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Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In the first part of our fifty-ninth episode, we tackle the first half of the biggest book we've ever featured on the show: Miguel de Cervantes's Picaresque adventure, Don Quixote (1605).We look at its status as potential 'first novel', one of the most influential works of all time (from Shakespeare to Dumas to Forrest Gump), and debate which of the two hosts is the Quixote and which one is the Sancho Panza.

Cover art © Catherine Wu.

Episode Theme: Manuel de Falla y Orquesta Nacional De Espana, 'Overture' in El Retablo De Maese Pedro (Master Peter's Puppet Show), 1957.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In our fifty-eighth episode, we once again cross the Atlantic for Harper Lee's 1960 novel of racial injustice, To Kill A Mockingbird. We get some long-overdue Cornish slander, delve into the American legalistic mindset, and mutter a lot about grits and yams.

Cover art © Catherine Wu.

Episode Theme: Daniel Jenkin-Smith on keyboard, 'Mockingbird Lullaby'.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In the second part of our fifty-seventh episode, we recap Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass (1871) and discuss rare spatial reasoning issues, Abby's peasant background (which includes tunnel-corn), famous egg-men, and if a single move in chess is measured in speed or mobility.

Cover art © Catherine Wu.

Episode Theme: Camille Saint-Saens, The Carnival of the Animals, '10 Voliere', played backwards.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In the first part of our fifty-seventh episode, we regress to childhood and look at Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). We examine Lewis Carroll's sexual vs. artistic motives, take our first dive into nonsense literature, and celebrate confectionary, being mean to children, and Alice's criminal escalations.

Cover art © Catherine Wu.

Episode Theme: Camille Saint-Saens, The Carnival of the Animals, '10 Voliere'.

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The sixth episode of SMFMS Bookends, the satellite show for Save Me From My Shelf. Here we read emails, answer listener questions, talk about what we're currently reading, watching, and playing, resuscitate the Bad Sex Awards™, and provide further outtakes and analysis cut from our Midsummer Night's Dream episode.

You can hear us on an episode of Carl Sweeney's The Movie Palace here, in the last 5-10 minutes of the show, where we recommend our favourite pre-'70s film: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/classic-movie-recommendations-part-1/id1398503911?i=1000656989665

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Two friends and academics recap classic literature and take it off its pedestal. In our fifty-sixth episode, we celebrate midsummer with Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1605). We make a lot of (obvious) jokes about asses, Amazon, and fairy kink (despite not reading THE fairy kink book).

Cover art © Catherine Wu.

Episode Theme: Felix Mendelssohn, A Midsummer Night's Dream 'Op 61'

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