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Bad Books

We tried to bind this episode in human flesh but the MP3 codec’s lossiness kept causing it cancer. This episode, Toren, Joe, and Kevin talk about Dr. Spock’s bibliographic death-toll, anti-Jewish hoax The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the copycat-inspiring The Collector and many more caustic tomes.

Music: “Epilogue: Some Things Man Was Not Meant To Know” by The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets

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22 Responses

  1. Loved the episode! heres a book yall missed that is one of my favorite weird books ‘Vril, the Power of the Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton’ a book about a subterranean master race that many members of the Thule society supposedly read as fact.

  2. I think you guys forgot to upload an image of the “naked girl dancing to death” rune… 😛

    Who’d have thought books could be Caustic?

  3. Boy, have you guys provided a number of sound bites for those that could be of the mind to misuse them. Be warned of the hate mail. I’m not sure which will be my new ringtone.

    1. You can pretty much hear the moment Joe realizes that as he’s going through the “no one could have done that, but I still think they should be gassed” bit. His voice instantly changes tone. 😛

  5. That was the best “The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets” song I have heard. Loved it.
    Keep up the good work guys, the show makes my Mondays.

    please post the “naked girl dancing to death” rune.

  6. A couple of evil books from pop culture:

    “The Tome of Eternal Darkness” from the Gamecube game “Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem”, in which the main character inherits her grandfather’s mansion after his grizzly demise and finds the skin bound tome in a hidden room. Throughout the game you find more chapters for the tome that let you relive the horrible events that occurred to people who had previously come into contact with both the book and the servants of the ancient gods lying dormant trying to revive themselves. (Basically, it’s Lovecraft: The Game)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Darkness:_Sanity's_Requiem

    The anime OVA “Read or Die” in which various evil clones of famous people from history try to steal the book “Die Unsterbliche Liebe” from the (super powered) main character who recently purchased it, eventually succeeding.
    SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!
    It turns out the book is Beethoven’s original copy in which he has written down his “Suicide Symphony” which, when heard, causes the listener to commit suicide immediately. The bad guys prepare to launch Beethoven’s clone into space on a rocket so that he can play the symphony for all the world to hear and the main characters must stop them.
    END SPOILER! END SPOILER!
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read_or_Die_(OVA)

  7. I brought Caustic Soda on to our podcast a few weeks back when we’re were discussing our favorite podcasts with a clip from “Dangerous Toys”. Check out episode 61 of Book Guys. I sent a tweet to you guys following that recording but didn’t hear back. Now I see that you’ve put out a Book Podcast…..small world. I do love your show and encouraged all of our listeners to check you out. -Sir Jimmy, Co-Host on Book Guys.

  9. There was an old Ewan McGregor movie called “The Pillow Book” which involved a guy getting written on and after he uh… died… some other guy dug him up and skinned him and turned his skin into a book. Yep.

    1. I actually did watch that for this episode and we discussed it in the recording, but it got cut. I had a hard time getting through the film, as Greenaway found a way to stretch out the boring parts, and also all of the characters were vain and/or petty and/or dumb. The digging up of the corpse was definitely the most entertaining part, that and the distraction of young McGregor junk flapping around for most of the movie!

  10. Just to comment on the Ninth Gate, the reason that the movie had weird parts that didn’t make sense is because it is based off the book Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte that has two parallel plot lines, which they combined in the movie.
    One plot line is the crazy old guy who hires Johnny Depp’s character to chase down the true book that will supposedly summon the devil.
    The other plot line is a group of people who are bibliophiles obsessed with the works of Alexander Dumas and have a club devoted to him, which they are trying to recruit Johnny Depp’s character to.
    The bibliophiles are a little eccentric, Johnny Deep’s character is still pretty sleazy and despicable, but the only one that is evil and kills people is the crazy old guy. They changed most of of the story line and events of the Duma’s plot line to the devil worshiping plot line, but they left out the parts of the Duma’s plot that tied together what seem like random events in the movie.

    1. I was going to say- speaking of bad books the movie was base on a bad book. Club Dumas was terrible.

      1. Yeah, I suppose I should have clarified: the changes in the book didn’t make the book that much better, it just made it make more sense.

  11. greatful that you mentioned the movie ‘In the Mouth of Madness’ i saw it for the first time a year or so ago and enjoyed the creepyiness. around the same time i saw it someone in Halifax attacked another fella in public and in broad daylight with an axe and i wondered to myself ‘does he read Sutter Cane?’

  16. Just bought a copy of The Necronomicon H.P. Lovecraft from Chapters with a sweet goldish foil like art on the front.