You're listening to Reading Glasses, a show about book culture and literary life designed to help you read better.

I'm author and book devourer, Mallory O'Mara. And I'm Brea Grant, filmmaker, and e-reader. This episode, we're taking off another box from the Reading Glass, Glasses, Glasses Challenge, give an author a second chance. Plus, we test out Breyer Wick Candles. I'm sitting here next to one. It smells like Ilya Rosenoff. Smells like hot, sweaty hockey players in here. And we give tips for when you space out during audiobooks. But first, Brian, what are you reading? I am reading the first of the dungeon crawler Carl books. Oh, wow. Busy, by Matt Deniment. I mean, it's funny because someone, okay, this came out in 2020. This was like one of those, I believe, self-published books that got really big. Yeah. And someone around 2021 was like, you should check these books out. It's taking me a while, obviously. And I just ran into one of my buddies when I was in Austin. He was like, I am not a reader. I don't read. And I found these books called Dungeon Crawler Carl. And I've read like six of them or eight of them or however many. This is like the boy version of a court of Thorne and Roses. It actually is. My boyfriend's reading one of these books right now. Really? Yeah.

Has he read the first one? He's like making his way through the series. You can correct me if I'm wrong. I think he's reading it. He jumped into like the third of the fourth one. Really? Another teacher told him to read it. Oh. So the whole thing is basically there's this guy named Carl and he's crawling around at a dungeon.

He's done,

calling around a dungeon.

There's a heavily featured cat, by the way which people will love to hear but

basically he's he's going to this breakup he has his girlfriend's cat and the cat goes outside during

the middle of the night and he goes out to get the cat and every man-made building everything around him

collapses like into a pancake into the world oh my every person who was inside dies. And he was outside. So he saved. And then this giant, like, there's this voice that comes on and says, hey, you're part of an alien invasion. Everything man-made is gone. And now you're going to be in this like intergalactic game. And you, if you want to, which you should want to.

And so you need to go into this, this like underground layer.

There's going to be some doors opening up.

And if you go in there, you automatically enter the game.

And we televise it for the universe.

And so he goes with this cat into this dungeon that's a reality TV show and he has to start. And it's very much set up like a video game. So it's like he goes in and all a side scroller fantasy. Yeah. And he can he goes in and he can see like in his mind's eye like, oh, here's the loot you have. Here's like your health bar. Here's your whatever.

So it's like, literally set up and it's like, oh, hey, you got an achievement.

Oh, hey, you got a box.

And this box is full of magic stuff. Here's a potion. Here's a healing potion. So it's literally set up like a video game. That actually sounds pretty sick. Yeah. So I think anyone who likes video games, this is the book.

This is definitely the choice right here.

And it is, it's really fun.

It's wild entertainment.

It's super funny.

And, likes video games, this is the book. This is definitely the choice right here. And it is, it's really fun. It's wildly entertaining. It's super funny. And I'm really enjoying it so far. What are you reading? All right. So I'm reading, remember last year how during the fun drive, everyone was asking for books about ships? Oh yeah, we had so many ships. This is for you. There's a few glasses that love, like, stories about ships. Glasser HMS Rheindogs. This is for you. It's a few glassers that love, like, stories about ships.

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