60 Weeks 60 Books

Week 60 The Usefulness of the Useless

Sun, 24 Mar 2024 19:30:31 GMT

This book was inspiring enough to make me try my hand at my first YouTube book review. And rereading it made me angrier than ever about the way our world is going: the materialism, the populism, the trivialisation and banality, the excessive worship of money and hectoring charlatans. I could go on, but I urge you instead to read Ordine's book which is an impassioned plea to preserve what is best and wisest about us puny humans.

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Week 59: Aristotle's Way

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 13:02:39 GMT

The penultimate book of this series dates from 2018, but I am still urging it on friends and students for the bridge it provides to timeless ideas. Edith Hall is an eminent academic specialising primarily in Greek theatre, but here explored her devotion to Aristotle despite his less than complimentary approach to women. His ideas about self-knowledge, values and virtues, and of course, about the theatre still resonate, and Edith Hall is a helpful and lucid guide to his thinking.

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Week 58: Shahnameh The Book of Kings

Sun, 10 Mar 2024 17:23:19 GMT

This week, a big fat book full of wonderful stories, dragons, magical birds and super-strong heroes with equally powerful horses. One of the books that makes me think that in school, we really ought to be teaching myth and legend from across the world - there would be enough to keep us busy for all 15 years of formal school.

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Week 57: The Faraway Nearby

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 14:56:18 GMT

For this week, I almost chose another book, but then I could not - Solnit's exploration of ice, of Arctic Dreams, the subject of one my own earlier podcasts, of Frankenstein and her account of her stay in the Library of Water on an Icelandic peninsula are so compelling, that I found myself reading and rereading.

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Week 56 Collected Prose, Elizabeth Bishop

Sun, 25 Feb 2024 21:59:47 GMT

Elizabeth Bishop's artistic reputation and legacy seem, rightly, to grow and grow. She won a Pulitzer Prize in the early 1950s, and was a challenging teacher of writing and literature at Harvard and MIT. She died of a brain aneurysm at 68 in 1979, no doubt a product of the booze and fags she packed away during the course of her life. She was also intrepid, insatiably curious about the world around her, and one of the most perceptive observers of all that it is to be a human. The more I read about her and by her, the more I want to read, but there is a limited palette - a relatively slim collected poetry, a thicker, richer collected prose, all driven by an eye at once objective and tender in its delineation of who and what we humans are.

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Week 55 Othello

Sun, 18 Feb 2024 16:13:17 GMT

Somehow, although the play is called Othello, it often ends up being all about Iago, arguably the most malevolent of all Shakespeare's villains. For a look at the best filmed versions of this terrific play head to ThatReadingWritingThing, where there are links galore.

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Week 54 The Great Gatsby

Sun, 11 Feb 2024 10:18:29 GMT

This week, a book that is 99 years old and grows in stature and authority with every passing year, as its satirical depiction of the super-rich and their destructive impulses gathers authority.

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Week 53: Heart of Darkness

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 15:28:19 GMT

Conrad's 1898 novella, based on his own experiences as a riverboat captain on his only voyage to the Congo, is today a contested book. Two particular attacks, by Chinua Achebe and Edward Said, level accusations of racism and imperialism at Conrad himself, invoking his regular use of the N-word and his depiction of the Africans that Marlow encounters throughout. Regarding the n-word, that is purely contextual. Conrad was writing at a time when it was common parlance, and it is important for us to understand that there was such a time, whatever our modern sensibilities suggest. Again, with the way that Africans are depicted throughout the novella, it reflects Conrad's own experiences, and the deliberate use he makes of stereotypes throughout the story. The fundamental is that Conrad sees through the hypocrisy and cant of European imperialism and colonialism, and skewers the brutish, undeserved superiority of the white men ripping resources from the country they believed should be their plaything.

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Week 52: I am not your Negro

Sat, 27 Jan 2024 17:48:15 GMT

This week marks a year since I began this podcast with one of the most troubling books I have read, a book and documentary that revealed at the end of 2016 just how deep racism runs in the United States. Eight years later, I am even more troubled as we see the rise of divisive, discriminatory populism not just with the resurgence of Trump in the US but in sectarian clashes in India, and the low level persistent vicious attitudes displayed by British politicians towards refugees and asylum seekers. But there is hope.

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Week 51: The Mighty Dead - Why Homer Matters

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 13:44:46 GMT

This week, as I raced to finish Adam Nicolson's book about his deep love of Homer, discovered 20 years ago on a sea voyage, I kept dipping into a recent translation of The Iliad and getting sidetracked. Homer's impact is strong, and here I take a look at how I started loving the Odyssey, but thanks in part to Nicolson, have ended up still more in love with the Iliad.

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Week 50 Antony & Cleopatra

Sat, 13 Jan 2024 20:41:26 GMT

Passion makes fools of us all, and nowhere does Shakespeare better display this than in Antony & Cleopatra. What I love about this play is the clash between the public and the personal, the political and the private. It's a sharp, bitter, witty play, full of gossip and black humour.

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Week 49 Reading Lolita in Tehran

Sat, 06 Jan 2024 17:10:11 GMT

Azar Nafisi is an impressive woman, and it is interesting to note that the relatively few dismissive critics of this wonderful book were from a masculine perspective. Women reading, thinking and generating their own ideas and perspectives have always been a threat to the established order. Nafisi's critical memoir explores the how and the why during the 18 years she spent trying to raise a family, maintain a teaching career and keep her veil covering her hair. Just how dangerous it is to challenge the Hijab and Chastity laws enacted in recent months is becoming increasingly clear. But the signs were there from the earliest days of the Iranian revolution and the overthrow of the Shah.

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Week 48 The Places in Between

Sat, 30 Dec 2023 18:12:47 GMT

Rory Stewart is nine years younger than me, and about ninety-nine times more adventurous. In this week's episode, I am amazed by his courage, foolhardiness, stamina, determination and also fall in love with his dog Babur.

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Episode 47 The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoe

Sun, 24 Dec 2023 16:39:42 GMT

Set on a Dutch trading post built on an artificial island off the coast by Nagasaki, David Mitchell's novel explores what brings us together and what separates us in our cultures, morals and choices. On the surface a straightforward chronological narrative of the first years spent in the East by a young Dutch clerk, Mitchell explores darker stories of corruption, exploitation and cruelty embedded in both Japanese and European men and women. A gripping thriller, a poignant love story and an exploration of friendship and enmity, this is a beautifully written book.

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Episode 46: The Winter's Tale

Sun, 17 Dec 2023 19:54:48 GMT

Hamlet or The Winter's Tale. I suppose it depends on mood and emotion. Hamlet has a brilliantly high body count and some of the best repartee ever, it has Horatio and flights of angels, ghosts and of course, the prince of charisma, Hamlet himself. But The Winter's Tale is different. It too deals with insanity, gardens, dreams and illusions, but where there is nothing but death and the special providence of the fall of the sparrow, Winter's Tale has that big old bear, and the most extraordinary of second chances.

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Week 45 Development As Freedom

Sun, 10 Dec 2023 20:19:54 GMT

This book as been deeply influential and deserves its place as it seeks to encourage us to rethink the nature of economic and social development, putting humans and humanity at the heart of what it means to be a thriving, healthy society.

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Week 44 The People's Act of Love

Sun, 03 Dec 2023 13:14:25 GMT

Cannibalism, castration, crime, confusion, what could I have left out of this summary of James Meek's terrific novel? Oh, yes, communism. It truly has it all and is well worth reading. Find out why in this week's pod.

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Week 43 Away

Sun, 26 Nov 2023 00:53:08 GMT

Amy Bloom's second novel is set in 1920s America. The protagonist, Lillian Leyb, sets off from New York, ending up in Alaska, battling her own past as well as a variety of predators.

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Week 42 Fingersmith

Sun, 19 Nov 2023 18:21:51 GMT

Of Sarah Waters's six novels, this is my favourite. An elegant and witty pastiche of Victorian melodrama and mystery, it is full of sinister twists and savage irony. A great read.

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Week 41 This Thing of Darkness

Sun, 12 Nov 2023 21:34:02 GMT

This book was amazing on first read, and it seems even better on this subsequent re-read. Just as in 2005, I was inspired all over again to visit Patagonia - the difference being that now I live in Brazil, this seems a much more plausible possibility.

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Week 40 Mapp & Lucia

Sat, 04 Nov 2023 19:59:29 GMT

Mapp & Lucia brings together two of EF Benson's most tricky customers, Miss Elizabeth Mapp and Mrs Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas in a series of skirmishes and battles to decide who will control the upper circles of Tilling. First published in 1931, it remains in print - whether in spite of the trivial underpinnings of the feuds or because these may be slight, but they carry their own significance. They are still magnificent as ever.

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Week 39 A Midsummer Night's Dream

Sat, 28 Oct 2023 21:08:18 GMT

It's time for another comedy by Shakespeare - we go into the woods with Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena and explore just how it was possible to reclaim A Midsummer Night's Dream from the curse of being a set text.

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Week 38 We Need to Talk about Kevin

Sat, 21 Oct 2023 19:46:06 GMT

Lionel Shriver's pathway to becoming a public controversialist began with this book - and it still resonates today, in a world where school shootings in the US continue and the gun lobby's agenda dominates public discourse. This podcast also features an original song by Sebby Clarke, Susan.

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Week 37 Welcome to Temptation

Sat, 14 Oct 2023 16:02:28 GMT

Jennifer Crusie is one of the finest romance writers of all. Welcome to Temptation consistently delivers on the Crusieverse key ingredients: snarky heroine, wary hero, cute kid, slightly odd but affectionate hound, small-town antics and surreal friends and neighbours. The recipe varies, but Crusie consistently delivers wit, weirdness and wonderful pay-off.

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Week 36 The Blank Slate

Sat, 07 Oct 2023 21:05:08 GMT

A look at Marmite academic Steven Pinker's 2002 book, The Blank Slate, challenging our long held beliefs about human nature with an exploration of how biology just might be more influential than anything else in determining how and we humans behave in the ways we do.

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Week 35 The Embarrassment of Riches

Sat, 30 Sep 2023 22:11:59 GMT

This week, the podcast takes a more optimistic turn, following in the footsteps of Simon Schama who delivers rich historical explorations on a grand scale. He is a magnetic writer, idiosyncratic and enjoyable as he displays his formidable breadth of knowledge and powers of synthesis in what remains an outstanding book, The Embarrassment of Riches. Even if you have not the slightest interest in 16th Dutch doings, this book is lively, engaging and full of ideas that resonate far beyond the narrow compass that it purports to examine.

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Week 34 Facing the Extreme

Sun, 24 Sep 2023 15:11:46 GMT

How Tzvetan Todorov's book about the concentration camps helped me come to terms with the full implications of our capacity for evil and find a way forward.

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Week 33 Hitler's Willing Executioners

Sat, 16 Sep 2023 17:48:33 GMT

Goldhagen's controversial thesis about ordinary Germans and the Holocaust came out 27 years ago. Today, I invited my husband Peter for our look back at the impact of this landmark history book when we first read the book in 1996.

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Week 32 Northern Lights

Sun, 10 Sep 2023 14:34:50 GMT

Northern Lights is a book that I return to regularly. It is an extraordinary adventure in its own right as well as a wondrous portal to worlds that are at once similar and very different to our own. Its heroes and villains are compelling, recognizable and dangerous, it is full of surprises and in amidst the action are deeper questions about what it is to be human and to be humane.

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Week 31 A Gathering Light

Sat, 02 Sep 2023 21:15:12 GMT

It seems unfair that A Gathering Light, a winner of the Carnegie Award in 2003, is so little known. It is a terrific book, with a great heroine, plausible and considerable conflicts, murder, love and friendships. It captures totally the harshness of life in the early 20th century for farming families in the northeastern US, and also the impact of the modern world on places that might otherwise have remained backwaters. It is a gripping and satisfying read that I cannot recommend highly enough.

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Week 30 Arcadia

Sat, 26 Aug 2023 21:46:58 GMT

Tom Stoppard's plays do leave some people cold; he has been accused of too much intellect and not enough emotion. But Arcadia is a dazzling play that has a heart, balancing a sense of loss with optimism and a strong sense of possibility about the future. Rereading it, listening to the radio version, it still feels delightful and poignant in equal measure.

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Week 29 Is He Popinjay

Sat, 19 Aug 2023 19:13:17 GMT

Anthony Trollope's narrative voice is particularly wry, sly and amused in this exploration of marriage, legitimacy and money. A cracking tale with a couple of very plausible and unpleasant villains, it stands up to multiple rereads.

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Week 28 The Blind Watchmaker

Sat, 12 Aug 2023 21:32:10 GMT

Before Dawkins was a combative and cranky commentator, he was a gifted researcher and academic. The Blind Watchmaker was for me, a game-changing book, and one that is worth re-reading.

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Week 27: The King James Bible

Sat, 05 Aug 2023 15:46:15 GMT

There are those who say that it is one of the most magnificent achievements in the English language, whilst others just feel it is seeing through a glass darkly, but the King James Version of the Bible is still worth revisiting.

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Week 26: The Ringed Castle

Sat, 29 Jul 2023 10:16:01 GMT

Dorothy Dunnett was a magnificent writer - and definitely bears re-reading. In this episode, I explore just why the fifth book in the Lymond Chronicles is my favourite.

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Week 25 Strong Poison

Sat, 22 Jul 2023 10:37:20 GMT

Peter Wimsey first appeared in the early 20s, and by the time Strong Poison appeared in 1930, he was a definite success. Although the mystery is fairly straightforward, the roles given in particular to Miss Murchison and Miss Climpson, two middle-aged spinsters who are instrumental in resolving the crime, are original and interesting - Sayers broke new ground by depicting women as calm, capable and shrewd.

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Week 24: Arctic Dreams

Sat, 15 Jul 2023 20:24:28 GMT

As global temperatures climb on land and in the sea, as wildfires rage and both the Arctic and Antarctic are melting, I remember an early warning voice, sadly disregarded despite achieving best-seller status in the mid 1980s. Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams is at once a meditation and a call to action which is more relevant than ever.

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Week 23 Old Glory

Sat, 08 Jul 2023 19:24:27 GMT

Initially an academic, Jonathan Raban led a fairly unsettled life until his 50s when he moved to Seattle and became father to his only child. He died earlier this year, but his books live on. I am sure that I am not the only reader inspired by his example to look at the world with a clearer, cooler eye. His final book, Father and Son, will be published in September. But this episode focuses on Old Glory, published 42 years ago and already carrying a foretaste of what was to come.

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Week 22 A Countess Below Stairs

Sat, 01 Jul 2023 21:08:26 GMT

Exploring the books that have shaped and changed me over the past 60 years.

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Week 21 Middlemarch

Sat, 24 Jun 2023 16:18:38 GMT

Exploring some of the aspects of George Eliot's rich life and why she absolutely outclasses Dickens.

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Week 20: Hamlet

Sat, 17 Jun 2023 18:50:27 GMT

How old should Hamlet be? Why does it matter that he was a student at Wittenberg? And why is he more than a standard revenge hero from a standard revenge tragedy?

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Week 19 Bleak House

Sat, 10 Jun 2023 14:34:39 GMT

Dickens definitely changed my life. First I loathed him, then I loved him, and if it hadn't been for Bleak House, I don't think I would have studied English at university.

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Week 18 Frederica

Sat, 03 Jun 2023 21:34:26 GMT

Georgette Heyer rightly has many fans and continues to sell well. Here I explore why Frederica is my particular favorite, with its world-weary hero and bustling, managing heroine. Heyer began the tradition of the regency romance, and arguably, her books remain the best of the genre.

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Week 17 Scruples and other bonkbusters

Sat, 27 May 2023 16:43:05 GMT

This week, we are taking a look at some of the tropes of the mass market bestsellers of the 1970s.

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Week 16: Thunder on the Right

Sat, 20 May 2023 14:34:00 GMT

Although not her most popular novel, Thunder on the Right was the first book of Mary Stewart's that I read. I have a feeling I acquired the tatty paperback in one of the dodgy second hand bookshops in Brighton's North Laines. Somewhere in a box, it still lurks!

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Week 15: The Catcher in the Rye

Sun, 14 May 2023 00:29:22 GMT

An exploration of how Holden Caulfield provided solace and hope to a cynical 13 year old.

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Week 14: Piaf

Sat, 06 May 2023 08:25:33 GMT

Edith Piaf's signature song is probably Non, je ne regrette rien, namechecked in the Simpsons, the Penthouse and Specsavers ads. Here, I take a look at her life and how the biography I originally trusted turned out to be highly unreliable.

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Week 13: Under the Stars of Paris

Sun, 30 Apr 2023 13:44:57 GMT

Why Mills & Boon were and are a possible answer to the angst of the adolescent.

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Week 12 Gone with the Wind

Sat, 22 Apr 2023 13:18:05 GMT

At once a terrible and a great book, Margaret Mitchell's bestseller is at once a propulsive, immersive read, and an awkward apologia for the well-deserved death of a toxic society.

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Week 11 The Young Elizabeth

Sat, 15 Apr 2023 14:22:26 GMT

Jean Plaidy was one of the most popular and prolific of the 20th century's historical novelists. She still delivers a cracking good read! For me, she was a transition writer between children's historical fiction and the bodice rippers that dominated romance writing in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

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Week 10: The Little White Horse

Sat, 08 Apr 2023 14:58:05 GMT

JK Rowling is quoted on the cover of the most recent edition of The Little White Horse - and I can see just why she loved it. It is a charming book - in the old-fashioned sense of enchanting and putting a glamour on the reader. Set in early Victorian England, it is a lovely and encouraging book. I missed the strong Christian message as a child, but even on rereading it as an adult, I did not find it intrusive. It is a tale of courage and learning what one is capable of achieving.

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Week 9 Harriet the Spy

Sat, 01 Apr 2023 15:01:40 GMT

How characters and stories can consume us.

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Week 8 Ballet Shoes

Sat, 25 Mar 2023 15:02:34 GMT

Ballet Shoes was published in June 1936 and is still one of the best depictions of how girls and women can navigate the world and gain independence.

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Week 7 Twelfth Night

Sat, 18 Mar 2023 14:22:08 GMT

This week, in 60 Weeks 60 Books, I take a look at Twelfth Night, where Shakespeare revisits the missing twins trope he first deployed in Comedy of Errors, and has his characters play one of the meanest pranks in drama on the hapless Malvolio.

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Week 6: The Castle of Adventure

Sat, 11 Mar 2023 17:26:14 GMT

Remembering Enid Blyton's gift for giving children agency and excitement - and why reading bad books is not necessarily bad for the reader.

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Week 5 Paddington Abroad

Sat, 04 Mar 2023 14:23:07 GMT

In which the reasons that Paddington is definitively the Best Bear in the World are explored, plus a little trip to the Biba shop in Kensington.

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Week 4 Where the Wild Things Are

Fri, 24 Feb 2023 21:39:54 GMT

This episode includes a reading of Where the Wild Things Are - it may be frightening to some of a vulnerable disposition.

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Week 3: Winnie the Pooh

Fri, 17 Feb 2023 20:38:38 GMT

Winnie the Pooh has sold millions of copies, been translated into 75 languages and analyzed by academics. But really, he's simply a very human Bear of Little Brain.

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Week 2 The Black Stallion

Fri, 10 Feb 2023 20:53:25 GMT

Taking a look at Alec Ramsay, hero of The Black Stallion and how he helped me change my name.

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Week 1 Wind in the Willows

Fri, 03 Feb 2023 23:16:13 GMT

How Wind in the Willows embodies England and what makes a home.

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