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Season Two
Episode 14 - Gulliver's Travels (1726)
Subtitle: ...and the Yahoo he rode in on
Abby calls Daniel: God Save the Queen
Casting: Werner Herzog fictionalised documentary, with Herzog as a pseudo-Gulliver narrator
Advice: Break difficult books up into smaller, more manageable chunks and have an immediate reward or break after (one chapter of a book, ten minutes of a TV show).
Clue(s) to the Next Episode: It's a great romance and contains the thirstiest skank in all of literature, a woman name Blanche.
Episode 15 - Jane Eyre (1847)
Subtitle: Recommended by the Bishop of Truro
Abby calls Daniel: Spotted Dick
Casting: Alfred Hitchcock thriller with Audrey Hepburn as Jane, Richard Burton, and Julie Newmar as Blanche AND Bertha.
Advice: Pay the most attention and take the most notes in the first quarter of a book. This is where authors do the most work to set up themes and characterisation. It may take you longer to get into the book, but it's better for revision.
Clue(s) to the Next Episode: It has a fistfight at a funeral (Abby); I'm so excited, I could eat a crocodile (Daniel).
Show Notes: The first example of the 'Corporate' joke.
Episode 16 - Hamlet (1603)
Subtitle: The play is dogsh*t
Abby calls Daniel: Fish and chips
Casting: A comedy version--an Ealing comedy, a Woody Allen film, or an episode of Curb your Enthusiasm.
Advice: Use an author's other works to help you analyse your current text.
Clue(s) to the Next Episode: Another text about the King of the Danes, but this one is primarily about a very pissed-off mom.
Show Notes: Upgraded audio--two mics instead of one.
Episode 17 - Beowulf (10th Century)
Subtitle: The Gold Standard of Gold Standards
Abby calls Daniel: Hadrian's Wall
Daniel calls Abby: High-fructose corn syrup
Casting: 1980s action film, with Mads Mikkelsen as Beowulf, Alan Rickman as Grendel, Linda Hamilton or Sigourney Weaver as Grendel's Mother, and Rutger Hauer as Hrothgar.
Advice: Playing 'Find the Phallus' is a great way to get close readings. There is a LOT of imagery in literature and film that is phallic--these are deliberate choices that tell you a lot about power dynamics.
Clue to the Next Episode: Our first Modernist novel, and Jonathan Swift makes an appearance as a character.
Episode 18 - Orlando (1928)
Subtitle: The Drag(w)oman Episode
Abby calls Daniel: General Cornwallis
Daniel calls Abby: Benedict Arnold
Casting: A candy-coloured Wes Anderson production, with a lot of portraiture and voice-over.
Advice: While understanding an author's biography can help give you context about a text, remember it's not important what the author intends--which we can almost never really know--but rather what the text itself does.
Clue(s) to the Next Episode: The heroine of our next text is tied with Liz Taylor for number of marriages and amount of wealth that passes through her hands (Abby); Hens love roosters. Geese love ganders. Everyone else loves.... (Daniel)
Show Notes: This episode contains multiple 'set the scenes'.
Episode 19 - Moll Flanders (1722)
Subtitle: Yeet the baby
Abby calls Daniel: Apples and Pears
Daniel calls Abby: Straight outta the hood
Casting: Full realsit period drama with a high budget, except the dialogue and the characters are complete Blaxploitation, starring Pam Grier
Advice: Eighteenth-century novels are very chatty and conversational, which can make it odd to read; it's easier if you read it in the voice of a gossip who wants to tell you their life story.
Clue to the Next Episode: Measuringworth.com developed a special calculator for the next episode that converts today's dollars into yams.
Show Notes: Shakespeare authorship controversy: the Warwickshire county council theory
Episode 20 - Things Fall Apart (1958)
Subtitle: This is a yam's world
Abby calls Daniel: Slap and tickle
Casting: Directed by Rungano Nyoni, with Djimon Hounsou as Okonkwo
Advice: Pay attention to naming conventions in books. Names or the ability to (re)name someone else equals power.
Clue(s) to the Next Episode: It's another text written in the 1950s, set somewhere hot, with a lot of daddy issues and masculinity troubles, with loads of children who are often insulted, and with another character called '[Someone] the Cat'.
Episode 21 - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)
Subtitle: Get outta here, cracker bones
Abby calls Daniel: Queen Boudicca
Daniel calls Abby: Tecumseh
Casting: A Coen Brothers farce, with Luke Evans as Brick, Scarlett Johansson (or Daniel) as Maggie, Frances McDormand as Big Mama, John Goodman as Big Daddy, and George Clooney and Holly Hunter as Gooper and Mae.
Advice: For things written in an accent or dialect, it makes it easier if you read it out loud.
Clue(s) to the Next Episode: Our clue to the next episode is actually our clue to the next two episodes: they're both titled '[Blank] and [Blank]'.
Episode 22 - Jekyll and Hyde (1886)
Subtitle: Oh Enfield, you fascinate me
Abby calls Daniel: Toodle-Pip and Cheerio
Daniel calls Abby: Howdy-Doody
Casting: Directed by Alex Garland, with Oscar Isaac as Jekyll and Pedro Pascal as Utterson.
Advice: More than paying attention to patterns you see, pay attention to what's not there--things that are conspicuous by their absence. For example, in this book, there are next to no women. Why?
Clue to the Next Episode: Another very famous nineenth-century text also titled '[Blank] and [Blank]'.
Show Notes: We got a TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. This is the first instance of 'Bad GoodReads Reviews'. This episode was secretly recorded in two sessions due to a series of mishaps in the first session.
Episode 23 - Pride and Prejudice (1813)
Subtitle: Get yer baps out, lasses!
Abby calls Daniel: Spirit of the Blitz
Daniel calls Abby: Manifest Destiny
Casting: Ernst Lubitsch 1930s screwball comedy set in an office (not a period piece), with Katharine Hepburn as Lizzie, Joan Crawford as Caroline Bingley, and Cary Grant as Darcy.
Advice: Take notes as you read, from page one. It's slower, but it forces you pay attention more and it saves you a lot of time during term and allows you to revisit the notes later, especially if you read other texts by the same author.
Clue to the Next Episode: About a man who is scared of his own journal (Abby); *speaks in a Geordie accent* (Daniel)
Episode 24 - Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
Subtitle: Lie back and think of Airstrip One
Abby calls Daniel: Gooseberry Fool
Daniel calls Abby: Boysenberry flan (or vinegar tart, or blondie)
Casting: No casting; Terry Gilliam's Brazil is already a perfect adaptation of this text and it can't be improved upon.
Advice: Authors don't always have a clear message. You can say that an author is ambiguous, but you as a critic can't be.
Clue (s) to the Next Episode: The story is straight-up Rumpelstiltskin.
Episode 25 - Silas Marner (1861)
Subtitle: You got your sensation fiction in my German Idealism!
Abby calls Daniel: This redcoat billeted in my office
Daniel calls Abby: This United Empire loyalist
Casting: An Ingmar Bergman film
Advice: No advice
Clue(s) to the Next Episode: We've had two nineteenth-century texts this season titled '[Blank] and [Blank]'. We'll open season three with another one.
Show Notes: Our one-year anniversary; cold open smash-cut shows how many sirens go by during every recording session.
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