The Second Captains Book Club is Back for 2022
Our first episode of the ‘I’ll Tell You Who Wrote It’ Second Captains Book Club of 2022 is coming next month and it features one of the seminal sports books of all time – The Fight by Norman Mailer.
It’s a riveting first-hand account of arguably the most famous sporting event in history – the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle between Ali & Foreman – and this one scored heavily when we asked you guys for book club suggestions on Twitter recently. Thank you all for the brilliant response to that shoutout – you can see the many other suggestions and our full list of reviewed titles below:
Our ‘I’ll Tell You Who Wrote It’ Book Club has featured these 12 books so far. What title would you like us to review next? Send us your suggestions below?
You can listen to any of our previous book club pods with our special guest reviewers right here?https://t.co/mD4Y3Ol7q0 pic.twitter.com/t4oN6xArGb
— Second Captains (@SecondCaptains) January 11, 2022
Mailer himself was one of the great novelists of the 20th century but also a hugely controversial figure, known for the chaos and violence of his private life – just this month his son Michael wrote an article about his father allegedly getting “cancelled” by his publisher and this is more than 14 years after his death – so this chat is going to be about The Fight but also about how we view the legacy & literature of a man who was so talented yet so clearly problematic.
To have that conversation we had to choose our reviewer wisely and we think we’ve done that with Catriona Crowe – she’s the former head of special projects at the National Archives of Ireland and one of the country’s most prominent social and cultural commentators. Some of you may remember Catriona from our RTE Radio 1 show, where she was one of our favourite ever guests. You can listen to that interview here.
Join us for another episode of Second Captains Saturday tomorrow at 10am on RTÉ Radio One ?
Hot on the tail of Senator George Mitchell in the race for the title of Ireland’s Greatest Non-Sportsperson Sportsperson is historian and Ireland’s premier archivist Catriona Crowe ? pic.twitter.com/z8fIJJu7lg
— Second Captains (@SecondCaptains) July 19, 2019
So go and get The Fight now! We’ll put the show out in the last week of February which should give you plenty of time (the book is pretty short too).
Keep your suggestions coming into us via Twitter or email – we’re gonna do four titles over the course of the year, and we’ll give you plenty of notice for each of them.
You can listen back to any of our previous book club reviews and see a list of the classics we’ve discussed simply by clicking here.
You must become a member to listen to our book club shows and all our programming throughout the week. Simply join the Second Captains World Service today, it’s independent, commercial-free and member-led with feature interviews, breaking news, Richie Sadlier’s Player’s Chair, The Politics Podcast and lots of added extras. You’ll also be supporting the development of our longer-form work, like our recent international series ‘Where Is George Gibney?’.
Packie Bonner and sexy thoughts are featured heavily in today’s Isolating Podcast with @phlaimeaux ????https://t.co/42H8wyLNSO pic.twitter.com/qozNPKum6v
— Second Captains (@SecondCaptains) January 24, 2022