Thumbing Through Yesterday
Join us as we take our favorite books off the shelf, dust them off, and remind ourselves why we love them. New episodes drop on the 7th and 21st of each month.
Episodes
Starship Troopers is iconic Robert Heinlein. One of his best sellers, and arguably his most recognized novel, Starship Troopers explores life under the Terran Federation through the eyes of Johnny Rico as, after high school, he joins the military. In true Heinlein fashion, he does this to impress a girl. After failing to meet the standards for anything more elevated, Rico finds himself in the Mobile Infantry, combat soldiers who we...
John Scalzi's first novel, Agent to the Stars, is a fun story about Tom Stein, a moderately-successful talent agent, who finds himself with a race of aliens as clients. His job? Find a way to reveal their presence to humanity without causing a fuss. A favorite of Tony's and a first-read for Tom, this is a genuinely delightful tale.
Heavy Time by CJ Cherryh is one part her Company Wars series. Filled with political intrigue and hard sci-fi, we follow a small cast of asteroid miners who get caught up in sweeping events. A favorite of Tom's, Tony found it lacking in sympathetic characters. What do you think?
Masters of Doom by David Kishner is our first non-fiction choice, and one of Tony's favorites. This tale focuses on John Carmack and John Romero, two programmers who shaped both video games and pop culture for a generation.
Before it became an iconic film, Logans Run was a novel by William F. Nolan. Tony didn't realize that the novel existed, while Tom read this many times in grade school and high school. Does it hold up after all this time? Let's find out!
A Wrinkle In Time by Madeline L'Engle is a young adult scifi that both Tony and Tom read in their youth. It's a very accessible story about a conflict between dark and light, evil and good. It turns out that Tom scarcely remembered anything about it!
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is one of Tom's favorite dystopian novels, although it's arguable whether the world is a dystopia or a utopia. Tom finds this book delightfully quirky and profoundly vague. Tony questions whether Huxley was a genius or a hack. What's your take?
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The Great Brain by John Dennis Fitzgerald is the first of a series of childrens books that Tony fell in love with during his youth. The stories center around Tom, the middle of three boys, and the shenanigans that ensue as he applies his great brain to the problems at hand, usually involving the acquisition of pennies. JD, the younger brother, is the naive lens through which we see Tom's machinations.
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This epsiode marks the first time we've had a guest on the show! Dr. Eva Rose Washburn-Repollo joins us in discussing one of her favorite books, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, sometimes called "The Great American Novel." Join us as we talk about one of the best-known, and somewhat controversial, pieces of American literature.
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Winnie the Pooh, along with The House at Pooh Corner, document the stories that author A.A. Milne told to his son, Christopher Robin. Two delightful collections of amazing stories and delightful language, well-suited for adults to share with children. What a joy it was to revisit these gems!
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Frank Herbert's Dune has been called the most important novel in science fiction. A winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and a favorite of both Tom and Tony's, join us to see if it lives up to the hype.
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H.P. Lovecraft is both the father of cosmic horror and the creator of the Cthulhu mythos. Since he didn't write novels, join us as we explore a collection of his short stories, culminating in the iconic Call of Cthulhu.
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In Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman set out to write a book that would do for adults what the books he had loved when he was younger had done for him as a kid. A favorite of Tony's, and a first-read for Tom, Neverwhere threads the line between dark fantasy and action/adventure, with a liberal sprinkling of dry wit.
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Animal Farm by George Orwell is a classic dystopian allegory, paralleling 1984 in showing Orwell's disdain for communism. Why does this book appeal so to Tom? Join us and find out!
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You probably know Dave Barry as a Pulitzer prize winning humorour columnist. Did you know he is also a novelist? Tony's pick this time is Big Trouble, a fun-filled crime story that shows Barry at his comedic best.
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Tom's return to yesterday is Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward. Tony characterizes this book as the epitome of hard sci-fi, and loved getting to revisit it. Join us as we explore life on a neutron star!
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Robert B. Parker is a favorite author of Tony's, and he's chosen Appaloosa, the first Western of a series featuring Virgil COle and Everett HItch. There's plenty of drama, action, terse conversations, and a surprising amount of humor in these pages! Tom was delighted, so much so that he quickly consumed the next three books in the series.
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A Fine and Pleasant Misery by Patrick McManus is a favorite from Tom's youth. Together with his best friends at the time, Tom lived many of the adventures that McManus so comedically recounts. Meet such memorable characters as old man and professional idler Rancid Crabtree; visit Grogan's military surplus store, where items with genuine jungle rot and bullet holes cost extra; learn the difference between a crick and a creek...
Glory Road is one of Tony's all-time favorite books, and his Robert Heinlein selection for our 2nd year. This is an atypical Heinlein in that, in Tony's words, it is "a deconstruction of a fantasy adventure."
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This Day All Gods Die is the conclusion to Stephen R. Donaldson's Gap Cycle, and what a conclusion it is! This is a novel-length climax that's an edge-of-your-seat experience from the first to the last page!
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