Hi, everybody. Welcome to The Librarian is in the New York Public Library's podcast about books, culture, and what to read next. I'm Gwen. And I'm Ovid. And we're here today to discuss Ovid's own work with him. Thanks for joining us, Ovid, an ancient classic writer here.

That's how I feel.

Frank is how Frank feels, anyway.

That's right.

Tell us about the end of the Roman Empire.

Okay, so what we're actually doing today is we are talking about Ovid, and we are knee-deep in our second annual reading challenge where we each give each other a book to read and read them ourselves and then talk about them.

Knee deep. We're not knee deep yet. We're not. That's right. We're like toe deep. Really? You're excited. I'm really excited. I'm loving this.

I just finished Ovid on the train this morning and I am really excited.

So we should say the two books that we read that we challenged each other with.

You challenged me with Donna Tart, her first book, The Secret History, which came out in 91.

92.

92.

And I challenged you with Ovid's, basically, tales from Ovid, Ovid's metamorphosis,

translated by Ted Hughes, the poet.

It came out in 1997.

97.

Yep.

Which actually, according to a comment when we announced this, they do have something in common in that the students in secret history are classics students, and Ovid is a classic Roman writer.

Anyway, so...

They have something even more in common.

So, and we should say before we start this, major spoilers for the whole thing.

I think we're going to talk about the ending of secret history. We're going to talk. And there is like some surprise stuff at the end. And so I think we're really going to talk. We're going to ruin everything about the secret history. So if you haven't read it yet, don't listen to this or just accept that we're going to talk about it. And you won't have listen to it like overdue where they say you really should have read this book already right it's Donna Tart's first book of of three yes her latest being the big bestseller the goldfinch so right all right so you finished open on the train and the thing that they have in common that I thought was... I've had a lot of coffee this morning. Wow. And iced coffee because it's really hot. I was late as ever. Yes. Yes. I got to get up to your speed here. Yes. So what I really wanted to talk about because I thought this was so amazing is that we don't know which book the other one is going to choose before this. And last time in our Hogwarts and Hollywood episode, it was sort of

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