secretlifeofbooks

Every book has two stories.
The one it tells, and the one it hides.

Welcome to a classic books podcast with @sophieggee and Jonty Claypole.

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NEW EPISODE: Welcome to the ultra-elite world of East Coast preppy culture, where Laura Ashley dresses, goldfish crackers, and pink shorts, reign supreme. We're rounding out our series on high school novels with @csittenfeld's Prep (2005).
https://t.co/7oSwVUc0qL

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@Guardian just announced the ‘100 Best Novels of All Time.’ So now it's official. The greatest book of all time (in English anyway) is ... Middlemarch, by George Eliot!
Here on SLOB of course we already suspected as much, which is why we picked Middlemarch as our first Book Club!

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📖✒️ Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice paints Mary Bennet as a comic character — we’re supposed to find her ridiculous and it’s clear Austen has little sympathy for her. In The Other Bennet Sister, Janice Hadlow asks: What does it look like to have sympathy for Mary? #TOBS

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This week, Sophie and Jonty chat with Janice Hadlow about her novel The Other Bennet Sister, which has recently been adapted as a new BBC series!

🎧️ Out today, wherever you get podcasts.
#JaneAusten #DónalFinn #EllaBruccoleri #TOBS

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Anyone else reading Janice Hadlow's The Other Bennet Sister? #TOBS #JaneAusten

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We're rounding out our series on high school novels by jumping across the pond (aka the Atlantic Ocean) and skipping several decades to find ourselves in early 1990s Massachusetts. Welcome to the world of East Coast preppy culture
Out now: https://t.co/7oSwVUbsBd

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Welcome to the world of East Coast preppy culture 💸🛍️✨, where Laura Ashley dresses, goldfish crackers and pink shorts reign supreme. These are the details that make up the ultra-elite 1990s boarding school of Curtis Sittenfeld’s novel PREP. Out now: https://t.co/7oSwVUbsBd

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It's Movie night 🍿🎥
You might be wondering why we're talking about American high-school films. Find out tomorrow, as we continue our series on high school novels by jumping across the pond (and several decades) to 1990s massachusetts.
🎧https://t.co/M6kuoeInUk

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🚽🧻✨ Here on SLOB, we love a toilet. So, how could we not love the (scarily accurate) description of school toilets in Barry Hines' 1968 masterpiece, A Kestrel for a Knave — it's a real time capsule.
🎧 Out now, wherever you listen to podcasts: https://t.co/M6kuoeHQ4M

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Corporal punishment, the use of physical force to correct a child's behavior, was legal when Sophie and Jonty were at school in Australia and the UK respectively. Sophie even suffered the cane! ...why are we chatting corporal punishment, you ask? Find out tomorrow 🎧

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Before writing fiction, Muriel Spark was a very successful literary biographer — and she played a huge role in re-shaping what biography, as a form, should do.
Spark believed that the life of a writer was inseparable from their work. Learn more: https://t.co/Vv6JbmAg99 #History

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The character of Miss Brodie isn’t the only thing memorable in Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. The prose is - as you would expect from a writer called Spark - electric. That is to say, both poetic and incredibly funny. 🎧 Out now, wherever you get podcasts!

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We made it! This week, we discuss the final rousing chapters of George Eliot's magnificent novel, Middlemarch. We feel so lucky to have re-read Middlemarch with our much-loved SLOB community. Thank you for reading along with us. We can't wait to start our next book club soon!

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George Eliot was not a radical... When we talk about George Eliot, we talk about her as a conservative radical. Eliot believed the world could not be made up of radicals, because this would lead to anarchy. Learn more in the finale of our subscribers-only Middlemarch book club!

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Thomas Hughes’ #TomBrownsSchoolDays (1857) wasn’t the first school fiction book–Sarah Fielding published The Governess over 100 years earlier. As always, the man takes credit. SLOB uncovers how Hughes’ inspired a genre for years to come 🎧⬇️ https://t.co/xi5vGD4YII
#HarryPotter

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Somehow we keep coming back to one of our favourite topics, or at least Sophie's favourite: the Reformation. While Jonty does not have the Reformation spirit, it's always bubbling under the surface in Thomas Hughes’ 1857 novel Tom Brown’s School Days. #History #ClassicBooks

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📚 Were you a teacher's pet or rebel at the back of the class? Maybe you were more like Sophie — somewhere in the middle. This week, the Secret Life of Books goes back to school with a deep dive into Thomas Hughes’ School Days. Out now 🎧️
https://t.co/xi5vGD4YII

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The WORST honeymoon in classic fiction? Being placed in a grave by your sleepwalking husband-not ideal. But it happened in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d'Urbervilles. We're taking a romp through the least romantic holidays in literary history. Which do you think makes the cut?

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There’s one kind of honeymoon in literature, and it's disastrous!
Join SLOB for a romp through some of the least romantic holidays in history. We don’t just cover fictional honeymoons – there are some classic off-page bloopers too. Not least, SLOBs own 🎧 https://t.co/Kl4Zbug5xL

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PODCAST: There’s only one kind of honeymoon in classic literature, and it's disastrous. From Frankenstein's murderous honeymoon to and Heathcliff’s revenge honeymoon with Isabella Linton in Wuthering Heights, they all seem to end the same - badly.
https://t.co/Kl4ZbugDnj