This week Tom continues his year of reading books outside his usual comfort zones, with Finnish author Anita Konkka’s A Fool’s Paradise, from Dalkey Archive Press. The book is written much like a diary, following the daily musings of an unemployed woman who is having an affair with a married man. We talk about the risks and potential rewards of writing a book without much in the way of plot, the novel’s aphoristic style, and how many recountings of one’s dreams are too many recountings of one’s dreams.
We’ve also got a new installment this week of Fan Fiction Corner, during which we get to know some popular fan fiction tropes. We’ve got a little bit of everything: accidental marriages, non-sexual showers, alien pheromones, and erotic tentacles. All trope definitions come from Fanlore, in case you’d like to explore any of them further (no judgment!)
As always, you can stream the episode right here on our site, by clicking on the little player thingy below. Or download the mp3 file. Or check us out in the iTunes store, Instacast, Stitcher Radio, or just about any other podcast app you can find. We’d love to hear your feedback on what we talked about. You can email us, hit us up on Twitter, or just leave a comment here on the site.
Thanks for listening!
Stream:
Download Episode 64 (right-click, save-as)
Book Fight! 
July 7, 2014 at 10:36 am
I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I was a huge RW fan back in the day. I kinda sorta remember the story about the English rocker dude. He was performing on stage one night, leaned forward to kiss the show-goer, and the guy bit off the tip of his tongue. Neile needed something like 10 or 15 stitches to reattach if.
July 7, 2014 at 1:49 pm
Happy to have Fan Fiction segment again, always hilarious stuff.
Regarding the Seinfeld/Mad About You “cross-over”: NBC wanted to have a Blackout theme night, where each episode in their big night line up (Mad About You, Friends, Seinfeld) would experience the same blackout caused by Paul Reiser. Mad About You and Friends did it, but Larry David thought the idea was lame and refused
July 7, 2014 at 9:13 pm
God bless Larry David.
July 9, 2014 at 7:35 pm
Thanks, Chris (for both the compliment and the info). I knew there was SOME kind of crossover, but for the life of me couldn’t remember what it was.
Looked it up just now to confirm that the Lisa Kudrow character on Mad About You was, indeed, Phoebe’s twin sister Ursula. Though I don’t remember if they ever did much with that.
And Ess, you shouldn’t have to be embarrassed about watching the Real World–at that point, I think it had yet to go off the rails and was still kind of interesting. Or maybe that’s just what I tell myself.
Mike
July 11, 2014 at 2:17 pm
Just started listening, love the podcast and sex pollen.