Testing, Testing. Is This Thing On?

Maggie Sperry
Jul 26, 2022
6 min read

Updated: Jul 29, 2022

Welcome to the first edition of Hey Book Club! A silly little recap of all the fun thing I enjoy and don't enjoy. Featuring some recommendations of podcast, books, T.V. shows, movies, and some other stuff. Sit back, relax, and enjoy.

Wowzah, well here we are. Firstly, I am suffering from some massive book burnout. I promise I like books but so far all my books have been boring and shitty. I was scrolling through REDACTED and I came across a video that was showing room aesthetics based on your favorite "Horror Podcast." Now I'm a sucker for podcasts and nice-looking rooms so I watched. Then... I proceeded to screenshot every aesthetic room and make a note of the podcasts so I could give them a listen.

The Kinda Small List Of "Horror Podcasts"

These podcasts are all fictional podcasts with stories lines and production value! Not like true crime or people reading Creepy Pasta.

The Black Tapes: This is one of my favorite podcasts. Focuses on a podcaster for Pacific Northwest Stories doing an episode on paranormal investigators. While speaking to the owner of the Strand Institute, an organization that will give $1 million to anyone who has proof of paranormal activity. She starts investigating his "black tapes," yet-to-be debunked proof of paranormal stuff.

This podcast has high production value, lots of voice actors, and a theme song that is a bop and a half. This one has multiple seasons and a good story.

Rabbits: Love this podcast! made by the same production company as The Black Tapes. Follows a podcaster whose best friend has disappeared. She suspects that her friend was playing a dangerous and secret game known as Rabbits. During her search for her missing friend, she becomes a player in this secret game.

High production value, great voice actors, the story is really juicy and good.

Mabel: I have only listened to a little bit of this podcast but it is very atmospheric. The podcast is told through voicemail messages left for a person named Mabel. Follows the voicemail messages of an in-home nurse working for Mabel's Grandmother as she starts experiencing weird things in the home she's staying in. At times this podcast can seem confusing and disjointed but that's the point.

Only one or two voice actors, very poetic type story. I could definitely fall asleep to this, she is very calming.

Death By Dying: They need to get an artist in there to make their cover image look better. This is a dark comedy podcast told in the form of an audio obituary. The main voice actor is the local obituary writer who is writing about the death and subsequent investigation of townsfolk in this town in Ohio. He is very funny and the town is very quirky.

The production value is okay, nothing to write home about. But the scripts are funny and I do enjoy it and it makes me laugh. Not scary at all!

Camp Here and There: Recorded via the daily announcements at a summer camp in every town America, done by the camp nurse. Also featuring the nursing assistant who may or may not have a little thing going on with the nurse (a little crush?) Weird things go down at this camp including a worm-eating man in an elephant mask that stands in the woods and weird options at the dining hall. This is a dark comedy podcast so a lot of it is treated like normal occurrences and the nurse never took the hypocritic oath.

This podcast could be a little childish at times (the penguin episode) but it's a fun listen and I enjoy it. Not too much production value but it doesn't take away from the episodes. They also have an ongoing joke about the vegan food options at the camp that gives me a giggle every time.

Dissing A Man For A Period Of Time

aka a review of the book My Heart Is a Chainsaw By Stephen Graham Jones

SPOILERS AHEAD! TW: Self-harm, suicide, rape, general violence

This book was really something else. As Ready Player One is to 80's references this book is to Slasher films. Both in the worst way possible. As a fan of the genre and also a college student who did a communications assignment on Final Girls and their relation to gendered violence, subsequently reading like... 50 academic articles and essays on the slasher genre and horror I feel like I am a little qualified to speak my mind about this book.

This book was about a young native American girl living in a small town. The first time we see her she is flicking a pocket knife against her thigh, and then proceeds to slit her wrist and try to kill herself. It doesn't work out. She has an obsession with slasher movies and by that I mean she just thinks about them all the time and makes references (even though she only mentions I Know What You Did Last Summer like once.) She talks about the Final Girl trope only in regards to the fact that she 'could never be a final girl, she has blue hair.' I'm weird, I'm a weirdo, have you ever seen me without this hat? She does however meet this new girl who she deems the Final Girl.

So when a dead body is found in the lake and everyone thinks it's the Lake Witch, she believes she has a slasher on her hands. She begins going around thinking she's in a horror film. She is incorrect in almost every aspect of this investigation she starts.

At some point in the story, the Final Girl and the cops believe that she was raped by her father. Now this book was easy to zone out but this accusation came out of nowhere. Cut to the end of the book. She was raped by her father, once when she was 11, she had thought he had gotten her pregnant (he didn't.) She does end up killing her father, after a scene where she is going to but can't and the Final Girl does instead, the first kill didn't stick. Also, the killer was a ghost girl, I don't want to talk about it.

Now you would think that a girl obsessed with slasher films a genre that focuses on the brutalization of women, only to see her suffer, and suffer more, but to finally succeed might draw parallels between the main characters suffering and that of the genre she loves. In fact, it's the easiest parallel to draw. Yeah... he doesn't do that! Also she never ever deals with her trauma. The book is written in a stream-of-consciousness style, so let me tell you if she was gonna have a thought or feeling we were gonna hear about it. Yet she never felt or dealt with any of her trauma, the rape, the suicide attempt, or her feelings for hunting goggles. Nothing!

Overall, as I have said many times and will say many more. MEN SHOULDN'T WRITE ABOUT WOMEN'S TRAUMA. Not only does it feel unauthentic to the reader it's f*cking weird, write your own trauma and leave us out of it.

Some Recommendations For Both Your Eyes & Ears

Now that I work 40 hours a week I went a little crazy and bought an AMC membership so I can see three free movies a week. Here are some movie and show recommendations.

Nope → Jordan Peele's third movie and it was just as good as the rest. It was an alien movie, that's not a spoiler. This movie was very good and I recommend you see it in theatres if given the chance. All the actors did a splendid amazing job! Shout out to Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, and Daniel Kaluuya they did so well.

This film is not scary by most standards, it's funny, and it's heartfelt. But there is some gore so watch out. I can't wait for all my horror movie podcasts to come out with an episode and explain the metaphors in this one.

Highly recommend you see this!

Marrowbone → Starring Charlie Heaton (Jonathan from Stranger Things), Anya Taylor-Joy, George MacKay (from 1917 and some other things), and Mia Goth (from X, that cool-looking horror movie). These British babies act their little hearts outs. This is a horror movie from 2016 and it's very good. There are some nice twists and turns.

This is available on Amazon Prime.

I recommend watching it.

Dare Me → This was a book, I did not read the book. This show is about some serious cheerleaders that don't do a lot of cheering but sometimes get held in the air and I get jealous. This show has some juice and it's an interesting watch.

However, the ending is sh*t, I mean WTF was that? A season 2 was never planned but it really should have, jeez.

This is my best example of queerbaiting, so all you Stranger Things fans can shut up! This is available on Netflix.

I recommend but this will leave ya hanging, Euphoria vibes though.

Crowd Work

Who would win in a fight?

Eddie Munson (that cool guy from stranger things)
The Grabber (from the Balck Phone Movie)