The English Club Podcast

Everyone and their mother (in my social circle, literally) is reading Dungeon Crawler Carl. But like, why? It seems like yesterday when litrpg as a genre was an obscure chimera isolated to certain Internet subcultures. A trancelike world untouched by the Freytag Pyramid bepopulate with a self-insert main character and a list of monsters from DnD. How did Dungeon Crawler Carl—which to an outsider’s eye is part and parcel with the works that preceded it—achieve this outplaced virality? Entrance into the closely-guarded annals of modern literary canon? Does Dungeon Crawler Carl, like a certain species of lobe-finned fish which hundreds of millions of years ago stepped warily onto land, represent the adolescent stage of a slow but determined evolution of its kind? Or have the gatekeepers of literary canon, those silent unknowable communicants whose whims determine the intellectual vector of our species, grown soft? Weary? Desperate to welcome in a novitiate born not of greed, but creative frenzy?Idrk. But we had fun talking about it hope u enjoy!!!Help us afford lootboxes for our talking cats: https://www.youtube.com/@sbu_englishclub/membershipObtain the “supported Internet weirdos” achievement: https://ko-fi.com/stbalasar

I wanted more Sopranos. I compromised. I googled “mafia romance books like the sopranos” and picked up Ruthless People by J.J. McAvoy. I wanted to talk about the Sopranos. All I have is a booktube channel. I compromised. I talked about this book instead. You see where I’m goin’?The sacred and the propane meet in a mafia romance deep dive! Join Andrew and his friend Evin (an exchange student from Boca) as they waste an hour trying to talk about a book that promised much and gave us… something. Will we manuj to get the drop on this book, or will we remain loyle to our capo? Is it fair to compare a market romance book to what’s considered to be one of the greatest TV shows of all time? NOPE! I wish the lord would take me now. Anyway, $4 a pound.Please consider supporting to help us replace our roof with soft tar!Watch the executive game through a crack in the door: https://ko-fi.com/stbalasarBecome the albacore around our necks: https://www.youtube.com/@sbu_englishclub/membership

It's SBU’s first movie! And last Rich Shapero review. I think for real. Like, abstractly these books are interesting to talk about, but they're all just... so much. So this time we have our normal book review and deep dive stuff, but we also have a (semi) found-footage horror movie to frame it to keep things interesting. Why? What does this add? Will this do anything but create a bad review and a poorly-paced movie? *SFX: RIDICULOUSLY LOUD PIG SQUEAL* I hope you guys enjoy!

ROLLER COASTER ROLLER COASTER ROLLER COASTER

Lightlark is back, baybeee! We've met Alex Aster, we've shaken her hand in diplomatic friendship, and now she either betrays or rewards us with what is quite literally Lightlark: In Space!! Stop me if you've heard this before: a big scary extraterrestrial wants to conquer the universe and gain possession of GEMs which are INFINITE.Aster-al adventures await on this historic episode of the English Club Podcast--now with video!ABOUT US:English Club Podcast is a joint venture between two critique partners at "Saint Balasar University". The goal of each episode is to give notoriously "bad" fiction a chance for fair critique, as if the authors were members of a writing group themselves.