Better Read than Dead: Literature from a Left Perspective

Episode 109: Babel-17

12 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Episode 108: The Monk

22 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Episode 107: Brave New World

08 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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, w...

Episode 106: CROSSOVER SPECIAL: The Last of the Mohicans (the movie)

06 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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 podca...

Episode 105: The Body

06 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Episode 104: The Stepford Wives

30 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Happy Halloween, book jerks! Starting our fourth annual spookfest, we’re reading The Stepford Wives, which should actually be called The Stepford Hu...

Episode 103: The Man Who Lived Underground

09 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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. Pub...

Episode 102: The Last of the Mohicans

25 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 frien...

Episode 101: Middlemarch, Part 2

14 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 h...

Episode 100: Middlemarch, Part 1

07 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Episode 99: The Mountain Lion

31 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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’...

Episode 98: Murder on the Orient Express

24 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Episode 97: Wuthering Heights

17 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It has taken your favorite commie book jerks nearly 100 episodes to answer the much-debated question – what is the horniest novel of the British 19t...

Episode 96: Naked Lunch

10 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

You’ve been asking for it (and by “you” we mean “nobody”), so here’s Naked Lunch (1959)! It’s almost unfair to accuse Burroughs of havin...

Episode 95: Jews Without Money

03 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

To kick off Season 6, we are joined by comrade, friend-of-the-pod, and Indiana University South Bend associate professor of English Benjamin Balthaser...

Episode 94: Season 5 Wrap-Up

06 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In our Season 5 wrap-up, we try to stir up a little controversy amongst Yr Worships’s favorite book commies by rerunning Pilgrim’s Progress as a s...

Episode 93: The Pilgrim's Progress

20 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

You all demanded it, so we delivered! Delivered you from evil. Today we have The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) otherwise known as John Bunyan’s Excell...

Episode 92: Inkle and Yarico

13 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Today in “men are trash,” and enslaving, colonialist white men are the trashiest of trash, we bring you Sir Richard Steele’s 1711 Spectator rete...

Episode 91: Lady Chatterley's Lover

06 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Even we, three very experienced Book Jerks, weren’t really prepared for the nightmare that was Lady Chatterley’s Lover, aka Dicks out for Fash. On...

Episode 90: Persuasion

30 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

If you like dunking on useless aristocrats, novels brimming with the psychological tension of unfulfilled desire, and ships, have we got a great one f...

Episode 89: Mrs. Dalloway

16 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Modernist grouch, Bloomsbury group member, Freud-to-tea-haver, and Great Novelist Virginia Woolf takes center stage in our discussion of Mrs. Dalloway...

Episode 88: The Talented Mr. Ripley

19 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Friend, comrade, fellow podcaster, and University of Pennsylvania Ph.D. candidate Devin Daniels joins us to discuss Patricia Highsmith’s The Talente...

Episode 87: Pierre, Part 2

12 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Wrapping up our two-parter on Herman Melville’s Pierre (1852), we talk about religion, the mind bending plot, what Melville was doing with these cha...

Episode 86: Pierre, Part 1

05 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This week we are bringing you what the people want, and have always wanted, Herman Melville’s Pierre (1852)! Wait, you don’t want to read a book a...

Episode 85: Caleb Williams

21 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This week, we bring you the OG ACAB novel, William Godwin’s Caleb Williams (1794). We very much stan Godwin, awesome radical, proto-anarchist, Mary ...

Episode 84: The Picture of Dorian Gray

14 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Closing out this year’s Halloween episodes, we have the much-requested Picture of Dorian Gray (1890/91) by Oscar Wilde. You probably know the story....

Episode 83: The Case of George Dedlow

07 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The next installment in our Halloween fright fest comes from the guy who brought us classics like “the rest cure” and a book called Fat and Blood:...

Episode 82: Carrie

31 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Friends, it’s our third annual Halloween series! We’re talking about Stephen King’s horror classic Carrie (1974), which is about a teenage girl ...

Episode 81: McTeague

24 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Hey comrades! We’re back with more swears, random Frankfurt School references, and messy book takes. In our Season 5 opener, UChicago PhD candidate,...

Episode 80: Season 4 Wrap-Up

15 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We are capping off Season 4 with a tribute to next season’s two-parter, Herman Melville’s sister-boinking polycule classic Pierre. We inhabit the ...

Episode 79: Wieland

08 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This week we are thrilled to bring you Charles Brockden Brown’s 1798 novel Wieland. It’s about a guy who gets tricked by a ventriloquist into murd...

Episode 78: Lucy

01 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

After devoting much of this podcast to the pressing topic of Dads Who Are A**holes (and have failsons), here’s our second back-to-back episode on Mo...

Episode 77: No-No Boy

18 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

It’s a drizzly day in Seattle in John Okada’s No-No Boy (1957), and we’re feeling the mood. No-No Boy is about Ichiro Yamada, a Japanese-America...

Episode 76: Silas Marner

11 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Bible says something somewhere about children who are worth their weight in gold. Well, George Eliot’s Silas Marner (1861) explores what would h...

Episode 75: The Great Gatsby

04 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

If you’re one of those try-hards who read this for the AP Lit test (and we are), you’ll be pleased to see us finally take this one on. This week w...

Episode 74: Dune

27 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

It is time to ride the worm and ask the eternal question “what’s in the box?” This week we have Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi classic about a fu...

Episode 73: The Man of Feeling

20 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

If you like feckless boobs who are also giant crysacks (Megan does not), do we have a book for you! Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling (1771) is a...

Episode 72: Lolita, Part 2

13 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We close up our discussion of Lolita and try not to reflect too much on what has brought us to this point. We consider what sort of people would read ...

Episode 71: Lolita, Part 1

06 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Our Season Four two-parter is on Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1955), and there’s some truly gruesome material here. If you’ve ever wondered where ...

Episode 70: Black No More

30 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Friend of the pod, cultural critic, and Northwestern University professor of African American literature Lauren Michele Jackson joins us for our discu...

Episode 69: Of One Blood

23 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Got a sister? Are you SURE you don’t have a sister? Pauline Hopkins's Of One Blood (1902-1903) explores this important question along with mesmerism...

Episode 68: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

16 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Are you on the bus or off it, man? The book commies, dear listener, are decidedly off it. Or rather, we’re punching, clawing, screaming, and fightin...

Episode 67: The Journalist and the Murderer

09 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Friend of the pod Sebastian Stockman joins us for the second episode in our three-part series on The New Journalism. Sub is a teaching professor in En...

Episode 66: The White Album

02 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

DID YOU MISS US? Reading with Reds returns for Season Four, and we’re talking about Joan Didion’s The White Album as the first of a three-part ser...

Episode 65: Season 3 Wrap-Up

17 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Join us as we revisit some of our favorite fail-lords of the season and conduct a highly scientific and professional grading meeting! We discuss the d...

Episode 64: Absalom, Absalom!

10 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

If you’ve been listening to Better Read for a bit, you’re probably aware that Megan’s favorite genre of novel is "brother hearts sister but in a...

Episode 63: The Wild Irish Girl

03 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In keeping with Better Read than Dead’s mission of bringing you literature’s greatest failsons -- and Tristan’s favorite genre of novel, “feck...

Episode 62: A Christmas Memory

27 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

If you need some salty tears in your fruitcake, have we got the one for you. We’re talking about Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory,” origina...

Episode 61: A Child's Christmas in Wales

20 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Ho ho ho! Or in Welsh, cywnwn cywnwn cywnwn! (Probably. Or definitely not, we don’t speak Welsh). For the first of two Christmas episodes this year,...

Episode 60: The Screwtape Letters

13 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This week we descend into the bowels of hell to bring you C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters (1942), a Christian epistolary novel about what happens...

Episode 59: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

06 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever wondered how to take some pointless old rich men for a ride? Have you ever wanted to learn to do close-up magic with a diamond tiara? Jo...

Episode 58: Rappaccini's Daughter

29 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Under no circumstances should you stop and smell the flowers. We learned this lesson and had many more plant-based epiphanies chatting about Nathaniel...

Episode 57: A Passage to India

22 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The book commies get into one of our favorite topics this week -- liberal imperialism (well, *dunking on* liberal imperialism is one of our favorite t...

Episode 56: A Clockwork Orange

15 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Wrench those eyeballs wide open for our discussion of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange (1962), a novel about a teenage droog and his rehabilitat...

Episode 55: Joseph Andrews

08 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Friend of the pod David Diamond visits us to talk about Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews (1742) and join in Tristan and Katie’s nefarious plot to t...

Episode 54: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

01 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We conclude our 2020 Halloween spectacular with the scariest one yet, Jonathan Edwards’s 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Tha...

Episode 53: The Haunting of Hill House

25 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We continue Halloween 2020 with Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House! We talk about Women Who Are A Problem, sexuality, what the ...

Episode 52: The Monkey's Paw

18 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to our second annual Halloween spooktacular! We begin our frightfest with W. W. Jacobs’s 1902 short story “The Monkey’s Paw.” We talk ...

Episode 51: The Call of the Wild

11 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We are talking about Jack London’s The Call of the Wild (1903), a book about a dog named Buck, his manly adventures on the frontier, and his tragic ...

Episode 50: Tristram Shandy, Part 2

04 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Comrades! It’s our 50th episode!! And what better way to celebrate than wrapping up our discussion of one of the raddest books of all time, Laurence...

Episode 49: Tristram Shandy, Part 1

27 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

MADAM, today we have the first of two episodes on Tristan’s *favorite novel ever,* Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gen...

Episode 48: Go Tell It on the Mountain

20 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It’s taken us a while to get to James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), which is too bad because it is delightful. We wander the many p...

Episode 47: Ragged Dick

13 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Get ready to give those bootstraps a nice firm tug, because we are opening Season 3 with Horatio Alger’s 1868 novel Ragged Dick! We discuss what cri...

Episode 46: Season 2 Wrap-Up

26 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

For our Season 2 finale, we do a round of roasts and toasts. Hear us dunk more on the readership of The New Yorker, marvel at the dipshit failsonery o...

Episode 45: The Dispossessed

19 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Our friend and comrade Hilary Strang joins us this week to discuss Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974) and we’re talking about anarcho-com...

Episode 44: The Outsiders

12 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It’s a real weeper this week: we’re reading S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders (1967) and talking about tough, dangerous, sensitive teenagers and the r...

Episode 43: The Masque of the Red Death

05 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever tried to ride out a plague by welding yourself and 1,000 of your closest friends in a psychedelic castle for some depravity and debauche...

Episode 42: Journal of the Plague Year

28 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Not sure why we wanted to talk about Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year (1722) in the middle of a global pandemic -- let’s just say we need...

Episode 41: Of Mice and Men

21 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

It’s everyone’s favorite book from freshman English, John Steinbeck’s novella-play Of Mice and Men, which is about two migrant ranch workers in ...

Episode 40: Parable of the Sower

14 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On this episode, we talk environmental catastrophe, economic collapse, and racism in the 2020s. If any of that sounds awfully familiar, stay tuned, be...

Episode 39: Things Fall Apart

07 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We recorded this episode before the police murder of George Floyd and before the nationwide protests against structural racism and police terror. We s...

Episode 38: The Most Dangerous Game

31 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We have made--and stand by--the claim that the whale is the most dangerous game of all. Well, apparently Richard Connell felt differently, because he ...

Episode 37: On the Road

24 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Once upon a time, Jack Kerouac got very drunk, taped a 120-foot roll of paper together, and started typing for three straight weeks. He ended up with ...

Episode 36: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill)

17 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

If you thought porn originated in 1972 or 2017 or with the invention of the pizza delivery man, goodness madam are you mistaken. We’re reading John ...

Episode 35: Moby-Dick, Part 2

10 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Regrettably, we bring our discussion of this whale of a tale to a close today. That's right, we are wrapping up Moby-Dick (1851). We talk labor, the e...

Episode 34: Moby-Dick, Part 1

03 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Continuing our Melville spectacular, we bring you the first of two episodes on Moby-Dick (1851). Yes, this is Melville’s famous, uh, novel? romance?...

Episode 33: Benito Cereno

26 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This week, we begin our three-part Melville spectacular with our friend, comrade, and very first guest host, Peter Coviello, Professor of American lit...

Episode 32: Native Son

19 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We can’t believe that we occasionally get to read books by real-deal leftists on this podcast, given the time we spend dunking on politically terrib...

Episode 31: The Turn of the Screw

15 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Here at Better Read than Dead we are here to tell you that work sucks and we should seize the means of production! But in the meantime, one job we def...

Episode 30: Rob Roy

08 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

If you were to write an historical novel about the Scottish hero-outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor, you’d probably make it about Roy Roy, right? Well, you ar...

Episode 29: The Lottery

01 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Megan is back to lead our discussion of Shirley Jackson’s most famous work, “The Lottery” (1948), and hoo boy, do we talk about how mad the read...

Episode 28: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

23 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) allows us to take up a crucial question -- is it a ship or a boat? Well, it’s actually a ra...

Episode 27: Fantomina

16 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Eliza Haywood doesn’t get read much today outside of eighteenth-century lit classes, which is a shame because she’s 1) as important to the English...

Episode 26: The Hound of the Baskervilles

09 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Calling all gumshoes! Get ready to hear how Sherlock Holmes cracks the case of a magical glow-in-the-dark dog who eats aristocrat failsons in The Houn...

Episode 25: Great Expectations

02 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

As previously noted on the classic Better Read than Dead Christmas Carol show, Katie and Tristan are both fans of Charles Dickens. So needless to say,...

Episode 24: The Time Machine

26 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1985, Doc Brown and Marty McFly traveled into the distant future of 2015, where we all had flying cars and hoverboards, wore our pockets inside out...

Episode 23: I, Claudius

19 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

We here at Better Read than Dead do not care for fascists. So when we had the chance to kick off our 2020 season with an historical novel that dunks o...

Episode 22: A Christmas Carol

01 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Katie says, “bah humbug,” but Tristan says, “oi guv, Bob’s your uncle an’ bless us all, every one” to this most beloved of Victorian Chris...

Episode 21: Hamlet

24 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Our apologies to Stephen Dedalus. Previously, we referred to him as King F*ckboy, but that’s grossly unfair to both Stephen and perhaps literature’...

Episode 20: Ulysses, Part 2

17 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Welp, friends, we made it through all eleventy billion pages of Ulysses and are the better for it. (Better Read than Dead 1, Mayor Pete 0.) And we all...

Episode 19: Ulysses, Part 1

10 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

After these next two episodes, will Megan manage to convince Katie and Tristan that our novel in question is hysterically funny and good indeed, or wi...

Episode 18: The Castle of Otranto

03 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Was Horace Walpole a second-grader when he wrote The Castle of Otranto (1764)? “And then a big helmet squished the guy, and then grandpa walked out ...

Episode 17: Rosemary's Baby

27 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We’re back to one of our usual themes this week--creepy babies! We take on Ira Levin’s 1967 genre novel Rosemary’s Baby, which asks if pregnancy...

Episode 16: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

20 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

There are few things Better Read than Dead enjoys more than owning dipsh*ts/watching dipsh*ts get owned, which is why we were so psyched to read Washi...

Episode 15: Little Women

13 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Put your crying pants on, because it’s time for Little Women (1868)! We talk about why Jo is so cool, whether it’s bad to steal a lady’s glove s...

Episode 14: Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

06 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We’re such goths (apparently), we didn’t even realize we were doing a Halloween month when we recorded this episode on Robert Louis Stevenson’s ...

Episode 13: Heart of Darkness

29 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We follow one of literature’s least-impressive boats up the Belgian Congo in our discussion of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899). It’s ye...

Episode 12: The Fall of the House of Usher

22 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

If you're trying to decide whether to reconnect with your creepy old childhood friend who lives in a fungus covered mansion deep in the woods with a s...

Episode 11: Gulliver's Travels

15 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Gulliver’s Travels (1726) may indeed be the “goofiest book that was ever written,” which is why it’s so fun to talk about! We get into all the...

Episode 10: The Awakening

08 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This week we read Kate Chopin’s novella The Awakening (1899). Chopin’s short work is about a tall lady who doesn’t want to listen to her husband...