Dried Up Brain

It's December. We've already put on our sweaters and chugged frankly criminal amounts of eggnog. Now it's time to talk about The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum.

Stay out of the Splash Zone™ because we got a real Wet Book™ on our hands! We're talking about Neil Gaiman's 2013 novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane. We also touch on the His Dark Materials trilogy and Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.

We're kicking off the official month of pumpkins, candy corn, and murderous monsters by talking about Norman Partridge's Dark Harvest. 

We're taking to the sea and talking about Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville. It's a surprisingly complex little story full of hot sailors and powerful punches. We also take a look at the 2019 Hugo Award Winners.

For this episode we read The Litany of Earth by Ruthanna Emrys. It's a sequel of sorts to The Shadow Over Innsmouth and thus we must also tangle with the thorny legacy of HP Lovecraft.

Lie down on the couch and rest your vermiform appendix because it's time to talk about The death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy.

This jam-packed episode includes a lengthy discussion of The World for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin and a post-mortem on Andrea's Hugo Award winner reading project as well as many of those delightful tangents that podcast listeners crave. 

For this episode, we read What Kind of Day Did You Have? by Saul Bellow. We wrestle with the grumpy, male intellectual and defend the honor of M*A*S*H (the movie not the show). If you can get through all that then your reward is a pleaseant chat about A People's Future of the United States.

We're discussing Thee Blind Mice by Agatha Christie, a story about nursery rhymes, bad cops, and busybodies.

Join us as we try and figure out if Thomas Pynchon thinks he's funny as we tackle his 1966 postmodern mystery, The Crying of Lot 49.