Secret Life of Books

Sophie Gee and Jonty Claypole
  • 4.9 (97)
  • 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.

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  1. 3d ago

    James Joyce 2: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

    One evening in 1898, the 16-year-old James Joyce lost his virginity with a sex worker on a canal bank in Dublin. The event would become the main event in his autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, published the same year as Dubliners in 1914. Joyce’s sexual awakening prompted both a spiritual crisis and a renewed determination to be a great writer.  Portrait tells the story of Joyce’s avatar, Stephen Daedalus, from childhood to graduation. Ultimately, it is about Daedalus’ hard-won rejection of all the baggage of late 19th Century Irish society - religion, morality, English intellectual colonization, and the social stagnation of Dubliners (discussed last week). Daedalus, of course, was the inventor of Greek myth who made himself wings to escape his prison - and the book ends with Stephen escaping the prison of his childhood by turning to the supposed intellectual freedom of Europe.  While being well known for its treatment of sexual awakening, the book is also famous for Joyce’s enthusiastic adoption of the stream-of-consciousness technique emerging in European literature, in which the narrative follows the trajectory of the characters thoughts. In this episode, we look at the intellectual journey Joyce took between 1907 - when he started writing Portrait - and 1914, when Ezra Pound had it published. 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 2: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

  2. 4d ago

    Emily Wilson, the Odyssey and Why Epics Matter

    We’ve been saving this one up for a special occasion – a live conversation with Professor Emily Wilson, the celebrated translator of Homer’s Odyssey and the version on which Christopher Nolan’s film is said to be based. Emily has long been revered in the academic world, and she’s currently the toast of the internet for remarks about the Nolan adaptation not having enough sex or nice food on display (here on SLOB, we agree!) Back in February 2026, Sophie hosted a conversation live in Princeton, with Emily, and the brilliant academic rising star of epic poems, Prof. Pasquale Toscano. In this crackling discussion, the talk turns quickly to why epics matter, what they mean, and how they pass their brilliance across time and place. Emily and Pasquale say lots of surprisingly, trenchant and thought-provoking things about why epics are such an important form, both then and now. 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.

    Emily Wilson, the Odyssey and Why Epics Matter

  3. Jul 30 • Subscribers Only

    Bleak House Book Club: Part 5

    Chapters 14-16: Richard heads off to begin his new career, and Esther and Ada, still in London, spend quality time with Caddy Jellyby, the sleeper hit character in Bleak House. Caddy has smartened herself up and fans will be happy to know that she’s looking “very pretty.” There’s light comedy about little brother Peepy Jellyby eating cake, and then we head into the substance of the chapter with the reveal that Caddy is secretly engaged. This enables Dickens to introduce one of his most delightful characters, the ill-fittingly named Prince Turveydrop, son of the dancing master Mr. T -- a man obsessed with deportment. Dickens goes in hard on the satire, but also on the affection and respect for Caddy and her Prince. Esther’s love-interest gets filled in a bit more, before he heads offstage to do something medical in the empire. And in a mike drop moment we learn the names of Miss Flite’s birds in Chancery. Then Dickens treats himself (and us) to another big chapter with the introduction of Charley and the Neckett children, young orphans who have recently lost their debt collecting father and are now at the mercy of the world. Dickens wants us to pay close attention to the characters who help out, and the ones who let it pass them by. Chapter 16 is another barn-burner of action and drama. An encounter plays out between Jo the crossing sweep, and a mysterious lady who calls herself a servant - but is not. Even Jo can tell. Dickens is giving us Big Plot for all he's worth in these chapters, and Sophie and Jonty weigh in on the how and why of it all.

    Bleak House Book Club: Part 5

  4. Jul 29

    A Podcast of One's Own x SLOB: Special Collaboration

    For this extra special A Podcast of One’s Own × The Secret Life of Books crossover, former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Sophie Gee sit down to celebrate their shared love of books and reading. Julia and Sophie compare notes on hosting book podcasts, share their lifelong love of literature, and reflect on their experiences chairing two of the world's leading literary prizes for women and non-binary writers – the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Stella Prize. Hosted by Julia Gillard, A Podcast of One's Own brings listeners extraordinary stories from remarkable women shaping the world through their work. Alongside these conversations, Julia's Book Club – co-hosted by Kathy Lette and Sarah Holland-Batt – celebrates brilliant books by women each fortnight. Hosted by Sophie Gee and Jonty Claypole, The Secret Life of Books uncovers the hidden stories behind the world's most iconic books, revealing the scandalous backstories, secret meanings and surprising histories that have shaped the way we read them. We hope you'll enjoy this conversation as much as we enjoyed having it. 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.

    A Podcast of One's Own x SLOB: Special Collaboration

  5. Jul 28

    James Joyce 1: Dubliners

    Next in our overview of Odysseys, we embark on an epic journey of our own toward the endless tome masterpiece James Joyce’s Ulysses. No reader comes to Joyce without preconceptions. Was he the greatest literary genius of the 20th century? Or a pretentious drunkard and misogynist? Was he an Irish patriot and torchbearer for Irish cultural revival? Or a Francophile ex-pat who gave Ireland the slip early on? For most of us, though, he’s just a guy in little glasses and a hat who wrote a very long book that is almost impossible to read. So for those who aren’t sure what to make of James Joyce, this is your perfect starter pack. But as befits an Odyssey, we’re not going directly to Ulysses. We’re backing up and looking at Joyce’s two earlier books, also set in Dublin, also deeply indebted to the Odyssey. These are Dubliners, his book of 15 short stories, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a novel, both published in 1914, the year in which WWI started. Joyce thought he would publish Dubliners in 1907, but a very fraught, complicated and frankly pretty bratty series of fights between Joyce and his Dublin publisher – along with a lot of other messy life circumstances – meant that it wouldn’t be published for another seven years. As Sophie and Jonty guide listeners through the long and winding — often whining — road to Dubliners, we ask how it’s a version of Homer’s Odyssey, how it lays out Joyce’s creative vision, and what it tells us about the kind of man James Joyce really was. 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 1: Dubliners

  6. Jul 21

    The Odyssey 4: Christopher Nolan's Odyssey review

    We've been limbering up for 3 weeks now, readying ourselves to take on Christopher Nolan's Odyssey, the cinematic event of the year (if you don't count Wuthering Heights or the Devil Wears Prada 2). In this episode, Sophie and Jonty weigh in with their acerbic but playful critical take on Nolan's version of Homer's epic, recorded just hours after they watched the film on opposite sides of the world. The positives come first. How does Nolan's interpretation give us a powerful epic for our times? What does Matt Damon show us about Odysseus that's fresh, new and timely? In the second half of the episode SLOB goes darker: what gets lost in this 21st Century remaking of the ultimate homecoming epic? What is fundamental to this incomparable masterpiece that the film doesn't manage to capture? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    The Odyssey 4: Christopher Nolan's Odyssey review

  7. Jul 15 • Subscribers Only

    Bleak House Book Club: Part 4

    At the top of Dickens’s 4th installment of Bleak House, Mr. Tulkinghorn waits nervously in the dark outside Nemo’s room while creepy Krook fetches another candle. But Nemo is dead! His death catalyzes another classic Dickensian sequence about the failings of the legal system when the coroner’s inquest gets underway, and fails to reveal Nemo’s true identity or the deeper cause of his death from an opium overdose. We meet the street-sweeper Jo, one of the novel’s most important sympathetic characters. In chapter 12, the Deadlocks return from a winter season at the Bristol in Paris (sounds pretty good) and host a large gathering at Chesney Wold: cue more Dickensian satire on the upper classes, corrupt electoral system and the House of Lords. But the real drumbeat involves Tulkinghorn’s secretive, lurking efforts to learn who Nemo was, and Lady Deadlock’s efforts to appear careless and indifferent about it. In the third part of the installment Esther’s narrative turns to solving the problem of Richard. We learn the origins of his irresolution and inability to form future plans, while Richard and Ada fall madly in love. To round out the chapter we learn (in a bravura piece of unreliable narration) that Esther has so far failed  to mention “a gentleman of a dark complexion: a young surgeon,” to whom she’s taken a fancy.

    Bleak House Book Club: Part 4

  8. Jul 14

    The Odyssey 3: Tennyson's Ulysses

    Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses” might just be the greatest Odyssey re-write of all time, even though it starts several years after Homer’s mighty epic ends.   “Ulysses” is a dramatic monologue in blank verse in which the aging Ulysses prepares to leave Ithaca for one last voyage into the unknown. Its famous last line - to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield - inspired Victorians - and continues to inspire us too. It wasn’t published until later in his writing life, but it was written early on after the unexpected death of his greatest friend, Arthur Hallam.   Part of the young Tennyson’s brilliance was the way he reinvented ancient myths and stories to encompass modern ideas as well as his own violently fluctuating mood state. Over the course of his life, he produced a long Arthurian epic, re-popularizing the legends of King Arthur. He also wrote several poems set in the Homeric world of The Odyssey. These include Tiresias - a friend of the show; The Lotus-Eaters and - the subject of this episode - Ulysses.    Here in the SLOB studios we were high-fiving and doing victory laps in celebration of Tennyson’s achievement before we even started recording. We might enjoy this version of the Odyssey more than we’re going to enjoy Matt Damon’s version, though obviously we can’t wait to see it. In short, SLOB stands with Prime Minister Robert Peel, who when he first heard the poem said that he recognized a ‘good speech’ when he heard one and awarded Tennyson a much-needed government pension on the spot.  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.

    The Odyssey 3: Tennyson's Ulysses
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4.9
out of 5
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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
    180
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Secret Life of Books
  • Show Website
    Secret Life of Books
  • Provider
    Sophie Gee

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