Episode Notes

Have you ever found yourself irritably telling an over-enthusiastic fan of certain children's novels to "please read even one other book?" I have! And then I thought, maybe I should take my own advice!

The result is about 14 hours of me reading through John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and reacting to this book that over the last 80 years went from popular bestselling novel to a book bored high schoolers read the spark notes for.

Read One Other Book is a free form, diaristic podcast based in my personal experience and weaving my takes on the book in with events from my life. It's not a definitive take, an academic survey, or a polished scripted introduction to aid new readers, but rather just a woman reading a book and talking about it.

In a lot of ways, I suppose this is a response to the ongoing discourse on "democratizing knowledge" and my complicated feelings about how that discourse has mutated. I wanted to start from the premise that maybe "the classics" are often classic for a reason, and are worth reading not just because of what they can tell us, but because good books are enjoyable to read. I decided to put that to the test the best way I knew how: by reading a book that people bought in incredible numbers and seemed to enjoy reading, despite the fact that it's basically just one god damn crisis after another happening to basically likable characters.

This first episode is "Pilot Pilot", and was me first testing the waters for a series that itself is testing the possibilities of a metaseries. It was originally published on my patreon last year for $3 backers.

Find out more at https://read-one-other-book.pinecast.co

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