Interview: The Terrible Book Club

The Terrible Book Club is a podcast where two Bostonian musicians, Paris and Chris, read and review a book they assume will be bad based on its cover, title, or synopsis.

What inspired you to start Terrible Book Club? (or, what's your origin story?)

Paris: Chris was the one who thought of it. I honestly have no idea what possessed him to ask me to read bad books with him.

Chris: I’ve always liked “bad” art and media that critiques it to look for what really went wrong. I didn’t really see any shows or channels that did that with books at the time, so I wanted to fill that niche and also get myself reading a bit more often. The intent was to try and have honest conversations about why something doesn’t work.

Which book surprised you the most?

Paris: Swamplandia! surprised me the most. I was expecting an absurdist story about a kid and her family of alligator farmers including her sister who messes with a Ouija board and a brother who works at a theme park. Alligators are cool living dinosaurs and all, but nothing in that description would interest me enough to pick up that book. What I got was a beautifully rendered darkness about broken trust that I still think about sometimes. We had some critiques for the book, but I'd happily recommend it to others.

Chris: A Spectre Is Haunting Texas surprised me the most because I fully expected it to be full silliness and nonsensical, but there was some meat on those Thin bones. There's a handful of cool ideas that I was into, like the idea of Thins in general and all the other future-human stuff, as well as the meta-ness of a man sort of double deceiving his way through stuff that he's meant to already be deceiving through. Could have done without the light misogyny, though.

What's your favorite (non-terrible) book?

Paris: I can't possibly pick a single favorite book, but I can tell you about some books I've read in the last few years that have left an impression on me: House of Leaves, The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, and Tentacles Longer Than Night.

Chris: A favorite book is pretty impossible to pick, I think. I can't pick a favorite all time anything. But, if there was a book I wouldn't mind re-reading over and over and over again, it would most definitely be The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. It probably informed a lot of my philosophy when I read it as a teenager, and I still take its comedic nihilism to heart a lot of the time.

Do you have a favorite bad movie?

Paris: We've both seen our fair share of bad movies, so I have a few to list: Maradonia and the Shadow Empire, Silent Night Deadly Night 2, and anything I've seen at Trash Night (a showing of a bad movies once a month at a local theater). A movie that sticks out in my mind as bad is actually Knightriders by George Romero because my expectations were completely wrong going into it. You think, "Oh - bikers, Romero, medieval stuff...should be fun!" but it ended up being 2 and a half hours of serious interpersonal conflicts and a sad, emotional Ed Harris.

Chris: As always, a favorite is really hard to pick. For my money, though, Birdemic is a shining example of no effort being put into every last aspect of a movie production. Sound, animation, framing, script, it’s all awful.

Speaking of movies, is the movie always worse than the book, in your opinion?

Paris: Often, but not always. It's a popular opinion since a 90-120 minute film can't possibly fit every detail from a book. I actually like the mini-series for Dr. Strange and Mr. Norrell far more than the book and I thought the adaptation of Sharp Objects was also better than reading the book because you were left with more to interpret.

Chris: If we’re counting movie novelizations, not really. It’s just a question of how hard it is to translate a story from one medium to another. Some things only work visually, some only in text.

You mentioned that people should start with Episode 15: The Art of the Deal. What about it makes it such a good place for people to start?

Paris: That was our 'comeback' episode as we had been off the air for over a year prior. It's sort of a special one with a fun cold open and it has a good balance of research and humor.

Chris: It’s where we started up after our hiatus, so the tone is a bit more refined. I think a good start is actually whichever title catches your eye.

Tell us a little bit about the prep work you need to do for each episode.

Paris: Other than us both reading the books in full, I take notes as I read in a shared word doc that Chris then adds to as he reads. I set these up and make sure they have all relevant content for the show so we don't miss things and keep the structure similar across episodes.

Chris: Prep work for me mostly involves doing things that make my editing life easier later, like ensuring the levels are looking good, helping Paris with any technical difficulties, and the clap-sync, where Paris and I do a little count and clap so I can line up the clap transients for easy-peasy syncing!

Any interesting episodes/special content/live shows coming up? Where can people find you on the internet?

Paris: Our Patreon has a ton of extra content - we've got a few video segments and a lot of audio tracks of us commenting on TV shows and films, usually related to a regular episode of the show. You can find our Patreon and much more at terriblebookclub.com. If you're interested in epic heavy metal/epic doom metal, you can find my band's music at http://concilium.bandcamp.com.

Chris: You can find my musical output on most of your usual streaming or distribution services, but I usually direct folks to Bandcamp. For bleepy-bloopy mellow synth jams, you can check out http://yearn.bandcamp.com. For higher energy heavy metal stuff, stop by http://gravebornma.bandcamp.com.