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Episode 379: Bookish (Patreon)

Published:
2024-05-16 13:50:01
Edited:
2024-10-11 00:15:12
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

Author Dan Sinykin joins us to talk through how the publishing industry shapes what we read, what corporate consolidation has to do with autofiction, why ABDL romantasy is on the rise, and more from his book Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Fiction.

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Comments

Blank

First?

Blank

My sincere condolences

Noah

Just finished, another banger

David Browm

Twilight is a quadrilogy

Mold

As a romantsy author I didn't expect to get read for filth so early in the morning

Blank

Do you listen on 4x speed or something?

Mark Owen

Imhotep had the ladies hypnotized

Noah

4x speed with two different podcasts going on my AirPods 24/7

S

Right ear: True Anon 4x speed Left ear: Chapo Trap House (Mandarin)

Dani

the open reminds me of the time my friend and i found a copy of Fifty shades of grey in the student center and we were gonna read it aloud to each other but when we pulled it off the shelf we noticed how sticky and beat up it was and it didn’t seem funny anymore. Same student center that AOC worked at btw. not that i think she had anything to do with that, just a fun fact

Townes

reading immediacy by anna kornbluh and she rails against autofiction… fitting timing

Blank

I could see Brace writing a very sincere and non-sexual romance novel under the pseudonym da gay pussy eatta

Blank

Foreword by pisspig granddad

J98

Could someone elaborate a little more on what MFA genre is? What are some examples and what is it that it is trying to do that is so offensive? Thanks

TrueAnonPod

it’s a guy writing about slim chinos, slim OCBD, and Clark’s desert boots

J98

What's an example of that, cowboy?

xx

Shoutout to Seven Stories Press, Dalkey Archive Press, Fitzcarraldo Editions

Mark Owen

True story - just saw a posted pic of Peter Lorre looking into a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People and making a funny face

J98

I've never even heard of any of this shit. I am so unserious :(

Demented Avenger

There needs to be a Memetic Badass version of Brace Belden. Like, Brace Belden doesn't order at a restaurant. Instead, when he shows up, the front of the house runs away because he's so annoying and then he goes in back and eats whatever is prepared for free. Something like that, only better.

Zach Young

I got to meet John Melrod at labor notes, we had a nice conversation and I brought up hearing him on true anon. He said “Brace is my favorite guy, too bad he moved to New York”. Great cover on the book I’d like to mention

xx

I would like a regular Literary Corner with Liz™️

Leebos

😅 Omg, and my cousin wrote like The defense of autofiction "In defense of naval gazing," so I live in anxiety and fear.

Leebos

Nobody's ready for the trend 10 years from now where everything is derivative of the Brace/Hunter fanfic we've all published to AO3

Fel

I thought brace was going to read from Bride… iykyk

Michael S. Judge

it should probably be mentioned that the Iowa Writers' Workshop has always been essentially a CIA front

Valentino

Not for nothing, but if anyone has any good recommendations of new fiction books I'd love to hear some. Fan of stuff by William Gibson, PKD, Kim Stanley Robinson, etc...

Julia

Im a book designer at a big 5 publisher … and romantascy is taking over everything 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫 and of course our team is the smallest its ever been and we have the most book we’ve ever had! Its insane

Julia

great ep and can confirm books go through sooo many people and covers also go through at least 7 people before they’re finalized

RMNB

Would absolutely listen to Liz vs Hamlet for an hour

Joe

Wait can someone explain the cover to me, a dummy?

ResilientBastard

This is why I only read self-published CreateSpace titles

pulled a muscle yearning

In the World of the Sleepy Time Bear: In the Hall of the Mountain King but it's lofi beats to relax to

Rick Slot

Catcher in the rye easily worst book I’ve ever read, FUCK jd salinger

Tyler

Can we ask questions to Liz about basketball? Or just skin care?

Militia Etheridge

It’s absolutely Spreckels and not “sprecklers,” major post-Gold Rush old money (new at the time.) boy do I have stories about Danielle….

David Constine

Ha ha .. Liz when you said Hamlet I smiled to myself and said “hell yeah”

Trees

Funny this came out today. My wife orders books requested by librarians at the major state university where we live. They just requested an ai written and ai illustrated book about how Norse pagans were the first Europeans to colonize Appalachia. It looks exactly like the ai horror tiktoks

Trees

Good day for banana fish

AfroCommie

Did I give too many compliments to the new themesong that you decided to replace it with the old one? Can't have anythint these days. Still love you though <3

Selecao9

Hamlet mentioned let's fucking go

Michelle C

Came here to say exactly the same thing

Michelle C

Would love to hear y'all talk to Anna Kornbluh

Michael S. Judge

basically if you wanted to find weird novels that somehow slipped thru the cracks into big-time publishing, that was what you looked for, those Vintage covers

hole

just finished the phenomenology of spirit yesterday, AMA

Sheep

Not to be all parasocial but i remember brace saying in an interview that he read the secret in Iraq on the way to Kurdistan so uhhhh DEBOONKED

Shiv

SF native can confirm a) Danielle Steele haunted our lives and b) yeah her mansion story is SO crazy

Satcomdaemon

As a producer for audiobooks who had to prep files for audible, their internal naming convention is the product ID number followed by _ADBL_. I would accidentally type ABDL quite a bit. Including our adult baby smut books.

MCL

Shout out to the king of contemporary fiction Chuck Tingle who has written thousands of books about how like a toaster can be sexy and pound someone or a raptor can put things in someone’s butt. He’s our Charles Dickens

Jeremy

Need to read Pynchon and Shakespeare now

Vampire vice

Just searched and found nothing 👎🏼

sadie

twilight is a SAGA!!!

Leebos

Damn, shadow banning has gotten really bad, huh. They're suppressing the voice of the people.

Isaac

Currently listening to Blindsight by Peter Watts.

nadia

Hell yeah Solenoid!! I’ve been doing some work for Deep Vellum the past few months. Great place great people

gus

Just so you guys know if you message Amazon customer service and claim that the ads are lewd and the kindle is used by your child they WILL remove the ads!

nadia

And favorite book Gravity’s Rainbow I trust you

Axel H.

I loved that part at the end about reading your favorite book during those early young adult years and how at that age you can really be blown away by something and it sticks with you. It was during college that I read the books I consider to be my favorites ("The Magus" by John Fowles and "The Savage Detectives" by Roberto Bolaño). Both had a similar effect on me--opening my mind and pushing the boundaries of what I thought literature could be. (And really it started with James Joyce's "Dubliners", the first time assigned reading in school actually captivated me). Maybe a bit corny to say all this, but as prolific reader, writer, and someone who works in a library, this episode was very much in my niche.

Ian H

Dude, I read 2666 for the first time at 19 while I was a volunteer English teacher in rural Mexico and it fucked my shit up. Savage Detectives is incredible, and probably objectively better just by virtue of being finished, but 2666 will always be my favorite.

Shiv

“What am I gonna do, help myself???”

Fernando

Liz saying Hamlet is her favorite book, it was the best bit

Buried Ledes

Great way to end the episode talking about favorite books. Loved the insights Dan and Liz gave into their choices. Reading Gravity’s rainbow was the first time I felt like I was just outgunned by a book. Took me several attempts to really get into it, but there’s something about the tone and subtext of it that reeled me in. It is strange the way reading a book like that is more of an involvement than an activity.

Dani

):

BROTHER TO BROTHER

SPD (small press distribution) folding is super sad. This episode gave me some hope though!

Austin Whitelemons

Are you not going to ask about Dune? It's the one book that made me love sci-fi. I thought you were smarter about this stuff guys. It's the starting of good sci-fi. The Culture wouldn't have existed with out Dune

Austin Whitelemons

It's the perfect story for this coverage. He fought to get Dune published for years. No one thought it would sell and finally when it published it blew up

E

Confirmed liz is basic b

Brendan Garcia

This was incredibly rewarding and interesting for me, as someone who worked at Barnes and Noble and Borders from early to mid 2000s, and saw kind of the last years of the golden age of big bookstores and glossy hardcovers, and the beginning (and eventual, for Borders) of the end.

Brendan Garcia

You gotta read it as an alienated teenager. Doesn’t work otherwise.

Brendan Garcia

Feel like they did it to shitcoat Pynchon by creating an endless series of derivative hacks who succeeded in making “Pynchon-esque” both meaningless, and incredibly triggering.

Tim Evans

Or: How Tumblr ruined literature

Doug Cartel

Really burying the lede by implying that china, an anti-gun tyrant, allows normal citizens to doordash refugees just to shoot them Tell me more about how the guns are handled in the situation

Ian H

The refugee has to bring an FP-45 Liberator with them.

Oliver Crane

I think he just had a guy tell him about The Secret

Oliver Crane

I read it a couple years ago at age 35 and I thought it was pretty good, really sad.

Cyclops giraffe

There's a whole chapter about a turtle crossing the road and it ends with a girl breastfeeding an old man. That whole book is trash and the dust bowl was boring.

snapplepeachtea

worst book is any of those childhood trauma memoirs that you're assigned to read in high school, best book is moby dick

Keanu

Hey man! I have the combination washer/dryer because my apartment is small and it fits in a small closet. And sure it doesn’t really get any lint or hair off of my clothes but it works. And yes I am poor as well. My rent is 2400 😔

Brody

barry hannah: the king

Keanu

Damn. That scene of Brace reading in between customers in the rain. Sounds so cozy.

Noah Mingus

This is a beautiful ep. I perceived that your analysis on "the industry of story telling" is a wonderful analogy for the state of industry across the board: greed -> shareholder value -> risk adverse -> shit product/service. And to guest's point, there is by necessity a live and well independent publishing 'community' because literature is a fundamental aspect of civilization. The shit products from entities seeking to profit from literature (without actually 'contributing' anything of value) necessarily leave a vacuum for entities, networks or communities that are actually providing works of quality. These money grubbing fuckers are choking themselves because "shareholder value" is an unnatural telos when matched up against the essential truths of the universe - the contradiction of which manifests over time *by necessity.

Hannah Wacha

AO3 MENTIONED (I'm deeply mentally ill)

Swimaroo

So THATS why the cookie lady I follow was making penguin house logo cookies! Ps. I am of the age where I was an early adopter of the Internet and was left unattended with it till now.... Very embarrassing that I was reading fanfiction for the mummy when I was 8. BUT I do think that reading so much ff has made me a very deserning reader

jrab

Re: girl mummy - Sofia Boutella in The Mummy (2017)

Ellen Grace

For a class once I basically read every gulag memoir and there’s one from this American soldier that’s straight up autofiction about him secretly fucking all the commander’s wives. Definitely up there for worst book

Jun m

he’s got a boner under his weiner

Norbur

Thanks for loving Hamlet Liz

Natty

I love Bolaño. 2666 was my introduction. I actually just finished it and recently started the savage detectives. My friend and I were using a random number generator to choose book passages from her bookshelf as performance art prompts a few years ago and we ended up writing a performing a one act opera based on a passage that references Electra. She then gifted me the novel and it took me a couple years to get around to it. I’m so glad that novel came into my life. I also wanted to say that as soon as Brace asked the favorite book question, two popped into my head: Hamlet (Yay! More fodder for my parasocial relationship with Liz!), and One Hundred Years of Solitude. I was in a production of Hamlet when I was 12 and the way the director talked to us about interpreting the text hooked me on theatre as a performer and as literature. I still remember her interpretation of Ophelia saying “there’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance, pray love, remember” as a moment of lucidity spoken to Laertes before she finally and fully descends into madness. She also staged it so Gertrude sees Ophelia committing suicide, lets her, and then says the death was accidental. (Gertrude is very much my favorite character because she can be interpreted so many different ways and is a powerful and dynamic woman, but is much more subtle and mysterious than many of Shakespeare’s other characters). Anyway, happy that we all have an excuse to geek out over our favorites.

Jaime Perez

Thats why, i dont read books. Only manga

Jimothy Realname

I don't need publishers to tell me what to read, I just read Book of the New Sun over and over again. I'm gettign close to obtaining Gnosis

Marshall Jackson

i wonder what their saddest or happiest songs are. This is a moment of vulnerability

Julian Gricksch

Haha, obviously I don't read books. I listen to podcasts, duh

blinkpup

shit this is BLEAK

j s

Why does Liz have reverb but Brace and the book dude don’t?

Matt

I don't know Dan personally but am friends with one of his grad students. He sounds like a great dude! And a great scholar.

Karl Childers

my favorite book is catch-22. you're welcome

Kujo

taylor swift ass books are winning. gonna send this episode to my swiftie friend who doesn't understand why i don't want to read ACOTAR or Lessons In Chemistry etc.

Kujo

my combo washer/dryer is also a violent offender re: lint. i can't cope with the lint

Kujo

she views these books the same as watching reality TV, which I can't genuinely criticize.

bruce

It's fucking depressing that the direction of this country is everyone being of 2 categories: bloodsucker executive slave-driver, and benefits-less gig worker

Rachel

love the shout-out to Minneapolis small publishers !!

mills

i played a show on the roof of Deep Vellum Books, mentioned in the non profit section. They are incredibly nice people

danny

my favorite book is DeLillo’s White Noise

bruce

Yeah except instead of there being any concept of nobility or honor, flimsy as it was, the ennobled class is strictly 1st generation jumped-up wagon train robbers

Stop the Spread

Super informative episode. Learned a TON.

DJetson

Hey all, has there been an episode about former IDF special forces Mickey Grosman from the insane 5000 mile Amazon expedition?

kallampero

Someone needs to tell the guest about Death is Just Around the Corner

Jessie Cherbak

Dan that’s a good book to become obsessed with at 17; my ass was obsessed with rock band Steely Dan, and so I was reading Naked Lunch :/ I’m reading through Gravity’s Rainbow right now on TrueAnon’s recommendation. I have it on both audiobook and ebook and listening while reading, stopping constantly to translate the German bits and Google old brand names and stuff. That’s how I’m gonna make it through this motherfucker

Rock Wallie

I am getting it from the library tomorrow. I have faith in you, you can do it.

Rock Wallie

Ian I just took 2666 back to the library unfinished. Does it get better after the first and second sections?

Gert

We've all been outgunned by a book. That is a devine fucking phrase that I will be using the rest of my life.

Gert

Crying of Lot 49 is a good way to ease in.

Gert

As a feckless teen, I was into the having money and freedom.

Gert

Colson Whitehead. All of then. Any of them. You cannot go wrong. Biggest thrill of the ep was the Colson mention.

Vlad Grey

PLZ DO ANOTHER ALIEN EPISODE

Vampire vice

Dear true anon Pls look into Eric Adam's whatsapp gc with rich Israelis. the media narrative is so good to fall for and I believe only yall can provide the true perspective:)

Sean

very little good new SF being made nowadays, you should read Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun tho

Sean

how is it the “starting of good sci fi” when The Demolished Man was published 10 years earlier 🤔

Vix

Did someone address the incorrect meaning of “cozy” in publishing?

Eric

Why are all the guys who write the multiple 1000+ page a book fantasy series’ always Mormon dudes?

Sean

actually China Mieville is alright

Sara S

Fortunately more and more books are available translated from languages other than English- there’s so much more to read that’s not formulaic genre

TJ

I miss when fanfiction was just those guys from Star Trek fuckin each other

Rock Wallie

Do you have recommendations?

Patrick

Probably because that's what the whole religion is to begin with. You get a whole planet to rule as a space god at the end of it after all.

Nic Warnock

Word book I’ve ever tried to read, David Byrne - How Music Works. Easy question

Emma

Check out Words Without Borders and Asymptote Journal, as well as the Man Booker International Award long lists, publishers like New Directions, Archipelago, and Fitzcarraldo, & Other Stories, Pushkin Press (to name just a few!)

Emma

Such a good episode, really looking forward to reading Dan's book. Would recommend Reading the Romance and A Feeling for Books by Janice Radway for anyone interested who wants more on the history of the spread of "reading for pleasure" through the American middle and working classes!

original gay pussy eatah

It took 379 episodes for them to finally invite a man with gay voice for an interview. Do better!

Sarah Alexandria Smith

I feel like Inherent Vice is pretty easy to follow as well, at least as narrative action goes.

chorchy

Ngl my favourite book is To the Lighthouse

chorchy

Read running dog!!!

chorchy

He has transmasc voice NOT gay voice. Learn the difference

Keanu

It is unacceptable. Luckily I work in surgery so at least my scrubs are always clean.

Sara S

I agree these are good ideas from Emma. In order to recommend a specific book, I'd have to know something about your taste, Rock. I like Yoko Ogawa (Japanese writer), Abdulrazak Gurnah, Jenny Erpenbeck - there are many great writers who have been translated into English - or they are from other countries but write in English.

Rock Wallie

Thanks! I'll check all these out. So great. My taste is other people's favourite books.

elizabethonline

brace belden baddie list goes unreleased .. for now

Matthew Clayton

Wondering if someone could link me to the essay they mentioned, analysing the first 17 lines of Hamlet? Thanks

Chris

lmao why is liz so catholic though

Roland Thompson

Did not expect Brace to say “Journey to the End of the Night”. A powerful and groundbreaking novel, and definitely one of my top favorites as well. I just didn’t expect Brace to admit to reading and enjoying Celine.

Sarah Rea

Wait. When are Brace/Liz aka Briz gonna teach a master class, YouTube sponsored duh!, first in topics they care about.... and then later a master class in podcasting. 7 hrs of unedited back and forth about watching BBall... Is that reddit reading list still up?????

J zub

It would be super interesting if you guys could one day talk about “the fourth turning” the original one from 1995.

sne

brace if you don’t want ads on the kindle contact amazon support & tell them the ads on the kindle are unsuitable for your little sister who u share it w

Christopher Price

brace, if you write mummy erotica based off of the Brendan Fraser movies, every millennial woman will buy the book.

Hank Piper

Minor Detail by Adania Shibli

Tone Bug

Worst book I ever read was this series called Tincture The dialogue was SO bad, like the writing was painfully bad. It was so bad that I like couldn’t look away. To the author’s credit though? Genuinely, truly, the action scenes were SO f*cking good. Like it was two different writers, night and day. The story itself was interesting, the characters had some depth; the dialogue was just SO bad. And then the firefight scenes were genuinely exciting page-turners. Absolute trip of an audiobook

Noah

The long ships