Hail and well met, book friends! We're feeling pretty silly as we close in on the final episodes of Season 9. We travel back to 10th century Bohemia to learn the story behind the popular Christmas carol "Good King Wenceslas". Join us for a very biblically-styled tale that taught us some things but failed to get us invested in the characters.

The author emailed us about his book and, usually when we get emails from authors or PR reps, it's not even worth consideration - but a medieval historical thriller? about a Christmas carol? In this century at this point in history? At this time of year? It only made sense to pop it onto the schedule for December.

Thanks to George himself for furnishing us with a free review copy of the book (and being willing to be featured on TBC with all that may entail)!

Musings and derailments include: Duke Abe Simpsovclav of Springfieldia, heavy metal months, Breastfeeding education, Paris’s Babadook terrors, and we struggle to poorly sing another song from the book (the titular carol)!

In addition to our usual barnyard language, today’s episode includes discussion or mention of parental abuse, sexual assault, and murder.

Chris found The Wife App by Carolyn Mackler out in the wild at a bookstore in NH when he was on a trip earlier this year. Considering apps themselves are often terrible, a book about an app seemed like a good candidate for the show.

Musings and derailments include: Chris gets really upset about the recurring stereotype of shitty musician boyfriends/husbands and we wonder about several things in the text such as British chins, sending cookies in Ubers, the power of polka dots, and babies smelling like fresh bread.

In addition to our usual barnyard language, today’s episode includes discussion or mention of infidelity, closeting, and the horrors of capitalism in app form.

This week we're discussing our experience reading Verity by Colleen Hoover. We selected this for today’s episode because it has appeared fairly often in reddit posts regarding bad books. Plus, we like to try to touch on current, popular authors when we can amidst the sea of deep weird terrible books we cover throughout the year.

Off-topic musings and derailments include: Paris Uses Maps About It™, the truth of our Dark Lord Mr. Peanut, and we struggle to solve this GRE murder problem.

In addition to our usual barnyard language, today’s episode includes discussion or mention of ableism and disability prejudice, abortion, child abuse, child death, murder, parental neglect, and sex.