372 Pages We'll Never Get Back

372 Pages We'll Never Get Back is a podcast series created by Michael J. Nelson (of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and RiffTrax fame) and Conor Lastowka (writer for RiffTrax and novelist). Beginning in 2017 with Ernest Cline's Ready Player One (the titular 372-page book), the podcast discusses literature that the two men "are probably going to hate",^[1][2][3] though they have stated they end up enjoying some books much more than others.

372 Pages We'll Never Get Back
Logo
Presentation
Starring	Michael J. Nelson Conor Lastowka
Genre	Literary criticism, satire
Language	English
Length	typically 90–150 minutes per episode
Production
Theme music composed by	Conor Lastowka
Audio format	MP3
No. of seasons	33
No. of episodes	183
Publication
Original release	September 1, 2017 (2017-09-01)
Ratings	4.857142857142857/5, 4.8/5
Related
Related shows	RiffTrax Like Trees Walking
Website	372pages.com

Episodes

Overview of 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back episodes

Season	Episodes	Release dates	Book	Summary
1	1–8	September 1 – October 27, 2017	Ready Player One – Ernest Cline	Bestselling novel, set in a dystopian future where a young man immerses himself in a virtual reality world based on 1980s popular culture and partakes in a competition for fame and fortune.
2	9–16	January 26 – March 23, 2018	Armada – Ernest Cline	A teenager plays an online video game about defending against an alien invasion, only to find out that the game is a simulator to prepare him against an actual alien invasion.
3	19–21	October 12–26, 2018	The Eye of Argon – Jim Theis	Sword and sorcery short story about the barbarian Grignr and his adventures.
4	22–29	November 2, 2018 – January 16, 2019	TekWar – William Shatner and Ron Goulart	A science fiction neo-noir detective novel set in 22nd-century Southern California and Mexico, centered around the fictional electronic drug "tek".
5	30–33	February 4–27, 2019	The Forensic Certified Public Accountant and the Cremated 64-SQUARES Financial Statements – Dwight David Thrash, CPA FCPA CGMA	Self-published novel about a Certified Public Accountant who attempts to solve the destruction of a skyscraper by the "Cat-Burglar Terrorist" and reconstruct its financial documents.
6	34–38	March 11 – April 11, 2019	Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff – Sean Penn	Satirical novel by the Oscar-winning actor, notorious for its "experimental" prose style.
7	39–47	May 6 – July 1, 2019	The Mister – E. L. James	Romance novel by the author of the bestselling Fifty Shades series about a British aristocrat who falls in love with his Albanian maid.
8	48–53	July 15 – September 3, 2019	Trucking Through Time – Charles E. Harris	A self-published novel about time traveling truck drivers.
9	54–58	September 16 – October 23, 2019	The Lair of the White Worm – Bram Stoker	Edwardian-era horror novel by the author of Dracula about a mysterious monster threatening rural Derbyshire.
10	59–67	November 13, 2019 – January 30, 2020	Shadow Moon – Chris Claremont and George Lucas	Fantasy novel serving as a sequel to the 1988 film Willow.
11	68–70	February 18 – March 10, 2020	Moon People – Dale M. Courtney	Self-published science fiction romance novel.
12	71–77	April 6 – June 3, 2020	Digital Fortress – Dan Brown	Mystery/thriller novel on the theme of government surveillance and cryptography.
13	78–80	June 30 – July 24, 2020	My Immortal – Tara Gilesbie	Notorious Harry Potter fan fiction in which the characters are depicted as goths and preps.
14	81–88	August 7 – November 13, 2020	Midnight Sun – Stephenie Meyer	Retelling of the young adult vampire romance Twilight from the point-of-view of Edward Cullen.
15	89–95	November 26, 2020 – February 26, 2021	Ready Player Two – Ernest Cline	Sequel to Ready Player One; Wade Watts finds a new advancement in Halliday's vaults that could change the world, and battles an artificial intelligence based on Halliday.
16	96–99	March 23 – April 30, 2021	The Quilters Push Back: Miranda Hathaway Adventure #7 – Mary Devlin Lynch and Debbie Devlin Zook with Beth Devlin-Keune	Cozy mystery in which a team of quilters confronts the American opioid crisis.
17	100–107	May 20 – September 17, 2021	Modelland – Tyra Banks and Michael Salort	A young aspiring model attends a magical boarding school for models.
18	108–112	October 8 – November 19, 2021	Irene Iddesleigh – Amanda McKittrick Ros	Victorian melodrama long ridiculed for its purple prose: a young English lady marries an older man, realizes she does not love him, and then elopes to America with her tutor.
19	113–119	December 10, 2021 – March 23, 2022	Antigua: The Land of Fairies, Wizards and Heroes (Part 1) – Denise Brown Ellis and Larry Ellis	Self-published children's fantasy novel in which warrior princesses fight an evil dragon.
20	120–124	April 1 – June 17, 2022	Gump and Co. – Winston Groom	Sequel to the 1986 novel Forrest Gump, published one year after that book's movie adaptation.
21	125–130	July 8 – October 21, 2022	Super Constitution – Charles Kim	Science-fiction novel about a "troika" of college students who create a single world government by technological means.
22	131–134	November 8 – December 23, 2022	Murder in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery – Meg Muldoon	Christmas-themed cozy mystery about the murder of a man behind a pie shop during a gingerbread house building competition.
23	135–139	January 18 – March 24, 2023	Edison's Conquest of Mars – Garrett P. Serviss	19th-century science fiction, considered the first space opera, in which Thomas Edison leads Earth in a war against Martian invaders.
24	140–146	April 11 – June 23, 2023	Artemis – Andy Weir	Sci-fi heist adventure follow-up to The Martian about a young Saudi Arabian woman living in the titular lunar colony and plotting to get rich.
25	147–150	July 21 – September 7, 2023	The Starlight Barking – Dodie Smith	Sequel to The Hundred and One Dalmatians, in which dogs acquire supernatural powers and all other creatures are put into a deep sleep.
26	151–155	October 5 – November 29, 2023	The Adventures of the Teen Archaeologists: The Land of the Moepek – Larry Ellis and Denise Brown Ellis	Young adult fiction about teenaged archaeologists who discover an ancient African civilization.
27	156–158	December 11–26, 2023	A Killer Christmas Affair: A Cozy Mystery (A Sunflower Farms Cozy Mystery) – Sussie Jordan	Christmas-themed cozy mystery set in the fictional town of Sunflower, Texas.
28	159–164	January 30 – March 20, 2024	Kaileb's Dream – Kaileb Varney	Self-published young adult novel about a 15-year-old boy whose alter ego is White Bo of the White Blades Council, a foundation protecting the world from evil.
29	165–169	April 17 – June 20, 2024	Bridge to Bat City – Ernest Cline	Children's novel set in 1980s Austin, Texas, about a girl who helps a colony of Mexican free-tailed bats find a new home under the Congress Avenue Bridge.
30	170–174	July 9 – October 17, 2024	Tek Kill – William Shatner and Ron Goulart	Eighth novel of the TekWar franchise, a series of science fiction neo-noir detective novels set in 22nd-century Southern California and Mexico and centered around the fictional electronic drug "tek". Private detective Jake Cardigan's boss, Walter Bascomb, is arrested for murder, and Cardigan tries to clear his name.
31	175–178	November 14 – December 26, 2024	The Quilting Cruise: Miranda Hathaway Adventure #9 – Mary Devlin Lynch and Beth Devlin-Keune	Cozy mystery in which a quilters' guild encounter a mystery aboard a cruise.
32	179–182	January 16 – February 27, 2025	The Legend of Rah and the Muggles – Nancy Stouffer	Children's science fiction novel about the mutated survivors of a nuclear holocaust; became notorious when the author claimed in a lawsuit that J. K. Rowling had stolen her ideas to make the Harry Potter series.
33	183–	March 19, 2025 – present	Ugly Love – Colleen Hoover	Romance novel by the author of It Ends With Us. A trainee nurse falls for her brother's mysterious airline pilot friend.

Reception

Michael J. Nelson, photographed in 2011.

In 2017, Marc Hershon of Vulture praised the first season of the podcast as a "comedically brutal thrashing" of Ready Player One.^[4]

The A.V. Club's Mike Vanderbilt interviewed Nelson and Lastowka in 2018.^[5]

In 2019, Alice Nuttall of Book Riot wrote, "Nelson and Lastowka spin bad books into gold. Listening to an episode is like sitting in on a reading group run by people who are much funnier than you are."^[6] In 2020, Emily Martin compared 372 Pages to the film podcast How Did This Get Made?.^[7]

In 2020, E. A. Henson of Biff Bam Pop! praised the podcast, saying, "372 Pages manages to avoid those common podcast pitfalls and hilarious [sic] transcend the source material...these books are so amazingly bad that they almost seem like some kind of outsider art."^[8]