Terrible Book Club

Feeling rather uninspired and lacking the will to live, Bookbarella once more turned her gaze to The Box of Books that a friend sent her a few years ago (thanks again Morgan). Within, she found  The Long Winter , originally published in 1962 by Fawcett Publishers. A supposed satire, this feels more like a story trying to be about racism and nationalism in a climate fiction setting and somehow fail...

Scribando ties on his apron and fastens his bowtie for his return to early 20th century American capitalist food business book hell! Our Patron JC suggested this in our Patreon chat simply saying, " I really enjoyed the Orville Redenbacher story. Get ready to GRIND IT OUT with Ray Kroc!! " Oh boy, are we grinding it out here. Every day, the sun rises on a new McDonald's. Today's episode includes o...

Several years ago, while Bookbarella was away for a few months, this 1980s fantasy book appeared on her desk and no one ever admitted to leaving it there. She saw a wizard on the cover and tossed it into the future TBC pile, thinking nothing of it. Years later, she was consulting a friend about which books she should pick for TBC episodes this year and he helpfully reminded her that the wizard on...

Scribando tackles a rare author Patron's Choice this week which we tend not to do that often, since most authors and publicists just fire off an email to any podcast with the word "book" in it and want to be a guest on the show. However, our Patron Jeff seemed to get what was going on here. When asked if he understood the show, he replied: " Honestly, after I had listened to a handful of random ep...

Sometimes you go to a pool party. Sometimes, that pool party also has a car with a trunk full of books. This was one of those books.  Resources & References: The Vampire Myth and Christianity by Dorothy Ivey Addictive Religion: Midnight Mass, Dracula, and the Prosperity Gospel by Alyssa Johnson Important Show Update: This episode was mostly edited, but did not go through our final editing process...

This is the continuation of Episode 240. If you haven't listened to that, please go back and do so because otherwise this isn't going to make a ton of sense. If you've ever wanted TBC to be a sleepy podcast to help you drift off into dreamland, you're in luck this episode and the next! Scribando worked really hard on this one but it is really just him retelling history, both real and imagined. Our...

If you've ever wanted TBC to be a sleepy podcast to help you drift off into dreamland, you're in luck this episode and the next! Scribando worked really hard on this one but it is really just him retelling history, both real and imagined. Our Patron Miles submitted this as his Patron's Choice this season saying, " This book was originally published online via the website Alternatehistory.com and t...

We're back, we're sober, and another Boston book has appeared on our digital doorstep! Now That You Have Seen Me was submitted to the show by the author herself sometime over the last two years. Every once in a while it's fun to experience Boston-based fiction and it's been a little bit since we've dealt with an unreliable narrator, so we thought we'd take this for a spin this season. In addition...

At last, we give you the final episode in our alcohol-fueled quadrilogy. Our wonderful Patron Beastwiththeleast mailed us this book of their own free will. Thoroughly in debt to them and their glorious book packages, we selected this one for review this year especially for our dear Beast. As we are far from being biblical scholars ourselves, we're desperately trying to summon Dan McClellan for an...

It's another alcohol-infused episode of TBC. Our long-time Ko-Fi Patron KiwiThing requested this book for 2026, so we were obliged to enter TRELLAND - the mishapen world that bubbled forth from a crucible of literary confusion, where popular video game franchises were melted down with Euopean fairytales and random writing exercises! In addition to our usual barnyard language, today's episode inclu...

You've heard of feminism, right? ... you wanna' drink it? You may recall us saying that we were a bit tipsy in the first episode of this season and would be for a whole four episodes in service to a later terrible book. Today, you meet that book. In addition to our usual barnyard language, today's episode includes discussion and consumption of alcohol (your hosts are fairly intoxicated after sampl...

It wouldn't be a new season of TBC without a Victorian visit from the Antiques Freaks! Dig your  Carnacki Bingo cards out of storage and enjoy a live reading of  The Story of the Beetle Hunter by Arthur Conan Doyle, all set to the impeccable scoring and sound design talents of Oselka Sound . If you'd rather hear a properly acted, serious version of this story, please check out the Gothic Tales aud...

Scribando and Bookbarella return! We're a little tipsy for the first four episodes of the season in service to a future TBC episode, so this one is perhaps not our greatest season opener. We try and fail to do a little scientific thinking around particle and quantum physics and sing a fake song for your amusement, though, so there's that. Special Thanks to: Ken from Antiques Freaks for narrating o...

Thank you to our Patron One In A Thousand who requested this week's book! They wrote in to us earlier this year, saying: "...At some point in your lives, you've probably experienced media that you felt was ALMOST really good, but for whatever reason it just wasn't, and media that was almost really good can be just as frustrating as outright bad media because you can see that it just needed a littl...

It's winter up here in the northern hemisphere, so why not explore a fluffy memoir that flirts with self-help specifically for the season? Get a nice blanket and a stuffed creature, a hot beverage, maybe light a candle or incense or perhaps even a fire, and snuggle in. Take care of yourselves out there - make that doctor, dentist, therapist, etc. appt you've been avoiding! In addition to our usual...

Terry has been dead for a few years now, but it's clear that he controls Chris from beyond the grave with a Rada'Han because Chris begged Paris to read yet another Sword of Truth novel this year. The suffering is turned up to 11 as we're both crushed beneath a block of fantasy plot swiss cheese. Even though it's more holes than cheese-plot, it still hurts because the holes have spikes, in Goodkind...

The time has come. It was inevitable; at last, we submitted to the will of Terriblo, listeners, and fate to bring down the evil monarch and find our destined mate - I mean, bring you our review of A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, popularly known by its acronym of ACOTAR. To ease us through this experience, I've brought my emotional support Emily who herself is an avid reader who has s...

Happy Halloween! This episode was supposed to air on 11/4, but we figured you'd all appreciate hearing this one a week early in the spirit of the season. The next episode will air on schedule on 11/18, so make sure you check out some older spooky season TBC episodes while you wait: The Hog from Carnacki, the Ghost Finder by William Hope Hodgson *Special Guests D & Ken from Antiques Freaks* Drag Qu...

For this year's Spooky Season, we headed over to reddit to see what r/horrorlit thought were the worst horror books they read in 2024. It seemed that Eric LaRocca's novella Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke was widely hated by the sub, but since the Antiques Freaks already reviewed that back in October 2023, Paris chose to instead read two short stories packaged together as Other Misfor...

Today's book was suggested to us by a fan on Instagram who said,  "Your schedule is probably still full but I have the book to end all terrible books. [Redacted] wrote this about her love (obsession) for Jason Mamoa and it is a mess; it's absolutely terrible."  This extremely personal book of poetry rotates around the axis of Jason Momoa and takes us to many strange, sad places. In addition to our...

This week, Paris discusses her experience reading the sample issue of a magazine called  After Dinner Conversation from the non-profit philosophy and ethics short fiction publisher of the same name. They DM'ed us on Twitter saying they wanted us to try their free sample issue, so we actually took them up on this offer because we've never reviewed a magazine before. It's a year of firsts on TBC! St...

Our patron rootbeercutie recommended  I Am Not Starfire and since we had somehow not done a graphic novel in the 10 years of this podcast, Chris stepped up to tackle this Teen Titans spinoff. Today's episode features a whole lot of superhero tropes and parent/child strife; even good art and a lesbian protagonist who gets a happy ending couldn't save this one, though.

We haven't done any self-help lately, so Paris braved Oprah's Book Club list to pull the recently published Secrets of Adulthood straight from its maw. Though it attempted to take her, she fought her way out to bring you this episode about the science of happiness and the pop cultural grift which swirls around it. References & Resources: Dr. Robert Waldinger: What makes a good life? Lessons from t...

One dark day in the TBC Patreon chat dungeons, our Patron Austin scrawled the following message to us: "...[D]uring the 80s there was a guy literally named Dick Wulf (Not to be confused with law and order producer and writer Dick Wolf) who made a Christian version of D&D called Dragonraid. There's very little documentation online about what the game system was like but it did exist and from what I...

Paris must conquer her fear and loathing to survive this gonzo, idiocratic adventure from the mind of Sean Penn (yes, the actor). Our Patron George submitted this as his Patron's request this season saying, " I've been listening to you guys for a long time and this is the first time I've ever found anything that you folks might be interested [in]. I present to you: Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff, a b...