Books We Wish We had Written

Marlon and Jake Read Dead People

Literary speculation abounds as Marlon and Jake reveal which books they wish they had written and which they think would have been better if they’d been written by someone completely different. Listen in as they explore the questions you never knew you needed answers to. Would The Confessions of Nat Turner have been better if Zora Neale Hurston had written it? Who could have written a funnier Ulysses? Were members of the Bloomsbury Group actually total bores? And perhaps most important: Does Marlon’s mom still have his Tom Jones fan-fiction and if so, how much is Jake willing to pay for it? Tune in for all this and more, including a lively discussion about plays that are as enjoyable to read as they are to see on stage. (And spoiler: Jake is not a fan of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.)

Select title discussed:

• Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
• Dubliners by James Joyce
• Tai-Pan by James Clavell
• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
• Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas
• The Quiet American by Graham Greene
• A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul
• Airships by Barry Hannah
• Joseph Andrews by Henry fielding
• Pamela by Samuel Richardson
• The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray
• Shōgun by James Clavell
• Trent's Last Case by E. C. Bentley
• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• The Obscene Bird of Night by José Donoso
• The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
• Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston
• Terrorist by John Updike
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
• Ulysses by James Joyce
• Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
• Orlando by Virginia Woolf
• Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
• The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West
• The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
• Highland Fling by Nancy Mitford
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
• The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
• The Two Gentleman of Verona by William Shakespeare
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
• As You Like It by William Shakespeare
• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
• An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
• His Girl Friday by Charles Lederer (screenplay), adapted from The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (play)
• Sleuth by Anthony Shaffer
• Amadeus by Peter Shaffer
• Endgame by Samuel Beckett