Book Club for Masochists: a Readers’ Advisory Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

 It’s episode 211 and we’re talking about books and other media we’ve enjoyed recently! We discuss early internet chatrooms, shuttlecocks, haunted dolls, what constitutes a “banger”, and more!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray 🦇 | Jam Edwards

What We’re Into:

• Anna
  • Acid West by Joshua Wheeler
  • Two Point Museum
    • Trailer
  • R.E.P.O. || Crossing the Streams
    • R.E.P.O. on Stream
• Matthew
  • Never a Sidekick: Exploring the Dynamic History of Batgirl by Tim Hanley
  • Yakuza: Like a Dragon
    • 7 Weirdest Yakuza: Like a Dragon Quests That Were Bizarre Even by Yakuza Standards
  • Mantracks: a True Story of Fake Fossils
• Jam
  • WEBFISHING
    • Trailer
  • Murdle Volume 1 by G.T. Karber
  • RuPaul’s Drag Race adjacent media
    • Runnereye (YouTube)
    • Drag Her (podcast)
    • UpUntil Dawn (YouTube)
    • I Got Dr*nk and Built the Lego Tuxedo Cat (Crashout Included)
    • Crystal Envy & Lexi Love’s “Alter Ego” Lip Sync
    • Arrietty & Lydia B Kollins’ “Boogie Wonderland” Lip Sync
• Meghan
  • Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
  • Badminton
    • Pilou
  • Meeting Infinity and Infinity Wars (short story collections)

Other Media We Mentioned

• Didi (film)
• Doechii - Denial is a River

Links, Articles, and Things

• RA in a Day
• folio - 019 - immanence 01 - with jam edwards & garbageface aka gnostic front aka karol orzechowski
• Spaceport America

15 Fairy Tales, Fables, Legends, Myths, and Folklore books by BIPOC Authors:

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcast chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here.

• Women Wide Awake: Stories, Sculptures and Poems From Sindhi Folklore by  Nimra Bandukwala and Manahil Bandukwala

• Blue Bamboo: Japanese Tales of Fantasy and Romance by Osamu Dazai, translated by Ralph F. McCarthy

• The Annotated African American Folktales by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Maria Tatar

• Blackberry Blue: And Other Fairy Tales by Jamila Gavin

• Her Stories: African American Folktales, Fairy Tales, and True Tales by Virginia Hamilton, illustrated by Diane Dillon and Leo Dillon

• The Dragon Slayer: Folktales From Latin America by Jamie Hernandez

• Laughing with the Trickster: On Sex, Death, and Accordions by Tomson Highway

• Legends of Vancouver by E. Pauline Johnson

• Living Ghosts & Mischievous Monsters: Chilling American Indian Stories by Dan SaSuWeh Jones, illustrated by Weshoyot Alvitre

• An Introduction to Yōkai Culture: Monsters, Ghosts, and Outsiders in Japanese History by Komatsu Kazuhiko, translated by Matt Alt and Hiroko Yoda

• Rediscovering Turtle Island: a First Peoples' Account of the Sacred Geography of America by Taylor Keen

• Night Stories: Folktales From Latin America by Liniers

• Mangoes, Mischief, and Tales of Friendship: Stories From India by Chitra Soundar, illustrated by Uma Krishnaswamy

• Vietnamese Folktales for Children: Stories of Adventure and Wonder in Vietnamese and English by Phuoc Thi Minh Tran, illustrated by Dong Nguyen and Hop Thi Nguyen

• The Little Hummingbird by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas

Give us feedback!

• Fill out the form to ask for a recommendation or suggest a genre or title for us to read!

Check out our Tumblr, join our Discord Server, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, May 6th when we’ll be discussing the genre/topic of Linguistics and Language!

Then on Tuesday, June 3rd we’ll be discussing “Found Books,” that is books that we’ve found in public little free libraries, book exchanges, and book swaps.

It’s episode 210 and time for us to talk about the genre of Romantasy! We discuss romance series, happily ever afters, tropes, social media, and more! Plus, special guest romance fiction researcher Christine Larson!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray 🦇 | Jam Edwards

Things We Read (or tried to…)

• Wooing the Witch Queen by Stephanie Burgis, narrated by Amanda Leigh Cobb
• A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
• Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer
• The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty
  • The Significance Of S.A. Chakraborty’s Name Adjustment In Upcoming Book
• One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig
• Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
• Newt’s Emerald by Garth Nix  (not mentioned in episode)
• The Bridge Kingdom by Danielle L. Jensen (not mentioned in episode)
• Order of Swans by Jude Deveraux (not mentioned by name)

Other Media We Mentioned

• Love in the Time of Self-Publishing: How Romance Writers Changed the Rules of Writing and Success by Christine Larson
• Ender’s Game / Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card
• Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
• Graceling by Kristin Cashore
• Redwall by Brian Jacques
• Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
• The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
• The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
• Empty Crown by Rosemary Edgehill 
• A Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K. Hamiton

Links, Articles, and Things

• RA in a Day
• Episode 057 - Nordic/Scandinavian Noir
• Episode 202 - A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking
• Let Them Eat Tropes: Why Romantasy Needs to Grow Beyond Trends
• Did a Best-Selling Romantasy Novelist Steal Another Writer’s Story?
• What is ‘romantasy,’ and why can’t readers get enough? (Interview with Christine Larson)

15 Romantasy books by BIPOC Authors:

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcast chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here.

• This Monster of Mine by Shalini Abeysekara
• A Broken Blade by Melissa Blair
• Sing Me to Sleep by Gabi Burton
• Once More Upon a Time by Roshani Chokshi 
• Faebound by Saara El-Arifi
• Immortal Longings by Chloe Gong
• The Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon
• The Maid and the Crocodile by Jordan Ifueko
• Sinner's Isle by Angela Montoya
• Witchmark by C.L. Polk
• Lore of the Wilds by Analeigh Sbrana
• Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri
• Trial of the Sun Queen by Nisha J. Tuli
• The Prince Without Sorrow by Maithree Wijesekara
• The Scorpion and the Night Blossom by Amélie Wen Zhao

Give us feedback!

• Fill out the form to ask for a recommendation or suggest a genre or title for us to read!

Check out our Tumblr, join our Discord Server, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, April 15th for our Spring Media Update! We’ll let you know about the media we’ve been enjoying recently that we haven’t experienced for the podcast.

Then on Tuesday, May 6th we’ll be discussing the genre/topic of Linguistics and Language!

 It’s episode 201 and time for us to discuss the genre of Weird West! (Just in time for Halloween!). We talk about the potential temporal and geographic restrictions on western fiction, folklore, tall tales, and more!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray 🦇 | Jam Edwards

Things We Read (or tried to…)

• Red Rabbit by Alex Grecian, narrated by John Pirhalla
• The Gunslinger by Stephen King, narrated by George Guidall
• Tread of Angels by Rebecca Roanhorse
• The Sixth Gun Omnibus, vol. 1 by Cullen Bunn, Brian Hurtt, Bill Crabtree, and Tyler Crook
• The Witch Owl Parliament by David Bowles and Raúl the Third
• Lone Women by Victor LaValle
• River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey
  

Other Media We Mentioned

• Vermilion: The Adventures of Lou Merriwether, Psychopomp and Molly Tanzer
• The New Adventures of the Lone Ranger (Probably the version Matthew saw)
• Lucky Luke
• The Shootist by Glendon Swarthout
• The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
  

Links, Articles, and Things

• Episode 029 - Westerns
• Episode 082 - Steampunk
• Episode 106 - Alternative/Alternate History
• Episode 183 - One Book One Podcast: Upright Women Wanted
• Space Western (TVTropes)
• Skin-walker
• Land-grant university
• Map shows where Colorado’s 8 known free-roaming wolves wandered in September
• Libro.fm’s Audiobook Listening Copy Program
• Jonah Hex
  

10 Weird Western Books by BIPOC Authors

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here.

• The Witch Owl Parliament by David Bowles and Raúl the Third
• Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas
• The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Nicole Davis
• Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland
• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones (forthcoming 2025)
• Sisters of the Wild Sage: A Weird Western Collection by Nicole Givens Kurtz
• Lone Women by Victor Lavalle
• The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu by Tom Lin
• Tread of Angels by Rebecca Roanhorse
• How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C Pam Zhang

Give us feedback!

• Fill out the form to ask for a recommendation or suggest a genre or title for us to read!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Instagram, join our Facebook Group or Discord Server, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, October 15th when it’s time for our “We All Read the Same Book” episode as we discuss A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher.

Then on Tuesday, November 5th we’ll be discussing the genre of Dark Academia.

This episode we’re Receiving Book Recommendations! Last episode we asked each other for books in specific areas and this week we’re back with our suggestions for table top role playing games, folklore, healthcare, poetry, urban fantasy and more.

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Things We Recommend

• An Indie Tabletop Game
  • The Queen of Cups
    •  TTRPG Safety Toolkit by Kienna Shaw & Lauren Bryant-Monk
  • The Skeletons
• Slavic/Eastern European Folklore
  • Slavic Folklore: A Handbook by Natalie Kononenko
    • Natalie Kononenko (Wikipedia)
  • Nart Sagas from the Caucasus: Myths and Legends from the Circassians, Abazas, Abkhaz, and Ubykhs by John Colarusso
  • Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales
    • Baba Yaga cross stitch Matthew’s working on
• Humanism in/of Healthcare
  • 2020 Summer Reading for Compassionate Clinicians - The Gold foundation
  • The Finest Traditions of My Calling: One Physician's Search for the Renewal of Medicine by Abraham M. Nussbaum
  • Journal of Applied Hermeneutics - Canadian Hermeneutic Institute 
• Fiction that Surprises
  • Bunny by Mona Awad
  • Untold Night and Day by Bae Suah
• Sci-fi/Fantasy set in the Contemporary World
  • The Scapegracers by Hannah Abigail Clarke
  • Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
  • Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker and Wendy Xu
  • Spellhacker by M.K England
  • The Lost Coast by A.R. Capetta
  • Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
  • The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor
  • The Nobody People by Bob Proehl
• Urban Fantasy
  • Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
  • Minimum Wage Magic by Rachel Aaron
• Horror
  • Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear
  • Parasite Eve by Hideaki Sena
    • Parasite Eve (video game) (Wikipedia)
  • The Fog Knows Your Name
• Poetry
  • Curator of Ephemera at the New Museum for Archaic Media by Heid E. Erdrich
  • Ledger by Jane Hirshfield
  • Catrachos by Roy G. Guzmán
  • Dub: Finding Ceremony by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
  • Queer Poets Write About Nature by edited by Dylan Ce
• Feminist Essay Collection
  • Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by adrienne maree brown
  • Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano
• Fiction set at Christmastime/Non-Fiction about Christmas
  • Christmas Inn Maine by Chelsea M. Cameron
  • Glass Tidings by Amy Jo Cousins
  • The Battle for Christmas by Stephen Nissenbaum
• Russian Language Learning Materials
  • Learn to Read and Write Russian - Russian Alphabet Made Easy
  • Sputnik: An Introductory Russian Language Course, Part I by by Julia Rochtchina
• Space Opera
  • Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
  • To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers

Suggestions from our Listeners!

• An Indie Tabletop Game
  • Bluebeard's Bride from Magpie Games
• Slavic/Eastern European Folklore
  • Slavic Folklore: A Handbook by Natalie Kononenko
  • On the Banks of the Yaryn by Aleksandr Kondratiev
    
• Humanism in/of Healthcare
  • The Language of Kindness: A Nurse’s Story by Christie Watson
• Fiction that Surprises
  • Slade House by David Mitchell
• Sci-fi/Fantasy set in the Contemporary World
  • Empire State by Adam Christopher
  • The Abyss Surrounds Us by Emily Skrutskie
  • Finna by Nino Cipri
• Urban Fantasy
  • God Save the Queen by Kate Locke
  • Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone
• Horror
  • And the Trees Crept In by Dawn Kurtagich
  • Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng
    
• Poetry
  • The Octopus Museum by Brenda Shaughnessy
• Feminist Essay Collection
  • Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall
  • This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color edited by Cherríe L. Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa
  • Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism edited by Bushra Rehman and Daisy Hernández
  • Turn This World Inside Out: The Emergence of Nurturance Culture by Nora Samaran
• Fiction set at Christmastime/Non-Fiction about Christmas
  • Whiteout by Elyse Springer
  • Glad Tidings of Struggle and Strife by Llew Smith
  • Mangos & Mistletoe by Adriana Herrera
  • Better Not Pout by Annabeth Albert
• Russian Language Learning Materials
  • We Read These Tales by Syllables by Vladimir Suteev
• Space Opera
  • Alien People by John Coon
  • Dreamships by Melissa Scott
  • A Matter of Oaths by Helen S. Wright
    

Other Media We Mentioned

• Fiasco
• Ring by Kōji Suzuki
• Tomie by Junji Ito
• Spirit of the Season
• The Coldest City by Antony Johnston and Sam Hart
• Atomic Blonde (Wikipedia)
• Saga, Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
• On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden
• House of Reeds by Thomas Harlan

Links, Articles, and Things

• Eisner Award for Best Lettering (Wikipedia)
• Lambda Literary Award (Wikipedia)
• Episode 078 - Supernatural Thrillers
• Shadowrun (Wikipedia)

Give us feedback!

• Fill out the form to ask for a recommendation or suggest a genre or title for us to read!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, December 1st we’ll be discussing the genre that you chose for us to read, New Weird Fiction!

Then on Tuesday, December 15th it’ll be our Best of 2020 episode!

This episode we’re Seeking Book Recommendations! We’ve each picked some topics and we’re going to perform Readers’ Advisory interviews to help figure out what titles to suggest to each other.

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Recommendations Wanted!

• RJ
• • An indie tabletop game
  • Sci-fi/fantasy set in contemporary real world, but the sf/fan elements are NOT secret/hidden/underground
  • Fiction set at Christmastime/non-fiction about Christmas
• Matthew
• • Slavic/Eastern European Folklore
  • Horror
  • Space Opera
• Anna
• • Humanism in/of healthcare
  • Urban fantasy
  • Feminist Essay Collection
• Meghan
• • Fiction (not a thriller) that surprises
  • Poetry
  • Russian language learning materials

Media We Mentioned

• Shadowrun (Wikipedia)
• Sleepaway
• FATE
• GURPS
• God's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine by Victoria Sweet
• The Soul of Care: The Moral Education of a Husband and a Doctor by Arthur Kleinman
• Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine by Damon Tweedy
• Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
• Your Republic is Calling You by Kim Young-Ha
• • Meghan discusses this book in Episode 013 - Spies and Espionage
• Tell the Machine Goodnight by Katie Williams
• Curse Workers series by Holly Black
• Uzumaki by Junji Ito
• Solaris by Stanisław Lem
• • Solaris (1972 film) (Wikipedia)
• The Stand by Stephen King
• Hellboy, Vol. 1: Seed of Destruction by Mike Mignola, John Byrne
• SCP
• • Document 050 - "The Great Researcher Prank War of '██"
  • SCP-087 - “an unlit platform staircase”
  • SCP-2521
  • We Need To Talk About Fifty-Five
  • Top Rated Pages
• IRL by Tommy Pico
• Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders by Neil Gaiman
• • The Day the Saucers Came
• Mass Effect (Wikipedia)
• The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
• The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
• A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe by Alex White

Links, Articles, and Things

• Desert Bus for Hope
• Gritty (mascot)
• Hark! Podcast
• Cyrillic script (Wikipedia)

20 Religious Non-Fiction Books by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) Authors 

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here.

• Decolonial Christianities: Latinx and Latin American Perspectives edited by Raimundo Barreto and Roberto Sirvent
• God is Red: a Native View of Religion by Vine Deloria
• Orishas, Goddesses, and Voodoo Queens: The Divine Feminine in the African Religious Traditions by Lilith Dorsey
• Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson
• That Can Be Arranged: A Muslim Love Story by Huda Fahmy
• The Color of Love: A Story of a Mixed-Race Jewish Girl by Marra B Gad
• We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir by Samra Habib
• Lovesong: Becoming a Jew by Julius Lester
• Stalking God: My Unorthodox Search for Something to Believe In by Anjali Kumar
• Her Name Is Kaur: Sikh American Women Write about Love, Courage, and Faith edited by Meeta Kaur
• See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love by Valarie Kaur
• In Love With the World: A Monk's Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying by Yongey Mingyur, with Helen Tworkov
• The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation by Thich Nhat Hanh
• The Four Sacred Gifts: Indigenous Wisdom for Modern Times by Dr. Anita Sanchez
• Why I am a Hindu by Shashi Tharoor
• The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church's Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby
• Unashamed: Musings of a Fat, Black Muslim by Leah Vernon
• Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations by Richard Wagamese
• I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation by Chanequa Walker-Barnes
• New World A-coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity During the Great Migration by Judith Weisenfeld

Give us feedback!

• Fill out the form to ask for a recommendation or suggest a genre or title!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again next week, on Tuesday, November 24th as we give each other the Book Recommendations we asked for this week.

Then on Tuesday, December 1st we’ll be discussing the genre that you chose for us to read, New Weird Fiction!

Finally, on Tuesday, December 15th it’ll be our Best of 2020 episode!

This episode we’re discussing Business Non-Fiction! We talk about personality quizzes, questioning capitalism, fighting against productivity/the productivity trap, the rigourousness of professional degrees, (somehow on-topic) tangents, and how books can manage to disappoint us in new and bizarre ways. It’s got both silliness and existential dread in one episode!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Things We Read This Month

• Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us  by Michael Moss
• Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis
• Uncanny Valley  by Anna Wiener
• No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy
• Joy at Work: Organizing Your Professional Life  by Marie Kondō and Scott Sonenshein
• Soulbbatical: A Corporate Rebel's Guide to Finding Your Best Life by Shelley Paxton
• Think. Do. Say.: How to Seize Attention and Build Trust in a Busy, Busy World  by Ron Tite
• The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting by Rachel Shteir
• Different . . . Not Less: Inspiring Stories of Achievement and Successful Employment from Adults with Autism, Asperger's, and ADHD by Temple Grandin
• The Art of Doing Business Across Cultures: 10 Countries, 50 Mistakes, and 5 Steps to Cultural Competence by Craig Storti
• 100 Side Hustles: Ideas for Making Extra Money  by Chris Guillebeau

Other  Media We Mentioned

• The Art of War by Sun Tzu (Wikipedia)
• What Color Is Your Parachute? A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers by Richard Nelson Bolles
• Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson
• Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World by Mark Pendergrast
• The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek by Howard Markel
• Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter
• • Episode 015 - Self Help
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey
• The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz
• The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute by Zac Bissonnette
• Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy
• Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
• The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the        Turn of the Twentieth Century by Deborah Blum
• • The Poison Squads: The Stupid, Risky First Food Safety Tests (SciShow)
• Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America by Michael Ruhlman
• Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving by Celeste Headlee 
• The Good University: What Universities Actually Do and Why It's Time for Radical Change by Raewyn Connell
• The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton
• More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are (No Matter What They Say) by Elaine Welteroth
• The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau

Links, Articles, and Things

• Ask a Manager
• Quantified self (Wikipedia)
• Herpetology (Wikipedia)
• • “the branch of zoology concerned with the study of amphibians (including frogs, toads, salamanders, newts, and caecilians (gymnophiona)) and reptiles (including snakes, lizards, amphisbaenids, turtles, terrapins, tortoises, crocodilians, and the tuataras)”

15 Business Non-Fiction Books by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) Authors

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here.

• The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap by Mehrsa Baradaran
• Eat a Peach by David Chang
• Fight or Submit: Standing Tall in Two Worlds by Ronald Derrickson
• Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less by Tiffany Dufu
• The Token: Common Sense Ideas for Increasing Diversity in Your Organization by Crystal Byrd Farmer
• It's About Damn Time: How to Turn Being Underestimated Into Your Greatest Advantage by Arlan Hamilton
• Black Wall Street: From Riot to Renaissance in Tulsa's Historic Greenwood District by Hannibal B. Johnson
• Indigenous Relations: Insights, Tips & Suggestions to Make Reconciliation A Reality by Robert Joseph
• The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters by Wes Moore
• Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change by Ellen Pao
• The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker
• Great American Outpost: Dreamers, Mavericks, and the Making of an Oil Frontier by Maya Rao
• How to be a Bawse by Lilly Singh
• Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
• Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You by Julie Zhuo

Suggest new genres or titles!

• Fill out the form to suggest a genre or title!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, November 17th we’ll be doing Readers’ Advisory and trying to come up with holiday gifts for each other!

Then on Tuesday, December 1st we’ll be discussing the genre that you chose for us: New Weird Fiction!

It's Halloween! And in this very special episode we're playing the game Happy Birthday Dracula!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Games We Played This Month

• Happy Birthday Dracula!
• We’re streaming visual novel games on Twitch!
• • Were|House (Matthew and RJ trying to date a kelpie)
  • Speed Dating for Ghosts
• Which BC4M podcast co-host are you most like?

Other Media We Mentioned

• Steeple by John Allison
• • The webcomic

Links, Articles, and Things

• Xylophones for Walking Bones (TV Tropes)
• Quadrille (Wikipedia)
• Witch Name Generator
• Astronomia but it's played on a Xylophone (music used in the episode)

15 Psychological Thriller Books by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) Authors (see all our lists here)

• My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
• Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha
• When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole
• The Birthday Girl by Melissa de la Cruz
• An Untamed State by Roxane Gay
• Spin by Lamar Giles
• We'll Never Be Apart by Emiko Jean
• The Good Son by You-Jeong Jeong
• The Lost Ones by Sheena Kamal
• Miracle Creek by Angie Kim
• The Cutting Season by Attica Locke
• The Best Lies by Sarah Lyu
• Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
• Blood Sports by Eden Robinson
• Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden

Suggest new genres or titles!

• Fill out the form to suggest a genre or title!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us on Tuesday, November 3rd when we’ll be discussing the genre of Non-Fiction Business!

Then on Tuesday, November 17th we’ll be dusting off our Readers’ Advisory hats and trying to come up with holiday gifts for each other!

This episode we’re discussing Comedic/Humorous Fiction! We discuss what makes something funny, the different types of humour fiction,  when you can’t tell if something is supposed to be funny until you know the context, and more! Plus: Comics’ comic comics! (That kind of makes sense in context…)

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Announcements

• Check out Matthew and RJ streaming Were|House on our Twitch Channel on Friday, October 9th at 9pm Eastern / 6pm Pacific Twitch stream
• • Monster Mash - Friday Night Spooktacular Visual Novel Stream
• Our genre-specific lists of books by people of colour
• Vote for what genre we read in November

Things We Read This Month

• Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde
• • “Somebody once said that the library is actually the dominant life form on the planet. Humans simply exist as the reproductive means to achieve more libraries.” from Fforde’s book The Constant Rabbit
• Giant Days, Vol. 1 by John Allison, Lissa Treiman, and Whitney Cogar
• • Matthew thinks the analysis he mentioned is somewhere in PanelxPanel #16 - Giant Days
• The Shakespeare Requirement by Julie Schumacher
• • Dear Committee Members
• My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
• My Man Jeeves by PG Wodehouse
• An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten
• The Sellout by Paul Beatty
• • Booker Prize (Wikipedia)
• Yotsuba&!, Vol. 1 by Kiyohiko Azuma
• Ozy and Millie by Dana Simpson
• • Read online

Sixteen Comedic/Humorous Fiction Books by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) Authors (see all our lists here)

• The Sellout by Paul Beatty
• Moccasin Square Gardens by Richard Van Camp
• 32 Candles by Ernessa T. Carter
• Days of Distraction by Alexandra Chang
• The Wangs vs. The World by Jade Chang
• Waypoint Kangaroo by Curtis C. Chen
• The Marriage Game by Sara Desai
• I Am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett
• A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
• Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal
• Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
• The Bad Muslim Discount by Syed M. Masood
• Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
• Members Only by Sameer Pandya
• Crees in the Caribbean by Drew Hayden Taylor
• Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

Other Media We Mentioned

• The Hippopotamus by Stephen Fry
• Making History by Stephen Fry
• The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie
• Get Out (Wikpedia)
• • Nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
• The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
• Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
• Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome (Wikipedia)
• The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (Wikipedia)
• • Cucumber sandwich (Wikipedia)
• Phoebe and Her Unicorn by Dana Simpson

Links, Articles, and Things

• Comic novel (Wikipedia)
• Themes of Pedophilia in the Works of Piers Anthony
• Revisiting the sad, misogynistic fantasy of Xanth
• Episode 053 - Comedic Science Fiction & Fantasy
• Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour (Wikipedia)
• Hark!
• • Tweet your eggnog sightings at RJ!
• Code Switch - Battle Of The Books
• • “What kind of books are best to read during this pandemic? Books that connect you to our current reality? Or ones that help you escape it?”
• Plotless Fiction

Suggest new genres or titles!

• Fill out the form to suggest a genre or title!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, October 20th when we’ll be playing Happy Birthday Dracula!

Then on Tuesday, November 3rd we’ll be discussing the genre of Business non-fiction!

This episode we’re giving you an update on the media we’ve been enjoying not for the podcast! We talk about music, books, podcasts, comics, videos, movies, and more!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Announcements

• Check out our weekly "spooky" visual novel stream at twitch.tv/bookclub4m. Starting Friday, September 18th at 9pm Eastern / 6pm Pacific.
• Or check out the recordings on our YouTube channel

Media We’ve Been Enjoying

• Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle, Vol. 1 by Kagiji Kumanomata
• The Way of the Househusband, Vol. 1 by Kōsuke Ōno
• • Matthew heard about both of these manga in the Best and Worst Manga of 2020 panel
• Coode Street Podcast
• The Slowdown
• Strides Forward
• • Comrades Marathon (Wikipedia)
• Dig: A History Podcast
• • Choice, Sterilization, and Eugenics in Twentieth Century Puerto Rico
  • Steaming the “Nefarious Sin”: Bathhouses and Homosexuality from the Victorian Era to the AIDS Epidemic
• Tell the Machine Goodnight by Katie Williams
• The Undying by Anne Boyer
• In the Dream House: A Memoir by Carmen Maria Machado
• Turning: A Swimming Memoir by Jessica J. Lee
• Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick by Maya Dusenbery
• Black Dresses on Bandcamp
• • Black Dresses - Eternal Nausea
• Mitski on Bandcamp
• • Mitski - Nobody
• Sofi Tukker on Twitch
• • Sofi Tukker - Batshit
• Anarchism & Police Abolition Feat. Domri Rade by Spice8Rack
• On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss
• A Christmas Prince 
• • The Grim Dystopia of A Christmas Prince (video by Jenny Nicholson)
  • What things need to be saved in RJ’s winter holiday RPG? Suggest something!
• Finish It! Podcast
• • Journey Under the Sea episode 1
• Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving by Celeste Headlee

Links, Articles, and Things

• Our “to be read” piles
• • Matthew
  • Anna
  • Meghan
• Hark! The Holiday Music Podcast
• Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick by Maya Dusenbery
• Trailer for the new Dune movie

15 Non-fiction Technology Books by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) Authors (see all our lists here)

• Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code by Ruha Benjamin
• Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life by Ruha Benjamin
• Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness by Simons Browne
• Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys Club of Silicon Valley by Emily Chang
• Inclusive Design for a Digital World: Designing with Accessibility in Mind by Regine Gilbert
• Girl Code: Gaming, Going Viral, and Getting It Done by Andrea Gonzales and Sophie Houser
• Reaching for the Moon: The Autobiography of NASA Mathematician Katherine Johnson by Katherine G. Johnson
• Black Software: The Internet & Racial Justice, from the Afronet to Black Lives Matter by Charlton D. McIlwain
• Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet by Lisa Nakamura
• Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life edited by Alondra Nelson and Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu with Alicia Headlam Hines
• Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble
• Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly
• Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science by Kim TallBear
• Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest by Zeynep Tufekci
• The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu

Suggest new genres or titles!

• Fill out the form to suggest genres!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, October 6th we’ll be reading Comedic/Humourous Novels! (or fiction?)

Then on Tuesday, October 20th we’ll be playing Happy Birthday Dracula!

This episode we’re discussing Visual Novels! We talk about what visual novels are, whether they count as books, reading novels we’re much too young for, being unable to suspend our disbelief, watching videos at 2x speed, monetization, watching vs playing, linear vs divergent stories, and more! Plus, this episode is like 75% tangents!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Things We Read (Played?) This Month

• Bury Me, My Love
• Dungeons & Lesbians
• • Stream with Matthew and RJ
• Serre - “A visual novel about a girl and an alien drinking tea and falling in love!”
• • Stream with Matthew and Meghan
• Speed Dating for Ghosts
• Order a Pizza: A Visual Novel
• • Stream with Matthew and hosts of Finish It! Podcast
• All the streams on YouTube!
• Our Twitch channel

Matthews list of (more) Visual Novels he enjoyed playing

• A Mortician's  Tale - “a story-driven death positive video game where you play as a mortician tasked with running a funeral home.”
• Arcade Spirits - “a romantic visual novel that follows an alternative timeline where the 1983 video game crash never occurred.”
• Don’t Take It Personally, I Just Don’t Like You: The Camping Trip - “a lo-fi relationship dramedy about camping illegally on government property in the chill of early autumn, having public anxiety attacks in crowded shopping malls, the people we choose to be with, and what we do when they don't choose us back.”
• The Night Fisherman - “A short tale of inhumanity in the English channel."
• The Outcast Lovers - “Driving home late one night you encounter a refugee in distress.” (Sequel to The Night Fisherman.)
• Us Lovely Corpses - “a short surreal-horror-romance visual novel about helping a friend.”
• Watch Me Jump - “a digital story of scandal and betrayal, played out in four quarters.”
• Mission: It's Complicated - “a visual novel about getting superheroes to fall in love, and the shenanigans that happen along the way.”
• Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator - “a game where you play as a Dad and your goal is to meet and romance other hot Dads.”

Other Media We Mentioned

• Choose Your Own Adventure (Wikipedia)
• Doki Doki Literature Club! (Wikipedia)
• Mr. Dough and the Egg Princess (Wikipedia)
• Tusks: The Orc Dating Sim
• • Orcs that RJ drew!
  • More orc(cupation)s that RJ drew
• Radical Dreamers (Wikipedia)
• Butterfly Soup - “A visual novel about gay asian girls playing baseball and falling in love.”
• 2064: Read Only Memories (Wikipedia)
• Now Kiss! YouTube Playlist of visual novel streams by Kathleen de Vere
• Finish It! Podcast
• Rise of the Videogame Zinesters: How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Drop-outs, Queers, Housewives, and People Like You Are Taking Back an Art Form by Anna Anthropy 
• Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death by Caitlin Doughty
• Ask a Mortician
• Signs of the Sojourner - “a narrative card game about relationships and connecting with people.”

Links, Articles, and Things

• Bingo Sheets for podcast
• Visual novel (Wikipedia)
• Gamebook (Wikipedia)
• Text-based game (Wikipedia)
• Interactive fiction (Wikipedia)
• Point-and-click adventure games (Wikipedia)
• Twine (software) (Wikipedia)
• Pandemic (board game) (Wikipedia)
• RJ’s itch.io page
• Pricing Hobby Games: An argument for pricing your small independent games.
• How One Gameplay Decision Changed Diablo Forever
• Why So Few Violent Games?
• Visual Novel Maker Says It Will Replace Its Striking Writers
• Visual Novel Writers Win Pay Raise After 21 Day Strike
• Visual Novels (TV Tropes)

5 Visual Novels (and 1 amazing resource) by People of Colour

• Blerdy Otome: this episode’s list would not be possible without Blerdy Otome, who reviews otome games, visual novels, and related media! Check out the Blerdy Tribe page of her website for tons of Black game developers, artists, podcasters, and other folks to follow!
• ValiDate: a forthcoming romantic visual novel about 12 adults in Jercy City navigating new relationships and the harsh realities that come alongside them. Features an array of character art by artists of color and a narrative developed by an all people of color writing team.
• One Thousand and One Days: an LGBTQ+ fantasy otome based on the mythology of ancient Persia and Islamic lore.
• Pairs: a romantic sci-fi visual novel featuring two superheroic couples and four perspectives to see their stories from.
• Us Lovely Corpses: a short surreal-horror-romance visual novel about helping a friend. Matthew’s stream of this game can be found here (check the content warning in the video description).
• Order a Pizza: play as a divorced dad trying to order the perfect pizza. Matthew’s stream of this game can be found here.

Suggest new genres or titles!

• Fill out the form to suggest a genre or title!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, September 15th we’ll be giving an update on media we’ve been consuming that’s not for the podcast!

Then on Tuesday, October 15th we’ll be reading Comedic/Humourous Novels!