Tackle That Daunting Novel With A Podcast Book Club
Photo by Ozan Çulha
Several years ago I was struck with the desire to finally read some classic novels that I had never touched. My kids were younger, so during nap times and their early bedtimes, I spent a few years catching up on all of Jane Austen, Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, some Elizabeth Gaskell, and Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
I was going along at a pretty decent clip, finishing, if not fully enjoying, each novel (a word to the wise: Don’t take up Crime and Punishment during a long, dark, Pacific NW winter), until I hit Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.
According to my Kindle, I made it exactly 42% through the novel before I laid it down to read something….less of a slog. The plot and the characters of Les Miserables are extremely compelling and Hugo’s descriptions of them are intimate, snarky, and masterful.
Many of us have seen the musical, either in person or the on-screen version, but what those don’t include are the long passages where Hugo dives into the details of the battle of Waterloo, his opinion of convents, or details of the French sewer system. Why, Victor? Why?
I told myself I’d return to Les Miserables one day. In fact, I didn’t originally intend to take an extended break from the novel—just enough time to read a lighter, more accessible book or two. However, that was about 10 years ago. It just honestly felt too arduous to pick up again, despite the well-written characters.
Skip to today, where I am on page 537 of Les Miserables, having started at the beginning again. I am enjoying it immensely more this time around, and I don’t see myself needing any breaks until I hit “Fin”! What has made all the difference?
I discovered an entity that is the podcast “book club.” I had been listening to a podcast entitled BiblioFiles put out by CenterforLit, when they announced in the spring of 2019 a spinoff podcast they were starting called, How to Eat an Elephant: The Little Book Club for Large Books.
The idea of this new podcast was to “take on these scary books together,” focusing on large, daunting, classic novels. Interesting! The first overwhelmingly large classic was Tolstoy’s War and Peace. The book club leaders (the podcasters) set the reading schedule, then released a podcast episode roughly every week where they discussed the themes, characters, plot, symbolism, frustrations, and highlights of that week’s reading. All I had to do was read the assigned section, and then listen in.
Would I have finished War and Peace on my own? I’m not sure. Tolstoy likes to digress a bit in this novel as well—and repeat himself. What got me through the whole novel (I did read every word! We finished, as a book club, in July of 2022.) was knowing I was reading it with a group of people, and getting to hear the experts’ take on the novel.
They pulled insights from the novel that I, not a literature major, would have never seen. We laughed together, railed at Tolstoy together, marveled at the tome’s depth, and praised Tolstoy’s ability to paint a picture in your mind. I’ve never met anyone else who is part of this podcast book club in person, and yet we carried each other along.
While not a full substitute for an in-person book club, I’ve discovered that podcast book clubs can aid in gaining literary insight, offer a sort of accountability, and encourage you to keep going when the reading gets tough. You can follow along at their live pace, or you can find a previously recorded series of episodes for a book you have been wanting to read but felt it too overwhelming. If you need a few extra days to finish the reading selection, you don’t have to feel guilty at all, but can just finish up, then listen to the podcast on your schedule.
Reading is a large part of my life, and getting to enjoy it with others that are interested in the same books as I am (which isn't always the case with my in-person bibliophiles) has been a pleasure. It's one I don’t plan on quitting any time soon!
There are podcast book clubs for all genres of books and with different reading schedules: some are one episode discussing a whole novel, others tackle novels in parts. Here are just a few to try out if you are looking to join one:
