Terrible Book Club

Paris was on a walk in Minnesota last year and decided to look inside a Little Free Library on the road. Within it, she found Emblem: Unity, flipped it open to a random page, and knew the luck of Terriblo was with her that day.

Content Warnings: In addition to our usual barnyard language, this episode includes discussions around animal violence, parental abuse, bad mental health advice, and suicide.

We're starting February off with a Double Feature! Today we tackle two pieces of book-like debris that Chris found in the bowels of an Amazon search, the criteria of which has been lost to time:

• Shannon’s Book of One Quote by Shannon Little
• Fastidious by Paul Richard Tasch

Our Patron Lynn chose this book as their once-per-year reward! Check out our Patreon here to get this and other rewards for yourself.

No substantial Content Warnings this week - brief mentions of death and terrorist attacks/shootings, and discussion of an infamous scene from the movie Blue Velvet but otherwise you’ve got nothing but our usual barnyard language to be concerned about.

Armed with our own childhood experiences of playing Nintendo games and Super Mario, we felt plenty prepared to dive into Bob Chipman's Super Mario Bros 3: Brick by Brick. Part text walk-through, part memoir, and part video game history retrospective, this book tried to do too much in its 208 pages. The author should've committed to one of these paths in a shorter form or found a better way to weave all three into a much longer, much more detailed narrative.

Chipman misses the opportunity to connect with his audience by avoiding deeper discussions of his own life and feelings. Strangely, the few times he does get more personal, he directs that emotion towards Mario and Shigeru Miyamoto and the unrefined phrasing of these moments is often uncomfortable. Like many books we've read, this book is in desperate need of an editor who would likely have caught these things and prevented them (along with some other inappropriate comparisons, spelling, and formatting mistakes) from making it to print.

A guy who reviews cartoons and is really invested in creating a cartoon series himself wrote a children's chapter book in the universe that he's been creating for a few years. There's nothing wrong with this concept on the surface.

Peer deeper into the chocolate puddle, though, and you'll find a horrifying interpretation of reality where children run the entire world and the unintended consequences of this arrangement smother any potential this thing might have had.

Imagine Hellraiser, but instead of Pinhead offering you the heights of pain/pleasure, it's a cute child luring you into her world of candy, ponies, and endless playtime. Rather than being flayed alive, dismembered, or otherwise horribly tortured in a physical sense, you're instead damned to be your child's canvas for humiliation. Enslaved by your child masters, you are crippled by the fear of displeasing them.

Thanks to our listener Letty for recommending we read Growing Around: Party Panic! by John 'Enter' Rozanski.

Content warnings: Discussion of cartoon violence; Toxic familial relationships; pedophilia (brief mention)

It's another episode of Terrible Antique Book Freaks! D & Ken from Antiques Freaks join us once again to read another Carnacki tale.

We use Eye of Argon rules to read the entirety of The House of the Laurels. Have your Carnacki bingo cards at the ready!

Content Warnings: Our usual barnyard language, plus: animal death and sexual jokes