Cracked Spines

Spookiness can be a November thing too. This week, Sarah and Amelia discuss what happens when you get a house that's just Bad. Like just the most toxic of vibes.  Where people die inside the house, sure, but that's almost incidental to why the house sucks. Amelia loves only the quietest and slowest of horror movies. Sarah expresses some strong disappointment with one of the staple works...

This week, we’re talking symbiotes! Venom! Parasites! I Married A Lizard Man! Venom! Honestly mostly Venom! What is it about having an alien consciousness riding tandem in your noggin that sparks such joy? We read virtually all we could find in the symbiote/host dynamic, from the actual Venom comics to Stephanie Meyer’s The Host. Sarah unironically compares the Venom movies to Lawrence of Arabia a...

Can we talk about Disco Elysium? I've been dying to talk about Disco Elysium. A video game technically, but like, counterargument, all you do in it is read and think and embarrass yourself, and that sounds like a book to me. If Victor Hugo had made video games, he'd have made Disco Elysium. Anyway Sarah would through herself in front of a bullet for this particular piece of media, and sh...

Hey remember those short stories in English class that are outstandingly good and extremely messed up? We certainly do! (Or, Sarah does and Amelia has goldfish memory probably as a result of playing World of Warcraft for so many years.) We're talking about those dark lil short stories you read fifteen years ago and have thought about every day since. Amelia ponders the question of hubris. Sar...

The same way that a pony is APPARENTLY not just a baby horse (????), a novella is far more than a smaller version of a novel. This week your hosts read a whole smattering of the little suckers, from the agonizing exorcisms in Prosper's Demon to the epic worldbuilding of The Empress of Salt and Fortune. What makes a novella great? What makes a novella unsatisfying? As usual, we're no expe...

Can we talk to you about Ethan Winters? We've been dying to talk to you about Ethan Winters. Look, we're big book people over here, but unfortunately there's no form of storytelling we've recently encountered that demands discussion more than whatever the hell is going on in these games. We got mold. We got #girlboss.  We got the weirdest approaches to worldbuilding you've...

This week, we're going full-on, all-out  id . The kinds of books that speak directly to your most basic, primal fiction desires, like bed sharing or parasitic fungus. You know, normal things. Sarah and Amelia talk about a few books they've read that really just hit the spot. Amelia exudes her usual natural calm and doesn't get stressed out over extremely minor matters. Sarah enjoys...

What is cosmic horror, and what makes it so effective? After last week's episode on Lovecraftian horror, we're diving into cosmic horror as a separate entity from Lovecraft--and yes, we then proceed to discuss more Lovecraftian horror for the first half of the episode. Also including Sarah's potential clown fetish, Amelia's unquestionable mushroom fetish, and a joke about henta...

Can we talk about H.P. Lovecraft's sex life? Because we've been dying to talk about H.P. Lovecraft's sex life. And apparently, so has this person who wrote a literal article about it. Yes, we spend an inordinate amount of time talking about this. In preparation for this episode Sarah and Amelia read H. P. Lovecraft's work for the very first time, and proceed to tear into the ma...

Sarah strongarms Amelia into reading one of her favorite books from last year, and to both their surprise Amelia liked it. This week we're talking Weird Points of View, from the plural first person of Julie Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic to The Mountain Goats to second person novels to Sarah's dim memory of Stargate SG-1 fanfic. Also there's like. A lot of discussion of a par...

Competitions aren't about who wins or loses, which is something you only write if you lost the competition. Sarah and Amelia sorted through their horrendously overdue library books and competed to finish their book(s) first. Who won? Well, again, it's just about reading books that you normally wouldn't and also it wasn't really  a competition and also let's do a rematch ri...

During lockdown, we took advantage of all our free time to better ourselves. Just kidding! We worked our way through Karl Urban's entire filmography with a thirst that would make more sense if either of us were attracted to him. A diversion in our podcast about books to talk about everything but books as we discuss (confess) our real passions of last year. Featuring: oops it's Supernatur...

Will no one protect the semi-organic killing construct? This week we read The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells in preparation for the release of Fugitive Telemetry. Folks, we love Murderbot! And we're not afraid to say it! Multiple times, in increasingly ear-piercing decibels, thus undercutting the fact that we literally recorded this in a blanket fort to try and get better audio! Whoops! Al...

One benefit of living in a society beset by plague: lots of extra time for reading. In this episode we talk through all we read this year, from life-affirming Pulitzer-winners to lesbian romance. Yes, we talk about Supernatural. No, we don't want this either.  Support the show

Yes, we are still a book podcast, no, this has nothing to do with books at all, but y'all? We have got to talk about the CW television show, Supernatural . Sarah and Amelia take a humiliating dive into their history with Supernatural in light of the show's finale (was it always this bad? yes but also no but also absolutely yes) and explore the hottest conspiracy theory since Johnlock. Sa...

Welcome to Cracked Spines, where every book is an orc lesbian regency romance novel, that's our thing now. In terms of the emerging OLRR genre, Charlotte Rogan's The Lifeboat tragically fails the Shagrat test (in that no two orcs never speak to each other about something other than eating flesh); however, seeing as it is a novel about a bunch of women trapped in an over-capacity life boa...

Two shipwrecks, one island, God’s little social experiment. In 1864, two separate vessels wrecked on two separate sides of Auckland Island. One group of survivors built a house, started night classes, and served four-course meals of sea lion. The other was down for cannibalism pretty much from the get-go. This week we read Island of the Lost by Joan Druett, the true story of one of the most fascin...

This week, we tackle the father of shipwreck narratives, Robinson Crusoe, and boy! Oh boy! Whatever your expectations for this book were, scale them down. Then make them a little lower. Discussion points include: the centrality of the slave trade to the plot of this novel, Robinson Crusoe's one moment of acceptance of other cultures, and why God keeps punishing him. Featuring a side trip into...

“We can’t keep talking about Javert,” we say, and then talk about nothing else for 30 minutes. That’s right, it’s another Les Mis episode. We know, we’re sorry. Sarah flew across the country so we could drive across the state and finally, for the first time, see the live production. Featuring the all-new take that Marius is good actually, and the classic take that Jean Valjean is the hottest chara...

What does it mean to be a woman? Well firstly, how big are your flesh-shredding mandibles? This week, your hosts read Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, and dig into questions of gender, violence, oppression, and proboscises. Support the show

We do not drink...wine. Unless the wine is extremely cheap and mixed with orange juice. Amelia and Sarah were briefly together in the same state and used that time to watch television, suffer mightily from the common cold, and slowly chug one (1) drink each. This week detours into Netflix's Castlevania, starring Richard Armitage at his sloppiest, Dracula and Lisa's accidental lovechild,...

Did rice crops create the most prolific maneater in recorded human history? Your hosts delve in to the story of the Champawat tiger, a creature which terrorized Indian and Nepalese villages for a period of ten years, evading large-scale efforts to hunt it down and ultimately killing an estimate of 436 people. Featuring the factors which make a maneater, a real-life musical instrument straight out...

This week, Sarah and Amelia discuss Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, and spent A Lot of of time agonizing over the high highs and the very low lows of revisiting old favorites. Amelia reveals herself as the ultimate mold queen. Sarah grapples with her love for this book in the face of YIKES YIKES YIKES moments and then accidentally talks her way into a queer theory revelation. Here&a...

And on the Seventh Day, a new episode appeared. This week your hosts watch the new Good Omens TV series and kick around their favorite Crowley and Aziraphale fancasts: namely, Philip Quast as both. Also featuring the struggle of going back to media you loved as a kid, the extremely cursed abandoned Good Omens script, and the notebook in which Sarah documented both her religious awakening and her a...

This week, Amelia and Sarah decide to defy God and Church alike to read The Golden Compass. Amelia struggles to find herself in the animal kingdom. Sarah raises questions about daemon sexuality that should have gone unasked. We also talk about things besides the daemons, but frankly we all understand what the most important part of this series is. Support the show