We’re joined by Sammy and Emily of the TOO SCARY, DIDN’T WATCH horror movie podcast this week to talk about Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho. None of us had an amazing time with this read, partly because the book seems to revel in its extreme violence and misogyny. But be sure to tune in to TSDW later this week to hear what we all thought about the Christian Bale-led movie adaptation!
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Leslie Feinberg’s debut novel is an intersectional bildungsroman about Jess Goldberg, a butch lesbian navigating the constellation of oppression that was the United States in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. It’s an overtly political novel, and it argues that a certain level of bleak hope may be necessary for survival. This cold comfort is balanced, however, with Feinberg’s tender depictions of chosen families able to endure for decades.
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James isn't so much a retelling or corrective of Huck Finn as it is an expansion, a conversation with, a delving -- or so says Pulitzer Prize winner Percival Everett. Tune in to find out what happens when an author reads Huck Finn 15 times and then starts putting pen to paper.
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A dying preacher writes a (rather) long letter to his son. Another dying preacher’s son returns home, seeking…something. Salvation? Forgiveness? A balm? Robinson’s novel is a deeply considered portrait of a family of ministers, wrestling with the powers and limitations of their faith and fatherhood.
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This is another one of those historical books that could have resulted from a Wikipedia dive. This one's arguably based on a real historical event but with a non-real non-historical protagonist .
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Did you know the towering career of Joan Didion included several novels, many of which were driven by the same acerbic wit and insight that helped to anoint her as an essential voice in the New Journalism movement? Her second novel, Play It As It Lays, traffics in much of the same Hollywood/Los Angeles social destruction that powered her essays, but instead focuses in on the maddening, maddened Maria Wyeth - an actress whose star is waning with the gravitational force of a black hole.
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Booth Tarkington is one of only four authors to have won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction twice, and he’s the only one of those four authors who nobody has ever heard of. His aggressively old-fashioned views and his stories’ general fluffiness have helped keep him from enduring fame, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a spark of something here.
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Everyone get into two lines, break your bread, brush your teeth, get into bed, and listen to our episode about Ludwig Bemelmans’ original series of Madeline stories. We talk about the art’s blend of sketchy and beautiful, the rise of Pepito, and the voice acting in 90s educational CD-ROM games.
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We have to go back. Back to FORKS! To celebrate 700 episodes of our show, we decided to celebrate the tenth anniversary of a companion novel celebrating the tenth anniversary of Twilight. Meet Beaufort and Edythe, who very much resemble Bella and Edward, and the rest of the genderswapped cast who inhabit this novel that is definitely not all different from the original novel at all, no way.
We livestreamed this recording on April 25th. You can watch the archive at bit.ly/overdue700.
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This collection of short stories runs the gamut from biblical fiction to sci-fi mockumentary to "short story that inspired a very successful film named Arrival." Recurring themes include Creation, Thought, and Perception. Pretty heavy stuff! But Chiang tackles it all with creativity and flair.
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