Secret Life of Books

Sophie Gee and Jonty Claypole
  • 5.0 (27)
  • ARTS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY
Secret Life of Books

Every book has two stories: the one it tells, and the one it hides.The Secret Life of Books is a fascinating, addictive, often shocking, occasionally hilarious weekly podcast starring Sophie Gee, an English professor at Princeton University, and Jonty Claypole, formerly director of arts at the BBC. Every week these virtuoso critics and close friends take an iconic book and reveal the hidden story behind the story: who made it, their clandestine motives, the undeclared stakes, the scandalous backstory and above all the secret, mysterious meanings of books we thought we knew.-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org-- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio: https://patreon.com/SecretLifeofBooks528?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLinkinsta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@secretlifeofbookspodcast/shorts

  1. Did Dickens Change the Face of Christmas Forever? Scrooge, Tiny Tim and the First Ever Turkey

    10 HRS AGO

    Did Dickens Change the Face of Christmas Forever? Scrooge, Tiny Tim and the First Ever Turkey

    From the “man who invented Christmas,” this is the ultimate Christmas fable. Everyone’s heard of Scrooge, and many could quote his “Bah! Humbug!” And maybe even Tiny Tim’s “God Bless us, every one.” But who knows which Christmas season mega-industry Dickens started, with Scrooge’s parting gift to the Cratchit family? And what was going on in Dickens’s life that drove him to the power and melodrama of this micro-novel?Sophie makes a foolhardy attempt to link Dickens’ Christmas Carol to our mod...

    59 min
  2. The Albatross Curse, Bad Weddings and Lots of Opium: Rime of the Ancient Mariner

    17 DEC

    The Albatross Curse, Bad Weddings and Lots of Opium: Rime of the Ancient Mariner

    The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - the name of a classic song by Iron Maiden AND a decent-ish poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It’s the latter that’s under the microscope in this episode. Written in 1798, in a haze of opium smoke and revolutionary fervor, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a long ballad poem describing the supernatural curse against a sailor who shoots an albatross. There’s a ghost ship, angelic spirits, a zombie crew and many unforgettable lines, including ‘water, water ...

    1h 12m
  3. Victorian dresses, teenage passions and fiction’s scariest picnic: Picnic at Hanging Rock

    10 DEC

    Victorian dresses, teenage passions and fiction’s scariest picnic: Picnic at Hanging Rock

    Sophie and Jonty find themselves a few sandwiches short of a picnic this week when they take on their first Australian classic book, the legendary “Picnic at Hanging Rock.” This 1960s masterpiece achieved global fame with Peter Weir’s hit film in 1975. And it has lost none of its edge with the passage of time. The intrepid hosts of SLoB discover that the joke’s on them – descended as they are from the white colonial families that Joan Lindsay set out to skewer so mercilessly. With riffs ...

    1 hr
  4. Please Sir, may we have some more? Oliver Twist, sex work and criminal underclasses in Victorian London

    3 DEC

    Please Sir, may we have some more? Oliver Twist, sex work and criminal underclasses in Victorian London

    Let’s Twist Again! Not the dance, of course, but Charles Dickens’ incendiary second novel, which he began writing at the tender age of 24. With Oliver Twist, Dickens found his voice - a style simultaneously intimate and epic, funny but terrifying, exaggerated but true to life. Millions fell in love with his characters, shared their misfortunes and triumphs, and had their eyes opened to the plight of society’s outcasts. To write it, Dickens drew on his own experiences as a ch...

    1h 6m
  5. The world's most famous classicist on the world's most famous classic: Mary Beard and The Odyssey

    26 NOV

    The world's most famous classicist on the world's most famous classic: Mary Beard and The Odyssey

    The Odyssey - where stories began. Probably written down around 7th century BC - give or take a few centuries either way - by somebody or somebodies who may or may not have been called Homer. Leaving aside these mysteries, what is the Odyssey really about, why is it so violent and why is Odysseus himself - the lord of the lies - such an unlikeable hero? Who better to navigate this intellectual Scylla and historical Charybdis than the world’s best-loved classicist Mary Beard? Sophie and J...

    58 min
  6. Bonus Live Ep: hosts' secrets revealed and the classics stripped bare!

    22 NOV

    Bonus Live Ep: hosts' secrets revealed and the classics stripped bare!

    Co-hosts Sophie and Jonty bare all in a bonus SLoB live ep! After months of rummaging through the dirty laundry of the great writers, it is only fair that we turn a critical eye back upon ourselves - and reveal the secret life of the Secret Life of Books. In this bonus episode, recorded to mark our official launch before a live audience in Sydney’s iconic Gleebooks, Sophie and Jonty get raw. After briefly discussing why we started SLoB and why the classics matter, we get down to the seri...

    30 min
  7. Jane Austen does gothic horror with insta-ready clothes and great interiors: Northanger Abbey

    19 NOV

    Jane Austen does gothic horror with insta-ready clothes and great interiors: Northanger Abbey

    Henry Tilney: is he yet another of Jane Austen’s Bad Men, or the stealth MVP with his interest in dress fabrics and interior decorating? Northanger Abbey is Austen’s funniest, most unabashedly joyful and silly novel. It’s also where Jane gets meta – with lots of speeches about what novels are and why we love reading them. Sophie makes the case that Catherine Morland is the most under-rated heroine in the Austen canon, an upbeat Fanny Price without the sad backstory. Jonty enthuses about ...

    1h 5m
  8. James: National Book Award global hit; a Huck Finn rewrite the world needed; plot twists you'll never guess

    12 NOV

    James: National Book Award global hit; a Huck Finn rewrite the world needed; plot twists you'll never guess

    It took 140 years for someone to write back to Mark Twain’s brilliant but troubling masterpiece The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Now the celebrated American novelist Percival Everett has done it with James, a daring, provocative, retelling of Huck Finn through the eyes, mind and heart of Huck’s friend Jim, a runaway slave. What are the untold secrets of Mark Twain’s novel, that Everett brings to light with James? And what should we make of the small but crucial fact that Everett once owned...

    49 min
See All (28)

Trailer

5
out of 5
27 Ratings

About

Every book has two stories: the one it tells, and the one it hides.The Secret Life of Books is a fascinating, addictive, often shocking, occasionally hilarious weekly podcast starring Sophie Gee, an English professor at Princeton University, and Jonty Claypole, formerly director of arts at the BBC. Every week these virtuoso critics and close friends take an iconic book and reveal the hidden story behind the story: who made it, their clandestine motives, the undeclared stakes, the scandalous backstory and above all the secret, mysterious meanings of books we thought we knew.-- To join the Secret Life of Books Club visit: www.secretlifeofbooks.org-- Please support us on Patreon to keep the lights on in the SLoB studio: https://patreon.com/SecretLifeofBooks528?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLinkinsta: https://www.instagram.com/secretlifeofbookspodcast/youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@secretlifeofbookspodcast/shorts

Information

  • Creator
    Sophie Gee and Jonty Claypole
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    28
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2024 Secret Life of Books
  • Show Website
    Secret Life of Books

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