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Book Spider (previously known as The God Setebos) is a book-of-the-week podcast primarily covering novels, with the occasional detour into nonfiction, literary criticism, poetry, and music. We pride ourselves in running a smart podcast for the discerning listener, and we strive for the highest level of intellectual rigor.
Our mascot, the book spider, sits in its cold corner, gathering its web of text, looking at the world with its calm, chilly eyes.
Our mascot, the book spider, sits in its cold corner, gathering its web of text, looking at the world with its calm, chilly eyes.
131 Episodes
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In this episode, the Spiders discuss Post Office, the first novel of infamous womanizing, drunkard poet Charles Bukowski. While it shows some promise in a few areas, it is, overall, pretty bad.
In which the Spiders consider Jayson Greene's Unworld, a lesson in the perils of blending the techniques and approaches of literary fiction and sci-fi, with reference to an earlier pick, the similarly shaky In Ascension.
In which we discuss whether Moshfegh pulls off the Ocean's 11 of torture porn.
In this episode, the Book Spider hosts discuss The Dwarf, an eighty-year-old Swedish novel that may be perfect.
In which Hans's initial enchantment with Martin MacInnes's In Ascension dissipates on a re-read. This novel attempts to mesh literary techniques with sci-fi themes, exploring environmental catastrophe, time travel, and multiple perspectives on family trauma, but does the ambition of its hybridization doom its effectiveness?
In which we politely drag Harvey's lovely new novel through the mud despite repeated efforts to say nicer things about it. It really is quite lovely to spend time with! We just wished...there was more to it.
In this episode, the Spiders think about the stories in Camus' excellent collection, Exile and the Kingdom.
In which the spiders approach Bruce Wagner's The Marvel Universe: Origin Stories, a book whose own origin as a victim of cancel culture overshadows its alternately daring and disappointing story choices.
The house is grief. There it is.
In this episode, the Spiders tackle a philosophical question? When we talk about art, are we just sharing opinions? Or can any of what we say be true? Can a work be "objectively" good or bad? To facilitate this topic, the Spiders discuss the film LFO, a Swedish horror comedy.
In which the Spiders take on Paul Auster's The Book of Illusions, weaving it into a web of textual filmism with prior picks Flicker and Zeroville, while debating and ultimately settling the question of its internal reality.
In which we discuss the magical cinematic language of David Lynch, focusing on three of his most challenging movies, and lovingly (I hope) dig at him for his largely blah memoir.
In which we discuss the seductive pointlessness of Jungian psycho-mysticism, whether consciousness emerges mechanistically or mysteriously, and our real fears about technology.
In this episode, the devious, uncanny Spiders examine Mother Night, a solid and thought-provoking novel from the oft-overrated Kurt Vonnegut.
In this episode, the Spiders discuss the novels Watchers and Abduction, by Dean Koontz and Robin Cook respectively, to see what bad writing is all about.
In a departure from the general format, the Spiders take on the broader question of the relationship between AI, writing, literature, and other forms of creative arts (especially film). A snapshot of a moment in history, posing questions which will soon be answered or made irrelevant, but pretty interesting in spite of that.
Works Cited:
Max Read: “Drowning in Slop” (published in New York magazine 9/25/24)
Max Read: “People prefer AI art because people prefer bad art” (published via Substack 11/22/24)
Kelsey Piper: “There’s a fix for AI-generated essays. Why aren’t we using it?” (published on vox.com 9/7/24).
Megan Herbst: “Nanowrimo said it was classist and ableist to condemn AI. All hell broke loose.” (published on wired.com 9/4/24).
In this episode we discuss the lesser known works of Melville, what they say about his style outside of Moby Dick, and how we define greatness.
In this episode, the Book Spider hosts discuss Flicker, a huge novel that delves into the golden age of films and a strange conspiracy involving a Medieval Catholic sect.
In which the Spiders tackle Omensetter's Luck, a set of prose poem loosely organized by the subjectivity of a mad preacher, which somehow briefly acquired a reputation as one of the most significant novels of the mid 20th century, and is now mostly lost to history.
We revisit one of the earlier podcast subjects and come away a little bit underwhelmed. That said, this is still a magical and strange piece to be nearly a hundred years old, and there are incredible parts.
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