Shana, Claudia, and Carrie, gather to talk books, re-reading, knitting, comfort reading, switching genres, books set in California, figuring out what books are five star reads, and the different ways to be kickass.
Happy New Year, and thanks for listening!
❤ Read the transcript ❤
↓ Press Play
This podcast player may not work on Chrome and a different browser is suggested. More ways to listen →
Here are the books we discuss in this podcast:
We also mentioned:
Carrie also shared a list of books set in San Francisco for Claudia that you might like to look at, too:
- The Heroine Complex series, Sarah Kuhn (contemp. Paranormal romance, SUPER FUN)
- The Fifth Sacred Thing, Starhawk (Pagan revolution, science fiction)
- Mama’s Bank Account, Kathryn Forbes (sweet collection of memoir stories)
- The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (contemporary fiction)
- The Girl with Ghost Eyes, M.H. Boroson (historical fantasy)
- Mr. Penubra’s 24 Hour Bookstore, Robin Sloane, (contemporary fantasy for booklovers)
- All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Anders (fantasy/sci fi)
- October Daye series, Seanan McGuire (urban paranormal)
- Calico Palace, Gwen Bristow (historical)
- Tea with the Black Dragon, R.A. Macavoy (fantasy)
- Passing Strange, Ellen Klages (historical romance)
- Copy Boy, Shelley Blanton-Stroud (historical about Sacramento and San Francisco)
If you like the podcast, you can subscribe to our feed, or find us at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows!
❤ More ways to sponsor:
Sponsor us through Patreon! (What is Patreon?)
What did you think of today's episode? Got ideas? Suggestions? You can talk to us on the blog entries for the podcast or talk to us on Facebook if that's where you hang out online. You can email us at [email protected] or you can call and leave us a message at our Google voice number: 201-371-3272. Please don't forget to give us a name and where you're calling from so we can work your message into an upcoming podcast.
Thanks for listening!
This Episode's Music
It’s time to feature my favorite holiday album from Deviations Project, Adeste Fiddles.
This is Favourite Things – I’m sure you recognized it. You can find this album at Amazon.
Transcript
❤ Click to view the transcript ❤
[music]
Sarah Wendell: Hello there. Thank you for inviting me into your eardrums. I’m Sarah Wendell; this is Smart Podcast, Trashy Books, episode number 439, and for our final Later, 2020! episode, Shana and Claudia and Carrie and I are going to talk about books, rereading, knitting, comfort reading, switching genres, books set in California, and the different ways in which to be kickass. I hope you’ve enjoyed these episodes looking back at 2020. We’re going to try to gather more often this year because I have heard from some of you that you really like it when we all talk about books together, which, you know, is our favorite thing to do. So to you, Happy New Year and thank you for listening, and thank you for keeping me company while I keep you company.
This podcast episode is brought to you in part by Headspace. If you are one of thirty-four percent of Americans who made resolutions to be less stressed, or if you are a person who is not in the US but you have also made a resolution to be less stressed, Headspace is here to help. Headspace is your daily dose of mindfulness in the form of guided meditations in an easy-to-use app. Headspace is one of the only meditation apps advancing the field of mindfulness and meditation through clinically validated research, so whatever the situation, Headspace really can help you feel better. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, Headspace has a three-minute SOS meditation. If you need help falling asleep, Headspace has wind-down sessions that their members swear by – Amanda loves those. And for parents, Headspace even has morning meditations you can do with your kids. Headspace’s approach to mindfulness can reduce stress, improve sleep, boost focus, and increase your overall sense of wellbeing. I have been using Headspace for over fifty consecutive days, and I really, really love it. I’m working on their 365 course, which is ten-minute meditation sessions every day for 365 days – does what it says on the tin – and I feel more relaxed and adaptable to whatever weirdness happens during the day. Also, my cat and my dog really like my meditation habit because they like to sit next to me and demonstrate the proper technique of falling asleep while I do the meditation. Headspace is backed by twenty-five published studies on its benefits, six hundred thousand five-star reviews, and over sixty million downloads. Headspace makes it easy for you to build a life-changing meditation practice with mindfulness that works for you on your schedule, anytime, anywhere. You deserve to feel happier, and Headspace is meditation made simple. Go to headspace.com/SARAH – that’s headspace.com/SARAH – for a one-month free trial with access to Headspace’s full library of meditations for every situation. This is the best deal offered right now, so head to headspace.com/SARAH today!
Hello and thank you to our Patreon community for being so excellent. If you have supported the show, you help keep the show going, and you help make sure every episode has a transcript, and you’re making everything accessible to everyone, which is very important to me and to the many listeners and readers who like to read along and listen at the same time. If you’d like to join the Patreon community, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Monthly pledges start at one dollar, and each pledge makes a massive difference, so thank you!
This podcast is also brought to you by Native. Native aluminum-free deodorant is a great addition to your 2021 routine. (I am not used to saying 2021, by the way; I really have to think about it. [Laughs] God help me when I write a check.) Native cares about what you put on your armpits. That’s why their deodorant’s ingredients list includes things you actually heard of, like, coconut oil and shea butter. Another plus? None of their products are tested on animals, and almost everything is vegan. Native is risk-free to try: every product comes with free shipping in the US, plus free thirty-day returns and exchanges. And they have options: they have a line of sensitive deodorants for people with baking soda sensitivities, plastic-free deodorants if you’re trying to cut out your plastic consumption, and even an unscented option. If you want to try a little something different, check out their rotating seasonal scents. Right now they have blood orange and clove, candy cane, or buttercream and French vanilla. You can even subscribe to Native so you’ll never have to sweat about running out of deodorant again – mad props to whoever wrote that; that’s brilliant. Make the switch to Native today by going to nativedeo.com/TRASHYBOOKS or use promo code TRASHYBOOKS at checkout and you will get twenty percent off your first order. That’s nativedeo.com/TRASHYBOOKS or use promo code TRASHYBOOKS at checkout for twenty percent off your first order.
If you are thinking, wow, Sarah sounds really relaxed, well that’s because I am. I bought myself a heating pad for my desk chair, and now I just sit back and relax in blissful, blissful warmth all the time, which means I am super relaxed right now. If you can give yourself this upgrade and your back hurts sometimes like I do because aging, heating pad on the desk chair, whoo, is it nice.
I will have links to everything that we talk about in this episode in the show notes, and I will end with a truly ghastly joke. But for now, let’s do this podcast: our final episode looking back and saying buh-bye! to 2020 with Shana, Claudia, and Carrie.
[music]
Sarah: First question: what book or piece of media – being very broad here on purpose – got you through 2020 or was one of your highlights? Who wants to go first? Or should I call names?
Shana: I want to go first!
Sarah: Okay, go ahead, Shana.
Shana: ‘Cause it’s easy for me. When I thought about what actually got me through, it’s something I read pre-pandemic – [laughs] – which is The Deep by Rivers Solomon. So it’s the mermaid sci-fi book; it’s all about, like, the descendants of women from slave ships during the trans-Atlantic slave trade who, like, turned into this whole mermaid society. It’s not a romance, but there is, like, a love story, and I think there’s a happy ending. But it’s just, like, it’s such a beautiful book; it’s really poetic. I read it when I was on a boat, so I was surrounded by water, reading about, like, these mermaids and their, like, society underwater, and it’s all about, like, collective grief and, like, forgetting things and needing to remember the kind of history that might be painful to remember but is important, which, I don’t know, it’s just, it was perfect for 2020 for me. I think because I, I have this strong memory of reading it on the beach, so when things were bad I just went back to, like, my strong book memory? It’s both about the book, which is, it’s a beautiful book, but it’s also just, like, how I felt lying on the beach reading the book and just so at peace and then, like, literally a week later – [laughs] – life was a disaster.
Sarah: Isn’t it funny how sometimes the place and the circumstance in which you read a book becomes indelible to the book itself, so that when you reread it there’s a piece of that experience alongside of it?
Shana: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I have a few of those that are vacation reads, you know? Where –
Sarah: Yeah.
Shana: – it’s just such a beautiful break. And I do try to, like, to read books that are about the place that I’m vacationing, which I guess this was, ‘cause I was by the ocean and it was under the ocean? But usually it’s more like, I’m in Canada – [laughs] – let’s read a Jackie Lau book!
Sarah: [Laughs] And that, that’s a pretty powerful book to keep you going through the year.
Shana: Yeah, it was great. I think I should reread it, actually, ‘cause I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.
Sarah: Isn’t it great when a book just sort of takes up residence in your head and is sort of like, you know, could always come reread.
Shana: It takes a lot for me to reread a book. I am not really a rereader.
Sarah: Oh really!
Shana: I’m not! There’s just too many books to read; I want to do the new things. I’m like that with knitting too? Like, did that pattern; why would I do it again? I want to knit a new pattern; I like a new recipe. So it’s a really special book when I actually reread it.
Sarah: Wow, that is an endorsement! That’s awesome!
Shana: Like, I know that’s not your style, though. I know you’ve been doing a lot of rereading this year.
Sarah: I, I, I do. I totally get not being able to reread? Like, one of my children is very disinterested in rereading, though I have gotten him to start listening to books that he’s already read, which he finds very peaceful, because he knows the story but gets to hear it being told to him. He’s very into audiobooks –
Shana: Hmm.
Sarah: – at the moment, which is good, because we all need a different coping mechanism every other day, right? Right? Yeah, obvs. But for me, rereading is all of the enchantment of the story, none of the heavy cognitive lifting of imagining everything, ‘cause I’ve already done that work.
Shana: Mm-hmm!
Sarah: Same thing with videogames! Like, if I maneuver through a videogame, I make choices to tell the story, but a lot of it is already built, including the visuals and the sound, so it’s less work for my cognitive imagination to have to do, so when my brain is tired it’s like, let’s go play Witcher and pick flowers and kill bandits and loot their underpants for chicken sandwiches; this sounds great.
[Laughter]
Sarah: That’s literally a thing you do: you pick flowers, and then you kill bandits, and some of them are just wearing their medieval tighty-whities, and then you loot them and they’ve got a whole chicken in their pants, and you eat!
Shana: Okay, I’ve never wanted to play videogames more than I do at this moment. Like, have you considered marketing videogames, like, as an alternate career?
Sarah: [Laughs]
Shana: ‘Cause that was very compelling.
Sarah: Pick flowers – sometimes there’s monsters. You kind of have to kill them; it’s kind of annoying; but yeah, you pick flowers, you kill bandits, you loot their pants for chicken, it’s great! Sometimes you get a ham sandwich. It’s pretty great. [Laughs]
That is a good pick, though. I like that one.
Carrie: I’m not sure how I feel about eating a sandwich that came out of somebody’s underwear.
[Laughter]
Sarah: Sometimes I’m eating raw meat. I mean, the Witcher is very weird: he has a very, very high energy load because he’s using all this magic? But yeah, you, you eat whatever comes out of a bandit’s pants. If it’s food, apparently it’s fair game.
Shana: Is, is this the one that the TV show is based on?
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah.
Shana: I had no idea it was a videogame.
Sarah: Oh yeah. Well, at first it was a series of books that are, like, the thing that Poland is most proud of exporting culturally is this series. Like, when President Obama visited Poland, they gave him a signed set of all of the Witcher books.
Shana: Wow. Wait, this is that –
Sarah: Oh –
Shana: – that Polish videogame company that, I just read an article about it in the paper, where they have the new Cyberpunk, and it was, like, disaster and it’s like –
Sarah: Complete disaster – CD Projekt Red. Yes –
Shana: Okay.
Sarah: – it’s a complete disaster; it is so error-filled. Okay, so I just recorded at one – my time – with Amanda and Kiki, and Amanda – [laughs] – Amanda was talking about playing Cyberpunk. She has this badass character? And her clothes keep glitching? So she has this leather jacket, but her boobs are showing through it!
Shana: Okay, I look forward to listening to that.
Sarah: I have pictures; they are incredible. They are just incredible. I’m going to see if I can actually hold my phone up to the camera, because the tits that, that, yeah, the tit glitch is incredible. But yes, it’s the same company, but The Witcher 3 is just, it’s such a good game, and it is so visually interesting, and the story is so good. All right, let me –
Shana: ‘Kay, I’m ready to see.
Sarah: – turn self-view on. There we go.
[Laughter]
Sarah: Look at, she’s such a badass! Tits right in the middle there! Just, they just –
[More laughter]
Sarah: – nips blasting the zombies, right? Yeah.
Shana: Oh, that’s amazing!
Sarah: I know!
[Laughter]
Shana: Oh my gosh, Carrie, your face.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Shana: All right, I want to hear what other books people –
Sarah: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! All right, Carrie, you want to go?
Carrie: I don’t know; I, I think I need to go lie down for a while.
[Laughter]
Carrie: Recover – okay. So I think it’s really interesting, Shana, that you talked about The Deep, because I really loved that book, but it’s, it was really hard for me to read, and it’s a harrowing read, and I think that’s interesting because I found that my lighter books, a lot of my normal comfort reads, romance – I’m sorry, I love you, romance; you’ll always be my heart, but that did not cut it. Like, I needed stories – except for a few romances that were pretty gritty – I needed stories about resilience. I did an author interview where an author talked about grit being a value in her family, and she wrote a book, Copy Boy; it’s by Shelley Blanton-Stroud; and it deals a lot with the issue of grit, so when I thought about what book or books got me through, like, there was a bunch of books – there’s, you know, definitely not, like, a single one, but they all sort of have this quality of, of resilience: what helps people survive difficulty.
And then as far as, like, a defining book though, that most influenced my year, I would have to say How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. That was a really important book for me this year. I read it right, either right before or during the, the summer when there were a lot of Black Lives Matter protests that my family was trying to participate in, and it really helped shape and changed a lot of my ideas about what racism is and how to approach it, something that I, I feel like, as a white person, is something that will always be a work in progress for me. So I really recommend that book; I thought that book was amazing.
And I found myself reading, I read a lot of nonfiction this year. I read a lot of nonfiction about World War II, interestingly, which was maybe not great for my mental health right before the election. I ended up getting really obsessed with making sure that we all had, like, all our papers in order, which I think is, first of all, not a bad idea, but second of all, maybe driven by reading a little too many World War II nonfiction books at one time. [Laughs] Calm down.
Sarah: The, to be, to be fair, to be fair, I have done the same thing quarterly. In the winter I check my emergency supplies in my car, and once a quarter I have a reminder to make sure that all of our passports are current and up-to-date and that all of our things are in one place, so it’s, it’s a normal abnormal thing to do, I think.
Carrie: Well, and I think that there was a certain obsessive quality to it that was not healthy, but having said that, I think that there is a pragmatic thing that does not need to be tied to obsession and anxiety; it’s just a normal thing we all have to do no matter where we live –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: – that you have about three days’ worth of emergency supplies and you know where all your, you know, important documents are. That’s, that’s just life, right? That’s always been life. You need to have those things in order. But some of the emotional baggage around it maybe came from a few more, too many World War II books.
And I read a lot of horror, but the kind of horror where people are, like, resilient and victorious at the end, although wait, how can I now say what the horror is, ‘cause I’ll have spoiled it? But I reviewed it all on Smart Bitches, so.
Yeah, books about resilience, which I think, you know, going back to The Deep, it’s a book that’s hard to read ‘cause there’s so much trauma, but it’s also so powerful in terms of that immense, you know, resilience, the reclaiming and, and reforming. I just, I just really needed a lot of that this year.
Sarah: I, I get it. I’ve been reading a mix of fiction and nonfiction too; I totally understand.
Claudia, what about you? What have you, what has, what has gotten you through 2020?
Claudia: This is going to sound strange, ‘cause I’m going to highlight a book that I read in January, before, you know, things got really dire, and –
Sarah: Apparently, that was still 2020.
Claudia: [Laughs] Yes. But –
Sarah: I think.
Claudia: Last I checked, it is! But it just didn’t feel like it, right? Because 2020 was defined so much by the pandemic.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Claudia: So to me, it really, this year started in March, and I, I’m hoping it will end sometime 2021, but it’s going to be longer, right, than, than just the twelve months that we’ve been through, so.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Claudia: So the first one was The Lord I Left, and the other one is the one that I just read like four weeks ago, or three weeks ago: Ten Things I Hate About the Duke by Loretta Chase. And at first glance you think they have nothing in common, but I think the unifying theme for me is that while both are very funny and also, more than anything, I think in those books, the writers really took risks? And I’ve been reflecting, this is something that I’ve been thinking about, is how hard to find a writer that really takes risks and goes out of their comfort zone these days, right? So I think this was also a year that, for me, was defined by getting out of my comfort zone a little bit. I’ve stayed within romance but read different subgenres, which was nice, and of course I did the rereading that a lot of us did, but going to different little niches of romance was really uplifting and really interesting to me as well.
Shana: Wait, what are the different subgenres you started reading? Did you finally start reading about alien sex? I want to know!
Claudia: I read a lot of fantasy, but not alien fantasy! [Laughs]
Sarah: But there’s always 2021.
Shana: [Laughs]
Claudia: Whenever, yes, I’ll, I’ll be ready for it! I, I, yeah, a lot of fantasy romance, which is sort of like historical-romance-adjacent, I think?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Claudia: So not entirely out of my comfort zone, but, like, baby steps. I, I read a, a couple good contemporary romance as well, and you and I discussed a, a couple of them, so that was also fun. But, yeah, a work in progress.
Sarah: Cool! Shana, what is your question for the group?
Shana: Well, my question is about California, because we are all Californians. Sarah’s an honorary Californian, obviously.
Sarah: Duuude!
Shana: [Laughs]
Sarah: How was that? Was that good?
Shana: That was really impressive!
Sarah: Thank you, man! Thanks, ‘preciate it!
Shana: [Laughs]
Sarah: Bruh!
Shana: So I’m wondering, what do you look for in a book that is set in California? Like, what feels right?
Sarah: Fire. Lots of fire? Fire.
Shana: Yeah, maybe I –
Sarah: Fire and sunscreen.
Shana: Not realistic – [laughs] – ‘cause that would be realistic!
Claudia: That would be depressing.
[Laughter]
Sarah: Fire, sunscreen, tacos, hiking, yeah. Oh, and, and edibles de- –
Shana: Definitely tacos.
Sarah: What?!
Shana: Tacos, I feel like, is the only thing on your list that I would actually want. [Laughs]
Carrie: Hey, how, how, how did we make Sarah an honorary Californian? I missed that.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Carrie: I, and I’m not, I’m not convinced by the dude. Now, people can’t see us, but when she said dude, was that good, Shana is, like, so supportive and sweet, she’s nodding, and I’m like, nooo!
[Laughter]
Carrie: So –
Claudia: I think it just happened, Carrie.
[Laughter]
Carrie: I like a book to get the details right. I like it when it gets so, you know, in, in Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, which, which fits Sarah’s category of having fire and, what el-, what does, I don’t remember any –
Sarah: Tacos.
Carrie: So.
Shana: [Laughs]
Carries: It’s dystopian, and you know it’s dystopian because there’s no tacos. That’s, that’s how you know. But they, you know, these people do this, this trek along – I’m sorry, I can’t remember now if it’s I-5 or up 99, but the, but the, the group that I read it in, we were all from California, and we all recognized, like, every rest stop that was mentioned. You know, we knew what that was like.
And there’s a really good book – which I apologize, ‘cause now I forgot the name of it; maybe I’ll stealth google while someone else is talking – which is another dystopia about California – and I don’t need them all to be dystopian; this is coincidence – but, you know, like the last bastion holding the line against the drought, you know, covered with sand, but the town won’t leave, is Needles, California, and I’m like, oh, of course it would be Needles, California. Like, obviously.
So I feel like when, when they get – it doesn’t have to be, like, every sentence is about, you know, and then we stopped at the Starbucks on Eastern and Watt. I don’t need it to be that specific, but I want the details to make sense.
Shana: Hmm. I do feel like Parable of the Sower has the suburbs, like, as its location is kind of my memory, and so they’re kind of like barricaded themselves in their suburban houses. That feels very Californian in times of dystopia.
Carrie: Totally. Totally. So it starts off, they’re, like, in this little gated community, but now gated communities are like these little kind of fortress communities, and it just feels very like, well, yes, of course that’s what would happen. Yes, obviously.
And, you know, and I’ve read a lot of, of lighter books that are, you know, my, a friend of mine, Eileen Rendahl, she has a series of paranormals that takes place in and around Sacramento, California –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: – which is where I live, and so, you know, when she talks about the underground tunnels below Old Sacramento, like, I’m like, oh yeah, that’s a real thing! I’ve been there. Where I’m sure other, you know, people from other parts of the country are like, pfft, she made that up. No, no! It’s a thing! Go hang out in the underground tunnels and do the tour and hang out. There’s a whole, yep.
Shana: I did the tour! I did, I took my sister when she came to visit, and it’s amazing! It’s like –
Carrie: That’s, so that’s my thing: I like it when the, and when people use the details not so much like they’re just name-dropping, but as an inventive part of the, organic part of the story that, that, that makes it feel really grounded and rooted to me.
Shana: Yeah, I think a, a lot of my favorite books about California kind of compartmentalize the different parts of the state, so –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Shana: – like, Jasmine Guillory’s books that are very either Southern California- or Northern California-focused, and – I don’t know if there’s really a rivalry, but you, like, really get a sense of the culture?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Shana: Even the tacos are important in both.
Claudia: Like, San Francisco is so tiny and insular and you, it’s fifty square miles; anywhere you go, you’re twenty minutes away as, you know, so it’s a very different experience. I was trying to think: The Roommate has an interesting part in, she doesn’t drive, and she moves to LA, and that’s a big part of the, you know, it’s a, it’s the middle part of the book, and she borrows his car, and she’s, ahhh, driving on the freeway and not really experienced. It, it’s funny ‘cause, yeah, I, I don’t do that hardly ever. I don’t go on the freeway; I don’t drive much. Not, well, not now, but even when we are all going places. So I, I don’t have that many good examples of, of books set in California, but I, I’m, I agree with Carrie: it has to give me some sense – it has to get the details right.
Carrie: What about books that are set in San Francisco? ‘Cause that’s almost like a whole other genre!
Claudia: I was, I, I thought of a couple, but it was just, you know, San Francisco is background, basically. There was nothing there that made it any different than anybody, any other place.
Shana: I can’t think of anything set in San Francisco except for Full House.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Claudia: Right? And the old-timey, like, you know, Raymond Chandler books? That, that is – [laughs] – but no, yeah.
Carrie: If I, if I, like, send you guys, like, this huge list of San Francisco books, is that, like, endearingly nerdy, or is that just really irritating? [Laughs] ‘Cause now I’m like, what?!
Claudia: Very endearing; send away.
Shana: I agree.
Carrie: [Laughs] And I did find – by the way, the, the, the novels that I mentioned was Don’t Kill the Messenger by Eileen Rendahl. It’s a trilogy, and Claire Vaye Watkins has a novel called Gold Fame Citrus, and that’s the one where the last bastion is Needles, California; all the stubborn people live. And here’s a San Francisco book for you that was on my list of books that kind of helped me get through 2020, was that book I mentioned, Copy Boy, which takes place in Depression-era Sacramento and San Francisco.
Shana: Hmm!
Carrie: And that’s the one by Shelley Blanton-Stroud, so –
Sarah: Cool!
Carrie: – there’s one! There’s one –
Shana: Thanks for being a Californian expert, Carrie.
Claudia: Definitely.
Carrie: Well, I, I think I had to do – oh, I had to do, like, a thing on, for the library once, on climate change literature in California, and then I also had, I also know, I like to buy local authors and stuff, so that just, like, I had to, like, do a lot of nerd things. So.
Shana: Thank you for being our nerd.
Carrie: Awww!
Claudia: I, I second that.
Sarah: Shana, do you have an answer for your question?
Shana: Well, I was going to say the book I just read, If the Boot Fits –
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Shana: – by Rebekah Weatherspoon? I thought, like, that has a lot of what I look for in a California book. Well, first, like, food, and then also making fun of Californian food, like the juice bar kind of culture. There’s, like, a character who needs everything to be, like, organic and, like, raw and, like, on the keto diet or something. And there’s a whole part of it is outside of the city, in a ranch, and I feel like a lot of the city, or a lot of the state is actually, like, farmland and, like, rural, but a lot of the books are set in cities, as though that part of the, the state doesn’t exist, so, so I really liked that part. The cowboys, cute Black cowboys on their horses, like, out in nature. I don’t know how realistic that is, but I enjoyed reading it, and I would like it to be the California I live in – [laughs] – so maybe that’s why I liked the book!
Carrie: So I, Sarah, you may just have to, like, mute me, ‘cause I feel like I’m talking too much, but when I was a kid we used to go hang out in Antelope Valley, which is right on the other side of the Sierras from where Sacramento is, and, and I would go, wake up really early in the morning, and I would – and we stayed in this tiny little motel that, like, five people had ever stayed in – and I would go for walks along the, the highway, which I forgot the name of, but a lot of the times, early in the morning, I would see actual cowboys with their little dogs on their horses, you know. I mean the cowboys were on the horses and the little dogs, like, herding the cattle –
[Laughter]
Carrie: – and I always feel really lucky that I saw that, because I don’t know, is that something that’s going to last forever or, or not? But I could tell you that as of many, many, many, many years ago, that was a thing in Antelope Valley; I used to see them. And then I’d go hang out with the, the truckers at the little diner, and they would give the truckers their coffee, and they’d give me a cup of hot cocoa with extra whipped cream, and I was like this tiny little person, you know.
Sarah: Aw!
Carrie: Aw! So I like, I like things about California that, that also, that point out that California is like multiple different countries at once, right?
Sarah: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Have you read –
Carrie: – liberal, and it’s not all tacos, and the regional stuff is –
Sarah: I don’t believe you about the taco part.
Shana: I was about to say, Carrie, you lost me there with the tacos.
Sarah: Yeah, I don’t believe you about the tacos.
Carrie: – wants tacos!
[Laughter]
Sarah: Have you read the Beverly Jenkins series that took place at the setting of California, at the foundation of California?
Claudia: It’s definitely on my list – oh my gosh.
Sarah: Oh, it’s so good.
Shana: Wait, which one is that?
Carrie: Which one?
Sarah: The Destiny trilogy. In the first one, the heroine leaves Philadelphia and accepts a mail-order bride offer from a person who is in pre-statehood California, and a lot of the history of the founding of California is in the book, and it’s so interesting.
Shana: Didn’t we read Destiny’s Captive?
Sarah: Yeah.
Carrie: Yeah.
Sarah: Yeah, Destiny’s Surrender, Destiny’s Captive, and then Destiny – the lady is a pirate, but I don’t remember which one that is.
Shana: Oh, that’s the one that Carrie and I read for our book club.
Sarah: Yeah, it’s Destiny, Lady Pirate.
[Laughter]
Carrie: I know a lot of times, you know, authors that have done their research, like, they could, they could, they, when they’re inventive, I love it. So there was a book, and I forgot the name of it, and frankly, that’s okay, because the book wasn’t very good, but I gave it a full extra grade level because it had one scene where the big earthquake hit San Diego while a woman – and everybody is okay.
Sarah: Right.
Carrie: A woman and her toddler are driving over the Coronado Bridge when the earthquake hits, and the bridge cracks, and I’ve been over that bridge a bunch of times, and it’s freaking terrifying, and I had to give the book the entire extra grade level because it gave me such a panic attack!
[Laughter]
Sarah: You did your homework in a way that has terrified me. Thank you!
Carrie: Thanks! I can’t even think about it! Oh my God!
Sarah: [Laughs]
Carrie: But, you know, like, they had mapped this out, and I was like, oh, okay! Like, points to them! I like it when they do their homework.
Sarah: Carrie, what is your question for the group? There we go.
Carrie: My question is, where did I put the piece of paper on which I wrote the question?
Shana: [Laughs]
Sarah: Well, this is a good question!
Carrie: Can we do Claudia’s question?
Claudia: Let’s start there! [Laughs]
Carrie: What? I have a lot of pieces of paper, and none of them have the question on it, and they did about two minutes ago. Can we do Claudia’s question and come back to me?
Sarah: Yes, of course!
Claudia: Okay, so I did two separate questions, one for Shana –
Sarah: Oh!
Claudia: – one for Carrie. Okay, for Shana, so you and I always laugh about the Shana stars and how you have a great rating system or, or I consider it a great rating system, where I’m completely, you know, whatever, whatever the mood strikes me, and I don’t keep good track of things, so can you go over what makes a, what makes a book a five-star for you?
Shana: Ah. Well, I would just say that I feel like you’re not being nice enough to yourself. I think that you have a strategy too; it’s not haphazard. You’re just a nice, kind person, and I am someone who is mean, and that is why I give lower scores to books. [Laughs] And you always have, like, such thoughtful reasons for why that book deserved a five, and I’m listening to your reasons and I think, gosh, I’m an awful person – [laughs] – who gave that book a two, even though I agree with you, Claudia.
Claudia: It’s, it –
Shana: What, what were you going to say?
Claudia: No, go ahead. Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, and I hope Sarah can cut this!
Shana: [Laughs]
Claudia: I was going to say that you’re not mean, but that’s okay!
[Laughter]
Shana: I can totally be mean. Well, I think five stars for me is – well, first, I feel like three stars is maybe like five Claudia stars, because three stars for me is, it was a good book! I liked it! And then four is, I loved it, and then five really is, I loved it plus it was, like, so beautiful, like transcendent; it rocked my world. Like, really, any book written by N. K. Jemisin or Octavia Butler pretty much hits five stars, and so you have to really meet that standard for the writing. So it’s not just that, like, I loved you, but, like, this was a life-changing experience. So I’m just a little stingy with those, but sometimes romance novels are great and they totally meet that! Like The Lady’s, what was it, The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics?
Sarah: Mechanics.
Claudia: Mechanics, yes.
Shana: Yeah, that was a five-star book for me. I can be nice every once in a while.
Sarah: All right, Claudia, what’s your, what your question for Carrie?
Claudia: Question for Carrie. Well, Carrie, as you know, as you know, I’m a big fan of your Kickass Women in History, so I wanted to know a little bit more about your process: how you find the women to profile and what goes into your decision-making? And, sorry, quick, you know, addendum would be, which one was your favorite so far this year?
Carrie: Okay, well, I’ll do the last part first, which is that I recently finished reading A Woman of No Importance, which is a nonfiction about Virginia Hall, who was a spy for the French Resistance in World War II France, and she went by lots of different code names, but Klaus Barbie, may he burn in hell, referred to her as that limping Canadian bitch. She was not Canadian – that was, like, the only nationality that she wasn’t – but he called her limping because she only had one leg, and despite only having one leg, she did all this revolutionary stuff without being caught, including, but not limited to, hiking over the Pyrenees. And so she is currently my favorite. And I do not aspire to be very like her, but I do limp a lot, and so I take a certain comfort in feeling like, you know, like that’s, that’s like, you know, if, if somebody calls you that, like, that’s, that’s, that’s a term of honor there. I really love that. We talked about her in my library book club, and we felt that she was probably not a very easy person to hang out with, but that is because, in the immortal words of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, bitches get shit done, and she got so much stuff done. She was amazing. So she is my current fave.
As far as process? So I try to go about a month ahead, and one kind of recurrent problem I have is that I try to plan a lot of my Smart Bitch stuff way far ahead, and then sometimes that doesn’t really jibe with, like, what else is happening. But I try to have, to kind of have, you know, something in the pipeline all the time, ‘cause it takes me a long time write ‘em. I want it to be representative in lots of different ways, so I’m always kind of running in my head, right, like, did I do two white people in a row? Did I do two academics or two soldiers or two – there’s lots of ways to be kickass, right? So I try to represent lots of different ways to be kickass. And I, so that’s the biggest part is just trying to make it different and, and I have a bunch of books that are, like, you know, compendiums of kickass women, but honestly, usually by now, stuff just sort of pops up, like, in my writing or whatever. Sometimes people send me suggestions, and I’m always happy to have the suggestions, and people should know that if I don’t get to the suggestion, it’s often because, you know, of, it’s, it’s too close to something else that I just wrote, and I’m trying to shake it up.
My biggest challenge is trying to keep it diversified and, and trying to identify the areas where it’s not diversified in lots of different ways. And I don’t think I do a fantastic job of that; I think I do a pretty good job, but I think there’s a lot of room for improvement. I need to, like, make a chart and color-code it or something, but I’m not a natural chart-color-coder person, so I’ll have to, like, really sit down and nail it out. Does that make sense? Does that answer your question?
Claudia: It does, and it’s amazing. I had no idea. I mean, I knew it was, you know, a laborious, you know, thing that you did and that you put a lot of thought into it, but I, I didn’t realize how much and, and makes it even, makes me even more appreciative of it.
Carrie: Well thank you! The other, I’ll tell you guys the other challenge, ‘cause I want to be kind of transparent about it: I would never intentionally commit plagiarism, but sometimes I’m writing about something where there’s not a lot about them, and there’s only so many different ways to write, this person was born on this date and died on this date, right? So that is always – and, you know, Sarah’s kind of nodding ‘cause I’m transparent with her that I don’t want to, like, just plagiarize an article or plagiarize Wikipedia, and you, it’s shocking how easy it is to do it and not realize you’re doing it. You know, it’s not intentional, but all of a sudden you look at it and you realize you wrote almost exactly what’s in the article, because that’s what you’re trying to convey.
So trying to make sure that I include my sources, trying to make sure that I am rephrasing things in a way that is not plagiaristic, trying to make sure that I highlight people who are really obscure. Like, I try to avoid people who al-, everyone already knows about. That’s why I don’t write about, like, I don’t know – actually, I think I did write about the children of Madame Curie, but – you know, Joan of Arc, right? Everyone knows about Joan of Arc, so I won’t do a column about Joan of Arc, but then there’s, the double-bind in that is that the more obscure you get, the less there is to pull from, and the harder it is to make it original, so that is something I’m always aware of and always struggling with and really hope I’ve done an okay job with, ‘cause sometimes it’s kind of scary.
Shana: I think you should write more about already-famous people; you should just write about the less-famous things that they did. Like, if you want to talk about Surprise Queers, I’m always happy to read about Surprise Queers. Just make, like, Joan of Arc queer. Actually, just make that up. Does this have to be accurate, your, your –
Carrie: Yeah, no, it’s supposed to be accurate. But –
Shana: Oh yeah.
Carrie: – that’s another thing is that, a lot of times it’s hard to figure out what’s accurate, and, and you also have to be careful about – this is another thing where – Sarah, for God’s sake, cut me off, ‘cause I’ll talk for hours – you have to be careful about queer erasure and other kinds of erasure, but I would say queer erasure is the biggest kind, right? You also have to be careful about using modern language and concepts to describe somebody who wouldn’t have thought about things that way themselves. So trying to find that balance can be surprisingly challenging in a way that I didn’t expect until I got much more into queer history, and there’s not, like, one answer.
So a lot of times I’ll write about people who dressed as men to fight as soldiers; none of them would describe themselves as transgender, because that was not a word, but some of them spent most of their adult life presenting as male, and so I would assume probably they were what we would currently think of as transgender. Other people only presented as male during the time of the war that they wanted to fight in and then went back to presenting as female, so for them, they may not have thought of themselves as male at all. They may have simply been doing something that was pragmatic for them at the time.
So trying to represent people as honestly as I can and bringing things to light about them that I think needs to be brought to light, I don’t want to contribute to queer erasure, but also helping people understand that the whole way that we think about things, it’s just very difficult to, like, impose on other people and not always appropriate to impose on other people. That’s a big struggle.
And then also, a lot of people are really kickass and admirable in one way but not in another way, or they were super kickass, but not on the right side! I mean, that, that I have to be careful about and I think about a lot, so yeah, there’s a lot of –
Sarah: So they were human.
Carrie: Right, yeah! It certainly has helped me learn a lot. An enormous amount, and I feel really privileged to get to have that learning process.
Claudia: I like, I like Shana’s idea. I think, I think you should do people who you might consider famous, but not everyone would know about them.
Shana: And that’s selfish for me, because I really rarely read nonfiction? I like nonfiction articles, and I just think it’s very rare that a book should be a book and not an article.
[Laughter]
Shana: So I want you to read the books and then distill them into a cute post about these people for me to read.
Carrie: Well, I –
Claudia or Sarah: So a couple of hours?
Carrie: I have gotten kind of in trouble at home ‘cause I’ve gotten kind of snobby, ‘cause by now I’m like, well – [snorts] –
Claudia: You don’t know this?!
Carrie: – so-and-so is, and actually, no, you know who so-and-so is? Nerds! This specific type of nerd! The science nerd I live with? No. Other kinds of nerds? No. So yeah, it is true that I’m like, no, I’m not going to write about so-and-so! Everyone knows who so-and-so is! No, everybody doesn’t know who so-and-so is.
Claudia: Don’t assume that.
[Laughter]
Shana: Hey, did you find your question, Carrie?
Carrie: I did! I did.
Shana: [Laughs]
Carrie: Okay, so this is for both Shana and Claudia: how has reading helped you this year? And if there were times when it was difficult to read, what else was helpful to you in terms of both mental health and just entertainment? Who wants to go first?
Shana: I think Claudia does.
Claudia: [Laughs] Shana, thank you for putting me on the spot!
[Laughter]
Claudia: Oh goodness! This was a really tough year, to say the least, right? Oh. Is, I did a lot of rereading. There were times that, I think I mentioned it before, like, I, I, it was a situation, it was not the book but me; I just wasn’t in a good frame of mind and I gave up on the book, or I skimmed and read the epilogue or, you know, something like that. And so it was strange, because reading is so much part of what I do and one of my few, one, one of the few things that, that I consider, you know, something I do regularly and enjoy regularly and able to do it regularly, and there were times that it wasn’t there for me, so that was really unsettling. There were times that just, you know, the only thing was to sleep, you know? Putting one foot in front of the other, keep going, don’t think too much? You know, what’s next? So. But the comfort reads were good, and when that wasn’t available, just mindless, you know, TV watching, baking, things of that nature.
Carrie: How ‘bout you, Shana?
Shana: I think, you know, I also had trouble reading at points, especially earlier on in the pandemic? I remember just watching hours and hours of television. Like, that was how I was kind of filling the days, I think, in that, like, first lockdown particularly? And I did do a lot of rewatching. So it’s funny ‘cause I was so skeptical of rereading, but I did so much rewatching. I, we watched The Vicar of Dibley for the third time, and I watched a whole bunch of British mystery shows. I think I might have rewatched Vera multiple times as well. Which is funny because I can’t handle police shows that are based in the US? They just make me really upset, but something about, like, British crime shows just really works for me, and they’re a little bit longer, and yeah, just all the dynamics of them – particularly, I think, the fact that they don’t usually have guns really helps make them feel less violent? So I rewatched Shetland.
Oh, and then of course I did a lot of knitting! So I learned to knit this year – [woohoo! – garlicknitter] – and that was really exciting, and I knit a lot, and then when I rewatched Shetland I had fun naming the stitches that I saw in the sweaters? And my wife was very tolerant of that when – [laughs] – especially when, like, there’s a couple of episodes where they go to Fair Isle? And I started screaming like, Fair Isle’s a real place! It’s not just sweaters! Yeah, I was real cute. So –
Sarah: That’s –
Shana: – that was fun.
Sarah: – adorable!
Shana: [Laughs] I had no idea! Ohhh, so, I highly suggest watching Shetland for knitters. And it just really made me appreciate, like, the costume work that went into communicating things about the characters based on the sweaters they were wearing. Like, the people who were outsiders would be wearing these, like, non-Shetland-style sweaters, like all swanky from London. That’s how you knew they didn’t belong there! So it was, it was very adorable.
But I think actually in recent months, I’ve really gotten back into reading, which is weird. I feel like as, somehow as things got worse in the pandemic, I actually found it easier to read. I think earlier on when I was just kind of anxiously anticipating things getting bad, the anxiety made it hard to read.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Shana: But, like, once it was clear things are really bad, then I actually started reading more, and, and I’ve been more ruthless, I think, in my selections too?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Shana: Where, really, within one page, like, I’m done. So – [laughs] – I have so many DNFs on my list this year. Like, I don’t know, I didn’t count them, but it has to be over half the books that I started. Maybe like two-thirds. I just, if I’m not feeling it like the first couple paragraphs, then I just don’t feel any responsibility to actually dive in and read it, and so I think that’s actually made my reading better, because I only read things that I love!
Sarah: I mean, if there is anything that this year has made very clear, is life is very short, and it can be incredibly limited all of a sudden. So I hear you.
Carrie, could you do me a favor? My brain is a little fried, and my brain has just gone off on a wild journey thinking about the answer to your question, and I’m pretty sure that the answer that I have is not in any way related to your question. My brain just went on quite a journey – Fair Isle was involved – so could you please repeat the question? [Laughs] I’m sorry.
Carrie: Oh but now I really want to hear what journey your brain went on, because it sounded –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Shana: I know, I’m really curious too!
Claudia: That’s more interesting than –
[Laughter]
Shana: Are we going to the Shetland Islands together?
Sarah: Yes!
Carrie: [Laughs] So the original question – which I hope you don’t answer; I hope you just tell us where your brain went – was –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Carrie: – how has reading been helpful to you this year? And if there were times when it was difficult for you to read – ‘cause I know for a lot of people, like, they hit a point where they just, no – what else was helpful to you in terms of mental health and entertainment?
Sarah: So where my brain went was, oh, reading that was helpful. Sometimes it was reading that completely distracted me and reminded me that people have had to endure terrible things all through history, so early in the pandemic I was reading the Cadfael series, which takes place in medieval Wales, where they had actual anarchy and, you know, a, an ingrown toenail could kill you, and no, nothing moved very fast at all, everything was very slow-paced, and that was very reassuring.
And then you were talking about knitting, and I’m like, well, you know, I did sew this year. I learned to quilt, and I learned to sew, and I like that a lot, and – but, you know, I haven’t traveled, so maybe I want to travel more in my reading, but then if I travel in my reading I get really sad because I can’t actually travel and go to the places that are in the book, and then if I read the thing and it’s not accurate – much like you were talking about California – then I get really annoyed because, well, you can’t travel to a place that’s not real, and if you’re saying that you’re somewhere and you’re not actually doing the research to prove that you’re there, then why are we here?
And, and that was when I’m pretty sure I had lost the thread of the question. But I do want to go to the Shetland Isles?
Shana: [Laughs]
Sarah: Like, real bad.
Carrie: I, I think you followed the thread!
Sarah: [Laughs]
Carrie: That was, that was spot-on, right? Everything we do this year, right, like, there’s, there’s what is necessary –
Sarah: Mm-hmm!
Carrie: – you know, and still have –
Sarah: Very –
Carrie: – actual jobs, right?
Sarah: – focused, yep!
Carrie: Got to do my Kickass Women column every month, right? So – [laughs] – I’m looking those up, but – so there’s what’s necessary, and then there’s, like, what sparks joy? And then, like, everything else is not –
Sarah: shrug emoji?
Carrie: Yeah, like –
Sarah: For, for me, one thing that helped a lot is if I could, if, hmm, if I could give everyone in the world a piece of advice, it would be, think very carefully about turning a hobby that brings you joy into your job. I love my job. I love what I do. I love that this is what I do for my job. I am deeply, deeply grateful and love what I do so much. But when I am reading a romance, it is very difficult now for me to turn off the part of my brain that’s like, hmm, should we review this? What are we thinking of this? But wait, does this remind you of that other thing? And wait, well, this character said that, and what’s happening? I keep engaging the analytical brain when I’m reading by default. And what helped me with that – because I was too tired; my brain was too tired to do any kind of analytical work, and then I would start that sort of spiral of you’re not doing this right; you’re not reading correctly; you are not reading in the right way, which, oh for God’s sake, Sarah’s Brain, calm down! What I would do is I would leave the genre for a little while. I read a lot of space fiction? I read a lot of AIs? I read Murderbot like eleven whole times? So I left the genre and came back and then left and then came back, and right now I’m rereading the whole Psy-Changeling series, and let me tell you, early 2000s PNR heroes, as Ari and I were, Aarya and I were emailing about this, early 2000s paranormal heroes are something.
[Laughter, crosstalk]
Claudia: I take it that you’re not recommending them.
Shana: I didn’t like them back then, so I just don’t think I’m going to like them more now.
Carrie: Yeah.
Sarah: I, I sort of – [sighs] – ‘cause I know what happens later in the series, and I know how these characters develop and change over the course of the series, and the series is going on for like twenty years now, so I can see, okay, this character is a product of the 2000s, and when I encounter that character in books written more recently I’m like, oh yes, clearly this character has taken a level in, in awareness and not being a possessive, stompy, pouty butt-cheese. But something about that series is working really, really well for me? And I’m still trying to figure out exactly what it is. [Laughs] And there are things where I’m reading it and I’m like, oh yeah! 2004, I remember this. I remember that phrase from sex scenes; I’m glad I don’t see that anymore. [Laughs more]
So that’s definitely what helped me the most: leaving the genre and coming back, and the nice thing is I’m not going to run out of books. There’s a lot of them? I don’t know if you’ve noticed. Like, since we started recording, probably like sixty have been published, so, you know, I’m not going to run out.
Carrie: Did anybody else find that no matter what genre they read and no matter what book they read, there ended up being some kind of disease in it? [Laughs] Like –
Claudia: Oh my gosh! [Laughs]
Carrie: Everything had a plague! And I was like, how? How? Like, every book I picked up! And it’s not like I was, like, plague dystopia obsessed when I’m going to read. Like, it didn’t matter! It could be like a, a fluffy romance, and they’d be like, well, we have an outbreak of, of fevers in this town; we’ll have to brew some tea. And I’m like, yeah, you’re all going to die!
[Laughter]
Shana: I mean, Two Rogues Make a Right? Is that the Cat Sebastian book?
Carrie: [Laughs]
Shana: I mean, I loved that book. That book was everything, it was so adorable, but the hero had consumption, and the other hero, who was healthy at the beginning of the book, kept kissing him and, like, every time I could not take it. Like, every single time. And there’s all this, like, snuggling and talking about the future, and I’m thinking, what future? ‘Cause you’re about to die! We all know; that was rough.
Carrie: Listeners –
Claudia: Also, they were also in a quarantine of sorts, right? They, they went nowhere. They were in a little cottage for the whole time.
Shana: Just breathing each others’ air.
Claudia: Talking in person.
[Laughter]
Carrie: For listeners –
Claudia: I like that book; I loved it!
Carrie: I know I have mute on and you can’t see me, but I’m laughing so hard, because we read this in our book club – [laughs] – and, and I read – as you know, because I just said so – like, buckets of history, right? And I don’t have to tell you, like, that’s, that’s not really a great hobby to mix with romance, it turns out, because every five seconds you’re like, okay, but the reason you got to get into that nice bath at three in the morning, and you were like, oh my God, that guy was so generous to pour me a hot bath at 3 a.m., is because an eleven-year-old girl had to wake up and haul buckets of water from the basement, and then nobody wants to talk to me anymore!
[Laughter]
Shana: That’s why I think I have been shifting in the direction of contemporary romance, where it’s at least easier to know the horrible things up front, and I can make decisions about whether I’m reading them or not.
Sarah: I also like space and the future-set romances, because there’s always an element of, oh, thank goodness that survived and that other thing didn’t. Like in Murderbot, pan relationships and multi-partner marriages are just, like, normal. He’s in a three-way; he’s got seven kids. Like, you know, that’s, that’s not even remarkable. It’s just how many? Sometimes it’s three, sometimes it’s six, sometimes it’s one, whatever, it doesn’t matter. But at the same time, the, the general ineptitude of humanity to adjust to things that are different remains quite difficult. [Laughs]
Shana: Well, but some humans are able to adjust to things that are difficult and different, like the heroine in Stran-, Strange Love?
Sarah: Strange Love, yeah.
Shana: Where there’s –
Claudia: I want to read that one.
Shana: – alien sex – that’s right, Claudia! You’re going to read it in 2021! [Laughs]
Carrie: So, Claudia, you’ll love it!
Claudia: You, me – no, I will, I will! It’s even on sale, so I’ll, I’ll pick it up.
Sarah: Yeah, it’s on sale today!
Shana: Oh, is it?
Claudia: Yes.
Sarah: Yeah! Talking dog, talking dog.
Shana: I should buy that book. I checked it out from the library –
Sarah: You should gift it. You should –
Shana: – but now I’ll buy one.
Sarah: You should gift, you should buy it and you should gift it. I love doing that, by the way, when a book is on sale. I just send it to friends and they’re like, oh, you got me a book! I’m like, first of all, it was two dollars, and second of all, I don’t expect you to read it, but yeah, here you go!
[Laughter]
Claudia: Can I talk about one highlight of the year for me?
Sarah: Yes, of course!
Claudia: Like, related to – your interview with Mary Balogh. It was –
Sarah: Oh gosh!
Claudia: – so hilarious. I loved it! And, you know, just knowing about the white shirt covers was priceless. And I, and I, I just really enjoyed that one, so I wanted to make sure –
Sarah: Thank you!
Claudia: – I want to mention it and how, you know, talking about people who take risks, she took a lot of them, ‘specially early in her career, and so it was fun, it was a really, really fun podcast.
Sarah: I was so nervous. My inner thirteen-year-old was not cool. She was very stressed about that. I mean, there were a couple of interviews this, this year where I sat down to do them and there was a part of me going – [inhales] – okay, just breathe. Okay, just breathe! It’s going to be fine! Breathe in, breathe out!
Claudia: I don’t blame you! I wouldn’t be able to get a word out. It’s, Mary, just talk, please! [Laughs]
Sarah: And –
Shana: You’re the biggest fangirl of Mary. I love it, Claudia! [Laughs]
Sarah: It was such a delight, and I loved some of her answers. Like, not only how much she hated those –
Shana: Oh my God.
Sarah: – those chesty shirt quest-, or the covers, but also, and she’s like, well, I’m older, and I’m tired, and it’s easier for me to keep writing about the same family rather than invent a whole new one, so I’m sticking with these people! That’s why.
Claudia: You, you guys, yeah, you guys are going to have to deal with it. Twenty books! [Laughs]
Sarah: And I’m like, you know what, that’s fine. Westcotts for days? Don’t care; works for me; thanks, Mary. All good. [Laughs] I loved doing that interview. I was so nervous, oh my goodness, but I’m really glad that you liked it. I hoped that was one that would, would make you happy.
Claudia: Yeah. Would, were you on a video call with her, or was it over the phone?
Sarah: No, it was actually Zoom, but by phone.
Shana: Well, even if it’s audio, I prefer just to imagine that you were in person? So right now I’m imagining you and Mary in her tea room in Canada, like –
Sarah: I like this! Keep going, yeah, it sounds great.
Shana: Yeah, there’s going to be scones –
Claudia: [Laughs]
Shana: – and, you know, delicious jasmine tea and discussion about whether you want milk or not. Should the milk go in first or not?
Sarah: Mmm!
Shana: I’m sure that conversation probably happened before you ate your scones, and then you had your nice little chat!
Sarah: Got some doilies
Shana: Oh, oh yeah, definitely doilies.
Claudia: Sweaters.
Sarah: Absolutely. Lemon curd –
Shana: Lemon curd. [Laughs]
Sarah: – for sure, Carrie. All the way lemon curd.
[music]
Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Happy New Year again. I hope you’ve enjoyed our small, silly recaps of 2020, and I can tell you that next week’s episode features Dr. Devon Price, author of the book Laziness Does Not Exist, which, if you read the website, you might have seen me review it and give it an A ‘cause I really liked it. I’m very excited to share this interview with you. I hope that you tune in next week!
I will have links to all of the books we discussed, and I also have a list of titles that Carrie recommends for Claudia that are all set in San Francisco, so if you would like to take a look at the list, it is at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.
If you are thinking, I know this song, yes, you do! It is Adeste Fiddles’ version of “Favourite Things” by Deviations Project. If you would like a link to buy the album for yourself, it’s in the show notes.
As always, I end with a terrible joke, and this joke is a bit of a story, but I told it this morning and, well, my husband laughed his face off, so I’m going to share it with you. This is a bit of advice for writers looking for character names:
You may not be aware of this: Lance is an uncommon name these days, but in medieval times people were called Lance a lot!
[Laughs] It’s so silly! People were called Lance…a lot! That is from Reddit’s Dad Jokes forum, posted by tadashi4. Thank you, person of excellence! [Laughs more] So silly!
If you would like to send me a bad joke, you know I would love to hear it! You can send it to me at [email protected] or Sarah with an H – S-A-R-A-H – at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books dot com [[email protected]]. I do love hearing from you.
And on behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading and a very restful weekend. We’ll be back next week, but until then, stay warm and stay safe! Happy New Year again, and thank you for listening.
Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.
[charming music]
This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.
Sourdough by Robin Sloan is also set in San Francisco, and is possibly the only book that has ever made me say, “I want her life.” Includes robotics, a magical sourdough starter, and a minor epistolary romance subplot.
Thanks for the warning about consumption in the Cat Sebastian book – looming doom in the near future knocks me right out of my nice cozy suspension of disbelief in a pleasant HEA. Devil in Winter has the heroine’s father dying of consumption and the hero is surprisingly conversant in germ theory, though the PPE available wasn’t so great. (I work with TB patients. Historical TB is not good escapist reading for me.)
The Penric and Desdemona novella this year (Physicians of… Somewhere) wasn’t a surprise plague (it’s right there in the blurb!) but oof. I love the wonderful marvelous abilities of Desdemona and Penric together, but I couldn’t enjoy them this time – it’s too close to Actual Work especially this year and I couldn’t believe even they could be physician and cure and epidemiologist all at the same time given the rate and severity of illness. The exhaustion was spot on though. I’m re-reading all the rest of the novellas though. Again.
This podcast is one of the things bringing me a little joy this year. Thank you!
im liking the border around the transcript very much , it seems to be easier to read somehow , very nice! mamx a from a place called canada
Thanks for a fun interview! And thank you, Garlic Knitter, for the transcript.
@Carrie S:
I’d like to offer a different take on your Kickass Women in History Column.
While you’re probably right that people reading it know about famous women already, what they know might be very surface level. They might know that they’re famous and not be sure why they are or should be famous. For this reason, I think it’s worth including famous examples among the lesser known ones.
Layla Reyne has some wonderful romantic suspense series set in the Bay Area, primarily San Francisco: “Agents Irish and Whiskey,” “Trouble Brewing,” and “Fog City.” All three series are incredible.
And of course it doesn’t get any better for San Francisco than the entire “Tales of the City” series by Armistead Maupin.
I can empathize with location errors and limited research changing a book. I live in Alaska and haven’t been able to read hardly any fiction set in my state. The worst offender had the heroine on a railway as public transit (doesn’t really exist) wherein she saw a ‘herd of moose’by page 3. Moose do not travel in herds. They are solitary critters unless mating or mama is raising her young. So that one was an insta-DNF.