Tom Cox and Sophie Scott
A Good Read
BBC
4.2 • 848 Ratings
🗓️ 28 October 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
THE STONE DIARIES by Carol Shields, chosen by Tom Cox HOW TO WRITE A THESIS by Umberto Eco, chosen by Sophie Scott PARADISE by Abdulrazak Gurnah, chosen by Harriett Gilbert
Writer Tom Cox joins neuroscientist Sophie Scott to discuss favourite books with Harriett Gilbert. Tom's choice is the 1995 Pulitzer Prize winner, The Stone Diaries. Following the story of one woman’s life from birth to death, the novel also charts the unsettled decades of the twentieth century. Sophie puts forward a very different book, a non-fiction by Italian writer and academic, How to Write a Thesis. It first appeared on Italian bookshelves back in 1977, but still rings true for many. And finally, Harriett's choice is a historical novel called Paradise by the Nobel Prize-winning author Abdulrazak Gurnah, which is both a coming-of-age story, and a tale of the corruption against the backdrop of European colonialism in East Africa.
Produced for BBC Audio Bristol by Becky Ripley
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:07.2 | Things just swirling around my head. |
| 0:09.6 | Am I really the product of this? |
| 0:12.1 | Astonishing secrets uncovered by at-home DNA tests. |
| 0:17.0 | Little did I know what more was to come. |
| 0:19.5 | I'm Jenny Clemen, and in the new series of The Gift, we'll hear more stories emerging |
| 0:25.2 | out of the ever-expanding global DNA database. |
| 0:28.8 | They did know that I was different. |
| 0:31.7 | You had kids together. |
| 0:33.0 | Yeah. |
| 0:33.5 | Then you met. |
| 0:34.3 | Then we met. |
| 0:35.2 | The Gift. |
| 0:36.1 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:39.9 | Hello, let's see if we can tempt you with today's suggestions for a good read. |
| 0:44.2 | Joining me are the author Tom Cox, whose story collection Help the Witch won a Shirley Jackson Horror Award, |
| 0:50.3 | and whose three latest novels are Villager, 1983, and Outjust this year, Everything |
| 0:57.0 | Will Swallow You. |
| 0:58.9 | With Tom is the neuroscientist Sophie Scott, director of the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience |
| 1:04.3 | at University College London. |
| 1:06.6 | Sophie has a specific interest in the perception and production of laughter, and she's the author of The Brain, Ten Things You Should Know. |
| 1:15.5 | Tom Cox, let's start with you. |
... |
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