A Case For Classics

It's finally here! The Dickens Episode! It's okay to have complicated feelings about the man, but we have to admit that his works are important to our society and culture. Some of them, at least.

It's the last episode, but it's not too sad. I'm not going anywhere...not really.

Winner of the 1961 Pulitzer Prize, To Kill a Mockingbird is still an important piece of American literature, we just need to adjust some things.

Talking about the 1953 Pulitzer Prize winner, The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. Not gonna lie, Hemingway is most of the focus...but he should be.

This is a quick one, just some tidbits about the Pulitzer Prize before we begin our series on works that won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Recast of original Episode 5, I get to talk about on of my favorite works ever, classic or not, Beowulf!

The Master and Margarita is one of the few books I'll cover on this podcast that actually has a rabid fanbase. So my job is easy, right?

Juiced up recast of Episode 4 with some extra material. Oscar Wilde and The Picture of Dorian Grey are the case.

Puliter Prize winning American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay is this case today.

This week's case is about Irish poet William Butler Yeats and his works.

This isn't a full re-cast of Episode 3, this is mostly new material of me explaining why, OH WHY, I don't like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Let's get weird this week as we talk H.G. Wells' classic The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Recast of Episode 2 where I made a case for Gustave Flaubert's classics work Madame Bovary.

Joseph Conrad's work Heart of Darkness is the case this week, but I somehow added more love for T.S. Eliot and Hunter S. Thompson.

I'm going back and redoing some of my earlier episodes, improving and adding a bit. Today's is Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451!

I read the wrong translation! Oh well, we're still going to talk about the woman who wrote this work, The Tale of Genji, and about the time in Japanese history that it represents. Good trivia here!

In honor of Black History Month, I talk about Frederick Douglass and, like, a fraction of his accomplishments. He was incredible.

Shirley Jackson is the whole case this week. I've found that not only do I need to read more of her work, I also need to read a biography on her as well!

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell is a great British book that has nothing to do with the American Civil War...I now know. But it's a fantastic read that I'm glad I found.

I'm back on poetry this week and I discuss Alfred, Lord Tennyson and his works.

With the New Year still fresh and shiny, I'm just doing a simple episode talking about the state of this humble little podcast.

Today's case is about someone so cool, she didn't have to obey the rules of grammar! That's bell hooks and she was a writer who had several works that should be read by anyone identifying as human.

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James is a work that has no consensus from readers as to whether it's actually about ghosts or not. That just makes it more interesting.

We're talking about a great play in this episode! Cyrano de Bergerac is a terrific good time and I can't imagine you wanting to pass this one up!

In this episode, it's all about Emily Dickinson, one of the most important American poets of the nineteenth century.

Algernon Blackwood's classic The Willows is a great short story, a true tale of horror for nature-lovers!

This is another bonus episode recast, this one about a biography on Anais Nin titled, "ANAIS: The Erotic Life of Anais Nin" by Noel Riley Fitch. Check it out!

Octavia E. Butler's classic, Kindred is a work that transcends genre. I hadn't read it before, but I freaking loved it.

Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel, A Brave New World is today's subject. I almost departed from horror, but this still counts. Boy, does it ever.

In keeping with spooky season, I'm talking Edgar Allan Poe this week. But make no mistake, he wrote MUCH more than horror.

Since today is the Autumnal Equinox, I thought we'd go spooky with one of the truly seminal works of horror, The House on the Borderland.

Sense and Sensibility might be my second favorite Jane Austen work. I love the book, but hey, the movie hits it out of the park too!

L. Frank Baum wrote the first American fairy tale with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It's a surprising book that no movie has yet lived up to.

I make a case for Valmiki's culturally important epic poem, The Ramayana. There might be a flying monkey and a blue guy, but this is a SERIOUS work!

It's another bonus episode, but it's a fun one where I lay down my movie adaptation-hating mantle and allow that sometimes, not only do movies get it right, they do it better. Sometimes.

Let's talk circluar logic and a war book that is just plain fun with Joseph Heller's classic, Catch-22.

It's another bonus episode from my Patreon days and it's a funny one about details from Dante's Inferno that I originally left out of the main show for fear of offending a listener. Oh well!

Ambrose Bierce was a short story writer with an influence that is far-reaching. And he was a notorious grouch with an amazing name.

I'm talking about Franz Kafka's amazing (and short) work, The Metamorphosis! You need a BIG can of Raid for this one.

Ovid's Metamorphoses is one of the greatest epic poems in the Latin language. Myths, gods, heroes, and and endless stream of rape victims. It's harsh, but absolutely worth a read.

I need a little more time for the next two episodes, so please enjoy this Bonus Episode from my Patreon!

No particular case this week, as I wanted to talk about an Ancient Athenian playwright who wrote plays that are STILL being produced!

With hope for an end in sight, I thought it was time to finally talk about Giovanni Boccaccio's plague-set book, The Decameron.

This week we talk about Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize winning classic, Beloved. It's spoiler-lite, so please do your best to keep this book a surprise before you read it.

This week is a little something special, a little something different. It's a bonus episode from my Patreon account, which I'm shutting down, on Stephen King's Rose Madder. Enjoy!

Let's talk AMERICA and how it was portrayed, lovingly believe it or not, by Sinclair Lewis in his work Main Street.

He's a great poet for beginners and old hat poetry fans alike! This week, I make a case for a man who won FOUR Pulitzer Prizes for poetry, Robert Frost.

Listener request! I make a case for Erich Maria Remarque's WWI classic, All Quiet on the Western Front. I'm glad to have read this book.

This week we talk about the highly impactful, talented poet, Audre Lorde.

In honor of Black History Month, I wanted to highlight two Black American creators of classical works. First is James Baldwin and his work, The Fire Next Time.

It's the end of the Russian Literature Miniseries and I end it on a man and not a work. Wires got crossed, but we still talk about an interesting man, Vladimir Nabokov.