@holpod.bsky.social
A podcast for lovers of literature since 2015. Find us at historyofliterature.com.
@holpod.bsky.social"Schoolteachers can be some hard-eyed people, with talkin eyes; they mouth sayin one thing and them eyes be screamin another."
– Alice Childress, A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich
@holpod.bsky.socialWhat does it mean to live a good life? In this episode, @jackewilson.bsky.social talks to translator Robin Waterfield and scholar John Sellars about their new edition of Aristotle's classic text.
#books #literature #aristotle @basicbooksgroup.bsky.social
@holpod.bsky.socialFor more about the book, take a listen to this episode in which @jackewilson.bsky.social talks to author Paul Chrystal.
@holpod.bsky.social"There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false."
– Harold Pinter #botd
@nobelprize.orgReposted by @holpod.bsky.socialToday author Anne Carson has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature. Throughout her entire authorship, Carson with a light touch explores the possibilities of writing, a process by which the literary sketch has become of particular value to her.
@holpod.bsky.social"My Poetry
explains nothing
clarifies nothing
renounces nothing
embraces no whole
fulfills no hope
creates no new rules of the game
takes no part in play
has a fixed territory
which it must fill"
– Tadeusz Różewicz #botd
@holpod.bsky.socialIn this episode, @jackewilson.bsky.social talks to author Amy Motlagh about her book Colorblind: Racial Thinking and Cultural Production in Modern Iran and the Diaspora.
@holpod.bsky.social "We take
unholy risks to prove
we are what we cannot be. For instance,
I am not even crazy."
– Amiri Baraka #botd
@holpod.bsky.socialIn this episode, @jackewilson.bsky.social talks to author Sean Keilen about his book Shakespeare's Scholars: Three Lessons from the Liberal Arts.
#books #literature #shakespeare @princetonupress.bsky.social
@holpod.bsky.socialIn this episode, @jackewilson.bsky.social talks to Malcolm Guite about his new book Galahad and the Grail, the first of a four-volume Arthuriad, which poetically retells the Arthurian legend of Galahad's quest to find the Holy Grail.
#books #literature #arthurianlegend
@princetonupress.bsky.socialReposted by @holpod.bsky.socialIn Monstrous Bitch, Eleanor Johnson masterfully reclaims the term “bitch,” transforming the narrative that portrayed women as monsters into a celebration of their power. Take the quiz to discover what you might have been labelled in the past & reclaim the admirable qualities of each archetype:
@holpod.bsky.social"For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons"
– T. S. Eliot #botd
@holpod.bsky.social"Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders."
– William Faulkner, Light in August
For more about Faulkner, check out @jackewilson.bsky.social's talk with author Carl Rollyson.
#botd #books #literature #faulkner @uvapress.bsky.social
@swellschultz.bsky.socialReposted by @holpod.bsky.socialHeroes Among Us
@holpod.bsky.social"When Iola opened her school she took pains to get acquainted with the parents of the children, and she gained their confidence and co-operation. Her face was a passport to their hearts. Ignorant of books, human faces were the scrolls from which they had been reading for ages." – Frances E.W. Harper
@holpod.bsky.socialF. Scott Fitzgerald, #botd
"I want to write something new," Fitzgerald wrote in a letter to his editor, "something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned." Months later, he presented the results: the novel that would eventually be titled The Great Gatsby. #books #literature
@holpod.bsky.socialFrom the archives – In this episode, @jackewilson.bsky.social takes a look at the life and works of Stendhal, whose innovative novels The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma made him one of the greatest and most influential novelists of all time.
#books #literature
@holpod.bsky.social"May I not be denied the time
once more to kiss the hands
of the one who patiently and in step with me
walked on and on and on
and who loved most of all."
– Jaroslav Seifert, "Autobiography"
@holpod.bsky.social“Fools, educated or not, will resent
you for what you know. A woman like me
is mistrusted and despised for her cleverness,
feared by you because your fear’s misplaced.”
– Euripides, Medea
#botd #books #literature #plays
@holpod.bsky.social"One could not stand and watch very long without becoming philosophical, without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog squeal of the universe."
– Upton Sinclair, b. Sept. 20, 1878
