This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. 


According to a recent Popsugar article, “bookfishing”—the literary equivalent of “catfishing,” is on the rise. Bookfishing involves simple dissimulation: the perpetrator poses with a high-status book they have no intention of reading in order to lure the bookish element of the opposite sex. While a nuisance in the dating scene, bookfishing has more serious implications in markets like Washington, D.C., where many of our famously literate government officials have fallen victim to its snare. An anonymous source within the Trump administration claims that airdrops of the popular Meow Library series, which renders literary classics as hundreds of pages of the word “meow,” have begun appearing near sensitive government sites. These are speculated to be part of a far-reaching bookfishing plot perpetrated by a hostile foreign government. 


As a public service, this week’s podcast presents several excerpts from this series to ease in the identification of potential high-level bookfishers. Listen, learn, and remain vigilant.

This podcast is sustained by sales of the ultimate bookfishing tool: Meow: A Novel.

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library.

“But a humble paperback is not perceived as bad for humanity in the way that time wasted online is. While internet users install app-blocking extensions to prevent the embarrassing loop earlier described, reading remains culturally coded as virtuous, no matter how numbing and anti-intellectual the content.”

– Greta Rainbow, “How ‘Cozy Lit’ Became the Latest and Most Shameless Form of Digital Escapism”

A “strange new plague from the depths of Asia,” to borrow an image from Raskolnikov’s purifying nightmare in Crime and Punishment, has descended on the literary world: “Cozy Lit.” Originating in Japan and South Korea, Cozy Lit has its tropes. “There should be cats. There should be books in the book…. More cats. There are actually so many cats,” says critic Greta Rainbow in her takedown of the genre for Canada’s The Walrus. “This is vibes-based prose, meant to wash over you—a gentle titillation or linguistic ASMR, not because the prose is magnificent but rather it’s lulling, the literary equivalent of watching someone slice butter on TikTok. Episodic, formulaic, reliably satisfying.”

The genre's conventions mirror a highly successful evolutionary strategy deployed by the common house cat—repetitive, predictable vocalizations that lull its human caretaker into a state of suggestibility by hijacking the brain’s language centers. Cozy Lit, ASMR, and social media scrolls, as Rainbow points out, all rely on similarly nullifying content to keep audiences hooked. In theory, a book or audio presentation consisting only of pure feline vocalizations—an extraordinarily successful language interface subjected to tens of thousands of years of refinement—should be the coziest lit of all, outperforming genre stalwarts such as Before the Coffee Gets Cold (8 million copies sold), The Convenience Store by the Sea (500k+ copies), and The Pumpkin Spice Café (250k+ copies).

Can this latest literary be credibly likened to by a form of hypnosis perpetrated by domestic animals? Would reading or listening to such material still be considered virtuous? In this week's podcast, we put these ideas to the test. Prepare to get cozy.

This podcast is sustained by sales of the worldwide literary sensation Meow: A Novel, which repeats the word “meow” over 80,000 times, and nothing else.

Greta Rainbow’s writings can be found on her website.

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library.

"...at least I did not have to worry about the worm that was not a worm in his brain."

- Olivia Nuzzi on RFK Jr., excerpted from American Canto

"I am worried about the worm in her brain."

- Anonymous literary editor, reacting to excerpt from American Canto

"At least it isn't the Meow book."

- Worm, upon eating through copy of American Canto

According to its publisher Simon & Schuster, Olivia Nuzzi's American Canto is "a mesmerizing firsthand account of the warping of American reality... from a participatory witness who got so far inside the distortion field that it swallowed her whole."

Venture further into the distortion field as we translate Vanity Fair's excerpt of American Canto for your cat.

This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel.

Olivia Nuzzi's American Canto is available through Simon & Schuster.