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Secret Life of Books

Sophie Gee and Jonty Claypole
  • 4.9 (76)
  • 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.

  1. The Secret Life of (Literary) Honeymoons

    1D AGO

    The Secret Life of (Literary) Honeymoons

    From the outset, there’s only one kind of honeymoon in classic literature, and it's disastrous. Honeymoons don't become fixed stars in the literary firmament until the early nineteenth century, but they begin as they go on - badly. The first literary honeymoon of the century is Maria Bertram's ill-fated tour with the fatuous Mr. Rushworth in Mansfield Park, with her jealous sister Julia Bertram third-wheeling. Next up we have Victor Frankenstein’s wedding trip to Evian with his bride Elizabeth. No sooner has the couple checked into the hotel and raided the minibar than Frankenstein’s Creature arrives and brutally murders his bride. After that there’s a trio of hideous honeymoons in Bronte novels – Mr. Rochester’s horrific Caribbean jaunt with his first wife; a catastrophic European whirlwind in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (husband already philandering), and Heathcliff’s revenge honeymoon with Isabella Linton in Wuthering Heights. After that, it's all downhill with Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Middlemarch and The Portrait of a Lady. Join Sophie and Jonty for a romp through some of the least romantic holidays in literary history. And we don’t just cover fictional honeymoons – there are some classic bloopers off the page too, involving the Victorian literati themselves having a bad time. We rank the honeymoons according to our usual rigorous criteria: Tripadvisor rating (location, food, accommodation); Marital Bliss quotient (ie. how was the sex?); Frictionless Travel score and – of course – centrality to the narrative itself. Join us on a 6-honeymoon literary package tour through England and abroad. 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.

    1h 8m
  2. Middlemarch Book 7: Two Temptations

    2D AGO • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    Middlemarch Book 7: Two Temptations

    Our sincere apologies. This week brought a major technical SNAFU for the Secret Life of Books. We messed up on the back end with our podcasting software, and failed to published our gripping new episode on Middlemarch Book 7, Two Temptations. We know how much you depend on these episodes for your weekend listening, and we let you down. Let's face it, we let ourselves down. Sorry, everyone! In Book 7, Eliot's story gathers momentum, with an intensive focus on Lydgate's and Rosamond Vincy's relationship. Until now Lydgate and Rosamond have taken a back seat, emotionally speaking, to the carryings-on of Dorothea, Will and Casaubon, and the less dramatic, but deeply stirring love-triangle of Mary Garth, Fred Vincy and Mr. Farebrother. The Lydgates' troubles have felt less momentous, less heart-rending, less consequential. But in Book 7, this changes. Under increasing financial pressure and forced to confront the reality of their emotional disconnection, Lydgate's and Rosamond's marriage unravels and we see their real despair and crises of the soul. Both characters are trapped in their own dogged worldviews. All they can see is how distant they are from one another; all they do in response is to put up walls of emotional self-protection and wariness. Nothing shifts it. Outright conflict, coldness and distancing, failed attempts at physcial intimacy: their relationship becomes orgnaized by a fundamental sense of mutual alienation. Lydgate turns to drugs and gambling. Rosamond turns to lies and deceptions. Lydgate plunges into social shame and disrepute as the details of his relationship with Nicholas Bulstrode become known. At the 11th hour, Dorothea steps in to clear Lydgate's name. But is it too late?

    50 min
  3. Beowulf: Inside the Anglo-Saxon mind

    MAR 24

    Beowulf: Inside the Anglo-Saxon mind

    'Although he was a brave and noble warrior, he did not often slay his own friends while drunk'. In this episode, Sophie and Jonty dive deep into the manosphere - aka Anglo-Saxon England - to look at one of foundational stones of English literature (although you need a bilingual dictionary to read it in the original). Composed sometime around the 8th Century CE, but not written down until much later, Beowulf is a nostalgic evocation of the north Germanic roots of the Anglo-Saxons. It recounts the adventures of the eponymous hero, who sails south from somewhere in modern-day Sweden to make his name by butchering monsters and telling everyone how great he is. In the first adventure, Beowulf defeats a terrible monster called Grendel who is preventing the Danes from enjoying their mead at night. He succeeds - only to provoke the wrath of Grendel's much more fearsome mother. But in the end, she too is no match for our hero. Smash cut to fifty years later and Beowulf embarks on his last adventure to defeat a dragon who is terrorising his own people, the Geats. Sophie and Jonty situate the Anglo-Saxons as a society, dissect Old English poetic forms, share highlights from the poem, make a total dogs dinner of pronouncing Anglo-Saxon names, and speculate what is really going on behind the carnage. They look at the influence of Beowulf in the works of JRR Tolkien, who took the concepts of Middle Earth, dragon lairs and Golem straight out of this poem. They ALSO look at its influence on - surprise reveal - Toni Morrison, who found Grendel's Mother far more interesting than Beowulf himself. Translations: Maria Dahvana Headley (2020) https://bookshop.org/p/books/beowulf-a-new-translation-maria-dahvana-headley/9892043?ean=9780374110031&next=t Seamus Heaney (1999) https://bookshop.org/p/books/beowulf-a-new-verse-translation-seamus-heaney/e6ac56b104eaeed2?ean=9780393320978&next=t J.R.R. Tolkein (1926) https://bookshop.org/p/books/beowulf-a-translation-and-commentary-christopher-tolkien/030a3c2a0fa27cea?ean=9780544570306&next=t We also mention Toni Morrison's essay "Grendel and his Mother" in The Source of Self-Regard (2019) and JRR Tolkein's lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" (1936). 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.

    1h 21m
  4. "On Morrison": a conversation with Namwali Serpell

    MAR 21

    "On Morrison": a conversation with Namwali Serpell

    To close out our popular series on the great American novelist Toni Morrison, SLOB brings listeners a wonderful discussion with the novelist and Harvard literature Professor Namwali Serpell. Namwali is in the middle of book tour, having just published her highly acclaimed book of essays, "On Morrison," which garnered national and international attention for offering new ways to read and appreciate one of America's most important writers. "On Morrison" is based on a class Namwali has been teaching for several years to her undergraduates at Harvard, in which they read many of Morrison's novels over the course of a single semester. In this conversation we talk about why Toni Morrison's novels became instant classics, why it really matters that her writing is often so difficult, what Namwali's experiences teaching Morrison in the classroom shows us about how we can address the reading crisis around the world, and how (as ever) classic literature especially offers us crucial ways forward. Namwali Serpell, "On Morrison." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    40 min
  5. Toni Morrison 3: Beloved

    MAR 17

    Toni Morrison 3: Beloved

    Beloved, published in 1987, was Toni Morrison’s fifth novel and instantly seen to be an all-time landmark of American literature, winning the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Sophie and Jonty continue their Morrison series by asking what makes Beloved so original, how the novel sets out to depict Black experience as never before, and - a favourite topics on SLOB – what, really, is the ‘ghost’ that haunts the household in this novel? Beloved was inspired by the true story of the Margaret Garner, a woman who escaped slavery in 1857. On being captured, Garner killed her young daughter to save her from a life of enslavement. At the time the story was a mainstream media sensation, used by abolitionists and pro-slavery voices alike. But in Morrison’s extraordinary retelling it becomes a deep, rich, hard to decipher tale of African-American lives and inner experiences of love, grief, pain and joy from the Middle Passage into the late nineteenth century.  Set mostly in 1873, with numerous flashbacks, Beloved tells the stories of the inhabitants of 124 Bluestone Road in Cincinnati, Ohio. A mother, her lover, her daughter, a ghost and a mysterious woman called Beloved who appears in the home of the protagonist Sethe and her daughter Denver. Through the novel we piece together the backstories of the characters and the impact of slavery on their lives. Morrison wrote that one intention in the book was to ‘make the slave experience intimate’. To achieve this she reinvents literary Modernism and African-American autobiography, with a novel that is uncompromising, frequently horrifying, and very beautiful.  Readings referred to in this episode: Toni Morrison, "Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature." ___ "The Site of Memory." Namwali Serpell, On Morrison, Hogarth Press, 2026. 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.

    1h 13m
  6. Middlemarch Book 6: you've lost that lovin' feelin'

    MAR 12 • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

    Middlemarch Book 6: you've lost that lovin' feelin'

    We’ve made it to Book 6 – The Widow and the Wife – and we’re catching first glimpses of the Middlemarch finish line, with just two books to go, after this. Mr. Casaubon and Mr. Featherstone are dead and buried, their difficult legacies have been revealed, and our protagonists and other Middlemarchers are adjusting plans accordingly. The widow of this week’s book, Dorothea, decamps from Freshitt Hall, where she’s been staying with her sister, Sir James and their delightful but boring baby Arthur, returning to Lowick. Ostensibly it’s so she can do good work in collab with Mr. Farebrother (her new-ish vicar) — but as she secretly acknowledges to herself — it’s really in hopes of seeing Will Ladislaw. The wayward Fred Vincy, meanwhile, is getting his act together after learning from Mr. Farebrother that Mary Garth is keen on him after all, provided he doesn't become a clergyman. So in a gutsy break with family expectations, Fred asks Mr. Garth for a job as an assistant land-manager. Mr. Garth agrees, but Mrs. Garth is pissed and skeptical. Can Fred really change his lazy, entitled ways? The Lydgates find themselves in desperate need of a copy of Men are From Mars and Women are from Venus. Rosamond and Tertius are drifting, nay tearing apart, with Rosamond recklessly spending money and flirting with other men, and Lydgate desperately trying to dig himself out of debt. Conflict and mutual distrust escalate with each move either party makes. We see the railways starting to rip through the countryside, changing farming and country life forever. There’s a great comic set-piece at a furniture and fine art auction, with a sinister reveal at the end about Will Ladislaw’s parentage. Will manages to engineer not 1, not 2, but 3 dramatic farewell scenes with Dorothea. All the while, the Dickenian under-plot gathers pace around the emerging drama of Messers Bulstrode’s and Raffles’ shared dark past.

    55 min
  7. SLoB Goes to the Oscars: Frankenstein vs Hamnet

    MAR 10

    SLoB Goes to the Oscars: Frankenstein vs Hamnet

    It’s Oscars week! The golden statues will get dished out on Sunday evening in Los Angeles and the world will be watching. Literary classics are big, yet again. Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein and Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet have received multiple nominations, and Jesse Buckley has already won BAFTA and Golden Globe for her performance as Anges, aka Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s wife.   Where do new adaptations and retellings leave the literary originals? Is the rage for reinterpretations revealing that books matter the most, or replacing books with easier, more exciting consumables? For lovers of Hamnet, does Hamlet still matter and if so, why? Does yet another adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, this time starring Jacob Elordi, the glowed-up Darcified Heathcliff of Emereld Fennell’s recent “Wuthering Heights,” give us new insights? Or does Shelley’s masterpiece sink beneath the icy polar seas of the Hollywood publicity machine, even as Elordi’s new version of the monster is unsinkable? 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.

    49 min
  8. Saved from Fire: the Toni Morrison Archives

    MAR 6

    Saved from Fire: the Toni Morrison Archives

    As part of our series on the writing of Toni Morrison we’re lucky enough to record a conversation with one of the world’s leading Toni Morrison scholars, Professor Autumn Womack. Autumn has spent more time with the Morrison Papers at Princeton University than pretty much anyone else – except (maybe) Morrison herself. Autumn describes the experience of coming to Morrison’s writing for the first time in high school, returning to it years later to her as a graduate student and finally getting to teach Morrison's novels at Princeton, where Morrison spent the last years of her writing life. We hear about the fire that nearly destroyed all Morrison's records, and the librarians who saved her papers. Autumn explains why archives are anything but boring – and how some discoveries she and her students made can change the way we read Morrison’s great novels. More about Autumn and her work https://english.princeton.edu/people/autumn-womack An essay Autumn mentions: “Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation” (1984) 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.

    37 min
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4.9
out of 5
76 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
    152
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Secret Life of Books
  • Show Website
    Secret Life of Books
  • Provider
    Sophie Gee

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