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Better Read than Dead: Literature from a Left Perspective

by Better Read

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Latest episodes

Episode 109: Babel-17

November 12, 2023 · 1 hr 18 min

We embark on a cosmic journey through Samuel Delany's 1966 sci-fi gem, Babel-17. This novel by the brilliant self-described “boring old Marxist” (the best kind of person!) has it all: a telepathic poet captaining a star ship, naked space…
Episode 108: The Monk

October 22, 2023 · 1 hr 32 min

For Halloween 2023, we bring you one of the craziest novels of all time (or certainly of the eighteenth century). Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796) is a tale of horny Catholics – men and women, in the clergy and not – sexy nuns…
Episode 107: Brave New World

October 8, 2023 · 1 hr 30 min

Hi again, nerds: we’re back after a long hiatus with more high school English class reads and some Jungianism on the side! JK about that last one, we would never. We’re talking about Aldous Huxley’s 1932 “science fiction” novel Brave New…
Episode 106: CROSSOVER SPECIAL: The Last of the Mohicans (the movie)

February 6, 2023 · 2 hr 14 min

Friends, it's the crossover event of the century - we join our comrades at You're Tall but I'm Standing in Front of You (if you don't know their podcast, it's amazing, hilarious, brilliant, and you should subscribe immediately) for a…
Episode 105: The Body

November 6, 2022 · 1 hr 27 min

There is still plenty of spookiness left in the season! To celebrate, this week we are bringing you Stephen King’s The Body from his 1982 collection Different Seasons, also containing Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption and Apt…

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Episode 104: The Stepford Wives

October 30, 2022 · 1 hr 23 min

Happy Halloween, book jerks! Starting our fourth annual spookfest, we’re reading The Stepford Wives, which should actually be called The Stepford Husbands (they’re the scary ones, after all, and credit to Amanda Davis for the appellation)…
Episode 103: The Man Who Lived Underground

October 9, 2022 · 1 hr 27 min

We couldn’t wait to read the new novel-length version of Richard Wright’s The Man Who Lived Underground, and it absolutely did not disappoint. Published as a short story in 1944, collected in Eight Men in 1961, and finally published as the…
Episode 102: The Last of the Mohicans

September 25, 2022 · 1 hr 32 min

We are back and bringing you The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper’s 1826 historical novel about stepping on twigs and tricking your friends by following them around in a bear costume. We chat about race, the novel's politics…
Episode 101: Middlemarch, Part 2

August 14, 2022 · 1 hr 43 min

We finish our conversation on George Eliot’s 1871-1872 behemoth Middlemarch with an in-depth discussion of the book as an historical novel and the historical contexts of its setting in the early 1830s. We all have different answers to how…
Episode 100: Middlemarch, Part 1

August 7, 2022 · 1 hr 49 min

For our 100th episode (!!!), it’s only fitting we tackle a Big One. And George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871-1872) is certainly that – literally (it’s SO MANY PAGES). Middlemarch tells the stories of several intersecting characters all trying…
Episode 99: The Mountain Lion

July 31, 2022 · 1 hr 24 min

It’s a journey Out West with the book jerks–we’re reading Jean Stafford’s The Mountain Lion (1947)! One of the many under-appreciated women’s novels of the midcentury, this account of Molly and Ralph Fawcett and their bonneted, foofy…
Episode 98: Murder on the Orient Express

July 24, 2022 · 1 hr 24 min

All aboard! This week we are bringing you a one way ticket...to murder! It's Agatha Christie's 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express. We talk about stabby eye-talians, big ole mustaches and detective fiction, and bust out some top-tier…