A Meal of Thorns

The Ancillary Review of Books
  • 5.0 (17)
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  • Updated Biweekly

A critical book club from the Ancillary Review of Books. Host Jake Casella Brookins invites writers, scholars, and critics to discuss thorny works of science fiction, fantasy, and other speculative genres.

  1. Jun 1

    A Meal of Thorns 51- THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS with Premee Mohamed

    Science fiction readers love a mechanism, they love a bit of world-building and mystery-solving. Premee Mohamed joins us to discuss Gene Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerberus, a book that asks: what if a science fiction book intentionally avoided all of that?  Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Premee Mohamed Title: The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake Moby-Dick by Herman Melville Mercutio by Kate Heartfield Pretenders to the Throne of God by Adrian Tchaikovsky Orbit 10 anthology edited by Damon Knight William Carlos Williams’ “This Is Just To Say” and its many responses Premee’s And What Can We Offer You Tonight Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Alison Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon Heart of Darkness by Josef Conrad The Vorrh by B. Catling The face dancers from Frank Herbert’s Dune series Mystique and the Kree from the Marvel/X-Men comics Michael Swanwick's Stations of the Tide Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire Premee’s The Butcher of the Forest & Wickhills "sentients" & "sapients" “The Great Chain of Being” Star Wars series The Bad Batch and The Clone Wars Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead Octavia Butler's Dawn Tolkien's On Fairy Stories Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? & Ridley Scott's Bladerunner Premee’s The Siege of Burning Grass Hilary Putnam's “Twin Earth” Premee's Patreon, Website, Bluesky Wickhills & From the Library of Jurgen Leitner The Carl Brandon Society

    1h 5m

  2. May 18

    A Meal of Thorns 50- SISYPHEAN with Gareth Watkins

    A rain of corpses is falling from the sky, insectoid femme fatales are setting their compound eyes on our tender thoraxes, and our cattle drive across an expanse of nanotech goo is starting to go off the rails. So we ask ourselves: do we still have to go to work tomorrow? Critic, author, & podcaster Gareth Watkins joins to discuss Dempow Torishima’s delightfully strange Sisyphean. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Gareth Watkins Title: Sisyphean by Dempow Torishima, translated by Daniel Huddleston Host: Jake Casella Brookins Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork by Rob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Death // Sentence Muskism by Quinn Slobodian & Ben Tarnoff  Peter Thiel One Piece by Eiichiro Oda Slavoj Žižek René Girard Carl Schmitt Thiel/Douthat NYT interview Jeff VanderMeer Haikosoru Viz Comics Battle Royale by Koushun Takami Finnegans Wake by James Joyce The Doloriad by Missouri Williams M. John Harrison’s essay on worldbuilding Marmite/Vegemite Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel "Professor Jiang" Isaac Asimov's Foundation New Chronology Tartarianism Franz Kafka & Philip K. Dick A Scanner Darkly H.R. Giger Phil Tippet’s Mad God Kameron Hurley's The Stars are Legion Antoine Volodine's Radiant Terminus Manuela Draeger's Kree Mike Judge’s Office Space David Cronenberg Raymond Chandler Antonio Gramsci Nick Land Friedrich Nietzsche's eternal recurrence Yoss's Planet for Rent Deleuze & Guitarri The Sex Pistols & Avril Lavigne H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" Ayn Rand Jeff VanderMeer's Dead Astronauts Torishima's Kanadete no Nufuretsun Gareth's bluesky Just Plain Evil: Cruelty, Extinction, and the Authoritarian Mind  Gareth's appearances on Blood Work

    1h 12m

  3. May 4

    A Meal of Thorns 49- MOONGATHER with Molly Templeton

    Stop explaining and start exploring: critic & reviewer Molly Templeton walks us through this gem of 1980s mass market fantasy, with many asides and theories on shifting patterns of publishing and reading patterns. Plus, we spill the beans on the most fun book club, also known as the most fun cult. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Molly Templeton Title: Moongather by Jo Clayton Host: Jake Casella Brookins Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork by Rob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: ARB’s Fundraiser! Donations & shares greatly appreciated! Kurt Vonnegut's asterisk John Darnielle's This Year "Cold Milk Bottle" "First Few Desperate Hours" Claire North's Slow Gods Hebe Stanton’s review at ARB Molly’s discussion of Slow Gods and being stuck on a book Gary Wolfe & Jonathan Strahan's Coode Street Podcast Arkady Martine & Ann Leckie The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Violet Allen's Prism, Plastic, Void Little Puss Press Casey Plett Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone’s This Is How You Lose The Time War Vajra Chandrasekera’s Rakesfall A.V. Marraccini’s We The Parasites Clayton’s Diadem from the Stars Brandon Sanderson Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea Forgotten Realms J.R.R. Tolkien's “On Fairy Stories” & Lord of the Rings Ged & the otak from Earthsea "Fridging" & "Bury Your Gays" The Arrowverse TV shows Ron Howard’s Solo: A Star Wars Film "Explaining vs Exploring" Bora Chung's Midnight Timetable The Toyota Tercel The soot-sprites from Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner Bethany Jacobs’ This Brutal Moon, conclusion to The Kindom Trilogy Jacobs’ website Philip Pullman's The Rose Field The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey David Eddings’ The Belgariad Parallel Worlds Bookshop Cherryh's Rusalka & The Paladin The Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation & Prize Molly's writing at Reactor & Bluesky & Website

    1h 5m

  4. Apr 20

    A Meal of Thorns 48- READY PLAYER ONE with Matthew Leggatt

    The pleasures and perils of nostalgia & reference, the importance of identifying real play versus gamified labor, and whether the internet used to be fun: Matthew Leggat of the Utopian & Dystopian Fictions podcast joins to discuss Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Matthew Leggatt Title: Ready Player One by Ernie Cline Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: ARB’s Fundraiser!!! Matthew’s Cultural and Political Nostalgia in the Age of Terror, Play in Utopian and Dystopian Fiction, and Wastelands and Wonderlands The Utopian & Dystopian Fictions podcast I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman Chicano Frankenstein by Daniel A. Olivas U&DF episode with Olivas Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash & Reamde William Gibson’s Neuromancer K.A. Teryna’s Black Hole Heart translated by Alex Shvartsman Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenya’s Chain Gang All-Stars Was It Yesterday: Nostalgia in Contemporary Film and Television edited by Matthew Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code Gamergate “Playing the Game of Literature: Ready Player One, the Ludic Novel, and the Geeky ‘Canon’ of White Masculinity” by Megan Amber Condis Captain Crunch: phreaker John Draper Kyle Chayka’s "Why the internet isn't fun anymore" William Gibson’s “The Gernsback Continuum” Ling Ma's Severance Helen MacDonald & Syn Blaché’s Prophet MacDonald’s H is for Hawk Stanislaw Lem's Solaris Alice Landsberg's Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture The television series Stranger Things Mark Fisher's Ghosts of My Life Richard Fleischer’s Soylent Green (based on Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room!) & Paul R. Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb Samuel Butler’s Erewhon B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two Voight-Kampf Test from Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner / Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The "lusory attitude" from Bernard Suits' The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia Ernst Callenbach's Ecotopia Philip Nel’s “I Love the ‘80s: Dystopia, Nostalgia, and Ready Player One” Michael Jackson 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back (That's Mike Nelson of MST3K Fame) High Fidelity by Nick Hornby Jordan Carroll's Speculative Whiteness Paul Hardisty'sForcing trilogy

    1h 11m

  5. Apr 6

    A Meal of Thorns 47- CLOUD ATLAS with Abigail Nussbaum

    A nested novel that very pointedly bridges the litfic/specfic divide, David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas takes some big swings at tricky topics. Abigail Nussbaum returns to the podcast with some thoughts on how the novel has aged, and how it’s still relevant to genre thinking today. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Abigail Nussbaum Title: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: ARB’s Fundraiser!!! Track Changes Aliya Whiteley’s The Misheard World & Abigail’s review Nina Allen Alexis Hall's Hell's Heart Olivia Waite Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick Lincoln Michel's Metallic Realms Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire Hanya Yanagihara's The People in the Trees Readerville forum & Salon Magazine's “The Well” The Cloud Atlas by Liam Callanan Jonathan Lethem's Girl in Landscape & Motherless Brooklyn Kate Atkinson's Case Histories Our episode on The Historian Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union New Wave, Cyberpunk, Mundane SF, The New Weird China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station The “New Adult” category of books Taylor Jenkins Reed Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin The Marvel Cinematic Universe Aragorn’s Tax Policy Jeremy Rosen’s Genre Bending Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, Russel Hoban’s Riddley Walker, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World Sofia Samatar’s The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain Jean Baudrillard William Gibson The Stanford marshmallow experiment The Chatham Islands, Moriori & Māori peoples Charlie Jane Anders’ piece on Cloud Atlas The Velvet Underground joke (not many people listened, but everybody who did started a band) Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go Niall Harrison’s “In Search of Green Overshoots” The Coral Bones by E.J. Swift In Ascension by Martin MacInnes Gnomon by Nick Harkaway Abigail's Blog & Bluesky Tolkien Series: Roseanna Pendlebury & Ed Morland’s, Ranged Touch’s Shelved by Genre, Nick Hubble, Jared Pechaček, Weird Studies

    1h 11m

  6. Mar 23

    A Meal of Thorns 46- THE BIG SLEEP with Max Gladstone

    We’re leaving speculative genres for just a moment! Author Max Gladstone joins to discuss style & structure in Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled classic The Big Sleep, a work that’s been massively influential across SFF literature, games, & film. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Max Gladstone Title: The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Additional music from David Hilowitz’s “Future Cities”, CC BY-NC 4.0 And a couple of seconds from the end of The Mountain Goats’ “Cadaver Sniffing Dog” Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Nominate for the Hugos! Nominate for the Le Guin Prize! Support Locus Magazine’s Fundraiser! ARB Kickstarter coming soon! Stranger Things Metro City by Kurt Busiec et al. Sex Criminals by Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky Kieron Gillan Balsam Karam's Event Horizon John Darnielle's This Year Song Exploder episode on the Mountain Goats song “Cadaver Sniffing Dog” 'Pataphysics Waigong & neigong Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” Dorothy Parker William Gibson L.A. Confidential, dir. Curtis Hanson Tracer Bullet in Bill Waterson’s Calvin & Hobbes Snoopy in Charles Schulz’s Peanuts Dashiel Hammett Haruki Murakami'sHard-Boiled Wonderland & The End of the World Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light & The Dead Man's Brother The Raymond Chandler Papers, edited by Tom Hiney & Frank McShane James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity Chandler’s essay “The Simple Art of Murder” Max Payne, directed by Petri Järvilehto & written by Sam Lake Albert Camus & Jean-Paul Sartre Robert A. Heinlein Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun Hammet's The Maltese Falcon Chandler’s The Long Goodbye Fix-ups & “cannibal novels” William Faulkner & Leigh Bracket To Have and To Have Not, directed by Howard Hawks Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall Chandler’s The High Window Rex Stour's Nero Wolfe stories, such as Black Orchids “The CSI effect” Jeffrey Rowland's “Science Cop” bit in Wigu David Lynch Paul Aster Peter Brooks' Reading for the Plot Dead Hand Rule, the latest Craft novel (one more to come!) Max's website & newsletter

    1h 1m

  7. Mar 9

    A Meal of Thorns 45- THE DEEP SEA DIVER’S SYNDROME with Alexander Dickow

    In this science fiction novel, translated from the French, dreamers “dive” into their own subconscious and return with mysterious & valuable objects. Translator, author, & scholar Alexander Dickow joins to discuss Francophone SF, weird fiction, and artistic allegories & analogies. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Alexander Dickow Title: The Deep-Sea Diver’s Syndrome by Serge Brussolo, translated by Edward Gauvin Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Nominate for the Hugos (if you’re eligible to) Nominate for the Le Guin prize (open to all!) The Translated Hugo Initiative Alexander’s Strange Horizons article on Francophone SF China Miéville Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation Poets Skip Fox & Ian Seeds Emil Petaja’s The Nets of Space Philippe Curval Kilgore Trout Alfred Jarry & ‘Pataphysics Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan Philip K. Dick Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?/Bladerunner PKD’s The Galactic Pot Healer, Confessions of a Crap Artist, Ubik Nathalie Sarraute’s work on Proust (possibly in The Age of Suspicion) Tolkien's “Leaf By Niggle” Harrison's Clomping Foot of Nerdism C.J. Cherryh's Wave Without A Shore Samuel Richardson Walter Scott Keats’ letter to Woodhouse: “A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence.” PKD’s A Scanner Darkly “Smellevision replaces television” Zachary Gillan’s work on the "Weird Art Story" Richard Gavin Alexander’s “The Weird and the Fantastic: Genre in Theory and Genre as History” Laurent Genefort Nnedi Okorafor's Death of the Author Honoré de Balzac Samatar's Olondriannovels Ray Bradbury's "The Jar" Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun "Anti-fantasy" Christopher Nolan's Inception JJ Abram's “Mystery Box” (blech boo hiss) Clive Barker's The Hellbound Heart Alexander's Linktree Alain Damasio’s The Horde of the Counterwind

    1h 4m

  8. Feb 23

    A Meal of Thorns 44- PALADIN OF SOULS with Liz Bourke

    Reviewer and historian Liz Bourke joins to discuss religion, historical overlaps, and examinations of gender in Paladin of Souls and fantasy more generally. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Liz Bourke Title: Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork by Rob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: Blood Tide by Sophie Burnham Jen Lyons' Green and Deadly Things Hiron Ennes’ The Works of Vermin China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station Bret Devereaux’s series on military-historical realism in Tolkien; see for instance “The Siege of Gondor Part IV” McMaster’s Curse of Chalion, Penric & Desdemona series, Vorkosigan series Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love Bioware's Dragon Age games Cult of Asclepius Tolkien's idea of the “eucatastrophe” M. Night Shyamalan Mythopoeia Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria and The Winged Histories Liz's bluesky & website

    1h 8m
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5
out of 5
17 Ratings

About

A critical book club from the Ancillary Review of Books. Host Jake Casella Brookins invites writers, scholars, and critics to discuss thorny works of science fiction, fantasy, and other speculative genres.

Information

  • Creator
    The Ancillary Review of Books
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    51
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © CC BY-NC
  • Show Website
    A Meal of Thorns

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