Book Fight

This week we're revisiting Ghost World, the 1997 graphic novel by Daniel Clowes. The book pulled together material from the serialized comic Clowes wrote over several years and published in his 20th Century Eightball series of anthologies. Later it was made into a movie starring Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansen, and Steve Buscemi.

Also this week: what people were saying in 1997 about a little company called Amazon dot com, which went public that May, making its founder a multi-millionaire. Plus the odd online short story project the company curated, with help from John Updike. Plus, Tom fondly remembers Final Fantasy 7, and Mike rewatches Chasing Amy.

Direct download: Ep266_Wayback_1997.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

We're on to 1996, friends! For this episode we read a David Shields book, Remote, which is kind of a memoir, kind of a collection of creative nonfiction experiments, and kind of difficult to categorize. Mike bought it years ago, in college, before he knew anything about David Shields, and back then he found it a little confusing. Now, with more context for Shields' work, will it make more sense? Tom, meanwhile, has read four Shields books over the years, but has never quite decided if he likes them or not. Will this be the one to get him off the fence?

This week in publishing news, Tom has the story of Sassy magazine's contest to name the sassiest boy in America, and Mike has some conflicting views from within the industry about how to deal with the internet. Plus, a bit of controversy surrounding a still-new, still-fledgling Amazon.com. And for 90s Movie Club: Did Swingers predict the Men's Rights Movement?

If you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, which helps us make a bit of money each month and keep the show going. For just $5 a month, you'll get access to a monthly bonus episode, Book Fight After Dark, in which we visit some of the weirder, goofier corners of the literary world. Recently, that's involved reading a paranormal romance novel, the debut novel of Jersey Shore's Snookie, and the novelization of the movie Battleship (yes, based on the popular board game).

Direct download: Ep265_Wayback_1996.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

We're halfway through the 90s, and this week we're reading a book that feels very much like a time capsule of the era: Douglas Coupland's Microserfs, his follow-up to Generation X, the novel that introduced that term into the world. In Microserfs we follow a group of twenty-something coders as they quit their jobs at Microsoft to work for a start-up company in Silicon Valley. The book explores the world of early start-up culture just a couple years before dot-com culture fully takes over the San Francisco Bay Area.

In lieu of publishing news this week, Mike tells a personal story from 1995 about email, the internet, and one young man's search for love. Tom, meanwhile, charts the quick rise and fall of JFK Jr.'s George magazine. And 90s Movie Club is revisiting the classic film Hackers, starring Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, and Jesse Bradford.

If you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, which helps us make a bit of money each month and keep the show going. For just $5 a month, you'll get access to a monthly bonus episode, Book Fight After Dark, in which we visit some of the weirder, funnier corners of the literary world. Recently, that's involved reading a paranormal romance novel, the debut novel of Jersey Shore's Snookie, and the novelization of the movie Battleship (yes, based on the popular board game).

Direct download: Ep264_Wayback_1995.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

Boy, the '90s are just flying by! We're already up to 1994, a year marked by tragedy (Kurt Cobain, Nicole Brown Simpson) and triumph (Mike's high school graduation). Our reading this week is a short story by Rick Moody, "The Grid." We talk about the story's unconventional structure, its musical voice, and its Gen X-era references. Mike also admits to having read this story aloud to multiple girlfriends (he was young! it was a different time!)

In publishing news this week, we take a deep dive into the story of a first novel, Fishboy, to see how a debut novelist was being marketed and promoted by a big press circa 1994. The New York Times did a multi-part series on the book's launch, providing a step-by-step look at how author Mark Richard tried to sell the book, and himself, to the reading public.

We've also got video game news, font news (the birth of Comic Sans!), and for 90s Movie Club Mike is revisiting Reality Bites and wondering how Gen X was somehow erased from the public consciousness.

Direct download: Ep263_Wayback_1994_.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:00am EDT

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