PopSugar Reading Challenge Book 33 or The New Weird

For a place I've always wanted to visit, I read the Welcome to Night Vale book. Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor have been telling us about this weirdly magical place since 2012 and I've always wondered what this place would look like. The closest I came to visiting was to see the live show earlier this year with the voice actors surrounded by a community of fans.

Fink and Cranor write a spectacular podcast. I adore Welcome to Night Vale. However, I don’t think Night Vale’s weirdness translated especially well into print format this time.

I found it hard to engage in the book as much as I expected. I adored this town and these characters. Why isn’t this speaking to me more? I’m willing to bet that if I’d done the audio book, it would have totally altered my experience.

I don’t think the book was bad but it was as amazing as I expected it to be. It was good and tied up a very curious story that’s been running around the podcast for ages. It’s a bit rare that Night Vale’s weirdness gets explained so that was pretty fun.

I’d love to see another Night Vale book in the future. Maybe short stories about various pieces of weirdness with people around town or another novel that ties up a loose end. BF enjoys Night Vale but doesn’t have a ton of reading downtime so I’m thinking about getting the audiobook off bandcamp as a surprise for him. We’ll see if that changes my mind about the book a bit.