It feels like we just started Grignr’s journey, but it’s already time to finish The Eye of Argon. Fortunately, the second half is just as amazing as the first half, with out of left field seizures, deadly rat pelvis bones, reeking maws, husking femmes, and iycks! We’ll also take a look at how the book’s love scenes translate to the audio book format, read your emails, and award the dumb sentence of the week. Plus, we’re very pleased to report that this podcast has been deemed the winner of the J...
Oct 26, 2018•1 hr 36 min
Wow! The Eye of Argon more than surpassed our expectations. Our ovals widened rotundly with every additional sentence Theis crafted. My god, the first four (4.5, really) chapters were only like six thousand words and we spent nearly two hours discussing them! Obviously there’s a lot to cover here as Grignr makes his way through the Norgolian empire: wenches, sluts (not the same, evidently!), bovine antagonists, and some very creative punctuation? Once again, Mike’s Hollywood sources have unearth...
Oct 19, 2018•1 hr 40 min
We teased it in our last episode, but we’re finally ready to reveal to you: our next book is called The Eye of Argon. We figured, what could possibly carry the torch of Ernest Cline’s terrible books, and decided: how about a typo-riddled fantasy novella written five decades ago by a sixteen year old who never published anything again? The Eye of Argon by Jim Theis is obscure, but it is available in print (VERY curious what the publisher makes of the sudden spike in sales!) Fortunately, it’s also...
Oct 12, 2018•34 min
We are back! Don’t worry, there is no new Ernest Cline book. But we’ve decided to launch back up to try to tackle some books which may be just as bad or even worse! DO NOT GET TOO EXCITED! There’s no real content in this episode. It is just A Crummy Commercial for our new Patreon . We ran afoul of the International Podcast Council for A) not having a Patreon and B) not reading commercials for MeUndies. We’re risking a lot by still refusing to do B, but if you’d like to support our Patreon , we’d...
Oct 09, 2018•10 min
Recorded live at Sisyphus Brewing in Minneapolis on April 11th, this is our first ever live show… Is how this post used to start before the recording of our live show was lost in an epic tech meltdown! But never fear, Mike and Conor have reunited to rediscuss the Ready Player One movie, in possibly more depth than even the original discussion! Did it live up to the expectations of the gunter faithful? Or did Spielberg pull a Pendergast? Most importantly: Were there any Battletoads cameos?? Thank...
Apr 20, 2018•1 hr 50 min
When we last left Zack Lightman, he was submerged beneath the Antarctic Ocean, trying to retrieve his father and save the world. But then it was getting close to happy hour, so Ernest Cline decided to just wrap things up and hit publish on one of the most unsatisfying, unbelievably rushed endings we’ve ever seen. We’re talking about an ending where cancer is cured IN ONE SENTENCE, and then the fact that MOST OTHER DISEASES were also cured is tacked on as a parenthetical to that sentence. Conor &...
Mar 23, 2018•1 hr 49 min
As humanity’s potential end draws near, our heroes still have not been allowed to say goodbye to their loved ones back on Earth. So they all do what any normal person would do in that situation: bang the hell of out someone they just met a few hours ago. Mike and Conor’s faces contort as they try to make sense of this lovefest. They’ll also hurt a mixture of insults and encouragement at each other as they try to determine the pop culture source of every Shakespeare quote Whoadie spouts, and feel...
Mar 16, 2018•1 hr 30 min
The Europan death armada is just hours away, and mankind’s last defense force is behaving about how you’d expect: grinning, crushing hard, and making references to classic 80s horror anthologies. With only 100 pages left in the book, Mike and Conor are convinced that events that advance the plot forward may soon begin to actually occur. In the meantime, we’ll discuss the gamers’ favorite snack foods. There’s also a interesting historical footnote we uncovered revealing the pivotal role D&D p...
Mar 09, 2018•1 hr 49 min
The calendars may say that it’s March, but to us it’s Clinetober! Here at 372 Pages we’re power-leaping into the month like a terrible Godzilla simile from the classic Toho kaiju flick Godzilla. This week’s reading may have broken the all-time record for most notes scrawled in the margins of our copies of Armada. Conor & Mike are here to examine all of the rich, complex new characters we meet: religious housewife, stoned dude, streetwise teen, and Asian stereotype. They’ll also examine the c...
Mar 02, 2018•1 hr 38 min
Mike and Conor cover an absolutely thrilling stretch of Armada in this episode. Hold your breath because we’re about to discuss all of this: not one but TWO phone contact exchanging scenes, not one but TWO briefings in a large auditorium, and to cap it all off: an EULA acceptance scene!!! We’ll also explore some of the unintentional comedy in the book, fail miserably in identifying fan fic or real, and shatter the world record for use of the word “Clineian”. Your assignment for next week: read u...
Feb 23, 2018•1 hr 35 min
In this episode we meet Zack’s insanely hot TV addicted gamer mom. Turns out the Hot but Relateable Mom trope isn’t just a Clineian invention, and Conor reveals where he’s seen it turn up recently. Also, Mike was able to pull some strings and secure a scene from the movie version of Armada, a movie so secret, it hasn’t even been announced yet! Some of those actors sound familiar… There’s more Star Wars than you can shake a rig at, but also inexplicably Vanilla Sky and The Edge of Tomorrow refere...
Feb 09, 2018•1 hr 27 min
In this first fifty pages of Armada, our hero sees a flying saucer, reads a giant list of movie release dates, and then goes to work. Somehow we talked about this sequence of events for 1 hour and 20 minutes. We also get caught up on what Conor and Mike read in between Cline novels, read about someone watching someone else play a video game, and learn the origin of this mysterious sword “Excalibur” that our hero mentions. Next week read up to the start of Phase Two, that’s page 97 in our edition...
Feb 02, 2018•1 hr 19 min
We’re back with a new season! Join us as we read Ernest Cline’s followup to RP1, Armada. We’re extremely excited to read what is widely regarded as Cline’s bad novel. We’ll talk about our expectations, see if we can guess whether a critic was reviewing RP1 or Armada, and play a quick round of Real or Fanfic. If you choose to read along, your first assignment is to read up to Chapter 4, that’s page 47 in our edition. Thanks for listening!
Jan 26, 2018•30 min
Support the podcast on Patreon to get every episode a week early, and a ton of other exclusive content: patreon.com/372pages Get the book here We’re done!!! After one last robot fight, video game speedrun, and rote recitation of a popular “geek” movie, we’ve finally reached the titular 372nd page. Tune in for the Dumb Sentence of the Book , one last Fan-Fic or Real, Great Moments in Villains with Tiny Robots, and some extremely creative listener emails. Nathan’s alternate ending skit is availabl...
Oct 27, 2017•1 hr 42 min
Support the podcast on Patreon to get every episode a week early, and a ton of other exclusive content: patreon.com/372pages Get the book here In this episode, Wade Watts faces the possibility of a lifetime of slavery! But then he gets out of it easily thanks to his hacking prowess, which he totally has had all along but forgot to mention. We’ll talk the unceasing cultural relevance of the “hang in there baby” motivational poster, the concept of Performative Niceness, and revisit some of Wade an...
Oct 20, 2017•1 hr 20 min
Support the podcast on Patreon to get every episode a week early, and a ton of other exclusive content: patreon.com/372pages Get the book here Join us in our detailed recreation of the living room from Family Ties for Episode 6! The gunt is in it’s homestretch, so what better time to pause your novel for a detailed description of the plot of Blade Runner. We’ll also play Black Tiger, but not the version you’re familiar with! (Get this: it’s slightly different.) We’ll also test Mike’s ability to ...
Oct 12, 2017•1 hr 21 min
Support the podcast on Patreon to get every episode a week early, and a ton of other exclusive content: patreon.com/372pages Get the book here This week we’re talking Wade’s Rig. And folks — it is a hell of a rig. We’ll also discuss the seemingly booming post-apocalyptic economy that makes all this gunting possible, venture into the immersive world of text adventure games, and visit several game rooms, bowling alleys and pizza joints. It’s all very classic. All this plus… Well, if you’re read ch...
Oct 05, 2017•1 hr 17 min
Support the podcast on Patreon to get every episode a week early, and a ton of other exclusive content: patreon.com/372pages Get the book here We’ll discuss whether eating rotted Greenland shark meat is better than Ready Player One, take a thrilling look at server redundancy and connection lag, analyze various rigs, and examine what has to be one of the top three most romantic chat logs we’ve ever read. PLUS, Mike has gunted deep into the dark web to track down audio of an EXCLUSIVE scene from t...
Sep 28, 2017•1 hr 13 min
Support the podcast on Patreon to get every episode a week early, and a ton of other exclusive content: patreon.com/372pages Get the book here It’s another classic episode of 372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back! We’ll guess whether passages came from RP1 Fan Fiction or the novel itself, break down our hero’s obsession with the definitely-a-sexy-lady Art3mis, guess what’s in James Halliday’s bedroom, and check in with Edgar Nash: Gunter Expert! Then we’ll read some listener mail and nominate the Dumb ...
Sep 13, 2017•1 hr 13 min
Support the podcast on Patreon to get every episode a week early, and a ton of other exclusive content: patreon.com/372pages Get the book here Update your Gunter Wiki, crapburgers, it’s time for a new episode! This week we calibrate our tastes with Mike’s, delve into the delightful parenthetical autistism of James Halliday, take a closer look at the infamous “List” that initially caught our attention, discuss the danger of taking the advice to “write what you know”, and crown our Dumbest Sentenc...
Sep 08, 2017•1 hr 3 min
Support the podcast on Patreon to get every episode a week early, and a ton of other exclusive content: patreon.com/372pages Get the book here In this episode, we’ll learn how calibrated your tastes are with Conor’s, meet our Rubenesque main characters, discuss the book’s generously amorphous definition of 80s pop culture, examine how hard it is to pull of convincing computer operating systems in entertainment, and wonder what possible role the undercurrent of atheism could possibly play in the ...
Sep 01, 2017•1 hr 2 min
Support the podcast on Patreon to get every episode a week early, and a ton of other exclusive content: patreon.com/372pages Get the book here Welcome to 372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back! This is a podcast book club where we are reading the bestselling novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. In this episode, Mike and Conor lay out their expectations, examine some of the critical praise for the book, and take a quiz to see which great works of literature they will not be reading at the expense of R...
Aug 25, 2017•27 min
