336. Reading Sanctuaries, Cat Poop, and Murder: A Conversation with Amanda and Elyse

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello, and welcome to episode number 336 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. With me today are Amanda and Elyse. This week we are talking about reading sanctuaries. Well, we started by talking about reading sanctuaries, but you might guess from the title of this episode, “Reading Sanctuaries, Cat Poo, and Murder,” we got a little sidetracked. Amanda and Elyse and I all require different things to build the perfect reading sanctuary, so we talk about what we have, what we need, and what we absolutely must not include in order to reach optimal reading enjoyment. We cover blankets, locations, lighting, noise, and whether Amanda can realize her dream of becoming a vampire librarian drow who reads in the dark. We also discuss the intricacies of reading in the bathtub, which for me, no, thank you! And we mention some podcasts we like to listen to while knitting or stitching, and yes, of course, Amanda and Elyse’s podcast recommendations include things where people are talking about murder. It’s unavoidable!

Now, I want to know about your reading sanctuary. What about you? What is in your favorite reading place? What do you need? Do you need pillows, blankets, weighted blankets? Are you a fan? Do you prefer a bed or a chair, the bathtub, silence, music, how much light is ideal? I would love to hear about your reading sanctuary, because this is the kind of topic that I think is very personal and very revealing.

Also, Orville is now here, and he’s mad that the keyboard is in his way and he can’t climb into the sound box. I love how the minute I start recording, he shows up. Thank you for screwing up my show notes – [thunk] – I really appreciate that. That was great. Okay, are you done now? Okay, now he’s on the heating pad; I’m sure you were all very concerned.

Anyway, if you want to tell me about your reading sanctuary, I want to hear about it! You can email me at [email protected], or you can call and leave a message at 1-201-371-3272. You can leave me a message, you can tell me about your reading sanctuary, you could email me a picture, or you could just tell me bad jokes. Those are awesome.

This week’s episode is being brought to you by a new digital publication that is all about romance: Blush Magazine. You’ve been swept away by the romance of your latest book, only to crash in disappointment when it has the audacity to end. Sometimes The End are the hardest words to read, so let’s remedy that, shall we? Blush Magazine is a free online publication for romance readers – yep, you! It’s a magazine that goes beyond the pages of your favorite romance novels to give you the inside scoop on authors, publishers, the latest industry trends, book reviewers, free reads, and more, so never again will you be frustrated when you read The End, because Blush has you covered. Subscribers receive the digital magazine in their inboxes, perfect for a quiet moment with a favorite beverage. Just sign up with your email address at blushmagazine.com.au for the first issue, which includes interviews with Beverly Jenkins, Kylie Scott, Colleen Hoover, and more. Head to blushmagazine.com.au to get your first issue.

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But enough talking, enough intro! It’s time for this podcast. Let’s get started. Let’s talk about reading sanctuaries.

[music]

Sarah: Elyse, I know that you made Rich watch the Fyre Festival documentary –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Elyse: Right.

Sarah: – without telling him anything about what Fyre Festival was. Would you please tell me what his reaction was, ‘cause I bet it was incredible.

Elyse: So last night he was like, what should we watch? And I said, I want to watch this documentary on the Fyre Festival, and he’s like, what’s the Fyre Festival? And I was like, oh shit. I’m like, I’m not going to tell you anything about this; we’re just going to watch the documentary. And, like –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: – you know, they start off kind of talking about the app this guy was building, and then it doesn’t really, like, it slowly builds into a shit show, and so it’s like, just the progression –

[Laughter]

Elyse: – of the horror on his face as we got into what was happening. I think it peaked when they interviewed, like, this pilot that had been flying them to the original island – ‘cause I didn’t realize there were multiple islands involved in this shit show; they had to switch islands like three times – and he’s like, yeah, I taught myself to fly on Microsoft Flight Simulator, and we were just like –

Amanda: Oh my God.

Elyse: – holy shit! This is the guy you pick to be your private pilot. Yeah, it was, it was pretty amazing.

Sarah: Well, I mean, I taught myself how to be an archer and a, an assassin using Assassin’s Creed and Dragon Age, so, I mean, it makes total sense that you’d be able to fly a plane.

Elyse: You’re definitely qualified to be an assassin now. Yeah, no, he just –

Sarah: Oh, absolutely.

Elyse: This slowly dawning terror is, like, all I can describe.

Sarah: [Laughs] What was his verdict on the documentary?

Elyse: It was basically just, what the actual fuck? I don’t think he cared about the documentary so much as what actually happened, and was just completely mystified by the whole thing.

[Laughter]

Sarah: What did you think? Which one did you watch? Was it the Netflix or the Hulu?

Elyse: It was the, it was the Netflix one. I mean, it was just like, I don’t –

Sarah: So what did you think?

Elyse: I don’t understand how you can be like, you know what? Let’s just put together a music festival on a Caribbean island and not think about things like waste disposal and food and bringing in water. Like, there were so many people involved in this, I have to wonder why no one was like, you know what? This is a really fucking bad plan.

Sarah: All right, so aside from Fyre Festival, which we are not going to –

Elyse: No. Although, you know what?

Sarah: I could not imagine something so –

Elyse: You know, tying this into the reading sanctuaries, there is a certain amount of money that I would pay for a mattress on the beach and people to just leave me the fuck alone. Like, I feel like I could, I could manage the rest, like getting food and water and – yeah!

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Elyse: Like, I could handle that! Like, the, the, the accommodations weren’t luxurious –

Sarah: Oh, oh yeah.

Elyse: – but as long as no one else was around, I would sleep in the little, whatever, FEMA tent or whatever they had found.

Sarah: Did you see the, the protest sign from one of the furlough protests? BUILD A WALL AROUND ME I HATE EVERYONE?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Elyse: That sounds legit.

Sarah: Yeah, I, I, I feel like this person and I would get along really well, but we’d have to stay quite a far distance from each other. [Laughs]

So we’re going to talk about reading sanctuaries, because I realized that we each have a reading sanctuary in our homes, or if you’re Amanda, you gather up a bunch of people and make one on the road –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – which is pretty amazing, and I wanted to ask you guys about the reading sanctuaries you have. What – Amanda, let me start with you. What are the elements of your reading space that you need to have –

Amanda: Blankets.

Sarah: – for you – blankets, duh.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Of course. Are, are you always cold? I am always freezing.

Amanda: I, I think so. I mean, I’m a nester by nature – instead of Naughty by Nature, I guess it’s Nester by Nature – [laughs] – and even in the middle of summer, I need, like, a thick quilt on my bed, and if you live in New England, most places don’t have central AC, so it’s interesting. But I always need a blanket. Even when we want on, like, the reading retreat, I commandeered one of these huge, like, eight-food-wide bean bags, and I had that and a pillow and a blanket. So blankets are a necessity for me. If I could take a blanket everywhere, like if I’m reading on public transportation and I would be allowed a blanket, like, I would do it.

Sarah: You want to hear one of my most prideful or proud moments as a parent? I took the kids to see a terrible movie after they got back from camp, ‘cause it had come out over the summer and it was, like, in a really somewhat distant and rather cheap theater, and my older son was like, it is always cold in a movie theater; I’m bring a blanket. And he rolled up into the theater holding nachos and a blanket, made himself so comfortable in the chair. I was so proud! [Laughs]

Elyse: People do that –

Amanda: I’ve seen people do that!

Sarah: So I say –

Elyse: Yeah.

Sarah: – pack a blanket, bring it with you; who cares?

Elyse: People do that all the time here, but I feel like Wisconsin has its own rules regarding coziness.

Sarah: Oh yeah. The, the, the planet, the, the place on the planet where you live is trying to kill you.

Elyse: Yeah, like, our dress code at work officially stops somewhere around October. Like, I have, I have the jeans that I can wear on a normal day, and then I have the jeans that my long underwear fits under, and, like, you just, you just layer –

Sarah: Yep.

Elyse: – because we’re in an old building, we’re attached a warehouse, which is just open space that gets really fucking cold. Like, at some point we’re like, we’re not –

Sarah: Yep.

Elyse: – an office anymore. Just don’t start a trashcan fire and we’re good.

Sarah: [Laughs] Yeah, I, I definitely believe that there is a point when it is so cold that fashion rules do not apply. It doesn’t matter what you look like, as long as you are safe and alive in this cold. Like, it’s supposed to be, I think, like, twenty degrees tomorrow. I will be wearing all my layers all the time, and I don’t care if I look like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: So Amanda, you need blankets.

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: Where is your reading sanctuary in your home?

Amanda: I mean, I and a, am a universal, like, bed reader. I love getting cozy in my bed and reading a book. We have, like, this really nice chaise longue in our “reading room,” and my roommate has, like, an extra electric blanket, so now she has an electric blanket that’s permanently out there on the chaise longue that you can just –

Sarah: Oh, poor Linus.

Amanda: Linus fucking loves it!

[Laughter]

Amanda: Loves it! But yeah, I am, like, a bed reader. I like to get under my – I currently have three blankets on my bed: an electric, a down comforter, and a quilt – and I like to just burrow in there with my book and go to town!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: So that’s usually where I am if I’m reading. Sometimes I’ll read on the couch, but, you know, with blankets. But yeah, I really like being in a bed so I can stretch out, I can prop myself up with pillows, my cat will be snoozing. That’s usually my, like, sanctuary is my bed.

Sarah: Do you have a secondary place in the, the reading room that used to be a dining room but is now for books?

Amanda: [Laughs] I think I read on our couch more than the chaise in the reading room, ‘cause the couch is a sectional –

Sarah: Right.

Amanda: – so I have, like, a chaise area of the couch, and then, like, the regular area of the couch, and I can spread out on that. So usually my roommate’s in the chaise longue, and sometimes I’ll get in it, like if I’m by myself. I like spreading out or being able to curl into a ball, so space is definitely something I like to have while I’m reading? It’s hardest – yeah, I don’t –

Sarah: So space and pillows –

Amanda: And blankets.

Sarah: – and blankets.

Amanda: Yeah, I don’t like a tiny –

Sarah: Those are your elements.

Amanda: A tiny armchair is not for me. I need to, like, wiggle around and move every so often and stretch my legs out. So that’s, like, integral to what I need when I’m getting comfortable for, like, a long, long reading sesh.

Sarah: That’s interesting. Elyse, what about you? What are the elements of your reading sanctuary, and where is it in your home?

Elyse: So first of all, my need for a reading sanctuary appeared sometime in November of, like, 2016? I don’t know why that –

Sarah: Oh God –

Amanda: Weird!

Sarah: – why?

Elyse: So crazy. So for me, I, I need a couple of things: one, it needs to be really toasty and warm, and then I have to have really good light, because my reading sanctuary is also my knitting sanctuary. So –

Sarah: Ditto; except for cross-stitching, I am the same way.

Elyse: So my reading sanctuary is actually just my spot in bed, because I have selected the warmest part of the house to sleep in, and then –

[Laughter]

Elyse: – we have, like, really big windows in our bedroom, so I get, like, lots of really nice natural light in there. And then what I’ve done – Rich actually went out and bought it; like, he saw it and just brought it home, and this is why I love him so much – he bought me this lamp that’s, like, basically a giant bookshelf that has a lamp on top. So I have, like, all of my ARCs on one shelf that are coming up for review, so I know what I need to read, and then I’ve got some older books down at the bottom. I’ve got my lamp there; I’ve got all of my cozy blankets; and then I make, like, a little pillow nest? So you know how in movies, like, guys complain about, like, all the throw pillows? Like, what’s the point of having all these throw pillows? You just take ‘em off the bed before you go to bed. No. You build the pillow nest. It’s got to be, like, a semicircular thing that supports you that you can then, like, fall back into, and it’s like being, snuggling with a polar bear; it’s all white and fuzzy and wonderful.

Amanda: It’s funny that you mentioned light –

Sarah: Wow.

Amanda: – because, I know this is the opposite, but I hate light. I hate it! [Laughs]

Sarah: What?!

Amanda: I will try to read a book in the dimmest light possible, and –

Sarah: Oh, my eyes hurt –

Amanda: I know.

Sarah: – just thinking about it.

Amanda: I’m sure it’s ruining my eyesight, but I had this thought: I was like, I wish I could read in the dark, and before you say, well, just read on an e-reader, I want to be able to read a, like a physical copy of the, of a book in the dark. I want, nighttime eyesight is what I want.

Elyse: You want, you want to be a drow, basically.

Amanda: Yes.

Elyse: Okay.

Amanda: Yes, please.

Sarah: You want to be a what?

Amanda: A drow. It’s D&D –

Elyse: It’s a dark elf, Sarah.

Amanda: – D&D speak.

Elyse: Get with the program!

Sarah: I’m still not with you, I’m sorry. You’re going to need to school me on an elementary level here.

Elyse: All right.

Sarah: A what?!

Elyse: A drow is a D&D character that is an elf that lives that lives underground in the dark, and sometimes they’re evil, except, like, there’ve been in books and campaigns and stuff with drow that are good, so it’s like a black-skinned elf with white hair that can see in the dark.

Sarah: Fantasy aside, you could get yourself a pair of those glasses that have little lights at the top corners so that it just shows light where you’re looking.

Amanda: I guess. I wor-, I’d be worried that it’d be too bright in, like, my periphery –

Elyse: But I –

Amanda: – I guess?

Sarah: Right.

Amanda: I get to a point where it’s like, I need to turn all of the lights off. I am done with light in my face. Like –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: – I just get to that point –

Elyse: So –

Amanda: – but it’s like I also want to keep reading!

Elyse: I kind of, I –

Sarah: Oh wow. That’s a problem!

Elyse: – I kind of get what you’re saying, Amanda. So, like, two thoughts: first of all, the other thing I didn’t mention that’s super important is my reading sanctuary has to be a space where I never do any work. So I have spaces in my house where –

Amanda: Mmm!

Elyse: – if I’m working from home or doing whatever that, you know, like, in the dining room, for example, I will sit at, sit there and pull out the laptop and work. I can’t do work in my reading space; this is, like, designated no-work area.

Sarah: Oh, that’s very smart!

Elyse: But going back to the no-light thing, I kind of get you. Like, I’ve been Pinterest-ing a lot lately, because I would like to, at some point, turn our spare room into kind of like a craft/reading room, and so I’ve been looking at a lot of interior design stuff, and I have decided that I can never live in California or marry a celebrity, because their houses are all, like, fucking white and glass everywhere, and it’s horrible, and everything’s really bright and shiny, and I feel like you would see all of my pores all of the time. Like, I definitely need, like, a moody or Goth aesthetic to my interior decorating.

Sarah: Yeah, I’m stumped on the light thing and the celebrity decorating thing. I’m, I’m stumped here. I feel like you need to just create yourself a, a world where you’re Amanda the Vampire Librarian –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – who can read books in the dark. Huh. Like, I’m really stumped! Like, I’m sitting here thinking; like, I’m staring off into space looking at the wall like, how do you read with the lowest light possible?

Elyse: Because it’s cozy!

Sarah: Huh.

Amanda: It is cozy, and –

Elyse: Yeah.

Amanda: – the lighting in my apartment, I wouldn’t say it’s bad. It’s definitely better than my previous apartment, but the overhead light takes a while to, like, warm up, and then at some point –

Sarah: Right.

Amanda: – it just gets annoying, and so I’ll turn that off, and I have, like, a tableside lamp, which –

Sarah: Do you have it on a dimmer, or do you have three-way bulbs?

Amanda: No, I do not.

Sarah: You might be able to put a three-way bulb in that light fixture or get a dimmable light.

Amanda: Ooh!

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: Well, my tableside lamp is pretty dim, so I’ll switch that over, but then it gets –

Sarah: Or you can put a lower-wattage bulb in it, too. That’s another option.

Amanda: Yeah, but then it gets to a point where it’s like, I’m tired of this light now! But, so I’m like –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: I just move from, like, darker to darker to darker.

Elyse: I –

Sarah: This is amazing to me!

Elyse: I, I get what you’re saying, because, like, I love the idea of, like, reading in the bathtub by candlelight? I just can’t do it. Like, I’m –

Amanda: Mm-hmm.

Elyse: – physically incapable of managing that.

Sarah: Oh, I’m too cold in the bathtub! It’s bleah! Bleah! Ugh.

Elyse: You’ve got to keep, you’ve got to keep adding more hot water.

Amanda: Don’t let it get too cold! Yeah! Once – you let it drain, and you add more hot water.

Elyse: Hot water, yeah!

Sarah: I get so cold, so quickly, that the hot water heater, as big as it is, cannot keep up with me being cold. Like, I would have, I would end up, like, boiling myself to try to stay warm in a bath. I cannot stay warm in a bathtub; I find it incredibly unpleasant.

Amanda: Interesting! Like, I love hot water to the point, like, when I leave the shower or bath, I want to look like a cooked lobster. Like, I want to be –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: – bright red and really tender. So I like –

[Laughter]

Elyse: And served with a side of butter!

Sarah: My, yes, my previous, my previous fantasy series, Amanda the Vampire Librarian filet.

[Laughter]

Amanda: So yeah, I will spend – thank God I work from home. I have never roomed with another person who was a bath person, but I’ll take a bath in the middle of the day, and I’ll be in there for, like, two and a half hours.

Sarah: How?! Oh my God, I would be so cold!

Amanda: ‘Cause I refill it! Once, once the water – I do have a pretty good water heater, I feel like, or, like, boiler.

Sarah: Wow.

Amanda: But, yeah, like, I can run the hot water for a little bit, let the tub fill, and then stop it, and by the time the water gets, like, cold enough to be, like, uncomfortable, the hot water is fine again to, like, refill the tub.

Sarah: I cannot. I, I also can’t, I also don’t like hot tubs because if I submerse, submerge myself past my, basically past above my heart, my heart starts pounding, and I start getting this throbbing headache?

Amanda: Oh my gosh.

Sarah: I can put my feet or my legs in the hot tub. I can even put myself in a hot tub up to about my waist, but once my heart and my lungs are in the hot water, I start to feel sick.

Amanda: Oh!

Sarah: So that also may be why I don’t like a super hot bath, but then I get cold because the water is not boiling Amanda temperature.

Amanda: Yeah, and, like, if that’s the case, you can’t, like, fully submerge.

Sarah: No, ‘cause I’ll feel like shit, ‘cause my head will start throbbing, and my heart’ll be like, why are you cooking me?! I’m a delicate Goddamn flower, let me tell you!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Elyse: So one of the things we did was, several years back, we discovered we had black mold growing behind the walls of our bathroom, which is a –

Sarah: Oh, I remember this! It was terrible!

Elyse: Yeah, like, so when they came in to – we had to tear everything down to the studs, and by “we” I mean a company we paid to, like, bring an HVAC tent in. Like, they’re not fucking around with black mold.

Sarah: They’re not fucking around with mold, no.

Elyse: So we figured we’d have to spend all this money to fix this anyway. We got rid of the bathtub, because I wasn’t – Rich will not fit in a normal bathtub because he’s six foot four, and I don’t take a ton of baths, so we put in a steam shower that has a bench, so in the winter, when your sinuses are all dry and, like, really awful, you can just kind of sit in there and steam yourself, and I do that and I read –

Sarah: Oh.

Elyse: – so all of my paper books are, like, super curly and jacked up in the winter –

[Laughter]

Elyse: – because I’m in my little, like, steam sauna room.

Sarah: [Laughs] So Amanda reads in the dark, and you read in the steam room.

Elyse: Yes.

Sarah: I am the most boring person, compared to the two of you.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh my gosh. I have a chair.

[Laughter]

Amanda: I have a chair.

Sarah: Like, seriously! Technically, I have two reading sanctuaries. Like you, I always read before bed, but the thing that made my bed even better as a reading place – I can’t pile pillows or anything like that, because I, it just hurts my back and my neck if I’m not sitting upright or down. Like, I can’t recline? I’m, I don’t know what it is up, but I’m a delicate flower. But I upgraded to one of those sunrise style alarm clocks?

Elyse: Ooh!

Sarah: So it’s like this big globe, and you set the alarm, and then twenty to thirty minutes before the alarm goes off, it mimics a sunrise. So it turns red, and then it turns gold, and then it has this bright sort of growing sunlight, and that’s part of what wakes you up, and then at the end of the time there’s actually a sound feature. You can turn on the radio, or you can have, I think there’s birds, and then there’s also running water, which I think is terrible ‘cause I would just have to jump and run to the bathroom. But it also has a sunset feature which I have been using, and I love it, because it starts with a lower-level light and then slowly decreases into sort of this red sort of sunset kind of glow before going out, and if I’m reading on my phone or my Kindle and I have the clock going, you know, darker and darker – you would like that part, Amanda – by the time I get to the lowest level of light, I am really tired, so it’s almost like I’m tricking my brain, reading plus sunset, and I am very, very peaceful, and then it is, it’s also my bed, which I love.

But as a space where I read that is not the bed, I have a chair in a room of my house. Now, I would – [sighs] – I would like to say that this is my chair, but if the dogs were on this panel they would disagree, because they also like my chair. It’s this, it’s a wing chair from IKEA that we bought I think a summer or two ago, but we put the legs on wrong – [laughs] – and we kept it that way. So they’re, two of the legs are longer and two of the legs are shorter, so it’s supposed to sort of tip you back, right? But we put them in the wrong places, and I didn’t realize we’d done it wrong until Adam did the other chair and did it correctly. We realized they didn’t look right, but I was more comfortable with it set up incorrectly because my legs are so short that having the shorter legs in the front means my feet touch the ground, which doesn’t happen in any chair I sit on, not even the couch. So I have taken the chair with the incorrect leg installations. I have it in the corner; I have it next to the window sill, so I have all of this light, and the window in that room faces west, so we get lots of light, especially in the afternoon. I have chargers; I have a Bluetooth speaker; I have my side table; and Elyse, you know that light you recommended to me that’s, it’s not a full-spectrum light for Seasonal Affective Disorder, but it’s a full-spectrum light for crafting?

Elyse: Yes, ma’am!

Sarah: I have one of those, which is fucking amazing! So I have my light, and I have my cross-stitching supplies, and I have chargers, and I have a speaker, and I got a blanket at Costco that I think is supposed to be one of those weighted blankets, except that it wasn’t labeled that way, ‘cause it’s very heavy. It’s plush on one side and fleece on the other, and the dogs fight with me over that, so if I have the blanket under or on top of me, I am warm. I am all cocooned up in my wing chair; I have the light that I need; I have the cross-stitching. I can switch from reading to cross-stitching and listening and then back to reading, and I really only have to get up to refill my water bottle or use the toilet. It’s brilliant. And since, and since Adam has been on, on furlough since we got back from Japan, we’ve been spending a lot of time in our respective reading places.

[Laughter]

Amanda: I’m really curious about those weighted blankets, because I always wonder if the reason why I have so many blankets on my bed is because I like the weight of all those blankets on top of me? So I’m always curious –

Sarah: Maybe!

Amanda: – to, like, try one out.

Sarah: I would love to try one out, because I don’t want to buy one – they’re very expensive.

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: I like the one that I got from Costco because it wasn’t very expensive, and it’s definitely not marketed as a weighted blanket – like, it doesn’t have weights in it – but it is so much heavier than any of the other throws that I have in the house.

Elyse: I have one of those that a friend sent me as a gift, and it’s not actually a weighted blanket. It’s just super heavy, and one side is like a faux fur, and it’s actually like a, I think, Lisa Vanderpump’s brand of blanket, but it’s, like, super heavy and –

Sarah: What?!

Elyse: Yeah! Like, she’s –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: – she’s got, like, a home décor line. And, but it’s like, I call it the, the cat blanket, because when you break it out, no matter where they are in the house, I swear to God, the cats know. They’re like –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Elyse: – the Blanket is out! And then you have, you have them fighting for space over it. But one thing I have noticed with my reading – oh my God! Sorry, sorry. My husband just sent me a text message – [laughs] – with a photo of it, saying, glad you’re busy right now, because a certain individual who has fuzzy pantaloons has scooted all down the hallway, and there is just a line of shit downstairs that he’s dealing with –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Elyse: – at the moment. So.

Sarah: Oh no! So he’ll be using the carpet cleaner.

Elyse: He did it on the, the hard floor, which surprises me. Normally, that’s a carpet activity he likes to reserve for us.

Sarah: [Laughs] I love how there’s always some kind of mention of animal poop when we talk. Do I have to content warning that, do you think?

Elyse: All of our animal –

Sarah: Discussion of poop, y’all.

Elyse: Sorry. So anyway, Fisher scooted all over the downstairs. One thing I have noticed, and I am not, I am not shitting on e-books and being ableist –

[Laughter]

Sarah: You’re not shitting on e-books!

Elyse: I hate people who do that, where they’re like, I need the smell of books, and only actual books are real, because I have no discernible personality other than owning books, and I’m a snob! I really like reading in paper because I stare at a screen all day. I stare at, like, three screens all day –

Sarah: I get it.

Elyse: – and so when I come home, I don’t want to look at any more screens. And even the E Ink, like, I feel like my brain is still in work mode when I’m staring at a screen. So I have kind of –

Sarah: Oh!

Elyse: – surrounded myself with stacks of books. Like, it’s to the point now where, like, they’re stacked up by – we, we need more bookshelves is what it boils down to – but, but they’re stacked up by genre and, like, then we start with the hardcovers, and we move up to the trades, and then we get into the, into the mass markets, and it’s sort of like I have a little fort, and I just go there to feel safe –

Sarah: Yep!

Elyse: – in my book fort.

Sarah: Oh yeah. I understand that. Mine is very much a nest or a fort where I have my speaker, my cross-stitching supplies, and I bought this frame for myself to cross-stitch on. It’s actually a lap frame, so I can stitch with both hands, and it’s massive, but it’s wonderful to work with, so I have all of that around me. If it’s time to relax and I park myself in the, in, in, in The Chair, then I have everything I want to relax and not work right in front of me, and sometimes I have my laptop there, but just as often – I only have videogames installed on my laptop; I won’t put them on my work computer because I know myself, and that would be bad – so I can have my laptop there and just, you know, play Stardew Valley for two straight hours and not even notice.

So what are the things that you cannot have in your reading spot?

Amanda: Oh boy.

Elyse: I was going to say a TV; however, my husband wanted a TV in the bedroom, so we have one. I typically do not watch it when I am in, like, my sanctuary zone. If I’m going to be knitting, I usually listen to podcasts or audiobooks. Every now and then, I put on a murder show, but that’s about it. I, I’m trying to avoid screens I think is what it boils down to.

Amanda: One thing that I forgot to mention for my – and I think we’ve talked about this – is that I like background noise, but I’m very –

Sarah: That is so interesting.

Amanda: – I’m very specific about my background noise.

Elyse: Wait, wait, didn’t you –

Sarah: Ooh!

Amanda: So –

Elyse: Didn’t you tell us once that you fall asleep to the Scott Peterson episode of Generation Why?

Amanda: Yes.

[Laughter]

Amanda: Yes, I did! I fell asleep last night to the Last Podcast on the Left episode about Josef Mengele, so.

Elyse: [Laughs]

Sarah: Jesus Christ!

Elyse: Ohhh.

Sarah: Wow!

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Do you have any idea what kind of dreams I would have?

Amanda: I’m sure horrible dreams, but I just – [zzzz] – conk right out.

Sarah: God! [Laughs] Okay! So –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – if you like background noises that, you like background noise that’s sixty-five percent scaring the crap out of your unconscious.

Amanda: Well, like, that’s for sleeping. For – [laughs]

Sarah: Oh, of course! What was I thinking? Of course that’s for sleeping!

Amanda: For reading, I just usually put on some kind of like trashy reality show, so, like, I don’t have to pay attention? It’s just, like, background noise? So complete silence for reading is something that I cannot have.

Sarah: You know, that’s really interesting, ‘cause the thing that I need to have, and in my, in where I read, is actually control of what I’m hearing, and complete silence doesn’t work for me, but if the choice is the TV or people talking or people on the phone and silence, I will always pick silence. Because people talking is distracting, so, like, the idea of turning on a, a reality show where people are going to be talking loudly at each other, I would be like, no, there’s nothing restful about that; I need to go hide, like, in a very quiet isolation zone.

Amanda: A lot of the things that I put on are, I think, people talking. Like, I’ll, I might put on, like, a Twitch stream or some –

Sarah: I can’t!

Amanda: Yeah. It’s always, like, a person talking in some capacity. It’s not, like, ambient music or, you know, like, sounds from a coffee shop or something like that.

Sarah: No, it’s talking! Oh my God. There is a –

Amanda: It’s always talking.

Sarah: I have a white noise app on my phone that I use sometimes, and one of the channels is crowd noise, and I’m like, no. Fucking no! Are you kidding? I wrote a whole post about this in, late last year, about music to listen to when you’re working, and the same things that I listen to when I’m working, I listen to when I’m reading. I listen to, like, lo-fi hip-hop YouTube streams, and I listened to, and I listen to Brain.fm. Like, I was in the hallway – my, my younger son is in honors band this month and next, and it’s awful. It’s half an hour away, the rehearsal is an hour and a half, so there is really no point in my driving there, driving home, being home for twenty minutes, then driving back to pick him up, so I just go and I sit in the hallway. There’s always someone who is having the loudest cell phone call of their life in this hallway, and it’s a, it’s at a school, so of course the hallway is, like, metal and linoleum and loudness, so I always have earbuds with me, and I listen to different things to try to drown out this woman hollering into her cell phone. I ended up, I didn’t have enough of a signal for YouTube, and Brain.fm wasn’t doing it, so I actually had to crank up the Stardew Valley piano soundtrack album to, like, volume 99.you’re-going-to-go-deaf-now, and that was the only thing that could drown her out was Stardew Valley on piano. I have to control the sounds I’m hearing because voices and words are distracting when I’m reading and when I’m writing. My brain and I are not good at ignoring, like, people talking, and if I really want to immerse myself in what I’m reading, I need to block out the sounds that aren’t in my control. Now meanwhile, I live in a house with two dogs who like to bark at things, cats who like to yell at each other, one of my sons plays the drums, and the other one plays the drums, the trombone, and the electric, and the acoustic guitar, and they all have to practice music. That does not bother me, because it’s not talking! It’s really interesting. Like, the idea of listening to a reality TV show just, like, I would be so miserable! It has to be not talking.

Elyse: I cannot read and listen to music with lyrics at the same time. Like, my brain can’t do it –

Sarah: No, me neither.

Elyse: – so I have a pod-, or I have a, a, not a podcast; I have a playlist that’s just, like, instrumental music, or I listen to a lot of soundtracks –

Sarah: Yep!

Elyse: – but then, like, I find, like, depending on the soundtrack –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Elyse: – I’m listening to, like, all of a sudden you’re reading, like, a flirty contemporary, and you’re, like, super pumped, ‘cause you don’t realize you’re listening to, like, the Game of Thrones soundtrack.

[Laughter]

Elyse: And I would like to just share with the podcast listeners that I have sent Sarah and Amanda the cat poop photo from downstairs, because this is our level of friendship.

Amanda: Oh boy.

Elyse: Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s real bad.

Sarah: Oh God.

Elyse: [Laughs] And now he’s, he’s –

Amanda: Oh my goodness!

Sarah: Jesus Christ! What, what did he eat?

Amanda: It’s like a little snail trail!

Sarah: Oh, he needs some rice! He needs some rice, like, stat! Oh my Lord!

Elyse: No, that’s just scooting! It gets caught in his britches!

Sarah: Yeah, you need to shave his ass and give him some rice. That’s a lot of dookie.

Amanda: He needs to talk to Linus. Linus doesn’t have that problem.

Elyse: [Laughs] So we see the vet on the 1st of February, and this will likely be –

Sarah: Just show him that picture!

Elyse: – a topic of conversation, and now the little perpetrator is in here with me like all snuggly, like I love you!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Elyse: So back to things we listen to –

Sarah: That’s a lot of schmear. Yeah, you need some rice. Oh God, I accidentally zoomed in! Escape, escape!

[Laughter]

Elyse: Why do I always bring our podcast to, like, a terrible, terrible place? I’m so sorry! Oh, anyway. Well, and here’s the thing I don’t get: they get super bland prescription cat food because Dewey has, like, colon issues as well, so I cannot figure out, like, what his deal is. Like, I can’t get anymore bland than this. But anyway.

Sarah: Right.

Elyse: Anyway, so I can’t listen to things with words in it when I’m reading. I do like to listen to podcasts, though, and audiobooks, when I’m knitting? Can I share some of my favorite happy podcasts with you guys?

Amanda: Sure!

Sarah: Yes. How many dead people are in them?

Elyse: No, I’m not doing dead people podcasts this time, Sarah. I’m doing happy podcasts!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Ohhh!

Amanda: Maybe –

Sarah: Okay, yeah! Sure! I, I’m, I’m willing to bet that by the third one, someone’s dead, but okay. Go ahead.

Elyse: Well, yeah, actually, now that I think about it, you’re right.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Yeah.

Elyse: So yeah, there’s a –

Sarah: You like dead things! It’s okay.

Elyse: So there’s a couple of knitting podcasts I like, and I know we’ve talked about it on the show before. I really like Knit 1, Geek 2. They don’t have a ton of episodes, but it’s two knitters who are also super into, like, geeky fandoms, and so it’s a combination of talking about what they’re knitting and what they’re working on and also, like, the super deep dive into things like Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD or Disney movies or whatever is kind of out at that time – Wonder Woman.

And then there’s also a podcast called Pom Pom Quarterly? Pom Pom is a British knitting magazine, and they do a podcast, like, every quarter where they interview someone who is either a dyer or a designer, and it’s just, like, two really fun British women interviewing people about stuff they  love, and it’s, like, incredibly soothing to my brain.

And then I think I’ve told you about Hey, Sis!, which is two sisters who are really examining kind of the role of race and feminism in their world and in being creative. One of them is Nicole Blades; so she is an author that I think we’ve talked about on the site. But it’s also obvious that these two women, they’re sisters; they’re friends. It’s really fun to listen to them talk to each other because of how much they obviously love each other, and it’s just a really good dynamic.

And then finally, the murder-y one. I got super –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: I got super into this podcast called Unobscured, which is a really, really deep dive into the Salem witch trials? Like, super deep dive. I read a whole bunch of books about it, and there’s stuff in here that I had never heard of before, and they interview historians, and it’s actually just really an interesting podcast if you’re a fan of history.

Sarah: That’s very cool. Did I recommend to you You’re Wrong About…?

Elyse: No.

Amanda: I recommended that to you.

Sarah: You recommended that to me. I listened to one about, you are wrong about multiple personality disorder?

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: That was fascinating, one, because one of the things that the hosts discuss is the idea that a lot of people were diagnosed with multiple personality disorder because at the time it was a trendy diagnosis. It was also curable, and it was a big novelty and very attractive to both patients and doctors to have a mental illness that was curable when all of the others are kind of not. But the thing that stuck with me was one of the hosts talking about millenials –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – and saying that, that the thing with millenials is that they are unabashed at saying, this is hard, and I hate it.

[Laughter]

Sarah: And I was like, yes, that is why I like millenials, because you’re, you’re unabashedly afraid to be like, yeah, this sucks; I hate it. And you know what? It does suck. Let’s not pretend that this doesn’t suck.

So I asked you guys to come with a question for the other two. Now, what question do you have? I have one, but I want to hear what you guys want to ask.

Elyse: So my question is for Sarah, because of out of the two of us, you’re the one with kids. So is there, like, a Mom Is in Her Reading Sanctuary, Emergency Contact Only rule? Like, you’ve got two kids, two dogs, two cats. Like, how do you maintain that space – [laughs] – and not have –

Sarah: Like, get everyone to leave me the fuck alone? [Laughs]

Elyse: Yes, yes.

Sarah: There’s a number of things. One, the dogs will always steal the chair, because the chair has the blanket, and they both want the chair and the blanket, so if I get up out of the chair, one of them will try to steal it, and then, depends on how ornery I am if I feel like making them move or I just go sit on another surface until they decide, oh, there’s space next to The Lady! I’ll go sit next to her! And then I go sit in the chair. There are times when I read when the kids are either in bed or, you know, at school, like I can read during lunch? Most of the time, though, they know that if I’m reading, I won’t actually hear them. Like, they could start talking, and if I’m really into my book, I won’t hear, so they now know and are like, Mom? Mom. Are you there? Mom? Hi. And then, like, they’ll get a little louder, hey, hey, Mom? MOM? And then they’re like, okay, now, do I need to, like, set something on fire, ‘cause I’m still reading? Or I have earbuds in and they can’t see my earbuds. So then they just start, like, dropping things or dancing around the room, and I’m like, what? What the fuck are you doing? But they know –

Elyse: Walking in and out while playing the trombone?

Sarah: Oh, yeah, yeah. I’ve, I’ve had, I’ve been interrupted by trombone; I’ve been interrupted by attempts at movie stunts; I’ve been distracted by dancing and singing. Sometimes a, a person will try to show me the latest meme dance – that is always hilarious – but they know that if I’m reading, it’s not that they can’t disturb me, it’s that I’m difficult to disturb. [Laughs] Sometimes they’re, like, really cautious, like, Mom, can I, can I talk to you? Are you there? Can you hear me? HELLO? [Laughs] So they know that they sort of gradually have to level up the volume if I’m ever going to hear them.

Amanda: My question is similar to Elyse’s, in that out of the three of us, I’m the only one who’s not married. So I’m – and I know both of your husbands read in some capacity. I know, I think, like, Rich listens to a lot of audiobooks and stuff like that. How do your spouses’ –

Elyse: Yep!

Amanda: – reading nests compare to yours? Do you ever join forces and combine your reading nests?

Sarah: Hmm! That’s a good question!

Elyse: Typically, when I’m upstairs, that’s kind of like my alone time, and he doesn’t try to bother me too much? Rich plays a lot of videogames, so it’s pretty common for him to be downstairs gaming, and I’m upstairs reading or something. On occasion, though, we will listen to the same audiobook, and right now we’re listening to In Farleigh Field by Rhys Bowen. So we’ll listen to the same audiobook while doing things; like I’ll be knitting, he might be playing a game on his laptop, so we do kind of sometimes intersect, but usually, me being upstairs is, like, my signal to leave me alone; I’m done talking to people for a while.

Sarah: That’s a good signal. Adam and I both read in bed before bed, but he reads on his phone and I usually read on my Kindle, unless the book I can, the book I’m reading is only accessible through a library app that’s on my phone. His reading spot, which he’s been spending a lot of time in, because as part of his furlough he’s not allowed to work, and he’s ethically not allowed to go get another job, and he’s forbidden from doing any work, so he’s like, well, now what the fuck do I do? [Laughs] We were joking that he’s, like, not actually going to remember how to do his job. Like, he’s going to need, like, 101, here is what you do, ‘cause it’s been a month now. He’s definitely not remember his passwords; those are gone, forget it. He’s, all those are going to have to be reset. But he’s wri-, he’s reading so much. We have, similar to you, Amanda, we have a chaise – another, another piece of furniture that the dogs tend to fight over, now that I think about it – but we have a, a chaise that is his place to sit in the morning on weekends. That’s his sort of location?

He and I, we were also talking about this today when we were walking, walking the dogs. I was reading a book called 168 Hours, which is sort of time examination and time management and time diary-keeping and all that time management stuff – that’s my, my catnip – and the author, Laura Vanderkam, pointed out that you lose a lot of hours to, to watching TV because it’s really easy: it’s relatively cheap, it’s very low impact, you sit down, you press a button, there’s something to entertain you. But I don’t like television, and I don’t trust television writers, which I’ve talked about before, and since we got rid of cable and now have streaming services and specific shows that we watch, Adam was like, I have specific shows, but I watch them when I’m working out; I don’t have shows that I’m watching all the time. So he’s reading more, and there’s no television in our front room, so we watch a lot less TV because we are most comfortable sitting in a room where there isn’t a TV.

Elyse: I think for me, part of the reason I have to be kind of almost in a separate room is because when Rich is gaming, again, I don’t want to be around screens as much, and also his videogames are really violent, and that’s distracting to – I shouldn’t say really violent. I guess they’re videogames, but he does, like, a lot of stuff where zombies get shot in the head and things like that, so I, I, it’s kind of distracting and gross and, like, I don’t want to sit there and – like, I keep being drawn to it over the top of my book, if that makes sense.

Sarah: Well no, it’s light and movement and, yeah, of course! It makes sense!

Elyse: And, like, that’s how he soothes himself, so you can’t make fun of my murder obsessions anymore. He finds dismembering zombies to be soothing.

Sarah: I’m not making fun of it; I just think it’s alarmingly consistent.

Elyse: [Laughs] It is!

Sarah: ‘Cause even when you say, there’s no murder in here, there’s murder in there!

Elyse: I know.

Sarah: Yeah! [Laughs] Someone’s getting murdered. Is Elyse involved? Someone was murdered. That sounds very bad now that I’ve said that, wait.

Elyse: No, I, it’s okay. Like, I feel like at this point I am so versant in murder I could easily commit a double homicide and not be caught. Like, probably just the one. I’d have to plan it out, but I think I could do it.

Sarah: I have one last question for you guys. If you are traveling, is there anything that you bring with you – other than books – to create a reading sanctuary –

Amanda: Oh boy.

Sarah: – when you’re not at home?

Amanda: No? [Laughs]

Elyse: I don’t, because I try to, I try to travel really light, but I do have, like, kind of remote reading sanctuaries where, when I’m at work, there is an empty office that sometimes I don’t have time to take an actual lunch, but I need – I’m, I’m like a mom; I have, like, twenty people that I work with that sometimes I need, like, ten Goddamn minutes of quiet, you guys! And I go in there –

[Laughter]

Elyse: – and I hide and read for a few minutes. And then there’s the cat café down the street from me, which has really become kind of like my little reading sanctuary, so I’ll go there if I can take a lunch and snuggle a cat and read and just completely decompress for an hour; it’s wonderful.

Amanda: For me, I always bring books in the hopes like, I’m going to read on the plane, or I’m going to read while my family’s being terrible! And that never happens. Like – [laughs] – I get a, I get on a plane, and I immediately fall asleep. I get around my, like, family –

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: – and the minute I pull out a book, my mom has a passive-aggressive, oh, you have to work? I was like, I just want to read my book! So no, but, I mean, I always have headphones on me. Like, always, in my purse, when I’m traveling, when I’m just, like, on the subway, because I do like background noise, so when I’m reading, even if it’s just –

Sarah: Mm-hmm?

Amanda: – on public transportation or whatever, I will put my headphones in and put something on to listen to while I’m reading.

Sarah: Right. Yeah, for me, it’s earbuds. If I can isolate my sound –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – of what I’m hearing, then I’m okay. So before we go –

Amanda: Wooo!

Sarah: – we have a book club! Yay! I’m so excited! So basically, the Patreon folks have dropped in a ton of really good suggestions, and –

Amanda: Awesome.

Sarah: – we are going to have such a good choice for the first quarter, and then we’ll do it again each quarter. The books that they have suggested that we read are so interesting, it’s actually going to be hard to choose?

Elyse: I was really afraid we were going to get, like, all crazysauce.

Sarah: No, we have some crazysauce, but then we also have, I, I love this book, and I would love to hear you guys talk about it? Like, they want someone to share their love of this book, which is always really enjoyable. I love reading books that other people have suggested, so I want to suggest this book that I really enjoyed. There’s also writers who are not as well known, and there’s suggestions that are just really thoughtful and interesting. I’m, I’m really excited to share the responses with you guys. So the Patreon community suggests books, we pick a book, we read the book, we’re going to tell everybody what the book is, and then we’re going to record a discussion of the book. And then in the future we can invite people on to be panelists with us to talk about the book, which will also be awesome. The thing is, though, I do want to have, like, I guess each of us would get, like, a veto card? Like, I’m not sacrifice my sleep or my mental health if the book is too murder-y, or I might just let you guys read it, and I’ll facilitate the discussion, ‘cause there’s some things I can’t put in my brain.

Amanda: Would the veto just be, like, a personal veto, like I’m going to sit out this quarter –

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: – or would it be, like, an overall veto like, we’re picking another book?

Sarah: No, I would just sit out.

Amanda: Okay.

Sarah: Like, if, if I’m like, yeah, that’s not something that I can read, or I’ll give it a try and if it’s, my brain is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, uh-uh, no, then I’ll sit it out and facilitate the discussion, but I mean each of us gets a veto. I’m not going to force you to read something that you think might really upset you, you know what I mean? It’s one thing to read outside the genres you’re accustomed to; it’s another thing to be like, I’m awake at three in the morning ‘cause this book has scared the shit out of me.

Amanda: Right.

Sarah: At least, that would happen to me, not to you guys, ‘cause you’re well versed in murder; me, not so much.

Elyse: I just need to formally apologize for – bleah – apologize to the podcast listeners for making this podcast so much about cat poop and murder when we were talking about reading sanctuaries.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Maybe that’s the title: Reading, Cat Poop, and Murder.

Elyse: I’m down with it –

Amanda and Elyse: Yeah!

Sarah: And if I don’t put in any commas, it’ll be really a more interesting topic.

Amanda: [Laughs] Reading cat – like, instead of reading tea leaves, you read cat poop? Like, what –

Sarah: I’m writing it down right now! Reading Cat Poop and Murder.

Amanda: What do these cat scoops, like, can, can tell you about your future?

Elyse: [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh my God, what if, what if Fisher is trying to tell you something? And it’s not, hey, I had a bad doodoo?

Elyse: Fisher’s not smart enough to tell me anything other than he had a bad doodoo. Like, I love him so much, and he’s got seven functioning brain cells. Really, he does.

[Laughter]

Amanda: You don’t think it’s, like, a higher, like, Rorschach or whatever it is test –

Elyse: No. No, he’s –

Amanda: – where it’s like, what shape do you see?

Elyse: [Laughs] Sometimes –

Sarah: I don’t know.

Elyse: – sometimes he does this thing where, like, we’ll have the curtain pulled along the patio door, and there will be something, like some critter out on the porch, and Dewey will, like, go behind the curtain so he can watch it, and Fisher will just push his face into the curtain like he can see through it if he pushes hard enough.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Elyse: Like, he’s super dumb. But I love him.

Sarah: I don’t know; I, I think that, that, that tile scoot is, has a message of great importance to the universe. I mean, it may be that he’s operating on an entirely different plane! He’s actually a super genius cat!

Elyse: Sure, we can go with that, or he’s got poopy britches.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: Mister –

Amanda: Or, like, you know, in Stranger Things, where they, like, communicate through the lights. He’s, like, communicating –

Elyse: I would –

Amanda: – through his poop.

Elyse: – prefer him to choose a different forum in which to communicate.

Amanda: A different medium?

[Laughter]

Sarah: Oh God! I’m going to have to put this picture of Fisher in the podcast notes, but with, like, a spoiler tag!

Elyse: Definitely a spoiler tag; it’s super gross. Yeah, it’s disgusting.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Yes, but the number of pet owners who listen to this podcast are probably like, oh yeah, I’ve been there.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this meandering episode. I hope you enjoyed our conversation. I had a really good time! And I would really like to know about your reading sanctuary. Where do you read? What do you have to have? What do you have to not have? You can email me at [email protected]. You can leave a message at 1-201-371-3272. Or you can come find us on Twitter. I am @SmartBitches, Amanda is @_ImAnAdult, and Elyse is @ElyseIndeed. If you want to send us pictures by email of your reading sanctuary, we’d love to see them. It’s a very personal thing, but I think it’s important to everyone when you make reading a really essential part of your day.

This episode is brought to you by a new digital publication that is all focused on romance: Blush Magazine. You’ve been swept away by the romance of your latest book, only to crash in disappointment when it has the audacity to end. Sometimes The End are the hardest words to read, so let’s remedy that, shall we? Blush Magazine is a free online publication for romance readers – yes, you! It’s a magazine that goes beyond the pages of your favorite romance novels to give you the inside scoop on authors, publishers, the latest industry trends, book reviews, free reads, and more, so never again will you be frustrated when you read The End, because Blush has you covered. Subscribers receive the digital magazine in their inboxes, perfect for a quiet moment with a favorite beverage. Just sign up with your email address at blushmagazine.com.au for the first issue, which features interviews with Beverly Jenkins, Kylie Scott, Colleen Hoover, and more. Head to blushmagazine.com.au to get your first issue.

Today’s podcast transcript will be hand-compiled by garlicknitter – thank you, garlicknitter! – and this episode’s transcript is sponsored by Summoned to the Thirteenth Grave by Darynda Jones. If you like J. R. Ward or Jeaniene Frost, you will love this paranormal romp that tickles not only the funny bone, but the other parts a little farther down as well. Charley Davidson, Grim Reaper extraordinaire, is back after a century of exile. She’s hurt, she’s angry, and she is out for revenge, but a century on one plane isn’t quite the same as it is on others, and she comes back to find a furious husband who can still melt the polar ice caps with a single glance, a world in chaos, and an expanding hell dimension that is taking over our own plane of existence. She has three days to stop an apocalypse that she may have accidentally started and to soothe the savage beast that is her blisteringly hot soul mate. Don’t miss the latest and the last book in the series that RT Book Reviews calls wickedly funny with true chilling danger. Summoned to the Thirteenth Grave by Darynda Jones is on sale now wherever books are sold, and you can find out more at daryndajones.com.

If you have supported the podcast with a monthly pledge at our Patreon of any amount, thank you, thank you, thank you. Monthly pledges start at one dollar, and by making a pledge, you’ll be part of the group who helps develop questions, suggests people for interviews, and will be helping us select our book for our quarterly Smart Bitches Book Club. If you would like to join our Patreon community, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches.

For the book club, each quarter the Patreon community is going to suggest books for us to read, and we will select one. Then we’ll reveal the title, read, record, and share the episode – and a transcript, of course – about that book so you can join in the discussion however you like! I am so excited about this, and I cannot wait to get started. If you would like to tell us what to read, if you would like to support the show, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches.

The music you are listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. This is the Peatbog Faeries, this is their album Blackhouse, and this track is called “The Ranch.” You can find the Peatbog Faeries at their website, peatbogfaeries.com. You can find the album at Amazon and at iTunes or wherever you buy your fine music.

Time for a preview of what’s coming up on Smart Bitches this week. Yay! This week and every week, we have a bunch of fun stuff. We have reviews for historical fiction and fantasy and science fiction and comics! We have Cover Awe, a new edition of Soggy Bottoms, a Rec League, a new recap of The Bachelor train wreck, and a giveaway! If you recall my podcast interview with Paul Jarvis, author of Company of One, his publisher has sent me five hardcover copies to give away, so you can enter to win on Monday at smartbitchestrashybooks.com. And of course we will have Help a Bitch Out, Books on Sale, and more.

If you hang out with us here or on the site, thank you for that. Your presence and participation in the community help keep us going, and with yet another round of contractions and layoffs in smaller and larger media outlets, I remain extremely grateful to still be here, and your being part of the Smart Bitches community is part of why we’re still here, so thank you for that.

And now I will end this episode with a terrible joke because, well, that’s how I roll. Before I do, if you are looking for any of the things we talked about, books, podcast episodes, movies, links to some of the posts we mentioned, you want to find out more about that sunrise clock I was talking about, I will have links to all of the things that we talked about in the podcast show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

Now it is time for the terrible joke. Are you ready for the terrible joke? I like this one. This is a really good one. It’s really bad; that’s why it’s really good.

Why couldn’t the computer take its hat off?

Give up? Why couldn’t the computer take its hat off?

Because it had Caps Lock on.

[Laughs] It’s like I can almost hear the eye-rolling! It’s really, it’s really quite silly to imagine everyone’s face like, oh, oh God! [Sighs] That book – that book, no, not that book, that joke – that joke was from thatindiandude at Reddit. Thank you very much for that joke, because it made my day.

Thank you very much for listening. Thank you to Amanda and Elyse for hanging out with me; thank you to Fisher for interrupting our episode with some epic, epic activity; and thank you for listening. I am, like I said, very honored to still be here each week talking with you about romance fiction. We wish you the very best of reading, and we will see you back here next week.

[lively music]