Episode · People I (Mostly) Admire · 2025-03-08
Books mentioned on Reading Dostoevsky Behind Bars (Update)
Reginald Dwayne Betts spent more than eight years in prison. Today he's a Yale Law graduate, a MacArthur Fellow, and a poet.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K.
Discussed“so I'm going to maybe embarrass myself but I love the Harry Potter series”
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Harry Potter
The Harry Potter series by J.K.
Discussed“so I'm going to maybe embarrass myself but I love the Harry Potter series”
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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M.
Discussed“okay what about Zen In The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I know that book it is not in the library”
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The Things They Carried
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien is a critically acclaimed collection of interrelated semi-autobiographical short stories about American soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War.
Discussed“yesterday actually I was having lunch with somebody and he said the things they carry and I was like of course we have Tim O'Brien in the collection”
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One Hundred Years of Solitude
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez is a landmark masterpiece of magical realism that chronicles the multi-generational saga of the Buendía family in the fictional town of Macondo.
Discussed“so you have your 100 Years of Solitude”
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Insurrections
Insurrections by Rion Amilcar Scott is a critically acclaimed collection of short stories that portrays the complex lives of African Americans in a fictional Maryland suburb, exploring themes of community, faith, struggle, and identity.
Discussed“but you also have somebody like Ron Scott who's an amazing short story writer and we had this collection of his called insurrections in the catalog”
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Black Boy
Black Boy is a powerful autobiographical novel by Richard Wright that recounts his harsh upbringing in the American South and his struggles against systemic racism, poverty, and isolation.
Discussed“So we got black boy and that's a 300 page book that's fit to a 45 minute solo show”
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot D%c3%ad%c3%ad%c2%a1z is a celebrated contemporary novel that follows an overweight, sci-fi-obsessed Dominican-American nerd growing up in New Jersey while haunted by an ancestral curse known as fuk%c3%ba.
Discussed“we brought somebody in to perform a brief wondrous life of Oscar wild”
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The Latehomecomer
Discussed“we brought somebody in to perform the late homecomers”
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The Secret History of Wonder Woman
The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore is a comprehensive non-fiction biography that uncovers the hidden origins of the iconic comic book superhero through the lens of early twentieth-century feminism, psychology, and the life of her creator, William Moulton Marston.
Discussed“Professor J leore historian out of Harvard we got her book in there about Wonder Woman”
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Hamlet
William Shakespeare's timeless play Hamlet explores themes of betrayal, mortal dread, and the paralyzing nature of overthinking as a young prince seeks vengeance for his father's murder.
Discussed“and Hamlet and we were holding up Hamlet when he said blah blah”
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The Voltage Effect
The Voltage Effect by John A.
Discussed“I think one of your colleagues wrote vage effect sure yeah John list”
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Beloved
Beloved by Toni Morrison is a powerful, haunting novel about a formerly enslaved woman haunted by the trauma of her past and the literal ghost of the daughter she lost.
Discussed“and they they St talk about how like they love books and somebody mentions belov it”
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A Gentleman in Moscow
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles is a historical novel that follows an aristocratic count who is ordered to spend the remainder of his life inside a luxury Moscow hotel.
Discussed“they go Czech off they go a gentleman in Moscow which is a very new book to set in Russia”
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The Black Poets
The Black Poets edited by Dudley Randall is an influential poetry anthology celebrating African American verse from its spiritual roots to contemporary revolutionary voices.
Discussed“yo somebody sent me a book and I end up getting this book called the black poet and it changed my life”
Other mentions in this episode (2) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“I got a chance to stand on a stage at the Pearlman art center and to perform my solo show felon an American Washi tail”
“and it is me publishing dog R my fifth collection of poetry”