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Latest Podcast Episodes

Episode 130: Opening Movements: Entering the World of a Book
April 14, 2026
In this episode, we begin a three-part series on the movements of a novel, starting with the opening.
Episode 129: Reading with a Plan: The Joys and Complications of Reading Projects
March 31, 2026
This week, we’re joined by Luis Panini to talk about reading projects.
Episode 128: If the Ship Goes Down, Grab These: Three Books for Our Desert Island
March 17, 2026
What books would you want if you were stranded on a desert island?
Episode 127: No One Knows Where to Shelf This: On Unclassifiable Books
March 3, 2026
We tend to think of books as belonging somewhere: novel, memoir, biography, fantasy, history.
Episode 126: Is That a Good Book?
February 17, 2026
Is that a good book?

Browse all episodes

From the Reading Life

mookse

Host with @bibliopaul of The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast. Reviews of books and film. Judge of the 2017 Best Translated Book Award.

What books have been sitting unread on your shelf

What books have been sitting unread on your shelf the longest? #BookReel #ReadingLife #UnreadBooks

I’m absolutely loving getting better prepared to t

I’m absolutely loving getting better prepared to talk about Faulkner in June with @bibliopaul for our next author focused episode. I’ve been intimidated by The Sound and the Fury for years and years. This particular edition, I see, was given to me by my parents for Christmas in 2001 (thanks Mom and Dad!), and so it’s made its way around my shelves for just shy of a quarter century.

But no regrets. I’m so glad I finally read this. That’s not quite the right word. I’m glad it finally experienced this. Because perhaps more than any other book I’ve ever read, The Sound and the Fury was an experience.

For the first section, I had no real idea what was going on. The story is told through a stream-of-consciousness narrative by Benjy Compson, who moves from past to present often without much indication of the shift. Things are happening around him, but we (like him) cannot capture it fully. I found the raw immediacy surprisingly emotional.

We get to understand the story in more detail in the next two sections, told by his two brothers, Quentin (on his last day on earth) and the deeply unlikable Jason. The final section goes to a third-person narrator, which probably helps clear plot points up, but the parts that stay with me are the three brothers. Somehow Faulkner made those sections terrifyingly real as they often fussed about their family, in particular their sister Caddy.

I’m looking forward to more. I’ve already started Absalom, Absalom!

#WilliamFaulkner #TheSoundandtheFury #SouthernLiterature #AmericanLiterature #BookReview

What can you read while waiting for @markhaber ‘s

What can you read while waiting for @markhaber ‘s Ada? Of course, if you haven’t, his three novels that are out from @coffeehousepress right now. Also, two (almost three) short pieces in @southwest_review can help mitigate your Haber hunger. #MarkHaber #Literature #BookReel #CoffeeHousePress #SouthwestReview

Episode 130 is up! Here @bibliopaul and I start a

Episode 130 is up! Here @bibliopaul and I start a short three-part series on beginnings, middles, and ends! #BookReel #ReadingPodcast #BookPodcast

I think Richard Wright said it well when he wrote

I think Richard Wright said it well when he wrote about The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter: “I don’t know what the book is about; the nearest I can come to indicating its theme is to refer to the Catholic confessional or the private office of the psychoanalyst.” It’s the novel we read for this month’s library book club, and tonight we get to sit down and discuss it. I’m glad I don’t have to feel the pressure to put my finger on just what it’s all about. The best I can say, having just finished it, is that it is a book about a host of unreciprocated relationships, connections people depend on just to keep going.

Central to the story is a deaf man named John Singer. In the first chapter, we learn that the man Singer lived with for a decade has been placed in an insane asylum. Now Singer lives alone but is always thinking about his friend, who, to be honest, doesn’t (and didn’t) seem to care. Meanwhile, four other individuals in the small Georgia mill town see Singer as a safe place for their own confessions, though they don’t know not the first thing about Singer himself—and they don’t seem to care to ask. In particular, there is the young girl Mick Kelly, who wants to be a musician . . . and turns to a deaf man as the one who might understand her desires best.

And I’m not entirely sure what to make of it all. There’s loneliness and pain throughout, and we watch hopes and dreams rise and fall. But sitting in the aftermath, I’m most intrigued by and mystified by those who come to Singer and who “did not look him in the eye, and in their faces there was neither love nor hate.”

I’m excited for the discussion tonight. I may not come away with clear answers, but I’m looking forward to where the questions lead.

#CarsonMcCullers #TheHeartIsALonelyHunter #SoutherLiterature #AmericanLiterature

One of my favorite memories from our trip to Engla

One of my favorite memories from our trip to England last October was a rainy day in Winchester. We visited Austen’s home, Chawton, the cathedral, and the new Jane Austen statue. We walked a lot and were cold and soaked through, and it’s still one of those days I wish you could step back into.

#JaneAusten #WinchesterCathedral #JaneAustenHouse #ChawtonHouse

Spark’s 1960 novel The Ballad of Peckham Rye is th

Spark’s 1960 novel The Ballad of Peckham Rye is the fourth book in my 22-month chronological journey through Muriel Spark’s novels, inspired by @literary.woman. It was new to me, but I’d heard folks speak fondly of this one.

I mentioned in last month’s review of Memento Mori that once I got into that book I felt a bit disoriented because Spark tends to set things spinning and then let us observe what the characters say and do without a whole lot of explanation between the lines. I appreciate it, but it does mean I often find her novels more challenging that they seem on the surface.

That was the case with this one as well. The Ballad of Peckham Rye’s opening set me up with a false sense of security: Humphrey Place is outside the door of his former fiancée’s home but he is denied entry. After all, at the wedding, when asked if he would take Dixie to be his wedded wife, Humphrey said, “No, to be quite frank I will not.” There is a consensus that Humphrey would not have done this had Dougal Douglas not come to town.

Spark then takes us back to when this Douglas first arrived in Peckham Rye, joining the firm of Meadows, Meade & Grindley to do “human research.” While it is not always clear just how he does it (“I have the powers of exorcism . . . The ability to drive devils out of people.”) everyone’s lives begin to wobble; things are just not quite the same once he arrives.

As I mentioned, I continue to find Spark a tricky writer. Spark just doesn’t guide me in the way I expect. Nevertheless, I am enjoying the journey.

It was great reading this alongside The Comforters and Memento Mori because we see the recurrence of Spark’s disruptive force. In The Comforters, it’s the disembodied voice from the typewriter. In Memento Mori, it’s the anonymous phone call reminding the listener of their death. Here, it is Dougal, who may be literally diabolical, or may simply be a person whose presence unsettles everyone around him. In each case, something enters the social world and disturbs it. Ultimately the force does not control outcomes; it reveals the characters.

Next up: The Bachelors.

#22MonthsWithMuriel #MurielSpark #WomensLiterature #Reading #BookReview

One of my favorite books is Stone Upon Stone, by W

One of my favorite books is Stone Upon Stone, by Wiesław Myśliwski, translated by Bill Johnston. It won the Best Translated Book Award. This lovely edition was published by @archipelagobooks. #WieslawMysliwski #ArchipelagoBooks #PolishLiterature #TranslatedLiterature #WorldLiterature

My copy of William H. Gass’s The Tunnel has arrive

My copy of William H. Gass’s The Tunnel has arrived from @dalkeyarchive, along with the audiobook! I’ve read what @nyrbooks has published; time for the big one. #WilliamHGass #DalkeyArchive #TheTunnel #BookReels #NYRBClassics

One of my book clubs is reading Steven L. Peck’s 2

One of my book clubs is reading Steven L. Peck’s 2022 novel Heike’s Void. Before diving into that, I wanted to go back and read Peck’s 2009 novella, A Short Stay in Hell.

In this intriguing, unsettling work, Peck examines the insanity of eternity. His protagonist, Soren Johansson, was a Mormon in life. He believed that after death he would be reunited with his family and live with them forever. Instead, he finds himself confronted by a demon who informs him that the one true religion was Zoroastrianism, and that since he was not of the true religion and would therefore need to spend some time in hell, eternal damnation does not exist. “Hell is for your edification and wisdom. Punishment? Yes. But not forever.”

What, then, is Johansson’s particular hell? It resembles something like Borges’ Library of Babel: a practically (but not actually) infinite library containing every possible book that could be assembled within 410 pages, most of them nothing more than nonsensical arrangements of letters, symbols, and spaces. Somewhere among them is the book of Johansson’s life. Find it, and he will be released from hell, though not from infinite time.

On the one hand, while task is clearly difficult it’s not impossible. If Johansson proceeds one book at a time, it’s inevitable that he will eventually find the right one. But as the total footage of shelves and the number of years grow, beyond anything the mind can reasonably hold, meaning begins to collapse.

Johansson is not alone in this vastness. One of the novella’s strengths lies in its exploration of relationships over time, and what becomes of them when time itself ceases to have any meaningful boundary. What does it mean to consciously exist, with or without another, for a thousand years? How about a million? How about 100 billion, and to know that someday this will all just be a distant memory?

Ultimately this book was one of the most effective explorations of unfettered time I’ve ever read. Is eternity something we truly want, or is it only meaningful because we can never actually grasp it?

#AShortStayInHell #StevenLPeck #ExistentialLiterature #Reading #Bookstagram

Episode 129 is live! @bibliopaul and I talk to @lu

Episode 129 is live! @bibliopaul and I talk to @luis.panini about reading projects! #Reading #BookReel #ReadingPodcast #BookPodcast #bookstagram

Happy April! #bookstagram #bookreels #reading #nyr

Happy April! #bookstagram #bookreels #reading #nyrbclassics #murielspark

After the fun of reading Bomarzo, it’s time to sta

After the fun of reading Bomarzo, it’s time to start another big NYRB Classics! #NYRBClassics #Effingers #WomeninTranslation #BigBooks #BookReels

“Can you not ignore it, Dame Lettie?” “No, I canno

“Can you not ignore it, Dame Lettie?”
“No, I cannot. I have tried, but it troubles me deeply. It is a troublesome remark.”
“Perhaps you might obey it,” said Miss Taylor.
“What’s that you say?”
“You might, perhaps, try to remember you must die.”

The opening pages of Memento Mori are funny and mysterious. It’s there that we learn that the elderly Dame Lettie Colston (and soon there will be others) has received a phone call in which a civil voice says simply: “Remember you must die.” It’s a wonderful setup, particularly because Muriel Spark is, at the same time, introducing us to her characters, and she is always so good at doing that. We meet Dame Lettie’s self-centered brother Godfrey and Godfrey’s wife, Charmian, a once-successful novelist.

Before long, though, the cast expands. Perspectives shift, social lives reveal a tangled web, and what first appeared to be a central mystery begins, strangely, to recede. The calls continue, but the characters are just as concerned with old affairs, petty grievances, and questions of inheritance. Memento Mori is delightful and not at all difficult at the level of sentence or scene, yet, for me, it was challenging to take in as a novel.

But what a fine novel it is. The scattered cast, the social chatter, the sense that the central device is somehow beside the point, all of this is just what makes the book work.

Reading Memento Mori so soon after The Comforters, I am intrigued by the recurrence of disembodied voices. In the earlier novel, the voices are overt, almost playful, calling attention to the act of authorship itself. Here, they arrive more quietly in the form of almost banal anonymous phone calls. It begins to feel as though Muriel Spark is positioning herself as a kind of authorial god, introducing a single, undeniable truth into her characters’ lives through strange means and then watching what happens. Faced with the reminder that they must die, the characters might be given an opportunity for some good old Flannery O’Connor style grace as self-awarenesss. Or maybe not.

Next up for #22MonthswithMuriel, The Ballad of Peckham Rye!

#MurielSpark #NewDirectionsPublishing #WomensLiterature #MementoMori

📚 March Releases from NYRB Classics I’ve started

📚 March Releases from NYRB Classics

I’ve started two of them—Voices and Crazy Genie—and I have always been intrigued by the third (I loved Coover’s late stories published in The New Yorker), so I will be reading it soon.

These feel like very different kinds of literary projects, which is what makes following NYRB Classics so much fun! Your shelf is always growing in unexpected ways!

Have you read any of these yet?

#NYRBClassics #bookstagram

Invite to join @literary.woman and read Muriel Spa

Invite to join @literary.woman and read Muriel Spark! Each of these three #MurielSpark books is available from @ndpublishing. #22monthswithmuriel #ReadingProject #bookstagram #womensliterature

Andrew Krivak’s The Bear was one of my favorite re

Andrew Krivak’s The Bear was one of my favorite reads of last year, an end-of-the-world story that was, strangely, beautiful and hopeful. I picked up his latest, Mule Boy, just out from @bellevueliterarypress without even reading the back.

Most of the book is told by Ondro Prach, an older man looking back on the defining event of his life. As a child he was the sole survivor of a mine collapse in Pennsylvania on January 1, 1929, which killed four other men. In the years since, descendants of those who died come to him, wanting at last to know what happened, what their loved ones said, how they died. What we get is Ondro’s recounting of those days he spent in the earth, as well as the trajectory of his life after he came out, including a failed marriage and time in prison.

From the start, I was intrigued by Krivak’s formal choices. While the book is divided into sections, there are no periods at all, so we get long, seemingly incessant sentences. It reads smoothly, and the effect fits this odd, Faulknerian tale. One of the pictures above shows the opening to the second section, rambling and, to me, lovely. Much like some of Faulkner’s narrators, this is a voice in which the past does not recede but presses continuously into the present.

As Ondro tells his story, Mule Boy is more than a survival narrative. During one stretch of his life, he encounters both the story of Book of Jonah and the writings of Maimonides. Jonah gives us a descent into darkness and a return while Maimonides raises harder questions about suffering, knowledge, and what we can reasonably expect to understand about our lives.

What makes Krivak’s novel compelling is that it seems to work with both at once. Ondro’s experience invites us to look for meaning, to shape what happened into something like a story with purpose, and yet the telling resists that impulse. The longer he speaks, the more the past feels not resolved but ongoing, something he continues to live within rather than something he has overcome. Yet somehow Krivak makes this exploration meaningful and, again in its own strange way, hopeful.

#AndrewKrivak #MuleBoy #LiteraryFiction #bookstagram #reading

Episode 128 is up! For this fun episode, @bibliop

Episode 128 is up!

For this fun episode, @bibliopaul and I asked ourselves the classic question: if you were stuck on a desert island, which books would you bring?

We each picked:
– one book to reread forever
– one to help us hold onto our humanity
– and one to wrestle with

The fun, as always, is in the conversation: what we think books do for us, and what we might need from them when everything else falls away.

What would you make sure to grab to sustain you, and why?

#bookstagram #readinglife #desertislandbooks #bookpodcast #literarypodcast

There was a stretch of time when a new Philip Roth

There was a stretch of time when a new Philip Roth novel meant a trip to the bookstore on publication day. I remember picking up his final novellas one by one, never knowing which would be his last. He called it quits in 2010 with the publication of the final book in what is often called his Nemeses Quartet: Everyman, Indignation, The Humbling, Nemesis, four late works that return, again and again, to aging, regret, desire, and the limits of control. They are pared down, stark, and though not as good as his masterpieces, I’ve always found something powerful in their restraint.

Everyman focuses on an unnamed older man, who, when the story begins, is already dead. Despite his vitality, his body grew old and feeble and—there’s nothing to be done—died. With Indignation Roth goes back to the 1950s. Here again the subject is already dead, but this time it is a young man who, despite his vitality, is swept up in the tragedy of history. A small, innocent decision led, in speedy course, to his demise. In The Humbling, Roth returned to an elderly subject, an actor who lost his ability to act. Not dead yet, this subject spends the pages of the book attempting to gain control over his fate—and maybe from his perspective he does. In Nemesis, Roth goes back to a young subject and back to early Newark, during a polio outbreak.

I don’t hear Roth discussed as much these days, something I would never have imagined twenty years ago when he was still alive and publishing a literary event practically every year. But it probably makes sense. He’s a complicated, often frustrating author, and not without reason people have stepped back from his work or never step toward it. Yet I still find myself returning to his books, with their clarity, unease, and willful digressiveness. They sit with life’s harder truths without trying to resolve them.

#PhilipRoth #NemesesQuartet #AmericanLiterature #Reading #bookstagram

I’m curious if others have read these, or any other Roth, or if he’s is a writer you’ve moved toward or away from over time.

There’s something special about returning to films

There’s something special about returning to films you love and finding them transformed.

I pulled out my old DVD of Eclipse Series 8: Lubitsch Musicals to compare with the new Blu-ray release, and the difference is remarkable. The image has a clarity and brightness that makes Lubitsch’s precision feel even more exact.

David and I covered these films on The Eclipse Viewer Podcast in 2014. More than a decade later, we’re going back! Look for these episodes sometime in the next month!

The films in the set are The Love Parade (1929), Monte Carlo (1930), The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), and One Hour With You (1932). Have you seen any of these Lubitsch musicals?

#CriterionCollection #EclipseSeries #ErnstLubitsch #ClassicFilm #FilmPodcast

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The blog

Steven L. Peck: A Short Stay in Hell

Some thoughts on a great short book: Steven L. Peck: A Short Stay in Hell
Muriel Spark: Memento Mori

Next up for my chronological read through of Muriel Spark’s novels is her third, 1959’s Memento Mori.
Andrew Krivak: Mule Boy

Andrew Krivak’s Mule Boy is another dark but strangely hopeful tale.
Claude Sautet: Classe tous risques

Today The Criterion Collection released an edition of a film new to me: Claude Sautet’s 1960 film Classe tous risques. I loved it!
Sidney Lumet: Network

Today The Criterion Collection is releasing a new edition of Sidney Lumet’s 1976 film, Network.

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