Book Spider

Book Spider

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

S4 Ep70: Beautiful Emptiness in Samantha Harvey's "Orbital"

July 21, 2025 • 44 mins
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

July 17, 2025 • 57 mins
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

June 22, 2025 • 56 mins
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

June 12, 2025 • 50 mins
The house is grief. There it is. 
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S4 Ep66: Are Aesthetic Properties Real? (With a Discussion of the Film LFO)

May 28, 2025 • 72 mins
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?

April 20, 2025 • 66 mins
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"

April 6, 2025 • 68 mins
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"

March 23, 2025 • 67 mins
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

March 18, 2025 • 76 mins
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?

January 15, 2025 • 77 mins
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)

December 29, 2024 • 73 mins
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 interesting in spite of that.

Works Cited:
Max Read: “Drowning in Slop” (published in New York magazine 9/25/24)
Max...
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S4 Ep59: Uneven Greatness in Melville's Billy Budd and Piazza Tales

December 25, 2024 • 60 mins
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

December 3, 2024 • 64 mins
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

November 10, 2024 • 77 mins
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

October 27, 2024 • 52 mins
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

September 17, 2024 • 53 mins
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

September 2, 2024 • 61 mins
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

August 24, 2024 • 63 mins
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

August 6, 2024 • 73 mins
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

July 21, 2024 • 54 mins
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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