Unfortunately Required Reading

This month Amanda and Victoria discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, and the historical events that inspired it.

By some miracle, we made it to 100 episodes. This week we discuss Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and wonder why we give this book to children.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss HG Wells as The War of the Worlds.

This is the reuploaded version of our episode on Doctor Zhivago. Some listeners advised the end had been cut off by our editing software. Thank you! 

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss the drag that is Doctor Zhivago and why it was so scary to the USSR.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas.

Amanda and Victoria FINALLY get to record together in person for the first time in....almost three years?  Welcome back with The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. We discuss ableism, rest cures, and the garden metaphor. 

This week Amanda and Victoria read a book that managed to break Victoria, Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

Amanda and Victoria discuss The Witch of Blackbird Pond and why Kit definitely would have been found guilty of witchcraft in Connecticut.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss the uncomfortable dating history of Hans Christan Andersen...wait, we mean The Little Mermaid. 

This week Amanda and Victoria read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick, the book that was adapted loosely into Blade Runner.

Amanda, Victoria, and special guest Baron Von Cheeseplate discuss William Gibson's Neuromancer.

This week Amanda and Victoria cover spooky season with Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe for Spooky Season.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss Sophocles' work Oedipus Rex (aka Oedipus the King) and make surprisingly few jokes about incest.

This week Amanda and Victoria read Love in the Time of Cholera.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss the most beloved Latin American novel of all time, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss Sartre's one-act play No Exit.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss Tennesse Williams' one act play, The Lady of Larkspur Lotion. 

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss Jeanette Winterson's Oranges are Not the Only Fruit.

This week we discuss the Iliad for Pride month. 

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and despair.

This week Amanda and Victoria unpack Of Mice and Men, the exploitation of the American worker, and the utter exhaustion of existence.

This week Amanda is drug kicking and screaming into a book they didn't have to read in school and Victoria has flashbacks to dating people who need therapy.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss the heartbreaking book Dicey's Song by Cynthia Voight.

his week, Amanda and Victoria discuss the memoir Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss Art Spiegelman's Maus and the Holocaust. 

This week Amanda and Victoria are exhausted and discuss James Baldwin's If Beale Street Could Talk.

This week Amanda and Victoria decide to discuss Cruel Intentions instead of Dangerous Liaisons.

This week Amanda and Tori unpack Neil Gaiman's Coraline, and a lot of childhood trauma in the process. Oh god, those button eyes.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss Alexander Puskin's Eugene Onegin and celebrate a delayed birthday month. 

This week Amanda and Victoria tackle the Odyssey and the audacity.

You've waited. You've watched. BARON VON CHEESEPLATE RIDES AGAIN! This week Amanda, Victoria, and the Baron (aka  Jason) return to discuss Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss Carmilla by J. Sheridan le Fanu.

This week Amanda and Victoria continue pain month with John Knowles' novel A Separate Peace. It is not peaceful. 

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss the Peter Schaffer play Equus and question our life choices. 

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss World War 1 and The Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front.

As mentioned in our content warning this week: https://www.veteranscrisisline.net/get-help/hotline

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart. 

This week Amanda and Victoria go through the slog that is the Victor Hugo novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame. 

Amanda and Victoria discuss the Joseph Kesselring play 'Arsenic and Old Lace' as well as women who kill, and black comedies. 

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness for Pride Month, and immediately regret it.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss Orlando by Virginia Woolf. 

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton and PTSD> 

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street. 

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss Don Quixote de La Mancha. 

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss the Crucible by Arthur Miller, and Victoria goes way down the rabbit hole of Communism and the HUAC. 

This week Amanda and Victoria dive into Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare and celebrate about 1 year of the pandemic. Yeah, celebrate, okay...

This week we look at three poems by the late great Maya Angelou and rant. So, like the usual?

This week Amanda and Victoria start off Black History month with Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. 

Amanda and Victoria discuss Alexander Dumas' The Three Musketeers, and reference a lot of D'Jango Unchained. 

Today Victoria makes a huge mistake for her birthday month selection and she and Amanda discuss Faust. Note, we should not record late at night after a work day. 

This week Amanda and Victoria celebrate Victoria's Birthday month with Phantom of the Opera. 

This week Amanda, Victoria, and special guest Jason (aka Baron Von Cheeseplate) discuss the book A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle.

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss the dystopian (but extremely believable) novel by Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower. 

We celebrate Halloween with too much sweet red wine and Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire. 

This week Amanda and Victoria tackle the word of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, discuss some true crime inspirations, and tell you all about Robert Louis Stevenson. 

This week Amanda and Victoria delve into the trauma that is Daniel Keyes' short story Flowers for Algernon.

This week we return (woo hoo) to finally discuss the Giver by Lois Lowry. 

This week Amanda and Victoria discuss Henrik Ibsen's most performed play, A Doll's House. 

For Amanda's Birthday Month we start with the classic Sherlock Holmes story The Hound of the Baskervilles. Oh...and we drink port

This week Amanda and Tori review the musical phenomena Rent, by watching the Christopher Columbus film and exploring the horrors of the AIDS Crisis. 

This week we drink bourbon and ginger ale as we discuss the incredible author James Baldwin, Black Lives, and the LGBTQIA+ Community. 

This week, we discuss Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy in both its book and movie form.   As always, this is not a child-friendly podcast. 

Today we delve into the world of Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad books, along with Queer Theory. 

This week we discuss J.R.R. Tolkien (Toll Keen) and the Hobbit while discussing quarantine decisions and the hero's journey. 

Quarantine recording is still going strong as Amanda and Victoria drink in the privacy of their separate homes and discuss a fan favorite. 

Amanda and Tori record remotely to show their support of Stay at Home protocol, drink what they want, and discuss Albert Camus' The Stranger. 

Today we discuss William Golding's Lord of the Flies, the nature of fear, misinformation, and Navy Grog. 

This week we sip Darjeeling Milk punch while discussing Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. 

This week, Amanda and Tori tackle the epic plat Hamlet by William Shakespeare. We drink a sweet poison, eat havardi, and the fight me bread comes back as we delve into the text. 

This week we discuss the Jane Austen work Pride and Prejudice, while drinking a cocktail named in her honor and chowing down on scones while discussing class structure. 

This week we discuss the Emily Bronte novel Wuthering Heights and do our best not to go off the rails with discussing Heathcliff and sipping Lavender French 75's.

We answer listener questions, share our biggest "ooops" moments and discuss our love for literature.  Happy 2020, all. 

This week's episode is on the Ambrose Bierce short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." We drink a Brandy based cocktail and discuss why Bierce was known as "Bitter Bierce." 

We finish out Pain Month with The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

This week we discuss Mary Shelley's genre changing work Frankenstein, while drinking a cocktail of the same name and discussing that weird party in Geneva. Bonus, there will be a video floating around of us doing this in Halloween costumes. 

This week's episode focuses on Bram Stoker's Dracula.  We drink sangria, eat Russian Hematoga bars, and much on Irish cheddar while discussing vampires, sexuality, and Abraham Stoker. 

This week we discuss Harper Lee's to Kill a Mockingbird, the controversy over Go Set a Watchman,  drink whiskey, and discuss racism.

This week's episode focuses on Dante's Inferno. Join us as we discuss Italian politics, the Catholic Church, and drink a Chianti from a bottle wrapped in raffia.  

This week we discuss John Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost. We drink a fire and iced tea, eat smokey cheese, and contemplate the sexy version of Satan that is very strange.  Oh, and we complain about how long this poem is. 

On this episode we discuss the poetry of Charles Baudelaire and partake of a Corpse Reviver: part 2,. 

For show notes and more details, visit UnfortunatelyRequiredReading.com 

As it's Amanda's birthday month, we are delighting in drinking Corpse Revivers while discussing Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart,  cousin love way too young, and thirst letters before Twitter was a thing. 

This week's short story rounds out Pride month with Amanda covering the two bad boys of French Poetry, Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine. 

 This week's episode is dedicated to melancholy and ouzo as we discuss the works of the poet Sappho. Often maligned, never duplicated, Sappho is a little hard to pin down as quite a bit of her history has been lost or glossed over with satire.  

A quick look to celebrate Margaret Wise Brown. 

 This episode does a dive into The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and features sipping champagne with ice cubes in it, witty banter, the Menger hotel, and odd facts about a fantastic icon.  

Do you know the difference between pansexual and bisexual? Are you confused about what the heck Stonewall was? We provide you with a brief primer on terms on the LGBTQIA+ community. 

This episode is focused on Toni Morrison's Sula. For this week, we drink a mocktail, discuss the difference between blackberries and nightshades, and finish out Toni Morrison month. 

In which we discuss Toni Morrison's Beloved, drink the most painful red wine possible in honor of the color red, and eat cheese to try to deal with our lives. 

Sooooo Anchor didn't upload our full audio. Here's the full episode with no ads, because you deserve it and we're sorry for technical difficulties. 

A brief argument about the Oxford Comma. 

I'm sorry, so sorry. 

You listened. We tortured Victoria.

Listen to Victoria read a few passages from 50 Shades of Grey while Amanda cackles in delight. 

This is not a full episode, but a brief segment we like to refer to as one of our Short Stories. 

In which we discuss Grendel by John Gardner, relive the depressing goth days of our high school youth and decide we like mead without added pepper, thank you very much.

Today's episode is about the epic poem Beowulf, how much we love Mead, how terrible the 2007 movie version of this epic poem is, and Beowulf's mom, Sheila. 

In which we discuss Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys, and the dangers of drinking only the rum layer of a Dark and Stormy. 

In which we discuss Jane Eyre, sip port, and discuss the horror of a wife in the attic. 

In which we struggle to survive George Orwell's 1984 with a single shot of Victory Gin, quietly consume a cheese plate off mic, and tell you about The Spanish Civil War and British Colonialism. 

Episode 4 discusses Tennessee William's play The Glass Menagerie, while we sip Ramos Gin Fizzes and contemplate Southern parenting.