Book Spider

This week, we discuss Böll's compelling but messy multigenerational, German POV reflection on the World Wars, evil, and their impact on the lives of common people. 

This episode, the Book Spider gang discusses an early suspense / psychological thriller novel, Rebecca, which deals with the melancholia a nameless narrator experiences when she marries a rich man and moves to his huge estate on a whim, only to find that the memories of her husband's first wife haunt the very ground upon which she walks. 

This week we're dissecting a book which mixes fiction and nonfiction in ways which are enigmatic, compelling, and -- to some readers -- morally suspicious. Benjamin Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World follows the fictionalized biographies of several scientists and mathematicians as they discover the principles which become quantum mechanics. This odd genre hybrid is admirable, gripping...

This week, we discuss Ferris's famous "we" novel about late 2000s office space culture, and get briefly melancholic about what work friends felt like in the pre-pandemic world. 

This episode, which discusses the modern-day sci-fi classic Eifelheim, features a rarity: all three podcasters agreeing on the quality of the text. Enjoy!

In this episode the three Spiders do their damnedest to wrap their heads around Lookout Cartridge, which is generally agreed to be the best novel by Joseph McElroy, an enigmatic postmodernist who is often considered an underrated peer of DeLillo, Pynchon, Gass, Gaddis, and the rest of the '60s and '70s greats. 

This week, we discuss Calvino's willful commitment to celebrate the act of reading by refusing to give readers what they want - over and over and over again. 

In this episode, we compare two novels with dog protagonists and discuss form, technique, and how a writer can represent nonhuman minds.

The Book Spider crew puzzles over Tanya Tagaq's Split Tooth, a novelish work whose mixture of bleak slice-of-life vignettes with a more fantastic, spiritual register seems like it might be magical realism (but definitely probably isn't). Are we ill-equipped to understand this work, or are we bringing the wrong tools for the job? Check out the episode for the answer, if such a thing exists. In the...

In this episode, we discuss the dreamy, expansive, magical, and somehow also frustrating Martin Dressler, as well as some right and wrong ways to criticize capitalist systems. 

In this episode, we discuss the intriguing, awesome memoir Road Song by Natalie Kusz. Check it out, if you want to be impressed.

No One is Talking About This is a hilarious, moving and disorienting novel about communication and the search for authentic experience in contemporary networked and mediated Western life, and how one woman's encounter with tragedy brings her back to a more human way of being. Or is that an oversimplification? 

In this episode, Hans and Patrick patiently butcher and then discard the disappointing cuts of Chris's pick, Waterland - a novel he's sure he remembers liking, the first time he read it.

In this episode, Chris, Hans, and I discuss Orwell's hilarious Coming Up for Air, the best of his lesser known novels.

Take a trip up the apartment building of death with J.G. Ballard's classic tale of social disintegration, High Rise. Scrupulously faithful to the cold details of modern mechanized life while ignoring the very idea of psychological verisimilitude, High Rise is a brilliant scummy head trip, easy to follow but hard to truly understand, and we do our best to tease out its many secrets.

In this episode, the Book Spider crew discusses Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis, which is deals with haircuts, getting tazed, self immolation, the dehumanizing aspects of capitalism, and where limousines go at night when they're not in use during the day. 

In this episode, the Book Spider crew discusses PKD's A Scanner Darkly, which deals with addiction, authority, and the nature of identity. Enjoy!

Can Xue's Love in the New Millennium is a dense, confusing novel which portrays a complex web of relationships with no clear center, and lacks a conventional protagonist. It is, perhaps, a fitting choice for our first episode under the new name Book Spider.

In this episode, we chat about Michael Chrichton's novel Sphere, which Hans claims is the only one of the popular novelist's books that has depth enough for an extended discussion.

In this episode, Chris, Hans, and I discuss Dana Spiotta's Eat the Document, a novel that tells the story of two activists through shifting experiences and time periods. Check it out.

In this episodes, Hans, Chris, and I discuss Keith Gessen's A Terrible Country, which is a novel that explores corruption in modern day Russia. Check it out.

In this episode, we discuss a novel that explores Nietzschean philosophy in the context of two Japanese schoolkids who are subjected to ruthless bullying.

In this episode, we discuss the classic novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Turns out, it's kind of problematic.

In this episode, we discuss William Shakespeare's Othello and refer to Paula Marantz Cohen's Of Human Kindness for critical context.

In this episode, Chris, Hans, and I discuss Pola Oloixarac's hilarious Mona, a satire of academia as well as a comment on the spiritual condition of woman. Note to listeners: I mistakenly refer to Oloixarac as Peruvian in this episode, when she is in fact Argentine.