The Big Read Cast

Bill and Joel are joined once again by the great Phil Christman for a guest podcast, this one about Cahokia Jazz, the alternate-history noir written by the incomparable Francis Spufford!

Joel and Bill wade through Laurence Sterne's wild and digressive masterpiece, and do their best not to get distracted throughout.

Joel and Bill discuss the books they read in 2023 and some plans for 2024!

Bill and Joel read a small but dense text: two essays by 17th-century doctor, philosopher, writer, and weirdo Sir Thomas Browne!

Joel and Bill read Vernor Vinge's 1992 Hugo-award winning novel A Fire Upon the Deep. It's the best book about group-mind dog packs either of them have ever read.

Joel and Bill return from their hiatus with a discussion of Kate Atkinson's novel Life After Life, which basically Groundhog Day but over the space of an entire life and in the first half of the 20th century.

Bill and Joel go through some of the books they read in 2022!

Bill and Joel read The Annotated Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, which covers his early life and his career in the Civil War, with extensive and excellent annotations by Elizabeth D. Samet, Bill only deploys a *few* Sherman memes.

Joel and Bill read Frans G. Bengtsson's "The Long Ships," an excellent romp throughout 10th and 11th-century Scandinavia, Britain, and Spain. Join us as we go a-Viking, friends!

Bill and Joel are joined by one of the best essayists in America, Phil Christman, to talk about Adam Roberts's barnstorming novel The This, which is about hive minds, social media, Coleridge and, most importantly, GWF Hegel.