Episode 41 – Gerald’s Game
The Worst Bestsellers
Worst Bestsellers
4.5 • 609 Ratings
🗓️ 1 February 2016
⏱️ 74 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kait, Renata, and their returning guest Nicole (of OWL Reviews) read Gerald’s Game by Stephen King and concluded: there’s a good reason this isn’t one of King’s better-known works. What should have been a compelling psychological horror short story is a gross, bloated novel about the importance of sex paperwork. (Of course, regular listeners of Worst Bestsellers are already aware of the importance of sex paperwork.) Even the fact that the titular Gerald dies in the first chapter wasn’t enough to make this enjoyable to our misandrist sensibilities. Join us for this upsetting journey to Maine!
Content warning: This book contains sexual assault and child abuse and so does our discussion of it.
Readers advisory: Here.
The French copy of Gerald’s Game, abandoned at a hostel, which tragically made Renata think this book would be much more exciting than it actually is
Candy pairing: Kait says baking chocolate, Nicole says gumballs, Renata says peeled grapes at a Halloween party.
Coming up next: The Perfect Letter by Chris Harrison.
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(But no pressure, we’re also happy if you get these items from your local library or independent bookstore.)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the worst bestsellers, where we read about the horrors of sex without |
| 0:16.5 | paperwork so you don't have to. |
| 0:18.7 | I'm Renata. |
| 0:19.8 | And I'm Kate. |
| 0:20.6 | And for this episode, we read Gerald's Game by Stephen King. |
| 0:24.7 | Joining us to discuss this fucking disgusting book is Nicole, one of the voices in Kate's head. |
| 0:31.3 | Hey, toots. |
| 0:34.9 | I thought we had carried you with all the therapy we didn't go to. |
| 0:41.8 | Because our therapist died of cancer. |
| 0:47.6 | Spoilers for one of the plot points of this book. |
| 0:52.1 | I would call the plot point so much as a random... |
| 0:55.0 | Yeah. |
| 0:56.1 | A thing that did not need to happen, but did. |
| 0:59.9 | And which I felt was built up much. |
| 1:02.1 | We'll get to that when we get to it. |
| 1:04.0 | Yeah, I've jumped very far ahead. |
| 1:06.5 | So we'll start, actually. |
| 1:08.4 | I would like to introduce how I heard of this book, which was last year. |
| 1:15.5 | At that point, we'd, you know, been doing the podcast and Kate had wanted to a Stephen King book. |
| 1:21.0 | And I did not really want to because, as you might know, I am a scarity baby and I don't like to read horror books. |
| 1:28.7 | But we had just read Outlander and I was traveling and in a hostel. |
| 1:33.9 | I found a copy of this book in French. |
... |
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