Marlon and Jake Read Dead People

In our last episode of the season, Marlon and Jake take on the worst books by the best authors—or at least, authors they usually love. They discuss why a journalist’s instincts can be both a gift and a curse when writing fiction, the importance of a great editor, writers who seem more interested in ideas than people, and novels that try so hard to be current they end up aging badly. Tune in for a conversation about literary misfires and wasted genius.

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• The Devil and Sonny Liston by Nick Tosches
• In the Hand of Dante by Nick Tosches 
• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
• Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
• The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
• I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe 
• Orlando by Virginia Woolf
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens
• The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
• The Golden Bowl by Henry James
• My Son’s Story by Nadine Gordimer
• Quicksand by Nella Larsen
• The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming
• The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
• Hotel by Arthur Hailey
• Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins
• The Carpetbaggers by Harold Robbins
• Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
• Whirlwind by James Clavell
• Gai-Jin by James Clavell
• The Breast by Philip Roth
• Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
• Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow
• Mr. Sammler’s Planet by Saul Bellow
• A Small Town in Germany by John le Carré
• The Little Drummer Girl by John le Carré
• A Perfect Spy by John le Carré
• The Continental Op by Dashiell Hammett
• The Far Pavilions by M. M. Kaye
• Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
• Until August by Gabriel García Márquez
• Heartburn by Nora Ephron
• Ancient Evenings by Norman Mailer 
• The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
• The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer
• India: A Wounded Civilization by V. S. Naipaul
• The Power Broker by Robert Caro
• Terrorist by John Updike

Marlon and Jake discuss the books they’d banish from school reading lists—not ban but give a well-earned time out. They consider why the Bible shouldn’t make the cut, why mythology deserves to expand beyond the Greeks and Romans, and what kinds of books actually resonate with high school readers. Plus: why being a great book doesn’t necessarily make something a great book to teach—and whether length should matter.

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• Mythology by Edith Hamilton
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• The Pearl by John Steinbeck
• “Who Am I This Time?” by Kurt Vonnegut
• King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard
• Benito Cereno by Herman Melville
• The Tempest by William Shakespeare
• The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges
• “The Aleph” by Jorge Luis Borges
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
• The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
• Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy by Douglas Adams
• The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding
• The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare
• The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
• As You Like It by William Shakespeare
• Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
• You Can’t Take It with You by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart
• A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
• Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
• Animal Farm by George Orwell
• 1984 by George Orwell
• The Trial by Franz Kafka
• Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
• The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• Look Back in Anger by John Osborne
• Butley by Simon Gray
• The Loneliness of a Long-Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe
• Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
• The Circle by W. Somerset Maugham

Marlon and Jake take on violence in fiction: what makes it effective, what makes it gratuitous, and whether “gratuitous violence” is even a useful distinction. Tune in as they discuss the difference between violence on the page and on screen and why extended cruelty can be harder to stomach than violence itself.

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• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
• Cities of the Red Night by William S. Burroughs
• Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
• The Godfather by Mario Puzo
• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• 2666 by Roberto Bolaño
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
• Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
• Hamlet by William Shakespeare
• King Lear by William Shakespeare
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• A Distant Mirror by Barbara W. Tuchman
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Marlon and Jake explore the power of setting in novels—and why the best stories feel like they couldn’t have happened anywhere else. They discuss settings that become characters in their own right, fictional worlds they’d love (or absolutely hate) to inhabit, and books that made unexpected places fascinating. Plus: why a modern-day Captain Nemo might just be a tech bro.

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• Amerika by Franz Kafka
• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
• Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
• Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian
• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
• The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson
• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
• Masters of Atlantis by Charles Portis
• Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
• The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
• Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
• Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake
• Dubliners by James Joyce
• The Ballad of the Sad Café by Carson McCullers
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré
• Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
• The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
• The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
• From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg
• The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle
• The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss
• My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola
• The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
• Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow
• A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
• Macbeth by William Shakespeare
• Dune by Frank Herbert
• The Last Man by Mary Shelley
• Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Marlon and Jake explore the books that have helped define who they are, choosing four that capture different parts of their personalities and lives. They unpack how reading can shape our understanding of identity, community, and growing up—and change the way we see ourselves and each other. Tune in as they reflect on books they encountered at exactly the right (or wrong) time and the stories that made the world around them feel a little bigger.

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• Amadeus by Peter Shaffer
• Sleuth by Anthony Shaffer
• The Lion in Winter by James Goldman
• The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
• Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
• Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• The Red and the Black by Stendhal
• The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
• Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
• The Aspern Papers by Henry James
• Persuasion by Jane Austen
• A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
• Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie
• Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter
• Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter
• For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange
• Sula by Toni Morrison
• The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor
• X-Men by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
• All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
• A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
• Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
• The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley

Marlon and Jake dive into one of literature's trickiest subjects: sex. Why do some writers capture intimacy with honesty while others veer into the unintentionally hilarious? Along the way, they discuss why writing about sex is really writing about people, the differences between American and French attitudes toward sexuality in fiction, ghost stories as a vehicle for taboo desires, and the delicate balance between telling the truth and keeping readers engaged. Tune in for a conversation about why the best writing on sex is rarely just about sex.

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• Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth 
• “The Diamond Mine” by Nadine Gordimer
• The Late Bourgeois World by Nadine Gordimer
• Death of Venice by Thomas Mann
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig
• Miracle of the Rose by Jean Genet
• Maurice by E. M. Forster
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• Ernesto by Umberto Saba
• Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
• London Fields by Martin Amis
• The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe
• Sex and the Single Girl by Helen Gurley Brown
• G. by John Berger 
• Flashman series
• Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
• The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis
• The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
• The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
• The Godfather by Mario Puzo
• Jaws by Peter Benchley

Marlon and Jake tackle the writers they have no interest in revisiting, asking when it's worth giving a beloved (or notorious) author another chance and when it's perfectly fine to walk away for good. Tune in as they debate literary canon, books that simply aren't for them, the difference between a difficult author and a difficult book, and why sometimes the most honest review is, "Nobody needs to go back to that"

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• The Executioner series by Don Pendleton
• Hotel by Arthur Hailey
• Airport by Arthur Hailey
• Wheels by Arthur Hailey
• The Moneychangers by Arthur Hailey
• Advise and Consent by Allen Drury
• Shōgun by James Clavell
• Tai-Pan by James Clavell
• King Rat by James Clavell
• Whirlwind by James Clavell
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
• The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson
• Light in August by William Faulkner
• Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
• As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
• Pylon by William Faulkner
• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
• Music for Chameleons by Truman Capote
• Answered Prayers by Truman Capote
• “Where Is the Voice Coming from?” by Eudora Welty
• The Ballad of the Sad Café by Carson McCullers
• The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
• Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
• Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
• The Return of a Native by Thomas Hardy
• The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
• The Summer Before the Dark by Doris Lessing
• Children of Violence series by Doris Lessing
• Pentimento by Lillian Hellman
• Scoundrel Time by Lillian Hellman
• An Unfinished Woman by Lillian Hellman
• The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara
• Butterfield 8 by John O’Hara
• A Rage to Live by John O’Hara
• Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
• Grendel by John Gardner
• October Light by John Gardner
• The Art of Fiction by John Gardner
• On Moral Fiction by John Gardner
• The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley
• The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• Giant by Edna Ferber
• Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver
• A Distant Mirror by Barbara W. Tuchman
• Once Is Not Enough by Jacqueline Susann
• Burr by Gore Vidal
• The Godfather by Mario Puzo
• In the Hand of Dante by Nick Tosches
• Delina Delaney by Amanda McKittrick Ros
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
• Stuart Little by E. B. White
• The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit
• Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews
• Jaws by Peter Benchley

Marlon and Jake explore why we're so eager to revisit the worlds of our favorite stories, asking whether great characters are better left where their authors left them—or if there's value in imagining what came before or after. Tune in as they unpack the appeal of sequels, the pitfalls of origin stories, and why some fictional worlds are more powerful when they remain a mystery.

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• A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
• The Life and Loves of a She-Devil by Fay Weldon
• Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis
• Flashman series by George MacDonald Fraser
• Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding
• The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• Lost Horizon by James Hilton
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
• The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• Little Men by Louisa May Alcott
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
• The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
• A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens
• Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Big Blonde by Dorothy Parker
• The Tempest by William Shakespeare

Marlon and Jake dive into the world of dystopian fiction, unpacking what truly makes a dystopia—and whether some of the genre’s biggest ideas hold up under closer scrutiny. Along the way, they discuss why some dystopias feel more believable than others, how our understanding of these stories changes over time, and the real-world parallels that make them resonate long after the final page. Tune in as they explore how history, power, and human nature shape the worlds we imagine.

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• Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle
• The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow
• The Last Man by Mary Shelley
• 1984 by George Orwell 
• Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
• Pilgermann by Russell Hoban
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• Pincher Martin by William Golding
• Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

Welcome back for a new season! Marlon and Jake catch up on what they’ve been reading, writing, and working on, including Marlon’s new novel, and explore the books they return to when it’s time to create. They discuss the stories that inspire rather than intimidate, the surprising value of giving up on a book, and the writers they revisit to clear the cobwebs from their minds. Tune in to hear how reading shapes their creative process, from finding the right voice to discovering what makes great dialogue.

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• “A Trifle from Life” by Anton Chekhov
• Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov
• The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
• “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway
• The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne
• War Music by Christopher Logue
• The Odyssey by Homer
• The Oresteia by Aeschylus
• Letters from a Stoic by Seneca
• Maurice by E. M. Forster
• Ernesto by Umberto Saba
• Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
• New Hampshire by Robert Frost
• In Parenthesis by David Jones
• Civil War by Lucan

In the final episode of the season, Marlon and Jake weigh in on their favorite vacation reads, including the ones they started but never finished. Tune in to find out which classic novels Jake took to the beach and which ones Marlon says should have been thrown in the ocean. 

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• The Goodbye Look by Ross McDonald
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
• Chances by Jackie Collins
• The Year of the French by Thomas Flanagan
• All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
• The Golden Bowl by Henry James
• The Ambassadors by Henry James
• Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
• Pronto by Elmore Leonard
• Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
• Smallbone Deceased by Michael Gilbert
• The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot by Robert Arthur, Jr.
• Persuasion by Jane Austen

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times—it was school. In this episode, Marlon and Jake discuss books where school is the setting or going to school is central to the plot. They debate which authors got school right and which got school wrong, what makes an inspiring teacher, and what the closed universe of a schoolyard or college campus can feel like. Tune in to hear Marlon and Jake reminisce over their own college experiences and what they were like as students.

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• Tom Brown’s School Days by Thomas Hughes
• The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling by Henry Fielding
• Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
• Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
• Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
• Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
• The Crime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
• A Separate Peace by John Knowles
• Look back in Anger by John Osborne
• Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
• Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
• Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
• Absalom, Absalom! By William Faulkner
• Love Story by Erich Segal
• The Miracle Worker by William Gibson
• Stoner by John Williams
• Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
• The Corn is Green by Emlyn Williams

In this episode, Marlon and Jake talk about cities in books. Books set in memorable cities, books set in cities you're glad you've never been to and books where the city itself is nearly a character. They talk about the specificity of London of the 19th century British novel, the New York novel, entirely fictional cities in Sci-Fi and Fantasy, and don’t miss Marlon’s personal experience with Bloomsday in Dublin!

Subscribe to our River-herd newsletter for sneak peeks of our upcoming books, free giveaways, and exclusive content. https://sites.prh.com/riverhead-reader-newsletterUlysses by James Joyce 

• Ulysses by James Joyce
• Portrait of the Artist by James Joyce
• Dubliners by James Joyce
• The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe 
• The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
• The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton 
• The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
• Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
• Palace of Desire by Naguib Mahfouz
• Sugar Street by Naguib Mahfouz
• Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino 
• Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Doblin
• In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust 
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
• Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice 
• Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
• The Young Unicorns by Madeleine L’Engle

In this episode, Marlon and Jake talk about the bad characters we’re not meant to like but do and the good characters we’re meant to like but annoy us. From Dracula to Daisy Buchanan to Oliver Twist and Bambi, the good-to-evil spectrum is vast and no character is safe from commentary. Tune in to find out which classic villain the duo unanimously hate, and which villain gives Marlon the chills and scares Jake to this day. 

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• The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
• A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
• The Flashman series by George MacDonald Fraser
• Tom Brown’s School Days by Thomas Hughes
• King Solomon’s Mines by Sir H. Rider Haggard
• Raiders of the Lost Arc by Campbell Black
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelly
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• The Awakening by Kate Chopin
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Good Morning Midnight by Jean Rhys
• Bambi by Felix Salten
• Watership Down by Richard Adams
• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• Railway Children by E. Nesbit
• Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
• The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
• Emma by Jane Austen
• Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

This episode, Marlon and Jake discuss a new subject for the podcast: poetry! From epic poems to sonnets to the Romantics poets to contemporary (dead) poets. They ponder over why people don’t read poetry as much as prose and recite, on the spot, lines of poetry that are forever engrained in their memories.

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• The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
• The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
• War Music by Christopher Logue
• The Gift Outright by Robert Frost
• Emily Dickinson
• W.H. Auden
• T.S. Eliot
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• William Wordsworth
• Rupert Brooke
• John Dunn
• The Spanish Needle by Claude McKay
• The Iliad by Homer
• The Aeneid by Virgil
• Omeros by Derek Walcott
• The Arrivants by Kamau Brathwaite
• Riddyn Ravings (The Mad Woman's Poem) by Jean “Binta” Breeze
• Anne Sexton
• Dr. Maya Angelou
• The Tyger by William Blake
• Fire and Ice by Robert Frost
• Gwendolyn Brooks
• June Jordan
• Audre Lorde
• Toni Morrison
• Ogden Nash
• Dorothy Parker
• Tales From Ovid by Ted Hughes
• Inferno from Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

Books assigned in school evoke strong feelings. You either love em’ or you hate em.’ In this episode, Marlon and Jake discuss the books they wished they were assigned in school and the ones they suffered through. Accompanying the books taught in school, there are, of course, the teachers who taught them. A teacher can make or break a book read in school. As a literature teacher (as well as Booker prize winning author), Marlon acknowledges there are some novels assigned in school that you have to work to understand that are really good, but sometimes those novels are not good and if it weren’t for being assigned in school, we wouldn’t still be reading it.

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• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• The Republic by Plato
• Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
• Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
• The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
• Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• Call of the Wild by Jack London
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
• The Warden by Anthony Trollope
• Washington Square by Henry James
• The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
• The Aspern Papers byHenry James
• The Ambassadors by Henry James
• Daisy Miller by Henry James
• Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
• The Bondsman’s Narrative by Hannah Crafts
• Guerillas by VS Naipaul
• Miguel Street by VS Naipaul
• A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul
• A House for Mr. Biswas by VS Naipaul
• Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone
• The Godfather by Mario Puzo
• Shogun by James Clavell
• Tia-pan by James Clavell
• King Rat by James Clavell
• Whirlwind by James Clavell
• Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
• King Lear by William Shakespeare
• The Tempest by William Shakespeare
• King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard
• The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• The Lady, or the Tiger? by Frank R. Stockton
• The Discourager of Hesitancy by Frank R. Stockton

In this episode, Marlon and Jake weigh in on a question as old as books themselves—can you judge a book by its cover? Spoiler alert: the answer is yes! They discuss good books with bad covers and bad books with good covers, cover art trends (*cough* the woman facing away), books that were recommended to them, and books they read because of peer pressure. Tune in to hear Marlon and Jake opine the myriad ways we judge books.

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• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner
• The Latecomers by Anita Brookner
• The Joy of Sex by Alex Comfort
• Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex: But Were Afraid to Ask by Dr. David R. Reuben
• Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
• Ancient Evening by Norman Mailer
• Miami and the Siege of Chicago by Norman Mailer
• The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
• The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
• Ballad of a Sad Café by Carson McCullers
• Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
• The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller
• Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
• The Hound of the Baskerville by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
• The Night of January 16th by Ayn Rand
• Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
• Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
• Jamacia Inn by Daphne Du Maurier
• Don’t Look Now by Daphne Du Maurier
• The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
• Dune by Frank Herbert
• Stoner by John Williams
• One is Not Enough by Jacqueline Susann
• Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
• Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins
• Chances by Jackie Collins
• Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
• Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
• Absalom, Absalom! By William Faulkner
• Butterfield 8 by John O’Hara
• A Rage to Live by John O’Hara
• Grendel by John Gardner
• Mickelsson’s Ghosts by John Gardner
• October Light by John Gardner
• Freddy’s Book by John Gardner
• The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• The Longest Journey by E.M. Forster
• A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
• Howards’ End by E.M. Forster
• Maurice by E.M. Forster
• Soldier’s Pay by William Faulkner
• Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor
• Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor

Marlon and Jake are back! And they’re catching up on the dead authors they’ve read since they last spoke—some of which they praise, others they don’t. From comparing Nella Larson’s Passing to the Netflix film, to discussing unsettling stories that linger with you, they cover a lot of literary ground. They also weigh in on longstanding debates like whether they read the book or watch the movie adaption first and the difference between horror and terror. Tune in for the witty book banter you know and love. 

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• The Letters of Thom Gunn by Thom Gunn
• Passing by Nella Larsen 
• A View From a Hill by Montague Roads James
• The Turn of The Screw by Henry James
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelly 
• The Birds by Daphne Du Maurier
• Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
• The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris 
• The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
• Jesus’s Son by Denis Johnson
• Airships by Barry Hannah 
• Lost Illusions by Honore de Balzac
• Madam Bovary by Gustave Flaubert 
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas 
• Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
• Hell House by Richard Matheson
• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson 
• Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring

Marlon & Jake are back to discuss the most indelible and powerful female characters—those written by dead female authors and those written by dead male authors. From Sula Peace to the Wife of Bath, Scout Finch to Janie Crawford—these two gentleman celebrate some of literature’s most ferocious, complicated, guileless, unrepentant and commanding women.

• The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
• Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens
• The Palliser novels by Anthony Trollope
• To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Double Indemnity by James Cain
• There Eyes Are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• Dubliners by James Joyce
• Kindred Octavia Butler
• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
• Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
• Sula by Toni Morrison

Marlon & Jake are back to discuss the narrators they love but can't trust. From the delusional to the uninformed, the sociopathic to the sympathetic, they explore the characters that charm as much as they trick, begging the question: is there such a thing as a reliable narrator? So tune in to hear if Jake has warmed to Great Expectations (spoiler alert: he hasn’t) and so much more! 

Select titles mentioned in this episode:

• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess 
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey 
• The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford 
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 
• The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe 
• Tristram Shandy by Laurence Stern 
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes 
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier 
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson 
• "Charles" by Shirley Jackson (in The Lottery and Other Stories collection)

We didn't ghost you, dear listeners. Marlon had a novel to finish, which Jake had to edit. But the good news is it's officially out in the world, and so before Marlon—the very living author—takes off on his whirlwind book tour, he and Jake are back together for a brief (but delicious) reunion of discussing what they love most: DEAD AUTHORS. We'll be back for season three later this spring, but until then, stayed tuned for an amuse bouche, a canapé, an appetizer—take your pick!—to the glorious meal on the horizon.

Prepare for what might be Marlon & Jake’s most controversial hot takes yet, as they travel back through the last four hundred years to decide which dead authors from each century stand the test of time and which can be left to gather dust on the shelf.  Where do they fall on Paradise Lost?  Who triumphs in the battle of the poets v. novelists of the 18th century? How much has the 1930s Hollywood studio system shaped classic stories?  Which of them stans Huckleberry Finn, and who thinks it might be overrated?  Marlon & Jake answer these questions and more as they discuss the timeless work of the freaky, the rebellious and the groundbreaking. From Mary Shelley to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Paul Laurence Dunbar to Daphne du Maurier—with a healthy dose of Alexander Pope-dissing—tune in to find out where you stand with their picks. 

• The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
• The Adventures of Amir Hamza by Ghalib Lakhnavi and Abdullah Bilgrami
• Paradise Lost by John Milton
• The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
• The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer 
• The Provoked Wife by John Vanbrugh
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Mathilda by Mary Shelley
• The Last Man by Mary Shelley
• The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
• Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
• The Complete Poems of William Blake
• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
• Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
• Pamela by Samuel Richardson
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens
• Nana by Émile Zola
• Germinal by Émile Zola
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
• The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
• The Awakening by Kate Chopin
• “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin
• A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
• Forest of A Thousand Daemons by D.O. Fagunwa
• Cane by Jean Toomer
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
• The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor by Gabriel García Márquez
• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
• Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe
• No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe
• The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
• The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

This week Marlon & Jake discuss the books by dead authors they give as gifts and the very important decision-making that goes into that selection. Whether it’s for a younger, skeptical or pretentious reader, they share the unintentionally comedic and surprisingly engaging books they choose to bestow upon their loved ones. 

• Middlemarch by George Eliot 
• The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson
• Tai-Pan by James Clavell
• The Godfather by Mario Puzo
• Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
• Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley
• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Gold-Bug by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
• The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• Animal Farm by George Orwell
• Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
• The History of Jamaica by Edward Long
• Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie
• One Thousand and One Nights 
• The Death of King Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory 
• Oreo by Fran Ross
• The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake by Breece D’J Pancake
• The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
• Les Liaisons dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

This week Marlon & Jake discuss memorable characters from books by dead authors—who they love, who they despise and everything in between. What exactly makes a character great?  Who would they invite to their literary dinner party and why?  From Elmore Leonard’s Raylan to Louisa May Alcott’s Jo March, Lady Macbeth to Auntie Mame—tune in to hear which fictional personalities would get a seat at the table, who would be banished forever, and who Marlon and Jake would simply ignore. 

• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
• The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
• Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
• Pronto by Elmore Leonard
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• Sula by Toni Morrison
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
• The Parker novels by Richard Stark
• Macbeth by William Shakespeare
• The Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso) by Dante Alighieri
• The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
• Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré
• The Palliser novels by Anthony Trollope
• Hamlet by William Shakespeare
• King Lear by William Shakespeare
• The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo
• Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
• The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
• Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
• Stuart Little by E.B. White

Marlon and Jake take on literary giants in a grudge match for the ages. This time it's Charles Dickens vs. Anthony Trollope and Louisa May Alcott vs. Laura Ingalls Wilder in a no-holds-barred royal rumble. The two of them pull no punches, whether they're talking about racism or Edith Wharton's snobbery, colonialism or Hugh Grant's hair. So get ready to cheer on your favorite dead author and literary warrior as Marlon and Jake go mano a mano in a street fight you've definitely never come across before.

Select titles mentioned in this episode:

The Palliser Novels by Anthony Trollope
The Warden by Anthony Trollope
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Maurice by E. M. Forster
Stuart Little by E.B. White
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway
The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway by Ernest Hemingway
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Literary speculation abounds as Marlon and Jake reveal which books they wish they had written and which they think would have been better if they’d been written by someone completely different. Listen in as they explore the questions you never knew you needed answers to. Would The Confessions of Nat Turner have been better if Zora Neale Hurston had written it? Who could have written a funnier Ulysses? Were members of the Bloomsbury Group actually total bores? And perhaps most important: Does Marlon’s mom still have his Tom Jones fan-fiction and if so, how much is Jake willing to pay for it? Tune in for all this and more, including a lively discussion about plays that are as enjoyable to read as they are to see on stage. (And spoiler: Jake is not a fan of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.)

Select title discussed:

• Tom Jones by Henry Fielding 
• Dubliners by James Joyce
• Tai-Pan by James Clavell
• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
• Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas
• The Quiet American by Graham Greene
• A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul
• Airships by Barry Hannah 
• Joseph Andrews by Henry fielding
• Pamela by Samuel Richardson
• The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray
• Shōgun by James Clavell 
• Trent's Last Case by E. C. Bentley
• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins 
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins 
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• The Obscene Bird of Night by José Donoso
• The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron 
• Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston
• Terrorist by John Updike
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf 
• Ulysses by James Joyce 
• Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt 
• Orlando by Virginia Woolf
• Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde 
• The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
• Highland Fling by Nancy Mitford
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
• The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare 
• The Two Gentleman of Verona by William Shakespeare
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
• As You Like It by William Shakespeare
• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
• An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
• His Girl Friday by Charles Lederer (screenplay), adapted from The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (play)
• Sleuth by Anthony Shaffer 
• Amadeus by Peter Shaffer 
• Endgame by Samuel Beckett

Marlon and Jake share their "gateway" books by dead authors, the first books they read that that turned them on—or off—the rest of an author's work. From John Steinbeck to Dorothy Parker, Umberto Eco to Norman Mailer, Ayn Rand to Carson McCullers, Marlon and Jake don't hold back in discussing the imprints, footprints, and thumbprints these books left on them. They also ponder the long-lasting consequences of the high school lit class, whether a gateway book can be assigned, and the enduring power of dullness in a novel, no matter the century.  Listen for this and more, including what Marlon and Jake think of The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara, edited by one Toni Morrison.  

• The Pearl by John Steinbeck
• The Red Pony by John Steinbeck
• Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
• Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls
• The Ballad of the Sad Café by Carson McCullers
• Sula by Toni Morrison
• For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange
• Night of January 16th by Ayn Rand
• The Fountainhead Ayn Rand
• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
• A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
• Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez
• News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel García Márquez
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
• The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel García Márquez
• Enough Rope by Dorothy Parker
• The collected poetry of Dorothy Parker
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
• Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
• The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco
• In the hand of Dante by Nicholas Tosches
• Ancient Evenings by Norman Mailer
• Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
• Miami and the Siege of Chicago by Norman Mailer
• Harlot’s Ghost by Norman Mailer
• An American Dream by Norman Mailer
• Why Are We In Vietnam? by Norman Mailer
• The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer
• Look Back in Anger by John Osborne
• Loot by Joe Orton
• What the Butler Saw by joe Orton
• Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe
• "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" by Alan Sillitoe
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
• Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas hardy
• The Return of the Native by Thomas hardy
• Already Dead by Denis Johnson
• The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara
• The Lesson by Toni Cade Bambara
• Gorilla, My Love by Toni Cade Bambara

In this episode Marlon and Jake ponder the tricky question of the last books by authors who’ve … um … left this mortal coil. Which last books are actually worth reading? (Not many, it turns out.) From Roberto Bolaño to Penelope Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath to Eudora Welty, Marlon and Jake discuss how an author's last book compares to their previous ones, how success and age changed how and what they wrote, and the wistfulness that comes when some last books are actually good and you wonder what the authors might have written next, if, you know, they hadn't died. Tune in for this and more, including Marlon and Jake’s surprising thoughts on James Thurber's humorous memoir, My Life and Hard Times.

Select titles discussed:

• Maurice by E. M. Forster
• Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
• The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
• 2666 by Roberto Bolaño
• Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau
• A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
• Passage to India by E. M. Forster
• Something Happened by Joseph Heller
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
• After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie by Jean Rhys
• One Writer’s Beginnings by Eudora Welty
• The Robber Bridegroom by Eudora Welty
• The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty
• “Where is the Voice Coming From?” by Eudora Welty
• My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber
• Typee by Herman Melville
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
• The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara

We've heard them rave about their favorites and rant about their least favorites, but Marlon and Jake reveal in this episode their second favorite books by dead authors: the books they love that are the runners-up to the #1 spots in their hearts. From Amos Tutuola to Gabriel García Márquez to John le Carré and more, Marlon and Jake explore why one's favorite book by an author might not always be their best book, what separates an intellectual vs. an emotional response to a book, and the importance of being a promiscuous reader. (That’s right, promiscuous.) And what is the next book by a dead author Marlon and Jake will be reading together for the first time? Tune in to find out!

Select Titles Discussed:

• Hamlet by William Shakespeare
• Macbeth by William Shakespeare
• A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul
• Darkness Visible by William Golding
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• Shardik by Richard Adams
• Watership Down by Richard Adams
• The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola
• My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
• Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
• Shōgun by James Clavell
• Airport by Arthur Hailey
• The Moneychangers by Arthur Hailey
• The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John le Carré
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré
• The Honorable Schoolboy by John le Carré
• Smiley’s People by John le Carré
• A Perfect Spy by John le Carré
• Persuasion by Jane Austen
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Sula by Toni Morrison
• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
• Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
• The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens
• Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• Blood on the Forge by William Attaway
• My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber

Marlon & Jake weigh in on the age-old “artist versus art” debate, as they examine good books by problematic dead authors, as well as the bad and sometimes problematic books by great dead authors.  From Flannery O’Conner to Roald Dahl,  Vladimir Nabokov to the surprisingly challenging Charles Dickens, Marlon & Jake explore the thorny questions surrounding the books worth fighting for and the ones worth fighting over. How exactly do we define terrible books?  Is there a statute of limitations on being offensive? Can we enjoy a book at the same time that we recognize its failures?  Do people and ideas ever evolve beyond books?  And what does it mean to have the freedom to choose what to read? Tune in for a provocative, nuanced conversation that might just make you rethink, revisit, or totally let go when it comes to your own reading of dead authors.

Selected works discussed

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Bear and His Daughter by Robert Stone
• The Breast by Philip Roth
• I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville
• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
• Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut
• Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford
• The Turner Diaries by William Luther Pierce
• Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• John Carter of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

And the writing of:

• Charles Dickens
• Knut Hamsun
• Jack London
• HP Lovecraft
• William S. Burroughs
• Norman Mailer
• Enid Blyton

Marlon and Jake talk short books they love, syllabus staples to skip (Hemingway die-hards, consider yourselves warned), and their first-ever real-time joint read, Blood on the Forge by William Attaway.  What does Marlon consider the closest thing to a perfect novel?  Tune in to find out!

• Sula by Toni Morrison
• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
• Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls
• Miguel Street by V.S. Naipaul
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
• Turn of the Screw by Henry James
• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
• The Aspern Papers by Henry James
• The Ambassadors by Henry James
• Passing by Nella Larsen
• Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
• If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
• Animal Farm by George Orwell
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• The Quiet American by Graham Greene
• The Lover by Marguerite Duras
• 1984 by George Orwell
• Blood on the Forge by William Attaway

Marlon and Jake reunite to discuss the books that got them through the pandemic, classics they wish they had written, and whether Lord of the Flies needs a sequel. 

Select titles mentioned in this episode:

• A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
• Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
• Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
• Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
• Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
• A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
• A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
• Maurice by E.M. Forster
• Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
• The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
• Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
• Blood on the Forge by William Attaway

As Marlon and Jake wrap up Season 1 of Reading Dead People, they take a moment to reflect on what they've learned and what dead books and authors they want to discuss when they return for season two. So Marlon and Jake will be on a hiatus--they have some reading to do!--but fear not, they will be back soon to discuss the good, the bad and the everything in between. Until then, go read some dead people!!

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 Faulkner
• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
• The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway
• Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
• Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
• Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
• The Awakening by Kate Chopin
• Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot
• Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
• Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
• Emma by Jane Austen
• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
• Persuasion by Jane Austen
• A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
• Harvey by Mary Chase
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
• QB VII by Leon Uris
• Airport by Arthur Hailey
• The White Witch of Rosehall by Herbert G. de Lisser
• The Black Sun by Lance Horner
• Richard III by William Shakespeare
• The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
• Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
• Pericles by William Shakespeare
• The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare
• Cymbeline by William Shakespeare
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
• A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
• This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens
• Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
• The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West
• Stoner by John Williams
• The Pearl by John Steinbeck
• The Ambassadors by Henry James
• Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel García Márquez
• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

This week Marlon and Jake dive into one of life’s great guilty pleasures: the trashy novel. Do such books provide intellectual stimulation or lessons on morality? Of course not. Nevertheless, Marlon and Jake extol the virtues of these irresistibly low-brow novels that they can’t get enough of, in the process asking: What makes a novel trashy and what makes it literary? If a book holds up a mirror to society, can it qualify as trash? What are the differences between trashy novels for women and trashy novels for men? From Peyton Place to Valley of the Dolls to the Falconhurst novels, Marlon and Jake get real about the wonderfully salacious plots, the ridiculously named characters, the gay subtexts, the surprising pathos, and all the sex. SO. MUCH. SEX. So literary snobs, be warned. For the rest of us, tune in to celebrate dead authors who have given us the gift of a shamelessly good read.

Select titles discussed in this episode:

• The Carpetbaggers by Harold Robbins
• The Falconhurst Series by Lance Horner, Kyle Onstott, and Ashley
  Carter
• Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
• The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe
• Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
• Shogun by James Clavell
• The Executioner Series by Don Pendleton
• The Godfather by Mario Puzo
• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• The Bad Seed by William March
• Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Marlon and Jake put on their Hollywood sunglasses as they discuss the films adapted from books by dead people. What makes a good movie adaptation? What translates from the page to the screen and what most definitely does not? Jake admits that The Exorcist is the most shocking novel and movie he’s ever encountered, and Marlon celebrates the unparalleled brilliance of Die Hard—which yes, was adapted from a novel, and which yes, Marlon has actually read. Jake (yet again) offends Marlon with his disdain for all things Hobbit and Marlon points to Angela’s Ashes as an example of the phenomenon of the “well-made bad movie.”  From the atrocious attempts to bring The Great Gatsby to the big screen to the unfortunate existence of Ewan McGregor’s American Pastoral, Marlon and Jake explore great books that were made into less-than-great films as well as bad books that made excellent movies. How did the messiness of Mario Puzo’s storytelling and prose make the perfection that is The Godfather films? How did an angry-animal thriller like Jaws become a horror movie classic? From The Princess Bride to A Streetcar Named Desire, Marlon and Jake debate what goes into a terrific – and a lousy – film adaptation. So grab your popcorn and Jujubes and settle back for one wild cinematic ride.

Select titles mentioned in this episode:

• The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
• The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
• Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
• American Pastoral by Philip Roth
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
• The Grifters by Jim Thompson
• The Hobbit by J.R. R. Tolkien
• Jaws by Peter Benchley
• The Godfather by Mario Puzo
• The Sicilian by Mario Puzo
• The Princess Bride by William Goldman
• A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
• Babe: The Gallant Pig by Dick King-Smith
• Watership Down by Richard Adams
• Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp

This week Marlon and Jake delve into the very real lives of very dead writers. From Gore Vidal to Frank McCourt, Ulysses S. Grant to Gabriel García Márquez, they discuss how memory compares to history and whether the trustworthiness of a memoir really matters if the book is a compelling read. Their discussion about WASPy realism leads them to debate whether John Cheever or John Updike is the better writer, and Marlon poses the scandalous question of whether Jane Austen lacked passion (gasp!). Whether they’re talking about philandering playwrights or humorous newspaper columnists, Marlon and Jake prove that truth really can be stranger than fiction.

Select titles mentioned in this episode:

• Personal Memoirs by Ulysses Grant
• Palimpsest by Gore Vidal
• The Night of the Gun by David Carr
• Act One by Moss Hart
• Once in a Lifetime by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman
• The Man Who Came to Dinner by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman
• Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
• Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel García Márquez
• Rabbit Series (Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit
  At Rest) by John Updike
• The Maples Stories by John Updike
• The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• At Wit’s End by Erma Bombeck
• If Life is a Bowl of Cherries by Erma Bombeck

This week Marlon and Jake go back in time-way, way back-and revisit the myths and legends that have terrified and tantalized us for centuries. Gods and monsters. The powerful and the petty. The shape-shifting and the rampantly naked. From ancient Greece and Africa to Jamaica and Ireland, Marlon and Jake explore the world's myths and legends-how they persist and how we absorb, sanitize and subvert them. Whether it's Jason and the Golden Fleece, the trickster Anansi, or the non-consenting kiss in Sleeping Beauty, Marlon and Jake get real about fairy tales and folklore. And for all Black Leopard, Red Wolf fans, tune in to learn more about which of these traditions influenced Marlon's epic fantasy and how he's turning the wicked witch trope on its head in the trilogy's next novel!

Select titles mentioned in this episode:

• The Greek Myths
• The Labors of Hercules
• Jason and the Golden Fleece
• Daedelus and Icarus
• Bullfinch's Mythology
• African Myths of Origin
• Anansi the Spider
• Apep and Ra
• Black Heart Man
• Rolling Calf
• Sukuyan
• The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales
• Snow White
• Rapunzel
• Sleeping Beauty
• Hansel and Gretel
• The Twelve Dancing Princesses
• The Little Mermaid
• The Little Match Girl
• Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales
• Irish Fairy and Folk Tales by William Butler Yeats

This week Marlon and Jake venture into fantasy: the imagined worlds of dead writers—from quests and dragons to magic carpets and pregnant kings. As they dive into the works of the giants of traditional fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, they discuss the influence both writers had on Marlon's own fantasy epic, Black Leopard, Red Wolf, which was inspired by the epic traditions of Africa and writers like D.O. Fagunwa and Amos Tutuola. They debate how reading fantasy as a child differs from reading it as an adult, wonder why there aren't more female characters, and lament how fantasy is still mostly read by boys and men. From The Hobbit to Ursula K. Le Guin, the two have some very real takes on the make-believe. So tune in.

Select titles mentioned in this episode:

• The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle
• The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
• The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
• The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake
• The Longships by Frans G. Bengtsson
• My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola
• Forest of a Thousand Daemons by D.O. Fagunwa
• The Lake Goddess by Flora Nwapa
• The Sagas of the Icelanders
• A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Beowulf by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Dune by Frank Herbert
• Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

Marlon and Jake are back-this time to discuss which dead author they'd take with them to a desert island to reread over and over again-as well as which ones they'd happily leave lost at sea. From the Jamaica of Wide Sargasso Sea to the lonely New England of Shirley Jackson, Marlon and Jake get fired up over the books they vehemently love and the ones they equally hate. Marlon explores his complicated love for James Clavell and the underappreciated wisdom of Pride & Prejudice's Charlotte Lucas, while Jake (unsuccessfully) attempts to convince Marlon that Agatha Christie is, in fact, not overrated. One thing they actually agree on?? That would be their passionate disdain for Wuthering Heights-and it's not pretty-so Emily Bronte lovers, consider yourself warned!

Included Titles:

• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
• Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
• The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
• Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• Raising Demons by Shirley Jackson
• Shogun by James Clavell
• Tai-Pan by James Clavell
• And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Marlon and Jake kick off the first episode by taking on some literary giants in a grudge match for the ages. This time it's Charles Dickens vs. Anthony Trollope and Louisa May Alcott vs. Laura Ingalls Wilder in a no-holds-barred royal rumble. The two of them pull no punches, whether they're talking about racism or Edith Wharton's snobbery, colonialism or Hugh Grant's hair. So get ready to cheer on your favorite dead author and literary warrior as Marlon and Jake go mano a mano in a street fight you've definitely never come across before.

Select titles mentioned in this episode:

• The Palliser Novels by Anthony Trollope
• The Warden by Anthony Trollope
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
• The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore
• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
• Maurice by E. M. Forster
• Stuart Little by E.B. White
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway
• The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway by Ernest Hemingway
• Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

Marlon and Jake Read Dead People is a podcast hosted by the Man Booker Prize-winning and internationally bestselling author Marlon James and his editor, Jake Morrissey, Executive Editor at Riverhead Books.

In each episode, Marlon and Jake talk about authors—specifically dead authors. Authors they like. Authors they hate. Great books, terrible books, and books they love that you’d never expect them to. As a writer and an editor, Marlon and Jake have read thousands of books between them, and they’re not shy in expressing their opinions about them. Sometimes they’ll agree, sometimes they won’t, but, in every episode, they’ll tell you what they think—uncensored and with no holds barred. (That’s why the authors have to be dead.) So listen along to hear about the spectacularly good, the hilariously bad, and the brutally honest.