Pulp fiction v the classics: summer reading
Economist Podcasts
The Economist
4.3 • 5K Ratings
🗓️ 25 May 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What do we mean by a “good book”? Some people choose a holiday read that demands time and attention. Others pick rip-roaring novels that require little thought. Our bookworms discuss whether art has to be improving to be praiseworthy, and give genre fiction some much-needed air time.
This is a full list of the books mentioned in the show:
“Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen
“Red Rising” by Pierce Brown
Jack Reacher series by Lee Child
“The Hunt for Red October” by Tom Clancy
“Riders” and the other Rutshire chronicles by Jilly Cooper
Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman
“Middlemarch” by George Eliot
“Ulysses” by James Joyce
“Wolf Hall” by Hilary Mantel
“The Diamond Age” by Neal Stephenson
The Murderbot series by Martha Wells
“The Martian” by Andy Weir
“American Wife” by Curtis Sittenfeld
Guests and host:
- Catherine Nixey, culture and Britain correspondent
- Tom Standage, Economist deputy editor
- Alexandra Suich Bass, culture editor
- Alex Hern, AI writer
- Rosie Blau, host of “The Intelligence”
Topics covered:
- Fiction, romance, sci-fi, crime, thrillers, fantasy, romantasy
- Jane Austen, Jilly Cooper, Curtis Sittenfeld, Lee Child
- Matt Dinniman, Pierce Brown, Neal Stephenson
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Economist |
| 0:05.0 | Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. |
| 0:12.0 | I'm your host Rosie Bloor. |
| 0:14.0 | Today we are blissfully abandoning the news and the real world to talk about something altogether more enjoyable. Fiction. |
| 0:27.8 | And we're thinking about what books to take on holiday. What do you plan to read on the plane, |
| 0:34.5 | on a sun lounger by the pool, or while you for once give in to all those |
| 0:39.1 | screen time demands of your kids. We're talking escapism, relaxation and happiness. I know, |
| 0:46.0 | not our usual fare. These are the books you want to read, not necessarily the ones you're going to |
| 0:51.5 | be bragging about or brandishing on the bookshelf behind you during your weekly meeting with your boss. Going under the covers with me are some of |
| 0:59.1 | the esteemed bookworms of The Economist. Catherine Nixie, our culture and British correspondent. |
| 1:04.5 | Hello, thank you for having you. Tom Standage, our deputy editor and World Ahead editor. |
| 1:08.6 | Great to be here. And from Paris, we're also joined by our |
| 1:12.2 | culture editor, Alexandra Sewich Bass. Good to see you. Today we're discussing Pulp Fiction versus |
| 1:18.6 | the classics. What is the value of an escapist read? So let's start. I'm interested in what you mean by a good book. |
| 1:30.8 | Catherine, why don't you kick us off? |
| 1:33.3 | Well, it's really interesting, isn't it? |
| 1:34.4 | This discussion absolutely presupposes that a good book and a book that you enjoy are probably two different things. |
| 1:40.5 | And the question is, why is that? |
| 1:41.8 | What is good writing and what is worthy writing and what |
| 1:44.8 | do we mean when we say both? I mean, I love Jilly Cooper. I tried to say that she was a great novelist and it got taken out in an article. It got corrected. A subset, I'm not sure that she's a great novelist. So why is she not a great novelist? Because I love her novels. But she isn't. She isn't, as you say, she's not one you'd put on the shelves behind you when you're in your weekly Zoom and certainly not in an interview, I suspect. Tom. Well, when I'm on holiday, I do want escapism. And I read a lot of books for work. I read a lot of non-fiction. and so I want fiction and I want escapist fiction. And it's actually not just when I'm on holiday. |
| 2:19.0 | I remember when 9-11 happened. |
| 2:20.5 | My immediate... fiction and so I want fiction and I want escapist fiction. And it's actually not just when I'm |
... |
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