We all have those books that are waiting in the wings, begging for a chance to make their way off the shelf and into our hands. This week, we chat about why some books seem to get stuck on the sidelines, even though we always think they’ll be the next one up. We discuss some of the reasons this happens and each share five of our own benchwarmer books, doing our best to justify why we keep ignoring their pleas to “put me in coach!” Shownotes Books * Horror Movie, by Paul Tremblay * Proust Was a Neuroscientist, by Jonah Lehrer * The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller * Circe, by Madeline Miller * To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolfe * Tess of the D’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy * The Human Stain, by Philip Roth * The Passenger, by Cormac McCarthy * Stella Maris, by Cormac McCarthy * Pnin, by Vladimir Nabokov * Absalolm, Absalom!, by William Faulkner * Baudolino, by Umberto Eco * The Gormenghast Novels, by Mervyn Peake * Strong Motion, by Jonathan Franzen * The Twenty-Seventh City, by Jonathan Franzen * Night Watch, by Jayne Anne Phillips * The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Books) Saved My Life, by Andy Miller * We, the Drowned, by Carsten Jensen * The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers * Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence * The Rainbow, by D.H. Lawrence * Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence * Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence * Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi * Hurricane Season, by Fernanda Melchor, translated by Sophie Hughes * Hons and Rebels, by Jessica Mitford * Romola, by George Eliot * The Snow Leopard, by Peter Matthiessen * At Play in the Fields of the Lord, by Peter Matthiessen * The Peregrine, by J.A. Baker * Shadow Country, by Peter Matthiessen * Tigana, by Guy Gabriel Kay * Up in the Old Hotel, by Joseph Mitchell * The Last Colony, by John Scalzi * Old Mans’ War, by John Scalzi * The Ghost Brigade, by John Scalzi * Zoe’s Tale, by John Scalzi * The Adventures of China Iron, by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, translated by Fiona Mackintosh and Iona Macintyre * Swann’s Way, by Marcel Proust * War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Anthony Briggs * The Expendable Man, by Dorothy B. Hughes * Felix Holt, the Radical, by George Eliot * Phineas Redux, by Anthony Trollope * Barchester Towers, by Anthony Trollope * Doctor Thorne, by Anthony Trollope * Suttree, by Cormac McCarthy Other Links * Jack’s Instagram Post * Episode 31: New Directions, with Mark Haber * Episode 6: Our Fantasy Past (and Future?) The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast is a book chat podcast. Every other week Paul and Trevor get together to talk about some bookish topic or another. We hope you’ll continue to join us! Many thanks to those who helped make this possible! If you’d like to donate as well, you can do so on Substack or on our Patreon page. These subscribers get periodic bonus episode and early access to all episodes! Every supporter has their own feed that he or she can use in their podcast app of choice to download our episodes a few days early. Please go check it out! This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mookse.substack.com/subscribe