@holpod.bsky.social
A podcast for lovers of literature since 2015. Find us at historyofliterature.com.
Episode 746 – Devoney Looser tells @jackewilson.bsky.social about her new book Wild for Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Jane, which suggests we also rethink the commonly held view of "spinster Jane."
#books #literature #janeausten @stmartinspress.bsky.social
Happy Halloween from the Lit Hub Podcast! @drewsof.bsky.social reads you “The Cask of Amontillado” as a treat.
31.10.2025 14:30 — 👍 6 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
“The zombie is a spiritual vessel for unspeakable anguish. A repository of hopelessness. No peace even in death.” On ants, parasitic mushrooms, and how the origin of zombies relates to historical anti-Blackness.
31.10.2025 15:02 — 👍 11 🔁 9 💬 1 📌 0
"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run"
– John Keats, "To Autumn"
#poetry #botd #literature @uchicagopress.bsky.social
Miranda Seymour on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, and Frankenstein’s monster
31.10.2025 11:56 — 👍 6 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
Book cover. Paul Valéry, Collected Verse. A new translation by Paul Ryan
Author photo. Paul Valéry
"The wind is rising! . . . We must try to live!
The huge air opens and shuts my book: the wave
Dares to explode out of the rocks in reeking
Spray. Fly away, my sun-bewildered pages!
Break, waves!"
– Paul Valéry, "The Graveyard by the Sea" #botd
#poetry #books #literature
“For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands.” – Christina Rossetti
@jackewilson.bsky.social takes a look at Rossetti's "Goblin Market." #poetry
For more about Ian Smith's book Black Shakespeare, take a listen to @jackewilson.bsky.social's conversation with author Ian Smith in Episode 506. #shakespeare #books #literature #reading @universitypress.cambridge.org
29.10.2025 20:58 — 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
It's Halloween, a perfect time to revisit the life and work of the "master of the macabre" Edgar Allan Poe!
"It is well that a writer of such canonical importance should have a definitive biography, and Kopley certainly seems the man to write it."
—@wsj.com
www.upress.virginia.edu/title/10034/
Book cover. James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
Author portrait. James Boswell
"It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time."
– James Boswell
#botd #books #booksky #writing #biography
The AHA recognizes that our colleagues in the federal govt. are facing unprecedented workforce reductions & furloughs & has compiled resources in support. We are offering one year of free membership in the AHA to former employees of the federal govt. who have been terminated or resigned since 1/20.
28.10.2025 19:54 — 👍 25 🔁 8 💬 0 📌 0
"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light." – Dylan Thomas
@jackewilson.bsky.social talks to John Goodby, co-author of the biography Dylan Thomas: A Critical Life.
#books #poetry @reaktionbooks.bsky.social
We are loving this episode of The History of Literature podcast all about LOVE, SEX, AND FRANKENSTEIN! Listen on your favorite podcast app now🪦🥀
27.10.2025 18:27 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
NBCC Award winner Guo delivers a spectacular retelling of Moby-Dick, in which she recasts Ishmael as a 17-year-old girl and Ahab as a Black freedman named Seneca who’s battling the “white devil.” Newcomers to Moby-Dick and Melville devotees alike will find much to love. @groveatlantic.bsky.social
21.10.2025 19:02 — 👍 8 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 1
"I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed."
– Sylvia Plath, "The Colossus"
Remembering Sylvia Plath #botd
For more about Plath, take a listen to @jackewilson.bsky.social's conversation with author Emily Van Duyne. #books #literature #poetry
@jackewilson.bsky.social talks to author Caroline Lea about her novel Love, Sex, and Frankenstein, which tells the haunting, evocative story of the summer that should have broken Mary Shelley, but instead inspired her to write her Gothic masterpiece. #books #literature #novels #maryshelley #booksky
27.10.2025 12:34 — 👍 5 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 1
"Words belong to each other."
Hear the only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf's voice (not at all what I imagined!), reading her timeless love letter to language: www.themarginalian.org/2013/04/29/c...
Past HOL guest Samantha Rose Hill, on Hannah Arendt. #books #biography @reaktionbooks.bsky.social
24.10.2025 19:48 — 👍 5 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
The arresting story of how Thomas Mann wrote The Magic Mountain as a defeated Germany descended into political chaos. Now available at yalebooks.com.
24.10.2025 16:01 — 👍 7 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 1
Book cover. The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov
Author photo. Denise Levertov
"We are faithful
only to the imagination. What the
imagination
seizes
as beauty must be truth. What holds you
to what you see of me is
that grasp alone."
– Denise Levertov, "Everything that Acts is Actual" #botd
#poetry #literature #books
Medieval manuscript miniature of a seated scribe holding a quill and knife over ruled parchment inside a decorated initial (GKS 4 folio III, fol. 165r)
I'll be talking to the Caxton Club next month on The Medieval Scriptorium - going through all the stages of making manuscripts, including demonstration videos. There may be cats in the background. Fri 14 Nov 12:00PM CT (5.00PM GMT) #medievalsky #bookhistory
www.caxtonclub.org/event-6296386
Cover of "Cast Out of Eden: The Untold Story of John Muir, Indigenous Peoples, and the American Wilderness" by Robert Aquinas McNally.
"Perhaps these Indigenous stories are the truly untold part of the John Muir story, and @ramcnally.bsky.social at least starts to unsettle the conservationist consciousness that sought to forget" writes Kendall Lovely in California History.
bit.ly/4nSNotd
Don't miss The Atlantic's glowing review of Lydia Davis' new Into the Weeds—called a "[chart to] a more serendipitous path to reading" by critic David L. Ulin.
10/23/78: Stories of John Cheever
Stellar collection bagged well deserved Pulitzer
Standouts incl The Swimmer (later film w/Burt Lancaster) [ @specktor.bsky.social "the fevered delirium of suburbia in decline"] & our favorite Goodbye, My Brother
More via @tcboyle.com: www.npr.org/2006/08/17/5...
Book cover. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
In today's Episode 743, @jackewilson.bsky.social discusses Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, which lands at #11 on his list of the Greatest Books of All Time. #books #greatbooks #dostoeyvsky
23.10.2025 13:05 — 👍 5 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0
In Episode 743, @jackewilson.bsky.social talks to the fairy tale expert Jack Zipes about his book Buried Treasures: The Power of Political Fairy Tales, which profiles modern writers and artists who tapped the political potential of fairy tales.
#books #fairytales @princetonupress.bsky.social
Nobel laureate Doris Lessing on how to read a book and how to read the world www.themarginalian.org/2025/07/17/d...
11.10.2025 04:47 — 👍 26 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 1
Book cover. Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
Author photo. Doris Lessing
“Half of what we do, or try to be, amounts to blueprints for the future that we try to imagine.” – Doris Lessing #botd
#books #literature #novels
Book cover. A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Book cover. The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin
“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” – Ursula K. Le Guin #botd
#books #booksofearthsea #novels
