This week the Spine Crackers are joined and dramatically upstaged by the inimitable Scott Thomas of The Infinity Podcast and And the Best Picture Is... to read Hiroko Oyamada's lonely, evocative corporate dreamscape The Factory (2013). 

This week the Spine Crackers read Bass Cathedral, the fourth volume of Nathaniel Mackey's epic ongoing, beginning and end-less epistolary work of jazz, history, and identity (among many other things) From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate. 

This week the Spine Crackers, along with OMEGA SPECIAL GUEST Daniel from the Viva La Dude podcast, tackle Helen DeWitt's genre and form-bending chonky boi novel about family and the nature of genius The Last Samurai (no not that one you rubes). 

This week the Spine Crackers read Guido Morselli's 1977 post-apocalyptic meditation on memory and selfhood Dissipatio H.G.: The Vanishing. If you have ever wanted to hear us sing, well boy howdy this is the episode for you!

This week the Spine Crackers read Anna Kavan's surrealist pseudo-autobiographical novel Sleep Has His House. This episode lives up the podcast's name, as disagreements were had, bones were broken, and feelings were hurt. Drama! Intrigue! Books!

This week the Spine Crackers head to British colonial Africa at some point in the flat circle of time with John Crowley's 1989 time-travel novella Great Work of Time!

This week the Spine Crackers read Dirty Snow, an existential pseudo-dystopian novel of life during World War II, by prolific Belgian noir specialist Georges Simenon. Listen to this episode in your happy place because this is not a fun read (though it is excellent and enjoyable in other sorts of ways). 

This week the Spine Crackers dig into a very unrealistic and not-at-all timely-or-an-exact-mirror-of-our-crumbling-reality novel The Lathe of Heaven by legendary science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin. Alien turtles, dream realities, and psychological malpractice abound!

This week the Spine Crackers break into the strange and slightly (though understandably) misanthropic world of Jakov Lind, reading his 1962 novella Soul of Wood and a selection of his other short stories, most of which are centered around WWII and its aftermath. 

This week the Spine Crackers celebrate the most wonderful time of the year (in the case of one co-host, perhaps a bit too much) by talking through two of Charles Dickens' lesser known Christmas novellas: "The Chimes" and "The Haunted Man"