Τα καλύτερα Literary Book podcast (2024)

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Kalidasa's Ode to Spring in Ritusamhara 11:36

3d ago11:36

11:36

In the concluding episode of our Ritusamhara series, I discuss how Kalidasa narrates the beauty of spring season. You can share your feedback on contactkalampedia@gmail.com. Thank you for listening. Keep following!

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Setting as a Character with Kay Chronister 29:45

4d ago29:45

29:45

Kay Chronister joins me to talk about bogs and how environments influence a novel, Gothic vs horror elements, and physically experiencing a setting as part of the writing process. Kay’s novel, The Bog Wife, was published earlier this month by Counterpoint LLC. This week our Friday Readers are glowing about Same As It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo, Th…

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Kanupriya Dhingra, "Old Delhi's Parallel Book Bazaar" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 55:01

25d ago55:01

55:01

Old Delhi's Parallel Book Bazaar (Cambridge UP, 2024) looks at Old Delhi's Daryaganj Sunday Book Market, popularly known as Daryaganj Sunday Patri Kitab Bazaar, as a parallel location for books and a site of resilience and possibilities. The first section studies the bazaar's spatiality - its location, relocation, and spatialization. Three actors p…

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Hannah Weaver, "Experimental Histories: Interpolation and the Medieval British Past" (Cornell UP, 2024) 53:49

23h ago53:49

53:49

In Experimental Histories: Interpolation and the Medieval British Past (Cornell University Press, 2024), Dr. Hannah Weaver examines the mediaeval practice of interpolation—inserting material from one text into another—which is often categorised as being a problematic, inauthentic phenomenon akin to forgery and pseudepigraphy. Instead, Weaver promot…

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Thinking Machines: The First AI Takeover Story 33:50

3d ago33:50

33:50

It’s the UConn Popcast, and in the second of our series on Thinking Machines we consider Karel Čapek’s “Rossum’s Universal Robots” (1920). Čapek’s play invented the word “robot” and pioneered the genre of the AI uprising. The play - a clear influence on works such as 2001, Blade Runner, The Terminator, and Battlestar Galactica – is a deep ruminatio…

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Jonathan A. Allan, "Uncut: A Cultural Analysis of the Foreskin" (U Regina Press, 2024) 32:51

3d ago32:51

32:51

The “uncut” penis is viewed by some as attractive or erotic, and by others as ugly or undesirable. Secular parents of male infants worry about whether or not the foreskin should be removed so their little boy can grow up to “look like dad” or to avoid imagined bullying in the locker room. Medical experts and public health organisations argue back a…

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Kalidasa's Winter in Ritusamhara 11:19

4d ago11:19

11:19

In the fifth chapter of our Ritusamhara series, we read parts of Kalidasa's poetry where he discusses the chilly and frosty charms of winter. Keep following us on www.kalampedia.org and do not forget to subscribe. Thank you for listening!

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Georgia Henley, "Reimagining the Past in the Borderlands of Medieval England and Wales" (Oxford UP, 2024) 45:42

4d ago45:42

45:42

Challenging the standard view that England emerged as a dominant power and Wales faded into obscurity after Edward I's conquest in 1282, Reimagining the Past in the Borderlands of Medieval England and Wales (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Georgia Henley considers how Welsh (and British) history became an enduringly potent instrument of polit…

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Ghosts In Our Fields 28:15

4d ago28:15

28:15

High Theory returns with a series of haunting concepts, places, and figures from our former guests. We asked folks to call in with something spookworthy (neologism!) from their fields – real or imagined specters, scary ideas, anything that could haunt, disorient, unsettle, horrify. And we got a full seance worth of ghosts. Listen if you dare! This …

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Angel Daniel Matos, "The Reparative Impulse of Queer Young Adult Literature" (Routledge, 2024) 1:16:54

4d ago1:16:54

1:16:54

The Reparative Impulse of Queer Young Adult Literature (Routledge, 2024) is a provocative meditation on emotion, mood, history, and futurism in the critique of queer texts created for younger audiences. Given critical demands to distance queer youth culture from narratives of violence, sadness, and hurt that have haunted the queer imagination, this…

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Alistaire Tallent, "Fictions of Pleasure: The Putain Memoirs of Prerevolutionary France" (U Delaware Press, 2023) 49:03

5d ago49:03

49:03

Alistaire Tallent joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, Fictions of Pleasure: The Putain Memoirs of Prerevolutionary France (University of Delaware Press, 2024). Out of the libertine literary tradition of eighteenth-century France emerged over a dozen memoir novels of female libertines who eagerly take up sex work as a means of escape from t…

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Bihani Sarkar, "Classical Sanskrit Tragedy: The Concept of Suffering and Pathos in Medieval India" (I. B. Tauris, 2021) 1:24:55

6d ago1:24:55

1:24:55

It is often assumed that classical Sanskrit poetry and drama lack a concern with the tragic. However, as Bihani Sarkar makes clear in Classical Sanskrit Tragedy: The Concept of Suffering and Pathos in Medieval India (I. B. Tauris, 2021), this is far from the case. In the first study of tragedy in classical Sanskrit literature, Sarkar draws on a wid…

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Lennard J. Davis, "Poor Things: How Those with Money Depict Those Without It" (Duke UP, 2024) 32:24

6d ago32:24

32:24

For generations most of the canonical works that detail the lives of poor people have been created by rich or middle-class writers like Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck, or James Agee. This has resulted in overwhelming depictions of poor people as living abject, violent lives in filthy and degrading conditions. In Poor Things: How Those with Money D…

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Ritusamhara - Kalidasa on Early Winter 11:45

7d ago11:45

11:45

In the fourth part of our Ritusamhara (The Garland of Seasons) series, we read more about the poetic genius of Kalidasa. It is the season of early winter and that's precisely what we discuss in this episode. Feel free to share your thoughts on contactkalampedia@gmail.com and help me improve.

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Sarah Dimick, "Unseasonable: Climate Change in Global Literatures" (Columbia UP, 2024) 55:03

7d ago55:03

55:03

As climate change alters seasons around the globe, literature registers and responds to shifting environmental time. A writer and a fisher track the distribution of beach trash in Chennai, chronicling disruptions in seasonal winds and currents along the Bay of Bengal. An essayist in the northeastern United States observes that maple sap flows earli…

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Dennis Wuerthner, "Poems and Stories for Overcoming Idleness: P’ahan chip by Yi Illo" (U Hawaii Press, 2024) 1:37:55

8d ago1:37:55

1:37:55

Dr. Dennis Wuerthner’s Poems and Stories for Overcoming Idleness: P’ahan chip by Yi Illo (U Hawaii Press, 2024) is the first complete English translation of one of the oldest extant Korean source materials. The scholar, Yi Illo (1152–1220), filled this collection with poetry by himself and diverse writers, ranging from Chinese master poets and Kory…

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Kristopher Jansma, "Our Narrow Hiding Places" (Ecco, 2024), "Revisionaries" (Quirk Books, 2024) 49:19

8d ago49:19

49:19

Kristopher grew up in Lincroft, New Jersey. He received his B.A. in The Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University and an M.F.A. in Fiction from Columbia University. He is the author of the critically-acclaimed novels, OUR NARROW HIDING PLACES (Ecco/2024) WHY WE CAME TO THE CITY (Viking/2016) and THE UNCHANGEABLE SPOTS OF LEOPARDS, (Viking/2013…

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Kalidasa's Autumn in Ritusamhara 11:00

9d ago11:00

11:00

In the third chapter of our Ritusamhara series, I discuss Kalidasa's poetic descriptions of autumn. Let me know your thoughts at contactkalampedia@gmail.com. Thank you for tuning in.

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Eve Dunbar, "Monstrous Work and Radical Satisfaction: Black Women Writing Under Segregation" (U Minnesota Press, 2024) 46:55

9d ago46:55

46:55

Monstrous Work and Radical Satisfaction: Black Women Writing Under Segregation (U Minnesota Press, 2024) offers new and insightful readings of African American women's writings in the 1930s-1950s, illustrating how these writers centered Black women's satisfaction as radical resistance to the false and incomplete promise of liberal racial integratio…

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Writing as Therapy with Jessica Hendry Nelson 26:51

11d ago26:51

26:51

Jessica Hendry Nelson joins me to talk about memoir vs. creative nonfiction, ownership over a story, and therapeutic outlets in writing. Jessica’s novel, Joy Rides Through the Tunnel of Grief, came out in September of 2023 with The University of Georgia Press. In Pop! Goes the Culture, I discuss manmade monsters in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Poo…

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To Gallop Again and Again into Failure: Kaveh Akbar and Pardis Dabashi (SW) 48:11

11d ago48:11

48:11

An unforgettable horse gallops through the pages of Kaveh Akbar’s best-selling novel Martyr! (2024), but it is a figurative hastening toward failure and the limitations of language that Akbar discusses with critic Pardis Dabashi. In their conversation, Kaveh considers writing both as an escape from the confines of the self and as a vehicle for expr…

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Kalidasa on Rains and Monsoon - Ritusamhara 15:22

12d ago15:22

15:22

In the second episode of this series where I am discussing Kalidasa's Ritusamhara (The Garland of Seasons), I discuss the chapter on rains. You can reach out on contactkalampedia@gmail.com for any feedback, queries etc.

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Seth Kimmel, "The Librarian's Atlas: The Shape of Knowledge in Early Modern Spain" (U Chicago Press, 2024) 47:20

13d ago47:20

47:20

In The Librarian's Atlas: The Shape of Knowledge in Early Modern Spain (U Chicago Press, 2024) Seth Kimmel explores the material history of libraries to challenge debates about the practice and politics of information management in early modern Europe. Ancient bibliographers and medieval scholastics, Kimmel reminds us, imagined the library as a mic…

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Ritusamhara - Kalidasa's Ode to Seasons - Part 1 - Summer 14:03

15d ago14:03

14:03

Ritusamhara is Kalidasa's ode to the six major seasons of India. It is an 1500 year old text which still describes India's seasons as wonderfully as it did back then. In this episode, I discuss the first chapter of this book. It is about the summer season. Hope you will like it. Feel free to share your thoughts on contactkalampedia@gmail.com and ke…

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Benjamin Bergholtz, "Swallowing a World: Globalization and the Maximalist Novel" (U Nebraska Press, 2024) 52:08

15d ago52:08

52:08

Swallowing a World: Globalization and the Maximalist Novel (U Nebraska Press, 2024) offers a new theorization of the maximalist novel. Though it’s typically cast as a (white, male) genre of U.S. fiction, maximalism, Benjamin Bergholtz argues, is an aesthetic response to globalization and a global phenomenon in its own right. Bergholtz considers a s…

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Sonja Stojanovic, "Mind the Ghost: Thinking Memory and the Untimely Through Contemporary Fiction in French" (Liverpool UP, 2023) 1:06:47

16d ago1:06:47

1:06:47

Spectrality disrupts and fissures our conceptions of time, unmaking and complicating binaries such as life and death, presence and absence, the visible and the invisible, and literality and metaphor. A contribution to current conversations in memory studies and spectrality studies, Mind the Ghost: Thinking Memory and the Untimely Through Contempora…

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381: Everybody Dies 58:40

17d ago58:40

58:40

The Nanotech War. Star Trek Voyager is a polarizing series to say the least and yet in the realm of literature, it has made for some of the best stories in Treklit. In this episode of Literary Treks hosts Casey Pettitt and Jonathan Koan talk about The Nanotech War. We discuss the book not being numbered, first impression, first contact, B’Elanna an…

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Mother Is a Form of Magic with Johanna Copeland 29:53

18d ago29:53

29:53

Johanna Copeland joins Bethanne Patrick to talk about finding community post pandemic and creation in the time of motherhood. Johanna’s novel, Our Kind of Game, came out this summer with HarperCollins. She is a former corporate attorney and fellow northern Virginia resident. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a story about guilt, shame, a…

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Christopher Smith, "Samurai with Telephones: Anachronism in Japanese Literature" (U Michigan Press, 2024) 42:02

18d ago42:02

42:02

What is going on when a graphic novel has a twelfth-century samurai pick up a telephone to make a call, or a play has an ancient aristocrat teaching in a present-day schoolroom? Rather than regarding such anachronisms as errors, Samurai with Telephones: Anachronism in Japanese Literature (U Michigan Press, 2024) develops a theory of how texts can u…

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Amy Reading, "The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker" (Mariner Books, 2024) 56:35

18d ago56:35

56:35

In the summer of 1925, Katharine Sergeant Angell White walked into The New Yorker's midtown office and left with a job as an editor. The magazine was only a few months old. Over the next thirty-six years, White would transform the publication into a literary powerhouse. The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker (Mariner Books, 2024…

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Beth Blum on Self-Help, Dale Carnegie to Today (JP) 29:44

19d ago29:44

29:44

Beth Blum, Assistant Professor of English at Harvard, is the author of The Self-Help Compulsion (Columbia University Press 2019). In 2020, she spoke with John about how self-help went from its Victorian roots (worship greatness!) to the ingratiating unctuous style prescribed by the other-directed Dale Carnegie (everyone loves the sound of their own…

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Suganya Anandakichenin, "The Monsoon Cloud: Poet Kāḷamēkam and His Irreverent Poetry" (Primus, 2024) 35:36

19d ago35:36

35:36

A wordsmith, an extempore poet and a satirist, Kāḷamēkam (also known as Kāḷamēka Pulavar; fifteenth century) is widely known for his taṉippāṭals or 'self-contained verses', on a panoply of topics. These splendid but notoriously provocative verses were composed during a transitional phase of Tamil literature, by now in deep conversation with Sanskri…

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Psychoanalytic Defense Mechanisms in James Baldwin’s "Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone" 41:36

20d ago41:36

41:36

This podcast describes a short history of a man who did something we’ve lost in America. That man was James Baldwin who insisted on telling the truth. He confronted the harsh realities of racism, believing that exposing its ugliness was necessary for progress. He rejected simplistic solutions, arguing that racism was deeply rooted in American consc…

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Aldous Huxley's Travel Essays 17:23

22d ago17:23

17:23

A Book A Day Podcast is back after a long gap. Thank you for keeping your patience. In this episode, I discuss some of the travel essays by Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World and The Doors of Perception. He offers a philosophical perspective on our need to travel and asks some really insightful questions. Let me know what you think of it. You…

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V. Domontovych, "On Shaky Ground" (CEU Press, 2024) 28:10

22d ago28:10

28:10

In this episode host, Andrea Talabér (CEU Press) sits down with Oksana Rosenblum, the translator of the new addition to our CEU Press Classics series, On Shaky Ground by V. Domontovych. We talk about Domontovych’s background, the process of translation, and about Oksana’s own memories of reading the book for the first time in the early 1990s. On Sh…

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P. Djèlí Clark on Why He Writes 29:55

22d ago29:55

29:55

P. Djèlí Clark is the author of acclaimed and award-winning speculative fiction, including the much-loved Dead Djinn universe books, Ring Shout, and his most recent, The Dead Cat Tail Assassins. We speak with him about why he writes, how he sees speculative fiction as a genre, whether we can expect to see more Dead Djinn books, the origins of his a…

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Helena Taylor, "Women Writing Antiquity: Gender and Learning in Early Modern France" (Oxford UP, 2024) 1:01:25

23d ago1:01:25

1:01:25

Women Writing Antiquity: Gender and Learning in Early Modern France (Oxford UP, 2024) recounts women authors' struggle to define the female intellectual through their engagement with the classical world in early modern France. Bringing together the fields of classical reception and women writers, Helena Taylor looks at various female novelists, tra…

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Eunsong Kim, "The Politics of Collecting: Race and the Aestheticization of Property" (Duke UP, 2024) 1:18:50

24d ago1:18:50

1:18:50

In The Politics of Collecting: Race and the Aestheticization of Property (Duke University Press, 2024), Eunsong Kim traces how racial capitalism and colonialism situated the rise of US museum collections and conceptual art forms. Investigating historical legal and property claims, she argues that regimes of expropriation—rather than merit or good t…

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Cami D. Agan, "Cities and Strongholds of Middle-earth: Essays on the Habitations of Tolkien's Legendarium" (Mythopoeic Press, 2024) 39:10

24d ago39:10

39:10

The 13 essays collected in Cities and Strongholds of Middle-earth: Essays on the Habitations of Tolkien's Legendarium (Mythopoeic Press, 2024) foreground processes of making and constructing Arda -- either within the Secondary world or for readers/viewers -- and thus continually assert that the habitations form a vital part of the tales within that…

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Claire Messud on Writing Family 24:59

24d ago24:59

24:59

In this episode of The Book Maven: A Literary Revue, Bethanne Patrick sits down with Claire Messud to discuss her book, This Strange Eventful History, and the challenges that arise when writing about your kin, good and bad. So many readers love Jane Austen as an author unreservedly, and the same goes for Emma as a novel. But in today’s “Canon or Ca…

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Satoru Hashimoto, "Afterlives of Letters: The Transnational Origins of Modern Literature in China, Japan, and Korea" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:13:16

25d ago1:13:16

1:13:16

When East Asia opened itself to the world in the nineteenth century, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean intellectuals had shared notions of literature because of the centuries-long cultural exchanges in the region. As modernization profoundly destabilized cultural norms, they ventured to create new literature for the new era. Satoru Hashimoto offers a n…

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A.J. Jacobs on Living Constitutionally 33:32

25d ago33:32

33:32

In this premiere episode of The Book Maven: A Literary Revue, Bethanne Patrick sits down with AJ Jacobs to discuss his book, The Year of Living Constitutionally, and the dangers of living by potentially outdated texts. If there's a literary work that has been adapted into more forms than Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, well it must be Winnie the Pooh. B…

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Dirt Bag Novels: Lydia Kiesling in Conversation with Megan Ward (CH) 48:18

26d ago48:18

48:18

What does it mean for a novel to think globally? And can a global novel concerned with the macro movements of capital and labor still exist in the form of a bildungsroman? This conversation between Lydia Kiesling and Megan Ward takes up questions of form and political consciousness in the novel, globality and rootedness, capitalism and the yearning…

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Scott Henderson, "Comics and Pop Culture: Adaptation from Panel to Frame" (U Texas Press, 2019) 1:06:53

28d ago1:06:53

1:06:53

It is hard to discuss the current film industry without acknowledging the impact of comic book adaptations, especially considering the blockbuster success of recent superhero movies. Yet transmedial adaptations are part of an evolution that can be traced to the turn of the last century, when comic strips such as “Little Nemo in Slumberland” and “Fe…

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Iris Jamahl Dunkle, "Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb" (U California Press, 2024) 52:12

30d ago52:12

52:12

In 1939, when John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was published, it became an instant bestseller and a prevailing narrative in the nation's collective imagination of the era. But it also stopped the publication of another important novel, silencing a gifted writer who was more intimately connected to the true experiences of Dust Bowl migrants. In …

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Introducing The Book Maven: A Literary Revue 1:46

1M ago1:46

1:46

Introducing The Book Maven: A Literary Revue. Hosted by Bethanne Patrick, who You may know online as @thebookmaven or as the author of a memoir called Life B and a book critic who’s been published in the LA Times, the Washington Post, and Oprah Daily, among others, the Book Maven: A Literary Revue is a variety show where we'll cover the canon and n…

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Recall This Story: Part 2 of Linda Schlossberg on Alice Munro's "Miles City, Montana" (JP) 54:51

1M ago54:51

54:51

You will want to start with Part 1 of episode 135; it can be found right here. Linda Schlossberg, author of Life in Miniature, who teaches at Harvard, joins RTB to read and explore one of her favorite Alice Munro stories, "Miles City, Montana" in our new series, Recall This Story. The discussion ranges widely. This story first appeared in The New Y…

1
William Cook Miller, "The Enthusiast: Anatomy of the Fanatic in Seventeenth-Century British Culture" (Cornell UP, 2023) 59:55

1M ago59:55

59:55

The Enthusiast: Anatomy of the Fanatic in Seventeenth-Century British Culture (Cornell UP, 2023) tells the story of a character type that was developed in early modern Britain to discredit radical prophets during an era that witnessed the dismantling of the Church of England's traditional means for punishing heresy. As William Cook Miller shows, th…

1
Recall This Story: Part 1 of Linda Schlossberg on Alice Munro's "Miles City Montana" (JP) 48:23

1M ago48:23

48:23

Linda Schlossberg, author of Life in Miniature, who teaches at Harvard, joins RTB to read and explore one of her favorite Alice Munro stories, "Miles City, Montana" in our new series, Recall This Story. The discussion ranges widely. This story first appeared in The New Yorker (1/6/1985) and was reprinted in The Progress of Love (1986) one Munro's m…

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Julia Caterina Hartley, "Iran and French Orientalism: Persia in the Literary Culture of Nineteenth-Century France" (Bloomsbury. 2023) 44:52

1M ago44:52

44:52

Today I talked to Julia Caterina Hartley about Iran and French Orientalism: Persia in the Literary Culture of Nineteenth-Century France (Bloomsbury. 2023). New translations of Persian literature into French, the invention of the Aryan myth, increased travel between France and Iran, and the unveiling of artefacts from ancient Susa at the Louvre Muse…

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