Great Unread Books

About Great Unread Books

From TLDR to DNF, we celebrate the books that for one reason or another we left behind.

Publisher

Alex and Robin

Category

arts

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

8 Jun 2026

Latest episode

6 Nov 2026

Latest episodes

8 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   6 Nov 2026

   A Short History of Byzantium (1997) by John Julius Norwich

   If you’re so obsessed with Rome, why do you only discuss the first 10% of its existence? People who only know the western Caesars are like people who've seen Star Wars and never watched The Empire Strikes Back. This week, Robin and Alex discuss John Julius Norwich’s A Short History of Byzantium as a back way to explore the insane stories from Rome’s arguably more successful Eastern phase. The hosts unpack the "Gibbonian Prejudice" that left Eastern Rome in the historical shadows, brainstorm ways to turn medieval military gambles into modern corporate buzzwords, and argue why the idle rich should spend decades writing comprehensive histories instead of going to Mars. Finally, Robin reveals his paradoxical plan for buying even more unread volumes of this exact same history. 00:00 - 02:01: The Great Unread Mission. Alex and Robin recap the podcast's core philosophy of destigmatizing unread books, and introduce today's pick from Robin's shelf. 02:02 - 06:12: The Aristocratic Historian. Examining John Julius Norwich's background, how he wrote the history he wanted to read himself, and the immense cultural value of wealthy heirs pursuing non-commercial passions. 06:13 - 12:00: The "Gibbonian Prejudice." Exploring why Edward Gibbon and Western historians minimized the Byzantine Empire in favor of Rome, despite the Byzantines viewing themselves as true Romans. 12:01 - 16:46: Mainstream Storytelling vs. Academic Slogs. Defending Norwich’s accessible, sweeping narrative against academic snobbery, proving you don't need a PhD to enjoy history. 16:47 - 20:54: "Time to Heraclius It." The epic story of Emperor Heraclius gambling everything to crush the Persians and reclaim the True Cross. The hosts pitch "Heraclius" as the ultimate Silicon Valley verb for a bold pivot. 20:55 - 23:20: Badass Royals. Empress Theodora's icy nerves during the Nika riots ("purple makes an excellent shroud") and Emperor Constantine XI choosing to go down with his men during the Ottoman invasion. 23:21 - 27:10: Hollywood's Blind Spot & The Bulgar Slayer. Why the multicultural, 1,000-year Byzantine epic defies clean cinematic narratives, and the incredibly dark story of Basil the Bulgar Slayer mathematically blinding his captives. 27:11 - 30:50: Skull Cups and the Alexiad. Using a vanquished emperor's skull as a silver-lined drinking cup, and Anna Komnene's historical shock at the thuggish early Crusaders. 30:51 - 35:04: The Books That Don't Exist Yet. Robin pitches a day-by-day map of Freud, Hitler, and Wittgenstein living blocks apart in Vienna. Alex advocates for an accessible English history of the Tajik Civil War. 35:05 - 40:48: Evocative Prose & The Royal Academy. A reading of Norwich's resonant opening lines, and Robin's mind-blowing visit to a Byzantine art exhibit featuring the mystery of Iconoclasm and El Greco's Eastern roots. 40:49 - 46:42: The Ultimate Unread Flex. Robin confesses he won't read his abridged edition, but will instead hunt down the out-of-print, 3-volume Folio Society version to use purely for bathroom reading. Plus, plans to performatively troll Italians by reading it in Rome. 46:43 - 48:21: Wrap Up. Previewing the next episode's journey into the belly of the beast: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Books & Authors Mentioned A Short History of Byzantium by John Julius Norwich. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. The Alexiad by Anna Komnene. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff (Next Episode's Pick).

2. 

   12 Oct 2026

   Be A Player (2017) by Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriott

   Can thinking less make you a better golfer—or at least a happier one? And can a non-golfer learn anything from one of the most highly influential golf books of the past five years? Robin finds out, to his golf-hating surprise, that the answer is yes. This week, Robin and Alex tackle Be a Player by Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriott, the acclaimed coaches behind the VISION54 method. Alex explains his increasingly obsessive relationship with golf, while Robin investigates why perfect technique on the driving range so often falls apart on the course. Along the way, they explore the “Think Box,” the “Play Box,” and the “Memory Box”; the strange appeal of sports psychology; and the art of observing a bad shot without turning it into a verdict on your entire personality. The conversation then travels from The Inner Game of Tennis to Zen in the Art of Archery, via Silicon Valley, teenage gurus, corporate consulting, dubious translations—and Robin’s unforgettable encounter with an exceptionally patient star of golf. The lesson for golfers, athletes, and readers alike: trust yourself, enjoy the game, and don’t beat yourself up when you fail to finish. CHAPTERS 00:00 — Welcome to the nightmare realm of golf 02:17 — Why Alex bought Be a Player—and never read it 05:07 — Inside Alex’s golf obsession 07:07 — The dream of shooting 54 08:26 — Why perfect technique fails on the course 12:07 — What golf reveals about your personality 15:38 — Strava, data, and the competitive nightmare 19:59 — Why good coaches teach you to coach yourself 21:48 — The VISION54 system 24:30 — The Think Box, Play Box, and Memory Box 29:29 — Alex’s inner golf-course powder keg 31:39 — Remembering that golf is a game 33:37 — Robin’s troubled history with golf 38:33 — Robin accidentally insults Tiger Woods 41:52 — The wider world of sports psychology 43:23 — The Inner Game of Tennis 49:08 — Perfecto, Competo, Learno, and Enjoyo 53:05 — Zen in the Art of Archery 56:59 — Is Western Zen really Zen? 59:34 — The troubling history behind a spiritual classic 01:02:16 — Next episode: A Short History of Byzantium 01:04:14 — What we’ve been reading and acquiring 01:07:39 — The inner game of book reading BOOKS DISCUSSED Be a Player — Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriott Every Shot Must Have a Purpose — Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriott The Inner Game of Tennis — W. Timothy Gallwey Zen in the Art of Archery — Eugen Herrigel Golf in the Kingdom — Michael Murphy A Short History of Byzantium — John Julius Norwich The End of History and the Last Man — Francis Fukuyama The Finest Hotel in Kabul — Lyse Doucet The Last Kings of Hollywood — Paul Fischer

3. 

   28 Aug 2026

   American Lion (2008) by John Meacham

   American Lion: Andrew Jackson, Dad Books and the Great Man Problem Robin's a Dad and American Lion, Jon Meacham's masterful and clever look at the seventh president of the U.S., Andrew Jackson, is very much a Dad book. He abandoned it at page 130 almost a decade ago. What remains is a vivid sense of a personality — and a latent confusion over a period of American history that's messy, confusing and hard to get your head around. Is the coziness of a Dad book really appropriate, though, for a man who marched thousands of people to their deaths in the wilderness? Alex and Robin return from their summer reading — regrettably, with several books actually finished — to tackle Andrew Jackson, the strange blank spot in American history between the founding and the Civil War, and the peculiar appeal of biographies about Great Men. They look at why Jackson remains such a historical Rorschach test: champion of the common man or proto-authoritarian; defender of the Union or destroyer of Native American communities; political innovator or enemy of institutions. They also ask whether Jon Meacham's deliberately empathetic approach makes Jackson more understandable — or just a little too comfortable to spend 400 pages with. Chapters 00:00 — Summer reading and fallen unread comrades Robin discovers that biographies of important men become mysteriously more attractive somewhere around your thirties. 02:25 — Enter Andrew Jackson and American Lion Jon Meacham, the Battle of New Orleans, Johnny Horton and Jackson's extraordinary durability as an American historical character. 05:10 — Is Meacham too cozy with Jackson? The case for an empathetic biography — and whether empathy is really the alternative to hostility. 06:25 — The Great Man Biography Industrial Complex Walter Isaacson, Leonardo, Einstein, Steve Jobs and the prestige hierarchy of being important enough to receive a Big Biography. 08:10 — Casting Andrew Jackson Charlton Heston, Sean Penn and the strange bipartisan appeal of wanting to play Old Hickory. 10:35 — Jackson as historical Rorschach test 11:30 — Why Robin bought the book 12:45 — American history's difficult middle seasons 14:45 — The duel 16:50 — Rachel Jackson and the emotional opening of the book 19:10 — The Petticoat Affair 23:00 — Jackson's real communications genius He wasn't a great writer or speaker. His message was himself. 26:55 — Authenticity, personality and political power 29:15 — The Nullification Crisis 31:20 — Alex puts Jackson near the bottom The Indian Removal Act, the Trail of Tears, patronage and why Jackson's legacy looks particularly dark from the present. 35:00 — Would liberals once have loved him? 38:15 — Are we just seeing Trump in Jackson? 41:25 — The Andrew Jackson book we'd actually read 44:15 — Will Robin ever finish American Lion? 44:40 — What makes a Dad book? 46:15 — Did podcasts kill the Dad book? The Rest Is History provides all the pleasures of reading 600 pages about a statesman without the irritating requirement to read 600 pages. 48:10 — Events are the new Great Men Why microhistories and tightly focused historical episodes may have replaced traditional doorstop biographies. 50:00 — Books Alex and Robin actually finished John Richardson's Picasso biography and Colin Thubron's The Amur. 51:30 — Next time???

4. 

   7 Aug 2026

   Why is so much "good" historical fiction boring?

   Alex loves history. He sort-of likes novels. He adores anything east of Germany and west of China. So what’s stopping him from even cracking open what was acclaimed as Georgia’s answer to War and Peace? Robin guides Alex through Nino Haratischwili’s thousand-page family saga: eight lives spanning revolution, Stalinism, exile, the collapse of the Soviet Union—and a cursed recipe for hot chocolate. Along the way, they ask whether magical realism improves historical fiction, why prestigious historical novels can feel less inviting than genre fiction, and whether Alex bought The Eighth Life to read it or simply to establish a Caucasus section on his bookshelf. Plus: the books they actually finished, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, Ezra Klein’s highly political interpretation of it, and next episode’s unfinished biography of Andrew Jackson. Spoilers throughout, although they may matter less when one host hasn’t opened the book and the other has mainly read the plot summary. Chapters 00:00 — Georgia’s thousand-page War and Peace 01:39 — The highest-rated unread book so far 03:39 — Eight lives, one family and a century of Georgian history 06:43 — Why Georgia fascinates Alex 12:49 — God’s own holiday paradise 16:32 — Why Alex bought the book 20:01 — Why history works for Alex—and novels don’t 22:37 — The entire family saga in ten minutes 25:03 — Cursed chocolate and the limits of magical realism 33:00 — Is Alex any closer to reading it? 34:16 — Would The Eighth Life work on television? 37:24 — What makes historical fiction enjoyable? 44:43 — Why Alex prefers institutional histories to spy novels 46:00 — Award-winning history versus history with “genre juice” 48:56 — Ratings, completion rates and the final reckoning 52:03 — Will Alex ever open the book? 53:43 — The Caucasus section of the bookshelf 55:35 — What Robin and Alex have actually been reading 56:44 — The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan and Ezra Klein 59:05 — Next time: Andrew Jackson and American Lion Mentioned in this episode “Christopher Nolan’s Trojan Horse” — The Ezra Klein Show (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/christopher-nolans-trojan-horse/id1548604447?i=1000779524498)

5. 

   4 Aug 2026

   "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf

   The podcast becomes therapy as Robin reckons with one of the biggest lies about books he has ever told—and the guilt that has blocked him ever since from finishing Virginia Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness classic. NOTE: SPOILERS THROUGHOUT Robin and Alex explore the perilously high stakes of buying flowers, hosting dinner parties and pretending to have read books to impress people. Along the way, they celebrate Woolf’s astonishing sentences, question whether anything actually happens in Mrs Dalloway, quarrel with the Guardian’s 100 greatest novels, and diagnose Alex’s deeper problem: he may not like fiction. Finally, Robin makes a legally non-binding commitment to finish the book by 2030. 00:00 — Equal-opportunity non-readers 01:13 — What actually happens in Mrs Dalloway? 03:42 — Virginia Woolf: genius, snob and literary juggler 08:11 — Clarissa’s loves, choices and dinner party 15:53 — The epic stakes of buying the flowers yourself 20:47 — The lie that stopped Robin finishing the book 26:28 — Why people pretend to have read great books 29:36 — The problem with leaving the stream of consciousness 30:42 — Quarrelling with the 100 greatest novels 38:22 — Does Alex actually like fiction? 39:38 — Will either of them finish Mrs Dalloway? 44:02 — Where to read Woolf performatively 46:00 — New arrivals for the unread pile 49:00 — Next time: the terrifyingly enormous The Eighth Life Chapters

6. 

   23 Jul 2026

   Between Two Millstones: Sketches of Exile 1974-1978 (2018) by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

   The books aren't getting any shorter, but the cuts are getting deeper. Alex rushed out to buy this book the moment it came out, having waited decades for a translation. He didn't make it past page 30. What happened?In this episode, Robin and Alexander explore Between Two Millstones, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s account of his first four years in Western exile. They trace his extraordinary journey from the Soviet prison system to literary fame, his bewildering arrival amid the Western media circus, and his growing frustration with the society that had celebrated him as a dissident.Why did the author of the accessible One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich increasingly produce books that almost nobody finished? What did Solzhenitsyn see in Switzerland, Vermont and the archives of Stanford’s Hoover Institution? And why did his notorious 1978 Harvard address transform him from a Cold War hero into an awkward, seemingly ungrateful critic of the West?Along the way, Robin presents the Goodreads evidence for just how profoundly unread Between Two Millstones remains; Alexander explains why he bought it in the first place; and both consider whether Solzhenitsyn was unfairly dismissed, temperamentally impossible—or simply constitutionally incapable of telling people what they wanted to hear.Timestamps00:00 Introducing Solzhenitsyn and Between Two Millstones03:29 The incredibly obscure book that even Solzhenitsyn readers haven’t read05:45 Using Goodreads to measure which books people actually finish07:07 Why readers complete One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich10:01 The scale—and strange power—of The Gulag Archipelago15:23 Only 41 ratings: the astonishing unreadness of Between Two Millstones18:06 Why Alexander rushed out to buy the book—and stopped at page 3021:23 Solzhenitsyn’s life before exile and the memoir’s historical setting23:42 From Soviet prison to an overwhelming Western media circus27:51 How isolation shaped the mind and habits of a Soviet dissident30:25 Switzerland, Vermont, Stanford and the expanding Red Wheel35:35 Ranking Russian writers—and Solzhenitsyn’s revealing encounter with Nabokov39:39 Why the West wanted a simpler, more grateful Cold War hero42:41 The Harvard address that destroyed Solzhenitsyn’s Western reputation46:19 His case against Western legalism, materialism and cultural exhaustion51:34 Caught between the two millstones of communism and the West52:43 The Red Wheel, Russia’s collapse and the warnings nobody followed55:29 Was Solzhenitsyn treated unfairly—or was he simply impossible?57:49 Would Solzhenitsyn have been the perfect Substack writer?01:00:19 Where should an unread Solzhenitsyn go on the bookshelf?01:01:32 Will Alexander ever finish it—and why is he buying another one?01:03:59 Recent reading and the announcement of Mrs Dalloway as the next book

7. 

   25 Jun 2026

   The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960) by William Shirer

   Alex and Robin take a fun trip to a Dad book classic, a history that sold 1 million copies when it was released and has since been attacked by almost every professional historian of Hitler in the 8 decades since.

8. 

   8 Jun 2026

   Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) by Thomas Piketty

   We're coming into our new season with one of the best-selling economics books ever, the best-selling book ever from the Harvard University Press ever and a hall-of-famer. Has any book since the OG "Capital" (Marx's version) ever had this much impact while being read so little? The 1%... The evils of inequality... Piketty put billionaires on everyone's radar as an economic problem in their own right. Alex has bought the book and failed to finish it twice. What motivated him to buy it? What does he remember about it? Why don't people mention Piketty in conversation, when his ideas seem to be everywhere? Why is France not producing the same amount of intellectuals as they used to? Do you need to read the whole book when it's basic argument is so easy to understand that people repeat it without thinking? Will Alex pick it up again? And what does Piketty himself think of the book?

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Spotify

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

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Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.