The Bibliofilles

Is fiction getting weirder? This week on Bibliofilles, Chaya and Sophie dive into the wonderfully strange world of weird books, exploring some of the most bizarre, surreal and completely unexpected stories they’ve come across. From women falling in love with bears, planes and even a front door, to characters transforming into insects, dogs and other creatures, there are some books where the premise alone makes you stop and think: how did someone even come up with this? Chaya and Sophie unpack what makes these stories so strange, why authors are drawn to the bizarre, and whether there’s something about weird fiction that makes certain books impossible to forget. Expect bizarre plots, unconventional romances, surreal storytelling and plenty of books that are almost impossible to explain to someone who hasn’t read them. What’s the weirdest book you’ve ever read? 👍 Like, subscribe, and turn on notifications for more bookish conversations with Sophie & Chaya. #Bibliofilles #BookPodcast #BookRecommendations #WeirdBooks #StrangeBooks #FictionBooks #BookClub #BookTok #BookTube #LiteraryFiction Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why are some of the most famous books in history called what they are? And what if they had kept their original titles? In this episode of The Bibliofilles, Sophie and Chaya dive into the fascinating world of book titles, literary titles and the stories behind them including famous novels that were almost given completely different names. From The Secret History originally being considered as The God of Illusions, to Pride and Prejudice almost becoming First Impressions, 1984 being considered as The Last Man in Europe, and To Kill a Mockingbird nearly being called Atticus, we explore how much a title can change the way we see a book. They also look at the phenomenon of the "title drop",  those brilliant moments when you suddenly realise why a book has been given its name and how titles can become bigger than the books themselves. Plus, we're joined by bestselling author Meg Mason, author of Sorrow and Bliss and Sophie, Staring There, to talk about how she creates her book titles, why Sophie, Staring There was originally called Lilac, and how much a title can shape the writing process. 📚 Books Mentioned The Secret History by Donna Tartt 👉 https://link.amazon/B047aiP9D Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 👉 https://link.amazon/B09p14rnN Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell 👉 https://link.amazon/B0iGu7djN To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 👉 https://link.amazon/B0eifZY86 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 👉 https://link.amazon/B00UOOQrx War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 👉 https://link.amazon/B0g0z2BY5 The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett 👉 https://link.amazon/B0cFQ407B Dracula by Bram Stoker 👉 https://link.amazon/B00bOgUH9 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll 👉 https://link.amazon/B03bkVwbD Catch-22 by Joseph Heller 👉 https://link.amazon/B06WOa116 Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson 👉 https://link.amazon/B0jgs2dCs Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck 👉 https://link.amazon/B07Py3TA1 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell 👉 https://link.amazon/B00ha1Vmk Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J. K. Rowling 👉 https://link.amazon/B0jaN8TpF Northern Lights by Philip Pullman 👉 https://link.amazon/B090VVmIb Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick 👉 https://link.amazon/B0iRJO5dn Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason 👉 https://link.amazon/B09A20K1h Sophie, Standing There by Meg Mason 👉 https://link.amazon/B0dJ9P7fW What’s a book title that you think is absolutely perfect? And what book do you think should have had a completely different name? 👍 Like, subscribe, and turn on notifications for more bookish conversations, literary debates, book recommendations and deep dives with Chaya & Sophie. If you love books, reading, literature, classic novels, contemporary fiction, book recommendations and literary trivia, make sure you're subscribed to The Bibliofilles. #TheBibliofilles #BookPodcast #BookTok #BookTube #BookClub #Books #Reading #Literature #BookRecommendations #BookLovers #Bookish #LiteraryPodcast #ClassicBooks #ContemporaryFiction #MegMason Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of The Bibliofilles, Sophie and Chaya are back from their summer holidays with their September Book Club picks — The Year of the Rat by Harry Shukman and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde — before diving into a much bigger question: who actually decides what we read? Inspired by new developments in Texas, where a mandatory school reading list includes more than 200 texts alongside Bible passages, Sophie and Chaya explore the politics of education, literary syllabuses and the power that comes with deciding which books students are exposed to. They look back at their own experiences of studying English, from The Great Gatsby, Frankenstein and War Poetry to The Go-Between, and ask whether students should have more choice over the books they study. The conversation then takes a deeper turn into university funding, foreign donations and the influence money can have on education, research and academic institutions. How much influence should donors have? Where does university funding come from? And can we really separate money, politics and what gets taught? Plus, Sophie and Chaya reveal the books they think should be on everyone's syllabus, including Toni Morrison, The Secret History, Giovanni's Room, Never Let Me Go, 1984 and more. Is there really such a thing as a neutral syllabus? And who gets to decide what the next generation reads? 📚 Books Mentioned The Year of the Rat by Harry Shukman 👉 https://link.amazon/B04jA3HWV The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde 👉 https://link.amazon/B0bUQ9I4G To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 👉 https://link.amazon/B0gNt1tL0 The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas 👉 https://link.amazon/B0awcdlLf Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington 👉 https://link.amazon/B0bGQuaRH The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare 👉 https://link.amazon/B0cEz42Jj Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 👉 https://link.amazon/B01PWmQRu Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White 👉 https://link.amazon/B0hPvrxRS Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck 👉 https://link.amazon/B0dxjifSF The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope 👉 https://link.amazon/B0iNQ493Z Sula by Toni Morrison 👉 https://link.amazon/B025v28K1 Beloved by Toni Morrison 👉 https://link.amazon/B04pm2BVP The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 👉 https://link.amazon/B064Bls4P The Secret History by Donna Tartt 👉 https://link.amazon/B0iBtIh8V Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin 👉 https://link.amazon/B06CMKsOs Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 👉 https://link.amazon/B05B8w9ik Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell 👉 https://link.amazon/B04hFuY1N Frankenstein by Mary Shelley 👉 https://link.amazon/B0c6tqJ31 Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel 👉 https://link.amazon/B0bVI15Aa Mythos by Stephen Fry 👉 https://link.amazon/B0cfHtSmF I, Claudius by Robert Graves 👉 https://link.amazon/B01YLuLg1 Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall 👉 https://link.amazon/B01ofGRPf One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez 👉 https://link.amazon/B0bQKuN04 The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien 👉 https://link.amazon/B01V4NdmR Translations by Brian Friel 👉 https://link.amazon/B013y1XWF The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank 👉 https://link.amazon/B0gxXgiSi Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell 👉 https://link.amazon/B05EuH7Yh 📚 September Book Club Picks: The Year of the Rat — Harry Shukman The Picture of Dorian Gray — Oscar Wilde 👍 Like, subscribe, and turn on notifications for more bookish conversations with Chaya & Sophie. #TheBibliofilles #BookPodcast #BookTok #BookClub #ReadingList #Literature #Books #Education #BookRecommendations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We sat down with Professor Luke Kennard to talk about Black Bag, our July Book Club pick, and honestly we're still thinking about it. 🖤📚 Luke is a poet, novelist and critic. His collection Cane was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize, Notes on the Sonnets won the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2021, and his debut novel The Transition was a BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime pick. He's now a professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Birmingham, and somehow also finds time to review for the London Review of Books, the Telegraph, the Poetry Review and the TLS. Black Bag follows an out of work actor who gets paid to sit inside a black leather bag as part of a psychology experiment, based on a real 1967 study into the "mere exposure effect", the idea that we come to like almost anything just by being repeatedly exposed to it. Luke told us where the idea actually came from, how a footnote in a completely unrelated academic paper turned into an obsession, and why he was determined to make the costume weirder than the original. We talked about writing male vulnerability without writing a manosphere book, why the majority experience of a creative life is frustration rather than success, and what it's like judging his students' work while sending his own out to be judged in exactly the same way. In this episode we chat about: 📖 The real experiment behind Black Bag, and the mere exposure effect 🎭 Writing a passive protagonist who denies his own agency 🧠 Masculinity, emotional dysregulation, and writing men without being didactic about it ✍️ Why failure, not success, is the real story of a creative life 🎓 Teaching creative writing at Birmingham while his own work gets rejected too 🌀 Anne Carson's influence on the shape and rhythm of the book Head over to Substack for the extended cut, we've got a bonus quick fire round with Luke that didn't make the main episode. 👍 Like, subscribe, and turn on notifications for more bookish conversations with Chaya & Sophie. #LukeKennard #BlackBag #BookTok #BookClub #AuthorInterview #ContemporaryFiction #BritishFiction Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What makes a great book adaptation and what happens when Hollywood gets it completely wrong? 📚🎬 In this episode of The Bibliofilles, Sophie and Chaya dive into the biggest book-to-film and book-to-TV adaptations, from the adaptations they absolutely loved to the ones that completely missed the point. Plus, they get into the hugely anticipated The Odyssey adaptation, discussing Christopher Nolan’s take on Homer’s epic, what was changed from the original poem, the missing intimacy and sexuality, the depiction of PTSD, Circe, the Cyclops and whether the film captures the heart of the original story. They also look ahead to upcoming adaptations including Klara and the Sun, Pride and Prejudice, East of Eden, The Love Hypothesis, In Memoriam and Buckeye and reveal the books they desperately want to see brought to the screen. In this episode: 📚 The best book-to-film adaptations 🎬 The adaptations that completely missed the mark ⚡ Books vs films: which is actually better? 🧙 Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings & Game of Thrones 💔 Never Let Me Go & We Need to Talk About Kevin 💕 Bridgerton, It Ends With Us & the rise of romance adaptations 🏛️ Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey adaptation 🔮 The books we want to see adapted next Which book adaptation do you think got it right — and which one completely ruined the book? 👇 All books mentioned are linked below 👇 Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien 👉 https://link.amazon/B0dKivsBE Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 👉 https://link.amazon/B0a2ffdKR The Godfather by Mario Puzo 👉 https://link.amazon/B0gWMEWLH Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling 👉 https://link.amazon/B08yksPbN The Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King 👉 https://link.amazon/B0faJ8h5R We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver 👉 https://link.amazon/B03WT5H1R Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke 👉 https://link.amazon/B07q2N2wT It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover 👉 https://link.amazon/B00VDC34Z Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir 👉 https://link.amazon/B0f8RsOa9 Dune by Frank Herbert 👉 https://link.amazon/B0dKfgPPs Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 👉 https://link.amazon/B08C2JTr7 Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë 👉 https://link.amazon/B0dTefgkV Game of Thrones Series 👉 https://link.amazon/B05ipHoug Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer 👉 https://link.amazon/B005j12Si The Testaments by Margaret Atwood 👉 https://link.amazon/B0gLGYGBP Atonement by Ian McEwan 👉 https://link.amazon/B0cuSbjog The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins 👉 https://link.amazon/B0daEqVNI Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman 👉 https://link.amazon/B01eBEnaS Bridgerton Series by Julia Quinn 👉 https://link.amazon/B05AGH2og The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood 👉 https://link.amazon/B03zFAERq The Deal by Elle Kennedy 👉 https://link.amazon/B0dmC1VYR Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin 👉 https://link.amazon/B02XZ1df0 Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro 👉 https://link.amazon/B0a2ttTfO East of Eden by John Steinbeck 👉 https://link.amazon/B0gvYmbCL The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood 👉 https://link.amazon/B0dSpRau9 The Housemaid by Freida McFadden 👉 https://link.amazon/B0aptJMwk In Memoriam by Alice Winn 👉 https://link.amazon/B089c8smW Buckeye by Patrick Ryan 👉 https://link.amazon/B0bRaZPRy Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates 👉 https://link.amazon/B06N0L3gU The Odyssey (Emily Wilson translation) 👉 https://link.amazon/A0aVpgM5g #TheBibliofilles #BookTok #BookRecommendations #BookAdaptations #BookToFilm #BookToScreen #BookLovers #ReadingCommunity #BookPodcast #BooksAndMovies Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices