Now with audio glitch corrected!

The Bookening discusses one of the most important books of the latter half of the twentieth century, and one that they are pretty excited to talk about, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. Postmodernism, magical realism, the history of India, and more inform a Contextual Texan that Brandon had a lot of fun preparing, and you should have an equal amount of fun listening to. Listen now! And here's the interview with Rushdie that Brandon recommended.

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Okay, so, let's get this out of the way. There is a huge run of positive energy coming up very soon with Midnight's Children, War and Peace, and then Sense and Sensibility. But today is not that day. Today our heroes are discussing midcentury theater, as represented by two behemoths, The Crucible by Arthur Miller and A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams. Yay!

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Our heroes recorded this episode at the end of a long session and they may or may not have been a little stir crazy, as you'll hear. However ...

Now THIS is how you write a horror story. After a weeklong foray into scary short stories, our heroes finally hit gold with Algernon Blackwood's much-anthologized "The Willows." And believe us, it's much-anthologized for a reason. The reason being that ... it's great! It taps into real fears, with subtlety and taste. Nice to end our week Spook-tacular on a high note.

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Music: Signs In The Fields by cinematicwaves licensed by a Creative Commons 3.0 license.

"Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness. Wretched is he who looks back upon lone hours in vast and dismal chambers with brown hangings and maddening rows of antique books, or upon awed watches in twilight groves of grotesque, gigantic, and vine-encumbered trees that silently wave twisted branches far aloft."

Oh brother. It's Part 4 of our Halloween Spook-tacular, and we're reviewing H.P. Lovecraft's "The Outsider", which, really, is not a very good representative example of Lovecraft's work. Oh brother.

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Music: Signs In The Fields by cinematicwaves licensed by a Creative Commons 3.0 license. 

Sredni Vashtar went forth,

His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.

His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.

Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.

Happy All Hallow's Eve Eve, fiends! Here's a truly weird little item for ya! In this episode The Bookening reads Sredni Vashtar by Saki (H. H. Munro). It's a good story by a good writer who people aren't as familiar with as they should be.  It's also part 3 of our weeklong Spook-tacular!

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Music: Signs In The Fields by cinematicwaves licensed by a Creative Commons 3.0 license. 

"Lo, there ye stand, my children," said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad with its despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race. "Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the communion of your race."

Puritans! Witches! Old Mr. Scratch! Oh my! That's right folks it's ... PART 2 OF OUR WEEKLONG HALLOWEEN SPOOK-TACULAR! Our heroes discuss Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne. SO SCAAAAAARY! DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES LISTEN TO THIS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT!

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Music: Signs In The Fields by cinematicwaves licensed by a Creative Commons 3.0 license. 

"And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all."

Our special Monday to Friday foray into short horror stories begins with Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe. Jake and Brandon lack the intelligence to appreciate this story properly. Meanwhile, Nathan wrote this blurb.

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Signs In The Fields by cinematicwaves licensed by a Creative Commons 3.0 license. 

In this episode of The Bookening, our heroes discuss Henry V. It is a good episode. Listen to it.

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Hooray, it's our episode on William Shakespeare's Henry IV. Which part you ask? We're doing both parts in one amazing episode. You'll hear our heroes' theories on whether Hal was faking it or he really loved Falstaff, whether Falstaff is still funny in 2019, and whom to reward and whom to punish when you suddenly become king, or manager of McDonalds for that matter. Plus Brandon goes to Washington, Jake works in Apple and Microsoft somehow. All in all, it's an episode of The Bookening. Yay! Listen now.

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Yay, it's our longest episode ever! (Pretty sure.) And we're closing the loop on C. S. Lewis (for now at least) and Narnia, discussing The Last Battle. Did our heroes like The Last Battle? Spoiler alert, they liked it a lot. They didn't even mind the depiction of heaven at the end. So settle in for our final thoughts on Lewis, those who can't handle criticism of Lewis, and the wonderful land of Narnia. Next week, Shakespeare!

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