The new Book Club podcast from Dominic Sandbrook - hmm

[wildfellhall]

The female presenter just lost me when she pronounced “Haworth” “Hay-worth”.

It’s hard to take her view of the book seriously.

Call me pedantic.

I really like Dominic Sandbrook but I didn’t think much of this. Would have preferred them to team him up with a literature expert. It doesn’t really work to have two people who don’t know all that much talking to each other- may as well have me and DH on 😭

That would have been exactly my reaction too OP.

Isn't "people who don't know that much talking to each other" the very definition of a book club? 😆

I enjoyed it, I like to hear other people's opinions about books that I've read, in particular - there are plenty of podcasts that get "experts". The joy of reading and knowing that everyone has a different experience of the same text, and my experience is unique and might change when someone else shares their experience (or it might not) - it makes me want to read more!

Mispronunciations are 😬but I've heard worse on a podcast...

I felt exactly the same about the Hay worth thing. So annoying

It doesn’t make sense to reject her book review because she mispronounces a name. If she’s only ever read it, how is she to know? I listen to a lot of books and even well known actors mispronounce places names.

Mispronouncing a name doesn’t mean you have no interesting thoughts about it

English isn't my first language and when you've only seen a word in writing and never heard it, you occasionally pronounce things differently. So she's well read.

I actually had to look up Haworth - you pronounce this like Howard?! 😁 I'm sure I've heard people with the surname pronounce it hay worth. What do you make of Rita Hayworth's surname?

I quite liked it. The ‘Hay-worth’ pronunciation did annoy me a little. That’s something I would have checked personally.
The list of future books looks good and they’re all ones I’ve read so I’ll definitely continue to listen.

I admit it is a Brontë snobbery thing! I would never blame a person whose speaking English as a second language, that would be mad.
But this Tabitha knows about the toxic water in the town of Haworth, she does know the book pretty well. It was just something I thought they might stop and check and re-record. It makes you think maybe there’s no producer that everything is fine because it’s on the cheap.
Alison Hammond pronounced Virginia Giuffre’s surname as “ Goff” the other day on This Morning but she apologized a bit later and corrected it. But presenters should prep those things is all, IMO.

Sorry (!) who’s not whose 🤦‍♀️ 😆

British place names are specifically designed to trick the non-locals (British and others alike) into making it obvious they are not local. See also: Reading, Leicester, Bicester, Alnwick, Mousehole, Hunstanton (which is actually correctly pronounced as "sunny Hunny", for future reference...). The residents of Folkingham village in Lincolnshire get very annoyed when visitors don't use the correct pronunciation of Fuck'n'm, for example...

What’s Tabitha’s expertise? I was wiling to give this a go but the casting of TRIH was very careful and successful for a reason, and this doesn’t sound quite as good.

British place names are specifically designed to trick the non-locals
I doubt that is the case.

The podcast looks OK to me but I've not managed to read more than a few pages of Wuthering Heights.

The mispronunciation of Haworth would grate. I recently heard an audio version of Bridget Jones's Diary where the reader said dahlias as dahl-ias not daylias and I couldn't unhear it.

None, I think- she's a podcast producer.

I think it depends what you want really. I note PP's comment that the podcast is called a book club so you wouldn't expect the speakers to be very knowledgable and of course there's a place for more accessible and chatty approaches to literature but I felt that this fell between two stools- it's still framed as "presenters informing listeners" but they're simply not very informative because they haven't got much to say.

I'll probably still listen but I much preferred the short series Tom Holland did recently on art with Laura Cumming, with Tom as the keen amateur and Laura as the pro.

good point, well made BB05.
yes it’s neither one thing or another. It needs more cointellectual heft or maybe a lot more charm .

I took that for the joke it was presumably intended as! (Right @LordEmsworth ?)

Dahlias are named after Anders Dahl... How do you pronounce Roald Dahl?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Dahl

It’s a bit of a reach then.

I really like the TRIH schtick, and obviously I am one of many who feels that. But the schtick is backed up by actual historical knowledge and expertise. I’m now feeling mildly upset that Goalhanger have gone ‘hey here’s someone who likes books, and a random podcast staffer who also likes books, and let’s do the literature podcast right here!’ as if analysing literature isn’t a skill like history.

I’ll still give it a go in case I am overthinking it. But I’m not well-disposed.

I didn’t finish it, but it was a complete travesty and riddled with errors. The version of Patrick Brontë as an ‘angry man’ who carried a gun around and therefore made his children a bit weird is based on long-exploded assumptions, and the family weren’t drinking ‘corpse water’,they were drinking from the same source as the rest of Haworth (not Hayworth) which, like not a few industrialised areas, had cholera outbreaks. We know practically nothing about Emily, apart from Charlotte’s postmortem attempt to try to soften the impact of WH, and Mrs Gaskell’s sentimental biography of Charlotte, do why repeat nonsense? And they couldn’t even get the plot of WH right. It’s really not that confusing!

I’ve only just started listening to TRIH and wasn’t that impressed with the presenters doing comedy French accents for Christine de Pisan and Joan of Arc. Maybe I got a bad episode.

Is Haworth really pronounced Howard?

I'd have thought it was Ha'rth or a similar variation

Yes that one annoyed me too. The accents have become a bit of shtick but recently some of the episodes have veered into the realms of mockery.

No, it’s pronounced Howurth

Sad to hear this is a bit crap as I like TRIH but I don’t think I can submit myself to the Hayworthing of it all

Thanks, I wasn't far off

@Agapornis , the pronunciation of Roald Dahl isn't relevant to the pronunciation of the popular garden flowers.
Fuchsias were names after Leonhart Fuchs.