CinemaSins for Books
☆
☆
☆
☆
☆
“You’ll get the most out of this if you approach it more like an actual play podcast than a lit crit / book club podcast. That is to say, you have to recognize the lit crit as a pretense for some guys to get together and bounce off one another; if you’re here any other reading, it’s bleak.
I was told by friends that the Junji Ito discussion series was worth a listen, so I put on the first TOMIE episode. It begins with one of the hosts wondering about the unknown history of Japanese horror fiction, and another vaguely responding that they once heard about a guy named Rampo.
That sort of limited engagement with context — no one’s done any secondary reading before starting? — isn’t necessarily a bad omen for a lit podcast, because some people can generate interesting discussion even out of cold reading. The hosts here don’t summon that kind of juice, unfortunately.
When they’re too bored with a story’s plot summary to riff on its description for a few minutes, no one seems to know what to do or say. If a story catches their interest, they’ll lay out their theory and then… move on, without any give and take. They are comfortable discussing illustrations at length, but will just as often fall into grinding riffs on story logic, as though Ito were a realist writer, or continuity between stories, as though they‘ve never read short fiction before (which, tbf, they may not have). The hosts have a rapport, in the sense that they love to run with a bit, but they generate very little dialogue, even when they disagree.
The throughline for the TOMIE episodes is a question of the stories’ politics; Walker’s ends up being the only take which does anything interesting — or anything at all — with the context of the writing, dragging the other hosts into discussion that doesn’t simply discard the work. I was curious if this was just the general vibe of the podcast, so I jumped back to sample the first episode; everyone seemed to have come to Gene Wolfe with deep established knowledge and ready grace for ugly elements of the work. Ito apparently doesn’t merit the same treatment.
The way the hosts ascribe regressive politics onto Ito, from surface readings of his perspective characters’ thoughts and actions, is indicative of how disinterested these guys are in what they’re doing. How *Gene Wolfe apologists* get to that kind of analysis is a serious question. It’s a mockery of reading, and of Ito.
If the effort of your literary analysis is directly proportional to how much you like the work in question, you shouldn’t be committing to cold reading in public. Or discussing literature in public at all, frankly. This is a reaction podcast pretending at thought. Ito deserves better, books deserve better, and listeners do too.”
Basic Chunnel via Apple Podcasts ·
United States of America ·
07/21/24
More reviews of Shelved By Genre
☆
☆
☆
☆
☆
“as a both a huge Games Studies Study Buddies fan and A More Civilized Age fan, seeing this announced was an absolute delight! I was a little trepidatious bc I’m not familiar with the series being covered and probably won’t be reading it anytime soon, but the hosts do an excellent job with summary...”Read full review »
CE998 via Apple Podcasts ·
United States of America ·
06/23/23
☆
☆
☆
☆
☆
“Here to say this is definitely A Unit, Never a Season, sometimes a Stephen!”
ScottJones92 via Apple Podcasts ·
United States of America ·
01/19/24
☆
☆
☆
☆
☆
“A great excuse to reread a great book. Book of the New Sun is such a dense experience that it’s really pleasant to read a section of chapters and listen to an in depth discussion of all the layers. Reminds me in the best way of what I thought University would be like. FCGH”
alltheghosts via Apple Podcasts ·
United States of America ·
07/02/23
Do you host a podcast?
Track your ranks and reviews from Spotify, Apple Podcasts and more.
Listen now
Links
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
Patreon
Genres
Artwork or description wrong?
Request an update »
Updates may take a few minutes.
Do you host a podcast?
Track your ranks and reviews from Spotify, Apple Podcasts and more.
