So Bridget-Coded: Lydia Kiesling on Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim
02/28/24 • 57 min
Jo finds surprising depth to Susan Casey’s The Devil’s Teeth and Charlotte (8:35) fantasizes that her nonexistent celebrity romance novel is better than Robinne Lee’s The Idea of You, with a brief bonus discussion of Lisa Halliday’s Asymmetry. The great mind and Mobility author Lydia Kiesling (25:40) then joins to reflect on Lucky Jim and the ways our parents’ book collections shape us as readers.
Read Jo's review of Asymmetry from 2018 here.
Lydia Kiesling is a novelist and culture writer. Her first novel, The Golden State, was a 2018 National Book Foundation “5 under 35” honoree and a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Her second novel, Mobility, a national bestseller, was named a best book of 2023 by Vulture, Time, and NPR, among others. It is a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Her essays and nonfiction have been published in outlets including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker online, and The Cut.
Send questions, requests, recommendations, and your own thoughts about any of the books discussed today to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com.
Charlotte is on Instagram and Twitter as @Charoshane. Her memoir, An Honest Woman (August 13, 2024) can be pre-ordered now. She has a newsletter called Meant For You, with additional writing at charoshane.com
Jo co-edits The Stopgap and their writing lives at jolivingstone.com.
Learn more about our producer Alex at https://www.alexsugiura.com/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jo finds surprising depth to Susan Casey’s The Devil’s Teeth and Charlotte (8:35) fantasizes that her nonexistent celebrity romance novel is better than Robinne Lee’s The Idea of You, with a brief bonus discussion of Lisa Halliday’s Asymmetry. The great mind and Mobility author Lydia Kiesling (25:40) then joins to reflect on Lucky Jim and the ways our parents’ book collections shape us as readers.
Read Jo's review of Asymmetry from 2018 here.
Lydia Kiesling is a novelist and culture writer. Her first novel, The Golden State, was a 2018 National Book Foundation “5 under 35” honoree and a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Her second novel, Mobility, a national bestseller, was named a best book of 2023 by Vulture, Time, and NPR, among others. It is a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Her essays and nonfiction have been published in outlets including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker online, and The Cut.
Send questions, requests, recommendations, and your own thoughts about any of the books discussed today to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com.
Charlotte is on Instagram and Twitter as @Charoshane. Her memoir, An Honest Woman (August 13, 2024) can be pre-ordered now. She has a newsletter called Meant For You, with additional writing at charoshane.com
Jo co-edits The Stopgap and their writing lives at jolivingstone.com.
Learn more about our producer Alex at https://www.alexsugiura.com/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Previous Episode
A Sodden Mushroom of a Man: Iva Dixit on Annie Proulx's The Shipping News
Jo’s spent the weekend on two books that have their seal of approval—The Wren, the Wren by Anne Enright and The Wounded World: W.E.B. Du Bois and the First World War by Chad L. Williams—while Charlotte (12:35) has been getting Edna O’Brien-pilled. The inimitable Iva Dixit (25:00) stops by to share the remarkable story of her spite-buy of Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News, a much-loved novel that has “rewired her brain.”
Read Iva’s work on Sean Paul, Oppenheimer, and Retin-A.
Read the Andrea Dworkin essay mentioned in this episode here.
Send questions, requests, recommendations, and your own thoughts about any of the books discussed today to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com.
Charlotte is on Instagram and Twitter as @Charoshane. Her memoir, An Honest Woman (August 13, 2024) can be pre-ordered now. She has a newsletter called Meant For You, with additional writing at charoshane.com
Jo co-edits The Stopgap and their writing lives at jolivingstone.com.
Learn more about our producer Alex at https://www.alexsugiura.com/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Next Episode
Feelings and Vibes: Osita Nwanevu on Walt Whitman's Democratic Vistas
The writers cast a wide net today as Charlotte goes meg gaga for M.T. Anderson’s Feed and Jo (15:00) expounds on the many pleasures of Iris Yamashita’s Village in the Dark. The hosts also touch upon Sally Hepworth, J.M. Barrie, Telluria, their beloved Lanark by Alasdair Gray, and the entirety of French literature. The brilliant Osita Nwanevu (29:10) brings some dignity to the proceedings as he shares his experience of reading Walt Whitman’s strange and beguiling Democratic Vistas.
Osita Nwanevu is a contributing editor at The New Republic and a columnist at The Guardian. He was previously a staff writer at The New Republic, The New Yorker, and Slate and his work has also appeared in The New York Times, the New York Review of Books, Harper's Magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review, Gawker, In These Times, and the Chicago Reader. He is the former editor in chief of the South Side Weekly, a Chicago alternative newspaper.
Send questions, requests, recommendations, and your own thoughts about any of the books discussed today to readingwriterspod at gmail dot com.
Charlotte is on Instagram and Twitter as @Charoshane. Her memoir, An Honest Woman (August 13, 2024) can be pre-ordered now. She has a newsletter called Meant For You, with additional writing at charoshane.com
Jo co-edits The Stopgap and their writing lives at jolivingstone.com.
Learn more about our producer Alex at https://www.alexsugiura.com/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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