Tea or Books? #53: Top of TBR vs Bottom of TBR, and The Bookshop vs According to Mark

It’s the battle of the Penelopes – and which books we’re most likely to read first (top or bottom of the pile?)   Rachel is back (hurray!) – many thanks to Karen for taking her seat last time. And in

It’s the battle of the Penelopes – and which books we’re most likely to read first (top or bottom of the pile?)

Rachel is back (hurray!) – many thanks to Karen for taking her seat last time. And in this episode we’re doing a suggestion that a different Karen emailed in – do we read books as soon as we get them, or are we more likely to go for books at the bottom of the pile?

In the second half, we compare two literary Penelopes – Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Bookshop and Penelope Lively’s According to Mark. We don’t read anything by Penelope Mortimer, despite what Rachel thinks.

We have a Patreon page! You can get shout outs, cards, and even a book sent every month, plus access to any exclusive Patreon content. We also have an iTunes page, but I’ve never quite worked out what to do with that. Anyway… enjoy!

Oh, and listen out for a feline cameo…

The books and authors we mention in this episode are:

Penelope Mortimer

Bookworm by Lucy Mangan

Enid Blyton

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce

E. Nesbit

Allan Quatermain by H Rider Haggard

King Solomon’s Mines by H Rider Haggard

Child of Storm by H Rider Haggard

Beverley Nichols

Floater by Calvin Trillin

Tove Jansson

Helen Oyeyemi

Sphinx by David Lindsay

The Birds by Frank Baker

Random Commentary by Dorothy Whipple

Vera Brittain

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

George Eliot

The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson

The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore

Possession by A.S. Byatt

Mapp and Lucia by E.F. Benson

Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner

Muriel Spark

Jane Bowles

Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

Oleander, Jacaranda by Penelope Lively

Thomas Carlyle

The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald

Memoirs of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald

Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting by Penelope Mortimer

The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer

Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett