Questioning the Canon
Episodes
Cat On a Hot Tin Roof
19 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Come stake your claim to 28,000 acres of the richest soil this side of the Valley Nile as we cover the classic southern gothic play, Cat On a Hot Tin ...
At the Mountains of Madness
27 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We've been on a bit of an expedition of sorts, and we come back bearing news. Terrible news! Namely about the author of our book this month, H.P. Lo...
Beloved
04 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Now that holidays are over, maybe it's time you started to process some of the trauma you've been accumulating for all of these years, and there's no ...
A Christmas Carol
07 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This month we're back with a traditional Christmas ghost story. Because Christmas and ghosts are a thing, right? Well, according to A Christmas Ca...
Dracula
12 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to our house...Hop a train with us to far off Carpathia and dank dark evils of Castle Dracula as we explore what made this 1897 novel such an ...
High Fidelity
07 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever gone back to really examine something you loved when you were younger? This month we dig into our record collection and put a fresh sp...
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
03 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Here we go! In this hot, stormy summer weather, we've decided to take a field trip to Oz and explore the 1900 book the Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. F...
Gone With the Wind
06 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It's fitting that our longest episode to date should be covering the longest book we've done so far. Gone With the Wind is a monolithic book and movi...
The Bridges of Madison County
01 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It's time to drift out across the farmlands of Iowa to find your one true love on a random encounter. Or not. This month we cover the wildly popular...
Anna Karenina
04 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
All aboard for Season 4! We crash through snowy Russian landscapes and meander about pastoral Russian farmlands in our exploration of Russian foundat...
Fun Home
13 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We round out season 3 of our little podcast with another graphic novel, this time from revered author Alison Bechdel and her 2006 masterpiece, Fun Hom...
The Left Hand of Darkness
02 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Now is the time to explore strange new alien civilizations, and thereby explore strange new ideas within ourselves with Ursula K. Le Guin's 1969 sci-f...
Kindred
03 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
None of us can ever know what it was like to live the harrowing experience of being a black slave in America in the early 1800's, but Octavia Butler w...
Hamlet
06 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Let us sit upon the ground and listen to nerdy podcasts about the death of kings. Alas, poor Hamlet! We reviewed it, dear listener! There was so mu...
Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade
09 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It can be hard putting your life back together after the traumas of war, especially if you are perceiving different portions of your life out of order...
The Secret History
11 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It's time we come clean about something with you...we covered the Secret History by Donna Tartt and we just can't hold it in any longer. Listen in on...
Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus
14 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The pumpkins are out, the wind is getting colder, it's time to hit the books and resurrect the dead! This month, we climb the glaciers of Switzerland...
A Wrinkle In Time
16 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Come along with us as we try to rescue ourselves from our youngest demographically targeted book yet, A Wrinkle In Time! While we may not cover impos...
Fight Club
19 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This month we're going underground talking about the book, movie, and phenomena that is Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club. We break the first two rules of...
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
22 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For America's birthday month, we decided to peruse Mark Twain's much discussed Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. There were so many topics to cover inc...
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
24 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Set out with us on our summer reading journey with the Hobbit by the wizard himself, J.R.R. Tolkien. We find a lot of comfortable knowledge holes to ...
The Fountainhead
06 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Here's quite a book for our season 3 opener! If you've ever been curious what the Fountainhead is and what it's all about, come join for a rousing di...
Watchmen
01 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In our giant-sized season closer, we square up against Alan Moore's seminal graphic novel Watchmen. This book contains so many details, nuggets, and ...
In Cold Blood
04 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The winds and rain of March seem like the perfect time to bring you our take on Truman Capote's true crime novel, In Cold Blood. In the episode, we d...
The Color Purple
04 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes beautiful things are also very hard things and the Color Purple by Alice Walker is just like that. In our discussion we range over topics i...
The Bell Jar
07 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Perhaps appropriate for January and the post-holidays slump, we take a look at the Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath's singular novel. As we swim out, we discus...
Little Women
03 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Okay, hear me out, there was a lot more to talk about with Little Women than I thought there would be. We cartwheel over the topics of domesticity, s...
The Kite Runner
05 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this month's episode, we finally get around to reading a book I had deliberately been avoiding my whole life, The Kite Runner. I'm not exactly sur...
Carrie
01 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For our October episode, we ran into the darkness with horror master Steven King and his first novel Carrie. We touch on high school trauma, anatomy,...
Valley of the Dolls
03 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Come along with us as we explore sex, drugs, and camp in Jacqueline Susann's bestseller Valley of the Dolls. We also...talk about the movie...yeesh. ...
The Grapes of Wrath
06 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It's late summer and that means it's time to celebrate the great American road trip! Maybe this trip with the Joads wasn't so great after all, but th...
Ender's Game
02 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Next on our summer reading list, we voyage into a little science fiction with Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. We dig into biases, warfare, and late...
To Kill a Mockingbird
04 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Perhaps you've heard of this little book? For our summer reading, we start with To Kill a Mockingbird and discuss not only its obvious racial implica...
Emma
07 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Here we go on season 2! We're very excited to bring you our discussion on what is probably Jane Austen's third most famous book, Emma. We cover a wi...
Maus
02 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We saved a GREAT book to round out season one and we threw ourselves a little party. Despite covering such a crushing and dour topic, our conversati...
Invisible Man
05 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This month we dive into the difficult journey of the complicated narrator in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. This novel provides a million important ...
Catcher In the Rye
05 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This month we dive into J.D. Salinger's Catcher In the Rye and question why a 16 year old in New York would be so angry and disaffected in the first p...
Wuthering Heights
01 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It's time to talk about tortured love and obsession on the moors of Yorkshire. That's right, this month, we get into Emily Bronte's 1847 masterpiece...
A Separate Peace
04 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This month, we discuss developing feelings, lashing out, and living wounded in the WWII-era classic A Separate Peace. This book was a great read and...
The Fifth Mountain
06 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Let's go to ancient Lebanon by way of Brazil, shall we? In this month's episode, we dive deep into the life of author Paulo Coelho, the prophet Elij...
The Haunting of Hill House
02 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Come explore spooky hallways and isolated estates with us as we discuss Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. This book was a lot of fun but...
This Side of Paradise
04 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This month we cover F. Scott Fitzgerald's first and career making novel This Side of Paradise. My money is that you've never read this and you can h...
Their Eyes Were Watching God
07 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We get swept up in this true American classic by Zora Neal Hurston. In this episode we cover Halle Berry, mules, and rabies, just to name a few appr...
Blood Meridian, Or, the Evening Redness In the West
03 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Let's head out west to experience one of the most merciless books we've ever read. You've probably heard about Blood Meridian before, but you've def...
The Martian Chronicles
05 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The month, we take off into Ray Bradbury's fix-up novel The Martian Chronicles. Arguably Bradbury's second most famous book, we cover a wide a varie...
Ethan Frome
28 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Our first episode! We decided to start with the most dreary book we've read in a long long time, Ethan Frome! Get ready for cold hearts, cold road...