Book Spider

In which the Spiders ponder Couples, by the now-underappreciated John Updike, a breathtakingly wrought and shockingly lovely work that evinces a now-alien disinterest in judging its characters.

In which we close our discussion of one of Bolanyo's masterpiece. 

In which we discuss the lesser discussed parts of this giant, shaggy novel, and stop just before the door to Hell.

In which we discuss The Part About the Critics, section 1 of Roberto Bolaño's posthumous masterpiece, "2666."

In this episode, the Spiders discuss A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe. While interesting as an historical artifact, the novel leaves at least one of the Spiders bored.

In which the Spiders take on Vincenzo Latronico's  Perfection,  a perfectly satisfactory novel which perhaps doesn't give them the sense of mystery and intrigue that some readers have experienced.

In which we discuss the brutal, hilarious, and deeply moving stop motion film, "Mad God," in development for 30 years and finally released in 2024. 

In this episode, the Book Spider hosts ask what genre and literary fiction are, and they wonder about the quality of a sci-fi book like The Left Hand of Darkness.

In which the Spiders discuss Charles Dickens's unwieldy, uneven Bleak House, how it may or may not be emblematic of the larger decline of literate culture, and whether we're sure we'd miss it.

In which Hans gets a little upset about Chris and Patrick's responses to the album kew. rhone. by John Greaves, Peter Blegvad and Lisa Hermans.

In which the boys discuss Pynchon's delightful drug-haze California novel, Inherent Vice, and Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation to film. Both are good hangs. And honestly, perhaps uniquely, are better for being read and watched together than on their own. 

In this episode, the Spiders discuss the devastating Atonement, by Ian McEwan.

In which the Spiders discuss two email newsletters hybridizing fiction and nonfiction, Sam Kriss's "The law that can be named is not the true law" and Naomi Kanakia's "Lonely Island Adventures," two pieces whose uncertain mingling of fact and invention may either bolster or undermine their points and their readability.

In which we discuss the hangout novel/non-novel (should be a memoir? a collection of lyric essays?), and the intense fall-off from her masterpiece, "No one is talking about this."

In this episode, the Spiders chat about Homage to Catalonia, Orwell's journalistic account of the Spanish Civil War. This memoir may in fact be his best work.

The Spiders briefly discuss Clinical Trials,  Violet Lucca's scholarly analysis of David Cronenberg's filmography, focusing primarily on the downsides of theory-oriented analysis, then go into more depth on the relationship between Cronenberg's new film  The Shrouds  and his earlier work  Naked Lunch.

In which we debate whether Polanski's grounded interpretation is better than Joel Cohen's hallucinatory interpretation, but ultimately circle back to the original play and the undying ritual of embodying, ingesting, and interpreting it. 

In this episode, the Spiders discuss Post Office, the first novel of infamous womanizing, drunkard poet Charles Bukowski. While it shows some promise in a few areas, it is, overall, pretty bad.

In which the Spiders consider Jayson Greene's  Unworld,  a lesson in the perils of blending the techniques and approaches of literary fiction and sci-fi, with reference to an earlier pick, the similarly shaky  In Ascension.

In which we discuss whether Moshfegh pulls off the Ocean's 11 of torture porn.

In this episode, the Book Spider hosts discuss The Dwarf, an eighty-year-old Swedish novel that may be perfect.

In which Hans's initial enchantment with Martin MacInnes's In Ascension dissipates on a re-read. This novel attempts to mesh literary techniques with sci-fi themes, exploring environmental catastrophe, time travel, and multiple perspectives on family trauma, but does the ambition of its hybridization doom its effectiveness? 

In which we politely drag Harvey's lovely new novel through the mud despite repeated efforts to say nicer things about it. It really is quite lovely to spend time with! We just wished...there was more to it. 

In this episode, the Spiders think about the stories in Camus' excellent collection, Exile and the Kingdom.

In which the spiders approach Bruce Wagner's The Marvel Universe: Origin Stories, a book whose own origin as a victim of cancel culture overshadows its alternately daring and disappointing story choices.