Carrie Sessarego and Sarah discuss the badass Victorian women Carrie has been researching, including travelers, scientists, inventors and spies. She talks about them in a presentation she gives titled, “Victorian Women Who Out-Steampunked Steampunk.” We also discuss books she’s enjoyed recently and what she’s reading now.
During the podcast, Carrie mentions two books that she can’t remember the titles of, but she remembers tons of details (welcome to Sarah’s brain!). Those books, which of course she remembered after we stopped recording, were Girl Least Likely to Marry, by Amy Andrews and Like No Other Lover by Julie Anne Long.
We also mention many, many people, and if you’re curious, here’s a list of them, linked to their respective Wikipedia pages.
Margaret Knight and her paper bag folding machine.
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Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater. This podcast features “Three Ships” by a UK duo called Deviations Project, which features producer Dave Williams and violinist Oliver Lewis – they have their own Wikipedia page. This song is from their Christmas album Adeste Fiddles.
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Transcript
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[music]
Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to episode number 114 of the Dear Bitches, Smart Authors podcast, known on iTunes, if it ever gets its act together, as the DBSA podcast. I know some of you have been having trouble finding it on iTunes and in other feed locations since we moved to a new server, and we are so working on that, and iTunes is so unhelpful I can’t even tell you. Like, I resubmitted the podcast feed to iTunes, and basically the response was No. And that’s it. Like, seriously, iTunes, what? Anyway.
When I am not frustrated by iTunes, I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today is Carries Sessarego who reviews for Smart Bitches and also for her own site, Geek Girl in Love, and whose writing is also appearing in a bunch of different interesting locations, which I will be featuring this week. We’re going to talk about the badass Victorian women that she has been reading and researching, including travelers, scientists, inventors, and spies. Basically, she does a presentation called “Victorian Women Who Out-Steampunked Steampunk,” and it’s awesome. We also do a discussion about what she’s read recently and enjoyed, including a micro but thorough review over the podcast of Cary Elwes’s memoir, As You Wish.
This podcast is brought to you by Berkley, publisher of Romancing the Billionaire, the sizzling new Billionaire Boys Club novel from New York Times bestselling author Jessica Clare. I will have information at the end of the podcast about it.
And now, on with the podcast.
[music]
Sarah: So we are here to talk about Victorian ladies, ‘cause you did a whole presentation about them, yeah?
Carrie Sessarego: Yes, I did. I’ve done it, now I’ve done it a couple of times. I, I, when I planned the presentation, I broke it into four parts, so that turned out to be really handy, because some people just want one part, so I’ve, I’ve done some variations on it.
Sarah: Right.
Carrie: Yes.
Sarah: So, what you talk about is Victorian women who out-steampunked steampunk.
Carrie: Yeah, that was kind of how it got started. So I, I broke it down in categories of inventors, scientists, travelers, and spies, and what was so cool about it was that I really thought that I would find, like, maybe, you know, like just a few women in each category, right?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: So, like, inventors, okay, I’ve got Ada Lovelace. Scientists, oh, I know couple, you know. I, I really thought there wouldn’t be that many. And, and it ended up being this, like, epic research project that will never, ever end, because it turns out that there were, like, hundreds, like, probably thousands of Victorian women doing all kinds of amazing kick-butt things, so this idea of the angel in the home, which was this very popular Victorian idea, it, it turned out that a lot of the Victorian women didn’t really have a lot of patience with that, and they just went off and did what they wanted to do.
Sarah: Whoa.
Carrie: So, yeah.
Sarah: I, I don’t know anyone who’s like that now in this era.
Carrie: It was –
Sarah: No, not at all, nobody. Mm-mm.
Carrie: [Laughs]
Sarah: No, no, no.
Carrie: It was really exciting, and when I do the presentation I’m always trying to kind of give that as the point where I’m like, the, the takeaway isn’t that I would expect people to remember any one particular person that I talk about. I want people to look at history with a broader lens than we’ve been handed. So, to, to look at history and see that so much more was happening than the stereotype that we’re presented with. It was really fun to put together.
Sarah: So which are the women that are most interesting to you? Like, tell me about some of the people you researched and that you talk about in your presentation, ‘cause this is really cool.
Carrie: Okay, cool. Okay, well, so, some of the women I talk about were pretty obvious. Like, Ada Lovelace, okay, who doesn’t like to talk about Ada Lovelace? She developed a program for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, and so she is often known as the mother of computing. She – and a lot of people know about her, but then when I was looking up her, I found a lot of female inventors, including a lot who were women of color, which is another thing that I talk about a lot that –
Sarah: Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Carrie: Yeah.
Sarah: Are you trying to tell me that there were people of color during history?
Carrie: Oh, my gosh, there were!
Sarah: No! Nonononono! Oh, no, how, ta- , how, how, here. So it wasn’t just wall-to-wall white people.
Carrie: It wasn’t just wall-to-wall white people!
Sarah: Are you sure?
Carrie: Even in –
Sarah: You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?
Carrie: There they were, just walking around London, Sarah.
Sarah: Are you serious?
Carrie: I’m serious.
Sarah: You mean like they are right now, people of color? In the world?
Carrie: Yes!
Sarah: No!
Carrie: Yeah, they were really there. Yeah. And –
Sarah: So, speaking of history that we’ve been handed – [laughs]
Carrie: Right. Oh, and you know what?
Sarah: What?
Carrie: Now really, they were walking around England and walking around America, but they weren’t all, like, working as maids or whatever. They were doing all kinds of awesome things!
Sarah: Oh, just stop it.
Carrie: No, I won’t. You can’t make me.
Sarah: [Laughs] Please go on. This is so cool!
Carrie: You can hang up on me, but I would just keep calling you back!
[Laughter]
Carrie: Yeah. Anyways, it was awesome –
Sarah: This is Carrie, calling from History.
Carrie: – to find this about there. Yeah, so, and –
Sarah: Tell me about these people you, you learned about.
Carrie: A lot of people already know about Madame Walker, whose real name was Sarah Breedlove. So she was an African-American woman in America. She was the first child to be born in her family free. And she’s this, like, rags-to-riches story, okay. So she started off, she was an orphan when she was six. She was married at fourteen. She was widowed at twenty. She went to work as a washer woman, she was making no money at all, but she started inventing hair products, and she became the first self-made African-American millionaire. Not the first female millionaire, the first millionaire, period.
Sarah: Whoa.
Carrie: Like a boss. So she’s more well known as a business woman than as an inventor, but what started her business was the products that she invented. And they were – I’ll tell you what her first five were, they were Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower, Temple Salve, Tetter Salve – tetter is, like, a, a skin disease that people used to get –
Sarah: Tetter, yes.
Carrie: Tetter, yeah.
Sarah: You, you ever see the advertisements for Blue Star Ointment, it will say, jock itch, ringworm, psoriasis, tetter!
Carrie: Oh, my gosh. I have not seen that, but I believe it. – Vegetable Shampoo, and Glossine, that’s the end one. So she got interested ‘cause she had brothers who were barbers, and her own hair started falling out, and hair loss in the Victorian era was really common because hair can fall out because of stress, and it can fall out because of malnutrition, and also a lot of the shampoos included lye, so every time you washed your hair, you were basically killing all your hair, and it would fall out of your head. So she was like, to heck with that, so she got some lessons from her brothers, and then she went off and invented these hair products, and then she paired that with this incredible business savvy, and she built this massive business empire, and then she used her money to fund all these civil rights activities later in her life.
Sarah: I knew a lot about her growing up because she lived in Pittsburgh, and she was –
Carrie: Oh, cool.
Sarah: – she was part of my Pittsburgh history, particularly during Black History Month.
Carrie: Cool!
Sarah: So she, she’s very awesome.
Carrie: Now, in contrast to Madam Walker we have a woman, and I’m so sorry ‘cause I can’t pronounce her last name, but her name was Ellen E-G-L-U-I. Egg-lee?
Sarah: E-G-L-U-I?
Carrie: Yeah.
Sarah: I would be, I would guess that that’s Egg-loo-ee?
Carrie: Eglui? That would make sense.
Sarah: Or Eh-loo-ee. Maybe you skip the G.
Carrie: Well, she, she is an example of what happened to a lot of women, whether they were of color or not, in terms of having trouble translating their inventions into money because of societal constraints. So she invented the first clothes wringing device for a washing machine in 1888 – I have no memory, so I have to look at my notes every time I say a number – and she ended up selling the patent rights for eighteen dollars because she said that she didn’t believe that white women would buy the product if they knew it was invented by a colored woman, so she sold it to a white guy so he could sell it to white people.
Sarah: For eighteen bucks.
Carrie: Eighteen bucks. And it’s, it’s very –
Sarah: Which is, like, $400 in our money?
Carrie: Oh, I have no idea. But it’s very similar to what we still have in our washing machines now. So, not what it was worth, basically. And that’s the last we heard of her. Like, she kind of floats up into history, and she says this, like, one thing, and then she floats back out.
Sarah: Wow.
Carrie: We don’t know when she was born or when she died and, you know, and that’s, that’s very representative, in a way, of what happened with a lot of women, particularly because until the late 1700s, women weren’t allowed to own patents under their name. So a lot of women inventors are, are lost to us. We don’t know who they were because they had to either not file a patent at all or file it under their husband’s name.
Sarah: And it’s interesting how many of those inventions are still in use, like the clothes wringer is, is, is still in use, and I think the original invention for the brake of the elevator, the elevator brake, to make it stop –
Carrie: Ohhh.
Sarah: – is still the basic function of how elevators stop. I, I once watched a documentary on elevators, and I’m telling you it changed my life. I just thought it was the most interesting thing, but then again, I am the kind of person who watches documentaries on elevators. Tell me more, tell me more, ‘cause this is cool.
Carrie: Okay, okay. Well, do you want me to keep talking about inventors, or should I branch on?
Sarah: Branch on, girl! Bring it!
Carrie: Okay. You should know that my full presentation is, like, two hours long, and I don’t think we want to do that. So, okay –
Sarah: Somebody just totally looked at their, at their iPod and went, yes! Do that, please!
[Laughter]
Carrie: Yeah, I will, too, on the slightest provocation. Ooh, let’s talk about travelers. Okay, so this presentation is so fun to do. Like, really, just Google, people, just Google. I, I would put in one name, and fourteen other names would come up. So I, I was looking up women who went to Tibet. I was like, you know, that’s interesting, and I found this woman Annie Royle Taylor, and I’ll talk about her some more, she was kind of fun, but because I was looking up Annie Royle Taylor, I accidentally discovered Annie Edson Taylor, who has, is no relation; it’s a coincidence. Annie Edson Taylor is the first person to survive going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Not the first woman, the first person. She did it in 1901, and she did not enjoy it. But she did it, and she was not significantly injured. She was in her 60s, but she told people she was in her 40s, and –
Sarah: [Laughs] So wait, she didn’t enjoy it, she survived, and she was in her 60s and just decided today is the day I go over Niagara in a barrel?
Carrie: Today’s the day – no, she put more thought into it than that. She, she was hard up for money, and she figured if she could survive going over the falls in a barrel, she could make money by, like, talking about it, you know, at different places afterward.
Sarah: She’s not wrong.
Carrie: Well, actually, she was kind of wrong. She never did –
Sarah: No.
Carrie: – make money off of it, unfortunately. But she had this barrel specially constructed, and it was padded, and then, this was her big trick. She had her, they had bicycle pumps by 1901, so she had her friends, she got in it, and then they compressed the air inside with the bicycle pump.
Sarah: So it would float.
Carrie: So it would – I guess. So she, she did – and also I wonder if that would make her less likely to, like, move around so much. So she went over the falls, and when she came out they opened the barrel, they let her out, and she said, no one. Ever. Ought. Do that. Again.
Sarah: This is totally a person who was brong, born in the wrong era, because if she was born now and she did that now, she’d have her own fucking reality show within, like, twelve minutes.
Carrie: I know, and that was basically her plan, right? Because people used to do this kind of touring circuit, so it’s like the Victorian version of the reality show, right?
Sarah: I’m telling you, she would have had her own show on TLC.
Carrie: Right, you go and give lectures and stuff, but – and she did do that, but it wasn’t as lucrative as she had hoped. She used to say that she, and she wasn’t, like, a big adrenaline junkie, and she used to say she would rather stand in front of the mouth of a cannon than go over the falls again. So don’t go over Niagara Falls, people.
Sarah: In a barrel.
Carrie: In a barrel.
Sarah: Or not in a barrel.
Carrie: Yeah, ‘cause then, of course, I got sidetracked, and I ended up Googling people who go over Niagara Falls, and so I think I’m going to stick with my, my broader assertion. Just don’t go over Niagara Falls. Just don’t.
Sarah: This has been a Public Service Announcement from Carrie Sessarego. [Laughs]
Carrie: Public Service Announcement, yeah. So you know, like, so, I put her in the travelers category. She didn’t travel very far –
Sarah: I would say she did. She traveled straight down.
Carrie: – but, right, but it was a really impressive trip. Yeah. So I found all these Victorian women who traveled, and one of the things that was kind of cool was just recreational traveling, just, like, being a tourist was made possible for women in the, particularly in the late Victorian –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: – so they would, like, go all over, like, England and stuff and have a lot of fun, but there’s this one woman who I got really attached to. So, her name was Isabella Bird; she’s pretty well known. And I adore her because I am four foot ten, and I have not been able to find out exactly how tall Isabella Bird was, but she is always described as “just under five feet.” So –
Sarah: So she’s, like, your, your, your, your Patronus.
Carrie: Like, my height, give or take an inch maybe.
Sarah: She, she’s your, she’s your historical Patronus.
Carrie: Yes, and, and like me, she had a terrible back. She had all these horrible back problems. However, unlike me – I have not emulated her in this way – she was told by the doctor to get fresh air, so she translated that as, I should travel all over Colorado on the back of a mule and ride 800 miles, much of it in the winter, and hook up with this mountain man who I will describe in my letters as the kind of man any woman might love but no sane woman would marry.
Sarah: Whoa!
Carrie: [Laughs] Well, yeah.
Sarah: Hello, romance novel!
Carrie: There’s a lot of subtext in her memoirs, which is –
Sarah: But she didn’t like Australia.
Carrie: She didn’t like Australia? I don’t remember her not liking Australia.
Sarah: Yeah, the notes I found just say she didn’t like Australia. Aww.
Carrie: She didn’t like Australia, aww. Oh, Isabella.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Carrie: So it fits – okay, so I’ve got this whole list of countries that she went to, and it’s really exhausting. England, Scotland, North America, Canada, Australia – which she didn’t like – Hawaii, Colorado, Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, India, Persia, Kurdistan, Turkey, she traveled between Bagdad and Tehran, China, Korea, and Morocco, plus, obviously, she went all over the U.K.
Sarah: Whoa.
Carrie: And every time she went home she got depressed and sick again, so she’d go back out, you know, for the fresh air.
Sarah: Yes. All over the world.
Carrie: Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah: Wow.
Carrie: I should have listened to our last podcast, ‘cause now I can’t remember who we talked about. Did I talk about Isabella Bird last month?
Sarah: No, I don’t think so.
Carrie: Oh good. Okay. ‘Cause, like, I totally love her. So, yeah. So, she, she was just a nut. So she did all this stuff, but one of the other things that was kind of interesting and a little bit sad was that a lot of these women, like, if you read about their lives from the sort of modern lens, you make assumptions about them, and you think, well, she must have been, like, a huge feminist, right? But a lot of women were able to do these crazy, outlandish things as long as they sold them just right.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: So Isabella Bird did not describe herself in particularly feminist terms, and she would say that she really felt that the role of the woman was to be the angel in the home, but tragically, tragically, she had these ailments, and she needed the fresh air.
Sarah: Right. Of course.
Carrie: Right. But she wasn’t really going out and saying, see, I can do it, everyone could do it, we should all do it, except in as much as she said she thought it was good for Victorian women to go out into these unsettled places because they would bring a gentle influence to [ahem] these mountain guys who no sane woman would marry.
Sarah: Of course.
Carrie: Of course, yeah.
Sarah: Of course.
Carrie: But it’s int-, and you see that sometimes with the sciences, too. The way they write about their work for publication, they’ll be very careful in how they word things, so there’s sort of, you know, they, they kind of come up with these little PR campaigns. Unless they’re women like Gertrude Bell, who just, like, didn’t give a – rat’s ass and just did whatever she wanted, ‘cause she was just boss. Oh, we have soldiers and spies. We have Loreta Janeta Velazquez. I think I talked about her last time. She served in the Civil War dressed as a man, and then she did some spying dressed as a woman, and then she did some more spying dressed as a man, and she just, like, ran around all over the place and had a great time.
Sarah: [Laughs] Nice.
Carrie: Harriet Tubman. We all know that Harriet Tubman is badass, that’s not news, but she led a gunboat raid, which I thought was pretty awesome, and I did not know that. During the Civil War, she worked for the Union, obviously, and she –
Sarah: You don’t say.
Carrie: – as a spy and a scout, mostly in South Carolina and in Florida, and then she ended up leading a gunboat raid up the – I’m going to mangle this pronunciation – Combahee River. She is considered the first woman to lead an armed assault in the Civil War. She guided three steamboats upriver and around mines. The raid freed over 750 slaves, many of whom joined the Union army. Yep. In her spare time, she was a nurse. When she wasn’t leading gunboat raids. Or, like, helping –
Sarah: Right. Like you do.
Carrie: – helping people to freedom, you know. She was busy. She was really busy, but I was like, wow, I already knew she was really badass, but I did not know about the gunboat raid.
Sarah: That’s pretty amazing.
Carrie: And the Crimean War, of course, was a pretty rocking time for women. Whenever there’s a war, women get to do things that normally men would do, so in the Civil War, there’s all these stories about men fighting as soldiers, leading medical teams, being nurses, but not in the sense that they were just, like, a nurse, but in the sense that they were in charge of, like, thousands of people, and in the Crimean War, we all know about Florence Nightingale, but there was also a woman named Mary Seacole who was a black woman from Jamaica. Oh, my gosh, it’s another woman of color! How did she get here? And she was also a nurse who was, helped, you know, thousands and thousands of people. She didn’t introduce any medical innovations, which Florence Nightingale is kind of really well known for transforming nursing practices, but she helped, probably saved the lives of, like, thousands of men. I mean, she was amazing. I, like, I could just talk all day, but I don’t know who you want me to talk about it and narrow it down.
Sarah: So you have soldiers –
Carrie: Yes.
Sarah: – travelers –
Carrie: Yes. Oh –
Sarah: – inventors, and what was the fourth one?
Carrie: – science. Science!
Sarah: Yeah, let’s do science.
Carrie: Science!
Sarah: Science!
Carrie: Okay, let’s talk about Mary Anning, ‘cause I like Mary Anning. Mary –
Sarah: Is there anybody on this list that you don’t like?
Carrie: Oh, I like all of them.
Sarah: I was going to say.
Carrie: Okay, but there are people who I would not have liked in real life. Like, I have a feeling that Isabella Bird would probably have annoyed me in real life.
Sarah: Hmm.
Carrie: One of the travelers, remember I started talking about Annie Royle Taylor, not the one that went over Niagara Falls, but the one who went to Tibet?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: Her claim to fame is that everybody hated her.
Sarah: Really!
Carrie: She was so freaking irritating.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Carrie: – hated her! But, you know, like, she got stuff done. But she, she also got in her own way. So she, she, to an extent, she didn’t get stuff done. She started a mission, but the missionaries that she hired basically, like, turned around and rebelled and got rid of her, fired her, because they hated her. She tried to get into the Forbidden City in Tibet, and she couldn’t get there, and her guide eventually quit because, apparently, he thought – he was a Tibetan man, and he thought of himself as her partner, but she thought of him as this, like, “native servant” guy, so she talked down to him all the time, and then she became convinced that he was trying to murder her, and apparently he’d have to get in the back of, like, a really long line. She was just the most irritating woman possible.
Sarah: Whoa.
Carrie: But! She’s really fun to read about. You know, like, if you don’t have to talk to her day to day –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Carrie: – I mean, her, she, she shaved her head and dressed as a Tibetan nun so that she could travel Tibet without getting caught. You know, you, you’ve got to, you’ve got to love that, right? She was another person who had ill health as a child and was described as frail.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: So if you were frail, you were supposed to get fresh air, and that meant you would shave your head and, you know, wander around Tibet.
Sarah: Wow.
Carrie: Or if you were Ada Lovelace, you were described as frail, and you stayed in bed all the time, and while you were in bed, you studied math.
Sarah: Right.
Carrie: Right.
Sarah: Does anyone know exactly what killed Ada Lovelace? ‘Cause she died very young. She was in her early thirties, right?
Carrie: Yeah, she had cancer.
Sarah: She’d had cancer.
Carrie: She had cancer, yeah. Okay, so Ada Lovelace had this whole, like, complicated family history, right, where her – she was the only legitimate child of Lord Byron, and her mother, who was divorced from Lord Byron, hated Lord Byron. So Ada never met her father, but she really idolized the idea of him, because she hated her mom. Her mom was really controlling, and her mom’s big plan was that Ada was, by golly, not going to grow up like her dad. So, no poetry, by gum. Ada was going to learn math. Math and science, math and science. So Ada’s –
Sarah: Because those aren’t poetic at all. No –
Carrie: Right.
Sarah: – not in the least. Wha- ?
Carrie: So, Ada’s whole biography, basically, is she fights with her mom, they make up, she fights with her mom, they make up, she fights with her mom, they make up. And one of the weird things that happened during one of these fights is that Ada started designing a flying machine, and then at some point it must have become evident that she wasn’t going to build the flying machine, and suddenly she was stricken with this ailment which caused her to be almost completely paralyzed and almost completely blind, and she was incapacitated for a long time. Months and months and months, I can’t remember exactly how long, but I don’t think anybody knows what that was. Was it a physical ailment? Was it a reaction to, like, a high fever? Was it something like, was it psychosomatic? You know, was she just trying to exert some kind of control? We don’t know. She was a complex person.
Sarah: Most good, interesting people are.
Carrie: Yes. Another woman who – oh, my gosh, we’re back to described as frail! So, Mary Anning, who was more late Regency, she was a frail, quiet, little infant, and then – swear to God, this is what people said, they swore it was true – she was a baby, and these two women were hanging out with her under a tree, and one of the women was holding the baby, and the tree got hit by lightning, and the two women died, but the baby survived, and from that moment forward, she was no longer frail; she had fantastic health.
Sarah: What?
Carrie: Yep! That’s what they said.
Sarah: Oh-kay.
Carrie: That is what they said; believe it if you dare. So after she had her entire personality change due to lightning strike, Mary Anning became this early paleontologist, and a fun factoid is that Mary Anning lived in Lyme Regis, which is this kind of beach resort town in England –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: – and Jane Austen used to go there, and Jane Austen set some of her books there. And Jane Austen tried to buy a cabinet from Mary Anning’s father – he was a curio cabinet maker – and she complained that he overcharged. There you go. The more you know.
Sarah: Wow.
Carrie: Yeah. So there’s no word on if Mary and Jane actually met each other, but I, for some reason, that totally cracks me up. I, I find that incredibly satisfying. So, yeah, so Mary Anning was this, like, totally amazing paleontologist, but she had a really hard time with the establishment because she was a woman. She couldn’t be a member of the Geological Society or any of those things, and so her life is very complex, and it involves a lot of this sort of tension between these men who totally respected her and felt very indebted to her, and yet she could not get in the door.
Sarah: Of course.
Carrie: And, and the deal back then was that if you found a fossil, you found the fossil, you cleaned it, you identified it, you might have sketched it, you studied it, and then you sold it to some man, and then the man would present your work under his name.
Sarah: Of course.
Carrie: Because he had bought it, and, and that wasn’t considered plagiarism, that was, like, part of the sale.
Sarah: Which is part of the inspiration of the plot for Tessa Dare’s A Week to Be Wicked.
Carrie: Yes.
Sarah: Because the –
Carrie: Which I adore, by the way.
Sarah: It’s, those, that, that whole series just makes me happy –
Carrie: Yeah.
Sarah: – but in that one, the heroine has found a fossil, and she’s trying to bring a plaster cast of it, and she needs a dude to travel with her for propriety’s sake, because she can’t travel by herself –
Carrie: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – and if I remember correctly, she doesn’t quite have any idea how she’s going to get in the door and make her presentation, but she’s going to do it. She doesn’t know how, but it will happen.
Carrie: She, she’s just going to stand on the doorway, as I recall, with her fossil, until somebody lets her in. I, I –
Sarah: Which sounds like a perfectly legitimate plan.
Carrie: It’s a really great book, so people should go read it, and I don’t want to say anything about the ending, ‘cause then people might not read it –
Sarah: Yes.
Carrie: – but people should read it, ‘cause it was really fun.
Sarah: Oh, it’s adorable.
Carrie: I love that book.
Sarah: Road trip!
Carrie: Road trip, road trip! Oh! And Elyse made me read What a Wallflower Wants, and she never even mentioned that the whole plot revolves around the Difference Engine.
Sarah: She didn’t tell you that part?
Carrie: She didn’t tell me that!
Sarah: [Laughs]
Carrie: She said the hero reminded her of Tom Hiddleston, so she had me right there. Like, of course I’m going to read it, but yeah.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Carrie: You would think she would’ve mentioned that little detail.
Sarah: You, you must have been so very pleased.
Carrie: Oh, my God, I, like, let out this little scream. I was like, [gasp] oh, my gosh! Yeah.
Sarah: Difference Engine!
Carrie: Difference Engine! Yeah, that was pretty exciting. So, yeah, so Mary Anning, great paleontologist. It was just, like, if you Google and Wikipedia, I’m not proud, I, I use Wikipedia as my starting place, and frequently my finishing place, and, and if you Google Victorian female scientists and Wikipedia, you will get, like, 150 names.
Sarah: Wow.
Carrie: And that’s just Wikipedia! I mean, it was, it was a crazy time for sciences. The Victorian era is just so fascinating, and what women were doing is so fascinating, and I, I had really assumed that women who did these unconventional things had to be rich, and some of them were, but a lot of them weren’t. The aquarium, you know, like your home aquarium with your, you know, like, guppies in it and stuff?
Sarah: Of course.
Carrie: That, that was invented by a woman in 1794. She was the daughter of a shoemaker, and then she became a dressmaker, and she kind of worked her way up. She designed the wedding dress for Princess Caroline, and then she made a very advantageous marriage, but not into the nobility, but into, like, you know, middle class. So she ended up moving with her husband to Sicily, and she wanted to study the behavior of nautiluses in controlled environments, so she invented the aquarium. Like a boss.
Sarah: Like you do.
Carrie: Like you do, yeah.
Sarah: Wow.
Carrie: Like, she, she was somebody who, you know, and, and, I mean, the extreme example of that, of course, is Sarah Breedlove who, you know, not to, not to minimize the impact of poverty, which was a horrible problem in the Victorian era, but they, people were so amazingly resourceful in terms of how they did what they wanted to do.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: You know, they would find ways.
Sarah: They, if it wasn’t there, they would figure out a way to make it or invent it.
Carrie: Make it or invent it. Margaret Knight invented the paper bag folding machine. If you pack your kids’ lunches, you know, like in a paper bag, and now we all use these fancy lunchboxes, but, you know, in my day, we used a little paper bag. That was invented by a factory worker, and the first thing she invented, she worked in a textile factory, and she invented a device that would make machinery automatically turn off if something was caught in it.
Sarah: Whoooa.
Carrie: Whoa. Like, if you read anything about the industrial age, you know that, like, that, I can’t even imagine how many lives that device might have saved if it was widely put in use, because the machinery would spin really fast, and people used to get their, their dresses caught in it, their sleeves, their hair.
Sarah: Yep.
Carrie: It would take the top of your head off. Like, they were horrible, horrible injuries.
Sarah: Oy.
Carrie: People would just get mangled. So she invented this device that would automatically shut off. And then she went on from that to invent the paper bag folding machine, and she had a hard time securing the patent because the guy took her to court, and he claimed it was his invention, and the only evidence he had that it was his invention was he said it couldn’t be her invention because she was a woman, and woman, women don’t invent things. Nononono, but she won her case ‘cause she was awesome!
Sarah: Whoa.
Carrie: Yep. That’s just how she rolled.
Sarah: Wow. So do you ever see shades of these people in, in the romances that you read?
Carrie: Well, I do. There’s like, so, I, I kind of feel like I’ve been neglecting, my original mission was to write a lot about science fiction and fantasy romance, which I’m still doing, but I feel like I –
Sarah: I don’t think you’re neglecting that, so no worries, dude.
Carrie: Okay, good, ‘cause, like, sometimes I’m like, man, I’m really reading a lot of stuff that’s, like, historical and contemporary now. But there’s, there’s like a whole subgenre of, the subgenre with the, the scientist, the scientist main character, and sometimes it’s male and sometimes it’s female, and they’re really, really fun. I mean, a lot of times they’re, they’re, either they’re, they’re more optimistic, maybe, than they should be, but then, you know, you look at history, and there’s lots of people who had great successes, you know?
Sarah: Of course.
Carrie: Maggie Knight won her case.
Sarah: Yep.
Carrie: Yeah. She made a fair little boodle off of that paper bag folding machine. Oh, and I’ll tell people who are listening, if you Google paper bag folding machine Smithsonian, there’s a model of it. It’s so pretty!
Sarah: Whoa, really?
Carrie: It’s like this beautiful – it looks like steampunk. I mean, it’s just this gorgeously crafted device.
Sarah: Have you been to the Smithsonian to see the model?
Carrie: I’ve never been to the Smithsonian ever.
Sarah: Yeah, me neither, I suck that way.
Carrie: You’re close, right? Ish.
Sarah: It’s like five hours.
Carrie: Oh, okay. But that’s like a doable thing.
Sarah: Yeah, it’s a doable thing.
Carrie: You’ve got to go.
Sarah: Eventually I’ll bring the kids.
Carrie: You’ve got to go. I’ve never been. I would love to go. I’m dying to go to the Smithsonian some day. But yeah, I, I really love that in romances, and I, I, it’s a big catnip thing for me. If, if any of the main characters is science-y, and especially if, if there’s some attention paid to how that affects how they see the world and how they think. Because I’m married to a scientist, and you know what, they see the world in a very unique way.
Sarah: Really.
Carrie: Yeah. Like all my husband’s friends are scientists, and he’s a scientist, and they, you know, they, they – it’s, it’s not the, like, the absent-minded professor kind of way of seeing the world, it’s just a way of seeing the world where you think about it in very analytical, precise terms –
Sarah: Right.
Carrie: – you know, and now I’m trying to think of a, of a romance that has a really good example of that, ‘cause I know there’s some where I felt like they really got it right. Sometimes they’ll just say, well, this person is into science, you know, and then that kind of falls by the wayside.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: Well, I mean, the, the Tessa Dare one you were talking about.
Sarah: Yep, that’s definitely true.
Carrie: Yeah. I mean, he, they talk, he talks about that a lot, that it affects how she sees the world. Oh, oh, there was one – oh, it’ll come to me, and I’ll hop on the comments and say, it was this one!
Sarah: [Laughs]
Carrie: Shoot! Okay, this is now, like, a, a HaBO. It was –
Sarah: [Laughs] Those always work out very well. What are the details?
Carrie: Oh, well, the guy – oh, my God, like, now my head hurts – the, the guy was the scientist, and he was a naturalist, and he had just come back from one expedition, and he wanted to go out on another expedition, but he needed funding, so he had to marry rich. And the woman was, had just gotten through some kind of awful scandal, and she had to marry rich. And they meet each other at this garden party weekend thing, you know, like Regency romances thrive on, and this is a little, this is more Victorian, but, you know, the same thing. So it’s a house party, so everyone’s thrown together, right? And they both have this mission, they’re both going to marry rich, and they decide they’re going to help each other marry rich, but of course they fall in love with each other, but they can’t be together. I wrote a review of it! Dang it! I’ll find it, I’ll find it. It’s not a HaBO, ‘cause I’ll find it. ‘Cause I, I mean, I wrote about the dang thing. But what I loved about it was that the, the woman grows so much to appreciate how the guy who’s the scientist in this story sees the world.
Sarah: Huh.
Carrie: And that changes the way she sees the world, and I found that to be very true of – even though my husband’s personality is very different from the hero’s personality –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: – that way of looking at things was very true to my experience, and the way that being around that, that attitude every day has shifted the way I look at things. Because I’m interested in science in a much more superficial, tangential way, you know, and I don’t feel like it’s shaped my brain the way it shapes my husband’s brain or that of his friends. I mean, they have a whole different way they look at things, and it, it’s, it’s really fascinating.
Sarah: Huh!
Carrie: So I’ll, I’ll figure out what that book was and I’ll tell you, and it’ll mess up the whole flow of the podcast, and now everybody’s, like, falling asleep, but oh! It’s –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Carrie: It’s killing me! Ah! I’ll figure it out.
Sarah: Don’t worry.
Carrie: I think, I wrote a whole review! Maybe it was a joint review. Okay, anyway, on to other things. But It was a great example, I’ll find it, I’ll tell you, it’ll – you can, you can add a little addendum.
Sarah: What are some of your favorite scientist or science-y romance novels?
Carrie: Well, that was one –
Sarah: That was definitely one, right.
Carrie: – and now I can’t remember the name of it. [Laughs] Oh, my gosh. I’m not good at, like, the – you know, like, I can think of twenty tonight, but now I can’t.
Sarah: Oh, of course. You always, you always remember them when you, when you, when you, when you ask the question, you remember later. I did a, a spot for, a, a very brief interview for Sirius radio that’s going to be on tonight, and I did it on Friday, and of course they asked me for some recommendations for historical romance, and I came up with a few, and then as I was walking down the street to the bus station to go home, I was like, oh, and this one, and this one, and this one, and this one, and this one. I think the French call it the spirit of the stairway, l’esprit de l’escalier –
Carrie: Oh, yeah.
Sarah: – where you, where you remember what you wanted to say –
Carrie: Yeah.
Sarah: – while you’re on the stairway, like, leaving. Yeah, that happens to me all the time.
Carrie: Well, I mean, this is my job. This is what I do for you is I –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Carrie: – I review science fiction and fantasy romance, science and kind of geeky nonfiction, and historical or contemporary romance if it has some kind of geek angle. Okay, this is my job, and I’m like, oh, I don’t know. What have I read lately? Okay, oh, one that was just kind of goofy was that, I think it’s a Laura Kinsale, midsummer, is it Midsummer Moon? With the hedgehog? The woman that has the pet hedgehog. It was adorable. And, and it was not particularly insightful into how the scientific brain works. I can tell you that my husband has never brought home a pet hedgehog or tried to build an airship in our family room, but it was just really cute. You know, they took, like, the absent-minded scientist idea and, like, turned it up to 11 and made the woman the absent-minded scientist, and –
Sarah: Yeah.
Carrie: – and the guy’s just kind of trying to keep up. And it was really cute.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Carrie: And one, there was a contemporary that I read, which again, now I can’t remember the name of ‘cause, like, I need help, but, but I will, and I’ll, I’ll email you and tell you what it was. But it was really controversial because the, the, the female character was the scientist in this one, and she – but then it turned out that the guy was also pretty science-y. He was really into math. And she had Asperger’s, and it was interesting because I read it at the same time that we read The Rosie Project, which I also loved, in which case the man has Asperger’s, and a lot of readers loved The Rosie Project and did not find the portrayal of the scientist with Asperger’s at all offensive, but when the woman had Asperger’s, they were offended because they thought that she was like a stereotype of if you’re a woman and you’re a scientist, then you’re also socially inept.
Sarah: Hmm.
Carrie: But I really admired her, because I felt like it gave this portrayal of how she was able to kind of work through any social difficulties that she had to have this kind of full, well-rounded life, and I liked the way that she thought about science, and she didn’t have to give up her career. There was, you know, and one of her worries was if she got involved she would take less time off of her career, and the guy was like, are you kidding? No, your career is super important.
Sarah: And what you do is also part of who you are.
Carrie: Right. I mean, he actually made the adjustments around her career, instead of the other way around. There was definitely some give and take, but he’s, you know, he’s the one who really shifted things so that she could keep doing what she did. I loved that book. I’ll, I’ll figure out the name of it. I, ‘cause I, that’s another one where I wrote the review, but now I can’t remember the title. [Sigh] ‘Cause I have that absent-minded thing going too, which is why I’m not very good at podcasts. Hi, everybody! I can’t remember my own name! I, but, yeah, I really liked that one.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Carrie: I liked, I liked the science in His Road Home, which I have talked about, like, 500 times –
Sarah: Yep.
Carrie: – ‘cause I totally love that book, yes. But again, the science was not a huge part of the story, but in a way that was kind of cool, ‘cause she was just out there doing science. Like, that’s just what she did.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: And that’s another one where there was never any discussion that she would back down from it – he’s the one who kind of accommodates his life to fit into hers –
Sarah: Right.
Carrie: – you know, with enough give and take that it doesn’t feel icky, you know, and, you know, I liked how she described a lot of the science she was doing was actually kind of tedious. She was spotting orcas – not those kind of orcas, Elyse , calm down – and they were –
[Laughter]
Carrie: – boring orcas, not sexy orcas – and –
Sarah: Of course.
Carrie: – and, and she had to, like, identify them by the markings on their tail, you know, which involves a lot of excitement, but also involves a lot of busy work and physical discomfort and –
Sarah: Stuff.
Carrie: – hours and hours of looking at pictures, and, you know, they kind of address that a little bit. So, yeah, I like that.
Sarah: Cool. So what else are you reading right now?
Carrie: Okay, well, like, literally as you called, I finished As You Wish by Cary – how do you say his last name? Elwes? Oles? That guy that was in The Princess Bride?
Sarah: I think it’s Elwes.
Carrie: Elwes, okay. So anyway, he wrote a really cute memoir about The Princess Bride. I was –
Sarah: As You Wish.
Carrie: As You Wish. At one point I thought that I would review it, but now I realize that my review would be, like, super short, so I’ll just tell you guys now. It’s really cute. If you’re not into The Princess Bride then there’s nothing for you. If you are into The Princess Bride, you’ll eat it up like candy, but what he really wants you to know is that making The Princess Bride was the best thing ever, and everyone in The Princess Bride was the best person ever, and it was, like, so fabulous. By page 54, I was already a little exhausted.
[Laughter]
Carrie: He’s like, oh, my God, and Andre the Giant is like, he’s like, he’s like a giant! He’s, he’s just so big, and he’s –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Carrie: – it’s really sweet. And Robin, oh, my God, she’s so beautiful. Intelligent and beautiful! And Mandy Patinkin, wow, I mean, he’s this amazingly talented guy! And –
[Laughter]
Carrie: It’s just like, and I think he’s sincere, which makes it kind of cute, but I’m like, there’s really no narrative tension here, is there? No. Everything – [laughs]
Sarah: Everything is awesome!
Carrie: Yeah, absolutely. So if you’re into The Princess Bride you’ll love it. If you’re not, it’s not like you’re going to get, like, a huge insight into the movie-making business. You’re just going to know that everything is awesome!
Sarah: Yes, of course.
Carrie: And it’s very sweet, and it has little parts where people kind of add in their two cents from other people from the movie, and that’s really sweet, you know, but really, like, that’s, that’s my review. It’s really sweet. That’s it. [Laughs]
Sarah: So the behind the scenes isn’t so much dishy behind the scenes as it is just –
Carrie: Gushing behind the scenes. Just so wonderful.
Sarah: Gushing, glorious, squee-filled behind the scenes.
Carrie: And it feels really sincere, which makes it sweet, but again, not, you know, terribly fascinating, unless you’re into The Princess Bride, which I’m sorry, if you’re not into The Princess Bride –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Carrie: – why are you even listening to me talk? Seriously. Like, I have nothing to say. The Princess Bride is just the bomb. But, oh, there’s a lot of Andre the Giant stories, ‘cause apparently he used to drink a lot. Because he was so big, he could drink vast amounts of alcohol.
Sarah: Yes.
Carrie: Yes.
Sarah: I believe I also read somewhere that he was in considerable amounts of physical pain most of the time –
Carrie: Yes.
Sarah: – and he may have been drinking to self-medicate.
Carrie: They talked about that a lot too. And that is the sad part of the book is where they talk about how much pain he was in and he would work past the pain, and also just what a really sweet guy he was. The, the closest thing to tension in the story is that, there’s a lot of funny stories about the Andre the Giant, and there’s a lot of sad stuff about Andre the Giant. So, and sometimes they’re the same story.
Sarah: Aww.
Carrie: So, like, at one point, he, like, drank so much that he passed out in the lobby of this hotel, but then nobody could wake him up, and nobody could move him ‘cause he was so big.
Sarah: [Laughs] He was so big.
Carrie: Right, so what they ended up doing was getting those velvet ropes, you know, like they use to barricade stuff off in a fancy place, and they put them all around him, this little velvet rope fence –
Sarah: No!
Carrie: – until he woke up on his own the next day.
Sarah: Oh, roped-off Andre.
Carrie: I know. Like, funny and super, super sad at the same time.
Sarah: Wow.
Carrie: Yeah. So that’s the, the closest we come to sad stories.
Sarah: So your, your micro review of this is super cute, way adorable, way enjoyable –
Carrie: Yeah.
Sarah: – for anyone who liked The Princess Bride.
Carrie: Yeah. But it’s not one of those crossover appeal books. Like, like, there are movies I have no desire to see or that I’ve seen but didn’t like, but I can read about how the movie was made and be really interested in that process. This isn’t one of those books. This, it’s not that in-depth. I mean, there are some interesting things about how they made the movie, but I would say it’s not a big crossover appeal kind of book. Very much for the fans.
Sarah: Right.
Carrie: You know. Which worked for me, ‘cause I’m a fan, so I read it in, like, five minutes. I just went chomp! and gobbled it right up.
Sarah: Right, and, and that movie is, is very, very long-lasting.
Carrie: Yeah.
Sarah: Like, I’ve watched that with my kids, and they were like, that was awesome! Can we watch it again? And they don’t believe me that it’s very, very much older than they are.
Carrie: No, my daughter loves it. And he does talk a little bit about the problems they had with marketing the movie. It, it was –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: – respectable in the box office, but not a big hit by any means. It, it didn’t bomb, but it wasn’t that great, and it wasn’t really ‘til it hit VHS –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: – that it went ka-boom and suddenly, you know, it became this huge cult hit. You know, and another thing that’s nice is that a lot of the actors, you know, everywhere they go, people come up to Mandy Patinkin and say, you killed my father; prepare to die, you know. Cary Elwes can’t order anything without the waitress saying, as you wish! You know.
Sarah: Of course.
Carrie: And you would think that would get old, but if it does, they don’t admit to it. They’re like, no, it’s, I’m really proud to be part of this, and, you know, when people come up and they say, would you say this line? I just say the line, and it makes them really happy, and it makes me happy that I’m part of their lives in a meaningful way.
Sarah: I was watching an interview with Jay Baruchel who does the voice of Hiccup for the Dragon series, which I love.
Carrie: Ohhh!
Sarah: And he was saying something about how he knows how much of a part of people’s lives the movies have become, and if he had to retire tomorrow, he would be satisfied, because he was part of it.
Carrie: Aww!
Sarah: Just having done that role, he could retire tomorrow and it, he would still consider his career a success because he had that much of an impact on so many people through doing one voice for two movies.
Carrie: Aww, that’s awesome.
Sarah: I know. Squee!
Carrie: Well, and the cartoons, you know, which he and the girl that plays Astrid, I think they’ve talked about how they do the voices for the cartoons –
Sarah: Yes.
Carrie: – so by the time they did the second movie –
Sarah: America Ferrera, yes.
Carrie: Yeah, America Ferrera. They had, they had kind of grown a relationship just from doing the voices. Even if they didn’t do the voice work together –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: – they kind of heard each other’s work, so that’s part of why that, that relationship feels so solid in the second movie.
Sarah: I learned later that the scene where, in the beginning, where he’s mapping and she lands on the island, and he tells her that his father wants him to become chief, they did that in the same room –
Carrie: Oh, cool.
Sarah: – because she had to develop her imitation of him, and she was nervous about doing it in front of him, so all of that stuff like, what are you doing with my arms? I don’t do that! And she’s like, you just did that! That’s all real.
Carrie: Oh, I love that!
Sarah: I know, I love it too! It’s – when, when I learn about the voice actors behind the scenes improvising things that become part of the character, oh, that just gives me the happy.
Carrie: Yeah.
Sarah: Happy glow! [Laughs]
Carrie: Well, you know, Cary never became, like, The Princess Bride guy. He never became, like, a huge A-list actor, but he’s works steadily all the time in something.
Sarah: Yes. He has the worst, the worst – like, it might even be worse than Dick Van Dyke’s English accent in Mary Poppins – the worst Southern accent inTwister.
Carrie: Oh, God, yes.
Sarah: Oh, my God. [Laughs] It’s so bad!
Carrie: Well, part of how he got the job in, in, in The Princess Bride is that he actually is English, so he could do an English accent, and they really wanted someone who wouldn’t fake it, but he says in the book, he’s like, you know, Twister was a big blockbuster, so was Days of Thunder. Glory got tons of award and great critical stuff, even Saw is now a big cult classic, but no one’s going to remember me for that stuff. They’re going to remember me for The Princess Bride, and I’m fine with that.
Sarah: Yep.
Carrie: He’s like, that’s awesome.
Sarah: Oh, and also Men in Tights, don’t forget that one.
Carrie: Men in Tights. He did not mention Men in Tights, but I’m like, yeah, well, we’ll, we’ll remember you for that, too, sweetie.
Sarah: Yeah!
Carrie: And he’s like, you know, but it’s nice that he doesn’t act like he resents that legacy. He’s like, you know, no, this, this, I’m cool with that. I’m really happy to be part of that.
Sarah: That’s very excellent.
Carrie: So.
Sarah: So, what else are you reading that you totally, totally recommend for other people? Or have you read recently?
Carrie: Okay, so I just finished, so, Elyse is apparently my new crack dealer, so I just –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Carrie: Which is funny, because a lot of what she reads, I would totally hate, but then every now and then she’s like, hey Carrie, I’ve got this.
Sarah: You’re going to like this.
Carrie: You’re going to like this! Meet me in the back parking lot at midnight, you know –
Sarah: Yes.
Carrie: – with unmarked bills. So What a Wallflower Wants by Maya Rodale, or Ro-dal-ee, R, R-O-D-A-L-E. Anyway –
Sarah: Rodale, Maya Rodale.
Carrie: Yeah, she was right, I loved it. We should all read it. She did a review for Smart Bitches –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: – it was an A+. It’s fantastic. Loved it. And she also got me started on The Dresden Files. Thanks, Elyse, for ruining my life. There’s, like, thirteen books in that damn series, so I just finished the fourth book, which is Summer Knight in the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher, and yes, I totally adore it. So anyone who follows me on Twitter will know when I’m reading a Dresden Files book, ‘cause I start tweeting about it. So yeah, Summer Knightis great. And then I just finished As You Wish about five seconds before you called me, and then I believe my next exciting read is Silverblind by Tina Connolly, which I’m very excited about because that’s the conclusion to her trilogy that started with kind of this take-off of Jane Eyre and ended up becoming a whole different thing. It’s a very, very cool series, so I’m really excited about that.
Sarah: Awesome!
Carrie: Oh, and I did finish reading A Bollywood Affair, and I’m very excited about November book club.
Sarah: On the eighteenth?
Carrie: On the eighteenth. I’m –
Sarah: Yes, the author is going to be there, and I think I will be ordering Indian take-out.
Carrie: Yes. I think I’m going to have to, because I was so hungry when I read that book.
Sarah: Oh, my God, I know. I found a recipe for Indian butter chicken in the pressure cooker –
Carrie: [Hungry noise]
Sarah: – and I’m thinking I might need to make that and test it out, and then just order in some samosas so that I have everything I need.
Carrie: Oh, my God, the scene in the kitchen with the rolling out the – yeah, I –
Sarah: And they’re competing about their technique, their cooking technique?
Carrie: Yeah.
Sarah: Ohh.
Carrie: And he’s like, yes, I’m so sexist that I’m making samosas for your wedding!
[Laughter]
Sarah: Yes, I know!
Carrie: God, I was just dying!
Sarah: And she’s like, that doesn’t count! [Laughter]
Carrie: I hated the beginning of it! I was like, this is going to be a sucky book! I hate this guy! They can’t redeem this guy! He’s such a jerk! Ew!
Sarah: Surprise!
Carrie: He’s so creepy! Yeah, so, yeah, so that was fantastic. Loved it! Loved it, loved it. So yeah, I’ve been on this, like, very satisfying reading kick lately. I have another Victorian lined up. I’m going to be reading a, a Victorian that is from the Victorian era, written in the Victorian, called Miss Cayley’s Adventures about a woman who rides her bicycle all over Victorian England. I’m very excited about that!
Sarah: That sounds fun.
Carrie: I know. So the author is Grant Allen, A-L-L-E-N, so that should be very cool. So, yeah!
Sarah: Cool. Awesome!
Carrie: That’s what’s going on. So I’m, like, kind of wedging in the Dresden Files books whenever I can fit them in between other stuff that I actually have to read and, and I’m really digging them. I really love them.
Sarah: That’s awesome!
Carrie: The only thing I don’t like about the Dresden Files is that I do like resolution, and Dresden Files is obviously just going to go on and on, like, forever. And so, you know, I do like, one of the things I like about standalone novels and, you know, of course, romance novels are quite famous for this, is that you get a resolution at the end.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: And I’m like, it’s never going to resolve!
Sarah: That’s one of the things that I tell people when they, when they, when they ask me generally about romances, and I’m like, it’s not about sex, it’s not specifically about anything that, you know – there’s, there’s no set of things that have to happen, but we are reading for the ending.
Carrie: Right. Yeah.
Sarah: You – if that ending isn’t there, we need to know in advance.
Carrie: Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, that, there’s a lot of things that I read that end really unhappily, and, and often I’m okay with that, but as long as it’s not marketed to me as something that will end happily.
Sarah: Right. Like, I was once pitched a book, and it was like, well, it’s, it’s like a romance, and I was like, oh, okay, it’s like a romance. The hero fucking died at the end! I was so pissed! Not only because I had invested so much in the relationship and I thought it was lovely, but that I had been lied to! Ohhh, that’s bad.
Carrie: Yeah. I mean –
Sarah: When you don’t fulfill the contract that the reader expects –
Carrie: Yeah.
Sarah: – it’s bad.
Carrie: I would tell people, if they’re going to write a tragic love story and they don’t want people to know it’s tragic, tell them it’s a love story. Don’t tell them it’s a romance.
Sarah: Yep, yep, yep.
Carrie: Because, because I’m used to the concept of a tragic love story, so if someone says, it’s a love story, I won’t necessarily assume that it’s going to end okay.
Sarah: Of course!
Carrie: But if you say it’s, it’s a romance, or particularly, it’s a romance novel, then you’re making me this promise, and you can’t break a promise. The Dresden Files is emphatically not a romance novel –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: – even though there is some romance in it, so I’m like, I just sense doom all over it. And I’m a little worried about Harry Dresden, ‘cause I feel like he’s not eating enough and –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Carrie: – go over and make him some nourishing soup or something. I don’t know.
Sarah: You need to cook for him?
Carrie: Yeah. Well, you know what, though, in the, in the last, in the last book, it was really heartwarming. I won’t tell you which book I read that ended this way. In one of the books that I read, it was really heartwarming ‘cause brownies came over, and they cleaned his house! And they, like, stocked his kitchen with really healthy food, and you have no idea how much better I felt after I read that.
Sarah: Aww!
Carrie: I was like, it’s okay, he’s got food.
Sarah: Yeah!
Carrie: It’s fine.
Sarah: He has, he has vegetables.
Carrie: Yeah.
Sarah: He’s going to be okay.
Carrie: Yeah, it’s not that I eat all that healthy myself, but I’m like, that magic must kind of really deplete the energy. Like, yeah, like, I’m, I’m like a mom. All. The time. It never turns off, so now I’m, I’m worried about his, his nutrient level.
Sarah: Aww, poor guy.
Carrie: He should take some vitamins!
Sarah: Harry Dresden, take your vitamins?
Carrie: Yes! He needs a good, solid multivitamin.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Carrie: So, yeah, so, I’m obviously, I think our readers can tell, possibly slightly overinvested in the Dresden Files.
Sarah: Just –
Carrie: Thanks to Elyse, who has –
Sarah: Just a little.
Carrie: – ruined my life.
Sarah: Yeah. Elyse. We should do a podcast where we get both of you on the phone, and then you can just yell at her.
Carrie: Okay.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Carrie: Yeah, and then she’ll be like, oh, yeah, well, you’re the one who keeps getting me to knit stuff! And I’ll be like, yeah! [Laughs]
Sarah: Well, of course! [Laughs] So is there anything else you wanted to add?
Carrie: No, I don’t think so. I, I always love doing the podcast. I will find out what book that is.
Sarah: And if you can’t remember, I can leave it in the podcast as a HaBO, and people will tell you what it is.
Carrie: And they’ll say, yes, you wrote the review, dumbshit.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Carrie: I did. It’s a book I actually reviewed, so, yeah, so, I’m actually kind of embarrassed.
Sarah: Oh, dude, don’t be embarrassed. My whole life is a HaBO. I don’t remember any authors or titles. When someone emails me and says, I can’t remember this book, but it’s this, this, and this happened, and I actually remember the title and the author, I need to go, like, sit down for a while in a quiet room, because the shock is too much for me.
Carrie: Oh, my gosh. Yeah.
Sarah: That never happens. Never.
Carrie: Yeah.
Sarah: So seriously –
Carrie: Well, I –
Sarah: – don’t worry.
Carrie: – I, I will find it. I will find it. Now I’m like, God, what was it? Did it have a butterfly in the title? There was something about a butterfly, and there was something about a spider, and there was, like, a blue dress, and, you know, like, ahh, it’s, oh, it’s not even on the tip of my tongue. It’s in my brain right between my eyes.
Sarah: [Laughs] I know exactly how you feel.
Carrie: Like, this laser focus. Anyway, I’ll find it, and then I’ll be able to sleep at night, so that’ll be good.
[music]
Sarah: So I hope you like long things, ‘cause this was a long episode. There wasn’t really a good place to cut it in two, so I hope you enjoyed the extended, extra-long, turgid – I’m going to stop now – edition of the DBSA podcast. Thank you to Carrie for sitting down with me for so long and having a very fun discussion.
During the podcast you may have noticed, especially at the end there, that Carrie was like, I know these books, and I can’t remember, and I reviewed them! And then she emailed me later, so if you’ve been yelling at your iPod or at your car stereo or, you know, gesturing wildly with your headphones on, the books that she was talking about were Girl Least Likely to Marry by Amy Andrews and Like No Other Lover by Julie Anne Long – that’s the Victorian one.
And as usual, I will have links to all of these books in the podcast entry, as well as links to some of the people that she mentioned. I’m going to start with Wikipedia, and if you want to go from there, there are plenty of sources at the bottom of each Wikipedia entry, and you can explore the Internet, ‘cause that’s what it’s for. Also, Madam C. J. Walker is totally awesome, and the Pittsburgh public schools were totally awesome for having her as part of my elementary school curriculum, ‘cause I didn’t realize how awesome that was until now, and now I’m fully in awe of the awesomeness. But then, I was a pretty big fan of Pittsburgh public schools, and also since my sister teaches there, I kind of have to be. So anyway.
Thank you very much for listening. You can subscribe to our feed, you can hope the feed works soon – we’re honestly working on that, and I apologize. You can email us at [email protected], and you can leave comments on the podcast about what you would like us to do next or who you might like us to interview. We have a bunch of other things set up for the future, but if you have ideas, we want to hear them.
This podcast is brought to you by Berkley, publisher of Romancing the Billionaire, the sizzening, sizz-, sizz-, ha, sizz-sizz, sizzling. Does, do things have to be sizzling? I’m not actually very good at saying the word sizzling; I just want you to know that. Okay. I’m, I’m just going to leave this in, because you know what – [laughs] – it’s been that kind of day. Ahem. The sizzling, sizzling! new Billionaire Boys Club novel from New York Times bestselling author Jessica Clare. And thank you to Berkley for sponsoring the podcast, and I’m going to try really hard to learn how to say the word sizzling better.
And if you’re listening to the music and you’re thinking, damn it, it is not Christmas, you’re right! It is not, but I totally watched a set of time-lapse .gif sets of people removing all of the Halloween decorations and adding all of the Christmas decorations to the Magic Kingdom in Florida, and I was like, wow. You know, it’s a little early for Christmas, but still? That was amazing. So this is “Three Ships” by Deviations Project, one of my favorite pieces of music that Sassy Outwater has provided. You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater, and you can find this song on their album Adeste Fiddles, because what else would it be called? And I’ll have links to the music, and I’ll probably play this track again closer to the holidays, but if you were thinking, oh, my gosh! Early Christmas decorations, especially if, like me, you’re Jewish, and you’re like, oh, my gosh, it’s almost like a whole month and more away! Oy. This track is not so bad. Have a little good Christmassy parts.
And this is plenty of me talking. I don’t think anyone needs anything more from me, so, on behalf of Jane and Carrie, all of the lovely people at Berkley, all of the Adeste Fiddles, Sassy Outwater, Deviations Project, and anyone else who is behind me at this moment, which is both of my dogs and one cat, we wish you a very, very good weekend with the very best of reading. Thank you for listening.
[Christmas music, but the good stuff]
This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.
Another fun episode. I knew the books, so glad the non-HABO HABO has been solved already.
I’m already reading Christmas novellas so the music did not strike me as odd.
The iTunes loves us again! I listened to last week’s ep, and I’m looking forward to Carrie’s interview discussion in this weeks!
I was one of the ones who was not a fan of Girl Least Likely to Marry but liked The Rosie Project okay. It really had nothing to do with the gender of the character for me but rather how well the Asperger’s was portrayed along with the interest in science.
One of my reading/media pet peeves is seeing scientists being socially awkward because they are scientists. My husband is a neuroscientist and biology professor and, because of him, I spend a lot of time with a diverse group of scientists. Some are awkward but many have amazing people/social skills. Most of the members of his department are way more extroverted than many of the members of religious studies faculty I am on. So, I really hate to see that stereotype anywhere.
When it came to those two books it really had nothing to do with gender for me. I am critical of books/stories with scientist main characters always. Big Bang Theory drives me absolutely crazy. In order for me to view a socially awkward scientist as well done, I need to see that the socially awkward is separate from the science. I don’t like characters who are socially awkward because they like science. Science does not infect humans with awkward cooties. It’s been more than a year since I read either book but I remember the distinct parts of the personality being better in The Rosie Project than in the other. Maybe it’s because Rosie Project was longer and had more time to develop character’s personality. Maybe it’s because The Rosie Project had secondary academic characters who had different ranges of social skills. Maybe I was in a rotten mood when I read Girl Least Likely to Marry and that affected how generously I felt towards scientist characters that day. Whatever the reason may be, I assure you, gender was not my problem.
Yay! I haz podcast!
Another Cary Elwes movie I’d recommend is Lady Jane from 1986, starring a super young Helena Bonham Carter as Lady Jane Grey and him as Guilford Dudley. Also Patrick Stewart is in it, so inherently awesome. It’s about the Nine Day Queen, so no happy ending, but Helena and Cary are wonderful together. Criminally unknown movie.
Oh, I forgot, if that buttered chicken recipe works out would you post it Sarah? I’ve wanted to try making it for a while, but I’ve never found a solid recipe that I’ve been brave enough to try.
I wouldn’t worry about the length. I enjoy the longer podcasts. i certainly enjoyed this one!
iTunes is finally working for me! This whole time, well since about podcast 65 or so, I have been a subscriber and it has NEVER automatically updated for me. THIS WEEK, for the first time EVAH, it automatically updated!!! So I’m sorry you had the crap from iTunes, but I’m so glad it’s finally working for me!
I finished reading Bollywood Affair and I loved it!! I couldn’t stop thinking about Samir and Mili when I wasn’t reading, they really got to me.
Speaking of outlandish Victorian ladies, Agnes, Lady Macdonald, the wife of Canada’s first prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald, went on a cross-country train trip with her husband when he was campaigning, and insisted on going through the Rockies on a chair tied to the cow-catcher on the front of the train to better appreciate the view.
@StarOpal: If the recipe’s good, I’ll absolutely share it!
Ladies! I am disappoint that you did not find, in your Ladies Who Out-Steampunked Steampunk” segment, Madame Bertha Benz! Missus Benz, who was the wifey and business-type partner of Karl Benz, whom you may recognize from not-his-first-name Mercedes-Benz.
Good ladies, it turns out that when Karl was working on his “motorwagen” prototype, he liked to do the tinkering in the garage, but not so much the getting out and showing it off to people, which Mme Bertha knew would never make them rich (or rather, richer than she already was). So, rather than wring her hands and get the vapors on a convenient couch, Mme Bertha packed up the kids, grabbed her street map, and took the keys to the motorwagen and took the Very First Road Trip Ever. And what is so compellingly feminine about this road trip, you ask?
I’m glad you asked! 1.) Because Mista Benz was not known for his adventurous nature when it came to his prototypes, he was never going to run them further than the 1888 equivalent of doing donuts in the parking lot. So bless her heart, Mizz Bertie collected up her boys (13 and 15), and said, “Kids, pack your things. We’re taking the car, and going to see Grandma!” Only, you know, in German. Together with her sons, who probably pointed out that Dad would be kinda pissed if she scratched the paint, she pushed the prototype out of the workshop and down the street to jump-start it and be on their way long before Daddy woke up (and probably wondered where his breakfast was).
2.) Mme Bertha knew her Pookie’s engine ran on petroleum distillate, which, at the time of No Cars Anywhere Ever, did not come out of a convenient pump at a service station, but rather came out of a much smaller bottle found at a pharmacist’s (or chemists, as they say On The Continent) and used as cleaning solvent. So what did our intrepid heroine do? She took her street map and found a chemist’s for a fill-up (and presumably, to buy the kids something sticky so they’d quit asking, “Are we there yet?”), leaving in her wake the first filling station ever.
and 3.) Our Girl Bertie did not expect that the Mark 3, so named–and carjacked–because it could seat all 3 people in the World’s First-Ever Grand Theft Auto (1888 Old Old Old Skool edition), would make the 60-mile trip to Mother’s without suffering some dings along the way. Being the well-prepared woman that she was, she did her own maintenance using her hairpin, in one instance, and her garter in another. Oh, yeah, and by the way, on the trip back home, she only INVENTED BRAKE PADS by asking a kind shoemaker across from her hotel to nail leather pads onto the wooden braking blocks that were wearing down.
Did this lady out-steampunk steampunk? Bitches, she PUT the punk in steampunk! Why is my comment so very way long? Because I’ve been crazy about this lady ever since I discovered her several years ago, and I want more people as crazy as I am about her! She’s got a Wikipedia page and her own site as well as a handful of articles about her that are easily found by The Google (I have a post on her on my blog, too, but it’s waay back in time). I felt I must share this with The Bitchery and would like to see Mizz Bertha become one of the patron badasses of Smartbitchery.
Ms Grayson, I did know about Mme Bentz, but your account is so much better than the one I read. Thank you.
PS Where was the non-HABO HABO solved?
I was yelling (internally, because I was at work) “Pennyroyal Green! Pennyroyal Green!”
@azteclady, the non-HABO HABO was solved at the very end.
Yay for the Mary Seacole mention 🙂 She was an amazing woman, I really look up to her.