174. Keepers and Our Favorites of the Year

[music]

Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 174 of the DBSA podcast.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today are Elyse, Carrie, Amanda, and RedHeadedGirl, also from Smart Bitches.  We’re going to talk about choosing a favorite, as in a single, solitary favorite romance novel or author, based on an email that we received.  We also talk about what makes a book or an author land on our favorites list, and we talk about the books we enjoyed most in this past year.

This podcast is sponsored by Renee Ahdieh, author of The Wrath & the Dawn, published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, and available in print and eBook.  Each dawn brings death, but can love change the story?  This intoxicating retelling of A Thousand and One Nights will leave you begging for a book two, conveniently coming in Summer 2016, The Rose & the Dagger.

The podcast transcript this month is sponsored by Kensington, publishers of More Than You Know by Jennifer Gracen, the first book in the new Zebra Shout imprint.  Shout features rising stars of romance at an affordable price of $4.99 in print with a new book released each month.  So if you like bad-boy business moguls who know what they want or sexy jazz singers with hidden secrets, you will definitely want to reserve your table at the club for this new series.  On sale wherever books are sold.

The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater, and I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is.

But now, it’s time for the podcast, and we’re going to begin with an email from Tiffany:

“Hi Sarah!  Loving your podcast as usual~ I love hearing the different interviews, people who are so different, from different backgrounds and jobs but connected because of books.

“My boyfriend and I were discussing books today and he’s not much of a reader.  He RARELY reads (I know I’m sad but we all have different hobbies) and one of the books he did read and said that ‘it’s my favourite book’ is Gone Girl – he also really liked the movie.

“Today’s conversation went something like this:

“BF: What’s your favourite book that you’ve read?

“Me: I don’t have one, I love most of them!

“BF: No you have to choose, excluding Harry Potter and JRR Tolkien (I’m a HUGE fan of them), what’s something you’ve read and you thought ‘that was the greatest thing ever’?

“Me: There’s too much to choose from, I love Nora Roberts…

“BF: So she’s your favourite?

“Me: No but I love most of her books, but then there’s Ilona Andrews…

“BF: I thought we were talking about Nora Jones

“Me: You mean Nora ROBERTS… anyway I can’t choose!  They’re all good (And I proceed to tell him the plot of Key Trilogy, Kate Daniels series etc).

“I think it annoys him that I don’t have a favourite anything.  No favourite colour, food, or book.  I know I love a book/series if I re-read it that’s how I measure my ‘I love this more than the rest.’  But I did realise I have no one favourite book or author.

“My question is how do you determine what’s your favourite?  Do you have a measurement system of any kind?

“Love, Tiffany

“PS – After telling my BF the plot of Kate Daniels (with some spoilers) he asked to borrow book 1!  YAY :D”

Sarah:  [Laughs] So, Tiffany, thank you for your email.  I had to share it with the entire Bitchery crew so that we could discuss it, because it really is hard for me personally to pick a single favorite.

So now, with the entire Smart Bitches crew, on with the podcast!

—

Sarah:  So, in order to make sure that everyone can understand, let’s start just by having you each introduce yourself so people can figure out whose voice is whose?

Someone:  Ugh.

Sarah:  Sorry!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Now, because you said that, Amanda, you have to start.

Amanda:  [Laughs] You’re a Bitch, Sarah!

Sarah:  It’s totes on my business cards!

RedHeadedGirl:  Yes!

[Laughter]

RHG:  That’s how this works!

Sarah:  That’s, that’s, yeah.

Amanda:  I’m Amanda.  I’m the, I’m the baby Bitch of the group, and this is what my voice sounds like.  I have really obnoxious neighbors who are children, so –

[Laughter]

Amanda:  – so you might hear them.

Sarah:  By the time this airs, people will have heard the podcast where you start off by complaining –

Amanda:  [Laughs] Complaining.

Sarah:  – complaining about them.  [Laughs]

Amanda:  It’s, like, my MO.  With every podcast I have some new complaint about my neighbors.

Sarah:  Like, when we, when we recorded the last one, you were like, they didn’t know that they have to pay for their utilities?

Amanda:  No.  Like –

Sarah:  [Laughs] Oh, my God.  RedHeadedGirl’s face right now!

Amanda:  I got a text message saying, hey, who was paying the utilities before.  What’s the, like, password and name on the account?  We’re like, excuse me?

RHG:  You, you set up your own fuck- – oh, my God.

Sarah:  Yes.

RHG:  Oh, my –

[Laughter]

Amanda:  Yep, okay.

RHG:  I can’t.  I can’t.

Sarah:  All right, Elyse, introduce yourself, and also Rich’s snot.

Elyse:  Yes, my name is Elyse, and my husband is Richard, sitting next to me, and he just blew his nose loudly.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  And now he has to sit in the corner of shame.

[Laughter]

Elyse:  I used to work from home, and so the rule was when I was on a conference call we had to have quiet if he was going to be in the room, and there was one call I was on, like, with the CEO, and Richard, of course, starts up, like, Clash of Clans or some shit –

[Laughter]

Elyse:  – with, like, the volume, like, full blast, right, and they all know it’s me, and I’m like, I’m really not playing video games while I talk to you.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Sorry.

Sarah:  Carrie, now you.

Carrie:  ‘Kay, hi!  I’m Carrie.  This is me.  I am the sci-fi geek, but a lot of my big reads this year have been classics and nonfiction and comics, so I had a really fun time trying to go back through and remember what I read this year, and now I’m all excited about it.

Sarah:  [Laughs] I always like looking back through a year’s worth of reviews.  Like when it’s time to look at the nominations for the DABWAHA, I always look back –

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – through my reviews, and I’m like, oh, I read that last year?  It seems so long ago!  And then I’ll look at another one that was even earlier and be like, wasn’t that last week?  Like, I have the worst sense of timing.

Carrie:  Well, and some reviews, like, I always wish I could do, like, a follow-up review.  Like, okay, so a year later, I’ve completely forgotten this book, so I’m adjusting the grade down because it was enjoyable but forgettable.  Or –

Sarah:  I’m fine with that.

Carrie:  – a year later, I forgot that this book didn’t make any sense, but emotionally, it, like, super stuck with me, and I think about it all the time. 

Sarah:  I think there’re totally justifiable long-term reviews.  Like, there are books that, like, even, like, The Duke and I by Julia Quinn, like, I –

Carrie:  Oh, yeah!

Sarah:  – loved that book, and now I read it, and I can’t cringe hard enough.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Because I am older and, and, you know, more aware of things, and I read the book, and I’m like, oh, Past Sarah, what were, what were you thinking?

[Laughter]

Sarah:  That’s not good.  All right.  RedHeadedGirl!

RHG:  Hello.

Sarah:  Hi!

RHG:  I’m RedHeadedGirl; this is my voice.  Tonight’s beer –

Someone:  [Laughs]

RHG:  – is a Smuttynose Winter Ale.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I have –

RHG:  Which is really quite delicious.

Sarah:  – water and chocolate.

RHG:  That’s not alcohol, Sarah.  We’re recording –

Sarah:  I had wine earlier.

RHG:  We’re recording a podcast.  Alcohol is req- – I asked Twitter.

Someone:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Oh, well, you’re right about that.

Carrie:  [Laughs] I, I don’t have alcohol.

RHG:  I asked Twitter, and Twitter is –

Sarah:  But you don’t –

RHG:  – never wrong.

Carrie:  I don’t even have tea!

Sarah:  But you don’t drink drink, right, Carrie?

Carrie:  Well, that is true, but I do drink, like, like, like, I should have my tea or my hot cocoa.  This is really, like, hot cocoa would be, like, my stand-in beverage.

Sarah:  Have you had to stop drinking beverages –

Carrie:  But no.

Sarah:  – because of the drought?  Is that where it is now?  Like, no one can drink anything?

[Laughter]

Someone:  No one can drink.

Elyse:  – drink anything.

Carrie:  No, I just didn’t bring it in with me.

Sarah:  Oh, okay.

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  All right, so, do, how do you guys determine what’s your favorite?  Like, is it possible to have a singular favorite book or a singular favorite author?

RHG:  No.

Amanda:  No.  Yeah, no.

Sarah:  I don’t, I don’t think so.

Carrie:  No!

Elyse:  I’m going to be the dissenting voice here.  I –

Sarah:  Well, you’re wrong!

Amanda:  No, Elyse.  Get out!

[Laughter]

Amanda:  Get out of here.

RHG:  Get out, red velvet lover!

Someone:  Shut up!

Elyse:  What was that?

RHG:  Whatever, red velvet lover!

Elyse:  Hey, I’m very snuggly right now.  This is very comfortable, my nips are warm, it’s –

[Laughter]

Elyse:  I’m in Wisconsin.  It’s cold; it’s dark.

RHG:  No, I’m talking about red velvet cake, and you’re wearing –

Elyse:  Oh, I thought you were talking about my robe.

[Laughter]

Elyse:  For, for the audience, I am wearing a very fluffy robe right now.

RHG:  Yeah, but it’s not velvet.

Elyse:  It’s classy as shit.

RHG:  Come on, I know the difference between velour and velvet, for fuck’s sake, Elyse.

Someone:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Oh, oh, I’m, I’m sorry.  So sorry.  I thought we’d, we’d, I don’t know, I thought we’d bonded over beer cheese soup with popcorn, and now I just, I feel like that’s gone between us.

[Laughter]

RHG:  That was this afternoon; this is now.

Amanda:  Hours have passed.

RHG:  Hours have passed; so much has happened.

[More laughter]

Elyse:  Okay, so – now, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that, like, Jane Austen, if, if I never, if I had to pick one author and that would be it for the rest of my life, I would pick Jane Austen.  And I would pick Pride and Prejudice, because I think, not just ‘cause I really like the book, but that book had such, like, a profound impact on my life, and if I hadn’t read it, I don’t know if I’d be doing this.

Sarah:  I don’t think I could narrow it down to just one, because –

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – I mean, even if I was on the proverbial desert island and I had, like, two books, first of all, if they were paper books and they dried, they would end up as kindling because I would rather not die.

Carrie:  Yes.

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  So I need some warmth, and I just have to accept that the books will become kindling because –

RHG:  ‘Kay, but it, it depends on what kind of trees are on this island, because –

Sarah:  True.

RHG:  – like, palm fronds make fine kindling.

Sarah:  That’s true.  If there’re palm fronds, well, if there’re no palms, I’m dead from sunburn anyway.

RHG:  Yeah, pretty much, so you don’t need to burn the books.  There’s other –

Sarah:  Okay.  So in my proverbial fantasy desert island, there’s, there’s, there’s sun cover, and maybe there’s a magical sunscreen plant too – woohoo! – but I could not narrow it down to just one or two.  I would get tired of that one book.  There are books that I’ve read fifty or sixty or seventy times, but I couldn’t say, oh, that’s my one favorite.  Even, even authors, I can’t say I have a single favorite, because I have such huge mood swings in terms of what I want to read.  Like, there are some times where it’s like, nothing but historicals for a month and a half, and then it’s like –

Someone:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – okay, I’m done with historicals, and now I want to read fantasy.  I, and, and I go through these huge blocks of time where there’s a genre that I want, but it’s not an author that I want.  If I mainline a particular author, because I’m so attuned to patterns, and the things that I pick up quickly are the patterns, if I mainline a particular author one book after another after another, I start to see that, their tics, and then I can’t read them for a while, because I start seeing their tics everywhere.

Cassie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Is that true for you, Amanda?

Amanda:  Oh, yeah.  I was, when you were talking, I was thinking about the Immortals After Dark series by Kresley Cole.  We’re up to sixteen books now, and I know some people, when they gear up for the next new release in a series, they will read the entire series through –

Sarah:  Dude!

Amanda:  – you know, just to catch up to the one book or get in the mood or whatever, but I –

Sarah:  Whoa!

Amanda:  – I tried reading, you know, up to the, the next book so I can prepare myself, but I can’t do it because, while I love Cole’s books, they are very formulaic, especially when you have the, the fated mates trope, and her heroes are so, like, alpha all the time for the most part, so I, I couldn’t binge on it, ‘cause I would probably get really tired of it and wouldn’t even want to read the new book by the time it came out if I had to do that.

Sarah:  I know there are people who read the Nora Roberts/J. D. Robb In Dark, In Death series, rather, and that’s –

Amanda:  Mm-mm.  That’s, like, forty books.

Sarah:  – that’s, like, forty books, and they’ll read the whole series, like, once a year, and I’m like, okay –

Someone:  Wow.

Sarah:  – I couldn’t do that.

Elyse:  So, I have a question, Amanda, about the Immortals After Dark.  In your review –

Amanda:  Yeah.  Sorry, there’s a cat meowing, by the way.  If you –

Elyse:  That’s Dewey.  I’m sorry.

Amanda:  No, I have a cat meowing here.

Elyse:  Oh, you do.  Okay.  He’s –

Sarah:  Yay!

Elyse:  Kitties!

[Laughter]

Elyse:  So, in your review, you said that – now this is the part I’m struggling with – so, if the vampire finds his mate, his heart starts beating –

Amanda:  Yes.

Elyse:  – and if the demon does, he gets to ejaculate?

Amanda:  Yes.  [Laughs]

Elyse:  So now, but – no, I need clarification on this – so does that mean, like, he didn’t previous to that have an orgasm, or just, like, the, the chamber wasn’t loaded?

Amanda:  No, they can orgasm –

Elyse:  Okay.

Amanda:  – but there’s no ejaculate.

Elyse:  There’s no emissions.  Okay.

Amanda:  Yeah, there’re no emissions.  They describe it as, like, there’s a –

RHG:  [Laughs] A crisis?

Amanda:  – a wang seal on the top that, like, doesn’t get broken until they have sex –

Elyse:  Like a cap?

Amanda:  You don’t see it.  It’s a magic seal.

Sarah:  Like a boy hymen.

Amanda:  It, yeah.

Elyse:  But, like, there would be a backlog, and that would be really painful.

Amanda:  That’s why it’s –

Sarah:  He would, like, shoot her through a wall!

Elyse:  Yeah.

Amanda:  That’s why they usually are paired with other supernatural – like, there’s no weird superman sort of issue going on.

Someone:  Yeah, right.

Sarah:  Like, what would Superman’s ejaculate do?

Someone:  Right.

Someone else:  – kill –

Sarah:  It’s a valid question.

Other people:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  He’d, oh, he’d shoot right through her spinal column and she’d be dead!

Someone:  Right.

Amanda:  That’s what happened one time, I forgot what comic it was, but it was Superman and Lois Lane, and one of the arcs was that Lois Lane gets pregnant, and the Superman baby kicks and kills her.

Elyse:  Well, that’s, that’s some dark shit right there.

RHG:  Okay.

Sarah:  I’ve, I’ve been there.

Carrie:  Well, there’s, there’s a super famous essay, but I can’t remember who wrote it, called “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex,” which in –

Amanda:  That’s exactly what it is.

Carrie:  – in detail breaks down the whole, like –

Someone:  Right.

Carrie:  – sex with Lois Lane, the problems, the problems, there are many.

RHG:  Right.  Which is what made the sex between Jessica Jones and Luke Cage so hot is that neither –

Amanda:  Right, ‘cause she couldn’t break him.

RHG:  She couldn’t break him, and neither of them had to hold back.

Someone:  Good for them.

RHG:  It’s great.

Elyse:  Thank you, Amanda.  I appreciate you –

Amanda:  You’re welcome.  I’m just, you know, doing the Lord’s work a –

[Laughter]

Elyse:  I told Sarah that if I ever win an award, I want to be like a professional athlete where they thank Jesus, but I want to thank all the romance authors.  Like, I want to give a big shout-out to my ladies at Avon for getting me through, you know.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  And I said she could thank her lord and savior, Mr. Darcy.

RHG:  Right.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  RedHeadedGirl, what about you?

RHG:  How do I pick a favorite?  I don’t.

Sarah:  It’s, I don’t think it’s possible for everybody to pick a single favorite.

RHG:  Yeah, I, I know.  I have things that I really like.  I have, like, if you look at my DVD collection, I go, well, most of these are clearly my favorites because I bother to drop money on them.  Like, I can say that my favorite TV series of the 2000s was The West Wing.  I feel like I can say that, but that’s my favorite TV series of the 2000s.  It’s a very specific, limited – if you ask me to choose my favorite TV series of the, of the teens, I can’t do it.  Probably Hannibal.

Sarah:  I’m sorry.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I’m sorry.  Moment of silence for Hannibal.

Someone:  Yeah.

RHG:  You know what?  We got two more seasons than we ever expected we would –

Sarah:  Yeah.

RHG:  – and I feel emotionally content with how it ended, so I look at it like that, that we got way more than we, than – [laughs] – than we deserved.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  So I, I am at peace with the fate of Hannibal.  Now, I appreciate your sympathies, but I’m in a good place.

Sarah:  Okay.  Good.

Someone:  Hey.

RHG:  As for favorite books, like, you guys have seen pictures of my bookshelves.  I can’t, I can’t do that.  I mean, I have books that I, I have found that I need to own.  Like, there are John Grisham books that I’ve, I’ve gotten rid of multiple times, but I’ve had to go buy them, because I just can’t live where I can’t read The Pelican Brief whenever I want.  I never want to, but I have to be able to.

Sarah:  Isn’t that what digital books are for, though?  Like, just buy it digitally –

Carrie:  No!

Sarah:  – and call it a day?

Others:  No!

RHG:  No, no.

Carrie:  No.

Sarah:  Because, because there’re the books where you have to physically be able to touch them, and what’s really weird is, I was having a conversation with someone who was asking me about books that you keep and why you keep them, and all of my books from my bookshelf have been in storage since September, so I haven’t been able to, like, physically touch them in, like, three months, and I’m starting –

RHG:  Right.

Sarah:  – to get a little itchy, but the reason that I have them isn’t so much just that book, but it’s that book when I read it and when I bought it and where I was when I had it –

Someone:  Oh, yeah.

Sarah:  – so that I see it, and it’s like a whole built-in little package of memory.  Just wanting to be able to read a thing whenever I want, for me, qualifies it for the Kindle folder of These Are the Books You Like to Keep.

RHG:  And maybe that would’ve been true if I hadn’t finally come to this realization well before I got a Kindle?

Sarah:  Ah, that makes sense.

RHG:  I, I think I bought my current copy in 2005, and I didn’t get a Kindle until 2010.

Sarah:  Right.

RHG:  But also, my current copy I got at a used bookstore for a dollar, and the Kindle copy – if I can get Amazon to fucking cooperate with me right now – is going to be at least five bucks.

Sarah:  Good point, ‘cause it’s a lot easier to find a book like that used.

RHG:  Yeah.

Dewey:  Meow!

Amanda:  It’s so strange that, like –

Sarah:  All right, hold on.  Which cat is that?

[Bunch of replies]

Elyse:  That’s Dewey.

Sarah:  Hi, Dewey!  [Laughs]

Carrie:  Aw, hi, Dewey!

Amanda:  Oh, look at his face!

Carrie:  Ohhh, Dewey!

Dewey:  Meow!

Elyse:  He’s really mad.

Carrie:  Hi!

Elyse:  He’s, now he’s smooshing the, the tablet, like, he’s rubbing his whiskers on it.

RHG:  Aw!

Elyse:  He’s mad ‘cause he, he thinks it’s time to eat now, even though he’s got, like, an hour to go, right?

RHG:  Well, you might forget.

Elyse:  Right, so he needs to start the reminding process –

RHG:  Right.

Elyse:  – immediately.

Sarah:  Wait, do you guys do Daylight Standard Time and Daylight Savings?

Elyse:  We do – yeah.  Yeah, so he’s, he’s technically on the right.

Sarah:  He’s, he’s right –

Elyse:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – we are wrong.

Elyse:  Right, we’re a bunch of assholes.

Sarah:  Spawn will tell you at length that this is bullshit.  This whole switching –

RHG:  [Laughs]

Someone:  Yeah, right.

Sarah:  – it’s bullshit.  He’s had, like, fifteen years to not be used to it.  He and Dewey are, like, totally together on this one.

Elyse:  I have to say I’m with them.

Sarah:  Yeah, I’m not a fan of it either.  What about you, Carrie?  Do you have a singular favorite?

Carrie:  Oh, God, no.  No.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  That would be, that is just, that’s so wrong.  But I, I have, I, I would say that I have criteria for my favoriteS, right.

Sarah:  Yeah.

Carrie:  So usually my favoriteS are, you know, a lot of the same criteria as Elyse’s, right?  They chang-, they had an influence on my life, there’s a lot to unpack, there’s a lot to get out of it, I can read it in a lot of different ways.  Dude, you think about Lord of the Rings, Jane Eyre, and Bet Me, which are three of my favorites, right, and, and Pride and Prejudice.  They’re super different; they’re very, very different books, you know, especially once you throw Bet Me in there, because Bet Me is a more recent book, and the other ones are older.  But they’re all books that had an influence on who I am.  They’re all books that I can read differently every year, so my experience with Jane Eyre from when I was ten is completely different –

Sarah:  I should hope so!

Carrie:  – than now, and – well, yeah!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  But it’s still a really fascinating book, and every time I flip it open I can get, like, a new thing out of it.  Plus, it sticks; it has a quality that sticks with me.

Sarah:  That makes sense.

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  And plus, when you reread a book and you keep coming back to it, it sort of becomes, like, a constant, like, it’s almost like a piece of your thoughts all the time?

Carrie:  Yeah!

Someone:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  And things remind you of it.

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  So how do you guys decide what is your favorite?  What makes you say, okay, this is better than all of the rest of the things that I have read, or this is, this is in my top five, this is in my top ten.  Have you had a book that hit you there recently?

Amanda:  Yes.

RHG:  Yes.

Sarah:  Oh?  Which one, Amanda?

Amanda:  I would say it’s a tie for two.  And, like, in terms of, like, favorites, I’m just going to do, obviously, what I read this year, but I would say Asking for It and Madame X, those two this year.  They’re both very, very dark romance novels, and they kind of break the conventions that you associate with a lot of romance novels?  Like, Madame X doesn’t have a happy ending at all.  And it’s just terrible; like, I don’t even want to call the first book a romance either, ‘cause not a lot of romantic stuff happens?  But those two books are books that, like, after I read, like, I would catch myself thinking about them a week later, and that’s how I know that they made an impact on me as a reader, when, even after the book is closed and I’m reading other things, I’m still going back to that book.

Sarah:  Yep.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  And is it because you want to visit the characters or you just want to reread it again or you think you missed something, or is it just, I want to read this; my brain isn’t happy with that; I want more of this.

Amanda:  It’s more like I want more of this, and I was just blown away by what the authors did with the characters and the world they created and the issues that they brought up in, in the books?  Like, both of them deal with trauma of their characters, and that does come up a lot in romance as a backstory for characters, especially heroines, so I just thought it was very interesting and very well done and not normally what we see?

Sarah:  That makes sense.

Amanda:  Yeah.

Sarah:  What about, what about you, Elyse?  Did you –

Elyse:  Well, I read –

Sarah:  – did you read something that made you go oh, yeah, this is one of my best ever?

Elyse:  Yeah, I read the Wallflowers quartet for the first time this year –

RHG:  Mmmm.

Sarah:  Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho.

Elyse:  – and that was one where –

Someone:  That’s a good series.

Elyse:  – right.  You have, like, after you finish it, you have, like, book hangover, right, instead of –

[Laughter]

Elyse:  – and when you try –

Sarah:  The Devil in Winter gave me hangover for, like, three years.

Elyse:  Oh, my God.  Oh, my God, that book.  Like, it just ruined me.  And everyone I talked to –

Amanda:  Which one was your favorite out of the four?

Elyse:  The Devil in Winter, hands down.  Followed by It Happened One Autumn.

Amanda:  Sarah, The Devil in Winter, you?

Sarah:  The Devil in Winter, no question.

Amanda:  Autumn was my favorite.

Sarah:  Yeah?

Amanda:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Cool.

Elyse:  I think when you’re, when you read a lot, and, and we do –

RHG:  Wait, what?

Elyse:  – when a book – I know, shut up.

[Laughter]

Elyse:  When, when a book takes something you’re familiar with and then does something different with it, it’s like, I’m going to take this to a different level, I’m going to go to a different place, and I think that’s what Amanda kind of said too.  It’s like it immediately pops out in your memory, and it makes you kind of re-evaluate, then, the other things in that genre that you’ve been reading.

Sarah:  Yeah.  What about you, Carrie?

Carrie:  I would say, so, okay, so I got all excited, right, and I started writing this list, and I broke it down by categories, and it’s, like, three pages long, but don’t worry –

Someone:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  – I’m not going read it to you.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  It’s just, like –

Elyse:  And now I’d like to give you my PowerPoint on my list …

[Laughter]

Carrie:  It, it was, no, it was, like, very, it was a very, like, OCD list, except I handwrote it.  Here, I’ll, I’ll – there you go.

Sarah:  Whoooa!

Someone:  Ohhh!

Sarah:  You did, wow, you did your homework!

Carrie:  But if you absolutely forced me to say what just blew off the top of my head, I would say Bitch Planet.  Bitch Planet, Volume 1, and –

Sarah:  Oh, God.  It’s –

Carrie:  Oh, my God, because every single page, every panel almost –

Sarah:  Every picture.

Carrie:  Took four or five tropes and flipped them –

Sarah:  Yes.

Carrie:  – just over and over again, and sometimes multiple times in a single panel.  It was just amazing.

Sarah:  It was incredible.

Carrie:  And, like, in terms of, like, layers, like, I could read it over and over again, get a different thing every time.  I got to see Kelly Sue DeConnick talk at San Diego Comic-Con, so then I took that to it, and that made me look at it differently, and, you know, there’s just so much to unpack just, just in that one volume, which people who read comics, you know that the trade issues are still super crazy short.  You can read the whole thing –

Sarah:  Yeah.

Carrie:  – in, like, half an hour –

Sarah:  Oh, yeah.

Carrie:  – but then you go back and you read it and read it and read it and read it, because it was so layered.  So good.

Sarah:  What else is on your list aside from –

Carrie:  Oh, unless I could do more on my list?  My list of many pages.

Sarah:  No, you only get one.  We, we discussed – [laughs] – we discussed this earlier –

Carrie:  Many pages, Sarah.

Sarah:  – you only get one favorite.  No, I’m just kidding.  Get – more, more, more!

Carrie:  Okay.  All right.  Well, okay, so, classics, I read a bunch of classics this year.  Cold Comfort Farm, that was another one that just, I had no idea.  It was like – also Lady Susan by Jane Austen.  I thought I knew my Austen; I didn’t know my Austen.  Oh, my God, Lady Susan was like this present.  It was like somebody just said, oh, hey, you think you know what Jane Austen was like?  Here, have this present; it’s just for you.  It was so fun.  So funny; it was hilarious.

Sarah:  It was all of your catnip, too.  All of your catnip.

Carrie:  I wouldn’t say Lady Susan was my catnip, but Cold Comfort Farm was totally my catnip.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  You know what, Cold Comfort Farm, the author doesn’t know it, ‘cause she wrote it so long ago, but I think it was written specifically as my consolation prize for all those, those versions of Wuthering Heights that I had to, had to watch.

[Laughter]

Carrie:  For that, that thing that I wrote.  Like, oh, my God, that, that was my consolation prize!

Sarah:  Cool!

Carrie:  She didn’t know that’s what she was doing, but that’s what that was for.  Yeah, Cold Comfort Farm was really fun, and then I read a ton of nonfiction this year, and –

Sarah:  I know; it was awesome.

Carrie:  Oh, it was way awesome.  And I just finished Romantic Outlaws, which is about Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft, and I thought it was great, but my family is sick of me.

[Laughter]

Carrie:  They’re sick of me; they’re going to kick me out of the house.  I will not fricking shut up.

RHG:  Man, I was so glad that I found that book and was like, Carrie, look.  This book was written for you, and you were like, oh, did you maybe want to review it?  And I said, no, this book jumped off the shelf and said, tell Carrie about me.

Someone:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  Yeah, now I’m just running around screaming, Lord Byron, he’s such an asshole!  And everybody’s tired of it.  Yeah, oh, my God.  So, yeah –

Sarah:  Was he a giant dick?

Carrie:  Oh, don’t even start with me, with the, Lord Byron.  Every single person in two generations of women was a total jerk, with the possible exception of Mary Shelley, who was, like, the only adult in two generations.  She was, like, the only person who was capable of, like, paying a bill.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  That was it.  And then people were like, God, she’s so cranky!

Amanda or Elyse:  So she knew that you had to pay your utilities.

Sarah:  Yes, she was the one who set up the utility bill account.

Carrie:  Right, absolutely.

Sarah:  But changed the password.

RHG:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  Absolutely.

Sarah:  So do you guys think I need to do a podcast, let’s ask Carrie about Lord Byron?

RHG:  Yes!

Amanda or Elyse:  Oh, my gosh, yes.

Carrie:  Yes!

RHG:  Yes, yeah, or –

Carrie:  And, and, and then you should take-

RHG:  Let’s, let’s ask Carrie about Lord Byron and Jane Eyre.

Sarah:  Ooh, yes!

Carrie:  And then – no, no.  No, those are really, like, two whole separate podcasts, because I will give up at least an hour about the Shelleys.

Amanda:  Sarah could get up and leave the room – [laughs] – and she’d still have a whole podcast.

Elyse:  I think, I think, I think because Carrie doesn’t drink, whoever’s asking Carrie the questions needs to be completely intoxicated.

[Laughter]

Elyse:  So –

Sarah:  This is My Drunk Classics with Carrie.  [Laughs]

Elyse:  – with Carrie.

Someone:  I hated – [laughs]

Carrie:  I could totally be a regular feature.  I could talk about Carmilla, like, either myself drunk or to a drunk person, for quite some time.  That was another fun book that –

Sarah:  I think we need to get –

RHG:  Let’s get Carrie drunk and have her talk about Carmilla.  I want that to happen.

Sarah:  Yes.  This is –

Carrie:  Victorian vampire lesbian porn.  Call me, Sarah.  You know where to find me.  I’ll tell you all about it.

Sarah:  I think, I think we’re going to line up some shots and then tape this in Vegas.

RHG:  Yes.

Carrie:  [Laughs] I would be so buzzed.

RHG:  Yes.

Sarah:  Where are you guys going?  Listen, we have a mission?

RHG:  Look, we have a mission.  We’re going down to the Chippendales, and we’re going to get Carrie shitfaced.

Elyse:  Right.

[Laughter]

Carrie:  I’m not, I’m not really clear on how you would record a podcast at Chippendales, though.

Sarah:  Oh, we have ways.

RHG:  We’ll figure it out.  It’s not –

Sarah:  We have our ways.

RHG:  It’s fine.

Amanda:  We’ll get, like, one of the private back rooms.

RHG:  Yeah.

Elyse:  I feel like at least one of those dancers has, like, some kind of radio/TV/film degree, and he’d be happy to put it to use.

[Laughter]

RHG:  Totally.

Carrie:  Yeah, Absolutely.

Amanda:  This is not being utilized.

Sarah:  Listen, we need to record a podcast about Lord Byron.  Could you help us out?  Oh, sure!  Just give me –

Carrie:  Oh, sure.

Sarah:  And you know, it’ll be the one guy –

Elyse:  Rich just flipped me off ‘cause he’s got a radio/TV/film degree, so he –

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Well, you should bring him!  We can bring Rich to Vegas, we could bring Rich to Chippendales.

Elyse:  Richard, he told me that he’s too hairy to be an exotic dancer, male dancer, and –

RHG:  That’s fixable.

Elyse:  – he feels –

RHG:  That is fixable.  There are solutions to that problem.

Elyse:  But he feels like he –

Someone:  Some people like that!

Elyse:  – would only appeal to a certain segment of the population, and it would be, like, a niche of German men, and he’s not comfortable with that, right.

[Laughter]

RHG:  These are all fixable problems, and Germans have money.

Sarah:  And besides, I mean, Amanda likes her men vascular; some women like their men a little fuzzy.  It’s fine!

Carrie:  Oh, my God, yes!

Elyse:  Oh, if, if a dude cannot grow chest hair, there’s no way.  Like, there’s something, again, like, adults have body hair.  They just do.  It’s weird, it weirds me out, and you’re laughing!

Amanda:  The belt guy, the belt guy that was here on Saturday, he has what I like to call hair paints, so it’s just like –

[Laughter]

Amanda:  – pants made of hair.

Carrie:  What?

RHG:  Forgot his belt.

Amanda:  He forgot his belt.  I’m wearing it right now, actually.

[Laughter]

Amanda:  I needed a new belt, and it fit!

Sarah:  I can’t breathe!

[Laughter]

Amanda:  And he had hair pants!

Sarah:  Where did they start?  Like, mid-thigh, like thigh-high stockings?

Amanda:  Well, he’s pretty, like, hairy all over, but, like, marked, markedly hair pants.  Like, the waist area, he had, like, the chest hair, then it, like, thinned down around the stomach and then, like, started right again at, like, the waist.  Waist down.

Sarah:  So he had a hairy ass is what you’re saying here.

Amanda:  Yeah!  Yeah, he did.

Sarah:  All right.

Elyse:  Was it almost like, what were those little, like they, in Fantasia, the little goat people that played the pan –

RHG and Sarah:  Satyrs.

Carrie:  Oh, yeah!

Elyse:  [Laughs] Yes!

Rich:  Satyrs?

Elyse:  Yeah, satyrs.

Sarah:  Who hasn’t gone?

RHG:  I haven’t gone.

Sarah:  You!  You tell us about your things while I clean my glasses of salt.

[Laughter]

RHG:  Oh, I, if you’re going to end up on my top-ranked things, you either have to, like, be pandering to me or you have to do something new and interesting.  And an example of somebody who has pandered to me is Unraveled by Courtney Milan, which, I mean, if you read my review of that, I’m clearly out of my mind, because there are finals that I was supposed to be studying for and papers I was supposed to be writing.  I’m like, I don’t want to do that.  I want to write this.  And she has so much fun with the legal stuff that it was, it was pandering to me, and I’m, and the heroine had red hair and made snarky comments in the theater, and so that was clearly a shout-out; you can’t tell me otherwise.  Even though I have very strong views about proper movie theater behavior, namely, shut the fuck up.  Or A Gentleman’s Game, and I feel bad talking about this book.  I don’t know when this podcast is going to come out, but the book doesn’t come out for another month.  But A Gentleman’s Game – yes – by Theresa Romain where she’s talking about horseracing, and there are enough references that I was like, I know what books were on your shelves when you were a child.  Am I right?  And she’s like, yeah.  [Laughs]

Carrie:  [Laughs]

RHG:  You had this book and this book, right?  And she’s like, yes.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  And –

Sarah:  Well, this will be, if you’re curious, I’m aiming to put this episode up for the first Friday in January, so I think that’s the fourth?  So it’s totally fine to go on and on about this book.

RHG:  Okay.  ‘Cause I think it comes out, like, the eighth or so.

Sarah:  Doesn’t matter, keep going, it’s fine.

RHG:  Anyway, yes.  Is it pandering to me?  Does it work?  Absolutely!

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Someone:  Oh, yeah.

RHG:  Totally!  Or doing, and I’m, I’m going to talk about something that’s not a book now.

Sarah:  Oh?

RHG:  Tough.  But Hamilton, the musical, is something, is super-nerdy and took the musical theater genre and twisted it and made American history about a bunch of old dead white dudes colorful and interesting for people who are not old white dudes, and just how Lin-Manuel Miranda was able to do that and suddenly make this Broadway musical, like, the big cultural, zeitgeist-y thing that it is?  Is incredible, and, I mean, he makes Lafayette rap at 6.8 words per second.  Like, there’s one person on the planet who can do it, and he is playing Lafayette on Broadway right now.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

RHG:  Possibly, like, right now at this minute.

Sarah:  Have you, have you figured out how to sell one of your kidneys to get tickets?

RHG:  I, I’m trying a more conventional route and asked my parents to subsidize a ticket for my Christmas present.

Sarah:  Well, that’s a lovely present.

RHG:  Yeah!

Carrie:  Oh, yeah.

RHG:  ‘Cause I got way too much shit.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Well, the, the same day that your review of the soundtrack runs, Esi Sogah from Kensington has – ‘cause she lives in New York and is very into theater – I think she has seen it four or five times, and so she reviewed it, and I’m like, I’m a little worried for your wellbeing once you tell people you’ve seen this more than twice.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  I’m a little concerned that someone may find you and be mad at you and, like, want to hit you with frozen fish.

RHG:  I mean, at the one hand, I kind of look at that and go, I can make a ballpark guess at how much money you’ve spent on that, assuming that you didn’t win the lottery, which –

Sarah:  No, she saw it before it was on Broadway.

RHG:  Yeah –

Sarah:  Yeah.

RHG:  – Maya, my friend Maya who comments as ppayajunebug saw it at The Public Theater off Broadway, and she –

Sarah:  Yeah, she’s a Public Theater member too.

RHG:  Yeah.  So, I mean, good for her.

Sarah:  Lucky people.

RHG:  Very lucky.

Sarah:  Lucky, lucky people.

RHG:  Lucky.  So it’s, it’s either you pander to my specific nerdery or you pander to my specific nerdery with hip-hop, I guess, is my catnip.

[Laughter]

RHG:  I don’t know.  There, this is my second beer.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I hadn’t read anything that I thought was going to be like, wow, this is one of the best things ever, and then –

Amanda:  You read Act Like It.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I read Act Like It, and I read it, I read it twice, and I’m like, you guys don’t understand how much I loved this book.  Like, I finished it, and I missed it.  Like, I actually missed the characters, and I missed listening to this person’s voice, and I missed hearing the story, and there are more, more characters from the heroine’s point of view than from the hero’s, but when you get the hero, he’s hilarious and cranky, and it hit me right where I needed to be completely transported.  The language and the setting just, I was, you know, I’m a little stressed, ‘cause lot of shit going on –

Carrie:  What?  What?  No!

Sarah:  Yeah, I know.  It’s just, it’s just, you know, moving and selling and buying and no big deal and, yeah.  You know.  General –

RHG:  The Property Brothers make it look so easy.

Sarah:  Yeah, I know.  General adulting is much easier on HGTV than it is in real life.  But, like, I loved this book so much, but the best part has been, once I wrote the review, how many people came back and were like, yes, it really is that good!  And I’m like, thank you!  I am not out of my mind for loving it this much!  Yay!

RHG:  Well, you might be out of your mind, but that’s not a symptom.

Sarah:  I’m not alone –

[Laughter]

Sarah:  – in my out-of-my-mind minded-edness.  So, what other books do you guys want to mention that you want people to go find this year?

Elyse:  Oh, I have to talk about the Bad Boys Undercover series by HelenKay Dimon because –

Sarah:  Yes?

Elyse:  – so I’m in a weird place where I really love romantic suspense, but it’s like the older I’m getting, the less I really want to read about people being raped and dismembered –

Someone:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  – and she writes romantic suspense, but it’s like popcorn action movie romantic suspense where –

Sarah:  Yes!

Elyse:  – where no one is –

Sarah:  And there’s not enough of that!

Elyse:  Yes!  Yes!  Like, no one is going to, like, the heroine’s not going to be sexually assaulted –

Sarah:  No entrails.

Elyse:  No entrails.  You know, there’s some big-ass threat that you know is never going to come to fruition, so you don’t have to really worry about it, and everything’s going to be okay.  And the hero is going to take off his shirt and get really bloody and still, like, kick ass.

Sarah:  And you’re okay with that.

Elyse:  I’m totally okay with that.  Like, the suspension of disbelief is totally there.  I want that, like, crazy action movie romantic suspense where you don’t have to have anxiety.

Sarah:  I have a half-baked theory about this.

Elyse:  Okay.

Sarah:  Okay.  So if you think about – ‘cause we were talking about why are hit men and heads of mafia groups –

Elyse:  Oh, yeah, yeah.

Sarah:  – like, why are they popular, why is that the hero?  And we’re all kind of like, yeah, human trafficking and organized crime.  Not a thing I can re-, you know, you can really redeem a hero for doing, even if it’s not explicitly stated in the book, that’s what organized crime does, so, like, once you know that, it’s kind of hard for me to be like, oh, yeah, all of the prostitution and human trafficking and selling people, that, we, we’ll just pretend that you were one of the good guys, like that didn’t happen.  But that, that, outside of our sort of group, those particular heroes are really popular, and there’s a lot more romantic suspense now, there’s a lot more gory romantic suspense, which I think is sort of like an offshoot of all of the CSI, CSI:  Original Recipe, Law & Order, Law & Order:  Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Law & Order, you know –

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – Colonel’s Special.  You know, there’s like nine different varieties of people getting raped, murdered, killed, assaulted, or all of the above, and that is showing up in romantic suspense, and then in the contemporary romance, we’ve moved out of the sort of happy, homey small town, and we’ve moved into this really dangerous guy contemporary.  Like, the, the heroes could easily kill you with, like, one-tenth of their pinky finger.  And I think the problem is, not the problem, but the reason is, readers want the stakes to be really, really high.  There’s not enough tension unless the stakes are really high, and if you’re in a romantic suspense, then entrails and rape are high-stakes, and that’s sort of your default setting, and if you’re in a contemporary then you want a really dangerous guy and add in a couple of suspense elements to drive the stakes higher.  So what readers seem to be really into right now – and again, half-baked theory – is super-high-stakes, emotionally demanding, tense conflict in the story.

Elyse:  I think there’s another component though, too, where, you know, one of the things that I kind of find troubling in these books sometimes is the power dynamic between the hero and heroine where, you know, he’s the mafia boss, hit man, whatever, but in the fiction, I think, she kind of absorbs or claims some of his power, right.  So in a weird way, it’s empowering the heroine and empowering the reader, right?

Sarah:  Right.

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Elyse:  Because a, and I think, you know, that was some of the appeal of Twilight, too, right.  Like, Bella became one of the sparkle vampire people’s member of their family.  She kind of –

Sarah:  Super strong and invincible.

Elyse:  Right, but even before she was changed, she, she absorbed their, they, they welcomed her into the fold, and therefore she became powerful and protected and strong, because now she’s one of the kind of elite or, you know –

Sarah:  She knows the secret.

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  That’s a big element that I think –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – repeats a lot in romantic trends, the knowledge of a secret, whether or not you’re a bunch of werewolves or you’re in a secret society or, you know, you’re a sparkly vampire.  There’s a, there’s a lot of secrets that get, like, that, that’s, that secret becomes a currency that the heroine then has.

Elyse:  I think the thing I struggle with a lot more as I’m getting older is the redemption of, like, the bad boy hero, where Young Elyse was all about that, and Old Elyse realizes, like, that shit ain’t going to change.  So, you know –

RHG:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  – I can see it – we were having kind of this whole Marvel debate – I can see, like, why, like, I could totally fix Loki.  He absolutely just needs the love of a good woman, right, but he’s, again, that kind of cheesy popcorn cinema villain, and then we were talking about Kilgrave from Jessica Jones, and it’s like, oh, no, we need to, like –

RHG:  Yeah, nope.

Elyse:  We, he needs to go put, we need to dig a hole, and he goes in the hole, and then we put a lot of things on top of it, and then we pour a concrete slab on top of that hole, and then –

Sarah:  And then we light it on fire.

Elyse:  Right, and there’s –

Carrie:  Yeah.

Elyse:  – there’s no possibility of redemption, because it’s such a dark and twisted character.

RHG:  Yeah.

Everyone:  Yeah.

RHG:  He’s all of the, the MRA dudes that we know, only turned up to 11.

Elyse:  Right.

RHG:  He’s who they wish they could be.

Elyse:  Right.

RHG:  And that’s what makes him terrifying.

Sarah:  Yep.

Elyse:  I’m reading a book now, I don’t know if it’s, it’s Katie, is it Roose [rhymes with goose], Rey-us, R-E-U-S?

Sarah:  Rey-us, I think.

Elyse:  Reus, and I was really liking the beginning, and then you find out that the hero’s backstory is that his wife, who also worked for the CIA, died but that when she was abducted, her captors raped her and sent photos of it to her husband, and it was just like, oh, nope.  Done.  Like, I can’t deal with that much awful backstory at the end of the day.

Sarah:  I, I had a lot more curiosity about the Mary Balogh book you reviewed this year?

Elyse:  Yes.

Sarah:  About how the heroine survived a horrible thing, and the horrible thing is not revealed, but everybody assumes that she was raped.

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  But that’s not the only horrible thing that could be visited upon a person.

Amanda or Carrie:  Yeah.

Elyse:  Right, and I think it was really significant because it said, I mean, it said a lot about kind of we assume that everything that’s important with a woman is tied up with her sexuality.  Like, the worst thing that could ever happen to you is that you were sexually assaulted.

Sarah:  There’s two:  you were either sexually assaulted or you lose a child, and those are the only two things that are the most horrible for women, because either you’re losing the prize and the value of your virginity, or you’re losing your role as a parent and a mother, and therefore you are nothing when you lose –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – either of those things.  Yeah, the, the whole idea makes my blood pressure go up.

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Elyse:  Right, and, and her, when you, when you get to the end and you find out what actually happened to her, I mean, it’s horrible, and you can understand why this would traumatize her for the rest of her life.

Sarah:  And that’s it not just, trauma isn’t just one or two things.

Elyse:  Right.

Sarah:  I think it was Barrie Hardymon who pointed out that you either get rape or loss of a child, and those are your two losses –

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  – for, for defining a female character –

Elyse:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – and she’s –

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – so right about that.

RHG:  Yep.

Sarah:  So right.

RHG:  Yes.

Sarah:  What about you, Carrie?  What else is on your list of things that you adored this year and you want everyone to know about?

Carrie:  Oh, I want everyone to know about, okay, well, we have not been talking TV shows and movies, but I don’t see how we can, like, segue from that discussion –

Sarah:  We totally have!

Carrie:  – without talking about Mad Max:  Fury Road!

Sarah:  Oh, totally!

RHG:  Yes!

Carrie:  Mad Max:  Fury Road was, like, that was amazing.

Sarah:  God, was that the beginning of the year?

RHG:  That was –

Carrie:  Summer.

RHG:  That was in May.

Carrie:  That was summer!  Yes!

RHG:  That was, that came out the same weekend we were at RT.

Carrie:  Yeah!

Sarah:  My amazing sense of time.

Someone:  God, it did?

RHG:  It did!

Everyone:  It did!

Sarah:  Wow.

RHG:  It did.  People were talking about it the, the weekend that we were leaving RT, and I was like, okay, fine, I will fucking go see it, but not until I get home.

Carrie:  Oh, yes.

RHG:  And by then the internet had exploded, and it had been in the theaters for three days.

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  And it’s, it’s amazing to see the way that word of mouth worked on that movie?

Carrie and RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Like, it was all of these people going, no, you don’t understand.  Like, you –

Carrie:  You don’t understand.  You have to be there.

RHG:  Yeah.

Sarah:  I can’t even tell you; we need to see this.

Carrie:  Yeah.  Yeah.  Brilliant –

RHG:  Yeah, like, the trailers came out, and we were like –

Sarah:  Eh.

Carrie:  Yeah.

RHG:  – okay, and then the MRAs were like, how dare Charlize Theron bark at Mad Max?  No one barks at Mad Max!  And we’re like, well, if you’re pissed off, then we’re going to throw them money.

Elyse:  We’re going to see that movie, yeah.

Carrie:  Okay, yeah, we’ll throw money at it, yeah.

[Laughter]

RHG:  And then people did –

Carrie:  Oh, my God.

RHG:  – and came back and were like, oh, my God, you don’t understand.  You have to –

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Has somebody built a website, what do MRAs hate, so we know what to go look at?

[Laughter]

Elyse:  They should!

Sarah:  What do you hate today?  ‘Cause we’re all over that shit!

Carrie:  I will find this, Sarah, and send it to you so you can link to it, but one guy who’s a film critic said, okay, I am going to review Mad Max:  Fury Road, even though I’ve been warned by MRA activists that this is so feminist that, you know, my –

Sarah:  I read that review.

Carrie:  – my penis might fall right off.

Sarah:  Yeah.  [Laughs]

Carrie:  It was like, and, and his conclusion was, you know what, this is very dangerous.  In fact, MRA people, it’s so dangerous that not only should you not go see it, you should just stay, don’t leave the house at all.

Sarah:  No, just go in the basement.

Carrie:  You should stay away from people.  Yeah.  No, that, I love that movie.  I haven’t said anything about romance, but The Highwayman?

RHG:  Oh, my God.  [Laughs]

Carrie:  By Kerrigan Byrne.  Well first of all –

RHG:  – this’ll be so ridiculous.

Carrie:  – that’s not specifically my catnip.  I see in terms of pandering, that RedHeadedGirl, like, all over it –

RHG:  Yeah, you could smell it.

Carrie:  – but I loved the way it flipped a lot of tropes.  It was so fun to see that heroine was just, like, so great.  You just kept flipping all your expectations in this really fun way.  And –

Sarah:  And you, you don’t see a lot of heroines like that.  I mean it used to be that –

Carrie:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – historical romance was 99.9% built of characters who were a lot like her –

RHG:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – and now you –

Carrie:  Yeah, well, what was cool was, she sort of starts off, right, you think, oh, we’ve seen her.  She’s, we haven’t seen her for a while, but we know who this is.  She’s, like, the young, sweet, naïve ingénue, and then you find out she’s totally not the young, sweet ingénue, although she is very sweet, but she’s, she’s very, you know, she’s, she’s worked in Scotland Yard for years and years, she knows what the world is like, and she’s so in charge of her own sexuality, and the way that it flipped the whole thing about, well, like, who’s in control of this, this sexual, you know, exploration I thought was just really clever and really interesting and really well done.

Sarah:  Cool.

Carrie:  RedHeadedGirl, I could see you.  We’re doing video Skyping.  You look you’re just going to just explode.  Say something!

RHG:  I have the hiccups.  I’m trying to hold my breath so I don’t hiccup.

[Laughter]

RHG:  That is what, what I’m doing, so I put mute on –

Carrie:  Okay.

RHG:  – and then I’m trying to reset my diaphragm so I don’t hiccup all through the rest of the podcast.  So.

Carrie:  Because I know that you also liked this book –

RHG:  I did!

Carrie:  – so I just assumed that your feels were just, like, boiling up.

RHG:  I, I mean, I really like the book.  I got all my feels out in the review, so.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Carrie:  Yeah.  That was really fun, and I don’t read a lot of contemporary, but Courtney Milan, she’s why, I mean, I should just, I should just, like, keep a basket of As, and every time she writes something, I don’t even need to read it, I just sort of toss an A out there.  Oh, Courtney Milan wrote a thing:  A, A, A.

Someone:  Isn’t that, isn’t that –

Carrie:  So, Trade Me, I really liked Trade Me, and that was just at the beginning of 2015.  I checked; it just –

RHG:  Yeah.

Carrie:  – sneaks in this year.

Elyse:  I was like that with Eloisa James and her new one where, it was Four Nights with the Duke, and one of the things I loved, first of all, there was witty banter.  Like, when they’re flirting –

Carrie:  Oh, yeah.

Elyse:  – with banter, that’s just the best thing ever, and then there’s this whole, like, letter-writing component, so not only are they flirting and witty banter, but it’s, it’s by – right, Sarah’s fanning herself – it’s all done via letters.

Sarah:  I love, I love books with letters in them.

Elyse:  Yes.

Carrie:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  I love that shit.  I am, I am an epistolary ho.

RHG:  It, it helps when they’re actual letters and not emails, E. L. James.

Someone:  Shhh!

Elyse:  I have a friend who, who-

Sarah:  That burn is taking the slow route across the Atlantic right now.

[Laughter]

Elyse:  She always signs off Laters, Baby, ‘cause she knows it pisses me off.

[Laughter]

Elyse:  So –

Sarah:  Well, I know how I’m going to sign all my email to Elyse.  How about you?  [Laughs]

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week’s podcast.  Next week, we have part two of this interview with all of the Bitches, and it is so Not Safe For Work, you might want to prepare yourself now.  Like, we’re going to need headphones, possibly a soundproof booth.  Like, we talk about some crazy things in this next episode, so get ready for next week.

The podcast this month is being sponsored by Renee Ahdieh, author of The Wrath & the Dawn, published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, available in print and eBook.  Each dawn brings death, but can love change the story?  This intoxicating retelling of A Thousand and One Nights will leave you begging for book two, The Rose & the Dagger, coming Summer 2016.

The podcast transcript this month is being sponsored by Kensington, publishers of More Than You Know by Jennifer Gracen, the first book in the new Zebra Shout imprint.  Shout features rising stars of romance at an affordable price of $4.99 in print with a new book released each month, so if you like bad-boy business moguls who know what they want and sexy jazz singers with hidden secrets, you will definitely want to reserve your table at the club for this new series, on sale now wherever books are sold.

The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater.  This is Sassy herself on the violin.  I’m not sure who is on the piano, but this is “Fiddler on the Loose” for Smart Bitches.  I don’t know if she composed this or she’s just memorized it, ‘cause she’s really good at that type of thing, but that is Sassy herself performing.  You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater.

Next week, all Bitches, so Not Safe For Work, but until then, on behalf of everybody, we wish you the very best of reading.  Have a great weekend.

[the sassiest of sassy music]