Once Upon A Podcast: Time Traveller’s Wife, Anne Hathaway and Taylor Jenkins Reid

STACK with Jake and Ella

Ella and Jake open with a spirited debate over Mary Beard's recent criticism of the phrase

Key takeaways

Mary Beard argues that calling reading something you
undermines its essential role in shaping human thought and existence, preferring it framed as a fundamental necessity rather than a hobby like golf.
Jake and Ella counter that childhood enjoyment of books often naturally evolves into adult intellectual pursuit, warning against gatekeeping reading for pleasure.
Audrey Niffenegger's sequel to The Time Traveller's Wife is titled Life Out of Order; Ella plans to read it carefully after her baby arrives while Jake has already finished the hot proof.
Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver reimagines Rumpelstiltskin through three intersecting female protagonists in a richly atmospheric fantasy that avoids traditional romance tropes.
Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber is highlighted as a macabre, gothic feminist retelling of tales like Bluebeard and Little Red Riding Hood, with the band Wolf Alice named after one of its stories.

Main topics

Mary Beard's reading philosophy controversy
Fairy tale retellings and modern fables
The Time Traveller's Wife sequel preview

Notable quotes

"I cannot bear the phrase, I really love reading."

Conclusion

Listeners gain a nuanced perspective on why reading for pleasure matters alongside

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) you Speaker 2 (0:05) Hello and welcome to Stack, the books podcast that's here to help you fall in love and stay in love with reading. I'm Ella, I work in book publishing. Speaker 1 (0:11) And I'm Jake, I'm a writer and I work in podcasts. In every episode, we will be building a themed stack of books that we love and that we know you will too. Speaker 2 (0:18) This week's theme, which is a really nice one, is fairy tales. So classic fairy tales, twists on, retelling, modern fairy tales, we've got the lot. But first, Jake, what have you been up to this week? Speaker 1 (0:28) Okay, well, I want to talk about something. Speaker 2 (0:29) Please. I want to talk, Speaker 1 (0:30) which is the point. Yeah. Speaker 2 (0:32) I Speaker 1 (0:32) want to talk about the Booker Prize. Speaker 2 (0:34) Yes, which may I say, we picked two of our favourites are on the short, two of the ones that we've read are on the shortlist. Speaker 1 (0:40) Two books we really enjoyed are on the shortlist and we talked about them on the Speaker 2 (0:43) episode Speaker 1 (0:43) two times ago. And having from last year when you said that things on the Booker Prize list are reason for you. Not to read them. Yeah, Speaker 2 (0:52) which I take back wholeheartedly. Well, we really Speaker 1 (0:54) had to come round to the whole concept. I thought that they've also been like really doing really cool stuff on social. They've really been like in some fun parts of the bookish parts of the internet. I Speaker 2 (1:03) think Speaker 1 (1:03) the long Speaker 2 (1:03) list all felt like literary but accessible. But. Speaker 1 (1:07) But. Have you heard what Mary Beard has said? Speaker 2 (1:09) No, what has Mary Beard said? I do not want us to Speaker 1 (1:11) start a beef, but I am going to. Speaker 2 (1:13) Okay, okay. Mary Speaker 1 (1:14) Beard has said, and this is like on a social clip that they have shared that has like, they've obviously chosen to share that. She said. I cannot bear the phrase, I really love reading. And I cannot bear when I hear on Radio 4 in the morning, what book first sparked your love of reading? I think that is to undermine and underrate reading. That's why I don't like the phrase. I get all kinds of pleasure from reading. I have a passion in some sense for reading. But reading is more essential to humanity now than just saying, oh, I really love it, you know, like I might love golf or something like that. Reading is about how to be you and how to think about the world. If we relegate it to the wellbeing section of our lives, we are underestimating it. I challenge anybody to say they feel better after they have read Kafka. I don't believe they have, right? That doesn't mean they shouldn't be reading Kafka, does it? And some of these books are not, I think, going to feel better. They're going to make you see the world differently. And that's not about love. Speaker 2 (2:05) Oh, gosh. Speaker 1 (2:07) Are you reading Kafka? Speaker 2 (2:09) First of all, no. No, me neither. And I won't. She's saying it in quite a blunt way because it's quotable. Well, fundamentally, I do think saying you love reading is a really good and positive thing. I think you can also get a lot more out of it. I feel like it's kind of, she's minimising what love is. Like, if you love something, it's kind of trivial. Speaker 1 (2:30) Yeah. Just Speaker 2 (2:30) for escapism. But you can, something can change you and therefore you can love it. And you can love reading and have read a book that, like, you don't feel like happy and light at the end of it. Speaker 1 (2:41) And I also think when you're a child, you're not reading and being like, this is a fundamental part of my life. You're reading because you... I Speaker 2 (2:47) wasn't reading Speaker 1 (2:47) Kafka. I wasn't reading Kafka. You're reading because you like, because you love it. And what a great thing for that to then lead to reading being a fundamental part of your life in any way. Speaker 2 (2:56) It's such a shame because I feel like the heart of it is reading opens... doors into other worlds. It gives you new experiences. It's essential. I do agree with all of that. So it's not like I think everything that she said is wrong, but I think it is a real shame when fewer people are reading for pleasure than, I don't know if ever, but there's been a decline in people reading for pleasure. That's such a shame to then kind of say like you should be reading for more worthy causes than just the pure enjoyment of it and the antithesis of the podcast. Speaker 1 (3:28) And I do think how privileged to be like a scholar. classicist yeah Speaker 2 (3:32) where Speaker 1 (3:33) reading is a fundamental part of your life because you are free to do that yeah Speaker 2 (3:36) to Speaker 1 (3:37) a greater extent of like having more time yeah Speaker 2 (3:40) and Speaker 1 (3:40) then be telling people that they can't like love doing it they have to be doing it in the way that you think is the reason and Speaker 2 (3:46) all that that does if you kind of close off reading to people and say reading for pleasure is kind of not worth it is stops people from then experiencing those new ideas and essential qualities that she deems you get from reading which Speaker 1 (4:00) is what i had loved about the book of prize thinking about like they had got into a space where like you might be reading like quite genre-led fiction but that might then lead you into something on the booker list that's like an amalgamation of the two also in the clip it's a group of like six people all sat around on the stage no one like challenges it everyone kind of chuckles along like oh she's being a bit bit cheeky it's like you're actually being really exclusionary so like stop Speaker 2 (4:26) yeah probably the Booker Prize and Stack Podcast are about even in our kind of notoriety and our reach. No, Speaker 1 (4:33) exactly. So we'll probably, Speaker 2 (4:34) we'll call it even now. And Speaker 1 (4:36) it obviously makes sense for us to go after them. And I'm sure, I mean, look, we've probably passed up the idea of working with them. But Mary Beard, just think before you speak. Speaker 2 (4:43) Yeah. And you hear it from us, read for pleasure. Read because you love it. I love reading. There, I said it. Speaker 2 (4:50) So aside from starting beef with Mary Beard, what have you been doing? Have you been reading? Speaker 1 (4:54) Well, we have both been so lucky because we have been sent the... Hot proof. Hot off the press. We have both been lucky enough to be sent the sequel to The Time Traveller's Wife that's out very soon, which is so exciting. You, I feel like, had read that book and were much more a fan of it. Speaker 2 (5:10) Yeah, I would say, so I haven't managed to get to Life Out of Order yet, the sequel. I feel like it's one, you know when you're like saving it for a time when you can really sink into it, which I do feel like with a baby is less often than I would like. And I really want to be able to just like indulge and just really spend the time reading it. So I'm going to get to that soon. Have you finished? Speaker 1 (5:27) I have finished it now. Speaker 2 (5:28) But I loved The Time Traveller's Wife. I probably came to it when I was about 17. It was the first time I read a book that wasn't YA, but was a love story and had time travel. in it yeah i didn't know i didn't know grown-up books could do that i Speaker 1 (5:42) didn't know grown-ups are reading about that yeah i Speaker 2 (5:43) didn't know i thought they were reading all about like boring things yeah Speaker 1 (5:46) and Speaker 2 (5:46) then i read this and it it's not it's not a fantasy novel but it's the first time i realized that we can do time travel and we can do romance in the same book and it can be for grown-ups so it has a very special place in my heart um but i also really liked the film had you seen i don't think you hadn't read it had you in my Speaker 1 (6:03) head i have read it but maybe it's so in the culture that I felt like I'd read it so I read it before the sequel in order to make sure I Speaker 2 (6:10) had Speaker 1 (6:10) read it and it's Speaker 2 (6:13) out Speaker 1 (6:13) still not sure if I ever had but really enjoyed it some of it's quite odd it Speaker 2 (6:18) is quite odd it's quite a Speaker 1 (6:19) weird book I Speaker 2 (6:20) think especially because it's a love story told out of sequence because Henry has a condition where he kind of unwillingly travels back to moments in his own life yeah so Claire He meets her at all different moments of her life, but it's not kind of chronological. And so it might be the first time she's met him, but he's met her loads of times or vice versa. And yeah, it is quite easy to follow all of that, I think. But then towards the end, it does sort of get quite weird. And Speaker 1 (6:50) it's quite, I was going to say spiky. Like it's not a smooth, lovely story at all. No, Speaker 2 (6:56) and I really never thought there'd be a sequel. It's not something that I'd been waiting for. But then when... they announced there would be a sequel and that Alba, their daughter, would be the main character in that. I was like, well, of course I want to know what happens to Alba. Speaker 1 (7:08) Yeah, and it feels like a big publishing event, which is very exciting. Everyone's excited. So I finished it. I obviously won't spoil it for you nor the listener, but it's good, but it's once again very different. It just very much like obviously is rooted in that story, but then ventures far enough away from it that you're not reading a rehash. So Speaker 2 (7:23) they felt like a pair together, the two books, even though the... spirit of them might feel quite different. Speaker 1 (7:29) It's almost like the genre's different, but the essence is the same. It's almost like dystopian. Speaker 2 (7:34) Interesting. We're doing an episode on dystopia soon. We are, Speaker 1 (7:36) coming up. Speaker 2 (7:37) Maybe I'll do it for that. Speaker 1 (7:38) Maybe, if you're interested in time. So before we get into this week's