Book Club for Masochists: a Readers' Advisory Podcast

This episode we're discussing Business Non-Fiction! We talk about personality quizzes, questioning capitalism, fighting against productivity/the productivity trap, the rigourousness of professional degrees, (somehow on-topic) tangents, and how books can manage to disappoint us in new and bizarre ways. It's got both silliness and existential dread in one episode!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Things We Read This Month

• Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss
• Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis
• Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener
• No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy
• Joy at Work: Organizing Your Professional Life by Marie Kondō and Scott Sonenshein
• Soulbbatical: A Corporate Rebel's Guide to Finding Your Best Life by Shelley Paxton
• Think. Do. Say.: How to Seize Attention and Build Trust in a Busy, Busy World by Ron Tite
• The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting by Rachel Shteir
• Different . . . Not Less: Inspiring Stories of Achievement and Successful Employment from Adults with Autism, Asperger's, and ADHD by Temple Grandin
• The Art of Doing Business Across Cultures: 10 Countries, 50 Mistakes, and 5 Steps to Cultural Competence by Craig Storti
• 100 Side Hustles: Ideas for Making Extra Money by Chris Guillebeau

Other Media We Mentioned

• The Art of War by Sun Tzu (Wikipedia)
• What Color Is Your Parachute? A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers by Richard Nelson Bolles
• Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson
• Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World by Mark Pendergrast
• The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek by Howard Markel
• Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter
• • Episode 015 - Self Help
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey
• The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz
• The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute by Zac Bissonnette
• Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy
• Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
• The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by Deborah Blum
• • The Poison Squads: The Stupid, Risky First Food Safety Tests (SciShow)
• Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America by Michael Ruhlman
• Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving by Celeste Headlee
• The Good University: What Universities Actually Do and Why It's Time for Radical Change by Raewyn Connell
• The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton
• More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are (No Matter What They Say) by Elaine Welteroth
• The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau

Links, Articles, and Things

• Ask a Manager
• Quantified self (Wikipedia)
• Herpetology (Wikipedia)
• • "the branch of zoology concerned with the study of amphibians (including frogs, toads, salamanders, newts, and caecilians (gymnophiona)) and reptiles (including snakes, lizards, amphisbaenids, turtles, terrapins, tortoises, crocodilians, and the tuataras)"

15 Business Non-Fiction Books by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) Authors

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers' Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here.

• The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap by Mehrsa Baradaran
• Eat a Peach by David Chang
• Fight or Submit: Standing Tall in Two Worlds by Ronald Derrickson
• Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less by Tiffany Dufu
• The Token: Common Sense Ideas for Increasing Diversity in Your Organization by Crystal Byrd Farmer
• It's About Damn Time: How to Turn Being Underestimated Into Your Greatest Advantage by Arlan Hamilton
• Black Wall Street: From Riot to Renaissance in Tulsa's Historic Greenwood District by Hannibal B. Johnson
• Indigenous Relations: Insights, Tips & Suggestions to Make Reconciliation A Reality by Robert Joseph
• The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters by Wes Moore
• Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change by Ellen Pao
• The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker
• Great American Outpost: Dreamers, Mavericks, and the Making of an Oil Frontier by Maya Rao
• How to be a Bawse by Lilly Singh
• Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
• Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You by Julie Zhuo

Suggest new genres or titles!

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Join us again on Tuesday, November 17th we'll be doing Readers' Advisory and trying to come up with holiday gifts for each other!

Then on Tuesday, December 1st we'll be discussing the genre that you chose for us: New Weird Fiction!

It's Halloween! And in this very special episode we're playing the game Happy Birthday Dracula!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Games We Played This Month

• Happy Birthday Dracula!
• We're streaming visual novel games on Twitch!
• • Were|House (Matthew and RJ trying to date a kelpie)
  • Speed Dating for Ghosts
• Which BC4M podcast co-host are you most like?

Other Media We Mentioned

• Steeple by John Allison
• • The webcomic

Links, Articles, and Things

• Xylophones for Walking Bones (TV Tropes)
• Quadrille (Wikipedia)
• Witch Name Generator
• Astronomia but it's played on a Xylophone (music used in the episode)

15 Psychological Thriller Books by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) Authors (see all our lists here)

• My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
• Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha
• When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole
• The Birthday Girl by Melissa de la Cruz
• An Untamed State by Roxane Gay
• Spin by Lamar Giles
• We'll Never Be Apart by Emiko Jean
• The Good Son by You-Jeong Jeong
• The Lost Ones by Sheena Kamal
• Miracle Creek by Angie Kim
• The Cutting Season by Attica Locke
• The Best Lies by Sarah Lyu
• Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
• Blood Sports by Eden Robinson
• Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden

Suggest new genres or titles!

• Fill out the form to suggest a genre or title!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us on Tuesday, November 3rd when we'll be discussing the genre of Non-Fiction Business!

Then on Tuesday, November 17th we'll be dusting off our Readers' Advisory hats and trying to come up with holiday gifts for each other!

This episode we're discussing Comedic/Humorous Fiction! We discuss what makes something funny, the different types of humour fiction, when you can't tell if something is supposed to be funny until you know the context, and more! Plus: Comics' comic comics! (That kind of makes sense in context…)

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Announcements

• Check out Matthew and RJ streaming Were|House on our Twitch Channel on Friday, October 9th at 9pm Eastern / 6pm Pacific Twitch stream
• • Monster Mash - Friday Night Spooktacular Visual Novel Stream
• Our genre-specific lists of books by people of colour
• Vote for what genre we read in November

Things We Read This Month

• Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde
• • "Somebody once said that the library is actually the dominant life form on the planet. Humans simply exist as the reproductive means to achieve more libraries." from Fforde's book The Constant Rabbit
• Giant Days, Vol. 1 by John Allison, Lissa Treiman, and Whitney Cogar
• • Matthew thinks the analysis he mentioned is somewhere in PanelxPanel #16 - Giant Days
• The Shakespeare Requirement by Julie Schumacher
• • Dear Committee Members
• My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
• My Man Jeeves by PG Wodehouse
• An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten
• The Sellout by Paul Beatty
• • Booker Prize (Wikipedia)
• Yotsuba&!, Vol. 1 by Kiyohiko Azuma
• Ozy and Millie by Dana Simpson
• • Read online

Sixteen Comedic/Humorous Fiction Books by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) Authors (see all our lists here)

• The Sellout by Paul Beatty
• Moccasin Square Gardens by Richard Van Camp
• 32 Candles by Ernessa T. Carter
• Days of Distraction by Alexandra Chang
• The Wangs vs. The World by Jade Chang
• Waypoint Kangaroo by Curtis C. Chen
• The Marriage Game by Sara Desai
• I Am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett
• A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
• Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal
• Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
• The Bad Muslim Discount by Syed M. Masood
• Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
• Members Only by Sameer Pandya
• Crees in the Caribbean by Drew Hayden Taylor
• Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

Other Media We Mentioned

• The Hippopotamus by Stephen Fry
• Making History by Stephen Fry
• The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie
• Get Out (Wikpedia)
• • Nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
• The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
• Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
• Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome (Wikipedia)
• The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (Wikipedia)
• • Cucumber sandwich (Wikipedia)
• Phoebe and Her Unicorn by Dana Simpson

Links, Articles, and Things

• Comic novel (Wikipedia)
• Themes of Pedophilia in the Works of Piers Anthony
• Revisiting the sad, misogynistic fantasy of Xanth
• Episode 053 - Comedic Science Fiction & Fantasy
• Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour (Wikipedia)
• Hark!
• • Tweet your eggnog sightings at RJ!
• Code Switch - Battle Of The Books
• • "What kind of books are best to read during this pandemic? Books that connect you to our current reality? Or ones that help you escape it?"
• Plotless Fiction

Suggest new genres or titles!

• Fill out the form to suggest a genre or title!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, October 20th when we'll be playing Happy Birthday Dracula!

Then on Tuesday, November 3rd we'll be discussing the genre of Business non-fiction!

This episode we're giving you an update on the media we've been enjoying not for the podcast! We talk about music, books, podcasts, comics, videos, movies, and more!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Announcements

• Check out our weekly "spooky" visual novel stream at twitch.tv/bookclub4m. Starting Friday, September 18th at 9pm Eastern / 6pm Pacific.
• Or check out the recordings on our YouTube channel

Media We've Been Enjoying

• Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle, Vol. 1 by Kagiji Kumanomata
• The Way of the Househusband, Vol. 1 by Kōsuke Ōno
• • Matthew heard about both of these manga in the Best and Worst Manga of 2020 panel
• Coode Street Podcast
• The Slowdown
• Strides Forward
• • Comrades Marathon (Wikipedia)
• Dig: A History Podcast
• • Choice, Sterilization, and Eugenics in Twentieth Century Puerto Rico
  • Steaming the "Nefarious Sin": Bathhouses and Homosexuality from the Victorian Era to the AIDS Epidemic
• Tell the Machine Goodnight by Katie Williams
• The Undying by Anne Boyer
• In the Dream House: A Memoir by Carmen Maria Machado
• Turning: A Swimming Memoir by Jessica J. Lee
• Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick by Maya Dusenbery
• Black Dresses on Bandcamp
• • Black Dresses - Eternal Nausea
• Mitski on Bandcamp
• • Mitski - Nobody
• Sofi Tukker on Twitch
• • Sofi Tukker - Batshit
• Anarchism & Police Abolition Feat. Domri Rade by Spice8Rack
• On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss
• A Christmas Prince
• • The Grim Dystopia of A Christmas Prince (video by Jenny Nicholson)
  • What things need to be saved in RJ's winter holiday RPG? Suggest something!
• Finish It! Podcast
• • Journey Under the Sea episode 1
• Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving by Celeste Headlee

Links, Articles, and Things

• Our "to be read" piles
• • Matthew
  • Anna
  • Meghan
• Hark! The Holiday Music Podcast
• Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick by Maya Dusenbery
• Trailer for the new Dune movie

15 Non-fiction Technology Books by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) Authors (see all our lists here)

• Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code by Ruha Benjamin
• Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life by Ruha Benjamin
• Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness by Simons Browne
• Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys Club of Silicon Valley by Emily Chang
• Inclusive Design for a Digital World: Designing with Accessibility in Mind by Regine Gilbert
• Girl Code: Gaming, Going Viral, and Getting It Done by Andrea Gonzales and Sophie Houser
• Reaching for the Moon: The Autobiography of NASA Mathematician Katherine Johnson by Katherine G. Johnson
• Black Software: The Internet & Racial Justice, from the Afronet to Black Lives Matter by Charlton D. McIlwain
• Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet by Lisa Nakamura
• Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life edited by Alondra Nelson and Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu with Alicia Headlam Hines
• Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble
• Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly
• Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science by Kim TallBear
• Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest by Zeynep Tufekci
• The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu

Suggest new genres or titles!

• Fill out the form to suggest genres!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, October 6th we'll be reading Comedic/Humourous Novels! (or fiction?)

Then on Tuesday, October 20th we'll be playing Happy Birthday Dracula!

This episode we're discussing Visual Novels! We talk about what visual novels are, whether they count as books, reading novels we're much too young for, being unable to suspend our disbelief, watching videos at 2x speed, monetization, watching vs playing, linear vs divergent stories, and more! Plus, this episode is like 75% tangents!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Things We Read (Played?) This Month

• Bury Me, My Love
• Dungeons & Lesbians
• • Stream with Matthew and RJ
• Serre - "A visual novel about a girl and an alien drinking tea and falling in love!"
• • Stream with Matthew and Meghan
• Speed Dating for Ghosts
• Order a Pizza: A Visual Novel
• • Stream with Matthew and hosts of Finish It! Podcast
• All the streams on YouTube!
• Our Twitch channel

Matthews list of (more) Visual Novels he enjoyed playing

• A Mortician's Tale - "a story-driven death positive video game where you play as a mortician tasked with running a funeral home."
• Arcade Spirits - "a romantic visual novel that follows an alternative timeline where the 1983 video game crash never occurred."
• Don't Take It Personally, I Just Don't Like You: The Camping Trip - "a lo-fi relationship dramedy about camping illegally on government property in the chill of early autumn, having public anxiety attacks in crowded shopping malls, the people we choose to be with, and what we do when they don't choose us back."
• The Night Fisherman - "A short tale of inhumanity in the English channel."
• The Outcast Lovers - "Driving home late one night you encounter a refugee in distress." (Sequel to The Night Fisherman.)
• Us Lovely Corpses - "a short surreal-horror-romance visual novel about helping a friend."
• Watch Me Jump - "a digital story of scandal and betrayal, played out in four quarters."
• Mission: It's Complicated - "a visual novel about getting superheroes to fall in love, and the shenanigans that happen along the way."
• Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator - "a game where you play as a Dad and your goal is to meet and romance other hot Dads."

Other Media We Mentioned

• Choose Your Own Adventure (Wikipedia)
• Doki Doki Literature Club! (Wikipedia)
• Mr. Dough and the Egg Princess (Wikipedia)
• Tusks: The Orc Dating Sim
• • Orcs that RJ drew!
  • More orc(cupation)s that RJ drew
• Radical Dreamers (Wikipedia)
• Butterfly Soup - "A visual novel about gay asian girls playing baseball and falling in love."
• 2064: Read Only Memories (Wikipedia)
• Now Kiss! YouTube Playlist of visual novel streams by Kathleen de Vere
• Finish It! Podcast
• Rise of the Videogame Zinesters: How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Drop-outs, Queers, Housewives, and People Like You Are Taking Back an Art Form by Anna Anthropy
• Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death by Caitlin Doughty
• Ask a Mortician
• Signs of the Sojourner - "a narrative card game about relationships and connecting with people."

Links, Articles, and Things

• Bingo Sheets for podcast
• Visual novel (Wikipedia)
• Gamebook (Wikipedia)
• Text-based game (Wikipedia)
• Interactive fiction (Wikipedia)
• Point-and-click adventure games (Wikipedia)
• Twine (software) (Wikipedia)
• Pandemic (board game) (Wikipedia)
• RJ's itch.io page
• Pricing Hobby Games: An argument for pricing your small independent games.
• How One Gameplay Decision Changed Diablo Forever
• Why So Few Violent Games?
• Visual Novel Maker Says It Will Replace Its Striking Writers
• Visual Novel Writers Win Pay Raise After 21 Day Strike
• Visual Novels (TV Tropes)

5 Visual Novels (and 1 amazing resource) by People of Colour

• Blerdy Otome: this episode's list would not be possible without Blerdy Otome, who reviews otome games, visual novels, and related media! Check out the Blerdy Tribe page of her website for tons of Black game developers, artists, podcasters, and other folks to follow!
• ValiDate: a forthcoming romantic visual novel about 12 adults in Jercy City navigating new relationships and the harsh realities that come alongside them. Features an array of character art by artists of color and a narrative developed by an all people of color writing team.
• One Thousand and One Days: an LGBTQ+ fantasy otome based on the mythology of ancient Persia and Islamic lore.
• Pairs: a romantic sci-fi visual novel featuring two superheroic couples and four perspectives to see their stories from.
• Us Lovely Corpses: a short surreal-horror-romance visual novel about helping a friend. Matthew's stream of this game can be found here (check the content warning in the video description).
• Order a Pizza: play as a divorced dad trying to order the perfect pizza. Matthew's stream of this game can be found here.

Suggest new genres or titles!

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Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, September 15th we'll be giving an update on media we've been consuming that's not for the podcast!

Then on Tuesday, October 15th we'll be reading Comedic/Humourous Novels!

This episode we talk about Pet by Akwaeke Emezi! There are lots of spoilers, plus discussions of ambiguity, language and communication, names, family, community, trust, and more!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Announcements

• Matthew is streaming visual novels on Twitch (and archived on YouTube)! Here are some of his favourites
• • Serre (with Meghan)
  • Dungeons & Lesbians (with RJ)
  • This Sunday, August 23rd, at 8pm Eastern Matthew will be joined by the co-hosts of Finish It! Podcast!
• 12 Gothic Literature Books by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour)
• Contest! Win a copy of Pet (the book we discussed in this episode) by sharing this episode (on social media, in an email, wherever) and tagging or otherwise telling us (e.g. screenshot it and email it to us at [email protected]).

The Book We Discussed

• Pet by Akwaeke Emezi
• • Akwaeke Emezi on "Pet" and on Making a Better World for Their Protagonist, a Black Trans Girl Named Jam (Teen Vogue)
  • My America: Akwaeke Emezi on Belonging (American Writers Museum/YouTube)
  • Review: Pet, Akwaeke Emezi (Reading the End)

Other Media we Mentioned

• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
• Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements edited by Adrienne Maree Brown

Links, Articles, and Things

• Visual Novel (Wikipedia)
• Ludo (Labyrinth Wiki)
• James P. Sullivan (Sully) (Disney Wiki)
• Sign language (Wikipedia)
• Igbo Language (Wikipedia)
• Hark! Podcast

12 Gothic Literature Books by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) (link)

• Ruby by Cynthia Bond
• The Bondwoman's Narrative by Hannah Crafts
• Joplin's Ghost by Tananarive Due
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
• A Visitation of Spirits by Randall Kenan
• Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• The Iliac Crest by Cristina Rivera Garza
• The Night Wanderer by Drew Hayden Taylor
• Cane by Jean Toomer
• Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Suggest new genres or titles!

• Fill out the form to suggest genres!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, September 1st we'll be talking about Visual Novels!

Then on Tuesday, September 15th we'll be giving an update on media we've been consuming that's not for the podcast.

This episode we're discussing Alternative/Alternate History! We talk about realism and magic, how long ago is history, tropes and when they're good, why this genre always seems to be about war, and more. Plus Matthew almost gets bingo!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Things We Read This Month

• The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark
• • A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djèlí Clark
• The Black God's Drums by P. Djèlí Clark
• The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson (an American writer, Meghan misspoke :/ )
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
• The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville
• • Graphic Annotations of China Miéville's The Last Days of New Paris
• Batman: Holy Terror by Alan Brennert and Norm Breyfogle (Wikipedia)
• Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

Other Media We Mentioned

• The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove
• His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik
• Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory
• What If (comics) (Wikipedia)
• Elseworlds (Wikipedia)
• Superman: Red Son by Mark Millar, Dave Johnson/Andrew Robinson, and Kilian Plunkett/Walden Wong
• The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
• Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman, Andy Kubert, and Richard Isanove
• Milkweed Triptych Series by Ian Tregillis
• Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
• Bright: The Apotheosis of Lazy Worldbuilding (Lindsay Ellis video)
• Shadowrun (Wikipedia)
• The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
• Battle Royale by Koushun Takami
• PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (Wikipedia)
• Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
• Ōoku: The Inner Chambers, Volume 1 by Fumi Yoshinaga

Links, Articles, and Things

• Alternate History (Wikipedia)
• Bingo Sheet for the podcast (play along at home!)
• When is an Alternate History Entertaining, and when is it Harmful?
• American Civil War alternate histories (Wikipedia)
• Hypothetical Axis victory in World War II (Wikipedia)
• List of civil wars (Wikipedia)
• American exceptionalism (Wikipedia)
• Surrealism (Wikipedia)

Visual Novel Stuff

• Stream 1: Boa Retina and a completely normal dating simulator (just Matthew)
• Stream 2: Dungeons & Lesbians (Matthew and RJ)
• Stream 3: Arcade Spirits (just Matthew)
• Our Twitch channel
• Our YouTube channel
• Schedule

15 Alternative History Books by People of Colour

• Lion's Blood by Steven Barnes
• Zulu Heart by Steven Barnes
• Buffalo Soldier by Maurice Broaddus
• Wild Seed by Octavia Butler
• The Black God's Drums by P. Djèlí Clark
• The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark
• The Sea Is Ours: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia edited by Jaymee Goh and Joyce Chng
• The Court of Miracles by Kester Grant
• Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson
• Everfair by Nisi Shawl
• Battle Royale by Koushun Takami
• Live in Infamy by Caroline Tung Richmond
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Suggest new genres or titles!

• Fill out the form to suggest a genre or title!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, August 18th we'll be discussing the book Pet by Akwaeke Emezi!

Then on Tuesday, September 1st we'll be talking about Visual Novels!

This episode we're discussing Summer Reading and Challenges! We talk about summer reading programs, struggling with reading during a pandemic, why we're bad at naming our podcast, ever expanding to-read lists, and more!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Announcements

• We've started doing retrospective lists of books by people of colour for genres we covered on old episodes. You can find a list of the lists here.
• Our stream of the visual novel BAKED:MAGIC
• Bingo sheets for Book Club for Masochists
• • Or try this link

15 Historical Romance Novels by People of Colour (Link)

• An Extraordinary Union by Alyssa Cole
• That Could Be Enough by Alyssa Cole
• Let Us Dream by Alyssa Cole
• Daughters of a Nation: A Black Suffragette Historical Romance Anthology
• Butterfly Swords by Jeannie Lin
• Stars in Their Eyes by Pema Donyo
• A Summer for Scandal by Lydia San Andres
• The Hidden Blade by Sherry Thomas
• The Duchess War by Courtney Milan
• Unmasked Heart by Vanessa Riley
• Heart and Hand by Rebel Carter
• Rebel by Beverly Jenkins
• Indigo by Beverly Jenkins
• A Delicate Affair by Lindsay Evans
• The Preacher's Promise by Piper Huguley

Media we Mentioned

• The Meaning of Birds by Jaye Robin Brown
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
• One of the Calvin and Hobbes comics featuring Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie
• Munchers (Wikipedia)
• • Play Number Munchers on the Internet Archive
• Dance Dance Revolution by Cathy Park Hong
• The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark
• Can't Escape Love by Alyssa Cole
• Plainsong by Kent Haruf
• Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

Links, Articles, and Things

• Literature Review on the Impact of Summer Reading Clubs
  • Is Matthew talking garbage about gamification? Let us know!
• Calgary Public Library - Ultimate Summer Challenge
• BC Summer Reading Club 2020
• TD Summer Reading Club: Home
• A History of Youth Summer Reading Programs in Public Libraries
• Milk caps (Wikipedia): These are Pogs
• THAC0
• Closed Stack Libraries (Wikipedia)
• National Magazine Awards

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Join us again on Tuesday, August 4th when we'll be discussing the genre of Alternative History.

Then on Tuesday, August 18th we'll be discussing the book Pet by Akwaeke Emezi!

This episode we're discussing Entertainment Non-Fiction! We talk about what does (and doesn't) count as entertainment, how we're bad at watching TV, whether people are now turning non-book sources for analysis of media (e.g. watching videos on YouTube), and how many bananas are in a bunch.

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Things We Read This Month

• As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes
• A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator's Rise to Power by Paul Fischer
• Jim Brown: Last Man Standing by Dave Zirin
• Medallion Status: True Stories from Secret Rooms by John Hodgman
• Black Space: Imagining Race in Science Fiction Film by Adilifu Nama
• Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made by Jason Schreier
• The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick by Mallory O'Meara
• Reading the Vampire Slayer: An Unofficial Companion to Buffy and Angel edited by Roz Kaveney

15 Entertainment Non-Fiction Books by People of Colour

• Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib
• The Devil Finds Work by James Baldwin
• Hollywood Black: The Stars, the Films, the Filmmakers by Donald Bogle
• Raw: My Journey into the Wu-Tang by Lamont U-God Hawkins
• Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies by bell hooks
• Fabulous: The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric by Madison Moore
• Black Space: Imagining Race in Science Fiction Film by Adilifu Nama
• Super Black: American Pop Culture and Black Superheroes by Adilifu Nama
• Everything's Trash But It's Okay by Phoebe Robinson
• Movies (And Other Things) by Shea Serrano
• The Rap Year Book: The Most Important Rap Song From Every Year Since 1979, Discussed, Debated, and Deconstructed by Shea Serrano
• This Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare by Gabourey Sidibe
• I Put a Spell on You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone by Nina Simone
• Iwao Takamoto: My Life With A Thousand Characters by Iwao Takamoto
• EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest by Qiana Whitted

Announcements

• The book we'll all be reading and discussing for episode 107 is Pet by Akwaeke Emezi
• Matthew talked about streaming visual novels, and that will hopefully happen, but there's no pilot episode (yet…).
• We've started doing lists for each genre by people of colour. You can find a list of the lists here.
• We're designing new bingo sheets for the podcast! (Here are the bingo sheets we made for episode 50.) What topics or titles always come up on the podcast? What verbal tics do we have? Let us know!

Other Media We Mentioned

• If You're Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be in Trouble: Movies, Mayhem, and Malice by Joe Queenan
• Anime from Akira to Howl's Moving Castle: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation by Susan J. Napier
• Pulgasari (Wikipedia) (North Korean giant monster movie)
• 3 Ninjas (Wikipedia)
• Mars Attacks! (Wikipedia)
• Things That Make White People Uncomfortable by Michael Bennett
• Bossypants by Tina Fey
• Métis in Space
• Stardew Valley (Wikipedia)
• Octodad: Dadliest Catch (Wikipedia)
• The Jackbox Party Pack (Wikipedia)
• What we completely forgot to mention: 33⅓ (a well-known and popular series of books about specific albums)

Links, Articles, and Things

• American Ninja Warrior (Wikipedia)
• Pedestrianism (Wikipedia)
• Six-day racing (Wikipedia): Bicycle races
• Dust-to-Digital (Instagram)
• Get a Mac (Wikipedia): Ad campaign featuring John Hodgman
• • A bunch of the ads in question
• Slash fiction (Wikipedia)
• Ars Technica's War Stories
• lonelygirl15 (Wikipedia)
• Todd in the Shadows' review of Drake's Toosie Slide
• Glass Animals - Dreamland

Suggest new genres or titles!

• Fill out the form to suggest a genre or title!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, July 21st we'll be discussing Summer Reading/Challenges!

Then on Tuesday, August 4th we'll be talking about Alternative History fiction!

Battle of the Books 2020! It's the one time a year that we all read the same book! We each pitch a title and our listeners vote and decide on which it will be. Our possibilities include Pet by Akwaeke Emezi, Best of all Possible Worlds by Karen Lord, My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education by Jennine Capó Crucet, and An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon.

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Which book should we all read?

• Pet by Akwaeke Emezi (RJ's pick)
• Best of all Possible Worlds by Karen Lord (Meghan's pick)
• My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education by Jennine Capó Crucet (Anna's pick)
• An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon (Matthew's pick)

• Vote for which book we all read! (deadline is July 1st)

Our Shortlists

• RJ
• • Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey
  • Circe by Madeline Miller
  • The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa
• Anna
• • Sounds Like Titanic by Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman
  • Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez
  • Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor by Virginia Eubanks
• Matthew
• • Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
  • Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch
• Meghan
• • Normal People by Sally Rooney
  • The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
  • Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips
  • Burnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens
  • The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
  • Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
  • Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

Other Media we Mentioned

• Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann (the 1000 page, one sentence book)
• Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
• Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
• The Murderbot Diaries: All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Links, Articles, and Things

• Episode 079 - Which Book Should We Read? (our "book pitch" episode from last year, includes shortlists)
• Episode 083 - The Fifth Season (our "we all read the same book" episode from last year)
• Domestic Fiction (encylopedia.com)
• A writer chronicles her "time among the whites" (Vox)
• Another Thing the Book Burning at Georgia Southern Reveals (Inside Higher Ed)
• Jennine Capó Crucet and Post-Trump Latinx Literature (Los Angeles Review of Books)
• Hark! (RJ's winter holiday music podcast)

Bingo sheets!

• The bingo sheets we made for episode 50.
• What should we add to updated bingo sheet?

Suggest new genres or titles!

• Fill out the form to suggest genres!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, July 7th we'll be talking about the genre of Entertainment (Non-Fiction)!

Then on Tuesday, July 21st we'll be discussing Summer Reading/Challenges!