Lucky's Book Lounge

CULTS: The most important thing I learned while researching this topic: people do not join cults; they find themselves in one. No one in their right mind would readily/blindly join a cult. But we are all susceptible to finding ourselves in one. High control groups are experts in targeting and exploiting our vulnerabilities. We all have periods in our lives when we feel alone and lonely, we feel de...

I did not do this book justice. I encourage you to read it for yourself. It’s titled Strange Pictures so it is important for you to look at the pictures. Dissect them yourself. I read this in one sitting, and couldn’t stop. It’s one of the best books I have read in a while. This is a masterpiece. A story that spans decades, with different actors who leave you wondering; how is this connected? Is i...

It's our One Year Anniversary!!! We've done it. Not all books I read make it to the podcast. And it doesn't have anything to do with my liking or rating of the book. The question I always ask myself is can I retell this story for 20 plus minutes? I might love the story but find that I can't retell it, especially pure thrillers. Or if I don't know how to talk about the subject matter. Or it's too m...

My longest episode yet. I should have cut this into two episodes, but oh well. Ten short stories. From freaky pregnancies to talking animals, cursed objects to doomed humans to mythical creatures, from rogue AI to haunted houses. The magic of short stories lies in the art of fitting the required information into very few pages. Every line carries its own weight, no words to waste. Every story is a...

This may contain spoilers. A man's wife suddenly changes her lifestyle. The husband decides he is the ultimate victim of this change. He married her to be one thing and since she has become so inconsiderate of his expectations of her, why should he remain married to her? Why would he be obligated to try to understand her, perhaps even help her? A man develops a dangerous obsession. It has the pote...

This was a very uncomfortable read. I tried very hard to keep the episode light but I am not sure I succeeded. Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica shows how quickly humanity can normalize previously unacceptable beliefs. It also shows how easy it is to oppress and exploit a group of people once you decide they are different from you. This book is set in a fictional future where mankind has...

And to others, it's 232.78 Degree Celsius (erupts in laughter, pats myself on the back.) 'It was a pleasure to burn.' Guy Montag in Fahrenheit 451. Fahrenheit 451 - the temperature at which book paper starts to burn. I was deeply concerned by the recent reports of AI companies destroying copies of books to scan them for their models. Then keeping the copies, some of them very rare, in their privat...

Have you ever thought about what hell would feel like? You do not have to believe in any religion to imagine what your worst experience would be. Hell surpasses religion. Real hell is unimaginable because eternity is not something our minds can understand. Eternal suffering is scary as a concept but can we really comprehend it? While reading A Short Stay in Hell by Stephen L. Peck, I tried to unde...

This is a collection of thoughts, opinions, and the occasional fangirling. This episode is supposed to serve as a kind of bridge between the last episode (Severance by Ling Ma) and the next episode (A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck). The two books are not connected in any way, they just happen to be next to each other on my nonexistent reading list. I had some thoughts related to Severance t...

This book was a total surprise. The first time I heard about it, I assumed it was the inspiration for the TV show Severance. It isn't, but it's every bit as gripping and satisfying. It captures the quiet beginning of the end in a full-blown epidemic world; imagine COVID-19, but with a brutal mortality rate. One of the most eerie things about this book is that it was released in 2018, well...

This is a love story. Imagine a world where corporations have conquered the solar system. Mars is where you go for fun. The moon, for parties. Saturn? I vacationed there last month. Venus is for honeymoons. Now imagine those same corporations have conquered something else: your mind. Feednet is the internet, wired straight into your brain, stitched in before you're even born. It's how you...

I sat down to talk about a book. I ended up on a 30-minute rant about the end of human intelligence. Sorry not sorry. This week's pick is The Feed by Nick Clark Windo, and yes, I do actually talk about it, for about ten minutes, promise. But then two real-world quotes hijacked the episode entirely: Sam Altman on intelligence becoming a utility, metered out like electricity or water. And a (fabrica...

Have you ever found something and felt, "this was meant for me"? That's how I felt reading The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey. You have to go in blind on this one. It's that good. I don't have the words to describe it without giving anything away, so I won't try. This is a literary sci-fi thriller about identity, and that's all I'll tell you about the plot. Read it before you listen to my take on this...

What if every single moment of your life; every word, every choice, every heartbreak, every mistake, is being recorded? This data is not just tracked but is used. It is fed into a system designed to optimize your entire existence. That's the world Ryan David Ginsburg builds in In the Algorithm We Trust. From the moment you're born, your life becomes data. Your relationships aren't just...

This is a sequel to Episode 4. We continue the journey of several black women trying to find their spaces. This episode contains a lot of swearing. I have never realized how much I use the F word in my daily register. I record the same way I speak, and I am not an excellent editor, so I could not take them out, and if I did, it would distort the flow. Which reminds me, there are several mistakes i...

The Chain by Adrian McKinty We all have our biggest fears. Something that we feel that if it happened to us, we would not survive. But sometimes, for those unlucky enough to experience them, we find that those fears are nothing compared to reality. For parents, the big fears are usually getting a call that your child has been in an accident, your child is missing, or the stuff of movies, your chil...

Part Two: Baby Nicole This is the final chapter in our four-part journey through Gilead. By now, we understand something important: regimes like Gilead do not collapse overnight. They are weakened slowly and painfully through years of resistance, sacrifice and ordinary people refusing to let the bastards grind them down. Sometimes, the people fighting back never see victory. Sometimes they die bel...

Part One: Aunt Lydia You are now familiar with Gilead. You understand how it works, how the women are oppressed and exploited, reduced to their bodies. You try to understand the Wives. You excuse the Marthas. You even make sense of the Jezebels; they are surviving the only way they can. But there are the Aunts. The only women who, for some reason, are allowed to read and write. The women who train...

Part Two: Offred Imagine waking up one day and everything has changed. The rights and freedoms you enjoyed, took for granted even, erased. You are no longer a person. You are considered a national treasure. But make no mistake, it's not you who is treasured, just your body. Because of what it can produce. You are not protected; you are controlled. Step out of line, and your body is no longer yours...

Part One: The Structure of Gilead. A totalitarian regime. A patriarchal theocracy. A world where power is absolute and entirely male. You’ve heard the arguments before . That the problems of modern society can be traced back to women. To feminism. To giving women too much freedom, too much voice(hello manosphere). But what if those ideas were taken to the extreme? What if women lost everything? We...

In this episode, we explore the memoir When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. This is the story of a man who did everything right. A life shaped by curiosity, discipline, and purpose, leading him from literature to medicine, and to the brink of becoming a neurosurgeon. And then, everything breaks. Diagnosed with cancer in the final stretch of his residency, he is forced to confront the very qu...

This is a sequel, kind of, to Episode 13: Lightseekers by the same author. You can still listen to the two episodes individually as the stories are different. A woman is dead. Her husband has been arrested for her murder. But this is neither an ordinary marriage nor an ordinary suspect. The accused is a powerful bishop, the revered leader of one of the country’s largest mega-churches, a man worshi...

This is my favourite love story of all time. And like all truly unforgettable love stories… it’s a tragedy. I keep coming back to this story because it captures the kind of love I hope to experience someday. Not the kind that’s extraordinary because it ends in a neat little 'happily ever after,' but the kind that’s extraordinary because of how two people choose to spend the time they’re given. Bec...

It’s Valentine’s week. The air feels heavier; perfumed with roses, promises, and the soft illusion of forever. For lovers, it’s candlelight dinners. Sweet nothings. Slow kisses. Grand gestures. For singles, it’s quieter. A glass of wine. A brave smile. A little self-love. A little jealousy. A stubborn, flickering hope that maybe , just maybe, next year will be different. And then there’s us. The o...

You’ve seen it before. You may have even stood in the crowd. A phone disappears. A bag is ripped away. A wallet is gone. This time, the thief doesn’t escape. He’s caught. Surrounded. Nowhere to run. Anger spreads fast. Not just for this moment, but for every loss before it. Every theft that went unanswered. Every crime that went unpunished. Faces harden. Voices rise. Maybe this is the one who stol...