This week, Natasha of the Unspoiled Book Club podcast joins us to hash out Stephen King’s Bag of Bones, a book about being a middlebrow fiction writer, small towns, and ghosts. So, you know, most Stephen King novels.

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Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves is out to get you. It is an antagonistic book that's larger on the inside than it appears on the outside. It's also a book about a book about a film about a house that may or may not be a portal to a hellish labyrinth. Confused yet? Join the club.

Join us for a discussion of metatexts, evil Zillow listings, and FOOTNOTES OH GOD THE FOOTNOTES.

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This week we take a double-dip into Edgar Allan Poe's spooky catalogue—Craig reads about the Murders in the Rue Morgue, and Andrew sips from the Cask of Amontillado. Both are sort of spooky in their way, but they're also deeply strange horror stories that raise questions like "what animal would be the most likely to kill you" and "what would someone have to do to you for you to wall them up in a cellar."

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This episode we dive back into the mailbag! We didn't read a book but we did read a bunch of great questions from you about how we make the show, how we program it, and what we eat while we're reading.

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Are you ready to get SPOOKY??? It's the first week of our 2017 Spooktober spectacular, and we're here to talk about R.L. Stine's teen horror series 99 Fear Street. This entry, The First Horror, is the story of Cally and her family, who move into the most clearly haunted house that you could ever imagine. Needless to say...things go poorly for the Frasiers.

Additional talking points include haunted TV shows, economic mobility, and phantasmagorical realtors.

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Books read 1, alcohol units 4 (bad), chuckles 179 (excellent).

This week we tackle Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, a book that's carried a long way by its narrator's voice; we also talk about Livejournals we may or may not have had, feminism, neuroses, and how we know basically nothing about dating in the modern era.

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How Weird do you like your fiction? Do you dig bogeymen who eat ghosts? Narrators who repeat themselves all the time? How about soul-crushing nihilism that implicates the reader in the demise of civilization? Well then Michael Cisco's The Traitor might be the book for you!

Other discussion topics include new iPhones, Magic Eye books, and the Thong Song.

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Sara Nović's Girl at War has all the confidence and impact of a firsthand account, despite the fact that it was written almost entirely from secondhand accounts. Detailing one girl's experience in the early 90s Croatian War of Independence and her life in America afterward, it's a compelling account of internal and external conflict from a character who has two homes and doesn't quite belong in either.

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This week, four conventionally-sized young women approach adulthood in Louisa May Alcott's seminal novel Little Women.

It's time to wonder who will marry Laurie, who will sell their novel, and who will frustrate us with their moral lessons. Also: what's the deal with the limes?!

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You might know George R. R. Martin from an obscure little HBO series called “Game of Thrones.” This week, we go back to his very first (and pre-ASOIAF) novel, the science fiction/romance story Dying of the Light.

This book showcases Martin’s gift for organic, engrossing world building, but the material is let down a bit by its characters and its protagonist in particular. All in all, a good first effort from the guy who would go on to write one of modern fantasy’s biggest juggernauts. 

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