Episode · People I (Mostly) Admire · 2023-08-19
Books mentioned on 112. Reading Dostoevsky Behind Bars
Reginald Dwayne Betts spent more than eight years in prison. Today he's a Yale Law graduate, a MacArthur Fellow, and a poet.
Reginald Dwayne Betts discussed The Harry Potter Series by Lana A. Whited and others, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, Insurrections by Rion Amilcar Scott, The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, Black Boy by Richard Wright, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, The Latehomecomer by Kao Kalia Yang, The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore, Hamlet by William Shakespeare, The Voltage Effect by John A. List, A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, and The Black Poets by Dudley Randall.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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The Harry Potter Series
Discussed“so I'm going to maybe embarrass myself but I love the Harry Potter series”
Where to get it
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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”
Where to get it
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Harry Potter
Harry Potter is a globally celebrated fantasy book series following a young wizard's epic struggle against the dark wizard Voldemort.
Discussed“so I'm going to maybe embarrass myself but I love the Harry Potter series”
Where to get it
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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M.
Discussed“but with Zen and the other Motorcycle Maintenance, I know that book it is not in the library”
Where to get it
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The Things They Carried
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien is a renowned collection of interrelated stories that explores the psychological burdens and realities of American soldiers during 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”
Where to get it
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One Hundred Years of Solitude
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez is a landmark novel that chronicles the multi-generational history of the Buendía family in the fictional town of Macondo and stands as a masterwork of magical realism.
Discussed“so you have your 100 Years of Solitude”
Where to get it
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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 Rion Scott who's an amazing short story writer and we had this collection of his called insurrections in the catalog”
Where to get it
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The Maltese Falcon
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett is a classic hardboiled detective novel that revolutionized the crime fiction genre with its gritty realism, morally ambiguous characters, and iconic protagonist, Sam Spade.
Discussed“and that might be right next to the Chester Himes or right next to the Maltese falcon or right next to the other run of Stephen King books that we have in there”
Where to get it
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Black Boy
Black Boy by Richard Wright is a powerful autobiographical chronicle detailing the author's harrowing upbringing in the American South, marked by systemic racism, poverty, and isolation, followed by his awakening through reading and his eventual escape to Chicago.
Discussed“so we got black boy and that's a 300 page book”
Where to get it
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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 broke somebody in to perform a brief wondrous life of Oscar Wilde”
Where to get it
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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“and so the next day we literally got a letter from this woman saying I picked up that secret history of Wonder Woman and it is such an amazing book”
Where to get it
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Hamlet
William Shakespeare's classic play Hamlet follows the tragic Prince of Denmark as he grapples with grief, betrayal, and the heavy burden of avenging his father's murder.
Discussed“and Hamlet and we were holding up Hamlet when he said blah blah”
Where to get it
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The Voltage Effect
The Voltage Effect by John A.
Discussed“I think one of your colleagues wrote voltage effect”
Where to get it
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A Gentleman in Moscow
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles is a celebrated historical novel that follows an aristocratic Russian count who is sentenced to spend the remainder of his life inside a luxury hotel by a Bolshevik tribunal.
Discussed“so if you get hooked on the Russians you could find the resources like they go dostevsky they go check off they go a gentleman in Moscow which is a very new book to set in Russia”
Where to get it
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The Black Poets
The Black Poets by Dudley Randall is an influential and expansive poetry anthology that preserves and celebrates foundational works of African American verse.
Discussed“and I ended up getting this book called the black poets and it changed my life”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (1) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“and somebody mentions beloved”