Tea or Books? #37: does studying books ruin them? and A View From the Bridge vs Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, and schooldays – we’ve got it all in episode 37 (depending on your definition of ‘all’).   In the first half of this episode, we meander around the topic of whether or not studying a book

Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, and schooldays – we’ve got it all in episode 37 (depending on your definition of ‘all’).

https://www.stuckinabook.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Tea-or-Books-episode-37.mp3

 

In the first half of this episode, we meander around the topic of whether or not studying a book at school ruins them for us. The topic was suggested by Karen (thanks Karen!) and it was really fun to discuss from the perspective of student and teacher. We got a bit preoccupied by Shakespeare, but that’s true of all the best of people.

Rachel and I went to see an amazing production of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Harold Pinter theatre – tickets here! – and it inspired us to compare it with Arthur Miller’s play from around the same time, A View From the Bridge.

Check out our iTunes page, listen above or via your podcast app of choice, rate and review if you so wish, and send us any suggestions you have for future episodes! Thanks for those who tweeted their responses to our school question.

The books and authors we mention in this episode are:

Idaho by Emily Ruskovich

Richard Yates

Wallace Stegner

William Maxwell

Alice Munro

Gossip From Thrush Green by Miss Read

Dorothy Whipple

Fairacres series by Miss Read

Richmal Crompton

Merry Hall by Beverley Nichols

E.F. Benson

A Case of Human Bondage by Beverley Nichols

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

The Three Sisters by May Sinclair

Pink Sugar by O. Douglas

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Emma by Jane Austen

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

The House of Sixty Fathers by Meindert DeJong

Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee

Beloved by Toni Morrison

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

Molière

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

All My Sons by Arthur Miller

Noel Coward

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor

At The Jerusalem by Paul Bailey