In this episode, Hans and Patrick patiently butcher and then discard the disappointing cuts of Chris's pick, Waterland - a novel he's sure he remembers liking, the first time he read it.

In this episode, Chris, Hans, and I discuss Orwell's hilarious Coming Up for Air, the best of his lesser known novels.

Take a trip up the apartment building of death with J.G. Ballard's classic tale of social disintegration, High Rise. Scrupulously faithful to the cold details of modern mechanized life while ignoring the very idea of psychological verisimilitude, High Rise is a brilliant scummy head trip, easy to follow but hard to truly understand, and we do our best to tease out its many secrets.

In this episode, the Book Spider crew discusses Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis, which is deals with haircuts, getting tazed, self immolation, the dehumanizing aspects of capitalism, and where limousines go at night when they're not in use during the day. 

In this episode, the Book Spider crew discusses PKD's A Scanner Darkly, which deals with addiction, authority, and the nature of identity. Enjoy!

Can Xue's Love in the New Millennium is a dense, confusing novel which portrays a complex web of relationships with no clear center, and lacks a conventional protagonist. It is, perhaps, a fitting choice for our first episode under the new name Book Spider.

In this episode, we chat about Michael Chrichton's novel Sphere, which Hans claims is the only one of the popular novelist's books that has depth enough for an extended discussion.

In this episode, Chris, Hans, and I discuss Dana Spiotta's Eat the Document, a novel that tells the story of two activists through shifting experiences and time periods. Check it out.

In this episodes, Hans, Chris, and I discuss Keith Gessen's A Terrible Country, which is a novel that explores corruption in modern day Russia. Check it out.

In this episode, we discuss a novel that explores Nietzschean philosophy in the context of two Japanese schoolkids who are subjected to ruthless bullying.