The Reading Hour

Epizode

• 
  Willa Cather, My Ántonia, Book III, chs. 1-4 16.09.2026 1h 6min

  Episode 45 presents the whole of My Ántonia's short third book, entitled "Lena Lingard," in which narrator Jim Burden relates highlights of his first year as a student of Classics in Lincoln. (I offer my insights regarding Cather's references to Paestum, Virgil's Georgics, and Dante's Christian version of the epic Latin poet Statius in the Purgatorio.) The four chapters also relate Jim's interest in one of the so-called hired girls of Book II, who has taken up dressmaking in Nebraska's capital city.
• 
  Willa Cather, My Ántonia, Book II, chs. 12-15 09.09.2026 59min

  Episode 44 concludes the second book of Willa Cather's My Ántonia, "The Hired Girls," with chs. 12 through 15, in which Jim Burden delivers his Commencement address, enjoys a restful day on the river among the blossoming elders, and grapples with Ántonio's employer, Wick Cutter.
• 
  Willa Cather, My Ántonia, Book II, chs. 7-11 & two poems by Marianne Moore 02.09.2026 57min

  Episode 43 begins with a warning about ch. 7 of Book II, in which the fictive narrator Jim Burden describes a "negro" entertainer in language that listeners may find prejudicially pejorative. (Those who wish to skip the chapter may scroll ahead to minute 21:00.) Much of today's reading from My Ántonia concerns how the arrival of a dancing tent in Black Hawk brought about Tony's departure from the Harlings. The episode concludes with two more poems by Marianne Moore: "Poetry" and "The Past is the Present."
• 
  Willa Cather, My Ántonia, Book II, chs. 1-6 26.08.2026 1h

  Episode 42 introduces the second of My Ántonia's five books, which begins a couple of years after Book I left off. First Jim then Ántonia move to Black Hawk and adjust to life in town.
• 
  Willa Cather, My Ántonia, Book I, chs. 15-19 19.08.2026 59min

  Episode 41 concludes the first of My Ántonia's five books with Jim's account of his and the Shimerdas' first year in Nebraska. Even as spring and summer return, a chill settles over the former friendship between those on the Burdens' farm and the Bohemian family, but Grandfather Burden effects a reconciliation.
• 
  Willa Cather, My Ántonia, Book I, chs. 10-14 & two poems by Marianne Moore 12.08.2026 1h 1min

  Episode 40 continues with five chapters from Book 1 of My Ántonia in which Jim Burden describes his first Christmas in Nebraska, a blizzard, and a death in the Shimerda family. The hour ends with two poems by the modernist America poet Marianne Moore: "Critics and Connoisseurs" and "A Grave."
• 
  Willa Cather, My Ántonia, Book I, chs. 5-9 05.08.2026 1h 1min

  Episode 39 offers our second reading from Cather's 1918 novel, My Ántonia, in which Jim and "Tony" visit Russian Peter and Pavel, encounter an enormous rattlesnake, hear a harrowing tale of wolves at a winter wedding, and continue to befriend each other.
• 
  Willa Cather, My Ántonia, "Introduction" & Book I, chs. 1-4 29.07.2026 59min

  Episode 38, the first of The Reading Hour's third season, begins the American novelist Willa Cather's fourth book of plainspoken narrative fiction, My Ántonia (1918), which seeks to depict the spark and tenacity of a Bohemian who has come with her family to farm in Nebraska as she matures from girlhood into womanhood.
• 
  H. D. Thoreau, The Maine Woods, "The Allegash and East Branch," §10; Wallace Stevens, "Sunday Morning" 22.07.2026 56min

  Episode 37 concludes Thoreau's The Maine Woods with the final three days of the journey south and east along the East Branch of the Penobscot. An excerpt from the Appendix about how to outfit oneself for such an excursion is included. We finish out the hour with a reading of the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens's "Sunday Morning."
• 
  H. D. Thoreau, The Maine Woods, "The Allegash and East Branch," §9 15.07.2026 57min

  In Episode 36, Thoreau loses track of his companion as night sets along the Webster Brook, a cow-moose is shot and skinned, and the party heads south and east on the Grand Lake Matagamon to the East Branch of the Penobscot, eating handfuls of blueberries and raspberries at each carry.
• 
  H. D. Thoreau, The Maine Woods, "The Allegash and East Branch," §8 08.07.2026 57min

  Episode 35 is only the second of season 2's episodes not to include a reading from Sarah Orne Jewett's A Country Doctor, which concluded in Episode 34; the full hour is devoted to "The Allegash and East Branch," in which Thoreau and his companions begin to return from their north-most excursion, making their way toward then along the headwaters of the Penobscot River's east branch.
• 
  Sarah Orne Jewett, A Country Doctor, ch. 20; H. D. Thoreau, The Maine Woods, "The Allegash and East Branch," §7 01.07.2026 59min

  Because we conclude A Country Doctor therein, Episode 34 begins with Jewett then rounds out the hour with additional pages from the third essay of The Maine Woods, in which Thoreau enters Apmoojenegamook (the largest of the Allegash lakes) and then the Allegash River itself, heading north.
• 
  H. D. Thoreau, The Maine Woods, "The Allegash and East Branch," §6; Sarah Orne Jewett, A Country Doctor, ch. 20 24.06.2026 57min

  Episode 33 continues with Thoreau and his companion striving to navigate the carry to Mud Pond on foot then catalogues the molesting insects encountered before concluding the day with observations about the loon; the climactic, penultimate chapter of Jewett's A Country Doctor follows.
• 
  H. D. Thoreau, The Maine Woods, "The Allegash and East Branch," §5; Sarah Orne Jewett, A Country Doctor, ch. 19B 17.06.2026 58min

  In Episode 32, Thoreau paddles through narrow waterways and seeks to carry his sixty-pound sack to Mud Pond by a path more swamp-like than muddy; we then conclude the 19th "Friends and Lovers" chapter of Jewett's A Country Doctor, the second half which registers Nan's perspective on her relationship with George Gerry.
• 
  H. D. Thoreau, The Maine Woods, "The Allegash and East Branch," §4; Sarah Orne Jewett, A Country Doctor, ch. 19A 10.06.2026 1h

  Episode 31 continues with Thoreau's third adventure in the Maine woods, during which he interests himself in his Indian guide's sensibilities regarding how to conduct oneself on a Sunday; the episode concludes with the first half of A Country Doctor's 19th chapter, in which the young Dunsport lawyer recognizes ponders the degree to which his affection for Nan is reciprocated.
• 
  H. D. Thoreau, The Maine Woods, "The Allegash and East Branch," §3; Sarah Orne Jewett, A Country Doctor, ch. 18 03.06.2026 59min

  Episode 30 continues our reading from "The Allegash and East Branch," wherein Thoreau wakes in the night to discover "phosphorescent wood," which delights him; following a re-cap of Nan's adventures with George Gerry on the river, we then eavesdrop upon "A Serious Tea-Drinking" at Mrs. Fraley's in ch. 18 of A Country Doctor.
• 
  H. D. Thoreau, The Maine Woods, "The Allegash and East Branch," §2; Sarah Orne Jewett, A Country Doctor, ch. 17 27.05.2026 57min

  In Episode 29, we venture further up Moosehead Lake with Thoreau and Joe Polis to camp and do a bit of botanizing at Mount Kineo, which rises on a peninsula within the lake. We then continue with Nan's visit to Dunport in chapter 17 of A Country Doctor.
• 
  H. D. Thoreau, The Maine Woods, "The Allegash and East Branch," §1; Sarah Orne Jewett, A Country Doctor, ch. 16 20.05.2026 58min

  Episode 28 introduces the third, final essay of Thoreau's The Maine Woods, "The Allegash and East Branch," then continues Jewett's A Country Doctor with its 16th chapter, in which Nan acquaints her Dunport aunt and a new friend with her vocational plans.
• 
  H. D. Thoreau, The Maine Woods, "Chesuncook," §7; Sarah Orne Jewett, A Country Doctor, ch. 15 13.05.2026 1h 3min

  In Episode 27 (2.15) we conclude "Chesuncook," the second of three essays in The Maine Woods, where Thoreau stirringly expresses how an ecological regard for the wild may promote the health of a democracy. The episode's second half is devoted to chapter 15 of Jewett's novel, in which Nan finally becomes acquainted with her aunt during an extended visit to Dunport.
• 
  H. D. Thoreau, The Maine Woods, "Chesuncook," §6; Sarah Orne Jewett, A Country Doctor, ch. 14 06.05.2026 1h

  In this episode, Thoreau tries to determine from several Native Americans in a Maine camp what some of the Abenaki place names mean; then, in ch. 14 of A Country Doctor, we move to Dunport and make the acquaintance of Nan's aunt, Miss Anna Prince.