Why do we let the messy implications of our beliefs keep us from shouting them the rooftops?Why is it difficult for a movement like feminism to be both strong and inclusive?Why don't chickens feature more prominently in the Nativity?Friend of the show Katherine Fritz joins us this week to answer these questions and discuss Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist. This 2014 bestseller features selected essays from throughout Gay's career, which includes pieces on The Help, the Internet outrage cycle, and the need for more diverse voices.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

At this point we've read a lot of novels, but we haven't tried to write our own just yet. Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman's 2008 anti-guidebook How Not To Write A Novel has shown us a lot of the stuff we should try to avoid if we ever decide to put pen to paper.We also devote a substantial chunk of this week's episode to listener mail from our Looking for Alaska episode, specifically responses to our questions about why people read young adult fiction well into regular adulthood. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Garth Nix may sound like the name of a country music superstar, but he's actually just the humble, award-winning author behind several fantasy series. This week's book, Sabriel, debuted in 1995 as the first entry in Nix's Old Kingdom series, and the novel remains notable for its lead character, its unique take on magic, and the small (for a fantasy novel) cast of characters.Special guest Giaco Furino returns to the show this week, sharing with Andrew and Craig his thoughts on the Redundancy of Michael Crichton, magical vo-tech school, and talking bananas.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

John Green's Looking for Alaska is another young adult coming-of-age novel in a long tradition of young adult coming-of-age novels. A young man goes away to school and becomes close with a small group of friends. They smoke, they drink, they have sexual experiences, they lose, they mourn.It's nothing that hasn't been done, but Green's light tone and deeper thematic questions make Alaska worth reading whether you're still a young adult or not. Join us for more thoughts on this book, as well as the great Central Air Conditioning vs. Dishwasher debate of 2015.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door is not for the faint of heart. The story is based on the grisly murder of Sylvia Likens by her de facto guardian in the 1960s. What preceded her death is too reprehensible to print here, but Ketchum dives headlong into the awful, determined to suss out the causes (and bounds) of human evil.Suffice to say, this makes for a difficult discussion on-air, and we spend nearly half the show trying not to talk about the rougher aspects of the book. So please join us for a discussion of phishing, safewords from the future, childhood games, and the parts of The Girl Next Door that made Craig feel terrible.Caveat lictor: This episode contains explicit language and discussion of graphic material.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

One of the reasons we read is because books can give us perspective—good ones can fully transport us to times and places where we've never been and, in some cases, could never go. That's the case with Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books, stories she wrote about her childhood on the American frontier.These books aren't without their problems (there are fairly significant questions about authorship and racism is sort of everywhere), but they're worth reading because of how completely they immerse you in the lives of their protagonists. Join us and special guest Margaret H. Willison as we talk about one of the best-known titles in the series.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ernest Hemingway is celebrated for the economy of his prose.This week we read A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Rejected a world record 121 times before finally finding a publisher and going on to sell millions of copies, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is one of the most widely read philosophy texts of the 20th-century.Robert Pirsig's semi-autobiographical, semi-fictional account of a motorcycle road trip with his son covers a lot of ground. America's psyche in the fifties and sixties; our fascination with and fear of modern technology; the age-old quest to unify the world around us: Pirsig crams it all onto one motorcycle ridden by one man. It should then be no surprise that we get a little lost in this one. So please bear with us as we fail to ask for directions and are forced to stop and check the fuel gauge/pistons/tappets/[insert motorcycle part here] more than a few times along the way.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We're back to sci-fi this week, but we take a break from the politics-heavy universe of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow instead uses science fiction to discuss anthropology, colonialism, and theology. There's some genuinely funny and warm stuff in this book, but there's a shadow hanging over the proceedings from the outset: eight people set out to explore the first known alien planet inhabited by sentient life, but only one comes back, and he's much worse for the wear.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

John Ford's 1620s revenge drama 'Tis Pity She's A Whore has everything: friars, murder, bawdy jokes, bawdy suitors, incest -- incest?! What's that doing there?, you might say. And such has been the reaction from nigh on four centuries of critics and audiences confused by how romantically (and tragically) Ford depicted a brother and sister's love.Never ones to stay wholly on topic, we also discuss March holidays, snow melancholy, and hitting up celebrities for college tuition.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.