Zoey Ashe's Life in the (Future) Panopticon
Listen now
Description
This week I’m rejoined by Jason Pargin to discuss his new novel, Zoey Is Too Drunk for This Dystopia, and the ways in which the futuristic panopticon he envisions for Zoey and the other citizens of Tabula Ra$a is a little like now, but moreso. We talk for a bit about how book marketing has evolved over the last decade-plus, why TikTok became a must for novelists like himself, and why despite the word “dystopia” being in the title of the book, he doesn’t necessarily think of his vision of the near future as a downer.  Unpaid endorsement: I really enjoy Jason’s novels (he is also the author of the John Dies at the End series), and the Zoey Ashe books (the first two of which are available on Kindle Unlimited) are pretty compulsively readable, a pleasing melange of ideas and imagery and just enough suspense from moment to moment to activate the “okay, just one more chapter” portion of my brain. Zoey Is Too Drunk for This Dystopia is understandable if you’ve not read the other books in the series, but you can’t go wrong by picking up copies of the previous entries. And if you want a signed copy of his latest, you can get one from Parnassus Books in Nashville, but you have to order by Monday. 
More Episodes
Published 04/27/24
On this week’s episode, I’m rejoined by the Los Angeles Times’s Ryan Faughnder (read and sign up for his newsletter here!) to discuss Netflix’s big data change, why some in Hollywood are hoping for David Ellison to take over Paramount (though shareholders have a different view), and more. If you...
Published 04/27/24
As readers may remember, The Beekeeper has been one of my favorite movies of the year thus far. One thing in particular I loved about it was the costume design: It’s an underappreciated artform, conveying character through clothing, and the costuming in this film perfectly conveyed a range of...
Published 04/20/24