Explore every episode of the podcast The Five Minutes Late Book Club

This week we discuss Thomas Hobbes famous work of political philosophy 'Leviathan'. We cover part one of the book and will cover part two next week.

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This week we discuss Plato's most famous work 'The Republic'.

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This week we discuss James Baldwin's debut novel 'Go Tell it on the Mountain'.

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This week we discuss 'Small Things Like These' by Claire Keegan.

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This week we wrap up our four part discussion of The Brothers Karamazov, and discuss it's profound themes that are still very much alive in our modern times.

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Part 2 of our Fyodor Dostoevsky 'The Brothers Karamazov' discussion.

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This week we launch part one of our four part serious covering Fyodor Dostoevsky's masterpiece 'The Brothers Karamazov' and how it gives a unique insight into the soul of Russia and the philosophies underlying the countries actions today.

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This week we discuss C.S. Lewis' masterfully written book 'A Grief Observed'.

This week we discuss Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical classic 'Beyond Good and Evil'.

This week we discuss As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner.

This week we discuss contemporary vs classic literature.

This week we discuss F. Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby.

This week we discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.

This week we discuss All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque.

This week we discuss Virginia Woolf's masterpiece novel Mrs Dalloway.

This week we discuss 'The Remains Of The Day' by Kazuo Ishiguro.

This week we are discussing Simone Weil's incredible essay 'Human Personality', which is one of the most important pieces of writing that everyone should read and think about - especially today.

This week we look at Flannery O'Connor's masterpiece 'A Good Man Is Hard To Find'. A short story that asks the tough questions all people regardless of faith should ask.

Especially around Easter we as people of faith must avoid just celebrating the resurrection of Christ, but also ask hard and challenging questions about the sins of us as people, and the fact that we are the ones who sent Jesus to Hell for three days, Easter must be a time for tough questions, not mere celebration.

This week we are discussing Faust.

It is a story much older than Goethe. The first version was published more than four hundred years ago based on a German magician, Johan Georg Faust.

You know the story right: man sells his soul to the Devil. Wrong. Faust does not make a deal with the Devil there is no Faustian pact. He in fact makes a wager.

Faust is bored. He is a man of science and reason. As he says two souls dwell in his breast: one clings to the world, the other reaches for the divine. He curses hope and belief.

Faust longs for the thrill of it all. He makes a bet with Mephistopheles: show me the world’s pleasures if I tire of it, my soul be damned.

“If I ever lay me on a bed of sloth in peace,

That instant let me for existence cease.”

It is no spoiler to say, that tragedy awaits.

Why does this book still resonate? Because it is a magnificent work of art. Goethe is considered a rival to Shakespeare as the greatest of all writers. Goethe himself, was indebted to the Bard. Whatever. There is room for both.

For those who have never read Goethe, please do. For those who have, read again. For all of our technology. For the obscene number of books published each year, none rival this.

In a world absent God; a world of despair, Camus asks, what makes us human? Camus asks: “What is a rebel? A man who says no, but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation.”

Think about that. I will say no to this awful world of mad leaders and hateful writers. I will say no to the imperative of picking sides and choosing whose life matters more. I will say no to those who desecrate the beauty of language to shout louder.

But I will not renounce the world. I will stand astride the ugliness. Choose not to share platforms with charlatans. And I will say yes, to the belief that words spoken to the heart will still be heard.

That’s Camus.