Hello and welcome to On the Same Page, a podcast in which two mates separated by oceans and hemispheres talk about books, and catch each other up on life between the lines. Unfortunately, we can’t get together in person, but through this podcast we hope to get on the same page.
Hi everyone! Just a little update, Seamus and Blake will be putting On the Same Page on hold for a moment. Blake is pursuing some incredibly exciting personal interests which we love so he will be unable to podcast! In the meantime, Seamus is taking up the podcast mantle, and will continue under a different name, (A Novel Review) so that On the Same Page remains ready to go at a moments notice. If you wish to continue listening, please follow the links below!
A huge thank you to everyone for all your support, it has been amazing and we both cannot thank you enough for everything. It has been an incredible amount of fun!
Website: http://anovelreviewpodcast.com
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Cormack McCarthy’s “The Road” took the world by a storm. It was published in 2006, won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 2007 and was a film by 2009, and yet, not to sound like a broken record or a lover of literature, the book is unmatched. McCarthy’s brutal and heartbreaking story, is as vivid and as shattering on the page, as any film adaptation could hop to achieve.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
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Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
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Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
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More than 75 years since its publication and the themes of change and memory in “Brideshead Revisited” remain as bittersweet and reflective as ever. Evelyn Waugh’s seventh and certainly most famous novel is, as a reading experience, more like a baroque building than a book. One does not so much read “Brideshead Revisited” as enter it. We wander its dynastic halls and marvel at its dynamic details, but most of all we seek out its inhabitants, that eclectic cast of characters. And yet, perhaps what is most enduring about “Brideshead” is that it pays revisiting; like its great themes, each reading renovates our memory and reveals the underlying truth that change “is the only evidence of life.”
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
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Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
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Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
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As its title suggests, Richard Powers’ ninth novel “The Echo Maker” resonates with readers long after they’ve put the book down. A psychological thriller set against one of nature’s most spectacular backdrops – the migration of Sandhill Cranes to the Platte River – the novel’s thread of mystery unfurls from a near-fatal accident on a remote stretch of Nebraskan road. Twenty-seven-year-old Mark Schluter survives the crash, but not without a traumatic brain injury which renders his sister, Karin, an apparent imposter. Enter famous cognitive neurologist Gerald Weber, who diagnoses Mark with Capgras syndrome and thereby gives a name to a desperate confusion that might not just be all in Mark’s head.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
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Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
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Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
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“A Study in Scarlet” by Arthur Conan Doyle is the world’s first introduction literature’s most famous consulting detective. We meet Sherlock Holmes, and the elemental but essential Dr. Watson, on the hunt for a killer whose scarlet trail crosses two continents and makes no shortage of twists and turns. Indicative of the long case history the world has come to know and love, “A Study in Scarlet” is one of only four full-length novels in the canon and carries all the hallmarks of a Sherlockian classic - death, mystery, exoticism, and deduction. Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
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Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
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A ghost story like none other, “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” by Shehan Karunatilaka is the chaotically mordant tale of a war photographer, Maali Almeida, who wakes up at the beginning of the novel to find out he’s dead. However, the liminal transit lounge where the dead are processed for a week after death (“seven moons”), a sort of waiting room for the afterlife, offers Almeida a chance to find out who killed him, and a chance to recover a hidden cache of negatives exposing horrific war crimes.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT
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Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
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In this edition of On the Same Page's "Poetry Parlay," Blake and Seamus read and discuss poems by two American giants – Rita Dove and Sylvia Plath.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
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Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
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The eponym in William Boyd’s whole-life novel “The Romantic” is one Cashel Greville Ross, whose time on earth spans most of the 19th century and a decent amount of the events within it. Born an apparent orphan in County Cork, Cashel’s romantic instinct to always choose his heart over his head took him to the Battle of Waterloo, the social circles of Lord Byron and the Shelley’s, and even through a mid-life crisis after becoming a farmer in Massachusetts. If that wasn’t enough of a life, Cashel also embarks on an exploration to discover the source of the Nile and, in his role as a diplomat, gets caught up in an international smuggling ring for antiquities. If you’re looking for a life of adventure, Boyd’s “The Romantic” won’t let you down.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gTHtxVh5
Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
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When it comes to short story writers, the names don’t come much bigger than Kate Chopin or Ernest Hemingway. In this Short Story Skirmish, Blake and Seamus discuss Chopin’s “Story of an Hour” and Hemingway’s “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”. The former is a story as dramatic as it is terse, while the latter is about as dramatic as an empty café, only imagine that café was painted by Edward Hopper
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gTHtxVh5
Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
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Mother-daughter relationships can be as tender as they are complicated, and Elizabeth Strout doesn’t shy away from either tendency in “My Name is Lucy Barton.” It’s a novel that dances on the tightrope between fiction and memoir, a novel about a writer, Lucy Barton, who is holed up in a hospital bed with no one for company except her estranged and mysterious mother. Through Lucy’s powerful and engaging voice, the novel tells the story of how Lucy became a writer, of how she came to New York City from Amgash, Illinois, and how she’s longed for her mother’s love. In a way, these are all the same story, but Lucy needs to tell it her own way.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gTHtxVh5
Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
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“The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” is a fitting final volume to Tolkien’s masterpiece. Published in 1955, and despite the massive spoiler in the title, this book manages to squeeze in as much story as possible. In fact, those who have only watched Peter Jackson’s film version will be surprised to learn they’ve only been told half the tale. Tolkien leaves no tangent untied in his culminating War of the Ring and neither will Blake and Seamus as they finishing ringing in the new year.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gTHtxVh5
Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
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In “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers”, the second volume of J.R.R. Tolkien’s most famous high fantasy novel, the narrative splits into two major streams. One follows the ringbearers into the foothills of Mordor, the other follows the rest of the original Fellowship as they enter the world of Orcs, men, and even Ents. These divergent paths expand the horizons of Middle Earth, test our favourite characters, and introduce some new ones. Far from a flop, this follow-up instalment may have two timelines but from Blake and Seamus it’s easy to stay on the same page.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gTHtxVh5
Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
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Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” by J.R.R. Tolkien: Here at the On the Same Page podcast we’re ringing in the new year with the one fantasy to rule them all. After all, what better way to begin 2023 than with a leisurely stroll to Mordor? So grab your pipeweed and settle in for the first of three episodes from Middle Earth.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gTHtxVh5
Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
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Originally published as two separate short stories, “Franny & Zooey” is one of J. D. Salinger’s most loved books, and for good reason. Franny and Zooey are siblings, the youngest members of the Glass family. The first section focuses on a weekend date between Franny and her Ivy League boyfriend Lane. Franny is in the midst of a spiritual crisis that ultimately leads to a fainting episode and a breakdown, but Lane, the 1950s equivalent of a fuckboi, is more concerned with his social schedule. The second section follows Zooey’s own confrontation with their family’s tragic past while also trying to drag his younger sister out of her dismay at the spiritual vacuity of modern life. Despite its terse length, Salinger’s vivid style breathes life into a book that broaches the questions we all ask ourselves at one time or another, particularly on the precipice of change.
Few stories have slipped into a wider culture with the seamlessness of Charles Dickens’ classic “A Christmas Carol”. First published in 1843, Dickens’ novella introduces the world to Ebenezer Scrooge, the original Grinch, a miserly chap who is visited by a series of ghosts seeking to rekindle his Christmas spirit. A powerfully moral tale, Scrooge’s journey plays with a range of seasonal and religious traditions and customs to transform a party-pooper into a proper Christmas miracle.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gTHtxVh5
Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
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In this edition of Short Story Skirmish we feature a classic of American gothic in Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Masque of Red Death”, and what is perhaps one of Vladimir Nabokov’s lesser known but by no means less thought-provoking stories, “A Guide to Berlin”. One considers the inevitability of death, the other considers the beauty in everyday life. Not only do both therefore complement each other, but both remain as prescient today as when they were written.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gTHtxVh5
Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
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Few novels are as simultaneously literary and accessible as Colm Tóibín’s 2004 novel “The Master”. Regardless of whether you know the eponymous master referred to is Henry James, or if you’re an avid James devotee, this book treats everyone equally. Everyone, that is, except Henry James, who we meet in his 50s and on the verge of the biggest failure of his prodigious career. Rather than drag the reader through a whole-life narrative, Tóibín focuses on a five-year period of flux, a period dominated by self-doubt, repression, regret, ambition and perhaps most of all, ambiguity. It is this latter quality of James, a cat-like elusiveness to categorisation, which the “The Master” captures so well. It’s a novel that doesn’t rely on plot to drive the story forward, but rather relies upon an alluring atmosphere of ambiguity that sweeps our eyes across its pages like mist over rolling hills.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gTHtxVh5
Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
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W.H. Auden & Charles Bukowski – In this episode of “On the Same Page” Blake and Seamus take a break from literary fiction to delve into literary truth, which is to say poetry. So put on your podcast seatbelts listeners, because we’re about to hit bedrock!
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
“The Passenger” by Cormack McCarthy Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Inner Shelf
Many novelists attempt to write about the writing life, but Lily King’s 2020 novel “Writers & Lovers” is that rare gem – a novel about a writer that doesn’t forget about the reader. King turns the doubt, toil and tears of artistic aspiration and precariousness into a richly textured story powered by grief and romantic determination, and yet never lacking in the realism of crushing college loan debts and interminable double-shifts at a restaurant. Set in the 1990s, Casey Peabody is a 31-year-old former golf prodigy struggling to confront her mother’s untimely death at the same time as writing her first novel. Throw in a less than desirable living situation, a choice of lovers that leaves much to be desired, and a cast of supporting characters that keep the witty dialogue coming, and Lily King’s “Writers & Lovers” is one of those precious books which is both compelling to readers and a companion to writers.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gTHtxVh5
Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
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Emily St. John Mandel’s “Sea of Tranquillity” is not as simple as its title or its length might suggest. And yet this part sci-fi, part pandemic anxiety, part historical fiction, part autofiction novel carries itself with a simple elegance. The multi-temporal narrative shifts smoothly between various characters’ encounters with a space-time anomaly. A young Englishman first encounters the glitch in 1912 while walking in the Canadian wilderness. Almost three-hundred-years later a famed author very similar to Mandel herself, except that she is from the moon's second colony, also encounters the anomaly as she struggles to complete a book tour under threat from a new pandemic. And one hundred years after that, in the 25thCentury, a Time Institute agent is sent back in time to investigate. This might all sound a bit too complicated if it wasn’t so clear that whatever force is tearing time apart is also bringing these disparate characters together, and you won’t put the book down until you find out why.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gTHtxVh5
Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
Portofino is one of the most fashionable spots on the Italian Riviera, but many attribute the picturesque town’s popularity to Elizabeth von Arnim, whose 1922 novel “The Enchanted April” saw four idiosyncratic women seeking a change of scenery find more change than they could’ve hoped for. After spotting a newspaper clipping advertising a small medieval castle to let furnished for the month of April, the four women leave dreary England behind and variously descend upon San Salvatore. It is a place, as the advertisement says, for “those who appreciate wisteria and sunshine.” And there, emboldened by the tumbling beauty and warmth of Italian spring, each character begins to experience a transformation of their own, an unexpected blossoming.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gTHtxVh5
Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
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“Trust”, by Hernan Diaz, is a novel with many faces. It is at once a novel within a novel and a mystery within a history, but perhaps at its core this book can best be described as a puzzle of perspectives. These perspectives orbit around a Wall Street tycoon and his ailing wife, but which perspective, if any, can we trust? As readers we simultaneously become detectives of the truth and also fascinated by the unlimited power of finance, captivated by, as it says in the novel: “The incestuous genealogies of money – capital begetting capital begetting capital.” Ultimately, we learn that Diaz’s novel, like money itself, is not to be trusted.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gTHtxVh5
Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
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After flying past the 50-episode mark, Blake and Seamus decide to take stock and answer some audience questions about literature, podcasting, favourite episodes and their ever-elongating reading lists.
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT
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Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
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Rachel Cusk’s 2021 novel “Second Place” takes inspiration from Mabel Dodge Luhan’s 1932 memoir of the time D. H. Lawrence came to stay with her in Taos, New Mexico. Cusk picks up some of the pieces of Luhan’s memoir to tell a numinous story in which a woman (M) invites a famous painter (L) to stay at her remote, coastal guesthouse. M hopes the landscape will inspire the painter, but what she really wants is for the painter to capture, or at least validate, some dark and impalpable part of her artistic soul. And yet, “Second Place” is far from being a simple ‘artist’s novel’. The relationship between M and L doesn’t quite pan out the way she hoped, and in the course of its unravelling the novel expands to encompass a variety of relationships and moral questions. Cusk takes on female fate in a man’s world and, in an age when a painting can sell at any price, asks how much a painter must pay for their art?
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gTHtxVh5
Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
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Widely regarded as one of the world’s greatest novels, Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” is a complex story centred around a scandalous affair in the social circles of Saint Petersburg’s upper crust. The book’s famous opening line divides the world into families that are happy and families that aren’t, but that division is just the first of many. The novel also broaches the division of labour, social class, rural vs. urban life, faith, family, desire and betrayal. What is more, “Anna Karenina” also divides opinion. Many place the novel at the pinnacle of the literary canon, but others, Blake and Seamus included, would rather place this “loose baggy monster” in the slush pile of history.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gTHtxVh5
Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
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There’s an awful lot that separates the pair of parallel protagonists in Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize winning 2014 novel “All the Light We Cannot See”. Marie-Laure is a blind French girl taking refuge in Saint-Malo after Paris fell to Nazi Germany, she loves braille books and natural history and navigates the world by memory of scale models built by her father. Werner Pfennig is a German orphan with a precocious affinity for radio technology, a skill that inevitably ushers him into the military. But what the pair ultimately share is what might be called the light we cannot see. As the novel’s plot turns toward the Battle of Saint-Malo in August 1944, bombs of war buffet the background and the two characters are drawn into a vortex with a Nazi gemmologist and, crystallised at the centre of everything, a diamond known as the Sea of Flames.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gTHtxVh5
Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
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Long have been the reigns of Britain’s queens and long has been the queue to see Elizabeth II lying in state. What isn’t so long however is this week’s book, “The Uncommon Reader” by Alan Bennett, a novella in which Queen Elizabeth II herself becomes obsessed with books after she happens upon a mobile library outside Buckingham Palace. With all his characteristic light-heartedness, Bennett brings the monarch to life in a way all readers can understand whether they’re royalists or not, because he does it through the love of reading itself.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gTHtxVh5
Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
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The premise of Amanda Lohrey’s 2021 Miles Franklin Literary Award-winning novel is about as simple as a pathway but as straightforward as a labyrinth. Erica’s son is a prisoner, and in her grief, Erica becomes “the prisoner of an idea with no path to its realisation.” She withdraws from the world to a rundown shack in a small coastal town near the penitentiary where she wants only to be close to her son and to build a labyrinth. Even Erica herself is not quite sure why she wants to build a labyrinth, though she knows it has something to do with finding her way step by step, as though in the dark, and something to do with the epigraph: “The cure for many ills, noted Jung, is to build something.” Taking its eponymous form as structure, and with some help from a curious cast of locals, the novel charts a meditative course through the fractures of past and present as Erica seeks to build a future she can live with.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gTHtxVh5
Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
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“You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning.” So begins Jay McInerney’s “Bright Lights, Big City”, a debut novel that sets out to encapsulate an era at its frantic extremity. That era is New York City in the early 1980s and our narrator is living the high life in the fast lane. Or to be more accurate, our narrator is getting high because life is moving a bit too fast. On the surface there’s a supermodel wife, a job at an unnamed literary magazine that sounds like it might rhyme with The Blue Talker, and a never-ending slew of yuppie parties and yucky nightclubs. But underneath there is a different story, a story full of the kind of suffering that can’t be solved by regular cash contributions to the Colombian cartels. Set over the course of one wild week, McInerney’s novel follows our narrator as he races from the heights of New York society all the way to the curb, and in between he has a lot of growing up to do.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gF2zVhQT
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gTHtxVh5
Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
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In 1882, Oscar Wilde arrived in the United States, declared the country’s wallpaper ugly and took off across the continent with a pioneering spirit for the Aesthetic Movement. He lectured on interior design, the decorative arts, and like his symbol, the sunflower, the young nation turned its attention toward him as though he were a new dawn. Later that year, writer and decorative artist Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” played into this hype to criticise the oppression of women, particularly patriarchal medicine’s now-discredited notion of hysteria and the so-called ‘rest-cure’. Perkins herself was a victim of such a ‘cure’, and her story is now considered one of the most important works of American feminism. Almost 80 years later, Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector’s short story “The Imitation of the Rose” took up some of Gilman’s themes and can be read as a subtle sequel. In this episode of On the Same Page, we place the two stories side by side.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
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Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
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Taymour Soomro’s debut novel “Other Names for Love” is as open as a world without villains, but not so open that forgiveness can simply fall out by itself. Before he is sent away to London at the age of sixteen, Fahad spends a pivotal summer in Abad, his family’s near-feudal estate in rural Pakistan. Despite being more interested in ‘other’ ways of life, Fahad’s father, Rafik, wants to make ‘a man’ of his son, to teach him the responsibilities of power while largely ignoring the responsibilities of fatherhood. Decades later, Fahad has lived in London longer than he ever lived in Pakistan, but the memories of Abad, the boy he fell in love with, and the knot of his family ties continues to course through his mind like one of the farm’s canals where buffalo wallow and the water is “bronze with silt”. But now the home that once sent Fahad away needs him to come back and Fahad must learn to swallow what has long been stuck in his throat.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
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Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gTHtxVh5
Podbean: https://onthesamepagepodcast.podbean.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
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Among Lawrentians and regular readers alike, D. H. Lawrence’s 1923 novel “Kangaroo” is more often maligned than praised. The plot isn’t much to poke a stick at, though as a piece of autofiction this may be excused, and the novel’s political anxieties did not make it out of the interwar period. And yet, like a Kangaroo’s pouch this book has more depth than you might think. Lawrence’s insights into the Australian psyche remain as lucidly scathing as they were a century ago. But if plumbing the shallow depths of Anglo-Australia’s indifferent soul doesn’t excite you, Lawrence’s painterly descriptions of Australia itself certainly will.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
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Anuk Arudpragasam's novel "A Passage North" delves into that eternal tussle between taking part in life and withdrawing from it, a tussle made all the more difficult in the shadow of trauma. Set in the devastating wake of Sri Lanka's 30-year civil war, the story follows Krishan's long journey by train into the shattered heart of the island and its people. On that meandering passage north we begin to understand the difference between desire and yearning, between the desire for something and yearning for something forever lost, some longed for piece of yourself that you can never get back.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
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On this week’s short story skirmish we read two American heavyweights, David Foster Wallace’s psychological spiral “Good Old Neon” and Shirley Jackson’s disturbing drawing of names in “The Lottery”. Jackson’s story was once a staple of Wallace’s freshman English syllabus, and perhaps a similarity between the two can be found in their examinations of toxic behaviour. “The Lottery” exposes the toxic side of tradition, and in “Good Old Neon” we see just how destructive a cycle of cynicism can be.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
“‘Gatsby?’ demanded Daisy. ‘What Gatsby?’” Like Daisy, we all know what Gatsby, but that doesn’t stop us from finding out anew each time we read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. The test of timelessness in literature is not just inter-generational freshness but also whether a book can be reread over and over again. “The Great Gatsby” passes both tests with colours that fly off the page like notes off sheet music. And yet, perhaps the true test of a great novel is that nothing can do it justice but the novel itself. But if no film can muster the same magic and no podcast can adequately portray the prose, what hope do Seamus and Blake have of getting on the same page? Only that hope which shines atop every podcast recording, only that green light.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
When Donna Tartt’s debut novel “The Secret History” was published in 1992 it was hardly a secret. Luckily for publisher Alfred A. Knopf, who printed 75,000 first editions as opposed to the traditional 10,000 for a debut novel, the book became an instant bestseller and Tartt an instant literary phenomenon. Thirty years later, Tartt’s star remains bright in the literary night sky and the gloomy glamour of “The Secret History” continues to mesmerize new generations of voracious eyes. To some, the novel’s popularity is far more mysterious than its plot, but it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that students continue to cement the book’s classical-status in the halls of ‘dark academia’ precisely because it is light on classical academia and heavy on the booze.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
On today's episode we're going to try something new, a short story skirmish. Put simply, we've each given each other a short story to read and in the episode, we'll see if they play along. Today the two short stories we've picked are "Taste" by Roald Dahl" and "Odour of Chrysanthemums" by D.H. Lawrence
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
Distinctive among Haruki Murakami’s novels for its lack of the fantastic, “Norwegian Wood” more than makes up for it with alcoholic undergraduates, melancholic walks, catatonic love triangles and, of course, symbolic 1960s pop songs. Set in Tokyo, the book follows a strangely serious young student called Toru as he comes to terms with the callow halls of campus life and the tragic loneliness of a life unpractised in love. A bit like a jazz progression the novel’s plot is as musical as it is meandering and yet still manages to move us somewhere, even if not the place we might expect. Perhaps Murakami’s most widely read novel, “Norwegian Wood” is worth the read and we hope, if only by osmosis, this podcast is worth the listen.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
Legendary Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain said Patrick Süskind’s novel “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” was his favourite book, probably because the protagonist, Grenouille, has such a murderous hankering for the smell of teen spirit. The story follows Grenouille, who is, in turn, following his preternatural nose through 18th-century France. Born odourless and orphaned in a Paris slum, Grenouille can smell everything except himself. Entranced by the art of perfumery amidst the miasma of the city our anti-hero sets out to learn his craft, but everything changes when he gets his first whiff of love.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
Many books have the power to make us think, but few have the power to change our minds. Throughout history the fear of this awesome power has seen scores of books banned for nothing more than turning our sleeping heads, and nothing less than widening our perspectives. Some have been lewd, some have been crude, some were banned just for their attitude. This week Seamus and Blake discuss the deep ranks of banned books as they swell with mediocrities, monstrosities and masterpieces.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
Do you have the courage to love? Do you really want to be free? Then leave your innocence at the door and come with us into “Giovanni’s Room”. This, James Baldwin’s second novel, tells us the truth about love, that while it may seem like falling at first, in the end love is a growing up. This is a novel about what happens to someone if they fail to tell the truth to themselves, and what happens to someone if they pretend to be innocent long after their innocence has been lost. In short, it’s a novel about what happens when you lie to yourself about something sacred.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
It’s rare that a prequel is as good as the original, but Jean Rhys’s “Wide Sargasso Sea” (1966), a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” (1847), is just such a precious novel. Set in Jamaica and Dominica, “Wide Sargasso Sea” is an origin story for Brontë’s Creole “madwoman in the attic”, Rochester’s first wife, who eventually burns down Thornfield Hall. But while Brontë invented the flames, Rhys provides the gaslighting, exploitation and ultimately the spark that sets the house alight. Through vivid prose dense with colour and made concise with masterly control, Rhys brings an imperial and patriarchal society to its natural conclusion – a burning house.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
Before the binge-watch was the binge-read, and few binge-reads come bigger than “The Count of Monte Cristo”, a book which bucks the trend of big things being hard to swallow. In the character of Edmond Dantès and the injustice done to him, Alexandre Dumas (père) managed to prove that famous phrase said to have originated in France during that Romantic Era of the July Monarchy, and ultimately the 1848 Revolution, the phrase: Revenge is a dish best served cold. Of course, as his name suggests, Dantès has to go through Hell before he can take his vengeance, which explains why Dumas takes another 1,000 pages for the dish to cool down. And far from being a complaint, readers to this day complain only that the dish could’ve been served even colder. This podcast is for all those people who gorged on each of the 1,200-plus pages of “The Count of Monte Cristo”, and yet are still hungry for more.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
Though he was as prolific in art as he was in life, Oscar Wilde only wrote one novel. Thankfully, he made it count. That novel is “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, a book in which Wilde manages to bring together his imagination and his intellect to ignite a bonfire of vanities which brought an end to the Victorian era.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
"This above all – ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write?” That is the question Rainer Maria Rilke asked of the eponymous young poet in the first of what has become known as his “Letters to a Young Poet”. Usually a writer’s letters are what one reads when they’ve already read everything else. However, thanks to the majesty of this short correspondence with an aspiring poet called Franz Kappus, these letters are often modern readers’ first encounter with Rilke – and what an encounter! In these letters Rilke is at his tender, word-perfect and emboldening best, providing poets, artists and general readers a lesson in discipline without a hint of didacticism, and a lesson in style with no lack of substance. If you are the kind of person who finds in the stillest hour of your night that you must write, that you must paint, that you must create in one form or another, then Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet” is a must read.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Additional segments throughout the podcast include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
If a dictionary provided meaning, instead of mere description, we would be never be lost for words. As it is though, there are a lot of words, and infinitely more meaning, which escape the dictionary’s binds. In her historical novel “The Dictionary of Lost Words,” Pip Williams’ protagonist Esme sets out to rescue these words, to protect them, to give them the meaning of lived experience. But what is more, many of these lost words find voice among women and the working class at a time when the first Oxford English Dictionary was being written, the women’s suffrage movement was at its height and the First World War loomed. In other words, at a time when the meaning of these lost words most needed to be heard.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
Wiradjuri writer Tara June Winch’s Miles Franklin Award winning novel “The Yield” is about the power of voice and language in the face of secrets, silence and suppression. Set on the banks of the fictional Murrumby River, “The Yield” revolves in time around the Gondiwindi family, primarily Albert ‘Poppy’ Gondiwindi and his granddaughter August Gondiwindi. Albert uses his last days to construct a Wiradjuri dictionary with a knowledge of country gained from his ancestors. While August, who fled to England to escape the painful burden of the past, returns to Australia to attend her grandfather’s funeral and to confront the realisation that she hasn’t escaped anything, that the past is ever-present, and that only by giving that past a voice can their ancestral lands be saved from a mining company. Winch’s novel is one in which distinctive voices are determined to put a stop to centuries of dispossession, and in many ways “The Yield” does just that.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
Marion Lougheed is Editor-in-Chief of Off Topic Publishing. Marion was raised between Canada, Benin, Belgium and Germany, and in addition to her career as an editor she is also a writer and an anthropologist. Today on “On The Same Page” we are excited to pick Marion’s brain about the editing of novels, shorter fiction, poetry and other forms, as well as the industry itself.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
In “A Gentleman in Moscow” Amor Towles manages to pull off one of those rare feats of literary magic wherein a story contained in space proves itself uncontainable in scope. In much the same way Melville bounded himself to the Pequod, Towles limits his novel to Moscow’s Metropole Hotel, wherein the noble, charismatic and adaptable Count Alexander Rostov is put under house arrest by a Bolshevik tribunal. But what can one little aristocrat get up to within the perimeter of an elegant hotel? The answer, just about everything. Each page turns like a kaleidoscope which, in Towles own words, needs only a glint of sunlight to produce “the interplay of mirrors, and the magic of symmetry, when one peers inside what one finds is a pattern so colourful, so perfectly intricate, it seems certain to have been designed with the utmost care.”
Some of the books discussed in this episode include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
Jennifer Mariani is a poet born and raised in Harare, Zimbabwe. A career as a ballet dancer took her to Manchester, England, before she eventually found herself in Calgary, Alberta, where she now lives and writes. A mother of two daughters and numerous cats, Jennifer’s poetry touches upon themes of exile and longing for her African homeland, motherhood, body image, eating disorders and domestic violence just to name a few. So clearly quite a bit to talk about.
Some of the books discussed in this episode include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
Few books need less introduction than George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” or “1984”, but that doesn’t mean this introduction needs censorship nor rendering in Newspeak. “1984” is a novel about the terrors of totalitarianism, of “The Party” and “Big Brother”, of mass surveillance, of a world where the citizen is the possession of the state, where resistance is futile and even a thought can be considered a crime. It is a world of perpetual war for perpetual peace and few can remember any different. Winston Smith is one of those few, but memory and love are rebellious acts in a slave state. Orwell’s novel remains as various as it is relevant, providing readers with one of the most sensitive warning systems for totalitarian thought, and one of the most powerful defences against the terrifying delusion that political certainty can ever provide personal security.
Some of the books discussed in this episode include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
In this episode of On the Same Page, Seamus and Blake discuss Maggie O’Farrell’s novel “Hamnet”, an example of historical fiction as imaginative as it is heart-breaking. Without so much as breathing his name, O’Farrell invites us into plague-ridden Elizabethan world of Shakespeare’s home life, breathing life into the oft undervalued Agnes (Anne Hathaway) and their oft overlooked son Hamnet. It would be challenge enough to write a novel in which the presence of Shakespeare is felt without that presence taking centre stage, but in “Hamnet” O’Farrell manages to turn the tables on great artistry by rendering The Bard as mere backdrop to the tale of marriage and grief which inspired him.
Some of the books discussed in this episode include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
On this episode of On the Same Page, Seamus and Blake sit down with a cask of Basque wine to throw out a few lines into the clear bittersweet waters of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”. In this modernist masterpiece we find a lost generation taught by WWI that there is no such thing as happy endings. It is a novel about a broken Europe, torn between the old and the new, and broken people learning to live with their traumas, or trying to. It is a book in which everybody behaves badly, and nobody has met with the frailty of masculinity without the scars to show for it. And yet, despite the damage done, Hemingway’s prose is stark and bright with the resilience of youth, and carries with it a wisdom for coping with life that is forever relevant.
Some of the books discussed in this episode include:
• "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemmingway
• "The Yield" by Tara June Winch
• "A Gentleman in Moscow" by Amor Towles
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
In this episode of On the Same Page, Seamus and Blake are joined by friend of the show Troy to discuss William Styron’s “Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness”, an abridged version of which is currently in print as a Penguin Vintage Mini under the title “Depression”. Growing from a lecture delivered to the Department of Psychiatry of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and later an article which first appeared in the December 1989 edition of Vanity Fair, “Darkness Visible” sees Styron describe his sober descent into a treacherous depression and his eventual ascent through artistic heights and hospitalisation to recovery. This little book that packs a big punch speaks to the idiosyncrasy of the illness that has come to be called ‘depression’, and the many pitfalls in the road of perseverance. Seamus, Blake and Troy came together to reflect on the book and their own experiences of that hellish place where, as Milton put it, there is “No light, but rather darkness visible”.
Some of the books discussed in this episode include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
Mary Shelley’s gothic masterpiece “Frankenstein” is a story about a grief-stricken man who decides to play God, a modern Prometheus, and his creation, a modern Adam. Untiring as the creature that comes to life in its pages, “Frankenstein” remains one of the world’s most enduring novels because it cuts to the core of the only division there is, that between life and death. Shelley’s story, as much an example of the sublime as it is science-fiction or the Romantic mythology of the self, tears at the stitching of that divide from which all the dangers of mortality spring: knowledge and ignorance, good and evil, creation and destruction, love and fear, feelings and intellect, in short, monstrous humanity and monsters all too human.
Some of the books discussed in this episode include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None” remains one of her most popular, controversial and enduring mysteries; and since the story follows the arrival of 10 strangers on a secluded island who slowly realise there is a murderer in their dwindling numbers, it’s not hard to understand why. This week, Seamus and Blake discuss the book Christie herself described as “a better piece of craftsmanship than anything else I have written."
Some of the books discussed in this episode include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
In this special episode, Seamus and Blake talk to writer, actor, director and corporate communication coach Annie McCubbin. Annie’s new award-winning book, published by Major Street, is called “Why Smart Women Make Bad Decisions: And How Critical Thinking Can Protect Them”. Part self-help, part novel, Annie’s book is as serious as it is funny and as necessary as it is prescient. From the pitfalls of decision making to the sinkholes of disastrous relationships, it’s a book full of insight, humour, narcissistic hipsters and an office subordinate called Lisa (pronounced Liza), who is so intimidating she could stare down Putin. Unlike Lisa (pronounced Liza), Annie is a big cup of good company and a delight to have On the Same Page.
Some of the books discussed in this episode include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
It’s a time of plague and poetry, a time of riverboats and sunken galleons, and a time when love is as intense and unrequited at first sight as it is fifty years, seven months, eleven days and six-hundred-odd affairs later. This week Seamus and Blake discuss Gabriel García Márquez’s “Love in the Time of Cholera”, a great novel if it were only dazzling, or only heart-breaking, but is greater still for managing to dazzle with the breaking.
Some of the books discussed in this episode include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
This week, Seamus and Blake are joined by Samira to discuss Hanya Yanagihara’s “A Little Life”, a book that is hard to put down, hardly little, and hardly shy of just how painful a little life can be.
Some of the books discussed in this episode include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
Great novels often divide opinion and this week Seamus and Blake are divided over Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights"; a novel which is itself centred upon the divisions between life and death, property and penury, care and cruelty, and most of all, between the layers of love and the limbo of its absence.
Some of the books discussed in this episode include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
Sula Peace may be an artist without an art form but Toni Morrison sure as hell wasn't. This week, Seamus and Blake discuss Morrison's second novel, "Sula".
Some of the books discussed in this episode include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
Before the outbreak of Covid-19 and its even more vicious variants, the abstract threat of plague was utilised by Albert Camus to emphasise some of the more apparent threats plaguing the 20th century. But reading Camus’ 1947 novel "The Plague" today reminds us that many of the same threats are still with us, not least of all abstraction itself. In this episode, Seamus and Blake discuss Camus’ novel and what light it brings to the world in 2022, yet another plague year.
Some of the books discussed in this episode include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
“To lose a passport was the least of one's worries,” wrote Bruce Chatwin, “to lose a notebook was a catastrophe.” In this episode Seamus and Blake venture into the far reaches of travel literature, that roving genre where writers are always on the move and no book is contained by its borders.
Some of the books discussed in this episode include:
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
While autobiographies are often written by ghosts, memoirs are often written to exorcise them. In this episode Seamus and Blake discuss memoirs, that narrative genre which hangs in the liminal shelves between fiction and non-fiction.
Some of the books touched upon in this episode include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
Covid-19 lockdowns have kept most of us in our place, but books can take us anywhere. After all, there are books without cities but there are no cities without books. Join Seamus and Blake as they discuss some of their favourite literary cities.
Some of the books, music and happenings touched upon in this episode include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
In the exodus from a cinema showing a new adaptation of a much-loved book, you are bound to hear the words: “Eh, the book was better.” But are there moving pictures that can move us as much as the books they’re based on? Join Seamus and Blake as they discuss some of those rare gems, great film adaptations.
Some of the books, films and happenings touched upon in this episode include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
Flowers wilt, batteries die and there is only so much perfume or Lynx Africa that a person can use at any one time, but books are the gifts which, in giving us ourselves, possess a generosity that never runs dry.
In this episode, Seamus and Blake discuss Books to Gift, and the books, stories and happenings touched upon include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
Not too long, not too short, novellas are right in the sweet spot. This week Seamus and Blake discuss some of their favourites from among those ill-defined books we call, for lack of a better idea, novellas.
Books, stories and happenings discussed in this episode include:
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
Long story short, this week Seamus and Blake discuss short stories.
Books, stories and happenings discussed in this episode include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
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With no shortage of books under the sun it is no surprise that some go under the radar. This week, Seamus and Blake discuss some of the underrated books that have had an overarching impact.
Books discussed in this episode include:
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You just couldn't make it up! This week, Seamus and Blake discuss some non-fiction books that have taken their factual fancy.
Books discussed in this episode include:
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Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
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What happens when a bookworm meets an earworm? In this episode of On the Same Page, Blake and Seamus audibly discuss audiobooks.
Some of the audiobooks discussed in this episode include:
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Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
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In this episode, Seamus and Blake discuss some literary classics that are worth it, and some that aren’t. Some of the novels touched upon in this episode include:
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Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/
In this episode, Seamus and Blake discuss great literary openings. Some of the books and writers touched upon in this episode include:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesamepagepod_
Email: seamusandblake@gmail.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/on.the.same.page.podcast/