The Bookening

In this special bonus clip that we're posting today for some reason, The Mysterious Phantom and Virginia Woolf attempt to discredit Jane Austen's greatness. Fortunately Jake and Brandon are having none of it! Support this amazing podcast here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Sign up here to support our heroes! Mansfield Park is a thorny novel. It plays with the form in challenging ways. It takes some discernment to read it properly. Today our heroes talk about these challenges, as well as the question of why Henry and Mary suck. Because they do suck, dear listener. Here are some things our heroes discuss in this amazing episode: 00:00 Our heroes are awesome 06:21 Donor Shout-outs 10:35 Genius Structure 21:34 Test Your Discernment 22:19 Complaints about the ending 25:17 Respect Your Literary Elders 27:49 Mary Crawford =/= Lizzie or Emma 30:17 Character will out 32:09 Everything is in play 36:40 Nature vs. nurture 40:58 Mr. Yates 43:25 Sobriety 44:58 The church scene 54:40 Our heroes talk about barbecue during the end credits for some reason ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Sign up to support our podcast here!Happy Valentine's Day, Bookeners!Fanny Price is not a popular heroine. She's weak, passive, and afraid for most of the novel. She achieves her victory through something almost like diffidence. And yet, our heroes at The Bookening unreservedly love her. They think she's kinda great. In today's episode, they attempt to convince you of the same thing. Also we decide if Nathan should marry a LIzzie or a Fanny, with copious love advice from Dr Mentzel.In so doing, the following things occur:02:15 Donor Shout outs!!!!!! 05:20 Nathan spits some awesome bars 06:56 Baggage check!! 12:31 The Price is wrong?????? 13:54 The Price is right!!!!!! 14:19 Fanny is damaged, yo 19:06 Shades of early Dickens 21:11 Fanny's faults 22:40 The play! 24:06 The clergy! 27:21 Feminine virtue =/= shutting up all the time 29:55 Feminine virtue = gentle and quite spirit 33:11 Fanny is awesome! 34:26 Edmund 35:30 Don't trifle with women's hearts! 38:30 Stockholm syndrome! 43:15 Love advice with Dr Mentzel ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Support us here on Patreon! FANNY FOREVER! This is an episode of the greatest literature podcast ever on the subject of Mansfield Park by the one and only Jane Austen. This first episode includes the following things: 00:00 Nathan says something silly while the music starts to play 00:43 The music stops playing and our heroes talk of many interesting things 08:32 Donor Shout-outs!!!!!!!!! 14:02 Contextual Texan Begins 16:10 Jane Austen's Evening Prayer 18:32 The non-irony of Fanny Price 20:15 Jane Austen's Life 27:20 The weird transitional literary time she lived in 29:15: Romanticism! Emotions! Cliffs! 34:48 Free Indirect Style 36:53 The Peerage System 40:39 Slavery 42:47 Landscape Development 44:26 Sublimity is the worst 45:35 A mixed critical response :( 47:41 A Feminist Marxist reading 50:24 Controversy! 51:41 Sorry, Virginia Woolf ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Support The Bookening here! What's this??? An episode of The Lookening!!!! Aka our heroes are reviewing a movie. What is said movie you ask? It's Shadowlands. According to our pals at Wikipedia, "Shadowlands is a 1993 British biographical drama film about the relationship between Irish academic C. S. Lewis and American poet Joy Davidman, her death from cancer, and how this challenged Lewis's Christian faith. It is directed by Richard Attenborough with a screenplay by William Nicholson based on his 1985 television film and 1989 stage play of the same name. The 1985 script began life as I Call It Joy written for Thames Television by Brian Sibley and Norman Stone. Sibley later wrote the book, Shadowlands: The True Story of C. S. Lewis and Joy Davidman." Here's some things that happen in this episode: 00:30 Our heroes are the coolest 06:23 Pig Latin Donor Shout-outs 11:00 Semi-colons are; the worst 12:15 Shadowlands is a movie we are discussing! 14:29 Things happened in this movie 15:36 Ugly crying 19:03 A Grief Observed 21:22 Lost! 24:32 Baggage check 26:13 Things the movie got wrong 32:03 Britishness prettified 33:58 British acting vs. Method acting 38:27 Offensive American Stereotypes 41:21 Why did Lewis fall in love with Joy? This movie has no clue 43:37 Quotable Lewis vs. Real Lewis 48:37 CS Lewis wrap-up 55:28 The Not-So-Great Divorce ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Our heroes continue their epic journey through all the books they read in 2017. They award prizes for the best line, best setting, worst book, best book and more! Nathan makes it sound like next week is Mansfield Park but that is actually the first week of February. Next week is somethin' special. Enable Brandon's gambling addiction by supporting us on Patreon here! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Support us on Patreon! Our heroes are looking back on all the books they read in 2017 and awarding the coveted Bookening awards of excellence in such categories as: Coolest male character Coolest female charcter Worst female villain Worst male villain Most evocative image. ... And more! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Our heroes continue to discuss Til We Have Faces, and decide that the ending freaks them out. Here's some things that happen: 1:15 Donor Shout-outs 3:24 Our heroes introduce themselves 6:09 Our heroes discuss Master and Commander for some reason 8:36 Our heroes discuss terrible children's movies, specifically Shrek, for some reason 10:20 Our heroes are still bitter about Winnie the Pooh 10:46 We are ambivalent about this book 12:00 The shadowy, puppety characters 14:24 It was a fun book to read 15:17 The journey vs the destination 15:47 The virtue of flat characters 18:24 The vice of flat characters 20:29 A psychologically real novel? 23:41 People who say this novel is great are weird 28:00 Things We Liked 33:27 Why do certain people like this book? 35:17 The false gospel of CS Lewis 38:00 Lewis's conception of holiness 45:47 How it should have ended 48:37 A rationalist with no faith 50:00 Bookening Seal of Approval ???? ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Our heroes dig into the semi-wonderful, but also kinda icky story of CS Lewis , and his final novel Till We Have Faces. Things that happen in this episode: 00:36 Our heroes are awesome 05:40 Donor Shout-outs 11:12 Contextual Texan 14:33 Biography 17:05 The Irish Influence 19:38 Childhood 22:10 Weird Unmentionable Things About Lewis's Past 26:26 WAR! 27:25 Back to Oxford 30:59 Til We Have Faces 32:56 Cupid and Psyche 35:19 Lewis's Wacko Mysticism 37:12 The Inklings Were Crazy, Yo 41:37 Owen Barfield and the Occult 44:48 Preface to Paradise Lost 45:32 Baggage Check 01:06 Guys with Something to Say Vs. Guys with a Story a Tell Support us on Patreon! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

This episode requires a bit of explanation. What happened was that our heroes gathered together to record their 2017 year-in-review. But, as you'll hear, one thing led to another, and before they knew it, they had recorded an episode on Star Wars, and why this new movie (with its abandonment of the traditional Star-Warsian mythological underpinning) is probably a death knell for the franchise. We do still plan on doing a 2017 Redux, but it will be later in January, after Til We Have Faces. Warning: Spoilers abound, even apart from in the part that Nathan says contains spoilers.Support us here! ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★