Literary Loitering - Irreverent Mockery With Cultural Anarchists

Don your leather jackets, wheel out your tricycles, and join Graham, Sarah and Rob for another anarchic slow-ride through arts, books and culture.

Kicking things off this week, yet another former member of Donald Trump’s staff has released a tell-all book - which is more proof that if you want a book deal in the U.S., you should get a job in the White House. In other news, we find out the truth about J. D. Salinger’s unpublished works, E. L. James announces a “sexy” new book, and we marvel at the rise of a new sub-genre of detective fiction called cozy mysteries - which may sometimes feature cats as the heroes. 

After that it’s Sarah’s turn to talk about her Christmas book, which is Cunk On Everything: The Encyclepedia Philomena by Philomena Cunk and Jason Hazeley. Then it’s time for a quiz about old dialect words and phrases from around the UK … what could go wrong?

If you've enjoyed this podcast then please share us with your friends or leave us a rating on your podcast app of choice. You can also follow us on Twitter @TGS_TheGeekShow, or on other social media by searching for The Geek Show. If you want to show your support then head over to Patreon and give whatever you can, or you can head over to The Geek Shop and partake in some of our lovely wares.

Thanks, and until next time, don't read anything we wouldn't!

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Literary Loitering returns for another year of cultural anarchy, and with all the gang present and correct there should be nothing to stop us!

Except for technology (apologies for the poor audio quality in parts of this episode). 

Anyway, the show must go on as they say, and this week we discover that the sale of physical books has increased and second-hand bookshops are becoming more popular. In other news, some fascist books were left in an old red phone booth that had been converted into a library (that’s some weird Doctor Who stuff right there), the argument between twitchers and birders continues unabated, and Stephen King saves a newspaper review section. 

After that it’s time to talk about the Secret Santa we did last year, and first up to bat is Rob with Charles Foster’s gloriously eccentric treatise on nature and animals, Being A Beast. 

Oh, and as further reading after that book, then we recommend the following: 

After Man: A Zoology Of The Future by Dougal Dixon (which we reviewed on episode 85)

Straight From The Horse’s Mouth: How To Talk To Animals And Get Answers by Amelia Kinkade

Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus by John Gray

Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps by Allan Pease and Barbara Pease

Animal: The Autobiography Of A Female Body by Sara Pascoe

If you've enjoyed this podcast then please share us with your friends or leave us a rating on your podcast app of choice. You can also follow us on Twitter @TGS_TheGeekShow, or on other social media by searching for The Geek Show. If you want to show your support then head over to Patreon and give whatever you can, or you can head over to The Geek Shop and partake in some of our lovely wares.

Thanks, and until next time, don't read anything we wouldn't!

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year which can only mean one thing - the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award! Join Graham, Andrew, Sarah and Rob for this final episode of 2018 which is top-filled with enough filth and innuendo to carry our jolly listeners well into the new year. 

After that it’s time to unwrap our presents as we do our own book-based version of a Secret Santa. 

Hold on to your strange seasonal jumpers because things are going to get weird (and possibly sticky).

If you've enjoyed this podcast then please share us with your friends or leave us a rating on your podcast app of choice. You can also follow us on Twitter @TGS_TheGeekShow, or on other social media by searching for The Geek Show. If you want to show your support then head over to Patreon and give whatever you can, or you can head over to The Geek Shop and partake in some of our lovely wares.

Thanks, and until next time, don't read anything we wouldn't!

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The end of the year draws near, and with one episode left before a well deserved break it’s time for those anarchic and rambunctious rapscallions of culture to once again do what they do best, and what better way to kick off the penultimate episode of 2018 than with the “Word” of the Year.

Is it still fair to call it that given some of the previous entries? Isn’t it now an oxymoron to call it a “word”? Should we change it to “Thing From the Human Vocabulary” … of the year?

Anyway, after that it’s time to find out what kind of filth has been kept in the Bodleian Library’s secretive Phi collection, why Barrow Island Primary School’s library has technically not checked out any books, where the citizenship of author Milan Kundera went, and what Jonathan Franzen thinks makes a good writer.

The next episode is our last one of 2018, and it’s a doozy so make sure you tune in for the Bad Sex Awards!

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Under normal circumstances (or what passes as normal around here), we’d take our rickety wagon of cultural anarchy and meander along until we found some oddity or weirdness that we could talk about, but at certain points in the time someone else kindly does the job for us.

That’s right. It’s time for one of our favourite annual awards - The Bookseller’s Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year!

But before we get into that there are a few items of note, like Isabella Rossellini’s bizarre “one woman” show that had her sporting novelty gorilla arms (which, contrary to the review we found, we thought sounded amazing), the winner of the Man Booker Prize, and the fact that copies of Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk by Mark Judge (who is a college friend of controversial supreme court judge Brett Kavanaugh), are suddenly very hard to get a hold of …

We end the show with our thoughts on Halcyon by Rio Youers.

If you've enjoyed this podcast, then please follow us on Twitter @TGS_TheGeekShow or on other social media by searching for The Geek Show. If you want to show your support then head over to Patreon and give whatever you can. Alternatively, we have a shop up and running so head over to The Geek Shop and partake in some of our lovely wares.

Thanks, and until next time, don't read anything we wouldn't!

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Apparently there’s a new way to become a published author - get a job in Trump’s White House and get fired from it.

Our resident cultural anarchists return to offer up a heap of interesting tidings from all sorts of places, beginning with Anthony Scaramucci who lasted in his role of in the White House and has now published a book about it. After a brief interlude to admire a statue of Matilda facing down a cartoonish Donald Trump outside Roald Dahl’s house it’s time to find out why Mr. Darcy is guilty of “negging”.  

In other news, a new study shows which countries are the biggest bookworms, a self-published author goes to jail for killing her husband after she wrote a blog about … killing her husband, Pat Barker says we need more passionate readers, a new font claims to assist memory and more. 

 Welcome to another fun-filled episode of Literary Loitering!

If you've enjoyed this podcast, then please follow us on Twitter @TGS_TheGeekShow or on other social media by searching for The Geek Show. If you want to show your support then head over to Patreon and give whatever you can. Alternatively, we have a shop up and running so head over to The Geek Shop and partake in some of our lovely wares.

Thanks, and until next time, don't read anything we wouldn't!

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This week Graham and Andrew discover that they may not be the bastions of sanity and elegance that they thought they were as Producer Rob is away, so they now have free reign to take the show in a more studied and genteel direction.

Unfortunately their inner cultural anarchists disagreed with their decision.

Alongside all of those shenanigans our intrepid duo are confused about the unusual U.S. renaming of Stuart Turton’s novel The Seven Deaths of Elizabeth Hardcastle, discover the ultimate in Frenchness, investigate some of Shakespeare’s possible inspirations, wonder why anyone would want to do a historical re-enactment of the funeral of Princess Diana, and all sorts of other stuff.

If you've enjoyed this podcast, then please follow us on Twitter @TGS_TheGeekShow or on other social media by searching for The Geek Show. If you want to show your support then head over to Patreon and give whatever you can. Alternatively, we have a shop up and running so head over to The Geek Shop and partake in some of our lovely wares.

Thanks, and until next time, don't read anything we wouldn't!

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The junk wagon of cultural anarchy rolls into town again with Andrew, Graham and Producer Rob riding in the back … hang on … WHO’S DRIVING?

 And since we’re travelling at the speed of a decrepit milk float, do we really need a driver? 

Anyway, things have been happening in the world. The Future Library burying books in a forest near Oslo, the Nobel Prize for Literature has been cancelled but already has a replacement award, the author of Crazy Rich Asians could see in the new year in jail, fictional medieval woodland character Reynard the Fox is due to make a comeback and more besides.  

After all of that it’s time to settle down with a good book, and this time it’s The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay.

If you've enjoyed this podcast, then please follow us on Twitter @TGS_TheGeekShow or on other social media by searching for The Geek Show. If you want to show your support then head over to Patreon and give whatever you can. Alternatively, we have a shop up and running so head over to The Geek Shop and partake in some of our lovely wares.

Thanks, and until next time, don't read anything we wouldn't!

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Has anyone else noticed that stories about the Trump presidency are beginning to sound more like stories from Game of Thrones that didn’t make the cut? 

Adding to the whirlwinds of controversy surrounding The Don of the U.S. government is Unhinged - a new tell-all book by former Trump aide (which, now that we say it, sounds like some kind of gastric medicine), Omarosa Newman. As part of her publicity drive she has also released several recordings that she made during her time as part of the White House “family”. 

In other news, and instagram star’s foraging cookbook has been pulled because of its potentially poisonous recipes, Jerry Adams divulges recipe secrets from Northern Ireland’s peace process, support pours in for a socialist bookshop that was attacked by right-wing vandals, Helen Lederer announces an alternative to the Wodehouse Prize that will focus on female authors, and Women’s Weekly comes under-fire from authors, writers and many others for its shockingly terrible contracts. 

After all of that we actually have two books - Smashing It Up: A Decade Of Chaos With The Damned by Kieron Tyler, and The Winter Vow by Tim Akers - which is the conclusion to his Hallowed War trilogy. 

Now normally we’d be done there, but not this week as Graham has put together a rather fun quiz …

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There are three Brontë sisters, and since we’re missing a Graham this week we decided to find out which of our three intrepid cultural anarchists (Sarah, Andrew and Producer Rob), could be the reincarnation of which Brontë sister. We find out the truth at the end of the show, we just hope that Graham isn’t Bramwell …

Also, don’t ask which of the Brontë’s was the best as you may start a rumble in certain circles. 

Before all of that though, things have been happening in the strange world of books and the arts, beginning with the usual dire statistics about young-adult fiction (it’s always something with teenagers …). After that it’s time to find out why bookshops and libraries are not the same thing, why a group of protest artists were protesting against their own exhibition, and why anyone in their right mind would pay $30,000 for a book about Ferrari. 

After a quick stop in Lincoln to find out what the art ninjas have been up to, it’s time for Producer Rob to explore the remarkably observant cartoons of Private Eye’s very own David Ziggy Greene in a new collection of his work called Times Like These: Graphic Reports of Modern Life.  

It’s a book that isn’t a book but is a book in the form of a graphic novel … technically? 

If you've enjoyed this podcast, then please follow us on Twitter @TGS_TheGeekShow or on other social media by searching for The Geek Show. If you want to show your support then head over to Patreon and give whatever you can. Alternatively, we have a shop up and running so head over to The Geek Shop and partake in some of our lovely wares.

Thanks, and until next time, don't read anything we wouldn't!

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