Cracked Spines

This week, Amelia and Sarah are laser-focused on the book. Unfortunately, it's because one half of the team hated the book. Sarah shares horrific facts about historical blood transfusion. Amelia makes a compelling case for useless men who love their wives. We both are ready and willing to die for the vampire-hunting cowboy. Support the show

This episode is all chianti, love darts, and apophallation as your hosts tuck into the latest installment in their obsession with cannibalism. From the all-you-can-eat buffet of insanity that is the animal kingdom to a deep dive into the culture of human cannibalism, there's a lot to sink your teeth into. Featuring spider sex diagrams, gender bias in scientific research, and Amelia desperatel...

This week, Sarah and Amelia discuss a work one of them has very passionate feelings about: the British television show Life on Mars. No, wait, they're talking about Les Mis again. No, wait, they're talking about Night Watch, part of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, and they're spinning theories that TPrat was waiting his whole career for some brave clever reader to figure ou...

This week, Amelia and Sarah read the tale of the least satisfying trip north since the time we tried to drive to Newfoundland. (Please don't ask us how late in the planning it was that we figured out it was an island.) Lament the loss of what seems to be thousands of dogs in this group project from hell. Like expedition leader Donald MacMillan, we literally can't imagine anyone not being...

Happy birthday, Victor Hugo! In celebration, your hosts spend this episode dragging the man's masterpiece Les Miserables through the mud of their mutual thirst. This is technically an episode about the musical, though Amelia may or may not have poured over all the parts of the book exclusively relevant to Javert. We just can't know. Featuring Les Mis humiliation at the hands of family me...

This week, things get heavy — heavy metal. Your hosts read Grady Hendrix's epic horror-ballad We Sold Our Souls, and honestly, it rocked. Featuring discussions of female anger, the power of music as an active influence, and the fact that Amelia had a crush on Durza from Eragon as a kid. You know, the evil ghost guy? Yeah, it was pretty niche. Support the show

This week your hosts spend a good long while debating the differences between zombies and vampires, stake out their claim on the post-apocalyptic trope market, and stray into a discussion about how religion created the apocalyptic genre but technology created the post-apocalypse. Support the show

Amelia and Sarah are back and more physically infirm than ever. This week, we discuss Scott Smith's travelogue gone wrong and offer good, constructive criticism on the name of both the book and the author. Amelia insists on going straight edge in emergency situations. Sarah's mostly just concerned about the time impact of all this plant murder on the local community. Support the show

The best gift is the one you yank off your own bookshelf in a panic because you weren't expecting this cousin to turn up for Christmas morning. Amelia and Sarah talk about their go-to gift books, the unbearable burden of Christmas cookies, and the big dick move of gifting people classic literature. We're sorry we talk about video games for the first ten minutes, but considering Sarah&apo...

Our latest pirate kick is halfway down the plank as we discuss the first two seasons of the epic television prequel to Treasure Island: Black Sails. Featuring Jack and Anne's jaeger name, Charles Vane as the Charlie Kelley of piracy, Alexander Hamilton's torrid pirate love affair 40 years before he was born, and the usual cursed takes. #GlintIsReal Support the show

Back in the same physical location for the first time in half a year, your hosts watch the underrated Disney classic Treasure Planet and Sarah has a fun and not-awful take which definitely doesn't ruin the entire movie forever. Also, every single adaptation of Treasure Island is immediately enhanced by assuming Flint's character motivations are the same as in Black Sails. Support the sho...

It’s a boy’s book for adventure boys! This week your hosts theoretically cover Treasure Island by Robert Louis "Bedroom Eyes" Stevenson, but not before they manage to botch the author’s nationality, the socio-political status of Ireland, and the main character’s literal actual name. We’re doing our best, guys. Let that both absolve and damn us. Also featuring fun facts about fo'c&ap...

Happy Halloween! Because it’s definitely still Halloween! Because we recorded and edited and posted the episode in a timely fashion because we’re diligent and good at things! And also, really, Halloween never has to end if you don’t want it to or are bad at deadlines. So here’s our Halloween special, on Halloween, about one of the scariest stories in English literature: The Haunting of Hill House,...

This week, Sarah and Amelia finally wrap up this chapter of the “disastrous mountain expeditions” saga we’ve taken you on for the past month. This time we return to the infamous Donner Party from a nonfiction perspective, with The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown. It’s a fantastic read packed with tons of relevant information and sensitively drawn portraits of human suffering, and by...

This week on Cracked Spines, Amelia and Sarah fail to finish the actual book they were supposed to read for reasons of varying validity, so Sarah walks Amelia through the other unhappy time in the mountains book she's read lately--the tale of the tragic Dyatlov Pass incident where nine Russian hikers met mysterious ends on a freezing night. Spoiler: it probably wasn't yeti. But spoiler p...

It's all bad cannibalism puns from here on out, folks. This week your hosts read The Hunger by Alma Katsu, a supernatural retelling of the ill-fated Donner Party expedition. Amelia speaks of cannibalism with a tremor of excitement in her voice, and Sarah kinkshames her by necessity. Support the show

This week, Sarah and Amelia fantasize about the perks of being (mostly) alone on an entire planet as they read Elizabeth Moon's Remnant Population. Featuring discussions of gender, ageism, and alien oral sex. Amelia says "self-actualization" at one point and it makes her feel very smart and cool. Support the show

This week on Cracked Spines, your hosts decided to spice up their Jurassic Park viewing experience by eating some (legal!) marijuana chocolate. Sarah proceeded to be trapped within a dying prison of flesh for the remainder of the two hour movie, and Amelia was a two dimensional shape. Here are our hot takes on that, and also dinosaurs. Also featuring oily mannequin baby birth, Steven Spielberg the...

Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park is a template for a beautiful socialist lesbian love colony, and this week on Cracked Spines, we uncork Amelia’s lifelong dinosaur fetish to explore why the capitalist fools of this novel couldn’t see it. Amelia slanders Ernest Shackleton, Sarah tries and fails to name a single correct dinosaur fact, and together we discover that this novel is a stealth fanfic of F...

In what may be the final episode in our polar exploration kick, Sarah watches the Broadway musical "Ernest Shackleton Loves Me," featuring Ernest Shackleton skype-calling a single mom in the 21st century, crawling out of her refrigerator, and talking about his dick size. So basically, Sarah's ideal musical. Also featuring bad passwords, Critical Role, and yes, as always, The Terror....

Ernest Shackleton has big dick energy, and Sarah is here to prove it. With his 69 dogs and his salty seamen, our boy Ernest proved that it is in fact possible to get famous for how badly you almost fucked up. Amelia reads Shackleton's memoir, while Sarah reads a selection of other Shackleton-related books, including children's stories and a manual on how to run your business like you got...

In keeping with our ongoing theme of polar horror, Sarah and Amelia watch John Carpenter's gooey vore masterpiece "The Thing." Yes, that is its official description. Featuring the raw erotic energy of MacReady's perpetual cowboy hat, discussions of practical effects vs CGI, and a brief digression on what opiods do to your poop. It's mostly relevant. Support the show

Bet ya'll thought we were done with the Arctic, huh. This week we read Who Goes There by John W. Campbell, the novella which inspired three different movie spinoffs including John Carpenter's The Thing. We talk about the pros and cons of classic sci-fi, which Jane Austen character would die first in the Arctic, and the expansive isolation of polar horror as a genre. Most importantly, we...

This week, Sarah and Amelia read The Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi; and shocker of shockers, actually manage to have a semi-intelligent discussion on subverting versus embracing tropes, the nature of YA lit, and the importance of representation. Also, a serious question masquerading as a bit about whether or not you're allowed to keep a person's necrotic toe if it falls off...

Listen, we say “don’t go to the Arctic” a fair amount on this podcast, but we just can’t help ourselves. This week we revisit our first book to discuss the AMC series The Terror which Sarah has not seen and has no interest to, and Amelia has watched twice, sobbing the entire time. Featuring things they changed from the book (including a welcome tweak to the backstory of our favorite little canniba...