"In Soviet Hungary...nanny hires you!" Time to talk about The Door, a lesser known but very powerful book by celebrated Hungarian author Magda Szabo. It's set in the 1960s and 70s, so we read up a little on the Eastern Bloc to make sure we knew what we're talking about. Instead we just make Yakov Smirnoff jokes. Other topics include old guitar ladies, "groupie states," and Craig's love language.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week Andrew completes the Brontë trilogy with Charlotte Brontë's seminal novel Jane Eyre. Is it a romance? Is it spooky? Do we like Mr. Rochester or does he well and truly stink? We'll attempt to answer these questions and more in between revisiting #MomSwears, solving some Scooby Doo mysteries, and traveling through Internet tubes. This week's episode is brought to you in part by Kinyo Poetry and Squarespace.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Here's a fun fact: Did you know that Marcia Clark, lead prosecutor on the OJ Simpson case, wrote legal thrillers? Neither did we! But Craig's fascination with the American Crime Story version of the trial and a well-placed ad on Andrew's Kindle led to Craig cracking open her first novel. It can be clunky, but it's also a surprisingly fun read! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What if God walked away from it all? And left behind a Gomorrah-like stew of sex and bloodshed out of which emerged a superpowered preacher, seeking revenge on the almighty? That's the set up for Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's graphic novel Preacher. This week, Craig tackles the first two volumes of the series and explains what's preventing him from pressing onward in the story. We also touch on how best to subvert the comic code, American Movie Classic, and how far is far too far when depicting taboo behavior.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's alternate universes, murderous plots, and ghostwritten novels all the way down this week—1Q84 is Andrew's first Haruki Murakami novel, and there's a lot of good stuff here even if the book could stand to shed a couple hundred pages. Come for the book talk, stick around for references to Highlights For Children, the Tostitos Bowl, and the usual nonsense.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Get in touch with your inner wolf-dog and answer The Call of the Wild by Jack London! We apologize that our Murakami episode will take another week, but we didn't want to leave you in the literary lurch. So we take a trip on the Yukon trail with one heck of a dog named Buck. It's time to talk instinct, dog names, oyster pirates, and Calvin & Hobbes and John Locke from LOST.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There are dinosaurs! Lots of dinosaurs! And they rule Jurassic Park!Michael Crichton's techno-thriller classic Jurassic Park kicked off a generation's dinomania. But it's also a chilling tale of science run amok. A story about what happens when advancement for advancement's sake breaks the rules of nature.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's wall-to-wall horse talk this week, starting with a blow-by-blow analysis of the Kentucky Derby and moving on to Anna Sewell's classic Black Beauty. Andrew wasn't expecting this tale to be told by a horse in the first-person perspective, but that's what Black Beauty is. As a warning against the dangers of horse abuse and drinking alcohol, it's actually quite effective. This week's show is brought to you by kinyopoetry.com and "Lonely and Horny," a video series by Headgum co-creators Jake and Amir.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

News at 11! The Dark is Rising! We repeat: the Dark IS Rising! The second (and titular) entry in Susan Cooper's award-winning The Dark Is Rising sequence turns out to have been a perfect book for Children's Book Week. It's a young adult fantasy novel about a boy named Will Stanton who embarks on an epic quest to fight against the Dark with the powers of the Light. It leads us to ask, why do kids gravitate towards stories with black-and-white morals? And why do people keep entrusting the fate of the universe to tweens? Of course, we also find time to talk terrible movie adaptations, time tourists, Old Old things, and the trials of having holiday-adjacent birthdays.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We're dipping back in the Victor Hugo well this week with his other best-known book The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Did you know that the book and the Disney movie don't end the same way? Also on tap: road trips, games of tag, revisiting the poverty question from last week, and talking about Hugo's views on architecture vs. the printing press.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.