Sylvia Plath, Janet Malcolm and our thoughts on writing style – welcome to episode 144!

In the first half of this episode, we discuss whether we prefer writing style to be ornate or simple. In the second half, we compare Sylvia Plath’s most famous poetry collection Ariel with Janet Malcolm’s book about Plath biography, The Silent Woman.

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You can support the podcast at Patreon – where you’ll also get access to the exclusive new series ‘5 Books’, where I ask different people about the last book they finished, the book they’re currently reading, the next book they want to read, the last book they bought and the last book they were given.

The books and authors we mention in this episode are:

Mrs Miniver by Jan Struther

All The Little Live Things by Wallace Stegner

Lucy Carmichael by Margaret Kennedy

Tortoise By Candelight by Nina Bawden

The Cost of Living by Kathleen Farrell

Bookish by Lucy Mangan

Bookworm by Lucy Mangan

The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford

Henry James

Wilkie Collins

George Orwell

Yellow by Janni Visman

The Trouble With Sunbathers by Magnus Mills

The Children’s Bach by Helen Garner

Island In Moonlight by Kathleen Sully

The Bloater by Rosemary Tonks

Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion

Barbara Comyns

Beryl Bainbridge

The Forensic Records Society by Magnus Mills

Elizabeth Strout

Anne Tyler

Carol Shields

Margaret Atwood

Virginia Woolf

James Joyce

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a Novel by Mark Hussey

Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Bitter Fame by Anne Stevenson

Ted Hughes: the Unauthorised Life by Jonathan Bates

The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm

Two Lives by Janet Malcolm

Fenny by Lettice Cooper

Rhine Journey by Ann Schlee