The Bad Books Book Club – Details, episodes & analysis

Episode notes:

• transcript

• buy The Free People's Village here!

• support Sim Kern on Patreon here!

• Sim Kern's website, including links to their book influencing and activist platforms, here - contribute to their fundraisers on linktr.ee

• "Houston abolished its ward system 120 years ago today, but its legacy still shapes the city" by Jhair Romero (Houston Chronicle, December 2024)

• "What the War on Terror Leaves Behind" by Harmonie Toros, Lee Jarvis, and Richard Jackson (European Journal of International Security, November 2024)

• DIY, Alternative Cultures & Society partially open access journal

• Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain

• Consensus: A New Handbook for Grassroots Social, Political, and Environmental Groups by Peter Gelderloos (TheAnarchistLibrary.org)

• "The Politics of Housework" by Pat Mainardi (Redstockings, 1968)

• The Garden: Commune or Cult (Hot Snakes Media - 2023)

• some relevant texts: the Combahee River Collective Statement (Yale.edu), The Broken Teapot (TheAnarchistLibrary.org), Come Hell or High Water: A Handbook on Collective Process Gone Awry (TheAnarchistLibrary.org)

• "The Political Mobilization of America's Congregations" by Kraig Beyerlein and Mark Chaves (Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, December 2020)

• Where you can find us: Patreon, Twitter, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and thebadbooksbookclub at gmail dot com!

• Read along with us for next time...Captive Prince by C.S. Pacat!

Episode notes:

• transcript

• buy The Housemaid here!

• Freida McFadden's very genre-appropriate website

• The Pleasure of the Text by Roland Barthes (we talk in greater detail about this in a future episode)

• The Housemaid film trailer

• "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

• "The Rest Cure Revisited" by Diana Martin, M.D. (The American Journal of Psychiatry Online)

• "Meet the Boston Brain Doctor Who Lives a Double Life as a Best-Selling Author" by Will Pavia (NAMD.org)

• WARNING!!!! "The Race Traits and Tendencies..." by Frederick L. Hoffman (May 1896) (this is race science in its original eugenicist 19th century context, offered in the context of our discussion and in conversation with the academic works below)

• "Harvard's Eugenics Era" by Adam Cohen (Harvard Magazine, March-April 2016)

• "A Troublesome Recurrence: Racialized Realities and Racist Reasoning Today" by Lawrence D. Bobo (Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race through Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard)

• Queen Camilla (!)

• Upstairs Downstairs (1971)

• Federal Bureau of Prison Statistics (updated weekly)

• Pew Research Center Fact Sheet About the US Black Population (January 2025)

• "Race, History, and Immigration Crimes" by Eric S. Fish (Iowa Law Review, March 2022)

• "Craniums, Criminals, and the 'Cursed Race': Italian Anthropology in American Racial Thought, 1861-1924" by Peter D'Agostino (Comparative Studies in Society and History, April 2002)

• Humbert Humbert

• Emma by Jane Austen

• "Interpreting Gender: Refrigerator Mothers" by Jordynn Jack (from Autism and Gender: From Refrigerator Mothers to Computer Geeks, 2014)

• "The WASPs Are Gone" by Yascha Mounk (Persuasion, March 2025)

• "The Infanticidal Attachment" by Brett Kahr (Attachment: New Directions in Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, 2007)

• the Strange Situation

• Where you can find us: Patreon, Twitter, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and thebadbooksbookclub at gmail dot com!

• Read along with us for next time...The Free People's Village by Sim Kern!

Episode notes:

• transcript link

• buy Heated Rivalry here!

• Rachel Reid's website (and bonus link to her blog post about Parkinson's, which Iliria really appreciated)

• Check, Please! by Ngozi Ukazu

• Icebreaker by A.L. Graziadei

• bonus link to hockey romances by Iliria's friend, Ari Baran :)

• Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson

• The Riveters 😢

• "There are no out NHL players. Could Heated Rivalry change that?" by Mey Rude (Out.com, Dec 2025)

• Untitled (You Construct Intricate Rituals) by Barbara Kruger

• "'I felt bad about it': The complicated origins of Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series" by Anna Good (Daily Dot, Dec 2025)

• Orientalism by Edward Saïd

• "Negotiating New Asian American Masculinities: Attitudes and Gender Expectations" by Peter Chua and Diane Fujino

• What we're reading: Solaris by Stanislaw Lem (and bonus, Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky), the rest of the Game Changers series by Rachel Reid

• Where you can find us: Patreon, Twitter, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and thebadbooksbookclub at gmail dot com!

• Read along with us for next time...The Housemaid by Freida McFadden!

Note for Patreon followers: reposting for Spotify and Apple listeners, so they can hear the whole episode :^)

Episode notes:

• transcript link

• buy Icebreaker here at bookshop.org!

• Hannah Grace's charming personal website

• Icebreaker next to Diary of a Wimpy Kid at Costco

• the Ballerina Farms exposé (Megan Agnew's 2024 article "Meet the queen of the 'trad wives' and her eight children")

• Licensing Entertainment: The Elevation of Novel Reading in Britain, 1684-1750 by William B. Warner

• What we're reading: Katherine by Anya Seton, Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice Across Andean Worlds by Marisol de la Cadena, All Fours by Miranda July

• Where you can find us: Patreon, Twitter, and thebadbooksbookclub at gmail dot com!

• Read along with us for next time...Heated Rivalry!

Episode notes:

• transcript link

• buy Icebreaker here at bookshop.org!

• Hannah Grace's charming personal website

• Icebreaker next to Diary of a Wimpy Kid at Costco

• the Ballerina Farms exposé (Megan Agnew's 2024 article "Meet the queen of the 'trad wives' and her eight children")

• Licensing Entertainment: The Elevation of Novel Reading in Britain, 1684-1750 by William B. Warner

• What we're reading: Katherine by Anya Seton, Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice Across Andean Worlds by Marisol de la Cadena, All Fours by Miranda July

• Where you can find us: Patreon, Twitter, and thebadbooksbookclub at gmail dot com!

• Read along with us for next time...Heated Rivalry!