I Don't Even Own a Television (a book podcast)

I Don't Even Own a Television is a podcast where two smartasses review terrible books. It's basically MST3K for books, and it's become my favorite thing to listen to. All manner of bad books are featured on IDEOAT: terrible D&D novels, WWE detective stories, giant monsters eating people, 50 Cent's self-help book, etc. The gang also isn't afraid to fire shots at famous/popular books. Ender's Game, Ready Player One, Casino Royale, and Snow Crash are all worth a listen, even if you thought they were okay. As a bonus, this podcast has hands-down the best jingles of any show ever.

Some good episodes to get you started:

Slugs

Giant slugs! They eat people!

ICP: Behind the Paint

A two-part review of a juggalo memoir, with lots of nerdy pro-wrestling digressions.

Night of the Crabs

Giant crabs! They eat people!

Those Who Tresspass (by Bill O'Reilly)

A double Mary Sue fantasy in which Bill O'Reilly is both a serial killer who seeks revenge on thinly-disguised representations of real-life media personalities, and also Bill O'Reilly is an Irish cop who has to stop said serial killer. Also, Bill O'Reilly kills Bob Scheiffer with a spoon.

TekLab (by William Shatner)

You're not a true bad book fan until you've read at least one of Shatner's TekWar books, why not start with this one?

 

Interesting, very interesting. Gonna give the Slugs episode a listen...

 

If you like wrestling, you should try the ICP episode and the WWE detective one. The IDEOAT guys are huge wrestling dorks, and will often digress into taking about wrestling at any opportunity.

 

Listened to the ICP and Slugs episodes. I'm officially hooked.

 

The next one you should listen to is Big Apple Takedown.

 

For the ladies out there, the Forever Pucked episode was a blast.

 

100th episode of IDEOAT is a real banger! The gang does an extra-long episode on The Girl With a Dragon Tattoo, with digressions into Micromachines, Nazi bagels, and that's just the first hour. Jay had to power through all 700 pages in one day, so he's extra cranky.

 

Sometimes, because I have way too much time on my hands, I'll actually read a book before listening to the IDEOAT review if the book looks awesome. Well, when I saw their latest episode was MEG: A Novel of Deep Terror, I knew I was in for a treat:



It's a fucking giant shark eating a T-rex right there on the cover! Basically MEG is Jaws meets Jurassic Park with lots of 80's action movie cliches and bad Asian-American stereotypes.

MEG has spawned whole franchise of sequels, and the "soon to be a major motion picture" thing on the cover isn't just bullshit. After spending decades in production hell, the MEG movie is set to be released any day now. Does it star Jason Statham as the badass deep-sea paleontologist? You know it does!