Secret Life of Books

Sophie Gee and Jonty Claypole
  • 4.9 (106)
  • Books
  • Updated Weekly

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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

SECRET LIFE OF BOOKS CLUB

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  1. 2d ago • Subscribers Only

    Bleak House Book Club: Parts 8 & 9

    We’re picking up the pace with Bleak House. This week we bring you a double-installment: sections 8 and 9 of Dickens’ serialization. The chapters begin in the now familiar landscape of the courts of Chancery, with the cautionary tale of Richard Carstone’s continuing decline into obsession and paralysis. We soon shift to the bracing story of Mr. George, cold-water bather, fitness fanatic, sharpshooter, all around top bloke. Mr. George goes head-to-head with Mr. Tulkinghorn, and comes out ahead in a bravura chapter of goodness outwitting cunning and corruption. Sophie and Jonty detour into a discussion of Victorian fitness culture and the UK’s first public gyms. But the fascinating tales of 19C boxing and “leaping” as national pastimes fade into the Dickensian narrative fog, in the astonishing final chapter, in which Lady Deadlock learns that the daughter she believed had died long ago is living large in Herfordshire. Subscriber heads-up: we sense some impatience among our listeners so we will likely do a few of these double-installments to keep pace, and keep momentum up with the Bleak House Book Club.

    Bleak House Book Club: Parts 8 & 9

  2. 4d ago

    Secret Life of Reading (with Maggie O'Farrell and Ben Alderson-Day)

    This episode was recorded at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, with literary superstar Maggie O'Farrell and one of Britain's leading psychologists, Ben Alderson-Day. On the Secret Life of Books, we talk about classic books and the life and times of the people who wrote them. In this conversation we talk about you - the readers. What happens when we read a book? What is going on our minds? Why can the experience of staring at words on a page be so intense, life-changing even? Is it just a case of impressions and ideas transferring from an author’s words into our imagination, or is there something more mystical, nay uncanny, at work too?  Maggie and Ben reflect on the experience of being readers, and how that can transform being a writer. Maggie is the author of 10 novels, including the acclaimed and recently adapted Hamnet, and her newest book, Land. Ben is a Professor of Psychology at Durham University, author of Presence: The Strange Science of the Unseen Other, and Director of the Readerbank project - a collaborative research project with the Edinburgh Book Festival into how we read, imagine and understand stories.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Secret Life of Reading (with Maggie O'Farrell and Ben Alderson-Day)

  3. Sep 1

    Secret Life of Edinburgh

    SLOB is in Edinburgh for the International Book Festival. Join us on a walking tour of literary Edinburgh. From Mary Queen of Scots and James VI of Scotland, obsessed with witch hunts and an early anti-tobacco campaigner, to Muriel Spark and slum tourism in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. We walk from the gentrified streets of Marchmont and Bruntsfield, across the Meadows, and into the rough and tumble of the Old Town, a maze of cobbled streets and old buildings crowded on the hillside below the Edinburgh Castle. Cameos from Ian Rankin and Kate Atkinson, William Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, and of course, Sir Walter Scott. Come through Edinburgh with SLOB and relish its very pungent history in a world before modern sanitation. Mr. Johnson and I walked arm-in-arm up the High-street, to my house in James’s court: it was a dusky night: I could not prevent his being assailed by the evening effluvia of Edinburgh. … As we marched slowly along, he grumbled in my ear, ‘I smell you in the dark!’ But he acknowledged that the breadth of the street, and the loftiness of the buildings on each side, made a noble appearance. With thanks to the Ponder & See Foundation for their support. Become a subscriber by signing up at Apple: http://apple.co/slob Or join our Patreon community here: https://www.patreon.com/c/secretlifeofbookspodcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Secret Life of Edinburgh

  4. Aug 31

    Secret Life of Trains 2 (Choo choo!)

    This week SLOB went full steam ahead from London to Edinburgh, to appear live at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. We love classic books, and we love trains, so what better way to while away the 6 hour slow-train to Edinburgh than to record our second episode about literary railway journeys. Join Sophie and Jonty as they choose sandwiches at Euston Station, board the 12:40 to Scotland via Wigan and Penrith, and talk about their favorite train lit. Savor the authenticity of the train-talk, while wedged in the gangway between the toilets and the trash bin, periodically interrupted by skeptical passengers en route to the snacks carriage. Choo choo!! A fun bonus - just because. Become a subscriber by signing up at Apple: http://apple.co/slob Or join our Patreon community here: https://www.patreon.com/c/secretlifeofbookspodcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Secret Life of Trains 2 (Choo choo!)

  5. Aug 27 • Subscribers Only

    Bleak House Book Club 7

    Chapters 20-22 Dickens leans into Bleak House as pea-soup thriller, a blockbuster about secret identities and buried connections. As we've said before, pea-soup fogs add far more than mere local atmos. to Dickens's settings: they express the writer's abiding fascination with the idea that modern life is defined by hidden networks of connection between people and events that seem to have no relationship to one another. Dickens treats us to a set-piece slap-up luncheon between the legal office-workers, Guppy and Smallweed, and their stooge Mr. Jobling, whom they're installing as a tenant in Nemo's old room, to get the low down on Nemo’s true identity. Dickens takes a deep dive on the Smallweed Family, giving us their full backstory. What at first seems no more than literary filler to eke out extra serial publications, emerges as a fascinating study of lower-middle class life in Dickens's London. The Smallweeds, Charley their child-servant and George the owner of a local shooting-gallery, undergird the main plots of Bleak House by reminding us that intrigue and complicated life-stories aren't just the domain of the rich and powerful. In these chapters we see the high-Victorian realism of Dickens meeting the high-Modernist stream of consciousness of James Joyce. Both writers are interested in the minutiae of lives that might otherwise go unwritten and unnoticed, showing us how literature is the great maker of connections and communities.

    Bleak House Book Club 7

  6. Aug 25

    Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde

    We’re aware that Chaucer’s epic poem Troilus and Criseyde written in the 1380s might be a tough sell to even the most devoted SLoB listener, but bear with us. Troilus and Criseyde is not a novel, but it bears a lot of features that we associate with novels and reading this novel-length poem takes you into the world and minds of medieval England - albeit transposed to Ancient Troy - by someone who was living there. It has action, betrayal and a racy sex scene. It gives us a new kind of access to characters' inner lives, and it reveals that inwardly people are wildly different from the way they appear. This is a love story that doesn't conform to any of our expectations about medieval love, and a war story that doesn't comply with our expectations of war. There are so many firsts here. We see the invention of the famous British sense of humour captured in real-time by Chaucer, the very guy who invented it. It features the first reconstructed male concerned with consent in literary history and the first dumping by text message - although obviously there’s no phone involved.  Become a subscriber by signing up at Apple: http://apple.co/slob Or join our Patreon community here: https://www.patreon.com/c/secretlifeofbookspodcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde

  7. Aug 21

    Charlotte Higgins on Ukrainian Lessons: Art in a Time of War

    Charlotte Higgins talks to Jonty about her new book, Ukrainian Lessons, which recounts her experiences the last four years reporting on the cultural life of a nation at war. Culture is never far from the front-line in time of conflict, but rarely more so than in Ukraine. Part of Putin’s attempts to legitimise the war lies in an age-old argument that Ukraine is simply an extension, or part of, Russia itself. He has personally written essays explaining his view that Ukrainian language and culture is simply part of a Greater Russia story. Not surprisingly, Ukrainians are proving him wrong with the current flourishing of poetry, writing and art that speaks to the uniqueness and separateness of their culture. Charlotte talks about how she went to Ukraine, what she found and why her belief in the power of poetry and art has never been greater. Charlotte is Chief Culture Writer for The Guardian, a classicist and host of Instant Classics podcast. Content warning: as you might expect from an episode about a contemporary war, some of the stories and experiences that Charlotte recounts are confronting. Become a subscriber by signing up at Apple: http://apple.co/slob Or join our Patreon community here: https://www.patreon.com/c/secretlifeofbookspodcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Charlotte Higgins on Ukrainian Lessons: Art in a Time of War

  8. Aug 18

    James Joyce 3: Ulysses

    Ulysses is a vast novel - over a quarter of a million words. Yet it follows the action of less than 24 hours. To be fair, Joyce packs a lot into that 24 hours. Although our old friend Stephen Daedalus and Leopold Bloom dominate the action, there are over 200 named characters. And, as ever, the most important character is Dublin itself.    The story and structure is loosely modelled on The Odyssey with the different chapters named after episodes in Homer’s poem. The first section follows Stephen Daedalus, just as The Odyssey begins with Odysseus’ son Telemachus. Then Leopold Bloom, a 38 year old Jewish advertising canvasser, takes centre stage with Odysseus’ various adventures given modern-day, satirical equivalents. At the climax, Leopold and Stephen are united and return home, where Molly Bloom - the Penelope of the story - has the final word. The word is ‘yes’, although this is one of the rare occasions where one hearkens after a curmudgeonly ‘no’.  So… like Odysseus finally reaching Ithaca, we have finally reached Ulysses after referring to it, usually in disparaging terms, over the life of this podcast. And the question is, how are we going to approach it? Are we going to fall to our knees and kiss the shores? Or will we grab bow and arrow and lay waste to the palace?   And if you’re concerned we’re sounding just a little too flip, it’s worth remembering that Joyce himself said that Ulysses ‘is fundamentally a humorous work’, filled with word-play, toilet humour and irreverence. Become a subscriber by signing up at Apple: http://apple.co/slob Or join our Patreon community here: https://www.patreon.com/c/secretlifeofbookspodcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    James Joyce 3: Ulysses
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4.9
out of 5
106 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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Information

  • Creator
    Sophie Gee and Jonty Claypole
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    190
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Secret Life of Books
  • Show Website
    Secret Life of Books
  • Provider
    Sophie Gee

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