Book Chat

Pandora Sykes

  • 57 minutes 48 seconds
    11. Stoner & The Unbearable Lightness of Being

    A bittersweet episode of Book Chat has Pandora and Bobby discussing two fittingly bittersweet books: Stoner by John Williams and The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. Also, “some news”, a hearty goodbye, and a look back on some of our Book Chat faves from episodes past.


    You can get in touch [email protected] 


    Books/articles mentioned:

    Stoner and Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams

    The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

    Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang

    The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr

    Emily, Bella, Harriet, Octavia, Prudence and Imogen by Jilly Cooper

    The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

    My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

    One Day by David Nicholls

    Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris 

    Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner


    The Greatest American Novel You’ve Never Heard Of by Tim Kreider for The New Yorker – https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-greatest-american-novel-youve-never-heard-of 


    Stoner: the must-read novel of 2013 by Julian Barnes for The Guardian – https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/13/stoner-john-williams-julian-barnes 


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    30 January 2024, 3:00 am
  • 51 minutes 41 seconds
    10. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret & The Bluest Eye

    We bring two books both published in 1970 to the table. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by “the poet laureate of puberty” Judy Blume, and The Bluest Eye, by the legendary Toni Morrison. 


    You can get in touch [email protected] 


    Books/articles mentioned:

    Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Forever and Deenie by Judy Blume

    The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Tar Baby and Paradise by Toni Morrison

    Mona of the Manor by Armistead Maupin

    First Love and My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley

    Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin

    Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

    The Wolf Hall Trilogy by Hilary Mantel

    Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver


    Books for episode 10:

    Stoner by John Williams

    The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera


    Sound by Joel Grove and production by Pandora Sykes


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    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    2 October 2023, 8:10 am
  • 36 minutes 47 seconds
    9. Augustown & Home Cooking

    After last month’s crowd-pleasers, Bobby and Pandora sink their teeth into two very different, equally meaty books. In Augustown by Kei Miller, a “dismal little valley” in Jamaica becomes a boiling pot of tension when a young boy’s dreadlocks are cut off. And in Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin, the boiling pots are a little more literal – and Pandora shares an all-timer of a kitchen horror story.


    You can get in touch [email protected] 


    Books/articles mentioned:

    Augustown by Kei Miller

    Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin

    The Pisces and Milk Fed by Melissa Broder

    When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Solà

    Good Material and Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton

    When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo

    Big Fish by Daniel Wallace

    Life of Pi by Yann Martel

    Trespasses by Louise Kennedy

    Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

    The Bread The Devil Knead by Lisa Allen-Agostini

    Heartburn by Nora Ephron

    Midnight Chicken by Ella Risbridger

    Takeaway by Angela Hui


    PRE-ORDER SMALL HOURS by Bobby Palmer


    Augustown by Kei Miller Review by Natasha Tripney for The Observer


    “Augustown”: A Novel of the Sacred and the Profane in Jamaica by Laura Miller for The New Yorker


    Scalding oil, racist prank calls and endless ‘lid duty’: growing up in a Chinese restaurant by Angela Hui for The Guardian


    Find out more about the ShelterBox Book Club


    Books for episode 10:

    The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

    Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. by Judy Blume


    Sound by Joel Grove and production by Pandora Sykes


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    12 September 2023, 2:00 am
  • 56 minutes 47 seconds
    8. Bridget Jones’s Diary & High Fidelity

    It’s a bumper episode 8, with Pandora and Bobby tackling two million-copy-bestselling, much-loved-movie-inspiring titans of the nineties. In Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding, Pandora finds a surprisingly feminist heroine who’s no less funny 25 years on. And in Nick Hornby’s beloved High Fidelity, Bobby meets his match in a perpetually depressed man-boy who needs to love himself before anyone else can love him back.


    Books/articles mentioned:

    Bridget Jones’s Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding

    High Fidelity, Fever Pitch and About a Boy by Nick Hornby

    One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

    The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

    A Life Of One’s Own by Joanna Biggs

    Shark Heart by Emily Habeck

    Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus by John Gray

    Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

    Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

    One Day and Us by David Nicholls

    Less by Andrew Sean Greer

    Heartburn by Nora Ephron

    Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin

    Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel


    Books for episode 9:

    Augustown by Kei Miller

    Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin


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    1 August 2023, 2:00 am
  • 56 minutes 25 seconds
    7. Close Range & A Girl’s Story

    Book Chat is back, and episode 7 pits a Pulitzer-winning author against a Nobel-winning author. But not really: in the battle of the Annies whose name ends in ‘X’, both Bobby and Pandora are winners. Discussing Close Range by Annie Proulx, Bobby feels the need to make apologies for the unapologetic bleakness of rural Wyoming – while Pandora is transported back to the excruciating experience of Catholic boarding school girlhood in Annie Ernaux’s A Girl’s Story.


    You can get in touch [email protected]


    Sound by Joel Grove and production by Pandora Sykes


    Books/articles mentioned:


    Close Range and The Shipping News by Annie Proulx


    A Girl’s Story, The Years, A Man’s Place, A Woman’s Story, Happening, Getting Lost and Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux


    The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin


    Ordinary Human Failings and Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan


    Different Seasons by Stephen King


    Stoner and Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams


    The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir


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    1 July 2023, 2:00 am
  • 45 minutes 3 seconds
    6. When I Hit You & A Visit from the Goon Squad

    Episode 6 takes on one little known book and one very, very well-known book. Pandora finally reads A Visit from the Goon Squad and falls in love with Jennifer Egan's entire canon, while Bobby has mixed feelings about one of Pandora's absolute favourite books of recent times, When I Hit You, about a woman's violent marriage to a communist professor in South India.


    You can get in touch [email protected]

    Sound by Joel Grove and production by Pandora Sykes


    Books/articles mentioned:

    When I Hit You, The Gypsy Goddess and Exquisite Cadavers by Meena Kandasamy

    A Visit from the Goon Squad, Emerald City, Look At Me and The Candy House by Jennifer Egan

    Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

    Burning Questions by Margaret Atwood

    Girlfriend on Mars by Deborah Willis

    Open Throat by Henry Hoke

    On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

    Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee

    Jennifer Egan on Radio 4 Book Club

    Stephanie Sy-Quia reviews Meena Kandasamy for LARB 


    Books for episode 7:

    Close Range by Annie Proulx

    A Girl’s Story by Annie Ernaux


    Please note, we will be taking a seasonal break for June, and will be back on July 1st.


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    1 May 2023, 2:00 am
  • 41 minutes 1 second
    5. Memorial & The Virgin Suicides

    Welcome to episode 5! On the menu today is Memorial by Byran Washington, which just slips over our '2 years old' threshold - the hype is arguably still hyping - and The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides, which was written 30 years ago and yet still, the hype hypes (StudioCanal just released a sparkly new version of the film.)


    We discuss Memorial's literary take on the 'meet the parents' romcom, the 'traumedy' genre, and why Mitsuko is one of the best characters ever written; and why The Virgin Suicides' big themes - adolescent mental health, the male gaze, the American Dream - still feel as prescient today.


    You can get in touch [email protected]

    Sound by Joel Grove and production by Pandora Sykes


    Books/articles mentioned:

    Memorial by Bryan Washington

    The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

    Bewilderment by Richard Powers

    Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

    Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid

    White Noise by Don DeLillo

    Memorial review by Maria Marchinkoski for The Harvard Review

    Memorial review by Tash Aw for The TLS

    Memorial review by Ron Charles for The Washington Post

    Jeffrey Eugenides interview at The Strand bookstore

    Does The Virgin Suicides still hold up 25 years later? By Emily Temple for LitHub

    Pre-order Isaac and the Egg in paperback


    Books for episode 6:

    When I Hit You by Meena Kandasamy

    A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan



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    1 April 2023, 2:00 am
  • 42 minutes 15 seconds
    4. All That Man Is & The Reluctant Fundamentalist

    For Episode 4 of Book Chat, we travel back just a decade or so, to Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist and David Szalay's short stories in a novel, All That Man Is.

    We discuss Mohsin Hamid's ability to condense big ideas - what makes a fundamentalist? What biases are you bringing to the story? - into readable prose (and his other magical novels like Exit West) and David Szalay's attempt to condense modern masculinity from teen to OAP, as it roves Europe - in one book.

    You can get in touch [email protected]

    Sound by Joel Grove and production by Pandora Sykes


    Books/articles mentioned:

    All That Man Is and London and the South-East by David Szalay

    The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Exit West and The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid

    Games and Rituals and Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny

    The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré

    Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

    The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis

    If on a winter’s night a traveller by Italo Calvino

    Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

    The Runaways by Fatima Bhutto

    ‘All That Man Is’, by David Szalay, review by Christopher Tayler for the Financial Times – https://www.ft.com/content/fe2db1c4-f797-11e5-803c-d27c7117d132 

    'All That Man Is,' and a Lot He Is Not, in David Szalay's View, by Dwight Garner for The New York Times – https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/books/review-all-that-man-is-and-a-lot-he-is-not-in-david-szalays-view.html 

    I Pledge Allegiance, by Karen Olsson for The New York Times – https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/books/review/Olsson.t.html 


    Clip attributions:

    David Szalay on Radio 4 Bookclub, 2019

    Mohsin Hamid on Radio 4 Bookclub, 2011


    Subscribe to Books + Bits: https://pandorasykes.substack.com/


    Our books for Ep 5:

    The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

    Memorial by Bryan Washington


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    1 March 2023, 3:00 am
  • 48 minutes 35 seconds
    3. Wuthering Heights & Orlando

    It's episode 3 of Book Chat! And this month we are travelling hundreds of years back, to a book Pandora's always wanted to read (Orlando, by Virginia Woolf) and one of Bobby's all-time favourites (Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte.) Last episode, Pandora groaned at the prospect of Wuthering Heights, which she read - and loathed - for GCSE. So has she changed her mind? We discuss the two books and also the culture around the two authors: the upper-class, sexually liberal art collective, the Bloomsbury group, which Virginia Woolf was part of, and 'the Bronte myth' which has become part of the Wuthering Heights lore. How were the books received at the time - and do they stand up as modern reads? 


    Other books/ articles mentioned:

    You Be Mother, by Meg Mason

    Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl

    Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte

    Mrs Dalloway, Jacob's Room, A Room of One's Own, The Waves and To The Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf 

    Terrible literary wigs that I have known and loved, by Maddie Rodriquez for Book Riot https://bookriot.com/terrible-literary-wigs-i-have-known-and-loved/

    Who's Virginia Woolf afraid of? by Stephen Unwin for Byline Times https://bylinetimes.com/2022/12/22/whos-virginia-woolf-afraid-of/

    Emily, 2022 film https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.985aca68-2553-4b7e-83de-1b6465a3a8e4?autoplay=0&ref_=atv_cf_strg_wb

    Orlando, a play directed by Michael Grandage, on now at The Garrick


    Our books for Episode 4 are:

    The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid

    All That Man Is, by David Szalay


    You can get in touch [email protected]


    Sound by Joel Grove and production by Pandora Sykes.


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    1 February 2023, 3:00 am
  • 42 minutes 54 seconds
    2. White Teeth & Convenience Store Woman

    Welcome back to Book Chat, a new monthly books podcast brought to you by novelist Bobby Palmer and journalist Pandora Sykes, which does what it says on the tin: we each bring one book, and we chat. Our one rule? The books have to be more than 2 years old. NB: this is a meaty book chat, not a book review show, so if you have not yet read the books, there will be spoilers.


    For our second episode, Pandora brings White Teeth by Zadie Smith (2000) and Bobby, Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata (2016, trans. 2019). Both books were huge bestsellers and launched each woman as a "literary sensation". We discuss this tag as well as the books themselves: our favourite bits, how they've aged, and what we'd change.


    Other books/ articles mentioned:

    Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald

    Darling by India Knight

    On Beauty, NW, Intimations, Swing Time and Grand Union by Zadie Smith

    Life Ceremony and Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

    The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

    White Teeth seemed fresh and optimistic in 2000 - how does it read now? by Sam Jordison for The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/jul/14/white-teeth-2000-how-does-it-read-now-zadie-smith

    Generation Why? by Zadie Smith for The New York Review of Books https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2010/11/25/generation-why/

    In Defence of Fiction, by Zadie Smith for The New York Review of Books https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/10/24/zadie-smith-in-defense-of-fiction/

    Zadie Smith interview: On Shame, Rage and Writing, for the Louisiana channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LREBOwjrrw

    For Japanese novelist Sayaka Murata, odd is the new normal, by Motoko Rich for The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/books/japanese-novelist-sayaka-murata-convenience-store-woman.html

    The future of sex lives in us all, by Sayaka Murata for The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/02/opinion/future-sex-society.html

    A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham

    Darling by India Knight

    Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald

    The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

    The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

    Collected Works by Lydia Sandgren

    Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson

    White Noise by Don DeLillo

    My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

    Luster by Raven Leilani

    The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

    Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

    On Beauty, NW, Intimations, Swing Time and Grand Union by Zadie Smith

    Earthlings and Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata


    You can get in touch [email protected].


    Sound by Joel Grove and production by Pandora Sykes.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1 January 2023, 3:00 am
  • 50 minutes 31 seconds
    1. Tin Man & Tales of The City

    Welcome to Book Chat! A new monthly books podcast hosted by Pandora Sykes and Bobby Palmer, which does what it says on the tin: we each bring one book, and we chat. Our one rule? The books have to be more than 2 years old. For our inaugural episode, Bobby has chosen Tin Man by Sarah Winman, and Pandora has chosen Tales of the City, by Armistead Maupin. So join us for a meaty book chat and beware for those who have not read the books: there will be spoilers. 


    Other books mentioned:

    The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan

    The Arrest by Jonathan Lethem

    Normal People by Sally Rooney

    Grief is the Thing With Feathers by Max Porter

    Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

    A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman

    When God Was A Rabbit and Still Life by Sarah Winman

    Further Tales of The City, Babycakes and Michael Tolliver Lives, by Armistead Maupin


    Clip attributions:

    Sarah Winman on Writer’s Bone podcast, 2018

    Armistead Maupin on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, 2007

    Ian McKellan reads Letter to Mama for Letters Live, 2017


    You can get in touch with us at [email protected]

    Sound by Joel Grove and production by Pandora Sykes.


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1 December 2022, 3:00 am
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