J.M. Coetzee’s 1980 novel still has insight and meaning for us today as it grapples with how colonial power trickles down and through the individuals who administer it. Jay talks about how he selected this from Coetzee’s catalog of titles, and Stacey swoons over its selection, as she is a Coetzee completist. Chaos Reader starts a new book of poems.

This week, Jay shares in-depth why the disturbing dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a lovable book, even as it envisions a future for the United States that is peak patriarchy. Chaos Reader reports on her presidential-biography reading project.

Jay’s List of the 100 Most Lovable Novels in English finally gets to one of his favorite writers when he discusses P.G. Wodehouse’s The Code of the Woosters, from which our culture gets the well-known Jeeves figure. Chaos reader goes again to the cookbook shelf for a volume by someone Americans love to hate.

This week’s 100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language entry is Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, which Stacey knew was about a war, but not which war. Jay shares why it made his list and how it's as meaningful today as it was in 1895 when it was published. Chaos reader talks more about Richard Nixon by John A. Farrell.

This week’s entry on the 100 Most Lovable Books in the English Language List is Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead… This beloved instant classic is popular for a reason. While it updates the eternally relevant Dickensian themes of David Copperfield, it also brings us something totally new and completely American. Chaos reader has also started a biography of a very American figure.

Jane Austen set out to write a novel with an anti-hero: “A heroine whom no one but myself will much like,” she wrote about her goals for the book, so why is Emma so lovable? Of course, we couldn’t discuss this enjoyable book without spending time on the equally lovable film adaptations. Chaos reader shouts out a podcast, because, well… chaos.

This week, Jay goes rogue and chooses a whole trilogy of books as the next entry on his list of the 100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series. He and Stacey discuss the theology behind what Pullman never meant to be young-adult literature, even if the main characters are young people. The page-turning fantasy novels are a very engaging delivery device for a iconoclastic consideration of religious belief. Chaos reader checks in with a new-to-her book of poetry.

Something in the King Arthur canon was bound to make it onto Jay’s list of the 100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language, and this week Jay and Stacey discuss the linked novellas that comprise this modern classic, the historical influences on White and the new takes that make this novel officially Lovable. Chaos Reader finally gets reading again with one of the New York Times best fiction books of 2024.