That Book

What we read in this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year. 

Books: The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett; Field Work, Mischa Berl...

Some classic segments today! A brief season wrap-up leads into a To the WHAThouse?!?™️ on Aeschylus’s The Oresteia and Michael’s (too) early introduction to it. Then a Tackle That Stackle™️hack for your e-reader. Then What Hannah is Actually Rea...

In our final episode of the season, we’re in New York City with one of the greats, Edith Wharton and her novel The Custom of the Country. We talk being frenemies with Henry James, half-assed ghosts, and why TCotC is a straight-up bop.

Just as the sun shines on that temperate den of vice known as Los Angeles, we shine our (private) eye(s) on noir fiction set in L.A., with authors James M. Cain and Walter Mosley. Taking bets on which one of us takes this as their cue to do a 10-minute monologue on Barbara Stanwyck. 

Y’all might have to down some redbull (+ vodka) to keep up with vanilla suit connoisseur Tom Wolfe and his eighties brick, The Bonfire of the Vanities. It is, let’s say, equal parts energetic and problematic. We get into why, then do a juicy dive on the misguided movie adaptation starring, bewilderingly, Tom Hanks.

Inspired by this New York Times interview by Lindsay Mannering, we dive headfirst into Jessica Simpson’s memoir Open Book. Join us as we travel back in time to the early aughts, when jean waistlines were low, cargo pants were plentiful, and Jes...

If you don’t love our pod, how in the *hell* are you gonna love somebody else?

This week: uber L.A. woman Eve Babitz. How do you talk about a woman who knew everyone and did everything there is to do?? We give it a shot--covering her life, her work, and her recent revival on #bookstagram.

Hannah and Michael travel back to early 20th-century New York and learn about two so-called “forgotten women” of the Harlem Renaissance. This one’s a remedial education!