The Booking Club

Books are dying. Across the world the number of people reading is in free fall. Literacy is declining or stagnating in most developed countries. At universities, students are unable to read the books assigned to them by their teachers. Addictive digital entertainment technologies have colonised our free time with infantilising ‘slop’. The golden chain of knowledge linking reader to reader through the centuries is breaking for the first time since the collapse of the Western Roman Empire ushered in the Dark Ages.The New Dark Ages is an impassioned attack on the trivial and meaningless culture of the screen and a defence of the written word. Drawing on history and classic works of literature and theory, The New Dark Ages argues that reading and writing are essential for innovation, creativity and critical thinking.Above all, the culture of print is essential to the functioning of modern democracies which require their citizens to grapple with ideas at length and in depth. And as print dies, we risk returning to the chaos, tribalism, and rage of a pre-literate society. (Penguin)James met Jack at Larry's beneath London's National Portrait Gallery.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:YouTube: @bookingclubpodTwitter/X: @bookingclubpodBlue Sky: @bookingclubpod.bsky.socialInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Do Not Go Gentle, acclaimed writer and philosopher Kathleen Stock tackles one of the great debates of our time: should we set up a system of assisted death? With her trademark sharp thinking and dry wit, the bestselling author of Material Girls argues that despite what some progressives might tell you, assisted death will not give a person more "freedom" or "control" over their lives. Whether you have a terminal illness, are in chronic pain, or are disabled, being able to ask your doctor to kill you fundamentally changes society's attitude towards the vulnerable - and in a sinister direction.Life is complex. For some individuals, an assisted death might be the right choice. But we should be deeply wary of introducing a system that offers death as just another option, especially when palliative care is so under-resourced. Expertly marshalling the arguments, Stock's laser polemic cuts through the wishful thinking and clouded reasoning that surrounds the issue and reaffirms life, rather than death, as what we should be fighting for. Collectively, we should rage against the dying of the light.Kathleen met Jack at Chez Antoinette in Victoria, LondonFollow and subscribe to The Booking Club:YouTube: @bookingclubpodTwitter/X: @bookingclubpodBlue Sky: @bookingclubpod.bsky.socialInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode was the novelist and essayist Will Self’s first live interview celebrating the publication of his new novel, The Quantity Theory of Morality. We hosted Will alongside our events collaborators for the evening, Special Rider Books and Records at Shepherd's Bush Market, on 23rd April. Will did not hold back on this one (did he ever?), and the longer you listen, the more apparent it is that his answers are in large part an attempt to hold the audience to account for the very social, political, and even theological malaise the book diagnoses in 21st Century British culture. As for the plot of the novel, The Quantity Theory of Morality follows a familiar cast of middle-class, middle-English characters as they circle through endless dinner parties and polite conversation until the veneer of civility inevitably fractures and exposes the darkness that they hide in. A sequel to his award-winning debut The Quantity Theory of Insanity, the novel returns to Self’s enduring preoccupations: the fragility of morality, the absurdity of social conventions, and the alienation of modern life. Both deranged and hilarious, it confirms Self as a master of satire as well as one of our most searching critics of contemporary culture.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:YouTube: @bookingclubpodTwitter/X: @bookingclubpodBlue Sky: @bookingclubpod.bsky.socialInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Megan Nolan is an Irish author and journalist. She gained critical prominence after releasing her debut novel, Acts of Desperation, which received a Betty Trask Award in 2022. Her second novel, Ordinary Human Failings, was shortlisted for a number of awards.Nolan also writes essays, fiction and reviews, with a new collection of essays due as of spring 2026. She met with Jack Aldane to discuss the challenges of writing, reading and living intentionally in the age of the smartphone. She also wrote on the subject for The Observer in a feature entitled The Lost Art of Paying Attention earlier this year.Megan met Jack at Le Paddock in her neighbourhood in Brooklyn, New York.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:YouTube: @bookingclubpodTwitter/X: @bookingclubpodBlue Sky: @bookingclubpod.bsky.socialInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ross Barkan is a born and raised New Yorker, journalist and author of four novels. He is the co-founder of The Metropolitan Review, New York's youngest books and culture magazine. His latest work of fiction, Colossus, is summarised as follows:"A stark and unsettling portrait of success, in the vein of Philip Roth and Jonathan Franzen, that revives the long-established intersection between ambition and corruption in the pursuit of the American dream.Teddy Starr has it all. A beloved pastor in a small Midwestern town, a devoted husband and father of three, and a rising real estate magnate, he has built a life that gleams with virtue and success. Self-made in every sense, Teddy is a man of conviction, or at least it seems. But behind the pulpit and the polished smile lies a fractured past, and when a figure from that buried life reemerges, the once-sturdy walls of his world begin to fall.As scandal and ambition collide, Colossus becomes the story of American hunger for reinvention and the blatant self-interest beneath its surface. Written with the moral gravity of Robert Penn Warren and the psychological insight of Philip Roth, Ross Barkan offers a timely update on the examination of the American identity in an age of performance and decay." Ross meets Jack at Edwards in downtown ManhattanFollow and subscribe to The Booking Club:YouTube: @bookingclubpodTwitter/X: @bookingclubpodBlue Sky: @bookingclubpod.bsky.socialInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The eagerly anticipated final volume of Jay McInerney's stunningly accomplished and profoundly affecting fictional tetralogy: Brightness Falls, The Good Life, Bright Precious Days, and now See You on the Other SideIt's early 2020 in New York, and the looming threat of a global pandemic begins to unsettle the gilded lives of Manhattan's literary and social elite. Now in their sixties, Russell and Corrine Calloway are navigating a new chapter: downsizing from their Harlem brownstone to a penthouse in the Village, grieving the death of Corrine's mother, and all the while facing the encroaching anxieties of aging, memory, and cultural obsolescence.Their daughter, Storey, prepares to launch her dream restaurant in Brooklyn just as fear begins to empty dining rooms and the city starts to shut down. Meanwhile, as the world tilts towards crisis, Russell is pulled between domestic stability and the temptation of an affair with a younger writer – an emotional turmoil which reignites complicated questions about fidelity and the alternate paths their lives might have taken.Told with McInerney's signature wit and elegiac prose, See You on the Other Side is a dazzling finale to the bestselling Calloway series, capturing the disorientation of a couple forced to confront their own mortality amidst shifting cultural tides and the slow unravelling of the world they once knew.Jay meets Jack at Parcelle, in Chinatown, on the Lower East-Side of ManhattanFollow and subscribe to The Booking Club:YouTube: @bookingclubpodTwitter/X: @bookingclubpodBlue Sky: @bookingclubpod.bsky.socialInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To command narrative is to control a sometimes frightening power. What is it that turbocharges some tales, and how is it possible to harness that potency?John Yorke’s groundbreaking bestseller, Into the Woods, revolutionised our understanding of story structure. This new book delves deeper into how to put that structure to work in the world. Trip to the Moon takes us on a journey not just through drama and fiction but through politics, religion and non-western narrative. Through these terrains, Yorke seeks out the role of story in all our lives, examining how to utilise its lessons to create life-changing tales – and, in a world aflame with conspiracy theories, to guard ourselves against their darker purpose too.Revealing the artful symmetry and underlying principles that connect Summer beach reads to Classical Chinese poetry, superhero flicks to Russian arthouse, and classical rhetoric to state propaganda, Yorke makes dazzling connections that show how stories have the power to transfigure the chaos of our existence into a new equilibrium, and make the world anew.John and Jack meet at The Fig and Walnut in Bloomsbury.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:YouTube: @bookingclubpodTwitter/X: @bookingclubpodBlue Sky: @bookingclubpod.bsky.socialInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Joel Foster is a hapless twenty-something. His girlfriend, Beth Lewis, would likely have been a hapless twenty-something, too, had she not been obliterated by a very large cement truck.Some time after Beth’s tragic death, Joel is still trying to juggle grief with the world of modern dating. And while he still feels like a widower, he has to find a new love before three years is up.The catch? Just as Joel thinks he’s finally falling for someone, he starts getting haunted by Beth. It’s not a ghost story, it’s a love story. With ghosts.Nearly Departed is novelist Lucas Oakeley's first work of fiction. When not writing novels, Lucas is a food journalist and book influencer tirelessly recommending books for boys and advocating for men in general to choose reading over watching YouTube Shorts, flirting with ChatGPT or disappearing down another Reddit hole.Starting the new year over a gorgeous Ethiopian plate, he and Jack discuss men, love and modern book culture.Lucas and Jack meet at Zeret Kitchen in Camberwell, South London.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:YouTube: @bookingclubpodTwitter/X: @bookingclubpodBlue Sky: @bookingclubpod.bsky.socialInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Who Will Remain by Kasim Ali is a powerful new novel following a young man as he weighs up the life of safety that his parents want for him and another path on the streets outside his door, from the acclaimed author of Good Intentions.Amir has grown up in Alum Rock, Birmingham, under the care of his sensible older brother, Bilal, and his cousin Saqib, born just a few days before Amir. Alum Rock can be a troubled place, but Amir has managed to keep his head down, worked hard and stayed out of trouble … until now.When Saqib is killed in a gang fight and Bilal announces his engagement, Amir suddenly loses the two men who keep him grounded. Amir’s university grades are collapsing, he’s running out of money, and pressure mounts from every direction. As tensions flare, the friends left around him start to draw Amir into their more dangerous pursuits, and the family ties that have bound him so completely begin to unravel.Amir decides he only has himself to rely on and must take his future into his own hands.This is a blistering story of social expectations and social condemnation, of dead ends and divided loyalties, and of what’s left behind when you have nothing left to lose. (Harper Collins)Kasim meets Jack at Salim's in Turnpike Lane, North London.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:YouTube: @bookingclubpodTwitter/X: @bookingclubpodBlue Sky: @bookingclubpod.bsky.socialInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode is lifted from a live recording that took place at The Battle of Ideas Festival 2025 in Westminster on Saturday 18th October.Jack draws together a panel of three speakers carefully selected to provide a modern perspective on the lasting significance of Franz Kafka's The Trial, which turns 100 this year.The panel featured Maxie Allen, radio producer for Times Radio, Nick Wallis, journalist and author of The Great Post Office Scandal, and John Yorke, narrative expert, author of Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them, and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Opening Lines. From Nick's relentless coverage of one of the biggest state-facilitated corporate assaults on working people ever recorded in British history, to Maxie's own brush with the absurdity of modern British policing earlier this year, to John's revivifying appraisal of the text, this discussion will make you wish you'd read the The Trial sooner.A big thank to the Academy of Ideas, and to our excellent audience on the day.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:YouTube: @bookingclubpodTwitter/X: @bookingclubpodBlue Sky: @bookingclubpod.bsky.socialInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.