We all have those books that are waiting in the wings, begging for a chance to make their way off the shelf and into our hands. This week, we chat about why some books seem to get stuck on the sidelines, even though we always think they’ll be the next one up. We discuss some of the reasons this happens and each share five of our own benchwarmer books, doing our best to justify why we keep ignoring their pleas to “put me in coach!”
Shownotes
Books
Horror Movie, by Paul Tremblay
Proust Was a Neuroscientist, by Jonah Lehrer
The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller
Circe, by Madeline Miller
To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolfe
Tess of the D’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy
The Human Stain, by Philip Roth
The Passenger, by Cormac McCarthy
Stella Maris, by Cormac McCarthy
Pnin, by Vladimir Nabokov
Absalolm, Absalom!, by William Faulkner
Baudolino, by Umberto Eco
The Gormenghast Novels, by Mervyn Peake
Strong Motion, by Jonathan Franzen
The Twenty-Seventh City, by Jonathan Franzen
Night Watch, by Jayne Anne Phillips
The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Books) Saved My Life, by Andy Miller
We, the Drowned, by Carsten Jensen
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence
The Rainbow, by D.H. Lawrence
Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence
Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence
Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi
Hurricane Season, by Fernanda Melchor, translated by Sophie Hughes
Hons and Rebels, by Jessica Mitford
Romola, by George Eliot
The Snow Leopard, by Peter Matthiessen
At Play in the Fields of the Lord, by Peter Matthiessen
The Peregrine, by J.A. Baker
Shadow Country, by Peter Matthiessen
Tigana, by Guy Gabriel Kay
Up in the Old Hotel, by Joseph Mitchell
The Last Colony, by John Scalzi
Old Mans’ War, by John Scalzi
The Ghost Brigade, by John Scalzi
Zoe’s Tale, by John Scalzi
The Adventures of China Iron, by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, translated by Fiona Mackintosh and Iona Macintyre
Swann’s Way, by Marcel Proust
War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Anthony Briggs
The Expendable Man, by Dorothy B. Hughes
Felix Holt, the Radical, by George Eliot
Phineas Redux, by Anthony Trollope
Barchester Towers, by Anthony Trollope
Doctor Thorne, by Anthony Trollope
Suttree, by Cormac McCarthy
Other Links
The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast is a book chat podcast. Every other week Paul and Trevor get together to talk about some bookish topic or another. We hope you’ll continue to join us!
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Episode 89: Benchwarmer Books