Good Scribes Only
Daniel Breyer, Jeremy Streich
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Top 10 Good Scribes Only Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Good Scribes Only episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Good Scribes Only for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Good Scribes Only episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
#84 🎬 American Fiction, Dark comedies, and Love on a Leash
Good Scribes Only
05/08/24 • 18 min
Episode Summary
About the Book
Goodreads Summarizes A Visit from the Goon Squad as: a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both—and escape the merciless progress of time—in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers.
About the Author:
Jennifer Egan is the author of several novels and a short story collection. Her 2017 novel, Manhattan Beach, a New York Times bestseller, was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and was chosen as New York City’s One Book One New York read. Her previous novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times book prize, and was named one of the best books of the decade by Time Magazine and Entertainment Weekly. Also a journalist, she has written frequently in the New York Times Magazine, and she recently completed a term as President of PEN America. Her new novel, The Candy House, a sibling to A Visit From the Goon Squad, was published in April, 2022, and was recently named one of the New York Times’s 10 Best Books of 2022, as well as one of President Obama’s favorite reads of 2022
About the Show:
Good Scribes Only is a podcast for curious minds to explore, challenge, and think differently through books. In Season 6, we’re traveling through 2010-2024, year by year, because Dan couldn't remember what the world was like before ChatGPT.
#88 🤨 Mad Men, Succession, Anti-heroes, and Complex Characters
Good Scribes Only
06/05/24 • 17 min
About The Book:
Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.
About The Author:
Eowyn Ivey's first novel, The Snow Child, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction and an international bestseller. To the Bright Edge of the World was a Library Journal Top Ten Book of the Year, a BookPage Best Book of the year, and a Washington Post Notable Book. Eowyn was raised in Alaska and continues to live there with her husband and two daughters.
About The Podcast:
About The Show:
Good Scribes Only is a podcast for curious minds to explore, challenge, and think differently through books. In Season 6, we’re traveling through 2010-2024, year by year, because Dan couldn't remember what the world was like before ChatGPT.
#42 🧑🎨 Portrait of the Artist as a Man by James Joyce
Good Scribes Only
08/08/23 • 62 min
About the Episode
In this 3rd episode of Season 4, we read Portrait of the Artist as a Man by James Joyce
Rich in details that offer vital insights into Joyce's art, this masterpiece of semi-autobiographical fiction remains essential reading in any program of study in modern literature. The book follows its main character, Stephen Dedalus, from childhood to adulthood on a quest to find identity. Through art, Dedalus gradually emancipates himself from family, religious, and claims of Ireland itself. Both an insight into Joyce's life and childhood, and a unique work of modernist fiction, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a novel of sexual awakening, religious rebellion and the essential search for voice and meaning that every nascent artist must face in order to blossom fully into themselves.
We hope you enjoy!
About the Show
Hosted by novelists and entrepreneurs Daniel Breyer & Jeremy Streich, Good Scribes Only is a podcast for curious minds to explore, challenge, and think differently through books. In Season 4 we’re traveling through the 20th century, decade by decade, because Dan really wanted to see what the world was like before plumbing was a common thing.
Episode Notes
0-5 min — Poor excuse for Irish accents
5-10 min — Introduction to James Joyce
10-15 min — Plot summary
15-20 min — Irish Independence
20-25 min — Meaning of the title
25-30 min — Genius in art
30-40 min — Plot continued
40-45 min — On retreats
45-50 min — Religion at the time
50-55 min — Final thoughts on the book
55-60 min — Ratings and conclusion
#83 👨🎤 A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2010)
Good Scribes Only
04/30/24 • 65 min
About the Book
Goodreads Summarizes A Visit from the Goon Squad as: a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both—and escape the merciless progress of time—in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers.
About the Author:
Jennifer Egan is the author of several novels and a short story collection. Her 2017 novel, Manhattan Beach, a New York Times bestseller, was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and was chosen as New York City’s One Book One New York read. Her previous novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times book prize, and was named one of the best books of the decade by Time Magazine and Entertainment Weekly. Also a journalist, she has written frequently in the New York Times Magazine, and she recently completed a term as President of PEN America. Her new novel, The Candy House, a sibling to A Visit From the Goon Squad, was published in April, 2022, and was recently named one of the New York Times’s 10 Best Books of 2022, as well as one of President Obama’s favorite reads of 2022
About the Show:
Good Scribes Only is a podcast for curious minds to explore, challenge, and think differently through books. In Season 6, we’re traveling through 2010-2024, year by year, because Dan couldn't remember what the world was like before ChatGPT.
#67 🥋 Fear, Regret, Shadow Careers, and Brazilian Jiujitsu
Good Scribes Only
01/12/24 • 15 min
About the Book
Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle—yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.
About the Author
Murakami Haruki (Japanese: 村上 春樹) is a popular contemporary Japanese writer and translator. His work has been described as 'easily accessible, yet profoundly complex'. He can be located on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/harukimuraka...Since childhood, Murakami has been heavily influenced by Western culture, particularly Western music and literature. He grew up reading a range of works by American writers, such as Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and he is often distinguished from other Japanese writers by his Western influences.Murakami studied drama at Waseda University in Tokyo, where he met his wife, Yoko. His first job was at a record store, which is where one of his main characters, Toru Watanabe in Norwegian Wood, works. Shortly before finishing his studies, Murakami opened the coffeehouse 'Peter Cat' which was a jazz bar in the evening in Kokubunji, Tokyo with his wife.Many of his novels have themes and titles that invoke classical music, such as the three books making up The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: The Thieving Magpie (after Rossini's opera), Bird as Prophet (after a piano piece by Robert Schumann usually known in English as The Prophet Bird), and The Bird-Catcher (a character in Mozart's opera The Magic Flute). Some of his novels take their titles from songs: Dance, Dance, Dance (after The Dells' song, although it is widely thought it was titled after the Beach Boys tune), Norwegian Wood (after The Beatles' song) and South of the Border, West of the Sun (the first part being the title of a song by Nat King Cole).
About the Show
Hosted by novelists and entrepreneurs Daniel Breyer & Jeremy Streich, Good Scribes Only is a podcast for curious minds to explore, challenge, and think differently through books. In Season 5, we’re traveling through 2000-2010, year by year, because Dan couldn't remember what the world was like before ChatGPT.
#87 ⛄️ Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (2012)
Good Scribes Only
05/31/24 • 63 min
About The Book:
Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.
About The Author:
Eowyn Ivey's first novel, The Snow Child, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction and an international bestseller. To the Bright Edge of the World was a Library Journal Top Ten Book of the Year, a BookPage Best Book of the year, and a Washington Post Notable Book. Eowyn was raised in Alaska and continues to live there with her husband and two daughters.
About The Podcast:
About The Show:
Good Scribes Only is a podcast for curious minds to explore, challenge, and think differently through books. In Season 6, we’re traveling through 2010-2024, year by year, because Dan couldn't remember what the world was like before ChatGPT.
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#68 🧮 The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa (2003)
Good Scribes Only
01/16/24 • 63 min
About the Book
He is a brilliant mathematics professor grappling with a unique challenge - following a traumatic head injury, he retains only eighty minutes of short-term memory.
She is a perceptive young housekeeper, raising a ten-year-old son, and she is hired to provide care for him.
Each morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper reintroduce themselves to each other, a remarkable and touching relationship unfolds. Despite his limited memory span (his mind erases itself every eighty minutes), the Professor's intellect is alive with intricate mathematical equations from the past. These numbers, with their precise order, reveal a captivating and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son. The Professor possesses a knack for uncovering connections between the most mundane details, such as the Housekeeper's shoe size, and the vast universe, drawing their lives closer together even as his memories slip away.
"The Housekeeper and the Professor" is a captivating tale that explores the essence of living in the present and the intriguing equations that can forge a sense of family.
About the Show
Hosted by novelists and entrepreneurs Daniel Breyer & Jeremy Streich, Good Scribes Only is a podcast for curious minds to explore, challenge, and think differently through books. In Season 5, we’re traveling through 2000-2010, year by year, because Dan couldn't remember what the world was like before ChatGPT.
Episode Notes
0-10 min — Dan’s interesting medical history
10-15 min — Intro to the novel
15-20 min — Plot begins
20-25 min — Broader message of the book
25-30 min — The Professor as a character
30-35 min — Why the novel works
35-40 min — Chosen and given families
40-45 min — The power of relationships in fiction
45-55 min — Mathematics as a theme
55-60 min — Conclusion and ratings
#82 🗺️ Cities, Access to Nature, Norway, and Choosing Where to Live
Good Scribes Only
04/16/24 • 18 min
About The Book:
My Struggle: Book One introduces American listeners to the audacious, addictive, and profoundly surprising international literary sensation that is the provocative and brilliant six-volume autobiographical novel by Karl Ove Knausgaard. It has already been anointed a Proustian masterpiece and is the rare work of dazzling literary originality that is intensely, irresistibly readable. Unafraid of the big issues - death, love, art, fear - and yet committed to the intimate details of life as it is lived, My Struggle is an essential work of contemporary literature.
About The Author:
Nominated to the 2004 Nordic Council’s Literature Prize & awarded the 2004 Norwegian Critics’ Prize.
Karl Ove Knausgård (b. 1968) made his literary debut in 1998 with the widely acclaimed novel Out of the World, which was a great critical and commercial success and won him, as the first debut novel ever, The Norwegian Critics' Prize. He then went on to write six autobiographical novels, titled My Struggle (Min Kamp), which have become a publication phenomenon in his native Norway as well as the world over.
About the Show:
Good Scribes Only is a podcast for curious minds to explore, challenge, and think differently through books. In Season 5, we’re traveling through 2000-2010, year by year, because Dan couldn't remember what the world was like before ChatGPT.
#30 🇬🇹⚔️ The President by Miguel Angel Asturias
Good Scribes Only
05/15/23 • 65 min
You don’t always need a plane ticket to travel; sometimes, all you need is a book. Fiction allows us explore worlds beyond our own, taking us out of life’s everyday tangles, and allowing us to move forward with a wider perspective. So rather than travel physically, Good Scribes Only is traveling to Europe, Africa, Central America, North America, Oceania, the Middle East, and Asia by way of literature. Third stop, Guatemala!
The President by Miguel Angel Asturias is as ruthless as it is hilarious. It chronicles the tale of a cruel dictator and his plots to eliminate just about every political opponent in his path. The book has long been lauded as one of, if not the greatest, depiction of the harmful affects of totalitarianism within a country, and its people.
In The President, Asturias draws from personal experience as a journalist in an oppressive time in Guatemala's history, but it's not as dark as some other books we've discussed. He uses humor, satire, and absurdism to illustrate the kinds of governmental transgressions he dealt with, and how living in a police state warps an individual’s psyche. Asturias was famously outspoken against all forms of injustice in Guatemala, and it earned him a reputation that brought both awards and imprisonment. But the man was clearly a trailblazer for his time: In his Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech, for example, Asturias vowed that his work would "continue to reflect the voice of the Latin American people and their problems." Part satire, part who-dunnit crime drama, part social commentary, The President is a great read for anyone interested in social commentary and/or in that bizarre (and unfortunate) moment in Latin American history.
Hosted by novelists and entrepreneurs Daniel Breyer & Jeremy Streich, Good Scribes Only is a podcast for curious minds to explore, challenge, and think differently through books. Sometimes even traveling to a place doesn't permit you to see it for how it really is for those who live there. Fiction, on the other hand, can. And thus, season 3 is about widening our perspective. We hope you're coming along can help do the same. Be sure to check out the Episode Cheat Sheet for an overview.
We hope you enjoy this discussion about The President by Miguel Angel Asturias
Episode Notes
0-5 min — Intro
5-15 min — Casting the movie
10-15 min — Part 1 plot summary
15-20 min — Why use humor?
20-25 min — Depiction of totalitarianism
25-30 min — Viewing culture from the outside
30-35 min — Character overview
35-40 min — Part 2 plot summary
40-45 min — Political history in Latin America
45-50 min — The power of fiction
50-55 min — Plot conclusion
55-60 min — Wrap up
#66 🐈 Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (2002)
Good Scribes Only
01/09/24 • 69 min
About the Book
Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle—yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.
About the Author
Murakami Haruki (Japanese: 村上 春樹) is a popular contemporary Japanese writer and translator. His work has been described as 'easily accessible, yet profoundly complex'. He can be located on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/harukimuraka...
Since childhood, Murakami has been heavily influenced by Western culture, particularly Western music and literature. He grew up reading a range of works by American writers, such as Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and he is often distinguished from other Japanese writers by his Western influences.
Murakami studied drama at Waseda University in Tokyo, where he met his wife, Yoko. His first job was at a record store, which is where one of his main characters, Toru Watanabe in Norwegian Wood, works. Shortly before finishing his studies, Murakami opened the coffeehouse 'Peter Cat' which was a jazz bar in the evening in Kokubunji, Tokyo with his wife.
Many of his novels have themes and titles that invoke classical music, such as the three books making up The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: The Thieving Magpie (after Rossini's opera), Bird as Prophet (after a piano piece by Robert Schumann usually known in English as The Prophet Bird), and The Bird-Catcher (a character in Mozart's opera The Magic Flute). Some of his novels take their titles from songs: Dance, Dance, Dance (after The Dells' song, although it is widely thought it was titled after the Beach Boys tune), Norwegian Wood (after The Beatles' song) and South of the Border, West of the Sun (the first part being the title of a song by Nat King Cole).
About the Show
Hosted by novelists and entrepreneurs Daniel Breyer & Jeremy Streich, Good Scribes Only is a podcast for curious minds to explore, challenge, and think differently through books. In Season 5, we’re traveling through 2000-2010, year by year, because Dan couldn't remember what the world was like before ChatGPT.
Show Notes
0-5 min — Introduction
5-10 min — Casting
10-15 min — Murakami’s process
15-25 min — Plot summary
25-30 min — Characters: Nkata and Kafka
30-35 min — Sexuality in the book
35-40 min — Free will and fate
40-45 min — Plot conclusion
45-50 min — What we liked
50-55 min — On loss and regret
55-60 min — John Updike’s thoughts
60-70 min — Conclusion
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FAQ
How many episodes does Good Scribes Only have?
Good Scribes Only currently has 129 episodes available.
What topics does Good Scribes Only cover?
The podcast is about Writer, Classics, Literature, Novels, History, Craft, Reading, Writing, Writers, Author, Podcasts, Books, Book, Science Fiction, Arts, Fantasy, Authors and Novel.
What is the most popular episode on Good Scribes Only?
The episode title '#90 👨🚀 Texas, California, Jon Stewart, Wokism, and an Unfortunate Foray into Politics' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Good Scribes Only?
The average episode length on Good Scribes Only is 42 minutes.
How often are episodes of Good Scribes Only released?
Episodes of Good Scribes Only are typically released every 6 days.
When was the first episode of Good Scribes Only?
The first episode of Good Scribes Only was released on May 13, 2022.
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