A bit of festive fun looking back on the year that was.

Which books have stayed with us? Which were forgettable? What was the best reading/watching we did outside of book club? What did we learn about podcasting? Are we gonna keep posting this stuff in public?

and MORE

CHAPTERS

• (00:00:00) festive chit chat
• (00:07:35) Revealing our favourite books of the year
• 00:34:13) Biggest STINKER of the year
• (00:48:25) Our #1 (non-book club) book/essay/blog
• (00:59:39) Favourite film or TV
• (01:10:05) Navel-gazing on the book club meta and podcasting lessons learned

WRITE US:

We love listener feedback. Send us a note at douevenlit@gmail.com to correct our bad takes, add your own, or just say hi.

NEXT ON THE READING LIST:

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

The Odyssey - Homer (Emily Wilson translation)

A paradox: how can an author—say, Walker Percy—get the reader to care about a protagonist—say, Binx Bolling—who is stuck in a malaise and doesn't himself particularly care about anything?

A corollary: how can a book club have an engaging discussion when they don't particularly care about said book and said protagonist?

Honestly you might as well skip the first 10 minutes or so in which we half-assedly try to talk about the actual plot elements.

Luckily Cam saved the day with an impromptu lecture on Kierkegaard and we just yapped about the meaning of life instead:

• Is it patronising to claim that everyone is living in a state of despair?
• Is self-gratification and individualism actually bad?
• What are the main avenues for having a meaningful life?
• How does society stigmatise or incentivise meaning-making activities?
• Has the existentialist project more or less been a success?
• Which of Popper's three worlds does 'meaning' fall into?

I can't be bothered doing chapter markers for this one so just take a leap of faith you cowards

WRITE US:

We love listener feedback. Send us a note at douevenlit@gmail.com to correct our bad takes, add your own, or just say hi.

NEXT ON THE READING LIST:

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

The Odyssey - Homer (Emily Wilson translation)

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul... You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.”

Nabokov had a lot of trouble getting anyone to publish a story about a grown man falling in love with a 12 year old. After multiple bans and scandals, Lolita caught fire in America, and is now considered perhaps his greatest work (altho you still cop some dodgy glances reading it on the train).

The great central tension is between Humbert Humbert the monster and HH the sensitive and sympathetic aesthete. How reliable is HH as a narrator? Is he deluding himself? Did he successfully hoodwink certain critics? Is he truly capable of love and redemption, or is everything staged for effect?

On the murder mystery: is HH really any better than his nemesis Clare Quilty? What's the significance of trying to kill one's shadow? Did we catch Quilty's lurking presence throughout these pages? Does he even exist at all?

What's the message of this story? On didactic vs aesthetic fiction, whether this book is meant to be moralising, Nabokov's instructions to the reader, and an overall vibe check on how we feel about his tricks after reading both Pale Fire and Lolita.

CHAPTERS

• (00:00:00) life imitates art
• (00:04:11) the two faces of Humbert Humbert
• 00:13:42) is HH an unreliable narrator?
• (00:26:32) Trying to distinguish between love and lust
• (00:36:50) Sympathy for the pedo
• (00:40:32) the questionable reality of Clare Quilty
• (01:04:49) Quilty vs HH
• (01:08:45) Does Lolita have a moral? (death of the author redux)
• (01:14:22) comparison to Pale Fire and Nabokov vibe check

WRITE US:

We love to share listener feedback. Send us a note at douevenlit@gmail.com to correct our bad takes, add your own, or just say hi.

NEXT ON THE READING LIST:

The Moviegoer - Walker Percy