Novel Ideas

Banned Book Month continues with a classic dystopian novel that taught me an important lesson, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. What I learned from this book is how to spell the word “Fahrenheit.” It’s a tough one, guys. In this episode we discuss Bradbury’s unique writing style, accurate futurism, the difficulty of determining cause and effect, and the origins of dystopian stories. We also talk about manic pixie dream girls, sage characters, the impossibility of being universally liked, and what plagues the youth of the future. Also, this is one of our more self-referential episodes. You don’t have to be familiar with our previous episodes and books to follow the conversation, but be prepared for references to: A Handmaid’s Tale, Divergent, Hunger Games, Brave New World, The Giver, Childhood’s End, The Road, and Harry Potter. And possibly a couple of others I forgot to write down.

The music bump is “The Cliffs of Dover” by Eric Johnson in reference to the poem “Dover Beach,” which plays a prominent role in the book. This selection narrowly edged out “House on Fire” by Kansas, but I decided to zag instead of zig.

Fahrenheit 451 – Dystopian Origins

Recommendations:

A well known book that offers an obvious theme and plenty to talk about, but written in a style that is rather difficult if you don’t enjoy artistic prose.

Gabs: 6/10 for importance as a classic, 2/10 for actual enjoyment.

Ben: She totally stole my bit. 7/10 for assigned reading, 3/10 for entertainment.

Bestseller Month concludes with… No, wait, I mean Banned Book Month begins with… Oh, right. BOTH of things happen this week on the Novel Ideas podcast with The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. This is a YA book that has been frequently banned or challenged due mostly to the content of the whole book. Holy smokes, there are some issues in this one. In this episode we cover: child molestation, autism, bad cycles, and teen sex. We also talk about Charlie’s similarity to Martians, pothead humor, essay writing, and the lack of sexual tension between step-siblings.

The music bump is “Asleep” by The Smiths. Read the book if you want to know why.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower – A Well Known Phenomenon

Recommendations:

Gabs – 7.5/10. An interesting read with a few minor flaws.

Ben – 9/10. Possibly my favorite podcast book of year 2.

Bestseller Month continues with The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, an inspirational (perhaps?) story about a shepherd finding his Personal Legend. This is one of the bestselling books of all time, and despite its English language release date of nearly twenty years ago, it is currently on the NY Times bestseller list in the paperback category. This is the book that will not die. So why is this such an international phenomenon. Well… we have no idea. Listen to the episode to hear us discuss that point, as well as love at first sight, spirituality, and the importance of making decisions. We also get into what time period this book takes place in, whether we are book snobs, and our issues with Fatima’s Personal Legend.

The music bump is “Listen to Your Heart” by A.J. Holmes, Carlos Valdes, and Darren Criss because it’s thematically appropriate.

The Alchemist – Easy Dream Interpretation

Recommendations:

This book is blend of mysticism and motivational speaking. If you’re into the inspirational/spiritual genre, you will probably like it. If you think more like us:

Ben: 4/10. Too short to be truly bad.

Gabs: 3/10, mostly due to blah

Welcome back to the zombie apocalypse. Or almost apocalypse. This week on Novel Ideas, we read World War Z by Max Brooks. This book is a little bit different from other books that we’ve read in that it doesn’t really have characters or a plot, but is instead written in the style of an oral history. Because of that, we changed our format slightly for this week’s episode. We talked about the movie, the breakdown of society, the nature of celebrity, and gender balance. We also discussed zombie tropes, the fact that dogs hate zombies, historical zombie fiction, and zombie war psychology. Basically, we discussed everything zombie related we could think of.

The music bump is “The Trooper” by Iron Maiden, used to bait zombies at the Battle of Hope.

Recommendations:

An interesting and compelling book about 80-90% of the time. It drags just a little at the end, but not enough to put a damper on the experience of reading it. The book includes some excellent world building in telling a well covered genre story in a different way.

Ben: 8.5/10

Gabs: 8/10

The great Harry Poddercast Extravaganza continues with… Oh, it’s over? Right. In that case, Novel Ideas is back with a non-Potter podcast for the first time in several weeks with Inferno by Dan Brown, a thriller that involves Dante and lots of obscure art knowledge. This episode also launches a new theme month, Bestseller Month, where we examine books that have sold well and recently. We would like to offer a legitimate spoiler alert for this episode, as the book has several plot twists, and even we would be less interested in the story if we had known those twists in advance. If you’ve already read it, or aren’t planning on reading it soon, tune in (Like on a dial? Maybe I don’t understand the internet yet…) to hear us discuss the aforementioned plot twists, infodumps, overpopulation, and feminism. We also talk about unlikely character pairings, victorious villains, the existence of gay people, and the consequences of monologuing. In a very special turn, we also get to experience a couple of minutes of Gabs rage. Hooray!

The music bump is from Franz Liszt’s “Dante Symphony,” which is being performed during much of the climactic scene of this book.

Recommendations:

Gabs: 5/10 If you like thrillers, read it. If you like the stuff we like, skip it.

Ben: 4/10 Pretty dull for a thriller.

Plug Alert!

Check out Epic One, a collaborative fiction project involving Gabs Roman, half of Novel Ideas. The link will take you to the first chapter of an ongoing online e-book.

And at long last, we reach the actual end of the Harry Poddercast Extravaganza with part 2 of our roundtable discussion. In this episode we discuss the portrayal of women, bullying, continuity, and the movie adaptations. We also cover Game of Thrones (again), Star Wars, and the Lensman series, possibly as a sign of Harry Potter fatigue. We also talk about revising the Hogwarts curriculum, twin stuff, sex questions that could only apply in the HP universe, and the face punch test for determining which house you should be sorted into. It’s been a lot of fun doing this, even if it has been fairly exhausting getting three and a half hours of raw audio edited in one day. We hope to see you again next week when we talk about… something other than Harry Potter.

The music bump is “Too Much Time On My Hands” by Styx, because that is surely what you think about my situation by now.

Recommendations:

Cast a memory charm on yourself and read/listen to the whole series again!

Welcome to the concluding episode of the Harry Poddercast Extravaganza, our roundtable discussion of the entire series. Or perhaps Harry Potter is just too huge to be disposed of so easily. Turns out, we can’t end it in a reasonable length of time. This is Part 1 of our roundtable, with Part 2 going up later today, or possibly tomorrow morning. In this episode, we primarily discuss characters and issues related to characterization. We talk about love, choice, angst, imperfection, redemption, and some of favorite/least favorite characters. We also discuss Game of Thrones, Parks and Rec, why you shouldn’t mess with old ladies, and Neville being Neville. There’s also a noticeable, but hopefully not too distracting, amount of whiny dog in the background from time to time. Sorry about that, he just wanted in on the action.

The music bump is “One Last Time” by Dream Theater, because I like to make them look like liars. Filthy, filthy liars.

Recommendations:

The books are already read, so if you’re listening to this, we hope you know exactly what you’re getting into!