30. Old people and books with Kate Camp
In this podcast episode, Kate Camp and I go nitpicking, grumbling and enthusing on the general topic of old people reading books and old people in books. Listen if you might be old one day. Because everything changes as you get older, including your reading habits.
My guest Kate Camp is a terrific poet and in New Zealand she’s well known and very popular because of a radio programme, Kate’s Klassics. Every month she used to re-read a classic book, like Anne of Green Gables or Pride and Prejudice or The Odyssey, and on Radio NZ she would do a wickedly funny commentary on that book.
That’s why I’ve asked Kate here to talk about reading. How reading may change as we get older. What we read, how we read, why we read, why we don’t read — and books that feature old people as protagonists. That sounds quite organised, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not. We wander all over the place, but always with a special interest in old people reading. Listen up for Kate’s origin myth of how she learned to read. We react in personal ways to Read NZ’s 2025 National Reading Survey. We cast about for very old protagonists in novels, and skip lightly over the current wave of book series set in retirement villages. We rave about a TV series and a couple of books that feature characters confronting their own old age.
Kate is wonderfully blunt at times. For instance, “In DIckens there’s a lot of old people but they’re all decrepit old wrecks.” “Subconsciously people think if you’re reading a book it’s more worthy than watching TV.”
Thanks for listening — catch you later! And if you like this podcast, please tell a friend.
Resources mentioned in this episode: old people and books
- Read NZ Te Pou Muramura—the organisation that promotes reading in New Zealand
- Horizon Research National Reading Survey 2025
- The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
- Grace and Frankie
- Vera Stanhope books by Anne Cleeve (actually Vera is middle aged, not old)
- The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishigura, audiobook read by Dominic West
- The Summer Before the Dark by Doris Lessing
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark