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Ep 179 - 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami May 30, 2016

Show notes

It's alternate universes, murderous plots, and ghostwritten novels all the way down this week—1Q84 is Andrew's first Haruki Murakami novel, and there's a lot of good stuff here even if the book could stand to shed a couple hundred pages.

Come for the book talk, stick around for references to Highlights For Children, the Tostitos Bowl, and the usual nonsense.

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Ep 178 - The Call of the Wild, by Jack London May 23, 2016

Show notes

Get in touch with your inner wolf-dog and answer The Call of the Wild by Jack London!

We apologize that our Murakami episode will take another week, but we didn't want to leave you in the literary lurch. So we take a trip on the Yukon trail with one heck of a dog named Buck.

It's time to talk instinct, dog names, oyster pirates, and Calvin & Hobbes and John Locke from LOST.

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Ep 177 - Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton May 16, 2016

Show notes

There are dinosaurs! Lots of dinosaurs! And they rule Jurassic Park!

Michael Crichton's techno-thriller classic Jurassic Park kicked off a generation's dinomania. But it's also a chilling tale of science run amok. A story about what happens when advancement for advancement's sake breaks the rules of nature.

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Ep 176 - Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell May 09, 2016

Show notes

It's wall-to-wall horse talk this week, starting with a blow-by-blow analysis of the Kentucky Derby and moving on to Anna Sewell's classic Black Beauty.

Andrew wasn't expecting this tale to be told by a horse in the first-person perspective, but that's what Black Beauty is. As a warning against the dangers of horse abuse and drinking alcohol, it's actually quite effective.

This week's show is brought to you by kinyopoetry.com and "Lonely and Horny," a video series by Headgum co-creators Jake and Amir.

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Ep 175 - The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper May 02, 2016

Show notes

News at 11! The Dark is Rising! We repeat: the Dark IS Rising!

The second (and titular) entry in Susan Cooper's award-winning The Dark Is Rising sequence turns out to have been a perfect book for Children's Book Week. It's a young adult fantasy novel about a boy named Will Stanton who embarks on an epic quest to fight against the Dark with the powers of the Light.

It leads us to ask, why do kids gravitate towards stories with black-and-white morals? And why do people keep entrusting the fate of the universe to tweens?

Of course, we also find time to talk terrible movie adaptations, time tourists, Old Old things, and the trials of having holiday-adjacent birthdays.

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Ep 174 - The Hunchback of Notre Dame, by Victor Hugo Apr 25, 2016

Show notes

We're dipping back in the Victor Hugo well this week with his other best-known book The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Did you know that the book and the Disney movie don't end the same way?

Also on tap: road trips, games of tag, revisiting the poverty question from last week, and talking about Hugo's views on architecture vs. the printing press.

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Ep 173 - Eat Pray Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert (Bonus episode) Apr 21, 2016

Show notes

For this month's bonus episode, Suzannah and Laura (wives of Andrew and Craig, respectively) go on an extended overseas vacation to find themselves. At least, they try to do so vicariously through Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love. Along the way, they talk about the movie Coyote Ugly, their discomfort with the sort of "priv-lit" that Eat Pray Love has been accused of being, and where they would go and what they would do to find themselves if given the money and time. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ep 172 - Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo Apr 18, 2016

Show notes

Do you hear the podcast sing?/Singing the song of Hugo's book?/It is a book about some people who are sad and live in France!

It took us a while to finish Victor Hugo's classic novel Les Misérables, but that doesn't mean it wasn't worth it! Join us this week for a discussion of the book's inception and its lasting appeal.

Other talking points include zoo cuisine, D&D alignments and soul-crushing poverty. Uplifting, huh?

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Ep 171 - Mr. Peanut, by Adam Ross Apr 11, 2016

Show notes

Adam Ross’ Mr. Peanut is a novel about marriage and murder with a warped sense of time and reality, but it’s also a book where the whole is a bit less than the sum of its parts. Individual threads have interesting things to say about marriage and interpersonal relationships, but these threads don’t quite form into a cohesive whole.

We also chat a bit about our own marriages (including Craig’s, which is hot-off-the-presses), Timbits, and how we feel when authors tell readers how clever their work is instead of just showing us.

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Ep 170 - Star Wars: Aftermath, by Chuck Wendig (Bonus Episode) Apr 07, 2016

Show notes

For March's bonus show, friend of the show Eric Van Tassell swings by to chat about Chuck Wendig's novel Star Wars: Aftermath. Eric's staggering knowledge of all things Star Wars helps us talk about the colossal job handed to Wendig - namely, to write a compelling novel designed to generate excitement about all things Star Wars while also ignoring thirty years of "Expanded Universe" fiction. Naturally, the episode veers in and out of a discussion about the challenges inherent to writing companion fiction, such as balancing the expectations of a rabid fanbase. Also, Andrew attempts to sum up 7 Star Wars movies in just over 90 seconds. Buckle up!

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