“All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hour, and the books of all time.”
I’m not really sure when I stopped growing as a reader. I feel like the Internet has something to do with it; the arrival of e-readers also has something to do with it. Like many people, I’ve got a sense that algorithmic recommendation keeps you trapped in a bubble. Like many people, I also struggle not to rely on it. But I could see that when it came to reading I was ultimately being fed more of the same of what I already enjoyed, and that over time what I was being fed was sliding down in quality.
Example: In 2020, at the start of the COVID lockdowns here in the UK, I started reading as many of Graham Greene’s books as I could get for my Kindle—something to draw my attention away from the infinite doomscroll. When I’d exhausted most of those, the algorithm moved me on to John Le Carre (who is great, don’t get me wrong, but a step down from Greene), and then to Mick Herron (also good! but also not Graham Greene), and so on down the chain. After a while I grew weary of thrillers, and I’d ingested so many of them I struggled to remember which plots were by which authors.
This cycle (which also repeated itself with historical fiction, and popular biographies, and horror novels) left me feeling undernourished as a reader. So I decided I would tackle a big project; one that I had started planning more than 15 years ago, when I was in a similar reading rut right after I’d become a mother. The project was this: I would assemble a list of 200 or so great books, and I would attempt to read, digest, and write about them. And in order to help impose some structure on this list, I would do it chronologically.
Life happens; work happens; there is only so much time in the day. But now I am in a happy place in my career where I have a reasonable amount of flexibility about my schedule.
Why a Podcast?
I was introduced to podcasts pretty late, around 2018, and became very excited about the format. It interested me first as a vehicle for fiction (I even wrote a script for one that took the top prize at the Austin Film Festival in 2019). As the pandemic wore on I realized how much I relied on factual podcasts, usually about history or culture, to get me through my day. Waiting in the queue outside the shops, walking back from dropping my daughter at school, washing dishes, folding and then abandoning piles of laundry—these were good times to listen to a voice telling me things I didn’t know about topics I was vaguely informed about.
One of my favorites was (and is) The History of England Podcast, by an independent podcaster called David Crowther. He’s been working his way through the history of this wacky little island with care and enthusiasm and a lot of Monty Python references since 2010 or so. Listening to the show starting from the first episode, I was impressed by how he grew as a writer and presenter, how he began to attract guests who are actual historians, and how he was eventually able to start making his living from talking to his computer in his shed.
Gradually I got the idea that I could probably do that too. So here we are. This may never be my day job, but it feels like it could be a really fun ride nevertheless.
How the Show Works
Great books lists are often non-representative, and the people who extol them as character-building exercises or as superior substitutes for other types of education can often be reactionary. This isn’t that kind of project, though I hope listeners will understand that I’m a white American lady in early middle age and subject to all the blind spots and unintentional biases that come with that background (though I do try to stretch beyond these limitations, you should price all that background in).
I’m also not a literary expert or scholar, so it’s my intention to treat everything I read as a plain old book (though I will treat the works others hold sacred—scriptures and the like—with respect). I’ll try to give my reaction to each work as a general reader, answering the kinds of questions I would normally ask. Is The Odyssey a good story? Is it accurate to describe Milton’s Paradise Lost as bible fanfic? What’s all the fuss about Aristotle?
Every title read will provide material for two episodes. The first episode is a summary of the work itself: either the plot or a summary of the main ideas or arguments. The second episode is a meta episode that goes into the history of the work or another aspect of its legacy—for example, as of February 2024, I am currently outlining episode four, which looks at the scribe class in Egypt.
Anyway, off we go. Your own opinions and thoughts are more than welcome in the comments, and I may read them out on the show, too (with your permission).
Want to know what I’ll be talking about? The Books of All Time reading list is here. Thanks for reading, and for listening.
Books Of All Time 