Questions, Questions

This week Marlon and Jake answer some of the questions that listeners have asked. What dead author or book did they initially hate but have come around to love? What is the best book by the worst dead author? And who is the most annoying character by a dead author? (Spoiler alert: Heathcliff. Obviously.) Along the way Jake confesses a lack of enthusiasm for William Faulkner and, yes, Virginia Woolf, while Marlon bemoans the insufferably boring Thomas Hardy and makes a plug for the poetic darkness of Shakespeare’s Richard III.  Their shared hatred of A Tale of Two Cities is back and stronger than ever. Will Jake re-read Absalom, Absalom!? Will Marlon let go of his Edith Wharton grudge? Should we take relationship advice from Jane Austen? Was D.H. Lawrence the 20th Century’s bridesmaid but never its bride?  Has the “Great Pirate Novel” been written? Tune in to learn the answers to these essential questions and so much more!

Select titles discussed in this episode:

Absalom, Absalom! by William FaulknerThe Sound and the Fury by William FaulknerThe Nick Adams Stories by Ernest HemingwayTess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas HardyJude the Obscure by Thomas HardyReturn of the Native by Thomas HardyThe Awakening by Kate ChopinFour Quartets by T.S. EliotMrs. Dalloway by Virginia WoolfThe House of Mirth by Edith WhartonWomen in Love by D.H. LawrenceEmma by Jane AustenSense and Sensibility by Jane AustenPersuasion by Jane AustenA Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee WilliamsHarvey by Mary ChaseWuthering Heights by Emily BrontëThe Great Gatsby by F. Scott FitzgeraldVanity Fair by William Makepeace ThackerayQB VII by Leon UrisAirport by Arthur HaileyThe White Witch of Rosehall by Herbert G. de LisserThe Black Sun by Lance HornerRichard III by William ShakespeareThe Merchant of Venice by William ShakespeareJulius Caesar by William ShakespearePericles by William ShakespeareThe Merry Wives of Windsor by William ShakespeareCymbeline by William ShakespeareOne Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García MárquezThe Master and Margarita by Mikhail BulgakovRobinson Crusoe by Daniel DefoeTreasure Island by Robert Louis StevensonA High Wind in Jamaica by Richard HughesThis Side of Paradise by F. Scott FitzgeraldA Tale of Two Cities by Charles DickensBleak House by Charles DickensOur Mutual Friend by Charles DickensDavid Copperfield by Charles DickensThe Edwardians by Vita Sackville-WestStoner by John WilliamsThe Pearl by John SteinbeckThe Ambassadors by Henry JamesAutumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel García MárquezWide Sargasso Sea by Jean RhysJane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë