This week we're dissecting a book which mixes fiction and nonfiction in ways which are enigmatic, compelling, and -- to some readers -- morally suspicious. Benjamin Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World follows the fictionalized biographies of several scientists and mathematicians as they discover the principles which become quantum mechanics. This odd genre hybrid is admirable, gripping, and only partially satisfying, despite great critical acclaim.

This week, we discuss Ferris's famous "we" novel about late 2000s office space culture, and get briefly melancholic about what work friends felt like in the pre-pandemic world. 

This episode, which discusses the modern-day sci-fi classic Eifelheim, features a rarity: all three podcasters agreeing on the quality of the text. Enjoy!

In this episode the three Spiders do their damnedest to wrap their heads around Lookout Cartridge, which is generally agreed to be the best novel by Joseph McElroy, an enigmatic postmodernist who is often considered an underrated peer of DeLillo, Pynchon, Gass, Gaddis, and the rest of the '60s and '70s greats. 

This week, we discuss Calvino's willful commitment to celebrate the act of reading by refusing to give readers what they want - over and over and over again. 

In this episode, we compare two novels with dog protagonists and discuss form, technique, and how a writer can represent nonhuman minds.

The Book Spider crew puzzles over Tanya Tagaq's Split Tooth, a novelish work whose mixture of bleak slice-of-life vignettes with a more fantastic, spiritual register seems like it might be magical realism (but definitely probably isn't). Are we ill-equipped to understand this work, or are we bringing the wrong tools for the job? Check out the episode for the answer, if such a thing exists. In the web department, intriguing parallels are found with Patricia Lockwood's No One is Talking About This.

In this episode, we discuss the dreamy, expansive, magical, and somehow also frustrating Martin Dressler, as well as some right and wrong ways to criticize capitalist systems. 

In this episode, we discuss the intriguing, awesome memoir Road Song by Natalie Kusz. Check it out, if you want to be impressed.

No One is Talking About This is a hilarious, moving and disorienting novel about communication and the search for authentic experience in contemporary networked and mediated Western life, and how one woman's encounter with tragedy brings her back to a more human way of being. Or is that an oversimplification?