It's the end of the year, so we decided to talk about some books we read in 2025 that weren't Pynchon. Of course, we decided to do this after we finished recording a 4+ hour episode for Against the Day, so we were admittedly all a bit spacey. Anyway, hopefully you'll recognize some of these books or come away with some new stuff to add to your never-ending TBR pile.

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Starting 01 February 2026, Cody and Kate will be (kinda) deep-diving into another book. What's the twist? It's not a Pynchon book (cue "shocking" sound bite). If you want to know what we're going to be covering in a monthly 10-part series within our series, give this brief explainer episode a listen!

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Books: Warlock by Oakley Hall; The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford by Ron Hansen; Lincoln In the Bardo by George Saunders

Music: Hermanos Gutierrez - Sonido Cósmico

Film/TV: The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford (2007; dir. Andrew Dominic)

As always, thanks so much for listening!

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In hindsight, it may appear unfair to have just been gallivanting about in Europe, as we return this episode to circle the Colorado Traverses. Lake gets in too deep, while Frank scopes the surface of his enemies, and our hosts struggle to keep their guts as lust intercedes. Despite their best efforts, even fleeing the Chums' company has not freed the Mappers from the occult slings of the Outsiders. Listeners are warned of degradation in transmissions thereby.

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Quit your scratching and bleeding and put down the rosary, the cure of all your anxieties has arrived! At long last, the Mapping the Zone Review of Shadow Ticket, Spoilerful Edition, has been released, and it's packed with more hot takes and thrilling twists than any diehard fans of the storied Spoiler-free episode could have imagined. The hype is NOT TOO HIGH!

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Books: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, Ulysses by James Joyce

Music: The Third Man (OST) by Anton Karas, Green Street, Grant’s First Stand, Idle Moments, Nigeria by Grant Green

TV/Film: Brazil (dir. Terry Gilliam, 1985), The Third Man (dir. Carol Reed, 1949), The Long Goodbye (dir. Robert Altman, 1973)

As always, thanks so much for listening!

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It's finally here and we got to read it! Shadow Ticket, the newest (and perhaps final) novel by Thomas Pynchon is out in the wild and we are here with a spoiler-free review for those who may not have had a chance to read it as of yet.

We will have a longer, more in-depth review episode out on 31 October 2025, so stay tuned for that if you wanted a more nuanced discussion of our thoughts on the novel.

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Music: Béla Bartók

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Wid'ya lookit that! It's been a hundred pages since our paths last crossed the Chums' of Chance, and here they are, in Venice. That ain't the only coincidence at hand, no, far too many'a them... Something's wrong. Still, hoping to keep with the patriotic aeronauts, and the history presented, our crew resorts to conspiratorial means of tracking the plot. Those mirrors 'n lenses had better help with that map, eh?

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Once in a lifetime, a moment comes around, and one has with the latest film from auteur director Paul Thomas Anderson! We take that moment to assess the film on its own merit, but not without respect to the weight of its primary credited influence, Vineland. Is Sean Penn the next Christian Bale? Just how Pynchonian has PTA gotten lately? Will anyone even need to read the old crank again, with adaptations like these? Answers to these questions, and more, await the listeners of our definitive, and complete, review of One Battle After Another.

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A spot of smoky rooms and heavy drapes suits us as finely as they do Lew, and somehow the more obscure the corner of history referred to by the couple-three iconoclasts he meets, the more our hosts find to discuss. There's plenty of room left in the shadows, as these dialogues reveal their purposes unorthodox even by the TWIT's standard! From the cricket...arenas...of Australia to bathtubs of Condy's fluid, it's no wonder we take a few missteps (e.g. Raimi) from the line of firm tracks this chapter joins them by.

Next episode: Ch. 21 (pg. 242-259) ending on “‘Bells are the most ancient objects. They call to us out of eternity.’”

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Music: The Pod - Ween

Film/TV: Love Liza (2002; d. Todd Louiso), Spider-Man (2002; d. Sam Raimi), Community (2009-2015)

As always, thanks so much for listening!

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With how things have gotten so real these past few eps, it's time to see what Lew's been up to in cheery old Inglund! These chaps, Nigel and Nuisance or whatbeit, who've already brung him across the world just have not said quite enough about this infinite tetrangle! Even the demonstrably stable Grand Cohen's powerful rhetoric can not convince our thoroughly skeptic troupe of the TWIT's wisdom. And just so, what more fitting a background to divine the sources of the oncoming strife upon the mainland? If Madame Eskimoff's recordings did not suffice our listeners, they might find a digestif in order while contemplating this episode of Mapping the Zone.

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The Avenger: An Allegorical War Map for 1877 by Fred W. Rose (1877) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Turkish_War_(1877%E2%80%931878)#/media/File:Fred._W._Rose_The_Avenger_An_Allegorical_War_Map_for_1877_1877_Cornell_CUL_PJM_1080_01.jpg

Books: The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage; Bare-faced Messiah by Russell Miller, Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

As always, thanks so much for listening!

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