Terrible Book Club

Cops that are dogs and dogs that are cops co-star in this sex-less Christian romance with an unreasonably long title! This story tries to cash in on the cross section of people who are Christian, fetishize men in uniform, and are really into dogs.

Ah, yes - remember being in love so fiercely that you disobeyed your parents, ran naked through the forest all evening, worshiped nature gods, and contacted the multiverse when you were SIX YEARS OLD? No? Yeah...probably not. Rich Shapero takes us on another drug fueled romp through the wilds of Alaska in this successor to Wild Animus, except this time the main characters are two six year old children. While this tale is pretty weird and there are major problems with the children's dialogue, there is actually some decent writing and even the bone fragments of a good story. Shapero still doesn't get it quite right, but there's some evidence to suggest that he could produce a solid novel in the future which may be the scariest revelation of all from Too Far.

If you're tired of plots and characters, this episode was made just for you! This time we read a book of poetry loosely held together by western gender norms, redundancy, and poor word choices. Paris reveals her theory about the hidden message behind these poems that will blow the lid off of everything you ever thought was true about Woman Worship by Dean Jean-Pierre! Luckily, Chris and Paris are finally rescued by the spirit of Pablo Neruda after suffering through a heat index of 104 to record this episode.

Have you ever really liked a band? Have you ever liked a band so much that you thought you found evidence in their lyrics that their frontman had lived previous lives and a demon helped you figure it out? Well hey, so did this author! This book IS arguably a biography of Trent Reznor and sort of Nine Inch Nails, but is also an argument about the validity of past lives and the existence of demons on other planes who tell you stories via swinging rocks. Topics in this episode include Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor, quantum theory, the dimensions of Lady Liberty's finger nails, and mysteriously frozen chicken.

Burning witches, evil dads and uncles, more foreshadowing than one could ever need, the most obviously evil necklace of all time, and - of course - unrequited love all rear their heads in this one! Paris has been binging the Goosebuds podcast and was inspired to get spooky for Episode 33! Chris and Paris return to childhood to read the first installment in the Fear Street Saga series that explains how and why Fear Street came to be the supernatural hot spot we all remember fondly from R.L. Stine's Fear Street series.

Can we interest you in some crawfish? Perhaps other types of seafood? Some jazz? How about some gay erotica? If you answered "yes" to any or all of these questions, you'll love this 30 page short story that masquerades as a book! Thanks (?) to D from Antiques Freaks for alerting us to the existence of this...thing. Disclaimer: We're not usually SFW, but this episode contains graphic descriptions of sexual activity so it's a bit more over-the-top than usual even for Terrible Book Club.

This time we read a short, double feature book with two fantasy/sci-fi novellas that were packaged together for seemingly no apparent reason: Lands of the Earthquake by Henry Kuttner Under A Dim Blue Sun by Howie K. Bentley Are they together because Howie Bentley really loved Kuttner and wanted to publish his stories again posthumously? Is it because they both have humanoid cat men? We'll probably never know. Check out our Instagram for images of the covers on these things. Thanks to our friends Noah & Hillary for giving us this book to read for this episode.  

In this in-between books episode, it's game time! Chris read a guide/miniature self-help book called Chakra Crystals by Kate Tomas about meditation and magical rocks and Paris tries to guess what each crystal is supposed to mean and what chakras are. We learn that crystals are alive and can be enslaved to your needs - neat! Meanwhile, Paris has curated a game of Two Truths & A Lie with 6 categories of books where Chris must guess which titles and summaries are real and which ones Paris made up.

This time on Terrible Book Club, we read a book that wasn't truly terrible! Wow! It happened!   We also have special guest Laura Filippi on to educate us about Florida, alligator farms, and alligator wrestling! Paris & Chris talk about their first piece of negative fan mail! Ultimately, Swamplandia! has some issues, but overall it was not painful to read, the characters speak like genuine human beings, and the story was intriguing and different! Issues discussed include how likely it would be for a 17 year old at a theme park to be trained as a pilot, how we feel about sexual assault being a catalyst for female protagonists, and the juxtaposition of a positive male coming-of-age story with his sister's negative coming-of-age journey! Just a warning that rape/sexual assault is discussed in this episode!

Episode 28 is all about ghosts, mediums, and how Long Island seems to be some kind of breeding ground for psychics. If you're a skeptic of supernatural phenomenon or have ever wondered about the John Edwards and Sylvia Browns of the world, this episode is for you. Oh and, uh, Paris & Chris just want you to know that you have a great need for other people to like and admire you and even though you have a tendency to be critical of yourself, you have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage.

Our Patron Dari chose this book as her once-per-year reward! Check out our Patreon here to browse our reward structure and consider donating. Dragon Prince is a basic fantasy novel with medieval internet on light beams, dragon mating details, minor dragon ecology, and mostly decent dialogue. The book is divided into two sections and the latter section is where things take a turn for the terrible. This book does have a rape scene and we discuss it briefly, so be aware of that. If you haven't had enough of fantasy/romance books, here we are again!

You Suck! was given to Paris as a Secret Santa gift (thanks, Coty!) The book has some issues, but ultimately it's a crass and somewhat amusing parody of the ever popular vampire romance novel. Listen to this one if you want to hear us talk about the book for 45 minutes and then ramble on about various other things for another 30 (we really went off topic on this one - eh, it was late and we were a bit tired).

Birds. Watches. Tits. These are things that old men from the 1800s love to talk about. Or, at least famous ornithologist John James Audubon liked to talk about, according to author John Gregory Brown? If you're into historical "fiction" inspired by some dude reading a diary entry that must have insinuated a love of boob sucking, then this book is for you, you weirdo.  BIRDS.

Episode 24 tackles the anti-vaccination phenomenon. Melanie's Marvelous Measles was written by an anti-vaxxer author so parents could easily indoctrinate their children and get them severely ill, injured, or killed with warped ideas based on a misinterpretation of data and science! Topics include outrage, trying to wrap our minds around anti-vax logic, and a description of the "illustrations" in this thing. We don't really want to call the work a "book" or the images "illustrations" since neither are truly those things. There are 40 pages with 20 of them only including images and the 20 with words have only 1-4 sentences/page, so ... you get the idea.

For November, we read a self-help book to help us become smart hos! G.L. Lambert has created the ultimate guide to being a sociopathic fraud winner! Read his book and get your rent paid by stalking wealthy men and lying constantly! **NSFW - do not listen to this at work or around people under 18 because there's a lot of swearing and sexual content**

Our first sequel. Sexy nuns. Demon dicks. Naked horseback riding. All this and more can be found in Terry Goodkind's Stone of Tears, the second book in the Sword of Truth series. In Episode 22 of the Terrible Book Club, Paris and Chris return to the Midlands with a special guest! TJ was the one who recommended we read this series in the first place, so we figured we should have him along to explain himself. We recommend that you listen to Episode 3 that deals with the first book in the Sword of Truth series - Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule - before listening to Episode 22.

Episode 21 is brought to you by vampires, pistols, werewolves, sub-machine guns, boobs, automatic rifles, orcs, elves in trailer parks, RPGs, hulking Liefeld drawings come to life, more guns, and names based on guns. Hope you like guns and locally sourced vampire feed! Monster Hunter International takes Men in Black to a ... different level.   Technical note: Paris sounds weirdly muffled in this one. We think it's because this was the first day she set up her home recording stuff since moving and probably did something wrong - sorry about that. 

Chris & Paris learn that a gluten-free themed murder mystery book exists. Naturally, they couldn't resist reading such a bizarrely specific thing. Topics discussed include people who "don't-have-celiac-but-are-intolerant-to-gluten', plots that ultimately make no damn sense, and the objectification of men.

This book has evangelical Christianity, drugged out rock stars, squeaky villains, and FREEDOM. Have you ever wanted to be converted to a religion by a crazy child fan who has written to you obsessively for nearly 20 years? And then marry her? Dark Star is definitely for you.

When a book opens with a Nazi coming through a time portal in a library in the year 2000, it's easy to assume that the book will be pretty bad. Somehow, though, Aeon Legion: Labyrinth jumps through time to convince us that it is less than great, but not quite terrible. Thanks to TBC listener Anya for the recommendation!