This is my first time editing for our podcast. I hope you enjoy my first contribution. 

Thank you so much for listening! 

Best,

Corbin of Pleasant Evenings Book Club. 

Opening Song: Laudanum by Velvet Cacoon

Closing Song: Dag Lezginka by Oleksandr Nepytailenko

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 conflicts vs. cooperation, and more on Lupe Cineau's psychology than is probably merited.

Join us next time as we wrap up the third and final installment of Sabres of Paradise, and next, Fighter G Gundam.

Intro and outro Music: Laudanum by Velvet Cacoon

This was Yoshiyuki Tomino's first Gundam TV Show since 1987's ZZ Gundam and we could not have been more excited to return to that particular style of pacing, world-building and characterization.

This was easily one of our favorite iterations of Mobile Suit Gundam so far and we hope that you enjoy our rambling conversation about it as much we enjoyed having it.

Blanch's ambition to cover such a complicated period of time seems incidental to the passion evident in every exquisitely rendered sentence describing the Murid freedom-fighters and the mountains they call home. Blanch travelled the world, interviewing descendants of the characters in this book and combing through Russian military dispatches, not only to provide a thorough accounting of the Murid War fought in the early 19th century, but to convey the depth of passion this region and this conflict seemed to have inspired in all who crossed.

There are a ton of digressions through anecdotes, literary criticism, ekphrasis, and personal observations that might seem out of place in a traditional history, but are essential to the feeling this book plunges you into.

We had fun discussing Part 1 of this book in our meandering way and we hope you do too.

For more on Sabres of Paradise's influence on Dune: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-secret-history-of-dune/

To email Pleasant Evenings Book Club: eveningspleasant@gmail.com

Skip the first 6 minutes if you'd like to jump straight into the Gundam talk.

Truly one of the most unique books I've ever read and one we're glad to share on Pleasant Evenings Book Club

This recording is closer to that initial reaction but even then the budding love we have for this movie is clear in our conversation.

It's no wonder that this episode came out to a little over two hours. We attempt to be thorough in our discussion of the book and open with our reactions. This was a conversation between someone reading for the first time and someone who had the enviable pleasure of reading it as a teenager. It made for a pleasant evening to discuss the book and hopefully it will be an equally pleasant experience listening to our thoughts (they are very deep because of how Authentic and Existential we are).

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 impactful works, not only in Gundam, but in the medium.

Our conversation kind of goes all over the place, but we never stray far from effusive praise of almost every element of this production.

From a time when that had little to do with crypto-adjacent scams, Asimov's story used AI to plant a seed in our imagination. I had never felt closer to the entropic ends of the universe than until I read this story. It turns out its a place where all things converge: optimism and pessimism, individual and collective, emergence and cessation, man and machine. At least that's where our conversation went, the story itself is a straight shot into the titular question. You can read the story or listen here to find out what that is.

We break it all down and point out some of our favorite and least favorite creative decisions from the movie as well as a joyful reading of one of Director Tomino's most incredible interview quotes.

Without deviating too far from the story, we discuss abstract art, the fall of the aristocracy, fungi, and the Castlevania video games.

In this conversation we talk about how ZZ interacts with the themes that we've discussed so far in the Gundam franchise and how it handles it's peculiar tonal pendulum (we would argue quite meaningfully).

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 here, we found the stories sang out twice. This is a collection of strange and affecting stories that seem to swirl together into a single text thanks to the steady (but not predictable) employment of leitmotifs throughout. Themes, images, phrases, or even whole characters or events pop in and out of these stories, adding to the richness of the reading experience.

Over our conversation on this pleasant evening, we attempt to scratch the surface in a wide-ranging discussion of these leitmotifs and their strange prescience concerning modern American life.

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 dealing with some heavy topics and doing a lot to expand on the world of Gundam, this series takes a lighter more episodic tone for its first half. And we absolutely loved it.

Listen to our discussion of Mobile Suit ZZ Gundam and count the ways that we get Glemy's name wrong (we don't get it right once).

Nevertheless, reading this novel is a very different experience from the animated '79 Gundam experience. You can find out how in this episode.

It was really fun to record this episode as we fill in some of the gaps of Amuro's journey and the experience of newtypes.

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.

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 original series so interesting, exciting, heartbreaking, and strange. Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam is a favorite among fans, and we had a great time digging into everything we liked and didn't for the first half of its run.

Join us next time as we round up the rest of the series and continue our exploration into the Mobile Suit Gundam.

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 live in it.

If you're Gundam-curious like us or already an ascended Gundam sage we hope you join us on this adventure.

Email: eveningspleasant@gmail.com

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 for any comments, questions or book suggestions!

His story Into the Wood is one of the more curious entries in his catalogue in that he has somehow inverted the ghost story to such a degree that the real terror becomes a world where nothing goes bump in the night. We discuss the feeling of surrendering to mystery and the way modernity casts itself in opposition to it.

For recommendations and comments email us at eveningspleasant@gmail.com

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 name is already mentioned alongside the likes of Edgar Allen Poe, HP Lovecraft, and Stephen King in the pantheon of horror writers.

For the uninitiated and the super-fans alike, join us as we discuss what makes his stories so effective and the breadth of his imagination through his stories The Human Chair (adapted from an Edogawa Ranpo story), Fashion Model, and Long Dream.

For any questions, comments, or reading suggestions reach out to us at 

eveningspleasant@gmail.com

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 a nice conversation regardless.

We touch on the pain of finding your life is behind you, how misplaced hopes can either carry you through the unbearable or bury you slowly, and the destruction of our ecosystems. (like I said, it was a nice conversation! )

Join us next time for a change of pace as we read the works of Junji Ito. If you'd like to read ahead the stories in question are: The Human Chair, Long Dream, and Fashion Model.

We will be changing to a bi-weekly schedule (once every two weeks), so you won't see too much of us next week. Keep a look out for updates on our social media and feel free reach out!

email us: eveningspleasant@gmail.com

https://twitter.com/BookEvenings

Sounds bleak, but it goes down smooth in rotoscoped animation! And it's occasionally pretty funny.

A good sign that you've got a good movie on your hands is that when we finished recording this episode we talked about the movie some more. We hope you enjoy this week's discussion of Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly, based on the novel by Philip K. Dick.

Join us next week for Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekov!

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 extrapolate modern-day doomerism out of and a surprising amount of From Software comparisons.

Next week, it's movie night. We're watching Richard Linklater's other rotoscoped reality-bending film: A Scanner Darkly (2006). We look forward to the discussion then.

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 movies is nearly a circle. (It's gag reflex that accounts for the difference).

Despite their difference in tone, setting, language, pacing and look, these are both fantastic films for celebrating the limits of human imagination and the anxious joy of peeking into its hidden dark corners where all the f***ed up little guys are hanging out.

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.

There are four stories in this collection that built the foundation for what would be called the "Carcosa Mythos," and we're reading all of them here on Pleasant Evenings Book Club. This episode covers the first two and the following episode will wrap things up. For now, expect to listen to a conversation on the madness that can take over the lives one person, three, or ten-thousand.

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!

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 about the warped mind of abusers, pessimism in modern life, and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. It's a good time.

Reach out to us at eveningspleasant@gmail.com