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Welcome to Pleasant Evenings Book Club, a podcast focused on literary criticism and analysis. Our main focus is literature but we also have been known to dabble in movies, television, and frankly whatever we see fit. We’re here to have fun with some heavy texts, and more than anything else, make more evenings pleasant. Currently on a quest to watch all of Mobile Suit Gundam, but we’re still a book club!
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Pleasant Evenings Book Club // Sabres of Paradise (Part 3)
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The ending to Sabres of Paradise offers a sober counterpart to the high passions of the previous two parts. The story of a rebellion that even in defeat refuses to be forgotten shifts into the story of a man who, in captivity, refuses to sacrifice his dignity and faces his new life and coming death with grace few can imitate. We count down all the …
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Mobile Suit Book Club - Victory Gundam (Part 2)
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It won't be the last we see of it, but this is as far as the Universal Century goes. In some ways compromised but never boring or lacking ambition, Victory Gundam is a true Tomino original and one of our favorite things that we've covered so far. For this discussion we discuss the motivations of colonization's middle-managers, inter-generational co…
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Sabres of Paradise by Lesley Blanch // Part 2
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Part two of Lesley Blanch's Sabres of Paradise is takes us beyond beyond introductions and scene setting and places the reader in the middle of the push and pull of rebellion. (Though many scenes are still set and characters introduced in Lesley Blanch's signature prose). The Russians acclimate to fighting in the Caucasus and the people of the Cauc…
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Mobile Suit Book Club // Victory Gundam (Part 1)
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Mobile Suit Victory Gundam found yet another way to escalate many of the themes and motifs that defined Gundam. The young pilot is only 13! The main crew is such a scrappy resistance that their base of operations is a big truck! The battles depict more desperation and destruction from the perspective of people that simply want to live normal lives.…
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Sabres of Paradise by Leslie Blanch (Part 1)
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Leslie Blanch's epic biography of Imam Shamyl and the Russo-Caucasian struggle that defined his life for almost 30 years is now mostly remembered for having been a major influence on Frank Herbert's Dune, but it's place as a classic of literary history-writing deserves to be celebrated. Blanch's ambition to cover such a complicated period of time s…
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Mobile Suit Book Club // Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory
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The second of the Gundam OVAs cements what War in the Pocket had confirmed: that the world of Gundam is rich and exciting enough to sustain and inspire many stories outside of Tomino's original vision. In this case, it is to tell a relatively straightforward wartime melodrama. We discuss the highs and lows of this series. And using the negative pro…
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Really proud of how this one came out. Ice is an incredibly slippery novel to try to pin down. The book teeters back and forth between dark anti-romance, bleak rumination on a dying world, and on one occasion, a James Bond parody(?) The story itself is unsteady about its facts and chronology, employing some perspective altering rug-pulls. We had an…
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Our initial reaction of F91 was as a beautiful but flawed movie. A stylish and emotional evolution of the themes and aesthetics of Gundam that never truly got to bloom. In way that lost potential somehow makes F91 an even more alluring and curious artifact that has only grown in our estimation since our initial reaction. This recording is closer to…
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It's hard to find new things to say about The Stranger. Occupying a space of historical importance in literature, philosophy, and youth culture across three continents and ultimately around the world, The Stranger is enduringly popular (especially so among people who lack the self awareness to consider whether their opinions are worth sharing). It'…
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Mobile Suit Book Club // 0080: War in the Pocket
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I'm starting to think that War is actually bad! This side story in the Gundam universe is the first series not overseen by Yoshiyuki Tomino; and it reflects a difference in style, tone, and scope. Instead of an operatic 50 episode epic, we zoom in on ordinary civilians and disposable grunts for only 6 episodes. The result is one of the most impactf…
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What happens after you die? What about after that? Or after that? And what if you just skipped the dying part entirely? How far can you take things? Isaac Asimov helps wrap our heads around these questions with the power of AI. From a time when that had little to do with crypto-adjacent scams, Asimov's story used AI to plant a seed in our imaginati…
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Mobile Suit Book Club // Char’s Counterattack
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Char's Counterattack is as iconic to the history of animation as it is inaccessible to those not caught up to the decade of Gundam that came before it. Amid all the proper nouns and sci-fi jargon is the touching conclusion to the saga of Amuro and Char. And throughout the runtime of the film is also some of the greatest achievements in animation, a…
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The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
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For how popular The Fall of the House of Usher is, it is quite a strange story. Poe guides us through a fever-dream where rather than ghosts or things of that nature haunting an old house, the house itself exudes menace that entrances our characters. Without deviating too far from the story, we discuss abstract art, the fall of the aristocracy, fun…
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Mobile Suit Book Club // ZZ Gundam Part 2
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This is where ZZ Gundam momentarily stops being the goofy show we came to love in it's first half, and the horrors of war rear up again and again. We found this second batch of episodes to be really impactful, cementing ZZ Gundam as potentially the funniest and most tragic Gundam series that we've covered so far. In this conversation we talk about …
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Who knew that reading about the world ending over and over again could be so fun? Exterminator! isn't as talked about as William Burroughs earlier work even though it contains some of Burroughs' most popular short stories, including "Twilight's Last Gleamings", "The Discipline of DE", and "Wind Die, You Die, We Die". In the context they're included…
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Mobile Suit Book Club // ZZ Gundam (Part 1)
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We went into this iteration of Gundam hedging out bets, but it easily ended up being our favorite series in the franchise so far. Bright Noa recruits a new generation of Mobile Suit pilots from the unlikely corner of Shangri-La, an impoverished space colony where we meet our new protagonists junking for salvage from the previous wars. Despite deali…
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So this book might literally be your grandfather's Gundam 0079 because it was released really close to the original run of Mobile Suit Gundam and written by Yoshiyuki Tomino himself, robbing me of claim to that cliche. Nevertheless, reading this novel is a very different experience from the animated '79 Gundam experience. You can find out how in th…
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Mobile Suit Book Club // MS Zeta Gundam Part 2
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Finishing up Kamile's tragic story, Pleasant Evenings return to discuss the second half of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam. We take turns discussing what it means to be a perfect soldier, brood parasitism among birds, and what happened to Reccoa's character in the back half of this show.Pleasant Evenings Book Club による
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Mobile Suit Book Club - MS Zeta Gundam Pt. 1
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A few months ago we announced we'd be diving into the world of Mobile Suit Gundam, and with our new episode talking about Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, it's officially a sub-series! Mobile Suit Book Club. Yoshiyuki Tomino parlayed the success of the original MS Gundam theatrical run into a well-heeled sequel that doubled down on everything that made the…
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After a longish absence, Corbin and Roberto come back to announce our most ambitious project yet: podcasting the entirety* of the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise. We're starting things off with the trilogy of movies adapted from the original series which we found to be a very exciting introduction to Universal Century and the poor people who have to l…
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This was a pleasantly entertaining read and a great showcase of the romantic nostalgia that Tokien's Middle Earth is such a great stage for. The episode itself is definitely one of our loosest and most deranged. We had a great time recording it and I hope that translates to a fun listening experience. You can email us at eveningspleasant@gmail.com …
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Ep. 11 - Into the Wood by Robert Aickman
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My favorite description for the curious effect of Robert Aickman stories was given by Neil Gaiman: "Reading Robert Aickman is like watching a magician work, and very often I'm not even sure what the trick was. All I know is that he did it beautifully." His story Into the Wood is one of the more curious entries in his catalogue in that he has someho…
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Ep.10 - Junji Ito Special // Human Chair, Fashion Model & Long Dream
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10th episode! We didn't plan anything extra for the occasion, but it is coincidentally our very first episode about a comic. So let's say that's how we are celebrating the milestone. It brings me great joy to introduce the medium to Pleasant Evenings with none other than Junji Ito. His works practically need no introduction as it feels like Ito's n…
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What do you get when a bunch of depressed failures spend a lot of time disappointing each other in a rural Russian estate? It turns out, one of the enduring classics of western literature. Anton Chekov is not messing around. This was easily the most emotionally challenging read so far for us on Pleasant Evenings Book Club, but we were able to have …
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Imagine a world where the state and capital have have attained so much power over our individual lives that every waking moment is surveilled and cataloged by an unthinking system, but we are only dimly aware of the problems at the edges because the burden of a meaningless life demands you find ways of floating through it all in a semi-narcotized s…
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Ep. 7 - 10 Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly // Part 2
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When reporter Nellie Bly successfully insinuated herself into the care of a mental institution, she encountered all the abuse and neglect (yes both) one might expect. What she wasn't prepared for was the terrifyingly inedible food! It's the finale to our two-part coverage of 10 Days in a Mad-House. A thought provoking read that we somehow manage to…
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Ep. 6 - 10 Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly // Part 1
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So half of Nellie Bly's trailblazing piece of stunt journalism "10 Days in a Mad-House" doesn't take place in a madhouse. This week we follow Nellie Bly through a slice of New York's boarding houses, police precincts and hospitals. We get a taste of what it's like to be processed by the systems that handle those on the margins of society. Mostly we…
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Ep. 5 - Movie Night! Viy (1967) and Mad God (2022)
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It's a double feature! Tonight we're sitting down to watch the Soviet Folk-Horror highlight Viy (1967) and Phil Tippett's unrelenting handcrafted staring contest with the abyss, Mad God (2022). Honestly the two movies have only the most tenuous and surface-level similarities, yet the Venn Diagram charting the kinds of people into either of these mo…
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Ep. 4: King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers // Part 2 - Court of the Dragon and The Yellow Sign
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Some technical issues in the back half of this episode spoils what could have been our best one yet. But it's still a really good episode! In our discussion of the latter two King in Yellow stories, we hit on all the great Carcosian themes: spiritual terror, human frailty, insanity, and a wacky book that makes all that stuff really come alive.…
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Episode 3: King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers // Part 1 - The Repairer of Reputations and The Mask
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Have you heard of the song of the Hyades in dim Carcosa? Where black stars rise and where flap the tatters of the King in Yellow? No? Well you can read all about it in the fake play 'The King in Yellow' which seems to cause the characters in the stories from Robert Chambers' short story collection 'The King in Yellow' all kinds of troubles. There a…
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Episode 2: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
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You've seen the video game adaptation in Top 10 lists for "MOst DISTURBING GAMES!" (maybe that's just me) but have you read the landmark 1967 short story by Harlan Ellison? It's bleak, it's unhinged, and finally, it's being covered by the only podcast on the internet devoted to having pleasant evenings, Pleasant Evenings Book Club!…
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Episode 1: The Nyctalops Trilogy by Thomas Ligotti
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Probably the most famous horror writer you can't find in an airport, Thomas Ligotti is the name to beat for cult-status in literary horror. For our first episode of Pleasant Evenings Book Club, we're diving into his Nyctalops Trilogy. Three very different stories linked by a very familiar evil at the center of the stories' point of view. We talk ab…
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