We had so much to say about Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire that we needed two episodes and an extra person to do it! We'll finish up our discussion in Part Two which will be out next Tuesday.

This was recommended to us by The Good Witch of the Northeast, who made time to float in on a bubble to be our special guest for this two-part episode.

In addition to our usual barnyard language, today's episode includes discussion or mention of: ableism, pregnancy, parental abuse, racism, sex, & sexual assault.

We've got another Amazon Double Feature for you! Today, we tackle two more pieces of book-like debris that Chris found in the bowels of an Amazon search, the criteria of which has been lost to time:

• Rathew Love Story: A Love Story by Argus G.
• Curiosity: A Book for Curious Minds by Bookinsky* (yes, the asterisk is in the author name)

Paris goes on a methodology queen adventure as she and Chris discuss whether both of these authors are actually just AI. They also ponder if Paris will live through Season 9 due to the condition of her New England apartment.

Over the last several seasons, we've structured our discussions into Things That Were Good and Things That Were Bad. For the first part of Season 9, we're trying out a rubric Chris created where we rate a book on each of the following categories on a 3-point scale of -1, 0 , or 1:

• Technical Construction (Typos, Formatting/Layout, Punctuation, etc.)

• Plot Construction & Content (Coherence, Rule Following, Character Quality)

• Moment-to-Moment (Quality of Prose & Dialogue, Overall Flow)

• Terriblo's Presence (Chaos Levels, Huh!? Factor, Please Help)

• Should This Exist? (Did the author meet their goal? Does it add anything new, interesting, or novel? etc.)

Ring in the new year with the Terrible Antique Book Freaks! The Antiques Freaks join us today to do a live read of The Getting Even of Tommy Dodd by William Hope Hodgson, a cross-dressing revenge fantasy on the high seas. We know it's not a Carnacki, and we know it's not even scary, but it's the best we can do having read all the 'nacks already. As usual, we're using Eye of Argon rules to read this and we encourage you to get out your Carnacki bingo cards and help us re-tool them for more generalized Hodgson tomfoolery.

In addition to our usual barnyard language, this episode includes or makes reference to: sexual humor (including foot stuff) and some bad Victorian ideas and opinions, including pedophilia.

It's winter holiday time again, so you all get a little gift from TBC!

Please enjoy this special edition of Less Terrible Book Club. People often wonder what else we're reading in a given year so we figured it was worth a brief discussion and rating of our Non-TBC reads from 2023.

We wish you a lovely winter and/or holiday time if that's what you get up to at this time of year! See you soon for Season 9. Hail Terriblo.

Chris's 2023 Non-TBC Reading List:

• The Music Lesson by Victor Wooten

• The Scar by China Miéville

• The Dark Profit Saga by J. Zachary Pike

• Jade City by Fonda Lee

• Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames

• Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter

• The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson

• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Paris's 2023 Non-TBC Reading List:

• This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

• Perdido Street Station by China Miéville

• Jagannath by Karen Tidbeck

• Walking on Cowrie Shells by Nana Nkweti

• The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

• The Secret Language of Flowers by Jean-Michel Othoniel

• Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

• Heavy by Kiese Laymon

• They Were Here Before Us: A Novella in Pieces by Eric LaRocca

• Babel or the Necessity of Violence by R.F. Kuang

• To Wallow in Ash & Other Sorrows by Sam Richard

• The Witch's Garden by Sandra Lawrence

• Lockdown Laureate by O.F. Cieri

• Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo

In addition to our usual barnyard language, this episode includes very brief mentions of: beastiality, death/murder/violence, ED/weight, and homophobia.

Ken of Antiques Freaks suggested that we read this and the time is nigh. Come along with us to Atlantis and Lemuria while we try to figure out why all of sentient life in the cosmos is organized like your local Target. The return of LMJ. Additionally, we are baffled as to why authors never seem to be able to cite a quote from a famous person that's actually real.

In addition to our usual barnyard language, today's episode contains: aliens, a touch of racism/eugenics, and dangerously high levels of woo-woo and conspiracy.

For today's episode, we read The Energy Conspiracy by David C Seman, vanity published in 1981. This was requested by our patron beastwiththeleast, who had this to say:

"Here's to another year of Terriblo's blessings and curses. I hereby submit my patron book request for you guys to read at some point next year...I haven't read the book in full, but I skim-read a few of the extremely short chapters. It looks like the sort of thing Ted Cruz would badger his wife into reading to him as a bedtime story. Please enjoy (tolerate? choke down?) this word salad tossed with right-wing dystopian elements, baffling typos, half a pound of cheese wrapped in aluminum foil, and dry-ass dialogue in place of croutons. BYOB."

Thanks for the recommendation, beastwiththeleast. We applaud your efforts in finding us an out-of-print book and digitally rendering it for ease of reading - truly a gentleman and a scholar!

In addition to our usual barnyard language, today's episode includes discussion or mention of: THE GUB'MINT in the vein of authoritarianism and some conservative and libertarian viewpoints around energy.

We read Jam by Yahtzee Croshaw this week at the request of our Patron Of the Void (The Taco-Eating Unicorn). We bring you a gray goo apocalypse dyed red atop a bland satire about how lame both terminally online and terminally corporate people are.

The Taco-Eating Unicorn from the Void would like to dedicate today's episode to his sister, Jade B., for being amazing through everything he's gone through recently, despite being in a different state. Yay Jade!

Today's show includes out usual barnyard language plus discussion or mention of: violence, both jam and human in flavor, and a brief discussion of a shitty slur.

Beginnings: A Christian Fantasy Short Story Collection by M.H. Elrich was self-published earlier this year. Chris found it while on an Amazon Short Reads dive and we figured a Christian fantasy collection was worth a review since we haven't read anything from this genre for the show before. Each of the 5 stories features a human-animal friendship with elements of magic and seem to be geared towards young readers or parents reading to young children.

Today's episode just includes our usual barnyard language with some brief discussions of Christianity.

This time we read The Golden Basement by David Norman Lewis, self-published in March of 2023. This was recommended by long-time listener, first-time caller Max who sent us a wonderful email recommending that we read this saying, "A few months ago you might have noticed a poem titled "$Reward$If$Found$" stapled up all over Cambridge, there were a couple reddit threads about it. On going back to my hometown of Seattle, WA I found out the poem is from a local self-published book...The author has been stapling the same poem everywhere. The novel is a "kids' book" about underground monsters controlling people's thoughts during the 1990 Goodwill Games...There's a YouTube video where the author is trying to sell it with donuts. You have to check it out. I so want to hear your takes on it…I emailed the author and he told me the baker is a friend of his. They once worked together on trying to make a new religion for Seattle but nobody showed up."

Thank you so very much, Max, for your longtime support and for recommending this book. It was very different from anything we've read before and we actually didn't hate it!

Today's show includes our usual barnyard language plus discussion or mention of: emotional abuse, enslavement, murder, parental neglect and abuse, sexual assault, and suicide.

Random Band/Album Reference from this Episode: Swan Christy - One with the Swan

Get your flannels, ciders, and s'mores ready for this week's discussion of Campfire Stories of Western Canada by Barbara Smith! Paris's friend Kristina recommended this for the show 6 years ago and we finally found a nice spot for it on the schedule. Thanks for sending us on this silly autumnal adventure, Kristina!

Today's show includes our usual barnyard language plus cartoon-level "spooky" stuff like a beheaded ghost, sasquatch, and spectral french fries.