Old Books with Grace

Austen's Persuasion: Ch. 10-12 Vol. II with Scott Hamman

Dr. Grace Hamman and her special guest this week, her husband Scott, discuss love, communication, resurrection, learning how to learn, and gush over Austen's profundity in depicting relationships in Persuasion. They also freeze in slight horror and pause the recording awkwardly when their four-year old son emerges to pee at 10:30 at night while they record. Welcome to the grand finale of the Summer Old Book Club!

Austen's Persuasion: Ch. 7-9 Vol. II with Goodwyn Bell

Welcome to the penultimate week of the Summer Old Book Club! Grace invites her friend Goodwyn Bell to chat about the continuing drama with Mr. Elliot, if where you grew up affects how you read Jane Austen, Anne's charming, blush-filled interactions with Captain Wentworth, the importance of Bath, the confusing lies of Mrs. Smith, what Jane Austen thinks of friendship, and so much more...

Austen's Persuasion: Ch. 4-6 Vol II with Carol Irwin

Welcome to Week 6 of the Summer Old Book Club and perhaps the first ever podcast episode featuring a grandmother and her granddaughter discussing Persuasion in great detail! Join Dr. Grace Hamman and her 86 year-old Grama, Carol Irwin, as they think through Mr. Elliot, Mrs. Smith, the intricacies of rank and society in Bath, what a "good" pride entails, and so much more...

Austen's Persuasion: Ch. 1-3 Vol. II with Dr. Jessica Hines

Grace welcomes Dr. Jessica Hines to the fifth week of the Summer Old Book Club discussing Jane Austen's Persuasion. Grace and Jessica talk about the mysterious Mr. Elliot, the perplexities of Lady Russell (do we like her or not??), Anne's move to Bath, and bring in some of their great loves: medieval things like Thomas Aquinas and virtue ethics!

Austen's Persuasion: Ch. 10-12, Vol I with Chelsea Swanson

Dr. Grace Hamman and her special guest and best friend since kindergarten, Chelsea Swanson, lose track of time as they endlessly dissect three chapters of Persuasion that perhaps have the most incredible emotional and interpersonal subtext of all chapters but the end. Plus, discussion of the most stupid Jane Austen injury: Louisa Musgrove jumps off the Cobb!

Austen's Persuasion: Ch. 7-9 Vol. I with Marisa Tualla

Welcome to week three of reading Jane Austen's Persuasion with the Summer Old Book Club! Today, Grace chats with her old friend Marisa Tualla, a math curriculum specialist, about ch. 7-9 of vol. I. They talk Jane Austen on gender, loneliness, the fascinating and unusual presence of children in this section, among many other things...

Austen's Persuasion: Ch. 4-6 Vol. 1 with John Irwin

It's week two of the Summer Old Book Club! Read alongside Grace and her brother, John Irwin, as they discuss chapters 4-6 of volume I of Jane Austen's Persuasion. Grace and John talk about meeting Captain Wentworth (in memory) for the first time, Jane Austen's meanest and most phallic joke, Regency-era ideas about class, the wretched Mary Musgrove, and so much more...

Austen's Persuasion: Chapters 1-3 Vol. 1 with Dr. Jessica Ward

Welcome to the Summer Old Book Club with Jane Austen's Persuasion! Grace and Dr. Jessica Ward, an English professor at Mercy College in NYC and one of Grace's grad school buddies, talk about our introduction to the characters, Austen's cutting humor, personality types, and more.