Save Me From My Shelf

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In the second half of our forty-first episode, we cover the last twelve books of Homer's The Odyssey (circa 800 BC). It's a delicious world, full of roast goat stomach, pig spine, and onion-peel cloaks. It's a sexy world, with plenty of Groundskeeper Willy nudity. It's an emotional world, full of crying naps and rage murder. And above all, it's a man's world, with some of the strongest misogyny we've seen so far.

Cover art © Catherine Wu.

Episode Theme: Γκάιντα Ναούσης 1498 (Wikimedia Commons)

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Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. Sing, O Muse!, of our forty-first episode, the first twelve books of Homer's The Odyssey (circa 800 BC). Sing, of oil baths and endless sobbing! Sing, of sex and monsters and sex-monsters! Sing, of potty-humour and MILF Manor! Sing, of two exhausted academics who pinball from Olympus to Hades and all around the Aegean.

Cover art © Catherine Wu.

Episode Theme: Γκάιντα Ναούσης 1498 (Wikimedia Commons)

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Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In our fortieth episode, we make our first foray across la Manche in order to recap Voltaire's satirical picaresque, Candide, ou l'Optimisme (1759). In this episode, Daniel trots out his feeble/faible Franglais, Abby discerns a preoccupation with derrières lying at the bottom of an otherwise highly varied narrative, and both take a moment to lament with Voltaire that most oppressed group of the eighteenth-century world: philosophers.

Cover art © Catherine Wu.

Episode theme: Jean-Philippe Rameau, 'Gavotte and Variations' (1727), performed by Martha Goldstein.

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Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In out thirty-ninth episode, our Audience Pick from Season Three, and Queer Con 2023, we recap our first Decadent text, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). In this episode, we throw a hate party for Lord Alfred Douglas, discover that Abby is both already a queer icon AND knows what music is, and see if Oscar Wilde is funny enough to do a Save Me From My Shelf-style recap.

Cover art © Catherine Wu.

Episode theme: Richard Strauss, 'Tanz' from Salome, Op. 54.

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Following on from our coverage of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower (1993), we have a bit of a roundtable chat with local hellscape expert, Liam Knight (AKA 'DystopiaJunkie').

In this bonus episode we discuss the differences and interactions between dystopian and postapocalyptic literature, explore these genres' preoccupations and their history, and explain why no budding survivalist should be without a garden gnome.

Liam's Youtube page (on which we're making a guest appearance) can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/@DystopiaJunkie

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Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In out thirty-eighth episode, we recap our first apocalyptic novel, Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower (1994). In this episode, Daniel redefines male fashion (monocles, Keith-core) and Abby traces real-world allegories, and both of them end the text shaking and traumatised under one of those tinfoil blankets.

Cover art © Catherine Wu.

Episode theme: Stickfigure, 'Spaghetti Western'.

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Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In out thirty-seventh episode, we look at a candidate for first-ever English language novel: Daniel Defoe's shipwreck narrative, Robinson Crusoe (1719). In this episode, Daniel creates a TikTok challenge, witness G.O.A.T. husbandry, and learn to see the Face of God (by watching barley grow or getting violent, turtle-induce dysentery).

Cover art © Catherine Wu.

Episode theme: Eric Coates, 'By the Sleepy Lagoon'.

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Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In out thirty-sixth episode, we journey back to Revolutionary France with Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (1859). We learn all about the historical novel, but are less certain about gay iconography, what constitutes clinical depression, and precisely what Dr Manette was up to with all those shoes.

Cover art © Catherine Wu.

Episode theme: Hector Berlioz, 'Symphonie fantastique, op. 14, 4. Marche au supplice'.

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Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In our Season Four opener, Valentine's Day special, and thirty-fifth episode, we recap D.H. Lawrence's controversial, court case-launching novel full of weird sex and four-letter words, Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). The episode teaches us many things: the difference between the normal West and exotic East Midlands, the mystery of eggs, the effects of purple prose, and when we finally need to put that 'explicit content' warning up.

Cover art © Catherine Wu.

Episode theme: Claude Debussy, 'Reverie'; Samuel Corwin, 'A Man Approaches with Bowed Sitar, Rishikesh'.

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Yet another sequence of brief clips that have been rescued from oblivion.

Thematically we're getting a bit thin on the ground here, and dressing it up as a hodgepodge, salmagundi, macédoine, zibaldone - or any other pompous way of describing a mishmash - would be to everyone's discredit.

Cover art © Catherine Wu.

Episode themes: Cliff Carlisle, 'Columbus Stockade Blues' (1930), and Anton Bruckner, Symphony 7 in E Major (1883) performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker.

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