Our Second Favorite Books by Dead Authors

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07/14/21 • 44 min

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We've heard them rave about their favorites and rant about their least favorites, but Marlon and Jake reveal in this episode their second favorite books by dead authors: the books they love that are the runners-up to the #1 spots in their hearts. From Amos Tutuola to Gabriel García Márquez to John le Carré and more, Marlon and Jake explore why one's favorite book by an author might not always be their best book, what separates an intellectual vs. an emotional response to a book, and the importance of being a promiscuous reader. (That’s right, promiscuous.) And what is the next book by a dead author Marlon and Jake will be reading together for the first time? Tune in to find out!

Select Titles Discussed:

Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul
Darkness Visible by William Golding
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Shardik by Richard Adams
Watership Down by Richard Adams
The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
Shōgun by James Clavell
Airport by Arthur Hailey
The Moneychangers by Arthur Hailey
The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John le Carré
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré
The Honorable Schoolboy by John le Carré
Smiley’s People by John le Carré
A Perfect Spy by John le Carré
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Sula by Toni Morrison
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Blood on the Forge by William Attaway
My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber

Select Titles Discussed:

Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul
Darkness Visible by William Golding
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Shardik by Richard Adams
Watership Down by Richard Adams
The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
Shōgun by James Clavell
Airport by Arthur Hailey
The Moneychangers by Arthur Hailey
The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John le Carré
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré
The Honorable Schoolboy by John le Carré
Smiley’s People by John le Carré
A Perfect Spy by John le Carré
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Sula by Toni Morrison
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Blood on the Forge by William Attaway
My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber

Previous Episode

Good Books By Terrible People

1 Recommendations

Marlon & Jake weigh in on the age-old “artist versus art” debate, as they examine good books by problematic dead authors, as well as the bad and sometimes problematic books by great dead authors. From Flannery O’Conner to Roald Dahl, Vladimir Nabokov to the surprisingly challenging Charles Dickens, Marlon & Jake explore the thorny questions surrounding the books worth fighting for and the ones worth fighting over. How exactly do we define terrible books? Is there a statute of limitations on being offensive? Can we enjoy a book at the same time that we recognize its failures? Do people and ideas ever evolve beyond books? And what does it mean to have the freedom to choose what to read? Tune in for a provocative, nuanced conversation that might just make you rethink, revisit, or totally let go when it comes to your own reading of dead authors.

Selected works discussed

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Bear and His Daughter by Robert Stone
The Breast by Philip Roth
I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut
Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford
The Turner Diaries by William Luther Pierce
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
John Carter of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

And the writing of:

Charles Dickens
Knut Hamsun
Jack London
HP Lovecraft
William S. Burroughs
Norman Mailer
Enid Blyton

Next Episode

Best Last Books

1 Recommendations

In this episode Marlon and Jake ponder the tricky question of the last books by authors who’ve ... um ... left this mortal coil. Which last books are actually worth reading? (Not many, it turns out.) From Roberto Bolaño to Penelope Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath to Eudora Welty, Marlon and Jake discuss how an author's last book compares to their previous ones, how success and age changed how and what they wrote, and the wistfulness that comes when some last books are actually good and you wonder what the authors might have written next, if, you know, they hadn't died. Tune in for this and more, including Marlon and Jake’s surprising thoughts on James Thurber's humorous memoir, My Life and Hard Times.

Select titles discussed: