PoS Book Club
Exploring the worst and weirdest books the world has to offer. Who appointed these guys critics? No one.
PoS Book Club
S1E7: Summer Skate by Sean Avery & Leslie Cohen
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The boys dissect Summer Skate, a cynical sports-romance cash grab from prodigious POS Sean Avery.
Like who does it appeal to? Because it's not going to appeal to anyone who likes hockey. And it doesn't appeal to romance fans because of the cheating, because it's written by uh a domestic abuser. Who's the target audience? Us, I guess. He wrote it so that it could get torn apart on a podcast that nobody listens to.
Intro
SPEAKER_07To all members present and worldwide, I'm calling this meeting of the Pizza Chip Book Club to order. I'm your esteemed chairman and chief bibliophile, Booker Dubois. And I am in top form today. Had a nap earlier, and I'm ready to guide you, dear listener, through the world of shit lit. So this is this is the second time uh we're actually trying to do this podcast. Uh we attempted this last week, and none of the podcast membership had read the book. And it's this is a book club podcast. There's really one job. You got to read the fucking book. And I don't maybe you don't respect me. Maybe you don't respect the podcast, but I implore you. Oh, I implore you to at least respect the fucking listeners. I mean, these people are tuning in to hear your takes on a book. And if you haven't read the thing, the whole podcast just goes to shit.
SPEAKER_04And that's the reason we canceled last episode, is it? It's because we didn't read the book. It's not because someone else cheaped out on their Filipino internet.
SPEAKER_03I implore you to pay the extra dollars so we have a decent connection.
SPEAKER_07There were also some technical issues. We've ironed out the bugs, but really the bottom line was nobody had read the book. So we brought back the same cast of losers, a book brigade of boozy bigots, our piece of ship book club rank and file membership. We've got Chip Wilson. Hello, Chip. Hey Booker.
SPEAKER_03I guess you're a little bit of an asshole host. I kind of was more of a Rich was a nice guy.
SPEAKER_07Uh but anyways, I'm the new chairman in town, and uh he's not about to take shit from rank and file members like yourself, Chip. Uh Dr. Bo Dashington, how do you do?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I'm good. I was actually gonna ask a question on this subject because what is the bit here? Like what's happening? Are you a different man each week?
SPEAKER_07I think the bit the bit is no, it's a different, it's a rotating chair, is the bit. I'm a different guy. Yeah. For all intents and purposes. I'm a different guy. You didn't interact with me last week. There's no institutional memory.
SPEAKER_04But who will be held to account for the previous the statements of the previous chair people, especially when it comes to celebrating noted diddlers.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_07Okay, you're gonna like this one. Before we get into this, uh Jane Lynch, welcome to the podcast. I hope you've read the book. It would be a first. So what I've done, because there's a lot of allegations that get thrown around on the podcast about, you know, who's a fan of what diddler, I've loaded all of the podcast episodes into a large, I've loaded all the podcast episodes into a large language model, and I'm compiling a dirty dossier of each one of you, of you, Dr. Bo Dashington, of you, Jane Lynch, of you, Chip Wilson. So if you want to make allegations about me, if you want to, if you want to try any kind of mutiny, you want to try to cross me, I've got the goods, I've got the documents, it's all in the the language model, and I can pull it up and I could cross-reference any sort of controversial statement that any of you have made and crush you.
SPEAKER_03I feel like that list has got to be 90% you.
SPEAKER_04Or past hosts. I'm getting this is kind of feeling a lot like you know the Trump accusing Clinton of being in the Epstein list, and it's like, yeah, that yeah, he's mentioned, but he's not the one who's mentioned 10,000 times.
SPEAKER_07Do I have to pull up the dossier right now?
SPEAKER_04Save it until we've got a lull in conversation, then you can bring in your accusations.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, don't make me go into the dossier five minutes into the podcast. Actually, I was having so I was having a thought. We're getting a little bit off topic, off track already, but I I was thinking about the podcast today while I was laying in bed. And I was thinking, so who who are we? We're four ostensibly straight white guys, right? Yeah. Mostly. Who attends book clubs?
SPEAKER_03Not middle-aged straight white guys as a general rule. Yeah, well, that's what I I said that like in the beginning of the first episode. Like, men don't read books at all.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that's come up a few days. Maybe you don't remember because apparently you're a different man. Hence why I never read any of the books.
SPEAKER_07There we go. I'm thinking maybe like 1% of book club attendees are might be in sort of like pickup artist date rapists types who are just there to try to get the women. Sean Avery. And they're not listening to this podcast either. They're all tuned into whoever the new Roosh V is or whoever the, you know, the the chief misogynist in waiting. So I don't know what to make of that. It's not, you know, there's no solution that I'm pitching. It's just like I was thinking about it, even though we look at the numbers, we're and and surprisingly, actually, we're getting some traction. But even if we posted these podcasts with any kind of regularity, if we establish like just a some kind of regular cadence, we're never going to be successful. So just dwell on that. I'm pretty sure success is kind of off the table here.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, the success went off the table when you hitched our wagon to Alex Jones and talked about how much you loved Prince Andrew.
SPEAKER_07On today's show, we shamelessly piggyback on the wild popularity of the homosexual hockey sensation heated rivalry by digging into a less notable hockey romance. Yes, it's a deep dive into SummerSkate, a novel, co-written by former NHL player and alleged woman beater Sean Avery. Those of you who are not aware of Sean Avery, he is perhaps the biggest prick to ever play the game, to ever lace them up, as they say. And we'll get into him and his book shortly in our feature segment. But first, the book report.
The Book Report
SPEAKER_07Regular listeners will know that the book report is a roundup of news. What we're reading, new releases, just a whole uh litany of literary stories. What items would you guys like to share in this segment?
SPEAKER_04Not what I've reading, but I I thought it was actually kind of funny. Someone posted in the in the subreddit. Uh, Dr. D Mango, you, Dr. D. Mango, a book called Gods and Spacemen in the Ancient East by Walter Raymond Drake. Um, a book that argues that ancient civilizations of the East, primarily India, China, and Tibet, were founded, influenced, or visited by extraterrestrial beings in the distant past. Uh, and he basically argues that what we used to think were gods and magic were actually magic spacemen. But the problem is that people in Asia all have an amnesia and they all kind of forgot that. So little twist on the ancient aliens. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Is it there's uh just an ad for cigarettes halfway through the book? Yeah, there's just an ad for cigarettes halfway through the book as well.
SPEAKER_04That's how you know it's good.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, they got better sponsorship deals than us.
SPEAKER_04Speaking of sponsorship deals, have we actually gotten any money out of any of that?
SPEAKER_06No.
SPEAKER_04The bovine colostrum?
SPEAKER_07Well, yeah, whatever it was. You know, it's biowarfare for your gut. Uh, I have to check into that. Jane, anything you'd like to share?
SPEAKER_00I'm sorry, yeah. No, I don't have uh don't have anything this this time.
SPEAKER_07I think generally what we're aiming for with this segment is everyone kind of brings an item, they bring something to the table. Maybe there's a funny knock-knock joke that you know about books. Um, but yeah, just uh just FYI on that. Um, I'm reading a book. Dr. Dashington. I know you're a big Africa guy. You uh you may have read this one. Into Africa, the epic adventures of Stanley and Livingston by Martin Dugard. Haven't read that one. Sounds interesting. You don't know this one? It's like a pop history of the search for Livingston and sort of a great man account, you know. Um and what's what's shit about it is it really builds Stanley up as this great man of history. Yeah. Yeah. And if you I I didn't know much about the guy, but then so you start looking at the guy, and it's like, yeah, he was he he was instrumental in opening up the Congo for the Belgian king in later trips, was whipping his. I think even in this one, he's like whipping his his help. Uh he also, I mean, it's not substantiated, but he may have also been a chomo as well. Um, there's a lot of um allegations that that that could have been the case. So not a great guy, but it's a breezy read.
SPEAKER_04I think I have this as like ringing bells in my mind from some book I remember reading at uni. What was it? No, the colonial state in comparative perspective. But it it focuses on on that guy as basically the perfect metaphor for the colonial state, and how the locals actually in Lengali used to call him, I guess, Bula Matari, like the breaker of rocks, because he'd bring dynamite with him and literally blow up blow up rocks to to clear paths and stuff. Right. But also just very frequently taking people with it. So they had this reputation of like you really have to watch out for this guy because he's literally just gonna blow shit up and kill people. Um, very much seeing next year. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07New and upcoming releases, uh, number one, number one Amazon new releases across all categories. Peter Schweizer's Invisible Coup, how American elites and foreign powers use immigration as a weapon. So again, this is number one new release on Amazon. Quote Everyday ICE is arresting hundreds of legal illegal immigrants with a criminal record. They didn't just come here, they will they were sent here. This guy is a um noted author, he's editor of Breitbart. Uh, also available now is Carnivore Leadership Taking Charge instead of taking shit by Corporal Ramon Kaló Lopez. So he's developed a list of 20 silver bullets that's become an antidote to canned speeches about how to motivate and get results. A bullet hits a target and makes an impact, and the silver bullets in carnivore leadership will do so too. Carnivore leadership is about taking initiative as opposed to reactive stance of herbivores. Uh, you can get it for 10 bucks on Kimdall, number one in leadership and motivation, and that's out already. Uh, the last book that I wanted to highlight, new release, uh Woman Down, a novel. Uh frustrated author looks for her muse in a remote hideaway, but what she finds defies all expectations and reality. I mean, it's really too complicated to unpack the whole thing, but the book's about a fictional cancelled author. While the actual author of this book, Hoover, faced a ton of controversy recently for a film version of a previous book of hers. This book has become sort of a lightning rod. It's seen as a middle finger to her critics. I mean, look, I don't really get it, and I gotta be honest, I don't care, but I ostensibly host a book podcast, so I feel like we have to we have to cover these things when they come up. Number four on Amazon Charts, 599 on Kindle, and it came out January 13th.
SPEAKER_03Over to you, Chip. I read the first book, Game Changer in the Heated Rivalry series. Because we were considering doing that. Um, but after after reading that book, we we discussed, and it's not like a total piece of shit. Um, but obviously those books and the TV series are this kind of big cultural phenomenon right now. So we we thought about looking at that. Uh, but I just wanted to touch on that one quickly before we get into the the main event with Sean Avery. So basically these these books, I think probably most people are pretty familiar with the stories, but there's the sports subgenre of of romance, and there's also the uh male-male uh subgenre of romance, uh male-male for female audiences. Uh and it's sort of those two are combined uh in this uh this uh game changer series from her first attempt, I think, the first in that series. So okay, but I would I'd hesitate to really call it like a total piece of shit. Uh and there wasn't anything too remarkable about it otherwise for us to to get in depth into. Uh but one thing I wanted to mention on it, I was kind of curious, like why is this genre very popular with women? Uh like male-male romances.
SPEAKER_07I was wondering, do you guys have any theories or or like you know the only yeah, the only thing that I know about this this phenomenon, and it's not much at all, is I I have seen so in in Thailand, uh, there's like tons of wildly popular films that are man-on-man romance, but the audience is overwhelmingly women. I mean, I I'm sure there's a small minority of gay fellas who I like to check them out as well, but it's it's primarily produced for women, and I've seen one or two of these, and they're pretty much just straight ahead like romance movies. There's not really there's no graphic sex or like any of the things that you would really want to see, like in a man-on-man romance movie. Um but I growing up, I was always mystified by the fact that women didn't watch Gabe Horn, the way that men were really into watching two ladies make out or act out in sexual situations. And now I don't know what's changed. Perhaps if you strip out the sexuality and just keep the romance and it becomes a lot more palatable for ladies, I don't know what goes on in women's minds necessarily, but that's that's my working theory. It's kind of touching and and harmless and non-threatening.
SPEAKER_04But I think that's it. I like I don't I won't pretend to know the answer, but but I guess would just be to sort of say changing sexual norms and that historically in you know in Western countries for whatever reason, it's quote unquote normal for heterosexual men to be turned on by two ladies getting it on, but it's quote unquote not normal um for two women or sorry, for women to be turned on by two men um being sexual together, whereas just now obviously sexual norms have been changing across Western society as a whole, not just in our lifetimes, but specifically over even the last decade. Then my guess would just be just it's just a result of that.
SPEAKER_07Things are just trying to I never got that excited about two ladies together, though. That's not something that ever really did a whole lot for. Good to know.
SPEAKER_06Um one thing you did mention though, like it's more of a recent thing, I guess, in like went western culture, but it like it has been kind of a big thing in China for quite a while. Like uh it got banned recently, like last year, I think. Um, where novels of of gay romance.
SPEAKER_07She's taking care of that stuff.
SPEAKER_06But um, but it's been around for uh for quite a long time and it was very popular. It's never like you know outwardly published at the big publishing houses, but it it was definitely written and like there was like massive forms for it um for a couple of decades.
SPEAKER_03Japan is the boy love genre, I believe. Yoi is common in like anime and things like that. One thing that stood out to me when I was I was looking at you know why they like it, you know, female readers or whatever. Like it's totally makes sense, you know, as something fun of fun and steamy, but but why is it like male-male specific? I don't know what thing that a lot of people I saw say is that if if you're if if you're reading something that is a pure escape, pure guilty pleasure, like relaxation, you want to forget the world, sometimes it'll it removes any potential like problematic aspects that you might have in male-female romances, in the sense that the characters are kind of on like a level playing field. There's no potentially misogynistic or patriarchal undertones or whatever. It's just kind of like a pure fantasy, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um, so I I wonder, I mean, at least I see I've seen that as a reason enjoyers, you know, say that they they like it so much.
SPEAKER_07Uh it's just kind of like a nice, happy the but the TV show heated rivalry is it's pretty horny. Like, is that is that characteristic of the genre as a whole where there is a lot of like man love, like physical dude, like like banging. Like I'm I'm into it. You and I watched it, we thought it was great, but yeah, I you know I don't know if that's par for the course or what.
SPEAKER_03This is just my impression, but I think when it comes to erotica, like I think women tend to track more towards enjoying writ written works, like they like reading things, and then men are more visual, just like pornography. Maybe I'm just making a broad stereotypes here, but I don't know. Um but yeah, the show is more of like direct raw. And so I feel like the show actually was kind of more made for a gay male audience, uh if that makes sense. It was kind of made for the boys, um, but very popular with with women as well, of course. Yeah, I d I don't know. It's it's an interesting genre because it's huge. It's like a huge, huge uh subsection of romance which dominates literature these days. It's also kind of the total opposite of Sean Avery writing a romance novel. Um, if you want to talk about a safe space
Book Review: Summer Skate
SPEAKER_03that's free of misogyny or patriarchy.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, sure. So I think that's a great transition. So thanks for uh bringing us uh out of the book report into our feature presentation, uh, our feature segment, Summer Skates, written by Sean Avery. Who's his co-author on this one? There was a lady. I mean, I we're gonna we're gonna pretend we're a book podcast.
SPEAKER_03Another tab here.
SPEAKER_04Leslie Cohen.
SPEAKER_03Leslie Cohen.
SPEAKER_04Speaking of, no one can remember the the female author's name. It's got nothing to do with their gender.
SPEAKER_03Uh to be honest, that's probably us doing her a favor. Uh, if we don't know, yeah.
SPEAKER_07I think it makes sense to give an overview of Sean Avery for people who may be less familiar or unfamiliar with him. I I've got a rundown of some of his better known um actions and incidents. I'm happy to run through it, uh, unless you had something lined up there, Chip.
SPEAKER_03I don't. Um, but yeah, like I mean, the guy's just I can't think of anyone. There are a few people that are more associated with the term piece of shit, I think, than Sean Avery. If you look at any description anywhere, yeah, you'll just see people warning each other like, don't read this. This guy is the most despicable piece of shit on earth.
SPEAKER_07I'm gonna try to be concise. It's a long list. He's probably best known in hockey, at least for the Avery rule. So back in so you he was a he was uh a well-known player on the New York Rangers, and during the was it during the playoffs or regular season? I'd have to double check that. But anyways, basically what he would do is he would stand it facing the goalie. So the goalie's facing the play, he's got his back to the play, and he's facing the goalie, and he's waving his arms around in an attempt to screen the goalie. Now, screening the goalie is a legitimate move in hockey, but they hadn't anticipated that somebody would act like a complete jackass in the way that he was acting. And it led to the Avery rule was implemented to specifically ban this type of embarrassing behavior. So, but that only scratches the surface of what this guy's done. Same year, prior to a game against the Calgary Flames, Avery told reporters it was a common thing for NHL players to fall in love with his quote, sloppy seconds, referring to his ex-girlfriend Alicia Cuthbert, who was then dating Flames defenseman Dion Feneuf. Well, I mean, no one's crying any tears for Dion Feneuf, but that's a nasty thing to say. And the NHL suspended Avery for six games and mandated anger management counseling. There was a guy on the Toronto Maple Eaves, Jason Blake, who got a leukemia diagnosis. Avery made inappropriate comments about this uh diagnosis during a pregame altercation. The league fined him $2,500. Former teammates and coaches alleged that Avery bullied teammate Dustin Brown. This is when he played on the Los Angeles Kings, specifically mocking Alisp and making disparaging comments about Brown's then girlfriend during a playoff series when Broder refused to shake Avery's hand. This is the goalie that he was screening. Uh, Avery later referred to the legendary goaltender as, quote, fatso to the media. He was one of the first players find under the NHL's new rules for what they call embellishment or basically diving, you know, acting like a European soccer player. He was convicted of road rage twice. He attempted criminal mischief after an incident where he slammed his scooter into a car during a dispute over a New York City bike lane. He was sent to time served. Uh, he was accused on multiple occasions of using obscenities towards fans and hecklers, including an incident involving a female fan in Nashville. And then more seriously, he it is alleged by his wife that he was guilty of multiple instances of domestic battery. She detailed an incident in September 2022 where Avery allegedly broke into her home, climbed into her bed twice, and physically shook her by the arms until police were called. He is alleged to have been physically and emotionally abusive towards her son. He, quote, body slammed the toddler onto a changing table while the kid was being fussy, punching walls and doors in front of the child while screaming. He habitually put the kid in danger by failing to use a car seat. All right, well, okay, no one's perfect. Uh driving erratically and allowing the child to access marijuana and drug paraphernalia. I don't know the details of that, but that was uh a deposition from his um his wife. He dismissed these concerns as the wife as being quote crazy. And then finally, according to Rhoda, this is his wife, Avery admitted to an addiction to oxycontin, which he blamed for his quote bad behavior and aggressive outbursts. Uh, interestingly, he has since reconciled, though, with uh his wife. Anyways, yeah, so you have inappropriate comments, um, the Sean Avery rule, making fun of people with leukemia, uh, road rage conviction, heckling women, beating up his wife, abusing his son, and uh abusing drugs as well. And number one bestseller. And number one bestseller, like a real like well-rounded piece of shit. Like if you if he sort of if he excelled in any one of those areas, you'd be like, Yeah, the guy's he's he's a solid, like you know, eight out of ten piece of shit. But to be so well-rounded that both professionally, personally, you know, in your just free time, that you're just a total rat bastard to everybody, like it's it's almost enviable.
SPEAKER_03He he also, I'm sure I think we've all watched them together, but he also, for example, bikes around New York City and sort of just like picks fights with homeless people. If there's like workers that are parked in a bike lane, he'll just pull up and be just like, What the fuck are you doing, you fucking dumbass? But the strange thing about this is that he just Yeah, that was the road rage conviction, but yeah, but he he's he did this for like Oh, there's tons of videos of him of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like like this is he just posts this online regularly. This is like he loves it. His on his presence.
SPEAKER_07He's like an anti-bike lane guy.
SPEAKER_03But he no, he loves bike lines. He hates people clogging up bike lines.
SPEAKER_07Excuse me, yeah.
SPEAKER_03He like he he he takes this like real pleasure in like cruelty very clearly. Um if I found out someday that Sean Avery went to some remote property and paid to like hunt humans, I I wouldn't really be surprised because he has this like true villainy. I if I I've watched stuff on him in the past that he's showed up in because he's been in media for like a long time. Like he's he has cameos in different movies. He was kind of like being on the Rangers before he's kind of I think got connected with like the New York social scene or whatever, and didn't know.
SPEAKER_07Well he's like a model following his NHL career, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, I think he kind of considers himself an intellectual and like a creative and things like that.
SPEAKER_07Right.
SPEAKER_03But I remember watching one thing where like it's him showing off his apartment, and every time whenever he comes in, he like washes his shoes in the sink every single time he comes in from outside. There's a lot of odd things that just sort of seem like a psychopath to me.
SPEAKER_06That is psychopathic behavior.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, it's worth checking out like his his Twitter or I don't know, was he posting on YouTube? But yeah, he was for a while there really active, and you're absolutely right. He leans into being a villain, he's a guy who's pretty media savvy, and for whatever reason, he just likes this image, this public image of him just like a being a scumbag. So like he plays a scumbag on TV, but he is also a piece of shit. Like if you watch the videos and think, ha, you know, this guy's like he's kind of like he's he's charming and dashing. Yeah, but he's also abusing his wife and like popping pills and yeah, you know, punching guys out and stuff.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, he he does it like for the love of the game. It's not it's not just an act.
SPEAKER_07Big time.
SPEAKER_03This is a bit of an aside, but I think you'd describe him as a metrosexual. Yeah, yeah, I mean that was a thing, I think so. Yeah, well, that was I was thinking, I was talking, I was thinking about that the other day. I'm like, what happened to the metrosexuals? Because they're all gone. That that classification doesn't exist, but he's a very vintage metrosexual to me.
SPEAKER_07And he came about during like metrosexuality probably peaked in like the early aughts. Like that's when people like guys were really putting a lot of effort into their like you you probably had great hair at that time. I had hair, but like fantastic hair. They go for the cheap shots today.
SPEAKER_04Excuse me. Inspired by Avery.
SPEAKER_07It's not a cheap shot. That's not a cheap no no. That that was that was me trying to be sincere and nice. I was saying he had nice hair in the aughts, and he was a metrosexual man. You were collared shirts.
SPEAKER_03My eldest brother was like a real proper metrosexual. It was like in that way that he was like all about fashion, but he hated women at the same time.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Isn't that just a homosexual? That's that's I think a hobosexual? What did you say? A homosexual. If you hate women and you're really into fashion, I mean that's not metro.
SPEAKER_04Gay men don't necessarily hate women.
SPEAKER_06But yeah, no, that's metro. If if you're attracted to men, you can hate women without being attracted to men, and vice versa. Oh, that's true. I feel like half our audience probably falls into that category.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, probably.
SPEAKER_03Metrosexuals kind of lean pickup artist to me. Yeah. Which I think are also gone.
SPEAKER_07They rebranded. Yeah, I mean, not to go too far off topic, but yeah, like the the I think the idea of pickup artists as sort of a mathematical formula that you can apply to getting laid is people have realized that that's funk. But there's still like like the past pork pro movement, men's right movement, it's still alive and well. Like it's as James said it's really been sort of rebranded.
SPEAKER_03I think the metrosexual, some they kind of got carved out. Some of them maybe went pick up artistry or something, a lot of them probably got back injuries.
SPEAKER_07And some of them, some of them wrote romance novels. So this book came out in 2025. It's actually a recent release. And if you one of the interesting things, as Chip said, if you look, if you Google the book at all, you go to any romance forms on Reddit or just like separate places, it's it's universally panned. It's so everyone writes like DNF, did not finish. And we'll get into some of the issues that people have with the book, but it usually starts with like this guy's a real piece of shit, this book's a piece of shit, Sean Avery's book.
SPEAKER_03I saw that a lot actually on the Siemen Retential Bible, too. Uh DNF. Because they didn't come. Yeah, but that was the first I heard that. That's a good one. Um looking uh looking around on SummerSkate, that was the first time I saw the term, the DNF. But yeah, it was pretty much DNF across the board.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, looking at like the the subreddit, hard note for me. This dude does need to be platformed. Yeah, I'm definitely not reading that book. There's a surprising amount of like hockey literacy in the romance subreddit, which I I thought was kind of fun. Uh kind of into this whole concept until I clicked on that link. Thanks, he gets zero of my money. Another person just read the allegations, just awful. Mr. Baby Body Slammer over here.
SPEAKER_03I do have let me play this if I can uh on Sean Avery. I've got his introduction to the book uh on that I found on Instagram that I just wanted to pull.
SPEAKER_07Terrific. I haven't heard this, so I'm excited.
SPEAKER_02All right, here we go. Summer skate, the hottest book of the summer. I gave a copy to a friend of mine yesterday. She called me this morning. She said, That's a horny little book you got there, pal. You're goddamn right. Game changer. I'm not gonna put the entire romance novel industry on blast, just the sports romance novel industry. It's time to step up your game. Game changer, matter of fact, should be the title to the follow-up of Summerskate. Carter Hughes is a dangerous man on and off the ice. Think more bull Durham than hard hitter. The pages are real, the pages are beautiful. Summerskate. I can't even read some of this book on Instagram, it would kick me off.
SPEAKER_07He's like a maggot first.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's true. He's doing Trump a little bit. He has a few more things to say, though. There's a lot of fucking. There's a lot of fucking.
SPEAKER_07Finish your scene. Yeah, it's a fucking lie, too. There's like maybe two fuck scenes in the whole book.
SPEAKER_03It's false advertisements.
SPEAKER_00Well, he only said it twice. There's a lot of fucking. There's a lot of fucking.
SPEAKER_02It's just I this is uh you can hit the pre-link order and go to Amazon, or you can walk into your local bookstore and say, I want this book. It's ready to go. I want it now. Summer skate. Summer skate. Some might say my Magnus Opus 2025. Let's go.
SPEAKER_04Magnus Opus. Real pages. Lotta fucking.
SPEAKER_07I don't know. Did we make it clear that it's a romance book that this guy wrote? If that hasn't been stated explicitly, yeah, it's a straight romance and not a gay romance, but just yeah, a lot of fucking. A lot of fucking. You know, actually, so I you three are married. I'm single, and um, you know, so I'm not in a regular committed relationship. And so I was reading the book, and like I I will admit there were like some passages where like I'd start to get like horned up a little bit, and I'd be like, Oh yeah, but that's like what first of all, the writing's horrible, but it's also like that's Sean Avery writing this. It's what he thinks is sexy. It's like that's instant boner killer.
SPEAKER_04Can I just say if he actually does go ahead with writing the sequel Game Changer, clearly he the characters have a rival who's like a Swedish forward whose name is Magnus Opus.
SPEAKER_07All right, so let's get into it then. Summer skate, written by Sean Avery. The plot is pretty straightforward. There's two characters essentially. That's all you really need to know. There is Carter, who is a young hockey player, just got drafted by the Rangers. He's renting a house in the summer in the Hamptons. He's hanging out with two of his buddies. They spend a lot of time chasing skirt, drinking, partying, doing drugs, whatever. Uh, the other main character, the female lead, is Jessica. Jessica is a married writer with one child, two children. Anyway, she has kids, and she is struggling to finish her second novel. Her agent sends her to an empty house in the Hamptons so that she can be uh she can have some seclusion and finish this book. The house is right beside Carter's rental, and romance ensues between the two of them. The book follows a format where in alternating chapters, they're from the perspective of either Jessica or Carter, back and forth, back and forth. Um anything I'm missing? Really, I think that's the sort of the broad strokes.
SPEAKER_04The way that the book starts, like the opening chapter to introduce the character of Carter, is basically a story of him going out to a bar, which doesn't make sense because at this time he should be a teenager way under the age in New York, but anyway, and someone basically calls him a pussy or something for taking a penalty or something like that. Uh, and so he responds by basically just turning around and beating three people mercilessly, including one guy who he punches in the face so hard that both his ears start bleeding uh and he needs to phone an ambulance. And this is like the setup of the character we're supposed to like. Like you immediately fucking hate him. Immediately.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, both the characters are both the characters are terrible people. The lady, I mean, it in in the lady's opening chapter, it's you know, her with her husband who seems like a handsome, successful, lovely, caring man. I I don't see how you are meant to sympathize with either of these characters.
SPEAKER_03I don't know much about the the genre, but I imagine if you're doing like romance around affairs, it's probably quite difficult to do it in a way that doesn't just disgust your audience.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And then in this case, both of the characters are completely unlikable.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, the guy, so so Carter Carter's like insane. So there's I mean, that that's only the first in many reprehensible uh actions that he's responsible for throughout the book. He's so he's a nut. He's he's clearly crazy. He he takes uh a cocktails approach to romance. You guys must have seen the 1980s Tom Cruise movie Cocktails, where if you watch it kind of and you're only half paying attention, you're like, Yeah, Tom Cruise, he's like, he's this lovely, eligible bachelor, he's pursuing Elizabeth's shoe, and he's charming, and you know, he's he's kind of old-fashioned, he's he's really doing his best to woo her. But when you look at the movie, you're like, this guy is like, he's a violent stalker, and he's out of his mind. One of the in the first, what's the first or second uh time that Carter and Jessica are hanging out, he invites her to a party at his house. And she's quite attracted to him and realizes that she should leave the party before anything untoward happens. And as she's going back to her house, she's like, okay, well, maybe instead of taking the road, I'll cut through the woods. And then she hears someone behind her and she starts sprinting back to her house, uh, through the woods, and realizes that Carter is behind her. She runs through the door, she locks the door behind her, she braces the door with a chair uh so that Carter can't break in and do whatever. And then he ends up rapping on the door, knocking louder and louder and louder, and refuses to go away. And this is the second time they've met. They haven't, there's been no physical intimacy, they barely know each other, and he's chasing this lady through the woods like a half-to-range serial killer.
SPEAKER_04Presumably, your comparison to cocktails as well is based on the fact that you're they're trying to get with women by getting them wasted and like plying them with booze and drugs and stuff.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_07If you watch Tom Cruise movies, there's like often a scene where he like runs in anger either at people or just like off into the night. It's a common trope in Tom Cruise movies that I think doesn't get discussed enough.
SPEAKER_03Did the male character seem like a Sean Avery stand-in? Like as a man that's like hunts women and things.
SPEAKER_06Sorry, were you asking we were you asking Booker as a man that hunts women if he recognized?
SPEAKER_03If he recognized his own kind. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, game recognizes game.
SPEAKER_03No, but I mean I thought he was, but I was curious if it was obvious to everyone that that uh it it seemed like it's Sean Avery. I mean also the guys in anger management uh courses and things like that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, he's got he's got the same favorite band, Fish. It makes a point of saying that in the book and in the notes at the end. His dream is to be on the Rangers, same as Avery. I mean, he's got the exact same sort of character as Sean Avery. But the same is true of the female character as well, right? She's from the Upper West Side of New York. She's a struggling writer, you know, she writes romance. Yeah, it's it's like so thinly veiled for both of them. Um and they both, it just it just almost seems surprising that people are just so willing to make themselves look like such awful people through these characters.
SPEAKER_07Well, you hit the nail on the head when you said that you're shocked uh at how Sean would like to be perceived or how he wants others to see him because there's so you highlighted him attacking the three townies. Uh he slams one of their heads into the concrete, they bleed from the ears, and then he calls the police and says that he's been attacked by these three men um to make his retaliation, quote, easier to sell. So that's bad enough. But then also he goes on in detail uh about how in the first grade he targeted a deaf classmate because he didn't think that the boy was actually deaf. And so he claps at him and tries to uh startle him and then ends up getting detention for it. And like he would he would just like bully this deaf kid and torment him relentlessly. And it feels so specific that it's like that happened. Yeah, yeah, he must have beat up a deaf kid when he was when he was younger, and then perhaps toned it down a little bit for the book to make it more palatable. Uh, there's another scene where he's Carter's in a yoga class, and there was this woman from a couple nights before that was trying to pursue him. She's depicted as sort of vapid, but overall pleasant and nice. And he just verbally attacks her in the yoga class, calling her devoid of personality, telling her to spend more money on her appearance, and she ends up crying in this yoga class and runs out of the room, at which point I think he gets tossed out of the yoga class as well. And it just goes back to Chip's point about him just kind of being villainous and mean. Yeah. There seems to be like some joy that's taken in in making this woman cry and in sort of belittling her in front of a group of her peers.
SPEAKER_03It's it's just like such a vile thing. Like if you think about the romance genre as some kind of safe space for like women to enjoy themselves.
SPEAKER_08Yeah.
SPEAKER_03This book just has like all this nastiness to it. To me, it's like a true piece of shit within that genre. There's like a yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, there's a really interesting sort of metaphor there of like like Avery coming rushing into that safe space where he's not supposed to go and go, look at me and distracting from attention. It's almost like the perfect like the literary version of the Sean Avery rule, which is Avery standing in front of the universally loved, universally loved Mot Martin Brodeur. Like, does anyone have anything bad to say about that man? And waving his hands in the face.
SPEAKER_07Devils of that time, but yeah.
SPEAKER_03I found the hockey podcast he was talking on that supposed where he's supposedly said this, but it was like a four-hour podcast. I can't like click through this. Right. Um, but he like he basically said he's like, Oh yeah, I just heard that like you can make a lot of money in that genre, and it's a bunch of chicks that don't know anything about hockey, so I figured I'd put a book out. He's like, he was like so dismissive and like blatant about uh this just being a money grab.
SPEAKER_07I gotta figure that his co-writer authored most of the book, and he kind of just gave some anecdotes about his time as an NHL player and and perhaps you know a little bit of uh color about all of the deaf and disabled kids that he beat up in his childhood.
SPEAKER_04Should we do you wanna give should we give like a rundown of the actual plot? Go for it if you want. I mean, there's not a lot to say. It's the the the author, the author character goes, yeah, go leaves her family and kind of like pretends she's mentally ill so she can go stay in the Hamptons for a month and just focus on writing and leave her husband and and kids.
SPEAKER_06Can I just ask, does she have a bad relationship with her husband? Are they like no? No, no.
SPEAKER_07He's see he's handsome, uh, rich investment banker. He's like a suave Hispanic guy, he's good with the kids, he takes care of her. She's she's depicted as being maybe a bit bored, and she's a bit of a renegade, you know. She's a she's not cut from the same cloth as all the other moms in the upper west side.
SPEAKER_03She talks about motherhood as like being like an obedient farmer. So the the important thing with this book is that it's these first-person perspective between the two engaged in the affair. And I don't know, half the book is their inner monologues. So the the husband, the husband that she cheats on, he only serves like uh as this this guilt uh component, basically. It's like he's there, he's introduced, so that you have something for her to have all these internal guilty monologues about later on.
SPEAKER_07Gotcha. He doesn't really that's every other character in the book. They just serve like a very practical narrative purpose. Um, they're not fleshed out characters. The husband maybe has like three or four lines in the whole book. It's the same thing with his buddies, uh the hockey players' buddies who he lives with. Um, you know, they're just there.
SPEAKER_06Before we get too deep into all this, sorry, I just wanted that quick, quick uh context. But Bo, can you continue the uh the plot?
SPEAKER_03I wanted to ask you one thing though, Bo, on that too. Didn't you find it weird that she like just faked like a mental illness to get away from her family?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's the same thing with like the the card, the the Sean Avery character where it's just like you just immediately dislike her. Yeah. And usually, usually it's like that build-up and the tension, and you like them and you want them both to succeed and come together. But and then as the book progresses, I mean it's the plot's not really that interesting. It's just like a back and forth, will they, won't they? Um, she's married, but they both want each other. But then he enters a competition with his hockey buddies to bang as many women as possible, and they have a point list of like the quality of the women, how many points you get, like six points for a model and two points for a yoga chick or whatever. So you just hate them more and more. Uh, and then it gets it builds up to to the the Sean Avery character being called by the owner of the New York Rangers and basically told he's gonna he's gonna play. And that's and that's they that's that's the plot. Like it's it's it's awful, it's not interesting, there's no tension that that you care about, uh, and you hate them both.
SPEAKER_07Well, that that's not quite it. He so in another act of another born act, he beats up some guy unprovoked in a restaurant and throws him into a table full of women, and that guy turns out to be an influential guy who's connected to the owner of the Rangers, who then uh summons him to his mansion and tells him, like, yeah, you're gonna be a star, but you better um shape up and uh fly right, or we're gonna ship you out. Oh, and he's for some reason banging the married author, he knows about it, and it's a big deal. He's like, You better be banging pop stars and banging this married author. We don't us on the Rangers, you know, we don't play that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, he gets in a little bit of trouble.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, yeah. Heat.
SPEAKER_04But they they also try to like there's a very thinly veiled attempt to make the the Sean Avery character, I forget his name in the book, Sean Avery, to make his character card or whatever, um, to make his character more likable. Like, she makes a comment at one point about a reference to like, what is the romance book you're writing? She's like, Oh, you know, it's uh it's taking the plot of the Ulysses and it's transposing it onto the narrative of the Odyssey. And he makes a comment that says, Oh, you know, it all happens in a single day, right? And she's like, You've read Ulysses or something. And they're supposed to, you know, he'll he's actually an intellectual. And he even in another scene knows Shakespeare and can start reciting it because his passion was always acting, which for the record also true of Sean Avery, right? Actually, don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure I read that he studied theater at one point and acting, and now he tried is trying to become an actor. Yeah, yeah, correct.
SPEAKER_06Does he have any cameos? He was in Oppenheimer, yeah. There's a bunch of cameos.
SPEAKER_03He was in Shoresy, which uh the show before uh heated rivalry from the same creator. That's kind of obvious, it's just a hockey one. But the odd one is that he's been in two Christopher Nolan movies, he'd been in Tenant and uh Oppenheimer.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's weird. It's also the character's got a huge dong. Don't forget. That's also made very clear. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07One of the things that I thought was interesting about the book is they didn't make any attempt to it's all set in the real world. And but it's not an NHL licensed product. Uh, and I think that's that's something that's sort of unusual. So they, you know, he plays for the Rangers. He um there's a couple of hockey players that are either mentioned or appear in the book. So uh Brady Kachuk has a cameo in the book, he shows up as himself at some kind of media event. Mentioned is Sidney Crosby. Sidney Crosby catches a little bit of heat. I it was in my notes, I don't know. But it it's sort of clear that he doesn't have a lot of respect for Sidney Crosby. Uh also mentioned is uh who's the uh the brawler on the Rangers? Matt Rempe. Matt Rempey is mentioned as so he talks to this little kid and he asks the kid, like, who's your favorite hockey player? And he's like, Matt Rempey. He's like, Oh, that kid's a maniac.
SPEAKER_03It's a psycho. What's really weird about it is that like okay, there's like there's not really anything about hockey in the book. Like it's the it's not gonna give you any insight into hockey or anything like that, other than sort of um maybe making a fantasy of like the bro banging chicks culture side of it or something. But why is there then all this real world dressing? Like, I I would have thought that like the Rangers maybe would have heard of maybe knew about it and said, don't include us in this book. You'd think so. You know, it's not flattering. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you would think that if a hockey player is writing a romance, the one thing they could bring to it is like some kind of perspective on hockey, but it doesn't actually provide that. It's just like, here's some names.
SPEAKER_07Well, and and it and it kind of begs the question is like, who does it appeal to? Because it's not going to appeal to anyone who likes hockey, and it doesn't appeal to romance fans because of the cheating, because it's written by uh a domestic abuser, and because it's generally poorly written. Who's the target audience? Us, I guess.
SPEAKER_04He wrote it so that it could get torn apart on a podcast that nobody listens to. You know, one thing that I thought was really odd about so there's you know, to to quote Sean Avery, there's a lot of fucking in this book. But there, you know, I think there's is there two sex scenes or three? Two or three. There's not nearly enough. Yeah. Is like Chip, you earlier noted this type of literature, especially if it's written for women, it's it's written in a well that's a way that's going to appeal to a woman, not to someone like Sean Avery and how they'd actually behave in this certain scenario. So the the sex is usually written as being, you know, uh much more consensual, much more, you know, engaging. It was noticeable about the book is is how much of that is in this book. Um, in that, apart from the the scene where he's doing the Tom Cruise running moment, in the actual sex scenes, it's very much entirely respectful. He verbally requests consent multiple times before doing anything, including like uh you know, removing her clothes and stuff like that. And even the first sex scene is uh entirely him going down on her, I think. It just it just stood out to me so strongly as being, you know, well, that's obviously a part of the book where the female writer has had a lot more influence on it, and the Sean Avery has been completely edited out, and it's completely incongruent with the character who's doing bang lists and bets with his friends about who he can slam and trying to get chicks drunk and take drugs so he can bang them. Like it just it's completely incongruent with the rest of the narrative.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so she didn't ask Avery for notes on specifically how he didn't how he would do the sex. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07Well, I mean one of the one of the bangs does come after like a heated argument, um, and he he gets her in the car, and then they go in the rain to the beach to bang. And they're it's it's funny because it's as they're driving and they're there's like tension, they're angry at each other. The book is very specific about what song comes on, and it's the song number 41 from the album Live at Luther College, and so it's clearly one of Sean Avery's like favorite romance bang and songs. And I I mean, I don't know Dave Matthews, so I put it on. It's just the weakest pile of steam and shit you've ever heard. It's like you know, late 90s college rock, it sucks. You can picture Sean Avery listening to in his car with just like this shitty and grin on his face cruising around Manhattan.
SPEAKER_05You're like, oh fuck, this guy sucks.
SPEAKER_06In the book, this song randomly comes on on the radio.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, there so they get in an argument, no way, and he's he like convinces her to get in his car so he can drive her home, and then it starts raining, so they can't roll down the windows, and then like this song comes on, and he's like, I fucking love this song.
SPEAKER_06Unless it's a college radio, there's no way that song is getting played.
SPEAKER_07All that said, I enjoyed reading this book maybe more than any other book I think we've read on this podcast so far. Oh, I wow, I actually really enjoyed it, and it may have been like a set and setting thing. Um, I was on a beach holiday at this gorgeous beach all week when I was reading this book, just kind of laying in a hammock, and it was the best beach read. Usually, I don't want to sound like a stuffy intellectual, usually I only read nonfiction, as you heard from my uh Livingston book earlier that I was talking about. I, you know, a real serious academic treatise. So it was nice to take a break and whine and just read like, yeah, a proper piece of shit. I've never read a romance before. This is my first introduction to romance, and I was thinking like, if this is a bad example of romance, I really want to get into the genre because it's really a lot of fun. So it may have awakened something inside of me. Amazing.
SPEAKER_03You're converted. That's amazing.
SPEAKER_07Because I I understand that Jane didn't read the book from this conversation, but I also understand that Chip and Bo didn't appreciate the book as much as I did.
SPEAKER_03I actually did enjoy it in a way. There were certain lines in it, like uh it's like talking about his friend, and he's like, JT is a left-winger from Canada. He loves electronic music, like Deep House. He plays it every chance he gets. He dresses like a white rapper and doesn't give a fuck about anything. He's always high, always going up or down. He sniffs out all the late night parties, but he knows who he is. He's accepted it, and I mean that. He has an arm tattoo that says, I am what I am. It was just the way it was written, just like I I just had so many there's so many paragraphs that he just had a laugh at. Yeah. So I I that's I I enjoyed it in that sense. But for you, it's it's you're you're converted. You're a big romance guy now.
SPEAKER_07Nothing wrong with that. Let's see. I'm uh I'm a romantic at heart, so this may have been the genre that I should have been reading my whole life. Uh and Bo, you didn't enjoy the book.
SPEAKER_04No, I think I mean I'm not no expert on romance, but I think the strength of romance is about building. I'm a romantic guy, but I I don't can't claim to be an expert on the on the genre. But I think the basic keys are like having, and I'm pretty sure the term is a meat cute, like that moment where they actually meet and there's some side of tension. You want them, and then they're pulled apart and you want them to get back together, and then there's tension about whether or not they will, and then there's some steamy sex. And this just doesn't have that, so it's missing like the core of the genre. And I'm not even sure if we explained for the benefits of the the the listeners and for Jane Lynch, who hopefully will never read the book, how the book ends. Did we actually say how the book ends?
SPEAKER_07No, nothing we did. No, it's it's worth getting into that.
SPEAKER_04Really simply, Sean Avery gets called up to be the future captain of the Rangers, and he starts banging some pop star um and who he who he hates and has no respect for, and she just goes back to her husband uh and just returns to her normal life without any form of consequences. And then there's a slight ambiguity at the end where he thinks, like, I'm gonna go up to the upper west side, implying he's going to going to try to see her again to continue the affair and rip apart the family. It's it doesn't have those key points that you want from romance.
SPEAKER_07While they were in the Hamptons, they could be themselves and they could be wild and free, but in New York, they're forced to fit into these rigid archetypes, and she has to be, you know, this sort of upper west side bomb who's a professional and kind of a uh has a great life, great husband, great kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she's got this great life, and he's he's got a totally different life, and never the uh the two shall meet.
SPEAKER_03It's basically summer just ends.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what in terms of like the genre as well. Like if someone's cheating on their partner, you want to be rooting in favor of the cheating, not against it. Like the the example that just popped into my brain is the movie Titanic, where you've got the K Winslett's character, Billy Zane, who's I think it's Billy Zane's actually he's really the hero of the movie, but go ahead. He's most certainly not. Um like everyone agrees that he's not, but but he's despicable and he's a despicable character. And so you want Rose to get away from from Cal, the Billy Zane guy, and into the arms of uh of of Leo DiCaprio's character, whatever his name is, Jack. Like you want them, you want them to be pulled apart. Whereas in this one, as Chip said earlier, it's just the husband's just a nice guy, just a normal guy. So, like, why would you cheer for his life? This poor man.
SPEAKER_07It's a baddie old woman is telling this story that happened a hundred years ago on the salvage vessel. She has got the diamond. Billy Zane was like a nice guy who was just trying to bring his fiancee over to New York. She goes running around with that scallywag Leo, breaking hearts, embarrassing the man, and really acting like a total bitch. So I if you re-watch it critically, you realize that Billy Zane, he's actually a good guy. And all of the nasty stuff that he does, like backhanding his wife and stuff like that, you could chalk that up to Rose's unreliable narrator status who was just kind of making it up, doesn't quite remember, wants to spin it so that she comes out smelling fresh, not buying it.
SPEAKER_03This is a theory you heard from your QAnon buddies or something.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, we sit around talking Titanic theories.
SPEAKER_04The real controversy from the end is is, of course, there's this gigantic ship full of people who've dedicated their lives to finding this jewel, which she has and she could just give to them, but instead she throws it into the ocean, just wasting all of their time and energy and resources uh when she's come along for this free ride to you know out to see on their research vessel.
SPEAKER_07She's no saint. All right, look, anything more we want to say about uh summer skate? That's the point. The point we're here to talk about this hockey romance book.
SPEAKER_04Can I make one last point about this book? Because the book starts with you hating the characters, and I think it ends with you even hating the the authors. But I don't know if you fellas read the very last page of the book of the acknowledgments, because it makes them both look awful. So if I just read that, Sean would like to thank Leslie for all the early morning texts and her overall flagrant disregard for the time difference in California and New York and for teaching him uh notes uh and then tolerating when he threw it back in her face, and for not getting easily offended when he started the calls with I need a cigarette before I talk to you, and frequently saying, Can I go now? And my brain is melting. Leslie would like to thank Sean for teaching her that waxed is a combination of drunk and high, and for the hot max volume words of encouragement and the videos of fingers being severed by skates.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, he contributed nothing to the writing of the book then. Yeah, clearly. But I think that's a great place to uh to put a pin in this episode. Uh, I want to thank all of the book club membership uh worldwide, but especially the three who agreed to come on the podcast today and share their thoughts and feelings, their candid desires, what they love, what they hate. Um, we'll be back with a new episode soon. And in the meantime, likes, comment, subscribe, send us hate mail, visit www.posbookclub.com. We appreciate every single listener. It means a tremendous amount to us. We love doing this project and hope we can continue to do it to bring you the best in shitlit. In the meantime, take care. I love you. Good night.