Backlisted. The literary podcast presented by John Mitchinson and Andy Miller. Produced by Nicky Birch.
Critic and editor of Boundless Arifa Akbar joins John and Andy on the Backlisted podcast to discuss Hilary Mantel's tale of mediums and malevolence in the M25 corridor, Beyond Black. Tony White's 'The Fountain in the Forest' and 'Mothers' by Chris Power are the books we've been reading this week.
Books mentioned:
Raymond Queneau - Oulipo
Other links:
Music producer, gallery owner and now novelist Tot Taylor joins John and Andy on the Backlisted podcast to discuss James Hilton's 1933 novel about an earthly paradise in the far Himalayas. And the various iterations of the story that came after.
Books mentioned:
The Story of John Nightly - Tot Taylor
Wake Up and Live! : A Formula for Success That Really Works - Dorothea Brande
Topper - Thorne Smith
Enough Rope - Dorothy Parker
News from Nowhere - William Morris
Other links:
In a special edition of the Backlisted podcast recorded at Shakespeare & Co. in Paris, John and Andy are joined by the bookstore's owner Sylvia Whitman and author Adam Biles to discuss Huysmans' novel of aesthetic isolation A Rebours.
Books mentioned:
La-Bas : (Down There); En Route - Joris Karl Huysmans
The Genius of the Future: Essays in French Art Criticism - Anita Brookner (also published as Romanticism And Its Discontents)
In a special Christmas edition of the Backlisted podcast (which of course can be listened to at any time of year) John & Andy welcome Jude and James Cook to discuss Ian Fleming's most festive Bond novel, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. There's discussion of the films, the music, and the sometimes questionable attitude to women, the French and drinking.
Also talked about in the 'What We've Been Reading' slot; Kindred by Octavia Butler and Alys Fowler's Hidden Nature.
Books mentioned:
The Bond novels - Ian Fleming
T.H.White Biography – Sylvia Townsend Warner
Other links:
Author and illustrator Alice Stevenson and her childhood friend, playwright Elinor Cook join John and Andy on the Backlisted podcast to talk about Diana Wynne Jones's novel of memory, childhood and friendship.
Books Mentioned:
Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously
Henrik Ibson - The Lady from the Sea
Diana Wynne Jones - Fire and Hemlock, Charmed Life
Jesmyn Ward - Sing, Unburied, Sing
Colson Whitehead - The Underground Railroad
George Saunders - Lincoln in the Bardo
William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying
Malachi Whitaker - The Journey Home and Other Stories, And So Did I
Dorothy Edwards - Rhapsody
George Gissing - New Grub Street
Alan Garner - Red Shift
Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Jane Gardam - Long Way from Verona
Other Links:
In a special edition of the Backlisted podcast recorded earlier this year live at the Durham Book Festival, John and Andy are joined by writers Adelle Stripe and Ben Myers to discuss Gordon Burn's debut novel Alma Cogan. The 'WHWBR?' slots are occupied by Pevsner's guide to Durham and The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro.
Books Mentioned:
Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously
Adelle Stripe - Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile
Ben Myers - Pig Iron, The Gallows Pole, These Darkening Days, Richard
Gordon Burn - Alma Cogan, On The Way to Work, Pocket Money, Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son, Happy Like Murderers, Fullalove, Born Yesterday
Alan Titchmarsh - Mr MacGregor
Kazuo Ishiguro - The Buried Giant, Never Let Me Go
Norman Mailer - The Executioner's Song
Other Links:
The novelist Jenny Colgan joins John and Andy on the Backlisted podcast to discuss R.F. Delderfield's epic of life in an English boarding school between the wars. Craig Brown's Ma'am Darling and Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood are the books we've been reading this week.
Books Mentioned:
Jason Hazley and Joel Morris - Ladybird Books
Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously
R. F. Delderfield - To Serve Them All My Days, God is an Englishman
Jenny Colgan - Christmas at Little Beach Street Bakery, Doctor Who, Welcome to Rosie Hopkins Sweet Shop of Dreams
John Fowles - The French Lieutenant's Woman
H E Bates - Fair Stood the Wind for France, The Darling Buds of May, The Dreaming Suburb, The Avenue Goes to War
Iris Murdoch - Under the Net
Nevil Shute - Town Like Alice
Patricia Lockwood - Priestdaddy
George Saunders - Lincoln in the Bardo
Julianne Pachico - The Lucky Ones
Craig Brown - Ma'am Darling
Vladimir Nabokov - The Gift
James Hilton - Goodbye Mr Chips
D. J. Taylors - The Prose Factory
R. C. Sheriff - Fortnight in September
Norman Collins - London Belongs to Me
Other Links:
For our annual Halloween episode John and Andy are joined on the Backlisted podcast by Fiona Wilson and Andrew Male to discuss Shirley Jackson's final novel We Have Always Lived In The Castle, originally published in 1962. In this show's 'What We Have Been Reading' slot John discusses True Ghost Stories of Our Own Time by Vivienne Rae-Ellis, while Andy puts forward Going On The Turn, the third instalment of Danny Baker's memoirs.
Books Mentioned:
Anthony Powell - Books Do Furnish a Room
Michael Frayn - The Tin Men
Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously
Vivienne Rae-Ellis - True Ghost Stories of Our Own Time
Danny Baker - Going on the turn, Going to Sea in a Sieve, Going Off Alarming
Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Haunting of Hill House, The Lottery,
Sylvia Townsend Warner- Lolly Willowes
Other Links:
In a special live edition of the Backlisted podcast, recorded in front of an audience at Blackwell's Bookshop in Oxford, John and Andy are joined by Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time and Sally Bayley, author and tutor in English at Balliol and St. Hugh's Colleges, Oxford. The panel discuss Jacob's Room, the third novel by Virginia Woolf, first published in 1922.
Books Mentioned:
Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously
Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, A Spot of Bother, The Pier Falls, Two Stories
Sally Bayley - The Private Life of the Diary, Girl with Dove
Julianne Pachico - The Lucky Ones
Dexter Petley - Love, Madness, Fishing
Virginia Woolf - Flush, Jacob's Room, Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, Orlando, A Room of One's Own
James Joyce - Ulysses
T. S. Eliot - The Waste Land
Jane Austen - Persuasion
John Carry - The Intellectuals and the Masses
E. M. Forster - Howards End
Other Links:
Simon Garfield, author of The Wrestling, The Nation's Favourite and A Notable Woman, amongst others joins John and Andy on the Backlisted podcast to discuss William Goldman's groundbreaking account of his life as a Hollywood screenwriter.
Books Mentioned:
Tibor Fischer - Under the Frog
Colson Whitehead - The Underground Railroad
George Saunders - Lincoln in the Bardo
Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously
Simon Garfield - Timekeepers, A Notable Woman, The Wrestling, The Nation's Favourite
William Goldman - Adventures in the Screen Trade, Which Lie Did I Tell?, The Princess Bride
Penny Pepper - First in the World Somewhere
Julia Phillips - You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again
Jake Eberts - My Indecision is Final
Steven Bach - Final Cut
Rob Long - Conversations with My Agent (and Set-Up Joke Set-Up Joke)
Russel T Davis - The Writer's Story
Peter Biskind - Easy Riders, Raging Bulls
Other Links:
In a long awaited episode of the Backlisted podcast John and Andy are joined by Una McCormack and Lucy Scholes to discuss Anita Brookner's third novel Look At Me (1982), a tale of intergalactic piracy in a far off star syste... No, not really.
The Cake And The Rain, Jimmy Webb's memoir of life in the 60's music industry, and We That Are Young a reworking of King Lear set in India by Preti Taneja, are the books John & Andy have been reading.
Books Mentioned:
Anita Brookner - Look At Me, Hotel du Lac, Latecomers, A Start in Life, Providence, Family and Friends, A Friend from England, Falling Slowly, A Closed Eye, A Private View
Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously
Jimmy Webb - The Cake and the Rain
Preti Taneja - We That Are Young
Kamila Shamsie - Home Fire
Jane Austin - Mansfield Park
Georges Simenon - Red Lights
Georgette Heyer - Arabella
Other Links:
John and Andy are joined on the Backlisted podcast by poet, radio presenter, playwright and genuine Tyke Ian McMillan to discuss Malcolm Lowry's 1947 masterwork, Under The Volcano. Also, The Factory of Light by Michael Jacobs, and more Rosemary Tonks. Do you have a problem with that?
Books Mentioned:
Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously
Michael Jacobs - The Factory of Light
Julian Pachico - The Lucky Ones
Rosemary Tonks - The Bloater
Malcolm Lowry - Under the Volcano, Dark as the Grave Wherein my Friend is Laid
James Joyce - Ulysses
Other Links:
Even your favourite podcasts need to take a holiday... but hopefully this collection of Backlisted off cuts, tall tales, terrible name dropping and the occasional bit of literary chat will help tide you over until we return at the beginning of September.
Books Mentioned:
William Maxwell - So Long, See You Tomorrow
John Kennedy Toole - Confederacy of Dunces
J. G. Farrell - The Siege of Krishnapur
Jerome K. Jerome - Three Men in a Boat
Erskine Childers - Riddle of the Sands
Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary
Émile Zola-Thérèse Raquin
David Seabrook - All the Devils are Here
Vladimir Nobokov - The Gift, Lectures on Russian Literature
Martin Fitzgerald - Ruth and Martin's album club
Sir Roy Strong - The Roy Strong Diaries
Tom Baker - Who On Earth is Tom Baker?
Other Links:
Author William Fiennes joins Andy and John on the Backlisted podcast to talk about Desperate Characters, Paula Fox's New York-set novel of relationships and feral cats. Also; William's First Story charity, Adam Scovell's Folk Horror and Sarah Hall's story collection Madame Zero, plus more on the mysterious Rosemary Tonks.
Books Mentioned:
Rosemary Tonks - Collected Poems
Malcolm Lowry - Under the Volcano
Sylvia Townsend Warner - The Death of Don Juan
Alex Preston - Kingfishers Catch Fire
William Fiennes - The Snow Geese, The Music Room
Paula Fox - Desperate Characters, Borrowed Finery, One-Eyed Cat, The Slave Dancer, How Many Miles to Babylon
Adam Scovell - Folk Horror
Alan Garner - The Owl Service, Red Shift
James Salter - A Sport and a Pastime
Sarah Hall - Madame Zero , The Wolf Border
Pete Brown - Miracle Brew
Shirley Hazzard - The Transit of Venus
Other Links:
The novelist Joanna Walsh and critic and academic Sarah Churchwell join John & Andy on the Backlisted podcast to talk about Anita Loos' Jazz Age novel. Also discussed: The Fact of a Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, and Bedouin of the London Evening, an anthology of poems by Rosemary Tonks.
Books mentioned:
Anita Loos - Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes
Andy Miller- The Year of Reading Dangerously
Joanna Walsh - Seed
Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich - The Fact of a Body
Mikal Gilmore - Shot in the Heart
Rosemary Tonks - Bedouin of the London Evening
Tot Taylor - The Rise and Fall of John Nightly
Edith Wharton - The Custom of the Country
Other links:
Author and critic Alex Preston and Rachael Kerr, Unbound's Editor at large, join John and Andy on the Backlisted podcast to discuss Charles Sprawson's ground breaking 'Haunts Of The Black Masseur', together with all things aquatic. The subtitle of the book is 'The Swimmer As Hero' and Sprawson's book tells the tale of literary swimmers from Byron to Cheever. Also discussed; Outskirts by John Grindrod and Bleaker House by Nell Stevens.
Books Mentioned:
Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously
Alex Preston - The Bleeding City, The Revelations, In Love and War, As Kingfishers Catch Fire
Charles Sprawson - Haunts of the Black Masseur
John Grindrod - Outskirts: Living Life on the Edge of the Green Belt, Concretopia
Muriel Spark - Memento Mori
Shena Mackay - Redhill Rococo
Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black
Nell Stevens - Bleaker House
Phyllis Richardson - House of Fiction
Philip Hoare - Risingtidefallingstar
Jenny Landreth - Swell
W. N. P. Barbellion - The Journal of the Disappointed Man
Edmund Gosse - Father and Son
John Cheever - The Swimmer
Other Links:
Sarah Perry, bestselling author of The Essex Serpent, joins John and Andy on the Backlisted podcast to discuss Edmund Gosse's account of growing up the son of a widowed Victorian fundementalist preacher. The trio also talk about Attrib. and Other Stories by Eley Williams, and Spanish Crossings, the second novel by John Simmons.
Books Mentioned:
Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously
Edmund Gosse - Father and Son
Sarah Perry - After Me Comes the Flood, The Essex Serpent
Eley Williams - Attrib. and Other Stories
Padgett Powell - The Interrogative Mood
George Saunders - Tenth of December
John Simmons - Spanish Crossings
Claire Scobie - The Pagoda Tree
Miriam Toews - A Complicated Kindness
Ann Thwaite - Edmund Gosse
Other Links:
Author and editor Richard T. Kelly joins John and Andy in the Backlisted studio to discuss I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life And Times of Warren Zevon by Crystal Zevon. They also discuss the art of the oral history, and run through some of their favourites, including Simon Garfield's The Wrestling and Edie - An American Biography by Jean Stein.
Books Mentioned:
Andy Miller - The Kinks Are the Village Green Reservation Society
Crystal Zevon - I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
Richard T. Kelly - Crusaders, The Possessions of Doctor Forrest, The Knives
Brigid Brophy - The Snow Ball
Emetic Pressburger - The Glass Pearls
Studs Terkel - The Good War: An Oral History of World War II
Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain - Please Kill Me: The Uncensored History of Punk
Sir Paul McCartney - Blackbird Singing
Jonathan Green - Days in the Life
Daniel Rachel - Walls Come Tumbling Down
Simon Garfield - The Wrestling, Timekeepers, The Nation's Favourite
Sophie Kipner - The Optimist
Vincent Van Gogh - The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh
Other Links:
Novelist Niven Govinden joins John and Andy on the Backlisted podcast to discuss James Baldwin's 1968 novel Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone. Also discussed: The World My Wilderness by Rose Macaulay, and The Gallows Pole by Ben Myers. Oh, and Lissa Evans' scene stealing turn in Their Finest, the film adaptation of her WWII novel, Their Finest Hour & A Half.
Books Mentioned:
Lisa Evans - Their Finest Hour and a Half
Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously
John Grindrod - Outskirts
James Baldwin - Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, Another Country, Giovanni's Room, Go Tell it on the Mountain, I Am Not Your Negro
Niven Govinden - We Are the Next Romantics, Graffiti My Soul, Black Bread White Beer, All the Days and Nights
Shena Mackay - Redhill Rococo
Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black
Michael Nesmith - Infinite Tuesday
Rose Macauly - The World My Wilderness, The Towers of Trebizond
Benjamin Myers - The Gallows Pole
Kerensa Jennings - Seas of Snow
Other Links:
Writer and critic Catherine Taylor joins John and Andy on the Backlisted podcast to discuss Vladimir Nabokov's parting love letter to Russia and it's literature, The Gift, first published in English in 1963. Also; singing with nightingales and reading Richard Mabey's book about the same bird, David Storey's Booker Prize winning Saville, and Bob Dylan's song and dance routine.
Books Mentioned:
Vladimir Nabokov - The Gift, Speak Memory, Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, The Defense
Katherine Taylor - The Stirrings
Richard Mabey - Book of Nightingales
Christopher Ricks - Dylan’s Visions of Sin
David Storey - Saville, Flight into Camden
Barry Hines - First Signs
Paul Bassett Davies - Dead Writers in Rehab
Andy Miller - The Year of Reading Dangerously
Other Links: