Continuing our series of reader interviews, Sarah chats with Tina Chaney, a longtime romance fan, about discovering romance, mystery favorites, living in Kentucky, and reader shaming. They also talk at length about Tina’s favorite books, and about pet peeves like “danger boner.”
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This podcast is brought to you by InterMix, publisher of HERE COMES TROUBLE, Anna J. Stewart’s captivating new romance starring the troublesome Tremayne family.
The troublesome Tremayne family is back in the next captivating romance from the author of Asking for Trouble.
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Transcript
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Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to episode number 155 of the DBSA podcast. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today is a reader, a romance reader, named Tina Chaney. We’re continuing our series of reader interviews, and Tina and I talk at length about being a romance fan, reader shaming, her favorite romances and mysteries, things about romantic suspense that kind of drive her nuts, and we start by talking about Southern accents, because that has everything to do with everything else, of course, right? Of course it does.
This podcast is brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Here Comes Trouble, Anna J. Stewart’s captivating new romance starring the troublesome Tremayne family. Download that on August 18th.
And if you like reading the podcast instead of listening, that’s totally cool. Our transcripts are created by hand by garlicknitter, and this week’s transcript is sponsored by Freeditorial. Freeditorial is a free and global meeting place for readers and writers from all over the planet. Freeditorial is a publisher and a library, and they invite you to download and read some of your favorite public domain books and articles for free. They also invite you to check out their long-short story contest, going on now. There is lots to discover at Freeditorial.
Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater. I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is.
Plus I have to warn you, there are a lot of book recommendations in this episode. I’m sorry. Well, if you don’t like it, then I’m sorry, and if you do like it, then I’m really happy that you’re pleased, but either way, if you’re curious about a book we mention during the podcast, there will be links to each book in the podcast entry, known by those who have much more podcasting experience than me as the show notes.
I’m still arguing, by the way, with my husband that outro is a word. He says it’s not, but that’s what it’s called at the end when I talk and tell you things? That’s called the outro. Still doesn’t believe me that it’s a word. Either way, this is the end of the intro, and it’s now time for the podcast.
[music]
Tina Chaney: – my entire life, you don’t sound like you come from Kentucky. Well, obviously, you haven’t spoken to me when I’m tired –
Sarah: Yep, or mad.
Tina: – ‘cause when I’m tired – mad, well, no, for me, it’s tired, drinking –
[Laughter]
Tina: – or around anybody with a really, really heavy Kentucky accent?
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: ‘Cause I can slip into it.
Sarah: Oh, yeah! And it’s a totally different Southern accent than –
Tina: It’s completely different, yeah.
Sarah: – other parts of the South. Like, even different parts of South Carolina are different to my ears.
Tina: Yeah, that’s, that’s what makes it funny. You can always tell when somebody’s fake-, well, almost always tell when someone’s faking it, ‘cause they rarely get it right.
Sarah: Nope, they start mixing them up.
Tina: Yeah. So, like, True Blood?
Sarah: Yeah, oh, yeah.
Tina: Not, not once sing-, hell, half of them weren’t even American.
Sarah: No.
Tina: Not one single one of them came from the South. [Laughs]
Sarah: No. And they didn’t get the accent right at all.
Tina: Like, everybody was doing their own version of a Southern accent.
[Laughter]
Tina: I mean, you get used to it after a while, but it was all so very wrong.
Sarah: Oh, yeah, it was all over the place.
Tina: Yeah, yeah.
Sarah: So, would you please –
Tina: Yeah?
Sarah: – introduce yourself and tell the people who will be listening who you are and where you live and how long you’ve been reading romance. Super easy question.
Tina: Oh. Okay. I’m Tina Chaney. I live in Lexington, Kentucky, the one place that everybody flies over or, you know, goes, oh, yeah, that’s that place where that idiot comes from.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Tina: ‘Cause it seems like any time anybody ever makes any sort of national news being from Kentucky, it’s always things like what we were talking about earlier. [Laughs]
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: Yeah. Except for, like, George Clooney, which people forget he’s from here. Johnny Depp is from here.
Sarah: Isn’t Jen-, Jennifer Lawrence from –
Tina: Jennifer Lawrence.
Sarah: – Louisville? She’s from Louisville, right?
Tina: She’s from Lou-uh-vul. You were close; it’s not Loo-ee-ville, it’s Lou-uh-vul.
Sarah: Louisville. Lou-, I, there’s a, I always put the third syllable in, and there’s only two; I’m sorry.
Tina: Yeah, sorry, it’s not Loo-ee-ville. Lou-vul.
Sarah: Lou-vul. Lou-vul. Yeah.
Tina: Lou-uh-vul. Luh-vul. Let’s see, who else? Oh, also the kid that is also in that movie with her.
Sarah: Peeta?
Tina: The short one. He’s the one who plays Peeta. Yeah, he’s actually from Lawrenceburg or something like that. It’s funny, ‘cause they’re –
Sarah: What are you doing down there in Kentucky making all these movie stars?
Tina: You notice they all leave.
[Laughter]
Tina: The one that actually I thought was weird, the girl from the Pussycat Dolls, the one that was a, a judge on that –
Sarah: Nicole Scherzinger?
Tina: Yeah! Yeah, she lived in Louisville for a really long time. Either Louisville or, I think it was Louisville, yeah. It was like, are you kidding? Really? Like, part of her family is from Hawaii and part of her family is from Louisville, ‘cause I was like, really?
Sarah: Well, those two things go together.
Tina: Yeah, yeah, well, it’s the first thing you think of, obviously.
Sarah: Absolutely.
Tina: Anyway, so, I’m from Kentucky, and I have been reading romance, God, for how long? That’s a question. ‘Cause you, you, I saw that you said you were going to ask me about this, like, who introduced me to, to –
Sarah: To romance, yeah.
Tina: Right. And the thing is, is that no one really, like, specifically intro- – my, my stepmother did, but kind of accidentally. See, here in town, and they don’t have it any more, but we used to have one of those bookstores where it’s like a used bookstore and you walk in, and, and you can’t find anything if you’re looking for it on purpose?
Sarah: Yep, it’s just shelves, yep.
Tina: Stacks of books everywhere and shelves, yeah. And we used to go to that on a regular basis, and I would get comic books, and my stepmother would get these brown paper bags full of books that I was “not allowed to read.” [Laughs] And –
Sarah: That always works really well. I guarantee you someone right now, at least ten people are nodding like, yeah, uh-huh, never works.
Tina: That, there, there was always, I wasn’t even allowed to look at them, let alone read them –
Sarah: Nope.
Tina: – which made me in-, just so very interested to find out what could possibly be in that brown paper bag.
Sarah: Well, yeah, the minute you tell somebody you’re not supposed to read it, it’s like, well, well, now I’m going to have to.
Tina: Right. So, I would have been nine or ten?
Sarah: Ooh!
Tina: And I tell people that I grew up feral –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Tina: – because I was – yeah, I, I – because my, I was, well, I grew up in the ‘70s, which you’re kind of young, but – [laughs] I –
Sarah: I grew up in the ‘70s! I was born in the mid ‘70s.
Tina: Yes, but I was born in the mid ‘60s –
Sarah: Okay.
Tina: – so I actually grew up in the ‘70s. I was six years old in ’72, okay, so –
Sarah: Okay.
Tina: Back then, latch-key kids were not uncommon.
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: And I would have big, long stretches of my day, especially in the summer, when there was no one in the house except for me and my stepsisters that, hahaha, I was supposed to be in charge of, and so – [laughs] – and she would take these books and put ‘em in a brown paper bag and then put ‘em in her bedroom and lock the bedroom door, and being the larcenous little bright ten-year-old that I was, I figured out how to pop that lock within a day.
Sarah: Well, of course!
Tina: So I would go in there and raid her books, and I knew when she would be home, pretty much within a ten-minute period, and I would read all day, all these books I wasn’t allowed to read, like Rose-, Rosemary Rogers? It’s a wonder that –
Sarah: Whoa! That is some, that is a big place to start, yo.
Tina: Yeah. Well, yeah, but I was thinking about it – in fact, I have a quote that I wanted to talk to you about, actually, but, about how you come to books when you’re ready for ‘em?
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: And I was like, well, I was reading John Updike when I was eleven or twelve, so – and I don’t read any kind of literary fiction anymore, because all those people are miserable. [Laughs] I mean, apparently, you can’t, it’s not literary unless everybody either sucks, they’re miserable, they die. It, it, yeah, it’s not fun, so – but, yeah, I was reading all that back then, so it wasn’t that weird to me to be reading Rosemary Rogers at ten. Yeah, I think it was, like, ten. So anyway, yeah, so, but that would be my sort of accidental introduction to it, simply by the fact that they put it in a brown paper bag so I had to know what it was, and whatever else you might say about Rosemary Rogers, the woman writes an engrossing tale, so – [laughs]
Sarah: Oh, she, she writes, like, crack.
Tina: These days it, see, it’s funny, ‘cause these days those are the books I would literally toss across a room, but back in –
Sarah: At the time, they were so compelling!
Tina: Oh, my God! Do you, do you remember, what was that one about, oh, they made a TV series with Lindsay Wagner, like a mini-series, and, oh, who was a, she used to write these crack books. She had a twin sister, and her twin sister, like, lived in a home, and she thought her twin sister was dead, and her stepbrother rapes her at some point, and – God, what is that thing? Anyway. Yeah, I’ve read all of those back in, when I was ten, eleven, twelve. It was –
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: Yep. But, anyway. Daisy. Was it called Daisy?
Sarah: It might have been.
Tina: Does that sound familiar to you? Daisy? See, now I’m so tempted to look it up on Google. [Laughs] But yeah, so, anyway, yeah, my actual on-purpose reading, romances on purpose, strangely enough were Harlequins, which were extremely tame, and some book called Christy? Which was from the bookshelf in my church, so it had to be religious?
Sarah: Of course.
Tina: It, it was a romance, but out, I could take that one home, and nobody would say anything. But the, the Harlequins, actually, my, I was thirteen, and my best friend was sixteen, and she used to bring them to church, and we’d sit in the back row and read them instead of listening. It was a lot more interesting than the sermon, and we would just very quietly read the pages together and then –
Sarah: Yeah.
Tina: – see who, yeah, and flip it to the next one, yeah. So –
Sarah: The thing I like about, you know, when you, when you discover the super purple prose romances at a young age –
Tina: Yeah?
Sarah: – is that if you don’t understand the sex scenes, it’s okay, ‘cause they don’t make a whole lot of sense anyway.
Tina: That’s true! I knew that –
Sarah: They just flew right over your head. Something –
Tina: I knew some bad things were happening, but the actual –
Sarah: Something was cresting? There were some waves.
Tina: There’re waves, there’s crashing, there’s – God, that’s where all those stupid metaphors came from, right?
Sarah: Oh, yeah, all the purple ones.
Tina: Love, love can – I, I don’t even remember now. It’s just, I know they were –
Sarah: Love’s Blazing Passionate Inferno of Love. [Laughs]
Tina: Yeah.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Tina: Like, the one that I remember distinctly, and I can’t remember the name of the book, but the, it was something to do with pirates?
Sarah: Oh, well, there were a lot of those, but yes.
Tina: This was a Rosemary Rogers, and it was pirates, and, and there was a ship and some humongous dress? Very tiny girl, great big dress?
Sarah: Well, always.
Tina: And –
Sarah: It’s, it’s like, it’s like dystopian YA where they’re all going to the prom.
Tina: Yeah.
Sarah: You’ve got to have a big dress. Big dress? It just doesn’t matter what genre, you just need the big dress. Big dress all the way.
Tina: I vaguely remember one, it wasn’t a Rosemary Rogers, but she, it was, like, an antebellum one, and she was, like, the favored daughter of the plantation owner –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Tina: – and then he dies, and then, that’s when it comes out that she’s actually, like, the love child of, of the, her dad and some slave woman, and she just happened to be really light skinned, but now that it’s come out, her evil stepsister of course tells everybody, and she gets sold into slavery. Yeah. I remember, and I can’t even, I, you know what, that would be a, a Help a Bitch Out. I don’t necessarily want to read it again, but now I really want to know –
Sarah: Now you want to know what the hell book was that. How did I read it?
Tina: [Laughs] That sounds like one we’d have to give to RedHeadedGirl, seriously.
Sarah: I, I think I would hear her head explode from where I am, and she’s in Boston? I think that you and I both would feel the [explosion noise] of her head if she read that.
Tina: I don’t suppose that sounds familiar, but that was actually, God, could that have been a Catherine Coulter? That was, yeah –
Sarah: Selling into slavery?
Tina: Yeah, she got sold into slavery, and of course she gets bought by the handsome guy who doesn’t really want to treat her badly but wants to sleep with her.
Sarah: You know, I read a lot of Coulter, and that’s not ringing a bell, but I bet at three in the morning I’ll be like, I remember which one it is!
Tina: It’s not necessarily Coulter, but, ‘cause I think maybe Coulter is after all that.
Sarah: Yeah.
Tina: Anyway, those early ‘70s books, I mean, God, everybody was getting raped and passed around and, they usually made these journeys around the damn world –
Sarah: Oh, yeah.
Tina: – how far they traveled.
Sarah: Oh, yeah. I think, I think – RedHeadedGirl calls them fucking through history.
Tina: Yeah. [Laughs]
Sarah: Here we are at a large, historical event. Let’s have sex somewhere around it. All right, next one.
Tina: Yeah, ‘cause –
Sarah: Oh, you’re signing the Magna Carta! Okay, don’t move, we’ll be right back!
Tina: Well, you know, that’s just like when they try to combine romantic suspense with erotica, and it’s like, oh, the serial killer is, is outside the house! Let’s bang on the stairs.
Sarah: Yes! [Laughs]
Tina: It’s like, really?
Sarah: They’re chasing us! They’re chasing us right now! I’ve never been so hot for you. Nooo! Elyse calls it danger boner, and it is the perfect term for it, because, like, come on! That doesn’t actually happen!
Tina: I mean, I get that danger, you know, you want to procreate because you almost died, but you should at least get through the part where you don’t die first.
Sarah: Right! Get away from the bad guys at least a half an hour, you know?
Tina: Like, deal with the killer outside the door – [laughs] –
Sarah: No.
Tina: – ‘cause that, that drives me crazy, that scene.
Sarah: Danger boner is a problem.
Tina: Yeah, that one, that one kills me.
Sarah: [Laughs] So, what are some of your absolute favorite romance novels that if someone was like, okay, what do you like? What should I read? Who or what novels are your absolute favorites?
Tina: All right, I had, one of my former bosses, she was going away on a, like, really long vacation, like three weeks or something.
Sarah: Woohoo!
Tina: Yeah, she was. It was great! It was their anniversary trip, they went to Hawaii, it was a big deal. But she was like, so, I need to take books, and I’m like, well, what kind of books, ‘cause I have a bazillion books, and she goes, oh, I want something kind of lighthearted that, that is fun. I was like, okay, how do you feel about romance? And she goes, I can do romance. Now mind you, this is my boss, so I didn’t want to freak her out, right?
Sarah: No, you don’t want to be like, all right, well, this one involves multiple partners and –
Tina: Yeah, anal sex, how do you feel about that? [Laughs]
Sarah: Yeah. Little, little anal discussion in the office, sure!
Tina: But, yeah, so there, I mean, there’re just certain things your boss doesn’t need to know about you. So – [laughs] – so what I did, I ended up giving her Agnes and the Hitman, because I love that book.
Sarah: That is one of my favorites. I was not crazy about all of the, the, the ones written with, with Bob Mayer?
Tina: But that one was so good!
Sarah: That one was just wonderful. I just, I like that she was violent, and she hit people with a frying pan, and she cooked for them too.
Tina: They made her go to anger management or something. [Laughs]
Sarah: Yes. She was mad. And the, and the hitman was just a, very chill, and she’s the one who’s, like, killing people with a pan.
Tina: Yeah, I know. I love that! It was, and it was funny. And I gave her the one – my brain. Oh, Phillips, is that her last name?
Sarah: Susan Elizabeth Phillips?
Tina: Yes, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, and one that starts out, it’s the football one. It starts out with, she’s walking down the street in a beaver costume.
Sarah: Yes, yes, yes, this is a very –
Tina: I died. [Laughs] That was the, I love that opening. And I gave her the one, God, completely different one. Now of course my brain is – but it’s very, it’s set kind of in a Victorian time, and she, he’s, like, an investigator type guy and she, they meet over the, the body of her dead husband? Best opening line ever, that she met Nicholas something –
Sarah: Oh! That’s, that’s – oh, my God, I just –
Tina: I thought I was the only one! [Laughs]
Sarah: What is, okay, whatever is in your brain just went to my brain, because I actually know this person, and I talked to her, and I can see her face, and I can – her, her name just flew out of my head! [Laughs]
Tina: One of my favorite opening lines to any book ever, that she met, she met Nicholas whatever-his-last-name-is over the body of her dead husband, but actually he really wasn’t quite dead yet, or something along –
Sarah: He wasn’t quite dead yet.
Tina: Yeah.
Sarah: Oh, my God, oh, geeze, it’s Silent in the Grave is the name of the book –
Tina: Thank you! Silent in the Grave.
Sarah: – and it’s Deanna Raybourn! Oh, my God, Deanna, I’m really sorry.
Tina: [Laughs]
Sarah: Wow! I, I’m, I’m actually amazed that I came up with the title, because I’m not good at that.
Tina: I could see the cover, but I couldn’t see the title. ‘Cause the cover’s got that kind of, sort of, not castle, but like a, almost like a chapel or something?
Sarah: Yeah.
Tina: On it?
Sarah: Yeah. Silent in the Grave.
Tina: But that is one of my favorite opening lines ever. And –
Sarah: It is a really, really good series, too.
Tina: It’s a good series, but I, I love that book best out of all of them, and that is my favorite opening line, pretty much to any book ever, ‘cause it, it tells you what the story’s going to be about, it introduces both of them, and it kind of sets the tone. It is one of the best opening lines I think anybody’s ever pulled off.
Sarah: It’s true. I’m with you there, one hundred percent.
Tina: Oh, and on a different end, I love Lori Armstrong. Not the, not the erotic cowboy ones, but she’s got a series called, like, Mercy Kills or something like that [Mercy Gunderson mysteries]. It’s a series of five books, and it’s not the Mercy one, it’s the ones right before it, but they’re mostly, they’re mostly suspense. They’re mostly, like, crime novels, but along the way, the her-, the heroine gets involved with this guy who’s, like, the leader of a local biker gang, ‘cause in the first book it seems like he’s the one that might be the killer, but of course he’s not.
Sarah: Right.
Tina: And they, they, they just gradually sort of work, work it out and, like, work their way through this relationship ‘cause they’re on two ends of the spectrum, and yet they’re kind of perfect for each other? So by the time you get to the last couple of books, they’re actually together, and he’s not quite as bad as you thought he was in the first book, and she’s not quite as good as she wants to be, so they kind of meet in the middle.
Sarah: Yep. She has two series, Lori Armstrong. She has the Mercy Gunderson series, and then she has the Julie Collins series.
Tina: Julie Collins series.
Sarah: The Julie Collins series.
Tina: I love that one. I’ve read the Mercy Gunderson one, but I like the Julie Collins one better.
Sarah: So do you like mysteries with your romance, as long as there’s not danger boner?
Tina: Yeah! Well, I was, the thing is is that, I think the one thing that actually ties everything I read together is that there is almost always either some sort of suspense or mystery.
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: Whether it’s urban fantasy – there’s almost always suspense or some sort of mystery going on, because you, usually each one, I mean, like, if you look at Ilona Andrews, that, her, like, Magic, what is it Magic Kills and all that?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Tina: If you look at that series, every book, you’ve got an over arc, overreaching arc, but every one has got an individual sort of mystery going on.
Sarah: Of course.
Tina: I, I like the fantasy element, but I also like the, the mystery, and, you know, the same with, I like romantic suspense. My problem is, the thing that just drives me crazy, other than the danger boner, is –
[Laughter]
Tina: – is if, for some reason, they’re standing over a dead body thinking how hot the other person is?
Sarah: [Laughs]
Tina: I’m done. I don’t care how jaded you are, if you’re standing over a recently murdered body thinking how hot that other per-, you’re sick, and there’s something wrong with you, and I don’t want to hang out with you. [Laughs] So, I can only think that it’s because whoever’s writing that hasn’t actually stopped to think about what would actually be confronting these people.
[Laughter]
Tina: But –
Sarah: Oh, it’s a dead person, but it’s a really erotic-looking dead person.
Tina: No, it, it’s always something like, oh, it’s a dead person, but they’re not personally connected to me. Oh, look how hot that person is who’s also standing there! It’s like – [laughs]
Sarah: And you know –
Tina: – I’m so blasé about the, well, as long as it wasn’t my cousin –
Sarah: Yeah, know. I – no.
Tina: [Laughs]
Sarah: Just no.
Tina: And I, you see that, I mean, and I read that, and I’m like, are you kidding me? What is wrong with you?
[Laughter]
Tina: So, yeah, don’t like the danger boner, and I don’t like the, the, any sort of, I, I have absolutely no idea who killed this person; they’ve been horribly murdered. I was briefly, I was briefly upset by it, but damn, you’re hot! That just kills me.
Sarah: Yeah, erotic eye-fucking over a dead body is just not good.
Tina: No, no. And it turns up more than you would think. I mean, bad, you would think bad fanfiction, which I’ve seen it there, but I’ve actually seen it in books that have gotten published on Amazon, and I don’t know if they were published by the author or actually somebody went, yeah, that works! and a publishing house published it. I don’t know. They –
Sarah: Wow, that’s messed up.
Tina: Like, I actually got a free book from Amazon, got that far in there, and I went, oh, hells to the no. So – [laughs]
Sarah: [Laughs] Not even the fact that this is free will compel me forward.
Tina: Oh, my God. I, I don’t tend to write reviews on Amazon much because mostly I’ve got other things I’d rather be doing, or I haven’t finished the book yet when they send me the little thing?
Sarah: Yeah.
Tina: But I actually went out of my way to write a review on Amazon –
Sarah: Oh!
Tina: – for a free book I didn’t finish because this upset me so much.
[Laughter]
Sarah: So, aside from less danger-boner and no hot eye-fucking over dead bodies, what are some things that you really like and want more of in the books that you read? Like, if you’re looking for books, what are the things you’re looking for? ‘Cause I know you like suspense –
Tina: I like suspense.
Sarah: – or a thriller or a mystery, and you like contemporary.
Tina: Well, I like urban fantasy, actually.
Sarah: Ooh!
Tina: Yeah. So, I’m, I’m, the two, my two big genres are urban fantasy, like Ilan-, Ilona Andrews or Patricia Briggs –
Sarah: I love her. She’s so talented.
Tina: Everything she writes is good! Patricia Briggs, I’ve never read a book from her that was bad. And I, I like, like you said, romantic suspense, and – but I was thinking about, like, right now, I’m enjoying this series, and I even wrote it down, ‘cause I am on, I’m on book two, but I’ve actually read three books, ‘cause the first one I’ve got, I read, I, I think I clicked a link on Smart Bitches and it was free –
Sarah: Ooh!
Tina: – or it was super cheap. One of the –
Sarah: That’s always good.
Tina: Yeah, and it was, I can’t remember what the third book is now. Or not, it’s not the third in the series; it’s more recent than that. But anyway, I liked it well enough that I went back and I was going to read the first one, and I discovered I’d actually already bought it at some point.
Sarah: [Laughs] Isn’t that the best?
Tina: So I went looking for it, and I went okay, so I read the first one, and then I immediately read the second one, and it’s the Invertary, I-N-V-E-R-T-A-R-Y series by Janet Elizabeth Henderson? They’re all set in this little town in Scotland.
Sarah: Oh!
Tina: There’s apparently an extraordinary number of Americans and really, really quirky weird people running around Invertary, by the way. So – [laughs]
Sarah: Really!
Tina: And, and I, it’s weird, because it’s full of things I don’t normally like. I don’t go out of my way to read contemporary, generally speaking, because I need there to be something more than – I find that you’re going to run into the Big Mis as the plot device more often than not in a contemporary because they need something for the drama, and if I find myself thinking, use your big people words?
Sarah: [Laughs]
Tina: I’m done. And they also have loads and loads of quirky people, which is, can be cute, but –
Sarah: It’s fun when it’s in a, when it’s in an interesting place.
Tina: Right, but at the same time, it can also be overdone.
Sarah: Yes.
Tina: And the other thing that I, usually puts me off is I don’t like intentionally funny, because a lot of times what I find funny isn’t necessarily what other people find funny and vice versa? So, so –
Sarah: This is very true.
Tina: – so funny books can be very hit or miss. These are things that –
Sarah: Humor is so subjective.
Tina: Yeah, and these are things I’d normally avoid, and yet something is – oh, and a lot of times I find myself thinking, God, that hero is kind of a dick!
[Laughter]
Tina: And yet! I am reading, I’m halfway through the third book that I’ve read in this series, and I, I will probably continue until I finish the series, because one, the secondary characters have great, interesting, sort of conflicted relationships.
Sarah: Cool!
Tina: Like, the one I’m reading now, his parents have been married for thirty-five years, and their, their marriage is imploding.
Sarah: Whoa, that’s a, that’s kind of a new one.
Tina: Yeah –
Sarah: You don’t see a lot of that.
Tina: Yeah, the hero, basically, he wants a marriage like his parents’, not realizing that his parents, their, their relationship has just been falling apart for years –
Sarah: Yikes!
Tina: – and what happened is, is that they retired and moved, and she’s very social and had to leave all of her friends, and they moved to a new state where she doesn’t know anybody, and he’s very not-social, and now he’s like, I’m old and just want, you know, I don’t want to go out and socialize and all this other stuff, and so she’s tired of living by, feeling like she lives all by herself with somebody who doesn’t even acknowledge her and doesn’t care about her anymore, and he’s like, I’m still exactly the same! I don’t know what’s going on, kind of deal, and so I’m almost reading alone trying to see if these people can get their act together by the end of the book, and it, it’s one thing I like about this series is that not only is there a main, a main relationship, but there are some really interesting secondary relationships going on – compelling! I, I’m just, just almost as invested in as the main characters, so – and like you said, you don’t see that very often where the, they’ve been together for years and now it’s kind of coming apart at the seams, and can they manage to pull it back together when they both still really love each other, and – so that’s interesting. And I really do, I like the series. I recommend it. Although, like I said, there are things that, if these things bother you, humor is subjective –
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: – and the hero’s kind of dick – [laughs] – so, and, and as I’ve noticed this in each one, about the time that, that they start getting all bossy and I’m the man, and I told you, and, and basically, sometimes, it sometimes feels like the heroine is not, not as quick as the hero or just sometimes, well, like the first book I read, I’m surprised I went to the, to the first book in the series, because she was almost stupid. She, they pull it together, she pulls it together by the end of the, the book, though. So, it works. Like I said, she takes elements that I normally don’t like, and she makes it work. So what do I look for in a book? I look for good writing. Something that’s going to grip me into the story.
Sarah: Right.
Tina: I want to believe that the happy ending is actually going to happen. I don’t know if you remember, but you and I had this discussion that there are some authors I broke up with because I could no longer believe their happy endings. These people were such a mess that, and so terrible to each other and, that, that by the time you get to the end of the book you’re like, I don’t believe that these people could possibly be together any length of time without trying to kill each other. So – [laughs] – yeah, and, and I don’t feel that way about these people, so I, I, I have to believe that that happy ending is possible –
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: – that, that even if they have issues that they can deal with these issues. I have to have some sort of plausible plotline.
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: And the other problem I, I have with books, not just with contemporaries in general where a lot of times the Big Mis is, is the drama, but I also have a – and thank God, it seems to have passed – the specifically supernatural ones, like the vampire ones or the, the werewolf ones, and we’re not talking about, like, the urban fantasy where there’s a mystery to solve and something going on. I’m talking about where, you know, the big plot device is she’s his chosen one; she just needs to realize it by the end of the –
Sarah: Yeah.
Tina: That drives me crazy.
[Laughter]
Sarah: The Fated Mate?
Tina: Yes.
Sarah: One of my, one of my favorite twists on it was Vivian Arend. She has a whole world of mixed shifters of different species, and the wolf shifters, we know, wolves mate for life, and, and the wolf is like, oh, my God, you’re, you’re my mate, we’re, we are meant to be, and she’s like, yeah, I’m a cat? We don’t do that. You’re cute, but that doesn’t – no. No.
Tina: That doesn’t work for me.
Sarah: No, we don’t, we don’t –
Tina: Have you met cats? [Laughs] Let me introduce you to cats.
Sarah: Yeah, we don’t, we don’t do that, but thanks anyway, and he’s just like, oh, crap, what do I do? I really liked that, because –
Tina: It spins it on its head a little bit.
Sarah: Yeah, and when you have the sort of fated pair, like, you’re my mate! I can see color! My heartbeat, and you know, the, it started to rain, and these are all the right signs, and I stubbed my toe, and you’re my, you’re my fated pair.
Tina: Yeah, and I stubbed my toe, the moon turned red, and, and then a bird flew overhead. It –
Sarah: [Laughs] The milk went bad, and the dog farted, and these are all the signs that my mate is here –
Tina: Yeah.
Sarah: – and it’s like, you’ve just got to wait for her to show up and realize it? Ugh.
Tina: Not to mention, if this, if this was any other thing where, like, the guy wasn’t a werewolf or a vampire or whatever the hell your flavor of the month is –
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: – and this was just some random dude coming up and saying this, this would be like restraining order and Taser.
Sarah: Yes!
Tina: You know, and yeah, that’s not creepy at all. [Laughs]
Sarah: That’s not weird, no, not at all.
Tina: Yeah. Yeah, I need some believability in the – I don’t care how, if your, if in your world there are vampires and werewolves and fated whatevers, I still need to believe that, that this is logically consistent within your world, it works, and everybody’s going to still make it happen at the, by the end. I don’t, I don’t, the, oh, you have to be with me because God’s decided, that’s annoying.
Sarah: Yeah.
Tina: That’s, I mean, like, not to mention, it takes away all the tension. You’ve just take the, if your only tension is, well, by the end of this she’ll get Stockholm syndrome and, and love me, so – [laughs] – I mean, if that’s your only, if that’s your only tension, that’s not enough, that’s not enough to propel a story for three hundred and something pages. So, yeah, I’m not, I’m not interested in that sort of thing, so I, I, what I’m interested in is a good story and make me believe that these people can actually work. That they’re grownups, that they can use their words, and –
Sarah: Yeah. Well, you, you unfortunately are like me and are a sort of demanding kind of reader. You want really good character and really good character development in a really good, intricate plot.
Tina: It doesn’t have to be intricate. It just has to be interesting.
Sarah: Yeah.
[Laughter]
Sarah: You know, that’s true.
Tina: People running around acting like teenagers who can’t talk to each other for 300 pages is not interesting. I don’t want to hang out with those people in real life. Why would I want to bring them into my downtime?
Sarah: I actually have noticed that there’s, there’s a couple different kinds of contemporary where, you have the contemporary and there’s a, a think of deep conflict that is super weighing on the characters’ minds. You know, like, you know, who’s going to inherit this? Or can I move into, can I come back to my hometown and fix this thing and then leave without any complications? There’s, there’s some major conflict that affects the characters constantly –
Tina: Right –
Sarah: – and then there’s the kind of contemporary where you just kind of wander through their lives with them for a little while.
Tina: See, I don’t like those movies either, though. I don’t like slice of life movies and, and, and it’s like, I don’t want to just, like, wander in and watch somebody’s life for two hours and then wander away again. I want, I want a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: You know, it doesn’t have to be The End, we all died, and that was it, but, you know, at least an end for right now. You know, happily ever after for now, and if things come up, we’re mature enough we can deal with it, because –
Sarah: Yes.
Tina: – because we went through all of this stuff before, and we learned how to talk to each other, and we learned how to deal with each other, and we learned what drives each other crazy, or at least we’re trying to learn these things.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Tina: What was I going to say? Oh! Deep conflict, and I had to, the library started getting demanding. I need to get a book back. So, there is – my God, I can’t believe I didn’t write it down. Set in the ‘20s, the brother is a bootlegger –
Sarah: Jenn Bennett, Bitter Spirits.
Tina: Yeah, the current one that’s out right now. Oh, baby, please get off of there before you knock my computer over. Come here.
Sarah: Is this a kitty?
Tina: Yes, this is my baby.
Sarah: Oh, hey, baby! Baby’s like, don’t hold me, I needed to be on the computer. Don’t you know anything?
Tina: Well, you know what, she wants to climb on me unless I pick her up, and then she’s all like, oh, God, what’d you do?
Sarah: And then she’s like, oh, no, no, no. Is it Grave Phantoms?
Tina: Yes. Maybe? No, it’s the third one.
Sarah: Oh, the –
Tina: Third one, with the, the sister and the Asian guy who is very physically –
Sarah: Yep, this is the third one, that’s it. Grave Phantoms.
Tina: Well, I – right. I got halfway through, and I started getting really anxious because, you know, the conflict here is, is the ‘20s. There are actually laws against the two of them being together, right? And –
Sarah: Yes. That’s a really hard conflict to get over.
Tina: Yeah, how do you get around that? I can’t figure out how she’s going to make that work, and I had to give the stupid book back because they, like I said, I took it with me on vacation and then I, I expected to finish it, and I ended up not finishing it because I got interested in this other series, and I have to admit, I got to the point where they slept together and they were together all night, and I found myself feeling really anxious, like, oh, my God, her brother’s going to have a fit. What’s he going to do? What are they going to do, and if they find, he could be arrested. This is really bad, and I’m just going to go read something that doesn’t make me as anxious, and then the library insisted I give it back.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Tina: So, I – [laughs] – so I need –
Sarah: Well –
Tina: – the book to finish it. Is that not silly? I should have just –
Sarah: Nooo! It’s not sill-, silly at all. I can tell you, though, that Carrie reviewed it and really liked it and gave it a B+, and you know, she acknowledged those same things, that it’s really hard to absolutely establish a happy ending when there are laws preventing them from marrying. But in her review – I won’t give everything away –
Tina: I figure it works out in the end. There’s got to be a way that they at least get to a sort of –
Sarah: They, because they have so many people around them, they, they’re okay. They will be all right.
Tina: Yeah. Yeah, but I, I was –
Sarah: So you should go and get the book and finish it, ‘cause it’s really good.
Tina: I do, I have to check it out ag-, well, I tried to check it out again, and they wouldn’t let me extend it, and, and I was already late, and then they sent me another email that said, we could send this to a collection agency. I’m like, it’s not that late!
Sarah: [Laughs]
Tina: It’s a week late! Geeze, people! [Laughs]
Sarah: Good God! So do you read only paper, or do you read digital too?
Tina: Actually, I’ve been reading this Invertary series on digital. I tend to read paper just simply because it’s easier to get from the library, because I can get a stack of them, and then I don’t have – you can only, with the digital with the library, you can only get three, and you have to finish them in fourteen days, and if I get buy doing something else or decide to read something else or whatever, I’m not nec- – and then it just disappears.
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: So, since mo-, we went through a period where I was making next to nothing, and we were, you know, things were broke, and my book budget went pfff!
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: So all my books came from the library, and I just got out of the habit of buying anything –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Tina: – and so a lot of mine are paper simply because of that.
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: Oh, there is a book I want to tell you about.
Sarah: Yes, please!
Tina: Have you seen this one: The Shattered Court?
Sarah: The Shattered Court. No, I have not heard of this.
Tina: This, this is so great. This is the best –
Sarah: Really!
Tina: – book I have read in forever that made me just go [gasp]! I love this book. I love, love, I want to marry this book. I want to have its babies, and I want to read the next one, and it’s not out yet!
Sarah: [Laughs] So tell me about this book. Is this fantasy?
Tina: It, it is, but it’s – all right, it’s set in a world where there, the, the noble women are usually born with magic, especi-, and apparently, the more magic you have, like, you don’t come into it, you don’t even find out if you have magic until you reach your majority, which in this case is twenty-one –
Sarah: Right.
Tina: – on your twenty-first birthday, and at that point you find out (a) if you have magic at all and (b) how strong it is. And what this particular society has been doing for a very long time is binding these women, these noble women, if it turns out that they have magic, part of their magic gets bound to the church, and part of their magic gets bound to whatever husband that gets picked out for them, okay?
Sarah: Ugh.
Tina: And, and so, here lately, there haven’t been these women that, there hasn’t been anybody really strong in a long time.
Sarah: Right.
Tina: But mostly, like, right now, the strongest person was the princess, and what happens is, is like, the day before or two days before her twenty-first birthday, she and this bodyguard guy – he literally is a bodyguard, but he’s, like, the second son of an earl, so he’s noble – they’re in town. She doesn’t realize that she’s picking up her birthday present, but the princess, ‘cause she’s a lady-in-waiting, was buying her a birthday present from this magic user, and while they’re in town, basically, this terrorist act happens at the, at the castle, and he does what he’s supposed to do, which is keep the noblewomen safe. His job is to keep her safe. Safest thing he can do is they, they jump, jump into a portal, and they basically port out of it, because –
Sarah: Whoa!
Tina: Yeah, they, because he, he can’t take her back to the castle because something blew up, and he doesn’t know if they’re being invaded by the, the other cit-, I mean, the other country that they consider their enemy –
Sarah: Right.
Tina: – or what’s going on, and his job, his one job is to keep her safe. Just like the Secret Service, you basically bundle them on out of there, and that’s what he did.
Sarah: Right, of course.
Tina: Right, so he basically sticks her in a portal and ports her out of there, and they take this rather winding journey to get to his brother’s lands –
Sarah: Right.
Tina: – quite far away, and in the meantime what happens is, is she turns twenty-one along the way, and touches a ley line –
Sarah: Uh-oh.
Tina: – and apparently that makes her, like, well, apparently, super horny, and it makes her pretty much irresistible, ‘cause she touches him, and whatever it is that’s happening with her kind of passes to him?
Sarah: Wha-oh.
Tina: And they end up accidentally bonding, which means that she can’t bond with the church, which means that –
Sarah: Uh-oh!
Tina: – she has way more power than a whole lot of other people. It’s this really interesting worldbuilding and, like, like, who all died and what that means, you know, in the terrorist act, and what that means, and who actually considered the terrorist act and who they suspect committed the terrorist act, and, you know –
Sarah: And what does it mean that she has all this power?
Tina: Right, because now that the crown kind of consider-, the crown and the, the church kind of consider her a threat, because she’s not, all that, she’s got all that power, and it’s not bound to anybody.
Sarah: Wow.
Tina: Yeah, and she’s exhibiting powers that women aren’t supposed to have –
Sarah: Right.
Tina: – ‘cause when she accidentally bonded with him, she got some of his magic that only men are supposed to be allowed to use. Come to find out, apparently it wasn’t because that’s just how it is but because that’s what society had been doing was separating them out, and, you know, because they don’t – and that’s the other thing; it’s like how we spent a real long time not teaching women anything about sex whatsoever –
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: – and so by the time that they would be exposed to sex, they’d have absolutely no idea. She was only taught, like, the most vaguest things about magic because until you actually have magic it’s unseemly to know about it.
Sarah: Right, of course.
Tina: And so she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to be able to do and what she’s not supposed to be able to do until she does stuff that she’s not supposed to be able to do.
Sarah: And then everyone, then she’s attracted –
Tina: Attention.
Sarah: – attention to herself, yes.
Tina: Well, yeah. So there’s this worldbuilding going on, and their relationship starts out with, he’s just basically trying to keep her safe, and in the process, because of things, they end up growing a lot closer, so that by the end of the book it’s more than that; they’re actually in a relationship together, and the things, things that he does to keep her safe, he ends up, like – it, it’s an amazing book. So, it’s so good, I can’t wait to read the next one and, and see what all’s going to happen, because, like, between the worldbuilding, I’ve, I’ve not seen magic dealt with this way –
Sarah: Cool!
Tina: – it’s this really quite interesting view, like an alternate view of, say, renaissance/just beyond the renaissance, not quite –
Sarah: Yeah.
Tina: – not quite, you know, modern age.
Sarah: Right, of course.
Tina: So there’s, like, so – and it’s funny, because when they actually, when you’re in another country, there’s actually, like, steam-powered stuff, but in their country it’s closer to the Dark Ages that the church is kind of imposing on everybody.
Sarah: Right.
Tina: A lot of people don’t even realize it ‘cause they’re so isolated. It’s like, it’s like an alternate version of, a magical version of England, but it’s not that obvious; they don’t call it England. They call it Albion or something like that.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Tina: And she actually uses a lot of historical research for, like, the names of places and things like that.
Sarah: That’s cool!
Tina: So, it’s real, I loved it. Yeah, I love this book. It’s M. J. Scott.
Sarah: I think I’ve met her. She’s Australian.
Tina: Yeah. It’s M. J. Scott, The Shattered Court. And –
Sarah: Cool!
Tina: Yeah. I recommend this. It’s so, so good.
Sarah: That sounds really awesome.
Tina: You have any other questions?
Sarah: I do, but if you have questions for me, I’m happy to take ‘em.
Tina: Well, actually, so I listen to NPR at work, because it works for me, ‘cause, like –
Sarah: Yeah, of course.
Tina: I can listen to podcasts and little bits of things, and then if I have to pause it, it’s – I hate pausing music in the middle and trying to keep going back and forth.
Sarah: Right, of course.
Tina: But anyway, there’s, there’s a guy named Saeed Jones who apparently is a literary critic for Buzzfeed of all places, and he was on NPR.
Sarah: Uh-huh.
Tina: Talking about his summer reading list?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Tina: And I’m not interested in most critics’ summer reading list or winter reading list or whatever, because, like I said, I don’t do literary. I did literary when I was kid, which is weird –
Sarah: Right.
Tina: – but no. But anyway, so he said, and I actually listened to it, like, three, four times to get it down perfect, he says, people bring a lot of guilt to books – which I believe – and they often feel embarrassed over not being familiar with some classic, or that they’re late on some book that everyone is talking about at the moment.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Tina: I really believe that books come to you when, when you and the book are ready to be together, so sometimes you have to step away. That’s the great thing about books; you’re always on time.
Sarah: I completely agree!
Tina: Well, the one part I thought is, is that people do bring a lot of guilt to books. Like, what we –
Sarah: Absolutely.
Tina: – don’t read. I mean, I’m pretty open about the fact that I don’t read the classics.
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: I don’t – literature literature – I don’t like the fact that people try to shame me into it by telling me that what I read is wrong and that I should be reading that, ‘cause screw that.
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: You know, that’s the great thing about being in your forties. You just –
Sarah: The older you get, the fewer shits you give.
Tina: Yep, yep, yep. This is, this is my field of fucks. It lies fallow at this point. So –
[Laughter]
Tina: – have no fuck left to give.
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: But yes! Yeah, I, I find myself a lot more willing to say, yeah, I don’t like that and I’m not going to read that. You know what else? I don’t like jazz, and I, I only like classical music in context, so –
[Laughter]
Tina: Which is fine, ‘cause I have an art history degree.
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: And I spent a whole lot of time with people who made it very, very clear what I should like and shouldn’t like, because art history is filled with people who are full of opinions of what you should read and what you shouldn’t read and what kind of music is good, and you should have seen the, the appalled look on my fellow grad student’s face when I said I don’t like jazz, I prefer blues, thanks.
Sarah: [Gasps] Sacrilege!
Tina: I know! Apparently, if I was truly sophisticated, I would actually prefer jazz. But, yeah, so I, I gave up, I, I’ve always been pretty honest about the fact that I don’t like literature and all that other stuff, but I do believe that people bring a lot of guilt to books, and especially women, who are constantly being made to feel guilty about what we like. And that was one thing I did like about Magic Mike, which I saw over the weekend, by the way.
Sarah: Oh, Magic Mike XXL?
Tina: Yes!
Sarah: Did you like it?
Tina: It was, I, you know, it’s one of those, it wasn’t a good movie, but it was a very fun movie. It was a very –
Sarah: Yes, I know exactly what you mean.
Tina: And there are parts of it that are important to articulate, which is that, that, you know, ask women what they want and then give it to ‘em. It makes us happy.
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: You know, because so few people do. And how, I, I love the fact that they, women of all sizes and all races were shown as participating in this activity of, of enjoying watching someone aesthetically pleasing dance in front of them, and it wasn’t played as a joke.
Sarah: Yep. And that their desire isn’t something to be laughed at.
Tina: Right. Right.
Sarah: And that everyone’s having fun, too.
Tina: Right. And, you know, older women, heavier women, black women, white women. There was never any joke made about the fact that those women were there enjoying the entertainment, and I appreciate that in a movie; I really do. [Laughs] Because oftentimes, we are made to feel guilty about what we like to read, what we like to do, what we like to talk about, as if we’re somehow not doing it right.
Sarah: We’re also made to feel guilty about choosing ourselves over something or someone else.
Tina: Yeah.
Sarah: Like, no, I don’t want to do that. I’m, and, you know, we’re supposed to put our needs and wants last, or farther than last, if there’s anything more past last.
Tina: Yeah, yeah. Stop having needs and wants. What’s wrong with you?
Sarah: Yep. You’re supposed to sort of sublimate everything into taking care of your children and your parents and your spouse and the home and everything, and, and you’re not supposed to have desires, and you’re not supposed to have things that you want purely for yourself.
Tina: Yeah, yeah. And I, I, I think that that comes out in books. You’ve made the point more than once that, basically, if it’s written by women for women, it must somehow automatically be trash. Seems to be the opinion of a whole lot of people who have never bothered to pick up one.
Sarah: It’s true!
Tina: Yeah, and, and – or they act as if we’ve never – [sigh] – it’s the same experience I get with people who try to proselytize to me. If I’m not going to church, it’s because somehow I’ve somehow managed to miss Christianity and the Bible all these years.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Tina: If you just explain it to me, I will be edified and suddenly see the light, and it’s funny because you get the same sort of proselytizing about what kind of books you shouldn’t, should and shouldn’t be reading. What kind of –
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: – what kind of pop culture you should and shouldn’t be consuming, and, and you get it from both ends. You get it from the people who think you shouldn’t be watching Doctor Who because it’s a kids’ show and the people, the guys, who think that women can’t really consume pop culture unless there’s a cute guy, and that’s the only reason why you’re there, ‘cause you’re not really a geek.
Sarah: Of course.
Tina: You know, it’s like, it’s like, gah, it’s nice to just be in a space where that isn’t an issue.
Sarah: It’s true. So true.
Tina: And, and I find that, like I said, I, I really liked what he had to say about that, because sometimes you have to step away ‘cause you’re never late. You’re always on time for whatever book you happen to be reading.
Sarah: I also think – I, I completely agree – I also think that when, when people worry about whether or not someone should or should not be reading a book –
Tina: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – you know, the, I, I often think that the parts that someone doesn’t get, they’re just going to fly over that person’s head.
Tina: Yeah.
Sarah: You know, don’t, don’t worry so much about it.
Tina: Yeah.
Sarah: They’ll get what they need to get out of it, and if they don’t understand something, well, you know, we can look it up.
Tina: [Laughs] Exactly.
Sarah: We have this magical internet. I completely agree with, with that idea, though, that you, you encounter books when you are ready for them.
Tina: Yeah. Well –
Sarah: And that there’s no timeline that you have to obey to read certain books.
Tina: Yeah. Well, you know, I, I, ‘cause I know that there are people that, you know, every now and then, it’s funny how you see it on Facebook and, right up there with –
Sarah: Oh, Facebook.
Tina: – status updates about how much they love their spouse – I’ve, I’ve already decided that if you’re announcing how much you love your spouse once or twice a day –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Tina: – there’re probably issues there.
Sarah: Something’s up!
Tina: Yeah. Just as much as, if you’re announcing the great books you’ve read, how many great classics you’ve read, have you, do you remember seeing that going around on Facebook there for a while? Where you were supposed to go and check, like, check off all the number of books, and then, like, out of a hundred books, I read thirty of these, or eighty of these, and that means –
Sarah: No. Nope. No.
Tina: – proud of their – yeah, well, I, I, I saw that, I went and clicked on the link, and a lot of them are books that, it’s not like they’ve somehow passed me by. I don’t want to read them! I don’t like Charles Dickens. I don’t necessar- – and, and the, the science fiction was all, like, Asimov and hardcore science fiction, as opposed to science fantasy –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Tina: – because that’s lesser-than. And, and like, who decided that these are the great books? Seriously? And, and not to mention, I’ve never been good with reading something just because someone told me that I have to.
Sarah: Oh. Yeah, me either. You should read this. There’re a lot of things I should do. I have no interest, no interest at all.
Tina: I, I, I don’t exactly look like a rebel, but would you like to know how many required books I read in school?
Sarah: Oh, please, do tell…One? [Laughs] Nice job.
Tina: You know why? No, I take that back. No, I didn’t even do that one. No, I did read Silas Marner. All right, two. [Laughs]
Sarah: Oh, two, two required books. I’m kind of impressed.
Tina: Well, you know, that’s, the thing is, is that’s because they teach the daggone book. All you’ve got to do is pay attention and take notes. You can write, I wrote more papers that got As on books I, I, like, read a chapter, maybe two? and then took good notes. ‘Cause you can figure out what the teacher wants you to say, and then you just give it back to ‘em. That was always easy. So – [laughs] – but, yeah, so, no, I read To Kill a Mockingbird –
Sarah: Nice.
Tina: – and I finished it in two days, and believe it or not, I actually really liked Silas Marner of all books. You wouldn’t think I would, but I did, I liked that one.
Sarah: Cool!
Tina: Oh, and The Turn of the Screw. No, I take that back; I didn’t finish that one either.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Tina: Well, the, have you read The Turn of the Screw?
Sarah: I cannot remember if I have, to be honest with you.
Tina: It’s the one about the two little kids and the governess, and she thinks that that, they’re being haun-, the kids are being possessed by their former governess, and –
Sarah: Oh!
Tina: – they made a movie out of it.
Sarah: Yes, and –
Tina: I watched, watched the movie when I was way too young to see that movie. It freaked me out.
Sarah: And Maybe This Time is Jenny Crusie’s version of The Turn of the Screw.
Tina: Okay. Well, the reason why I didn’t finish The Turn of the Screw is because he never met a sentence that he couldn’t, you know, that he couldn’t turn into a page. I mean, I’d, literally, on one page, he might have three sentences. It’s like, take a breath, man. So – [laughs] –
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: – periods are, periods are free! You don’t have to dole them out, where –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Tina: – there’s no, there’s no period famine. [Laughs] The, the story itself was interesting, but his writing style drove me crazy. But no, being told, let’s see, the first one that I wrote, the first time I realized I didn’t have to read a book all the way through, The Red Badge of Courage, because I liked the story, but I hated the fight scenes.
Sarah: And that’s a lot of the book.
Tina: Yeah, but my dad told me that I could skip through the battle scenes and just read the story part, and that I’d –
Sarah: And you’d be all right?
Tina: Yeah, he was right.
Sarah: [Laughs] Good man!
Tina: [Laughs] Yeah. So, yeah, I, I was, I was really bad about not reading those books, because the, the second you tell me that I have to read it, I have absolutely no desire to read that. I know there’re a million other things I’d rather be reading. You know, I, I could finish, I did finish The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in a day and a half, or The Princess Bride, you know, and I’ve got, I’ve got Shakespeare here and The Princess Bride here, so – [laughs]
Sarah: Yep. I don’t blame you.
Tina: Yeah. So, yeah, I’m not good about being told what I should read and, yeah. So what other questions do you have?
Sarah: Well, actually, my last question is if you have any last recommendations for people.
Tina: The Shattered Court. Read it, read it, read it. Everybody should read this book.
Sarah: Got it!
Tina: You know, I could really, it’s hard to say, because it really depends on what you like, and everybody has, you know, the standard recommendations of Bet Me and, like I said, Agnes and the Hitman or whatever, Silent in the Grave, but if, you know, if you like, I, I can’t think of, I can’t think of anything that isn’t just a million people already reading it that I stumbled onto, other than the two I told you about. The In-, Invertary series by Janet Elizabeth Henderson –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Tina: It works. It really works. I, I can’t even explain to you why exactly it works, when it has so many –
Sarah: And it totally hits you the right way?
Tina: Yeah, there’re so many elements that taken separately I would hate, but somehow she mixes it all together in a very sort of satisfying stew, and I love the fact that the secondary characters are, are interesting and detailed enough that I am nearly as invested, like I said, in their relationship as I am in the main relationship.
Sarah: Yep.
Tina: And the, The Shattered Court that I actually renewed twice just so I could – and nobody else, obviously, is checking it out, and the, the one, Jenn, the Jenn – why can’t I think of the name?
Sarah: Jenn Bennett?
Tina: Yeah, the Jenn Bennett one. The, it’s an amazing book, and I actually didn’t – I loved the first one, didn’t care for the second one all that much; I didn’t even finish it. Third one, I loved it, and it, and it was making me anxious ‘cause I didn’t know if the, if the happy ending will actually work, but I love these two people, and I want them to be together and be happy. Even though she’s kind of flighty and, and a little selfish and shallow and young, and, and he’s, you know, kind of ambitious and kind of – they’re both in a hard place, though. I mean, I don’t know how they’re going to make it work. I love the two of them together. They bring out the best in each other, and that’s what you want for a couple in a book, right? So – [laughs]
Sarah: It’s true.
Tina: Yeah, I mean, seriously, you want, you want them to be kind of flawed, but when they’re together, they’re better human beings.
Sarah: Totally true! Totally true! Absolutely.
Tina: ‘Cause you don’t want, you don’t want a Mary Sue, I don’t want a Marty Stu. I don’t, I don’t want, you know, the strangely perfect at everything, you know, dude or girl, ‘cause –
Sarah: No, totally.
Tina: – I want them, I want them to be kind of not perfect human beings that when they’re together, they’re the best version of each other.
Sarah: I completely agree.
Tina: And they, and they’ve realized it by the end of the book. That makes me –
Sarah: Oh, yes. That part is important.
Tina: [Laughs] When I’m with you, I not only love you, I like me better is a good, is a good thing to shoot for, whether you’re reading a book or it’s in real life.
[music]
Sarah: And that is all for this week’s podcast. Thank you to Tina for hanging out and chatting with me.
This podcast was brought to you by InterMix, publisher of Here Comes Trouble, Anna J. Stewart’s captivating new romance starring the troublesome Tremayne family, available for download on August 18th.
Our podcast transcript is sponsored by Freeditorial, a free and global meeting place for readers and writers from all over the planet. They invite you to download and check out some of your favorite public domain books and articles for free and check out their long-short story contest as well.
The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater. This is the Peatbog Faeries. This is their new album Blackhouse. It’s awesome. This track is called “Spiders.” I’m totally in favor of these spiders, and I know a lot of you are actually afraid of spiders. I happen to think they’re the best because they eat the insects that bite me and give me hives, so I am all for spiders. But I totally understand if they creep you out.
And if you would like to tell me how wrong it is that I like spiders, or you would like to suggest a podcast topic, or you have an idea or a question, you can email us at [email protected]. We love your email, ‘cause you’re awesome!
And on behalf of Tina and Jane and myself, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend.
[non-creepy, friendly, insect-eating, spidery music]
This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.
Transcript Sponsor
Our podcast transcript this week is sponsored by Freeditorial.
Freeditorial is a free and global meeting place for readers and writers from all over the planet.
Freeditorial is a Publisher and a Library. They invite you to download and read your favorite books and articles for free, and check out their long short story contest, too.
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I’m so glad I’m not the only one who uses the term “danger boner.”
Here is a link to the Oxford English Dictionary definition of “outro”.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/outro
…which isn’t to say it doesn’t exist in American.
Yay Lexington! I’m going to have to check out the shattered court on my next library visit.
I concur with the comments about reader shaming and guilt about reading. I agree that it gets easier to deal with as you get older, because, you care less and less about other people’s opinions.
I really like the reader interviews and hope that you will continue to periodically feature readers.
The mention of the book Christy,by Catherine Marshall brought back some good memories. I don’t think that it was characterized as a romance when it was published in the 1960’s. I think that the story is based upon the life of the author’s mother or grandmother. I read it as a teenager (in the mid-70’s), around the time that I discovered Georgette Heyer and Jane Aiken Hodge at the library. I think that Christy was adapted into a tv series or miniseries in the 1990’s.
I remember hearing about the Christy series — both tv movie & series starring Kellie Martin in the mid 1990s. There were later tv movies to finish off the storyline.
Loved this week’s podcast, it was fun because there were so many different and varied books, and the conversation was perfect. Also, The Shattered Court was bought whilst listening, I was persuaded quite easily so thank you.
Heh, the conversation about the required reading made me laugh, because I did that too. It was about junior year that I just threw both middle fingers in the air (metaphorically, because I didn’t want to go see the principal, it cut into my reading time) and quit on the required reading. It was when we were supposed to read Crime and Punishment. I didn’t make it past page 20, and I didn’t want to. Instead, I read the end, paid attention in class, and wrote such a good paper on it that it got entered in the county essay contest. Once I figured out that this was a thing I could do, the “required” reading became more, “I’ll read it if I damn well feel like it.” Sula and Catch-22? Read those. Heart of Darkness and Chronicle of a Death Foretold, hahaha, nope.
The Daisy book Tina was trying to remember near the beginning of the podcast was probably Princess Daisy by Judith Krantz.
I’ll be looking for The Shattered Court!
Am I the only one who got angry with Patricia Briggs? She had one of the worst “danger boner” scenes I’ve ever read.
They were tracking a human-killing water fae possessing unknown magic on an island when they were so overcome with lust they just had to have sex.
Nor were they alone. No, they were just a little ahead of a group comprised of humans and weres and possibly another fae. It’s been awhile so I don’t recall that part, but it threw me out of the book. It was the worst TSTL moments I’ve ever encountered in one of her books.
However, my library has both The Shattered Court and Agnes & the Hitman. Armstrong, Henderson, and Phillips will be looked into as well. Thank you for the suggestions.
Oooh, I didn’t know MJ Scott had a new book. I am going to glom that as soon as I get a chance.
I’m so glad you all enjoyed this episode! I really love doing reader interviews – but then, I think y’all are pretty freaking cool. 🙂 Thank you again to Tina!
I loved this episode – Tina had so many opinions and they were all interesting! Thank you, Tina and Sarah.
I am officially in love with Tina! (In a completely non-creepy internet stranger kind of way.)
I’m newly returned to the world of romance reading, and am loving these interviews. So much fun.
Thanks, everyone, for your kind words! I was kind of nervous about doing this, but Sarah made it incredibly easy on me. I had a great time talking to her and I’m so happy that you all enjoyed this episode. Finally, and – I can’t stress this enough – read “Shattered Court”! (I know that I’m seriously pimping this book so hard and, I swear, I’m getting not one bit of the royalties! But it is SO good!)
Because of this podcast, I read the Shattered Court and O! M! G!!!!! Tat book was sooooooooooo good! I freaking loved it. I need more like this. I need the next book like right the heck now!
I think book about the slave girl Tina was talking about is called Band of Angels. It was made into a movie during the 1950s with Clark Gable, Yvonne de Carlo, and Sidney Poitier. Of course, I could be wrong, since that probably caught on as a trope in 1970s and 1980s romance.