The Bookening

"If it had not borne Mr. Dickens's name, it would in all probability have hardly met with a single reader; and if it has any popularity at all, it must derive it from the circumstance that it stands in the same relation to his other books as salad dressing stands in towards a complete salad. It is a bottle of the sauce in which Pickwick and Nicholas Nickleby were dressed, and to which they owed much of their popularity; and though it has stood open on the sideboard for a very long time, and has lost a good deal of its original flavour, the philosophic inquirer who is willing to go through the penance of tasting it will be, to a certain extent, repaid. He will have an opportunity of studying in its elements a system of cookery which procured for its ingenious inventor unparalleled popularity, and enabled him to infect the literature of his country with a disease which manifests itself in such repulsive symptoms that it has gone far to invert the familiar doctrines of the Latin Grammar about ingenuous arts, and to substitute for them the conviction that the principal results of a persistent devotion to literature are an incurable vulgarity of mind and of taste, and intolerable arrogance of temper."

--from an original review of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Don't worry, our heroes talk about it. 

The senselessness of life. The meaninglessness of death. Those moments where you murder someone in cold blood for no particular reason. Hope you like existential stuff. Because Ernest Heminway and Albert Camus sure do, as we talk about in this mega-stuft episode of none other than ..... THE BOOKENING. 

The Bookening is divided over one of the great (?) Russian novels!

Here's a link to that great piece on Tolstoy and Turgenev's relationship.

Two children's books that we had STRONG feelings about!

Happy Valentine's Day! It's been six years. Can you believe it? Time for The Bookening to return to the book that started it all. Will our opinions have changed? Will we argue our former selves into the dust? Will we now HATE Pride and Prejudice???? Find out in this mega stuffed episode.

How is the Bookening moving forward after a 2021 that wasn't what we wanted? What are we reading in 2022? Was Ender's Game a good novel? The answers to all these questions and more in the mega-long super spectacular new episode!

Next week (Lord willing) Jake and Brandon will face off in the epic trial of Ender's Game. This week Jake prepares.

Ender's Game on, Bro!

A Room with a View by E. M. Forster. Will our heroes decide this book is romantic wish fulfillment? Or just really good?