I Don't Even Own a Television

It's time...for us to take on one of the pale male faces surely adorning everyone's Bad Book Rushmore, but for complicated reasons we explain at no little length, we enjoy or anyway endure one of L. Ron Hubbard's lesser-known book-like objects, a...collection of described events entitled Spy Killer.

No matter how bad you think this thing is going to be, it's worse than you can easily imagine. It features a main character who actually snaps back at his captor "I'm laughing out loud," because being captured by the spy he is supposed to kill is actually funny to him, he can't believe you thought this would upset him. This 1936 action (?) / adventure (?) is jam-packed with racist descriptions of non-white characters, MANY scenes of our rugged, uh, protagonist, being captured and locked in rooms, and a scene that's supposed to be happy denouement description but that includes the words "brutal kiss". On the plus side, it also includes things we somehow didn't even get to, like "The man was riddled." (Yes, with a full stop. No, not riddled with anything, like every other time you've ever seen the word "riddled".) "Even a decanter couldn't be trusted."

Short story shorter: this old Hubbard? It's a real mother.

 

Recommendations:

• The Outsider, by Stephen King (NOTE FROM JW: I was very wrong about the lack of supernatural stuff here, it just takes a while to kick in. Don't @ me.)
• The Mars Room, by Rachel Kushner

Music:

• "One Night in Bangkok" from "Chess"
• "Scenario" by Tribe Called Quest
• "The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World" by Sammy Davis Jr.

It took a while, but the world finally made us go back to Lee Child, so here we are: Make Me. Yes, down these manicured streets a man must go who is not himself manicured, who is neither wearing cologne nor designer clothes. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man (pauses, sips coffee, explains joke).

So it's another long walk with Jack Reacher, full of long descriptions of diners, short rants about leg room on airplanes, and a whole lot of bottomless cups of coffee. Oh, and bone-splintering acts of violence. Lots and lots of those. Mostly those, actually. Not a whole lot of anything else that I can remember, actually. But I'm certain that for a certain kind of reader, it's just a non-stop ride of thrills and chills. For us, it's an occasion for bellyaching. So all aboard the IDEOTV Train -- next stop, fun!

CONTENT WARNING: This book's plot revolves around self-harm and suicide and people's plans to take their own lives, and includes some descriptions of torture. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline phone number is: 1-800-273-8255.

 

Recommendations:

• "The Glass Essay", by Anne Carson
• "What Was It Like to Be a Nintendo Game Play Counselor?", by Annie Zaleski

Music:

• "Wild Mountain Nation" by Blitzen Trapper
• "Travellin' Man" by DJ Honda (feat. Mos Def)
• "Train Song" from MST3K

You wanted the best, you've got the best, because we're joined byHow2Wrestling's tremendous Jo Graham to discuss sexy pirate outfits, smart, sad horses, and love quadrangles, because that's what we've got when we've got Anne "Quinoa" Bishop's Daughter of the Blood.

Light S&M, sexy vampires, sexier vampires, sexier still demons, and, at the center of it all, a girl who ages from 7 to 12, so it's safe to say that very strong content warnings apply.

Recommendations:

• "re:memeber" -- Ólafur Arnalds
• Marie Antoinette
• Do Men Enter Bathtubs on Hands and Knees So Their Balls Hit the Water Last?
• The Wizard's First Rule, Terry Goodkind

Music:

• "This Corrosion" by The Sisters of Mercy
• "Ride the Wind" by Poison
• "Hot Blooded" by Foreigner

We're not trapped in a maze with you, Who Moved My Cheese?—you're trapped in here with us! After some more or less satisfying mysteries, we're returning to the self-help / motivational genre, with 1998's mystifyingly world-conquering clip art for the soul extravaganza, supposedly based on a story previously immensely successful business-book writer Spencer Johnson used to tell people. The story? Sort of a blend of Hellraiser and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, in which limited beings of uncertain creation are subjected to torment and deprivation at unknown hands.

It's horrifying, for sure. It also gets a little hairy—and maybe even...a little bit...cheesy. Bait the trap and bate your breath, because it's time to learn how to win the rat race. As an Extra Special Bonus In Celebration of Summer, we have a brand-new theme song, as demanded by our many, many fans who are also huge fans of Mungo Jerry. So hoot on that jug with the ONLY podcast that loves you, and you'll never get cheesed off.

Recommendations:

• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, book and movie
• "'It Feels Like a Derangement': Menopause, Depression, & Me", by Rose George

Music:

• "Protect Ya Neck" by Wu-Tang Clan
• "Mice Race" by Rudimentary Peni
• "Cats, Mice" by Big Business

The book so nice, we had to record it (the episode) twice, straight out the Pacific Ocean and packing both nearly a million strands of hair per square inch AND a cell phone telephone, it's The Otter of Death!

Our new direction, where we talk All Lighthearted Mystery All The Time, encounters serious challenges, including technical difficulties, a plot neither of us can quite follow, and a massive heap of animal facts. If you really want to be able to school somebody on the difference(s) betweens puffers and penguins, this may be the book for you! (NOTE: you will almost certainly be asked to leave the store after said schooling.) But if you want to take a ride through a lightly fictionalized version of Santa Cruz, located slightly annoyingly near the actual Santa Cruz, for some reason, and try to get to the bottom of just exactly who could have murdered the guy everybody hated, while not interrupting the dog-walking schedule, then come with us! Any otter choice...would be madness.

Recommendations:

• The Word Is Murder: A Novel, by Anthony Horowitz
• The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey
• The Vegetarian, by Han Kang

Music:

• "America We Stand as One" by Dennis Madalone
• "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" by Rupert Holmes
• "You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morissette

It's not Death by Chocolate, it's Murdered by Wine: A Cedar Bay Cozy Mystery! Folks, we took a look at our recent offerings: presidents, borders, sharks, spies, Dungeons and Dragons...lobsters...and we realized one thing hard and fast and deep and true: it was getting pretty dude-centric around here, so it was time for COZY MYSTERY MONTH! And you know what Cozy Mystery Month means. It's time to drink precisely one glass of wine and poke around and maybe help solve a murder.

So come along with our plucky, level-headed hero, as she active-listens and asks all the right questions to get strangers to open up to her, pounding out notes on her iPhone so she doesn't miss any details! Take some side trips so her husband can golf! And make sure you try every good restaurant in town, because you never know what kind of clue will turn up...or what kind of recipe inspiration you might get! The weather is fine, the Bed and Breakfast is waiting, and there's a mystery to solve, people, so let's get a good night's sleep, eat a light breakfast, and get to the bottom of just who was Murdered by Wine—and why—and we better do it soon, because Mike has an early-morning tee time and Kelly just confirmed our reservation for dinner, and it's a little bit on the early side, oh and we have to make sure we call Julia to check in on the kids' fever, oh and I should do a little shopping, it would be so nice if we could bring back a little something from our trip an—.

Recommendations:

• Murdered by Wine: A Cedar Bay Cozy Mystery (No.13), by Dianne Harman
• The Dublin Trilogy, by Caimh McDonnell

Music:

• "Drinking Wine Spo-Dee-Oh-Dee" by Jerry Lee Lewis
• "Madman (1992 Remix)" by Ugly Kid Joe
• "At Home He's a Tourist" by Gang of Four

The country's in dire straits indeed, even when not listening to Dire Straits, and it's clear that only two men are literarily capable of breaking down the situation and empowering the masses with knowledge bullets to fell their foes, and those men are ... second-or-maybe-third-tier action protag dude Steven Segal and his pal (?) Tom Morrissey, who wasn't in any movies with DMX.

For this roughest of rides, only one man could show up and help us through the deep thickets of paranoid dog-whistling about a version of the Deep State (sic) that lurks just beyond every border, and also in our nation's capital, and also in TV stations and we could go on like this for some time, but luckily (?) Messers. Segal and Morrissey have gone ahead and gone on like that for us, and that man? Why, it's Jeb Lund!

Somehow, we make it through a couple hundred pages of magnificently clunky prose, pseudo-positive stereotypes bashing against horrifyingly offensive ones, head shots, manly banter that's torture to read, snake-heavy torture scenes, and more glancingly mentioned right-wing conspiracy theories than was probably healthy. But it's all fun, we promise. So if you're ready to step into the shadows and enter a state that's most deep, please: join us.

Keep in touch with Jeb's work here, and listen to his rad podcast, which just may soon feature a guest spot from some fellas you know, here!

 

 

Recommendations:

• Tad Friend, "Jumpers"
• Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age
• Judith Shulevitz, "Forgotten Feminisms" series at the New York Review of Books
• Inspector Morse: Endeavour, BBC

Music:

• "Work the Angles" by Dilated Peoples
• "Apache Rose Peacock" by Red Hot Chili Peppers
• "Cherry Coke" by Karate

"The president is missing," you say? "Christ, I wish!" Sorry, that's not what this book is about, though. This episode drops the bucket down into the ever-reliable well of James Patterson and when we pull it back up we find that it's also got a few viscous droplets of ol' Bill Clinton mixed in. In The President Is Missing, we encounter a red-blooded, two-fisted kind of President of the United States, the kind of rugged leader who isn't afraid to...call terrorist leaders on the phone...or...go to a baseball game in disguise to meet with a possible source of information, the kind of guy with exactly two friends: a movie star who doesn't need anybody's help to resolve sexual harassment issues, and a venture capitalist who got rich on tech companies he brags about not understanding.

Look, we're not going to pretend this one makes a whole lot of sense. But hey, at least when this president drones on and on, it doesn't end up costing anybody their lives. If you're ready for a president who writes poems to square off against bad guys who thought of everything, but one thing they forgot: the United States has helicopters and knows how to use them, then you just might be ready for ... The President Is Missing.

 

Recommendations:

• "Feminize Your Canon" Column at the Paris Review: Olivia Manning by Emma Garman
• "Song for Sasha Banks" by the Mountain Goats

Music:

• "Funky President (People it's Bad)" by James Brown
• "Adrenaline!" by The Roots
• Theme from "Bad Dudes vs. Dragon Ninja"

We continue our trip around the world by following Amsterdam with a jaunt to Palo Alto, or anyway James Franco's grimdark version of Palo Alto. If you're still thrilled every time somebody says "Hi kids! Do you like violence?" this book may contain the pages you've been waiting for. If Sammy Hagar singing "you're like rock candy, baby—hot, sweet, and sticky" is how you like your descriptions of the act of physical love, this book may deserve a place on your shelf. Or, maybe, if you just have a serious thing for the products of creative writing programs, Palo Alto may satisfy. Otherwise, come along if you care—come along if you dare—take a ride to the land inside of Silicon Valley.

NOTE: this book contains serious quantities of objectionable content, including teen sex, not all of it consensual, violence, and racism and other forms of bigotry. Also, the author has been accused of inappropriate and exploitative sexual behavior, which we were not aware of at recording time: we apologize for not being aware of this. Had we known, we would have likely been much more critical of the book's content, or maybe not have discussed the book at all.

 

 

Recommendations:

• Embassytown, China Mieville
• Exile in the Outer Ring, EMA

Music:

• "Less Than Nothing" by I Hate Myself
• "Suburban Home" by The Descendents
• "What's Up Doc? (Can We Rock)" by Shaquille O'Neal ft. The Fu-Schnickens

Who's the guy who made the Cold War ... cool? Why, the American James Bond, Nick Carter, of course! And it doesn't get much cooler than Nick Carter, Killmaster: Amsterdam, a plot-light traipse through some of the more scenic parts of the Netherlands—and not a few excursions through some rather gratuitously described nether regions.Actually, it does get much cooler than Nick Carter, Killmaster: Amsterdam. What it doesn't get is much more tepid or forgettable. But when a vacation isn't going well, it's time to make your own fun! So we do, ranging from Gorilla Biscuits to Gorilla Unit and trying to gin up some suspense of some kind in a book that drops foreshadowing hints like this: "Nick noted that she kept the big flat artist's case with her, as she had on the plane, where she even carried it to the powder room. Its contents might prove interesting, or they might just be ad proofs and sketches of jewelry settings; it was not worth a move on his part—yet." Riveting, riveting stuff. Please feel free to mention everything that isn't worth a move on Nick Carter's part yet.

If you want to read more about Nick Carter, that's seriously weird. But we can recommend the Glorious Trash blog on that front. So. If you're ready for a trip, put on your red light, grab your wooden shoes and prepare to plant tulips right on ... Nick Carter.

   

Recommendations:

• I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara
• "I could have fancied her" by Angela Carter

Music:

• "Uniform" by Faberyayo
• "Secret Agent Man" by Johnny Rivers
• "Amsterdam Squeeze" by The Bonobo Project