Spine Crackers

The Spine Crackers share a very important announcement regarding plans for 2022 and beyond! We will be taking a brief break to get ourselves mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally ready for the coming changes and are so excited to get back to the show in a couple weeks!

In the first episode of 2022, the Spine Crackers welcome the bleak midwinter months with their first ever episode on poetry. Specifically, they discuss the bleak, philosophical, surreal, and deeply human poetry of Yugoslav-American poet Charles Simic. 

In this very special episode, the Spine Crackers present their first annual end-of-year awards. They each count down their personal top 5 books of the year, give out awards for categories such as Best Character, Best Cover, Most Disappointing Book, and many more! Have a fantastic New Year!

In this episode, the Spine Crackers read Herman Melville's final novel, the 1857 satirical masterpiece of identity, religion, irony, and the American psyche, The Confidence-Man. 

In this very special episode, the Spine Crackers celebrate one year of the podcast with some reflections on the story so far and a Q&A with listener submitted questions! Here's to many more years and many more books!

In this episode, the Spine Crackers read American enfant terrible Truman Capote's 1949 collection of short stories, "A Tree of Night and Other Stories." 

In this episode, the Spine Crackers read Percival Everett's 2013 postmodern metatext of death, family, race, and language Percival Everett by Virgil Russell. Make sure to stay tuned through the end for a #booktube callout and a first for the podcast surprise! Let's philosophize. 

In this episode, the Spine Crackers are joined by Ben, the proprietor of the fantastic Book Shore YouTube channel, to discuss legendary postmodern author Joseph McElroy's 2013 novel of war, family, memory, and American identity, Cannonball. Ben also breaks some genuine literary news with respect to some previously semi-lost McElroy texts!  https://www.youtube.com/c/BookShore @bookshore_ben on...

ALERT: THIS EPISODE DOES WORK IT JUST DOESN'T START UNTIL 45 SECONDS IN JUST SKIP TO THAT! In this episode, the Spine Crackers read Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid's 2017 novel of place, space, emigration, and love, Exit West

In this episode, the Spine Crackers take a trip back to middle school to discuss John Steinbeck's 1947 parable of family, community, greed, and meaning, The Pearl. 

In this episode, the Spine Crackers are joined by Daniel of the Viva La Dude podcast to discuss legendary screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky's first and only novel, and the basis for his 1980 cult classic film, Altered States (1978)! Go ape! 

In this episode, the Spine Crackers read seminal American author Don DeLillo's 2003 pseudo-postmodern novel of technology, the future, and American identity, Cosmopolis. 

In this episode, the Spine Crackers read French writer and academic David Diop's International Booker Prize winning 2018 novel of war, race, friendship, and madness, At Night All Blood Is Black. 

In this episode the Spine Crackers read the reluctantly Austrian author Thomas Bernhard's 1975 novel of obsession, family, science, and madness, Correction. 

In this episode, the Spine Crackers read prolific Belgian author Georges Simenon's 1967 novel of class, marriage, memory, and the nature of love and hate, The Cat. Meow. 

In this episode the Spine Crackers read Graham Greene's 1960 novel of faith, colonialism, and fame A Burnt-Out Case. 

In this episode, the Spine Crackers read Nicholson Baker's 1988 short novel detailing one man's mental life during a ride up an escalator. Prefiguring some of the stylistic and thematic interests of more recent postmodern, encyclopedic novels, Baker's hyper-detailed "microhistory" is powerful and hilarious. 

In this episode, the Spine Crackers dig into what is arguably the most well-known and influential American novel of all time, F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 tale of class, time, national identity, and so much more, The Great Gatsby. 

In this episode, the Spine Crackers read Virginia Woolf's 1925 modernist masterpiece of war, aging, social isolation, and British identity Mrs. Dalloway. 

In this first episode back after an extended vacation, the Spine Crackers ease back into things with some miscellaneous discussion of literature, booktube, our reading styles, why we started the podcast, and many other topics! Check it out! 

This week, the Spine Crackers read British novelist T.F. Powys' 1931 allegorical novel of Death, Love, and Vice in an English country town, Unclay.

This week the Spine Crackers read science fiction legend Philip K. Dick's 1969 novel of consumerism, death, identity, and time Ubik. We get a nice little case of the giggles in this one so be sure to look out for that. 

This week, the Spine Crackers read Jean Toomer's 1923 modernist classic of the Harlem Renaissance, Cane. Alternating between vignettes of African American life in the South and the North, as well as poems, Cane is a unique achievement.

This week, the Spine Crackers are joined by OG IRL friend and friend of the pod Casey to present our first ever 3-hour episode. We discuss Haruki Murakami's 2017 epic of art, trauma, family, and so much more, "Killing Commendatore!" Settle in for this one y'all! 

This week, the Spine Crackers read Russian-American author Vladimir Nabokov's first English-language novel (1941) of identity, memory, exile, and language "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight."