Radio Read Along

The CenterForLit crew wraps up Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage with a discussion of our reactions to the story, Western tropes, and the novel’s strange ending. We also announce the next title for the Radio Read Along podcast!

In which Venters and Lassiter become better acquainted…

The wait is over! Radio Read Along is back, and this time we’re taking it easy with a little lite reading for the summer. Adam Andrews is reading Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey, a good old western romp that scholars point to as the origin of Western genre fiction.

As we wrap up Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the CenterForLit crew discusses the question of the story’s protagonist, unreliable narrators, and the relationship of the three story frames. We also reveal our next Radio Read Along title!

The conclusion to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein…

In which Victor, with questionable judgment, gives himself that which he denied the monster…

In which things take a turn for the worse after Victor has a change of heart…

In which Victor and Henry embark on a quaint English “vacation”…

In which the creature wraps up his story and makes a special request of Victor…

In which Frankenstein’s creature works up the courage to make himself known to the De Lacey family…

In which the monster recounts his time stalking the De Lacy family…

Now that we’re halfway through Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the CenterForLit crew paused to discuss what we’ve read thus far. Topics include the influence of Romanticism in the story, Byronic heroes, the problem of first person narratives, and the age old question: who is the protagonist, Victor Frankenstein or his creature?

In which we finally get to hear things from the monster’s perspective…

In which Victor Frankenstein suffers the secret knowledge of his creature’s violence…