Welcome to Zero to Well Read, a podcast about everything you need to know about the books you wish you'd read.

I'm Jeff O'Neill.

And I'm Rebecca Shinsky.

Jeff, pull the curtains, light a candle, stack your books high, and get ready to get Gothic.

Today, we are talking about the culty cult classic,

The Secret History by Donna Tart. Point of order, even before we get going. Is this a cult

class? Oh, I guess we'll get into this. I think this is beyond a cult classic. It's a culty book,

but is a cult classic? I think it is a cult classic.

It's not as widely read as I anticipated it to have been.

Sales are estimated at about 5 million total over more than 30 years.

It is beloved in certain bookish circles.

I think of Stoner as a cult classic.

The Stoneer stole one-tenth of the books of-

I think what we're, yeah, I think there's a spectrum of cult classics. And the secret history

is maybe on the cusp of just contemporary classic. But I think of it as a cult classic.

I think if you get adjusted for inflation more than a million dollar advance and you earn out, it's hard to call it a cult classic. So I think that's going to be one of the discussions here. I think a lot of people maybe have heard of this book. I think a lot of people have read this book really like it, judging by the Goodreads, you know, ratings, which are on the four and a quarter, which is on the high side for a book.

That's higher than average for a good reads. I think 3.5, 3.75 is considered a good,

like solid good reads rating. But this is also a book lover's book. I think that's one of the

reason we want to talk about it today. And it comes from the early 90s, a book. I think both

of us really liked when we first read it. We'll talk about origin stories there.

We'll get into it. A couple of programming notes. Thank you so much for everyone who's rated and reviewed the show. We blew past our 150. We're looking at, we're crawling up on

250 now, which is really terrific. It doesn't hurt to do more, but it won't get you any closer

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