PODCAST · arts
Book Spider
by Xi Draconis Books
Book Spider (previously known as The God Setebos) is a book-of-the-week podcast primarily covering novels, with the occasional detour into nonfiction, literary criticism, poetry, and music. We pride ourselves in running a smart podcast for the discerning listener, and we strive for the highest level of intellectual rigor. Our mascot, the book spider, sits in its cold corner, gathering its web of text, looking at the world with its calm, chilly eyes.
Episodes
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S4 Ep98: Course of the Heart is honest, even if we're not sure what it's honest about
In which the Spiders try to make whatever sense should be made of M. John Harrison's The Course of the Heart, a novel in the tradition of semi-sensical vibes books, which pulls a strong emotional core from an uncertain set of events.
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S4 Ep97: Inconsistent Return on Authorial Indulgence, with JG Ballard's "The Atrocity Exhibition"
In which we discuss the mixed success of JG Ballard's super experimental, multi-modal and even multi-generational work, "The Atrocity Exhibition."
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S4 Ep96: John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath: Maybe It's Sanctimonious, but It's Still a Masterpiece
In this episode, the Book Spider hosts discuss The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck. Hans thinks it's sanctimonious, but Patrick and Chris don't really care, because it's awesome all the same.
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S4 Ep94: Yesteryear misunderstands and misuses the tools of fiction
In which the Spiders are really quite unimpressed by Caro Claire Burke's enormously successful debut novel Yesteryear.
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S4 Ep95: "The Trial" by Kafka - Find the David Wyllie Translation!
In which we discuss Kafka's prophetic qualities and the importance of finding a good translation. The translation we recommend in this instance is that by David Wyllie (hint: search for the Dover thrift edition).
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S4 Ep93: Michel de Montaigne's Antiquated Essays
In this episode, the Spiders discuss the essays of Montaigne, with mixed feelings.
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S4 Ep92: John Updike's Couples is a work of cold, amoral beauty
In which the Spiders ponder Couples, by the now-underappreciated John Updike, a breathtakingly wrought and shockingly lovely work that evinces a now-alien disinterest in judging its characters.
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S4 Ep91: Pure and Bureaucratic Horror - Part 3 of Bolanyo's "2666"
In which we close our discussion of one of Bolanyo's masterpiece.
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S4 Ep90: Ritual Narrative Intermedio this side of the Heart of Darkness; Part 2 of "2666"
In which we discuss the lesser discussed parts of this giant, shaggy novel, and stop just before the door to Hell.
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S4 Ep89: The Mundanity of True Human Horror: Section 1 of Roberto Bolaño's Opus, "2666"
In which we discuss The Part About the Critics, section 1 of Roberto Bolaño's posthumous masterpiece, "2666."
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S4 Ep88: A Journal of the Plague Year: An Interesting Historical Artifact
In this episode, the Spiders discuss A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe. While interesting as an historical artifact, the novel leaves at least one of the Spiders bored.
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S4 Ep87: The hollowness of surface satisfactions in Latronico's perfectly adequate Perfection
In which the Spiders take on Vincenzo Latronico's Perfection, a perfectly satisfactory novel which perhaps doesn't give them the sense of mystery and intrigue that some readers have experienced.
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S4 Ep86: The Catharsis of Chaotic, Perpetual Suffering in Phil Tippet's "Mad God"
In which we discuss the brutal, hilarious, and deeply moving stop motion film, "Mad God," in development for 30 years and finally released in 2024.
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S4 Ep85: What Even Is Genre Anyway?: Discussing U. K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness
In this episode, the Book Spider hosts ask what genre and literary fiction are, and they wonder about the quality of a sci-fi book like The Left Hand of Darkness.
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S4 Ep84: Bleak House, Coming up for Air, and the demise of the English literary tradition
In which the Spiders discuss Charles Dickens's unwieldy, uneven Bleak House, how it may or may not be emblematic of the larger decline of literate culture, and whether we're sure we'd miss it.
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S4 Ep83: kew. rhone. and the uses of obscure art
In which Hans gets a little upset about Chris and Patrick's responses to the album kew. rhone. by John Greaves, Peter Blegvad and Lisa Hermans.
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S4 Ep82: Pynchon's "Inherent Vice" and Paul Thomas Anderson's film adaptation: A most delightful multimodal pair
In which the boys discuss Pynchon's delightful drug-haze California novel, Inherent Vice, and Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation to film. Both are good hangs. And honestly, perhaps uniquely, are better for being read and watched together than on their own.
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S4 Ep81: Two Say Nay, One Says Yea to Ian McEwan's Atonement
In this episode, the Spiders discuss the devastating Atonement, by Ian McEwan.
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S4 Ep80: The perils of satire in the newsletters of Sam Kriss and Naomi Kanakia
In which the Spiders discuss two email newsletters hybridizing fiction and nonfiction, Sam Kriss's "The law that can be named is not the true law" and Naomi Kanakia's "Lonely Island Adventures," two pieces whose uncertain mingling of fact and invention may either bolster or undermine their points...
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S4 Ep79: Disappointment with Patricia Lockwood's "Will there ever be another you?"
In which we discuss the hangout novel/non-novel (should be a memoir? a collection of lyric essays?), and the intense fall-off from her masterpiece, "No one is talking about this."
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S4 Ep78: Orwell's Acerbic Ambivalence: A Discussion of Homage to Catalonia
In this episode, the Spiders chat about Homage to Catalonia, Orwell's journalistic account of the Spanish Civil War. This memoir may in fact be his best work.
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S4 Ep77: Are Naked Lunch and The Shrouds the secret twins of the Cronenberg filmography? (Plus Violet Lucca's Clinical Trials)
The Spiders briefly discuss Clinical Trials, Violet Lucca's scholarly analysis of David Cronenberg's filmography, focusing primarily on the downsides of theory-oriented analysis, then go into more depth on the relationship between Cronenberg's new film The Shrouds and his earlier work Naked Lunch.
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S4 Ep76: On Shakespeare's "Macbeth," and the Polanski and Cohen Film Treatments
In which we debate whether Polanski's grounded interpretation is better than Joel Cohen's hallucinatory interpretation, but ultimately circle back to the original play and the undying ritual of embodying, ingesting, and interpreting it.
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S4 Ep75: Post Office, Charles Bukowski's Terrible Debut Novel
In this episode, the Spiders discuss Post Office, the first novel of infamous womanizing, drunkard poet Charles Bukowski. While it shows some promise in a few areas, it is, overall, pretty bad.
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S4 Ep74: Unworld and the problem of literary science-fiction
In which the Spiders consider Jayson Greene's Unworld, a lesson in the perils of blending the techniques and approaches of literary fiction and sci-fi, with reference to an earlier pick, the similarly shaky In Ascension.
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S4 Ep73: Comedic Tones and Tragic Times in Otessa Moshfegh's "Lapvona"
In which we discuss whether Moshfegh pulls off the Ocean's 11 of torture porn.
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S4 Ep72: Pär Lagerkvist's The Dwarf: A Perfect Novel
In this episode, the Book Spider hosts discuss The Dwarf, an eighty-year-old Swedish novel that may be perfect.
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S4 Ep71: In Ascension and the perils of a needless re-reading
In which Hans's initial enchantment with Martin MacInnes's In Ascension dissipates on a re-read. This novel attempts to mesh literary techniques with sci-fi themes, exploring environmental catastrophe, time travel, and multiple perspectives on family trauma, but does the ambition of its...
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S4 Ep70: Beautiful Emptiness in Samantha Harvey's "Orbital"
In which we politely drag Harvey's lovely new novel through the mud despite repeated efforts to say nicer things about it. It really is quite lovely to spend time with! We just wished...there was more to it.
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S4 Ep69: Albert Camus' Exile and the Kingdom
In this episode, the Spiders think about the stories in Camus' excellent collection, Exile and the Kingdom.
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S4 Ep68: How Bruce Wagner's brave and lazy The Marvel Universe: Origin Stories suffered and benefited from the culture wars
In which the spiders approach Bruce Wagner's The Marvel Universe: Origin Stories, a book whose own origin as a victim of cancel culture overshadows its alternately daring and disappointing story choices.
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S4 Ep67: The Fun but Empty Calories of Danielewski's House of Leaves
The house is grief. There it is.
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S4 Ep66: Are Aesthetic Properties Real? (With a Discussion of the Film LFO)
In this episode, the Spiders tackle a philosophical question? When we talk about art, are we just sharing opinions? Or can any of what we say be true? Can a work be "objectively" good or bad? To facilitate this topic, the Spiders discuss the film LFO, a Swedish horror comedy.
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S4 Ep65: What is the illusion in The Book of Illusions?
In which the Spiders take on Paul Auster's The Book of Illusions, weaving it into a web of textual filmism with prior picks Flicker and Zeroville, while debating and ultimately settling the question of its internal reality.
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S4 Ep64: RIP David Lynch - On "Eraserhead," "Lost Highway," "Inland Empire," and "Catching the Big Fish"
In which we discuss the magical cinematic language of David Lynch, focusing on three of his most challenging movies, and lovingly (I hope) dig at him for his largely blah memoir.
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S4 Ep63: A Storm Painted on a Low Ceiling in Glen Slater's "Jung vs Borg: Finding the Deeply Human in a Posthuman Age"
In which we discuss the seductive pointlessness of Jungian psycho-mysticism, whether consciousness emerges mechanistically or mysteriously, and our real fears about technology.
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S4 Ep62: Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night: Thematic Complexity, Aesthetic Simplicity
In this episode, the devious, uncanny Spiders examine Mother Night, a solid and thought-provoking novel from the oft-overrated Kurt Vonnegut.
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S4 Ep61: Dean Koontz, Robin Cook, and Others: What is Bad Writing?
In this episode, the Spiders discuss the novels Watchers and Abduction, by Dean Koontz and Robin Cook respectively, to see what bad writing is all about.
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S4 Ep60: AI, Writing, and Literature (with a bit of film thrown in)
In a departure from the general format, the Spiders take on the broader question of the relationship between AI, writing, literature, and other forms of creative arts (especially film). A snapshot of a moment in history, posing questions which will soon be answered or made irrelevant, but pretty...
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S4 Ep59: Uneven Greatness in Melville's Billy Budd and Piazza Tales
In this episode we discuss the lesser known works of Melville, what they say about his style outside of Moby Dick, and how we define greatness.
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S4 Ep58: Apocalyptic Conspiracies: Theodore Roszak's Flicker
In this episode, the Book Spider hosts discuss Flicker, a huge novel that delves into the golden age of films and a strange conspiracy involving a Medieval Catholic sect.
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S4 Ep57: Omensetter's Luck and the Demise of Hard Fiction
In which the Spiders tackle Omensetter's Luck, a set of prose poem loosely organized by the subjectivity of a mad preacher, which somehow briefly acquired a reputation as one of the most significant novels of the mid 20th century, and is now mostly lost to history.
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S4 Ep56: Somewhat disappointed by, but still finding enchantment in, Mikhail Bulgakov's almost-100-year-old novel: The Master and Margarita
We revisit one of the earlier podcast subjects and come away a little bit underwhelmed. That said, this is still a magical and strange piece to be nearly a hundred years old, and there are incredible parts.
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S4 Ep55: Sayaka Murata's Earthlings Is One-Dimensional
In this episode, the Spider hosts discuss the shortcomings of Sayaka Murata's Earthlings.
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S4 Ep54: Pacing and Tragedy in Mary Shelley's The Last Man
The Spiders encounter Mary Shelley's The Last Man, in which grief is transfigured into a radically inventive and astonishingly bleak post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel whose impact and legacy are undone by a complete lack of editing.
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S4 Ep53: Gelatinous Eggs and Dead Anti-Worlds: The Mystery of Stanisław Lem's His Master's Voice
In this episode, the Spiders discuss the heady and intriguing His Master's Voice, a first-contact novel that turns the trope upside down, to good effect.
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S4 Ep52: Despicability and Empathy in Patrick Barney's Gusano
In this episode, the hosts of Book Spider, along with special guest Eddie Kim, discuss the recently released horror novel Gusano, written by founding spider himself, Patrick Barney.
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S4 Ep51: Accepting the mushiness of Jeff Vandermeer's Acceptance
In which the Spiders consider Acceptance, the third book in Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach trilogy, and a step down from the focused mood and mystery of the first two installments -- though not without its virtues.
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S4 Ep50: Transparent Satire and Opaque Plotting in Jeff Vandermeer's Authority
A discussion of Jeff Vandermeer's Authority, the second book in the Southern Reach Trilogy. The spiders find that it strikes an uncommonly good balance between that which is understood readily and that which can't be understood at all.
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S4 Ep50: Inverted Emotional Polarities in the two Annihilations
A discussion of Jeff Vandermeer's novel Annihilation, in which the Spiders can't help comparing it to Alex Garner's film adaptation, in particular the ways in which one character's arc turns her outward while the other's turns her inward.
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Book Spider (previously known as The God Setebos) is a book-of-the-week podcast primarily covering novels, with the occasional detour into nonfiction, literary criticism, poetry, and music. We pride ourselves in running a smart podcast for the discerning listener, and we strive for the highest level of intellectual rigor.
Our mascot, the book spider, sits in its cold corner, gathering its web of text, looking at the world with its calm, chilly eyes.
HOSTED BY
Xi Draconis Books
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Book Spider have?
Book Spider currently has 151 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Book Spider about?
Book Spider (previously known as The God Setebos) is a book-of-the-week podcast primarily covering novels, with the occasional detour into nonfiction, literary criticism, poetry, and music. We pride ourselves in running a smart podcast for the discerning listener, and we strive for the highest...
How often does Book Spider release new episodes?
Book Spider publishes regularly with 151 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Book Spider?
You can listen to Book Spider on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Book Spider?
Book Spider is created and hosted by Xi Draconis Books.
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