This week, the Book Boys read "The Rise of the Novel" by Ian Watt. Topics of discussion include literature and the market, the nature of the 'reading public', and the lineage of the novel in English letters.

As always, we hope you enjoy the conversation!

This week, we're wandering through medieval Khazaria with good ol' Mikey C as we read "Gentlemen of the Road". Topics of conversation include Swords & Sorcery vs Historical Fiction, depictions of Jewish identity in Chabon's oeuvre, and serializiation of fiction.

As always, we hope you enjoy our conversation!

You can follow the show on Bluesky at @infinitelibrarypod.bsky.social

Did you know that YOU can teach YOURSELF ANCIENT GREEK? In this week's episode of The Infinite Library, John and Ben are discussing "The Last Samurai" by Helen DeWitt. Topics of conversation include autodidacticism, sleazy British men, and the value of the humanities in troubling times.

This week on The Infinite Library: John and Ben check-in and see how they're feeling about this whole Michael Chabon read-through project, then they continue along the primrose path and discuss "The Yiddish Policeman's Union". Topics of discussion include noir fiction, Filipino-style Chinese donuts, and Messiah.

Happy New Years, Book Heads! In this bonus epsiode, John and Ben sit down to ring in 2025 by talking about their favorite books of 2024. We hope you enjoy!

For our first episode of the New Year, John and Ben are discussing Ryan Ruby's poem about the history of poetry: "Context Collapse". Topics of discussion include jongleurs, Ezra Pound, and romanticism.

As always, we hope you enjoy the conversation!

Merry Christmas! John and Ben are flying solo again this week to discuss "The Final Solution" by Michael Chabon. We're officially halfway through our readthrough on Chabon's works, and in this episode, we discuss Sherlock Holmes, Chabon's development as a writer, and genre fiction more broadly. Special Bonus: We return to Movie Land to discuss "The Seven Per-Cent Solution", the 1979 Sherlock Holmes movie where the Great Detective teams up with Sigmund Freud.

Pow! We're back with part 2 of our discussion of "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" with Nat of Collective Action Comics. As always, enjoy the conversation.

It's the big one, the book that won Michael Chabon the Pulitzer Prize, the 600-some page behemoth known as "The Adventures of Cavalier & Clay". The Book Boys knew that they were going to need some backup for this one, so they called in Nat of Collective Action Comics for a Two-Fisted Team-Up! We had so much fun talking about this one that it ended up being our first two-parter. As always, we hope you enjoy the conversation!

Happy Thanksgiving, Bookheads! We're taking a week off for the holiday, but fear not, we have a special, John-free bonus episode to tide you over till the next regular ep. If you're a Big Ben fan, this one's for you, because he's sitting down with previous guest of the pod, Ana, to have a more casual chat about another banger from the Roberto Bolaño Fascism Extended Universe: "The Savage Detectives".

Ben hopes you enjoy the conversation. John hopes you don't so that Ben doesn't try to fire them from the pod.

Semper Books!