Terrible Book Club

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.

One Hundred Proofs that the Earth is Not a Globe was written and self-published by William M. Carpenter in 1885. However, Chris found this on a homeschooler's Twitter page where it was recommended for teaching children in 2023, so we figured it was worth a review.

• Folding Ideas:

  • In Search of a Flat Earth

• Science of Our Spherical Earth:

  • Neil deGrasse Tyson Demonstrates Absurdity of Flat Earth

  • Dave Explains: The Earth is Definitely Not Flat

  • Dave Explains: The 10 Things That All Flat Earthers Say

  • Wikipedia: Empirical Evidence for the Spherical Shape of Earth

The 9th Colony by Colin Curtis was vanity published through AuthorHouse UK in February of 2023. We received an email from a podcast PR rep asking us to have the author on the show as a guest. We don't have authors on the show, but we get a lot of these emails because some PR companies just send blanket form emails without actually having any idea what the podcasts or other entities they're contacting actually do. Normally we just skim and delete, but this one caught our eye because it suggested that Mr. Curtis had expertise in the science of human evolution and space exploration and would talk about "the evolution debate". Considering the book was only 128 pages, it seemed worth a read and review for us this year.

Disclaimer: Most of this year's episodes were pre-recorded many months in advance. Please keep in mind that when we recorded this review in early 2023, the UAP/UFO hearings in congress that took place in July obviously hadn't happened yet. If you haven't yet watched or read the transcripts of those hearings, it's worth your time: UAP Hearing Wrap Up

In addition to our usual barnyard language, today's episode includes discussion or mention of: aliens, alien abduction, cartoon-level violence, conspiracy theories, and UAPs/UFOs.

• U.S. Government Alien/UFO Investigations

  • Office of the Director of National Intelligence's Preliminary Assessment of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

  • National Archives: Project Blue Book

• Kurzgesagt's Short-Form Videos about Alien Possibilities:

  • The Fermi Paradox — Where Are All The Aliens? (1/2)

  • The Fermi Paradox II — Solutions and Ideas – Where Are All The Aliens? (2/2)

  • Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter

  • Aliens under the Ice – Life on Rogue Planets

  • What Do Alien Civilizations Look Like? The Kardashev Scale

• Citations Needed:

  • The Very Real Social Brain Rot of Ancient Aliens and Ancient Apocalypse

If you're interested in our take on a WWII popcorn spy thriller, it's here!

It's hard for us to say no to reviewing a book when you mail it to us. We got a copy of His Majesty's Hope through the magnificence of the US postal system from our Patron EasternSwiss. They asked us to read it for their Patron's Choice episode this year, telling us that this book is about, "a British tutor [who] becomes a spy to fight Nazis, but neglects her duties, gets her partner killed over dumb shit, and never listens to smart people...her half sister in Germany is...clueless about Nazis despite her mother being a top official with the party! Like how can you know nothing about what's happening!? It's implied Goebbels sometimes visits her house, like c'mon - you know some shit."

In addition to our usual barnyard language, today's episode includes discussion or mention of: Nazis and their whole deal during WWII, but specifically child murder, eugenics, prison camps, and mild violence.

We've got another reddit find for you this week! Paris found this when perusing the latest "What's the worst book you've ever read?" post that surfaces a few times each year in various literary subreddits. In one response, redditor u/lydiardbell explained that Interview with the Devil (Part 1 - Victor's Account) was indeed the worst book they've ever read. What made it really memorable was that the author threatened to burn their house down for the review they wrote for the book.

In addition to our usual barnyard language, this episode includes mention or discussion of: cannibalism, violent abuse, r*pe/sexual assault, su*cide, and torture.

This week, we discuss our experience reading Golden (The Golden Wolf Series Book 1) by Shannon Mayer at the request of our Patron Robin. Robin said, "It looks truly abysmal. I can't wait to hear your summary." Golden is a shifter romance where a wolf is cursed to be a golden retriever and gets wrapped up in the events of Ragnarök (the end of the Norse cycle of renewal) and everything's got a little nü-metal flavor. Paris goes full red-strings-on-corkboard to try to figure out how the elements of the plot could possibly make sense.

In addition to our usual barnyard language, today's episode includes discussion or mention of r*pe fantasies and physical violence.

The Man Without Qualities by Morris Berman was recommended by listener (and author!) O.F. Cieri back in December of 2020. It was recommended to them by a friend who said this book "would change America" and that "we were all going to look at each other differently "- "a new culture would emerge from this book!" Although this book is supposedly intended as satire, it left us wondering how much of it or what elements were supposed to be funny.

Check out O.F. Cieri's urban fantasy, Lord of Thundertown

In addition to our usual barnyard language, this episode includes discussion of: American politics (specifically the 2015-2016 brand) & jokes based on ethnicities and gender.

Correction: Around 2:00 and 9:50 we mention that we were told this author was a "major conservative thinker who worked for the Nixon administration" by the original person who recommended it to O.F. We later discovered that neither of those things were true - Morris Berman is an American historian and social critic and is not typically categorized as conservative. He also never worked for the Nixon administration. Whoops! Apologies for the accidental misinformation.

• Sherry Turkle:
  • 2012 TEDtalk: Connected, but alone?
  • Turkle's Books & Articles
• U.S. Socioeconomic & Political Background Info:
  • Poverty & Disenfranchisment:
    • https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/resource/power-of-poor-voters/
    • https://www.prrac.org/newsletters/julaug2002.pdf
    • https://www.americanprogress.org/article/systematic-inequality-american-democracy/
    • https://www.aclu.org/news/voting-rights/racist-roots-denying-incarcerated-people-their-right-vote
    • https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9930477/
  • Police Brutality:
    • https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/
    • https://policebrutalitycenter.org/police-brutality-statistics/
    • https://policeepi.uic.edu/u-s-data-on-police-shootings-and-violence/
  • March & Protest Statistics:
    • https://stacker.com/history/famous-protests-us-history-and-their-impacts
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protests_and_demonstrations_in_the_United_States_by_size
    • https://acleddata.com/2020/09/03/demonstrations-political-violence-in-america-new-data-for-summer-2020/