100 episodes
Two Month Review Three Percent
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- Arts
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4.8 • 35 Ratings
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Each “season” of Two Month Review highlights a new and amazing work of world literature, reading it slowly over the course of eight to nine episodes. Featuring a rotating set of literary guests—from authors to booksellers, critics, and translators—each episode recaps a short section of the book and uses that as a springboard for a fun (and often irreverent) discussion about literature in a general sense, pop culture, reading approaches, and much more. Talking about great books doesn't need to be deadly serious, and 2MR makes it fun to everyone (even if you’re not reading along).
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TMR 22.10: "Butterfly Coma" [Praiseworthy]
Praiseworthy ends with some praise, a bit of exhaustion, questions about satire and the ending, and a dirty phrase Chad can't quit competing. Then there's the TMR Class Draft in which Chad, Kaija, and Brian each selected five previous TMR titles to create imaginary classes: "Dismal Lady Stuff," "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor," and "Laying Brick." Now it's up to you to choose which class "wins." Fill out this survey and we'll analyze the results in June when we return for Season 23, Lanark by Alasdair Gray.
This week's music is "One Milkali (One Blood)" from Electric Fields, Australia's entrant in Eurovision 2024. (How is Australia part of Eurovision? Who knows!)
You can find all previous seasons of TMR on our YouTube channel and you can support us at Patreon and get bonus content before anyone else, along with other rewards, the opportunity to easily communicate with the hosts, etc. And please subcribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Tune in in June for more banter and analysis live on YouTube where we will be discussing Lanark by Alasdair Gray.
Follow Open Letter, Two Month Review, Chad Post, Kaija Straumanis, and Brian Wood for random thoughts and information about upcoming guests.
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TMR 22.9: "One Donkey at a Time" [Praiseworthy]
Like a first time marathon runner, Chad, Brian, and Kaija are losing steam this season, but persist in talking about the book and their mixed feelings. They do learn some things about donkeys and mules though! And they set up next week's game: each co-host will draft five books from the twenty-two seasons of the podcast which would constitute a reading list (and listening list) for a college class. Then, y'all get to vote on which class you'd be most excited to take. Tune in live next week—it's going to be wild.
This week's music is "B.I.N.G.O. (Sound System Remix)" from Australia's worst gift to the world—The Wiggles!
You can find all previous seasons of TMR on our YouTube channel and you can support us at Patreon and get bonus content before anyone else, along with other rewards, the opportunity to easily communicate with the hosts, etc. And please subcribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Tune in next week for more banter and analysis live on YouTube where we will finish this book.
Follow Open Letter, Two Month Review, Chad Post, Kaija Straumanis, and Brian Wood for random thoughts and information about upcoming guests.
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TMR 22.8: "Madder Than White Heat" [Praiseworthy]
Little discussion of Priaseworthy in this episode. Instead there's a longer discussion about publishing, art, sales, how do these books get made?, favorite lines, future games, and much more. It's a 20,000 foot view of book culture with an emphasis on success, investment, and more. Enjoy!
This week's music is "Pedestrian at Best" from Aussie musical savant Courtney Barnett.
You can find all previous seasons of TMR on our YouTube channel and you can support us at Patreon and get bonus content before anyone else, along with other rewards, the opportunity to easily communicate with the hosts, etc. And please subcribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Tune in next week for more banter and analysis live on YouTube where we will be covering pages 526-591. (Up to "Holy Donkey Business.")
Follow Open Letter, Two Month Review, Chad Post, Kaija Straumanis, and Brian Wood for random thoughts and information about upcoming guests. -
TMR 22.7: "@CheapIllegalPeopleSmuggler" [Praiseworthy]
Talk of Australian cartoons—and not just Bluey—morphs into a look at several specific passages in Wright's Praiseworthy, discussion what makes the book "difficult" to read, the style of humor, what pushes us away from the text and then re-grabs out attention, and much more.
This week's music is "Frontier Psychiatrist" from The Avalanches.
You can find all previous seasons of TMR on our YouTube channel and you can support us at Patreon and get bonus content before anyone else, along with other rewards, the opportunity to easily communicate with the hosts, etc. And please subcribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Tune in next week for more banter and analysis live on YouTube where we will be covering pages 400-463. (Up to chapter 12 in "Sitting in the Bones.")
Follow Open Letter, Two Month Review, Chad Post, Kaija Straumanis, and Brian Wood for random thoughts and information about upcoming guests. -
TMR 22.6: "Nuisance Bugger Donkeys" [Praiseworthy]
Chad and Kaija make up this week's panel as they play the "Slang Game," then discuss the elliptical meta-structure of the book and how this impacts their reading and the book's effectiveness. They also discuss Sam Rutter's New York Times review of the novel, addressing the difficulties of discussing the workings of the text itself given the burden of having to contextualize so much for a foreign audience.
This week's music is "Under the Milky Way" from The Church, one of Australia's most widely known bands.
You can find all previous seasons of TMR on our YouTube channel and you can support us at Patreon and get bonus content before anyone else, along with other rewards, the opportunity to easily communicate with the hosts, etc. And please subcribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Tune in next week for more banter and analysis live on YouTube where we will be covering pages 400-463. (Up to chapter 12 in "Sitting in the Bones.")
Follow Open Letter, Two Month Review, Chad Post, Kaija Straumanis, and Brian Wood for random thoughts and information about upcoming guests.
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TMR 22.5: "Maximum Superhero Cop-God" [Praiseworthy]
"Who's Stronger?" is the game of the week in this episode about the Maximum Superhero Cop-God's arrival in Praiseworthy to quell the frantic search for Aboriginal Sovereignty. There are lots of moths, discussion about acknowledging the land which we occupy as a good first step, and more about the difficult reality of life in this part of the country even without government interventions.
This week's music is "Punching in a Dream" from the New Zealand band The Naked and Famous. (I thought they were Australian!)
And if you want to see the Norm Macdonald bit, you can find it here.
You can find all previous seasons of TMR on our YouTube channel and you can support us at Patreon and get bonus content before anyone else, along with other rewards, the opportunity to easily communicate with the hosts, etc. And please subcribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Tune in next week for more banter and analysis live on YouTube where we will be covering pages 265-336.
Follow Open Letter, Two Month Review, Chad Post, and Brian Wood for random thoughts and information about upcoming guests.
Customer Reviews
Best Literary Podcast
The only book podcast you'll ever want. They actually offer in-depth analysis of the books they're reviewing. It's basically like all the conversations you wish you had with friends about the books you read. The people who host the show & the guests they have on are funny, entertaining, and knowledgable. The podcast overall allows for a more interesting reading experience if you keep with each episode. Highly recommend giving it a go.
This Should Be So Much Better
The hosts deserve credit for promoting challenging/unusual fiction, especially in translation, but the delivery is hard to listen to. Analysis is minimal and rarely goes beyond “best bits” and inarticulate, chortling college-boy-level enthusiasm. The co-host, Brian, has little to say; Chad can occasionally be roused to make interesting connections about the text at hand; but both can just as easily spend half an hour on what Pink Floyd meant to them in high school and other topics only distantly related, if at all, to the text being discussed. And, despite constant appeals for thoughts and questions from listeners, they appear to ignore them—YMMV. Guests on the podcast are usually scrambling to keep up with the inane chatter — Rachel Cordasco (2017) was an exception in this regard, as she was successful at making interesting observations about the book being discussed and didn’t get diverted by the boys’-club hi-jinks — no doubt the show could use more female guests. I realize the show generally promotes books Open Letter or Dalkey are publishing, so one can’t expect much in the way of discussion of the books’ weaknesses, but listening, you’d think all of the books covered were equally good and without flaw. The books —and their authors — deserve better.
Best literary podcast
Truly one of the best book podcasts out there! In depth, meaningful discussions of awesome books in translation paired with a lot of fun banter between the hosts and invite guests.