to the surface with a smile.

Books featured in this episode:

Cocktail Time by P G Wodehouse (read by Kaivalya Dasu)

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 ¾ by Sue Townsend (read by Maya Bhagat)

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (read by Aniruddha Dasu)

Brisingr by Christopher Paolini (read by Pakhee Jha)

The original piece featured in the episode was written and read by Fleurette Modica

In this episode, Suroor Alikhan, host of the blog Talking about Books, takes us on a global reading tour. The six excerpts featured in the episode are by writers  from different regions of the world, from Argentina to Angola, from Jamaica to Poland, opening the page to very different literary traditions.

The books featured in this episode are:

Drive your plow over the bones of the dead by Olga Tokarczuk (Poland)

Go went Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck (Germany)

Bestiarios by Julio Cortazar (Argentina)

The Lunatic by Anthony C Winkler (Jamaica)

The Book of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Agualusa (Angola)

The Book of Masks by Hwan Sun-won (South Korea)

If you’d like some reading recommendations, take a look at Suroor’s blog: https://talking-about-books.com

A group of enthusiastic young readers share some of their favourite moments from some of their favourite books, ranging from folk tales by A K Ramanujam to good old Ruskin Bond, and even a bit of Shakespeare.

The books/stories featured in this episode include:

Folk Tales from India by A K Ramanujam

The Enormous Turnip by Alexei Tolstoy

The Wizard’s Wand by Geronimo Stilton

Basava and the Dots of Fire by Radhika Chadha

Farida plans a Feast by Maegan Dobson Sippy

Coming Round the Mountain by Ruskin Bond

Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, children’s abridged edition

The Little Bird in the Big Mountains by Pari Rana

In a slight departure from our usual format, four students of art history take us through the lives of four individuals who inhabit different roles during the period known as the Dutch Golden Age, spanning the 17th century in Holland, and give us a sense of what it might have been like to have been an artists--or live on the edges of the art establishment--during this time.

If you'd like to learn more about the Dutch Golden Age, Shreya Subramanyam suggests these readings:Schama, Simon. The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987

Sutton, Elizabeth, ed. Women Artists and Patrons in the Netherlands, 1500 - 1700: Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2019

Hofrichter, Frima Fox. Judith Leyster: A Woman-Painter in Holland’s Golden Age. Texas: Davaco, 1989.

Prak, Maarten. “Guilds and the Development of the Art Market during the Dutch Golden Age” Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 30, no. 3/4 (2003) 236 - 251

Kirby, Jo. “The Painter’s Trade in the Seventeenth Century: Theory and Practice” National Gallery Technical Bulletin 20, Painting in Antwerp and London: Rubens and van Dyck (1999) 5 - 49

Dash, Mike. Tulipomania: The Story of the World’s Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused. New York: Crown Publishers, 1999.

Alpers, Svetlana, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983

Moggach, Deborah. Tulip Fever. Canada: Dial Press Trade Paperback, 2001

This episode, Banned! opens the covers of some proscribed books—works of both fiction and non-fiction that have been banned or simply taken out of circulation, in India. The episode has been put together by Hyderabad-based art historian, anthropologist and curator Sita Reddy, and features readings from A K Ramanujan's 300 Ramayanas, Wendy Doniger's The Hindus, Perumal Murugan's One Part Woman, and Anand Teltumbde's Republic of Caste, among others.

Drawing from writers as far apart in time as Ismat Chugtai and Arundhati Roy, and as distant in location as Elif Shafak and bell hooks, our young readers sample work on emotions and experiences that are specific yet universal. How do we think of love--as a noun or a verb? What is the content of grief? And how do we recover...and remember?

In the weeks and months since the Covid-19 pandemic locked us down and stilled the streets, we have all had to deal with a variety of challenges--some large, some small, but all to some degree forcing us to re-evaluate our relationships with each other, with nature, and the world. In this episode, we bring you a set of reflections, combing some original writing mixed in with extracts from work that "speaks" to us in specific yet somehow universal ways. 

Six children between the ages of 8 and 10 read from their favourite books, including selections from the Harry Potter series, Fancy Nancy and The Penderwicks.

Children read from some of their favourite work--mythology, adventure, humour and more!