Terrible Book Club

This time, we read How it Unfolds (Far Reaches Book 1) by James S.A. Corey, published by Amazon Original Stories in 2023. Chris really enjoyed The Expanse by Corey, so he was looking through other works by them and found this short story. Unfortunately, though, it had a description that made him think it was more suitable for TBC than for his personal reading adventures. Today's episode includes our usual barnyard language along with some discussions of sex and relationship dynamics.

Paris & Chris dive back into children's literature and find that Dr. Block may have written some of the healthiest relationship dynamics in all of the books we've reviewed so far for the show.

We had so much to say about Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire that we needed two episodes and an extra person to do it! If you haven't listened to Part One, we recommend going back and listening to last week's episode before listening to this one. This was recommended to us by The Good Witch of the Northeast, who made time to float in on a bubble to be our special guest for this two-part episode. In addition to our usual barnyard language, today’s episode includes discussion or mention of: ableism, pregnancy, parental abuse, racism, sex, & sexual assault.

We had so much to say about Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire that we needed two episodes and an extra person to do it! We'll finish up our discussion in Part Two which will be out next Tuesday. This was recommended to us by The Good Witch of the Northeast, who made time to float in on a bubble to be our special guest for this two-part episode. In addition to our usual barnyard language, today’s episode includes discussion or mention of: ableism, pregnancy, parental abuse, racism, sex, & sexual assault.

We've got another Amazon Double Feature for you! Today, we tackle two more pieces of book-like debris that Chris found in the bowels of an Amazon search, the criteria of which has been lost to time: Rathew Love Story: A Love Story by Argus G. Curiosity: A Book for Curious Minds by Bookinsky* (yes, the asterisk is in the author name) Paris goes on a methodology queen adventure as she and Chris discuss whether both of these authors are actually just AI. They also ponder if Paris will live through Season 9 due to the condition of her New England apartment. Over the last several seasons, we’ve structured our discussions into Things That Were Good and Things That Were Bad. For the first part of Season 9, we're trying out a rubric Chris created where we rate a book on each of the following categories on a 3-point scale of -1, 0 , or 1: Technical Construction (Typos, Formatting/Layout, Punctuation, etc.) Plot Construction & Content (Coherence, Rule Following, Character Quality) Moment-to-Moment (Qual

Ring in the new year with the Terrible Antique Book Freaks! The Antiques Freaks join us today to do a live read of The Getting Even of Tommy Dodd by William Hope Hodgson, a cross-dressing revenge fantasy on the high seas. We know it's not a Carnacki, and we know it's not even scary, but it's the best we can do having read all the 'nacks already. As usual, we're using Eye of Argon rules to read this and we encourage you to get out your Carnacki bingo cards and help us re-tool them for more generalized Hodgson tomfoolery. In addition to our usual barnyard language, this episode includes or makes reference to: sexual humor (including foot stuff) and some bad Victorian ideas and opinions, including pedophilia.

It's winter holiday time again, so you all get a little gift from TBC! Please enjoy this special edition of Less Terrible Book Club. People often wonder what else we’re reading in a given year so we figured it was worth a brief discussion and rating of our Non-TBC reads from 2023. We wish you a lovely winter and/or holiday time if that's what you get up to at this time of year! See you soon for Season 9. Hail Terriblo. Chris’s 2023 Non-TBC Reading List: The Music Lesson by Victor Wooten The Scar by China Miéville The Dark Profit Saga by J. Zachary Pike Jade City by Fonda Lee Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin   Paris’s 2023 Non-TBC Reading List: This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone Perdido Street Station by China Miéville Jagannath by Karen Tidbeck Walking on Cowrie Shells by Nana Nkwe

Ken of Antiques Freaks suggested that we read this and the time is nigh. Come along with us to Atlantis and Lemuria while we try to figure out why all of sentient life in the cosmos is organized like your local Target. The return of LMJ. Additionally, we are baffled as to why authors never seem to be able to cite a quote from a famous person that's actually real. In addition to our usual barnyard language, today’s episode contains: aliens, a touch of racism/eugenics, and dangerously high levels of woo-woo and conspiracy.

For today's episode, we read The Energy Conspiracy by David C Seman, vanity published in 1981. This was requested by our patron beastwiththeleast, who had this to say: "Here's to another year of Terriblo's blessings and curses. I hereby submit my patron book request for you guys to read at some point next year...I haven't read the book in full, but I skim-read a few of the extremely short chapters. It looks like the sort of thing Ted Cruz would badger his wife into reading to him as a bedtime story. Please enjoy (tolerate? choke down?) this word salad tossed with right-wing dystopian elements, baffling typos, half a pound of cheese wrapped in aluminum foil, and dry-ass dialogue in place of croutons. BYOB." Thanks for the recommendation, beastwiththeleast. We applaud your efforts in finding us an out-of-print book and digitally rendering it for ease of reading - truly a gentleman and a scholar! In addition to our usual barnyard language, today’s episode includes discussion or mention of: THE GUB'MINT in the ve

We read Jam by Yahtzee Croshaw this week at the request of our Patron Of the Void (The Taco-Eating Unicorn). We bring you a gray goo apocalypse dyed red atop a bland satire about how lame both terminally online and terminally corporate people are. The Taco-Eating Unicorn from the Void would like to dedicate today's episode to his sister, Jade B., for being amazing through everything he's gone through recently, despite being in a different state. Yay Jade! Today’s show includes out usual barnyard language plus discussion or mention of: violence, both jam and human in flavor, and a brief discussion of a shitty slur.

Beginnings: A Christian Fantasy Short Story Collection by M.H. Elrich was self-published earlier this year. Chris found it while on an Amazon Short Reads dive and we figured a Christian fantasy collection was worth a review since we haven't read anything from this genre for the show before. Each of the 5 stories features a human-animal friendship with elements of magic and seem to be geared towards young readers or parents reading to young children.  Today's episode just includes our usual barnyard language with some brief discussions of Christianity.

This time we read The Golden Basement by David Norman Lewis, self-published in March of 2023. This was recommended by long-time listener, first-time caller Max who sent us a wonderful email recommending that we read this saying, "A few months ago you might have noticed a poem titled "$Reward$If$Found$" stapled up all over Cambridge, there were a couple reddit threads about it. On going back to my hometown of Seattle, WA I found out the poem is from a local self-published book...The author has been stapling the same poem everywhere. The novel is a "kids' book" about underground monsters controlling people's thoughts during the 1990 Goodwill Games...There's a YouTube video where the author is trying to sell it with donuts. You have to check it out. I so want to hear your takes on it…I emailed the author and he told me the baker is a friend of his. They once worked together on trying to make a new religion for Seattle but nobody showed up." Thank you so very much, Max, for your longtime support and for recommend

Get your flannels, ciders, and s'mores ready for this week's discussion of Campfire Stories of Western Canada by Barbara Smith! Paris’s friend Kristina recommended this for the show 6 years ago and we finally found a nice spot for it on the schedule. Thanks for sending us on this silly autumnal adventure, Kristina! Today’s show includes our usual barnyard language plus cartoon-level “spooky” stuff like a beheaded ghost, sasquatch, and spectral french fries.

One Hundred Proofs that the Earth is Not a Globe was written and self-published by William M. Carpenter in 1885. However, Chris found this on a homeschooler’s Twitter page where it was recommended for teaching children in 2023, so we figured it was worth a review. Folding Ideas: In Search of a Flat Earth Science of Our Spherical Earth: Neil deGrasse Tyson Demonstrates Absurdity of Flat Earth Dave Explains: The Earth is Definitely Not Flat Dave Explains: The 10 Things That All Flat Earthers Say Wikipedia: Empirical Evidence for the Spherical Shape of Earth  

The 9th Colony by Colin Curtis was vanity published through AuthorHouse UK in February of 2023. We received an email from a podcast PR rep asking us to have the author on the show as a guest. We don't have authors on the show, but we get a lot of these emails because some PR companies just send blanket form emails without actually having any idea what the podcasts or other entities they’re contacting actually do. Normally we just skim and delete, but this one caught our eye because it suggested that Mr. Curtis had expertise in the science of human evolution and space exploration and would talk about "the evolution debate". Considering the book was only 128 pages, it seemed worth a read and review for us this year. Disclaimer: Most of this year's episodes were pre-recorded many months in advance. Please keep in mind that when we recorded this review in early 2023, the UAP/UFO hearings in congress that took place in July obviously hadn't happened yet. If you haven't yet watched or read the transcripts of those

If you're interested in our take on a WWII popcorn spy thriller, it's here! It's hard for us to say no to reviewing a book when you mail it to us. We got a copy of His Majesty's Hope through the magnificence of the US postal system from our Patron EasternSwiss. They asked us to read it for their Patron’s Choice episode this year, telling us that this book is about, "a British tutor [who] becomes a spy to fight Nazis, but neglects her duties, gets her partner killed over dumb shit, and never listens to smart people...her half sister in Germany is...clueless about Nazis despite her mother being a top official with the party! Like how can you know nothing about what's happening!? It's implied Goebbels sometimes visits her house, like c'mon - you know some shit.” In addition to our usual barnyard language, today's episode includes discussion or mention of: Nazis and their whole deal during WWII, but specifically child murder, eugenics, prison camps, and mild violence.

We've got another reddit find for you this week! Paris found this when perusing the latest "What's the worst book you've ever read?" post that surfaces a few times each year in various literary subreddits. In one response, redditor u/lydiardbell explained that Interview with the Devil (Part 1 - Victor's Account) was indeed the worst book they've ever read. What made it really memorable was that the author threatened to burn their house down for the review they wrote for the book. In addition to our usual barnyard language, this episode includes mention or discussion of: cannibalism, violent abuse, r*pe/sexual assault, su*cide, and torture.

This week, we discuss our experience reading Golden (The Golden Wolf Series Book 1) by Shannon Mayer at the request of our Patron Robin. Robin said, “It looks truly abysmal. I can't wait to hear your summary.” Golden is a shifter romance where a wolf is cursed to be a golden retriever and gets wrapped up in the events of Ragnarök (the end of the Norse cycle of renewal) and everything's got a little nü-metal flavor. Paris goes full red-strings-on-corkboard to try to figure out how the elements of the plot could possibly make sense. In addition to our usual barnyard language, today's episode includes discussion or mention of r*pe fantasies and physical violence.

The Man Without Qualities by Morris Berman was recommended by listener (and author!) O.F. Cieri back in December of 2020. It was recommended to them by a friend who said this book "would change America" and that "we were all going to look at each other differently "- "a new culture would emerge from this book!" Although this book is supposedly intended as satire, it left us wondering how much of it or what elements were supposed to be funny. Check out O.F. Cieri's urban fantasy, Lord of Thundertown In addition to our usual barnyard language, this episode includes discussion of: American politics (specifically the 2015-2016 brand) & jokes based on ethnicities and gender.  Correction: Around 2:00 and 9:50 we mention that we were told this author was a "major conservative thinker who worked for the Nixon administration" by the original person who recommended it to O.F. We later discovered that neither of those things were true - Morris Berman is an American historian and social critic and is not typically ca

Waldo Beyond the Walls: Adventures in the Galaxy by Bill Shook was recommended by an anonymous fan who has been a devoted listener to the podcast for 5 years. Thanks, anonymous friend! We very much appreciate your devotion. Our wonderful anonymous listener here recommended this book because, “It read not like…someone's first pass at writing something...It was so utterly abysmal that it deconstructed my brain…and put me off reading for a wh[o]le week…I ran the [book] by [4 family members, one of whom is] a professionally published writer. Their opinions were in line with my own, and I'm sure yours will be as well…It has been optioned for a movie; these truths need [to] be expressed [so] that [Waldo Beyond the Walls] may be extinguished.” In addition to our usual barnyard language, today's episode includes some discussion of 1990s-era "multiculturalism" which means we'll be touching on race and racism but not heavily. Vikings in North America: https://brewminate.com/the-norse-in-america-and-the-myth-of-vi