Book Spider

In which we discuss the hangout novel/non-novel (should be a memoir? a collection of lyric essays?), and the intense fall-off from her masterpiece, "No one is talking about this."

In this episode, the Spiders chat about Homage to Catalonia, Orwell's journalistic account of the Spanish Civil War. This memoir may in fact be his best work.

The Spiders briefly discuss Clinical Trials, Violet Lucca's scholarly analysis of David Cronenberg's filmography, focusing primarily on the downsides of theory-oriented analysis, then go into more depth on the relationship between Cronenberg's new film The Shrouds and his earlier work Naked Lunch.

In which we debate whether Polanski's grounded interpretation is better than Joel Cohen's hallucinatory interpretation, but ultimately circle back to the original play and the undying ritual of embodying, ingesting, and interpreting it. 

In this episode, the Spiders discuss Post Office, the first novel of infamous womanizing, drunkard poet Charles Bukowski. While it shows some promise in a few areas, it is, overall, pretty bad.

In which the Spiders consider Jayson Greene's Unworld, a lesson in the perils of blending the techniques and approaches of literary fiction and sci-fi, with reference to an earlier pick, the similarly shaky In Ascension.

In which we discuss whether Moshfegh pulls off the Ocean's 11 of torture porn.

In this episode, the Book Spider hosts discuss The Dwarf, an eighty-year-old Swedish novel that may be perfect.

In which Hans's initial enchantment with Martin MacInnes's In Ascension dissipates on a re-read. This novel attempts to mesh literary techniques with sci-fi themes, exploring environmental catastrophe, time travel, and multiple perspectives on family trauma, but does the ambition of its hybridization doom its effectiveness? 

In which we politely drag Harvey's lovely new novel through the mud despite repeated efforts to say nicer things about it. It really is quite lovely to spend time with! We just wished...there was more to it.