#130: Do Books Need Romance? and The Ladies’ Paradise vs Babbacombe’s

Tea or Books?

Emile Zola, Noel Streatfeild, and romantic books – welcome to Tea or Books? episode 130!

https://www.stuckinabook.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/tea-or-books-130.mp3

In the first half of this episode, we do a topic suggested by Lindsey – do books need a romantic storyline? In the second half, we compare two novels set in department stores – The Ladies’ Paradise by Emile Zola (both of us read the translation by Brian Nelson) and Babbcombe’s by Susan Scarlett aka Noel Streatfeild.

You can get in touch with suggestions, comments, questions etc (please do!) at teaorbooks[at]gmail.com – we’d love to hear from you. Find us at Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. And you can support the podcast at Patreon. If you’re able to, we’d really appreciate any reviews and ratings you can leave us.

Please come and see us talking about the British Library Women Writers series at the Marlborough Literary Festival on 29 September! And you can find out more about End Sexism in Schools at their website.

The books and authors we mention in this episode are:

The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre
Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre
Timebends by Arthur Miller
Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
Unless by Carol Shields
Larry’s Party by Carol Shields
Rereadings ed. by Anne Fadiman
Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman
High Wages by Dorothy Whipple
Babbett by Stella Gibbons
Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
The Love-Child by Edith Olivier
The Provincial Lady Goes Further by E.M. Delafield
The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen
The World My Wilderness by Rose Macaulay
Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski
To Bed With Grand Music by Marghanita Laski
Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf
The Waves by Virginia Woolf
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Emma by Jane Austen
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Anthony Trollope
Zadie Smith
Ian McEwan
Chimananda Ngozi Adichie
Sally Rooney
Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Journey’s End by R.C. Sherriff
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
An Inspector Calls by J.B. Priestley
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
Translations by Brian Friel
The Tempest by William Shakespeare
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Strangers by Taichi Yamada
One Year’s Time by Angela Milne
Which Way? by Theodora Benson