594. Holiday Wishes and Recs from Verity, Elyse, Carrie, and Rich

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Sarah Wendell: Hello there. Happy holidays, and welcome to episode number 594 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell. With me today are Verity, Elyse, Carrie, and Rich! We have more holiday wishes, more book recs, more TV recs, and bad jokes with all of you as my guests. Verity and I are going to talk about TV, books, and writing. Wilbur is going to faff about in a pile of paper – that’s the noise you’re hearing behind me – so if you’re looking for British TV shows, you are in a lot of luck.

We do start with some critique of the early 2000s language about women’s bodies, body shaming, and all of that horrible anti-fat bias, so just a heads-up for that.

I really love doing these, and it is really so much fun to connect with everyone. I will have links to all of the books that we talk about and the shows and all of the nifty things like documentaries and the Safe Haven Pet Sanctuary Bonfire store – [laughs] – very important link – in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast under episode number 594.

I have a compliment this week, which always makes me so happy.

To Jenn E: The neighborhood birds and squirrels are very excited that the days are shorter, because they get to go home to their burrows and tell everyone about the cool things you did today much earlier. You have a fan club.

[rustling]

Sarah: Wilbur is also a big fan of this box of paper.

If you have supported the show with a monthly pledge of any amount, thank you. You are making sure that every episode has a handcrafted transcript from garlicknitter – hey, garlicknitter! [Hey, everyone! – gk]. Thank you so much for supporting the show. If you’d like to join, well the benefits are pretty nifty if I say so myself. One, you get a wonderful Discord; two, you get full scans of all of the Romantic Times issues that we’re talking about each month. So if you’d like to join the Patreon community, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Monthly pledges start at one dollar, and it would be lovely to have you.

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All right, are you ready for books and wishes and TV recs and more? On with the podcast of holiday wishes.

[music]

Sarah: Thank you so much for doing this!

Verity: No, this is really exciting! Long time listener; first time caller.

Sarah: Yay!

Verity: I, I want to say it’s been at least a decade?

Sarah: Really?

Verity: Mmm.

Sarah: You’ve been listening for that long? I mean, I know the show’s been around that long, but wow!

Verity: Yeah, I think so.

Sarah: You’re not tired of my ass yet? Wow!

Verity: [Laughs] I’m trying to think, ‘cause I’ve been working, like, there’s some stuff that I absolutely, totally remember, where I was doing, like, I was listening to, the office, I came across listening to the podcast. And it’s weird how, I don’t know, I discovered again in COVID that my memory’s very situational?

Sarah: Yes.

Verity: I can remember where I was when things happened, and when sort of happened you get everything from the same place, I forget who I’ve told what to whom. It’s bonkers.

Sarah: That’s –

Verity: Can’t remember.

Sarah: Wow! That’s really, that, that is absolutely true!

Verity: Yeah, ‘cause if you’re staring at a screen the whole time, you have absolutely no perception of who it is you’re talking to.

Sarah: Mm-mm.

Verity: But I was in the States for the 2018 midterms?

Sarah: Right.

Verity: That’s a while.

Sarah: Yeah.

Verity: And was wandering around an outlet mall in Maryland when I was listening to an Alexa Mar-, when you had Alexa Martin on talking about one of her football books, and I, like, remember being wandering around in a Skechers outlet and being like, Ooh, I must look this up when I get back.

Sarah: [Laughs] That was several years ago, too. That – wow!

Verity: Yeah.

Sarah: Well –

Verity: Odd, isn’t it?

Sarah: – that’s, that is wild, and it completely makes my day. Thank you.

Verity: Well, you’re welcome! Thank you for many happy hours of listening on my commute to and from London.

Sarah: Yay! Well, this is very easy; there’s only four questions. I’m sure –

Verity: Yeah.

Sarah: – as a seasoned radio professional this will be dead easy. Please introduce yourself and tell the people who will be listening who you are and where you are.

Verity: Hi, I’m Verity, and I am in miserably wet Northampton, England.

Sarah: Lovely. First question: what’s a book you really, really enjoyed this year? And if you brought more than one, just know you’re not alone.

Verity: I tried really hard to come up with books written by British authors on the basis that, like, that might be different, but I failed miserably because they, basically, this year has been the year in which I read a lot of contemporary romances about famous people and celebrities. I don’t know if that was actually genuinely a trend this year or that once I’d spotted them I just kept spotting more of them.

So I wanted to mention Mrs. Nash’s Ashes, which I don’t know if any of you’ll have read, but it is about a former child star who goes on a road trip with a grad student, and it starts…all the way down to the Florida Keys. It’s really good fun.

Also, if you’re like me and you’re still angry about Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears and the way that all went down for Britney, Elissa Sussman’s Once More with Feeling has got a child star and Broadway star, and if you lived through that particular early 2000s sort of celebrity culture, I think that the heroine’s journey will really appeal to you as a sort of revenge thing?

Sarah: Isn’t it wild how Elissa Sussman, through her books, is like, Let’s just take a collective look at how we talked about celebrities twenty years ago. Let’s just look at that for a minute, because it was so messed up.

Verity: It really, really was, and it’s only going back now and watching some of the stuff again that I realize – in the same way that about five years ago my sister and I realized that a lot of our shared language comes from Buffy? We realized that a lot of the early 2000 celebrity stuff, like, really rubs off on you, and I watched the David Beckham documentary the other week – I don’t know if any of you’ll have seen that on Netflix – and Posh Spice and how skinny she was and all the stuff about, like, it just really, really rubs off on you, and I read that Jessica Simpson article about that photo of her with the high-waisted jeans where everyone said she was fat? Now you look back at the photo? She’s not fat! Like –

Sarah: No!

Verity: – in no universe is she fat, and that was what you were telling us!

Sarah: Yep!

Verity: No, nononono.

And then the other one, which is not quite a strictly romance but is also celebrities and real people was Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy? And I like, I, I do mostly now read romance and mystery, ‘cause I like the certainty of knowing that I’m either getting a happy ending or the murderer’s going to get caught.

Sarah: Agree.

Verity: But Curtis Sittenfeld, I write for ages, and this is her take on romantic comedy. It’s set on a, a sketch show that’s definitely not Saturday Night Live; in no way is it Saturday Night Live. There’s absolutely no Pete Davidson vibes going on in her side characters at all; no, no, no, no, no. But it’s really nice, and it’s the only sort of book that’s got a bit set in the pandemic that hasn’t sort of given me the Nahhhs.

Sarah: [Laughs] Yep.

Verity: But, like, warning: it has got pandemic in it. If you’re trying to avoid pandemic for absolutely legitimate reasons, don’t read it.

Sarah: Oh, for sure.

Verity: And the only thing I was going to say, it’s not a romance, but it’s the only British book, so I’m going to mention it: The Three Dahlias is a murder mystery. If you watched Phryne Fisher, imagine that Phryne Fisher was actually a real Golden Age murder series, murder mystery book series, and that since then there have been several different TV and film adaptations of it, and the three actresses who’ve played that lead character solved murders.

Sarah: I –

Verity: I see your face.

Sarah: My, my jaw is hanging open. I’m just, Buh?

Verity: It’s really good. It’s by Katy Watson. There’s two of them now with a third coming next year. The first one is a mystery on, like, they’re making a new adaptation of the books, and there’s a new actress in the lead, also a former child star, and two of the other actresses who played the same character are hanging around on set. Someone gets murdered, they solve it, uncover mysteries, and then, yeah, and then there’s more! So it seemed like it might be the intersection of things that people who listen to the podcast might be interested in. But apologies: not a romance.

Sarah: Okay, so first of all, this is like, every-, everyone who listens to these is like, Oh my gosh, these are so bad. I add so many books to – okay, I have, now I have three different tabs open with books to look for in the library? This is just as dangerous for me. I know I’ve seen this cover before. But you ever hear a description of a book, and it’s like someone has handed you the perfect hot beverage when you’re freezing cold and you didn’t know that was the flavor you wanted, and you’re like, Oh yes, this is exactly what I – yes. Okay, that is exactly what I needed. Ohhh, I’m excited!

Verity: Imagine it’s, the book was written by sort of Agatha-Christie-esque figure, but the heroine is Phryne Fisher’s sort of age rather than, like, Miss Marple.

Sarah: Yes. Here’s a trend, ‘cause I’m looking at the listing on my –

Verity: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – Amazon for the US. Here’s a trend that I could, I could do less with? I could, I could be very happy to see this go away? When people are listing the title, and they list lots and lots of extra words? So the title of this –

Verity: The TikTok sensation that will make you crazy!

Sarah: Yes! I hate it so much, because the title of this book is The Three Dahlias: ‘An absolute treat of a read with all the ingredients of a vintage murder mystery’ Janice Hallett (Three Dahlias Mysteries Book 1) by Katy Watson.

Verity: There must, there must be something in the way that SEO on Amazon works that means that people do this. So –

Sarah: It’s absurd, right?

Verity: It’s absolutely absurd, and I’m going to blame the, that book site named after a river for it, because I can’t think who else it might be, but it must be that the keywords need to be in the title for it to be searchable, ‘cause I can’t think why else anybody would be doing it. Because it, it drives, also drives me bonkers.

Sarah: I just don’t get it.

Verity: I’ve almost stopped buying books that tell me they’re a TikTok sensation at this point. Like, four out of five books claim to be a TikTok sensation.

Sarah: But I’m ready for people to stop listing – [laughs] – all of these words in the title; it makes me nuts!

Verity: Yes, so annoying! I –

Sarah: It’s so bothersome! I don’t understand.

Verity: I have been, I don’t know if the US cover is prettier than the UK one, but the UK one is sort of flowers and houses and gold.

Sarah: Yes. We have, there’s a couple of covers. The, the hardcover is a pale background and the digital cover is a red background, but it’s three huge –

Verity: Yeah.

Sarah: – illustrated dahlias beneath a big, stately house. The kind that, like –

Verity: Yeah.

Sarah: – I look at that and I say, I don’t want to mow the lawn, and I don’t want to pay the heating bill.

Verity: Yeah, exactly. The cover thing is also totally set because we’re back down to sort of cartoon covers like we were getting on chick lit, the kind of chick lit that I was reading in like the late ‘90s, early 2000s, to date myself, having been through the photo covers, the headless women, the dogs. [Laughs]

Sarah: The random items. Like, here’s a castle; here’s a flower; here’s a garden.

Verity: Yeah.

Sarah: And it’s weird that the cartoon styles change, because for the December issue – I have to always look, because I don’t exactly know what time I am in – for the December Romantic Times issues, we’re looking at July 2004, which is a, you know, solid twenty years ago, and all of the cartoon figures are these super stretched-out, elongated, pointy figures? And it’s so weird!

Verity: There was a, it was like a cartoon trend. Did you get all that sort of gift stuff in the shops with the, the women with the, like the really elongated women with, like, little mantras? It’s that, isn’t it, on the book, in book cover form?

Sarah: They look like praying mantises? Like, if somebody crossed a human and a praying mantis and made it an illustrated, it would be these, these stretched-out figures? Like, and they’re pointy. And it’s the same thing; it’s that hyper-hyper-thinness that’s just designed to give everyone, give everyone bad feelings about themselves.

Verity: Let’s not.

Sarah: Yep. Well, I mean, God forbid we write books about women – ‘cause if you think about chick lit, it was like, I’m going to have a career, I’m going to do these things, I’m going to fuck up in funny ways, and then I’m going to fall in love and, you know, but I, it was very career and wealth centered? You can’t have all these women having, you know, self-actualization and autonomy if, if you don’t have another vehicle through which to make them feel like they don’t measure up, and of course what we’re going to do is stretch them out.

Verity: That’s impossible to win, isn’t it?

Sarah: It is! Screw it!

So what holiday wishes do you have for everyone listening?

Verity: Well, I would like everyone’s holiday season to be exactly what they want –

Sarah: Yes.

Verity: – and minus the thing that makes you annoyed every year, whether that’s a dish that doesn’t work or an uncle that corners you to tell you why your career decisions are wrong or your life decisions are wrong. I would like you not to have that this year. I feel like the last three years have been pretty terrible, and, like, really sucked, so I think a holiday season where you can just do what you want and it all goes to plan is exactly what everyone needs.

Sarah: I love that! Because, I mean, there are things that tend to happen every year at the holiday season. One of the things that’s so weird about holidays is that we tend to reinforce the same traditions? Without thinking about why we reinforce – and, you know, you do not have to have a tradition of dealing with things and people who are harmful. You can, you can eschew that tradition.

Verity: You can opt out of that. You can absolutely opt out of that. My mum decided that I didn’t have to go to family gatherings if I didn’t want to a few years back after two of my uncles decided to corner me and tell me why my life choices were wrong, and I felt a lot better for that, and I feel like everyone should have that moment.

Sarah: Oh, cheers to your mom!

Verity: I feel quite lucky in my mum, ‘cause she’s very good, and she doesn’t really mind about where we go for Christmas or what we do. My, she, my dad’s parents divorced, and they had three sets of parents, essentially, all wanting them to go to them for Christmas. And she’s like, It was awful; I’m never going to do that to you. You do what you want. Be nice to see you, but you do what makes you happy, and I feel like that’s a really nice attitude, and I’m glad that she’s like that.

Sarah: I am so a fan of your mom now. I’m a big fan – please tell your mom that she has a fan club of one in Maryland, and it is me. [Laughs]

Verity: Yep, I will tell her. Yeah! So I hope everyone has the sort of festive season that they want and it’s unbothered by awful people, and that there’s some good telly if people still watch telly?

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Verity: I hope there’s some good telly. I’m trying to think if there’s anything else good that’s on TV. Do you get, you have American, but do you get the UK version of Ghosts as well as the American version of Ghosts?

Sarah: Yes. We’ve got both of them.

Verity: We’ve got the last ever UK episode of Ghosts coming at Christmas this year, and that is the one thing that I’m really looking forward to?

Sarah: The last one, like the series finale?

Verity: We’ve had the last series and the Christmas special, which I think, I don’t know if it, I don’t know what day it’s on yet, but the Christmas special is the last one, apparently.

Sarah: Oh, that’s awesome. That’s –

Verity: Yeah.

Sarah: I love how there’s this very specific flavor of television program, programming there where you have the Christmas special. Like, a very much loved property from other times in the year will have a very cozy Christmas special. Like the, The Vicar of Dibley Christmas specials?

Verity: [Laughs]

Sarah: Top shelf.

Verity: I went to the theatre the other week, and Hugo from The Vicar of Dibley was in the show that I saw.

Sarah: No!

Verity: Yeah!

Sarah: Nooo! Oh my go- – is – must be so much older.

Verity: Yeah, he is, but he was, he was, he was – so it was Noises Off, which is a farce…

Sarah: I love that show. I’ve seen it on Broadway.

Verity: He was playing the bumbling drunk, and he did it very, very well.

Sarah: No.

Verity: Yeah. It also had Matthew Horne from Gavin & Stacey in it, as well as the young thing that’s having the affair with the leading lady. It’s really very good?

Sarah: Is it weird to be like – this is always weird for me. Like, I, I am in the same room. Like, they’re on the stage, and I’m here in my seat, and I am in the same room as someone who I used to watch on television, and it’s really weird to see them in three dimensions?

Verity: Really weird, yeah. I, like, I’m lucky I work in London and I go to the theatre, and I’ve been trying to tick off the people who, as they’ve come round and be like, Oh yeah, I’ve seen you on, seen you on TV. Now I’m going to go and watch you. It’s quite weird, yeah.

Sarah: That is super cool, though.

Verity: We’re quite lucky. You know, there’s quite a few things. I’ve managed to tick Judi, Judi Dench; I saw Angela Lansbury before she died. They’ve got a thing at the moment with Bernadette Peters in, which, who I’ve heard about from theatre people for years, and she’s, like, over here. Also Lea Salonga, who’s the singing voice of Princess Jasmine. She’s one of those sort of things where you’re like, Oh yes, it’s Princess Jasmine. I’m a child of the ‘90s; I’m going to cry now.

Sarah: Yep! Yep. Yep! Yep, yep! I’ve had the same thing happen. It’s so true.

Verity: Last Christmas’s Christmas thing was Detectorists. Now, have you, do you get Detectorists over –

Sarah: We can get it if we have like a, there’s a couple of, like, streaming services that are all British things. Like, there’s Acorn and there’s BritBox, but you can get the Detectorists through one of those. And they’re not really expensive; I think BritBox is seven or eight bucks a month?

Verity: Yeah, if you like that sort of chill, very British, not a lot happens sort of thing, Detectorists is the other one for you, I think. Like –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Verity: But we have very short series. That was the thing: when I was first getting into spoilers, I got, oh, I’m going to really date myself. So when Angel died at the end of the second series of Buffy –

Sarah: Yes?

Verity: – we were crawling along behind the US. That was the first time I ever went looking for spoilers for TV shows was to find out whether Angel was really dead, and though I’ve been deep in the spoiler-verse since then, but that was when I realized that sort of the American shows run quite differently to UK shows, and your season starts in the fall and kind of carries on through with breaks for Christmas, and that it’s like twenty-two episodes a season.

Sarah: Yeah, you’ve got like six.

Verity: Six. [Laughs] Yeah, six. We don’t do that. You know, we don’t have as many – much smaller country, don’t have as much – just, just don’t! And so these twenty-two-episode seasons is like – and the whole thing about getting to a hundred episodes to get the syndication. What even is that?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Verity: What is syndication? I still don’t get it.

Sarah: Okay, I, I will tell you if you’d like! So it used to be, when we had cable, it used to be that there were shows, or there were channels, rather, that would be kind of local but have a very wide broadcast area, or they would start out as a local station, like Chicago had WGN, and –

Verity: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – there were some New York stations, and then when they got hooked up with, to the cable networks, then suddenly everybody across the country had access to these, what were formerly regional stations. And the regional stations don’t have a lot of original programming, so they will buy the rights in syndication to older shows and rerun them. So it used to be that you could turn on the television and someone was replaying Law & Order. Somewhere someone was playing a flavor of Law & Order, but that also goes for old TV shows like Frasier; Friends was in syndication for years. It was easy to fill a broad-, broadcast schedule when you could buy the licensing of a show, and it really wasn’t an option to license a show for syndication to show on other networks until it passed a hundred episodes, ‘cause then they could bundle it up. What that means for the actors and the crew and everything is that they get residual payments and they get money, which is why they went on strike, because that doesn’t happen as much anymore, ‘cause we don’t have broadcast cable. We have streaming, and so if you get, like, Netflix, and they’re just like, Here’s all of Friends, the money that the actors and the crew get for that, especially because it was too early to be specified in the contracts, is a lot less. It’s like streaming a song is one one-, like five one-thousands of a cent for the artist or some nonsense like that? But yeah, that’s what syndication means, and it doesn’t happen as much anymore?

Verity: Our TV over here is so much smaller than yours because we don’t have the same sort of size of country, so –

Sarah: Yeah!

Verity: – we have regional, we have regional telly, but it’s basically just the news. So half past six evening you can have your local news, and that’s your, that’s your local TV. And there’s, like, I’m, when I was in the States I was a bit like, Oh! So you can watch different sports depending on where you are in the country. We don’t have that. You can’t watch the, the Saturday afternoon soccer game on telly at all. None of them are on TV. If you want to watch them, you have to pirate it in from outside the UK, ‘cause the idea is that they want you to go and watch your local team live, whether it’s, like, lower league or premier league; they want you to go and watch it. Whereas in –

Sarah: Or you go to a bar, and the bar has it.

Verity: Bar has it, yeah.

Sarah: So do you have a bad joke?

Verity: No, but I’m looking forward to hearing everybody else’s, ‘cause all those – I’m very bad with jokes. I get it from my mum, and I just, no, sorry. I apologize…

Sarah: Please do not apologize! I offer the opportunity, but not everyone wishes to do this, and it is totally fine. We have a, we have a surfeit; we have a, a cornucopia of bad jokes.

Verity: Aw, great! Thank you very much for doing this! This has been so much fun.

Sarah: Thank you so, so much. It was, it was really a delight, and, and thank you for listening for such a long time. I imagine that you are very tired of my voice. [Laughs]

Verity: …Yeah, it’s weird. I used to have this, one of my first jobs in the organization I currently work for, I used to record the weather people doing their weather broadcasts for overnight.

Sarah: Right.

Verity: And then they’d phone up, and they’d look straight down their camera at you like this and be on the phone to you, but obviously you couldn’t see them because you didn’t have a camera; you just had a screen. They’d be on the phone to you, talking to you, and you’d run into them around the building, and you’d be like, Hi! How are you? And they’d be like, Who’s this crazy lady talking to me?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Verity: ‘Cause they have no clue what you look like, and you’d say, Oh, it’s, it’s Verity from the phone calls? They’re like, Oh, yeah, right. This is a bit like that. Like, I’ve been listening to you talking for so long I forget that I haven’t actually talked to you before.

Sarah: [Laughs] Well, thank you! Well, let us, let us chat again soon! And please tell your mother Merry Christmas.

Verity: I will be.

[music]

Elyse: I am Elyse. I’m a reviewer for Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and I do The Bachelor/Bachelorette recaps, and I am in the beautiful state of Wisconsin where today that we’re recording this, there’s much speculation about whether Taylor Swift is going to be in Green Bay or not.

Sarah: She’s going to be wearing so many layers if she’s in Green Bay.

Elyse: I feel like Taylor doesn’t fuck with Wisconsin, and I respect that about her.

Sarah: [Laughs] So what are a book or books – ‘cause people have brought more than one – what is a book or books that you really enjoyed this year? Tell me, tell me, tell me.

Elyse: Okay, so my favorite book this year, hands down, was The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty? It is a high fantasy adventure book set on the Indian Ocean, and the heroine is a retired pirate, and she has to get the band back together for one last job to rescue a girl. And it’s very much, if you have ever played Dungeons & Dragons, the book unfolds like every campaign I’ve ever been on where nothing happens the way it is supposed to happen.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: And it is just wonderfully funny; there’s romance; there is adventure; there’s action; there’s giant sea monsters. There is a cat who’s supposed to be the mouser on the boat, who’s terrible at his job and somehow survives all of the shenanigans; the cat is fine. Don’t worry about that. But it is just so good. The narration is beautiful, and my husband listened to it on audio and confirmed that the audiobook narration is just as fantastic as reading the book.

Sarah: That is excellent.

Elyse: The character’s voice really comes through, so.

Sarah: That is excellent!

Elyse: So good. It, I read this book on vacation, and I was supposed to be out doing things, and I was like, No, I’m going to sit in my hotel room and read this book.

Sarah: I do not wish to do things; I wish to read book. Makes sense.

Elyse: Yes. So there, each chapter opens up with a scribe who is writing down the story of what happened as Amina, the main character, is telling it to him.

Sarah: Ahhh!

Elyse: And so you get like a little bit of the scribe’s, like, official narration, more formal, and then you jump into her point of view.

Sarah: Oh, that’s fun.

Elyse: So I cannot recommend that book enough. That, it’s just wonderful, and I will go back and listen to it on audio now that I’ve read it, just when I need something kind of comforting that I already know what’s going to happen.

Sarah: I have been listening to the audio of A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking?

Elyse: [Laughs] Okay?

Sarah: And it is very cozy, although there’s a lot of dead bodies for something that was described as so cozy. I think it sounds like something you might like, if you haven’t read it already?

Elyse: Okay.

Sarah: It’s about a fourteen-year-old bread witch in a place where having witchcraft, even in the, having magic, even in the tiniest amounts, is a bad thing. Her magic is that she can make bread rise or make baked, make baked goods come to life, if you need them to, and she can make bread not spoil. Like, she can, she works with dough. She’s like, Icing is harder; I work with dough. And then a dead body turns up in the kitchen, and she is blamed because she has magic, and she, the, she’s fourteen? But she’s a very realistic fourteen, ‘cause at one point she’s like, It would be really great if just an adult could take care of this.

Elyse: Yes.

Sarah: [Laughs] But there isn’t one, so damn it.

Elyse: That, you know what, being able to make bread rise, that is magic.

Sarah: Isn’t it?

Elyse: That is.

Sarah: There’s, her familiar is also a malevolent sourdough starter? I think that’s probably my favorite part.

Elyse: I have never been able to bake because baking is very science-y, math-y, extremely precise?

Sarah: Uh-huh.

Elyse: I can cook –

Sarah: Uh-huh.

Elyse: – because, you know, you make some decisions from the heart there, not from the recipe?

Sarah: Right.

Elyse: But baking, baking, not my strong suit. I can do a quick bread; that’s about it.

Sarah: I’m pretty good with quick breads, but I do have a very good sourdough starter, and we have reached a good relationship. The sourdough starter will live in the fridge for up to two weeks, and it’s fine with that, and then I will take it out, and I will give it a big feed, and I will make a bread, and I will make some crackers with the discard, and then it goes back in the fridge for two weeks, and it is happy with that. We have worked out a schedule that is as low impact as possible. Which I –

Elyse: That’s amazing.

Sarah: Which I appreciate, because sourdoughs can be very persnickety.

So what wishes do you have for the people who will be listening?

Elyse: I wish that all of their reads next year are five-star books.

Sarah: Woohoo! That is a good wish. Did you have any other five-star books this year?

Elyse: So I had a lot of five-star books, but from a nonfiction standpoint. You and I have been talking: I have been trying to stick to an anti-inflammatory diet?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Elyse: Which is really no dairy, no gluten, no processed sugar – really no sugar at all. Very plant-based, so it’s –

Sarah: Right.

Elyse: – it’s a lot to work with –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Elyse: – and I have really been loving the Love and Lemons cookbooks?

Sarah: Really!

Elyse: They’re vegan, for the most part. I think they might all be vegan, but they have some really amazing plant-based recipes in there? There’s three of them, I believe, that are, that are out there, and they are out in Kindle too.

Sarah: What was that Instant Pot cookbook that you had recommended? I think there was an orange –

Elyse: Yes.

Sarah: – beef recipe that you really liked?

Elyse: Everything in there is so good. So the author’s name is Brittany Williams, and it’s called Instant Loss, and if you, they’re marketed as weight-loss cookbooks, which is bullshit because if you read the introduction, her kid had juvenile arthritis, and so she went on this heavy-duty anti-inflammatory diet to take care of her kid. Her Instant Pot recipes are phenomenal. She’s got either Orange Beef or Orange Chicken, Beef and Broccoli. She has a Corn Chowder that I make all the time; it is so good. She’s got a Chicken Tortilla Soup that’s fantastic. Everything in there is just phenomenal.

Sarah: That’s awesome.

Elyse: So I highly, highly recommend her cookbooks. Those I all have in physical copy, because I cook out of them constantly.

Sarah: Yeah, I have a few that are cracked right at the spine of the recipes –

Elyse: Yes.

Sarah: – that I use the most, and I’ve written on them.

Okay, so do you have a bad joke?

Elyse: So I have a story about a bad joke, and it’s a little inappropriate, so it’s up to you if you want to keep it in the podcast or not, but –

Sarah: I’m pretty sure I will, but go ahead!

Elyse: Okay. So around Halloween I picked up my fourteen-year-old niece, and she says to me, My friends were laughing at this joke at school, and I don’t understand it, and I’m too, I was too embarrassed to ask them, and I said, Okay, what is it?

Sarah: Oh boy.

Elyse: And she, she goes, Why can’t you get pregnant having sex with a vampire? And I said, Why? And she said, Because they can’t come inside unless they’re invited.

And I said, Okay. So in order to get pregnant –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elyse: – the man has to ejaculate, and she looks at me like I’m the stupidest person on Earth, and she goes, Aunt Elyse, I know that. I don’t understand the vampire part.

Sarah: [Laughs and laughs]

Elyse: She had never heard the, you, you know, vampires can’t come into a house uninvited thing, so here I am, like, explaining the bird and the bees, and she’s like, oh my God, you’re such an idiot. I, I know all of that already.

Sarah: Okay, that is hilarious. [Laughs more] And there is no disdain like teen disdain, right?

Elyse: And they are so different. Like, the, the level of knowledge that they have – which is a good thing – that we did not have –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Elyse: – growing up. Like, I am amazed and, and, actually, it makes me quite happy. So they’re a lot more savvy than we, we were, I think.

Sarah: Oh, they really are.

[music]

Carrie S: I am Carrie S. I am one of the writers for Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. I’m in Sacramento, California!

Sarah: Fabulous! Okay. So what is a book or books that really, really made your year? Tell me all about ‘em.

Carrie: Mine is The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi. I’m guessing at pronunciation, and it came out at the end of February this year, and I loved it so much. It had everything. It was like the intro to The Princess Bride, where he says, This book has good men, bad men, fencing, torture, adventure, romance! Right, like, everything was in it. It was spectacular. So that is definitely my pick for the year. I loved that the main character is around my age. I liked it that she was a mother and trying to kind of rediscover her pre-mothering identity, and as a mother, which I think a lot of us deal with in life. Found family, like, which is one of my favorite things, of course. It did have some romance; not tons and tons, but it did have some. But a lot of it was about relationships between people who had one experience in their twenties and are having another experience in their forties and fifties. But on a pirate ship.

Sarah: Awesome! Well, in, in complete silliness, I talked to Elyse, and she recommended the exact same book. Two of you have both said that you liked it.

Carrie: Wait, does that mean that I get a second book?

Sarah: Would you like a second book? If you would like a second book, you may have a second book.

Carrie: I would like a second book. I really liked The September House, and it is emphatically not a romance, super not a romance. I have to admit that most of my favorite books this year were romance-adjacent but not actually romance novels? Although, at the very last minute, just sneaking into the end of 2023, I did read The Marquis Who Mustn’t by Courtney Milan, which is a romance novel, and I adored it, so that’s my romance novel for the year.

But The September House is definitely not a romance novel. It is a horror novel, but a lot of it involves, again, it’s a woman with an adult daughter, the relationship between the mother and the daughter; the mother and her husband, of whom I will say nothing; and the interesting things that happen with this house, which is a house that is so extravagantly haunted that the protagonist, the mother has kind of just sort of gotten used to it and is like every time, you know, morning, she wakes up and there’s blood pouring down the walls, and she’s like, Oh, I guess I’d better move that chair; I don’t want that to get stains on it. And that ties into the things she accepts about her life in general, and –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Carrie: – her relationship with her husband and what she’s going to allow to continue.

So I don’t want to give, like, all the twisty stuff away, but totally different book than the other two that I mentioned. The Marquis Who Mustn’t is a nice, warm hug from Courtney Milan. I loved it, loved it, loved it, although it also had stuff between mothers and daughters, so I guess that’s a big thing for me right now.

Sarah: Bit of a theme.

Carrie: Older mothers and their adult daughters. And then, of course, both of those were completely different from The Adventures of Amina, who is running around on her pirate ship fighting tentacled sea monsters.

Sarah: As you do.

Carrie: As you do! So, see, I did sneak three in there.

Sarah: Well played. I’m very impressed.

What are your holiday wishes for people who will be listening?

Carrie: …hope that people will be kind to themselves, and I hope that people will be kind to other people, and I hope that we will all find a balance between kindness and accountability.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Carrie: With ourselves, with other people, with broader issues happening in the world. I know people are really stressed out right now. If you are a woman during the holidays, remember that it is okay to buy it from the store.

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Carrie: I thought about this a lot, but I really struggled with this year, because I think that we’re sort of in a, in an era where that tension between kindness and accountability is really strong when it comes to tiny little things like, Should I make the cookies or buy the cookies?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Carrie: And when it comes…huge, giant issues of, of war and peace. So –

Sarah: Yep!

Carrie: – good luck to, to all of us and all the same, so for heaven’s sake, just buy the cookies. It’s okay.

Sarah: As someone who has a potluck this week and has a box of Costco assorted cookies in her pantry for that potluck, I agree.

Carrie: Queen!

Sarah: And no one will be unhappy with Costco cookies; they’re as big as your face.

So did you bring a bad joke?

Carrie: I did! It’s a terrible joke. And –

Sarah: Oh, I’m so excited.

Carrie: It’s from Reader’s Digest, so you know that it is both bad and good.

What do you get when you combine a rhetorical question and a joke?

That’s it; that’s the joke. That’s the whole thing. It’s a rhetorical question.

Sarah: [Laughs] That is the most Reader’s Digest joke I have ever heard, and my parents subscribed, so there was a lot of Reader’s Digest in my life growing up. That is, that is choice.

Carrie: I picked the least, the least one. I mean, that one is kind of a little bit, you know, writer-y, right? Rhetorical question, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my God, no, there’s so much worse ones. I picked the best one! I’m, like, scrolling:

What do you call a fish with no eyes?

Sarah: What?

Carrie: A fsh.

Sarah: [Laughs] Applause. All the applause. Thank you very, very much! Clearly I need to get the Reader’s Digest on my phone –

Carrie: That’s –

Sarah: – next time I do a recording.

Carrie: That’s the kind of sophisticated humor that you can count on me for.

Sarah: I appreciate it, ‘cause it’s the very best kind. And I hope you and your family have a very happy holiday!

Carrie: I, same to you, and same to our readers and our listeners!

[music]

Richard: My name is Richard. I’m also known as Mr. Elyse in, in many places. I am the quasi-wingman for Elyse when she does the Bachelor and Bachelorette shows so that she doesn’t gnaw off one of her own limbs. We’re, we’re in the Midwest.

Sarah: And you run the, the, you run The Pawffee Shop, right?

Richard: Well, yeah, technically I’m the daytime manager, which sounds really impressive. On my Facebook I put that I am the Emperor of Espresso, ‘cause I thought, you know, that would work out really well. Yeah, The Pawffee Shop is a coffee shop here in, in Appleton. We have our partner that we’re partnered up with is Safe Haven Pet Sanctuary. So we’ve adopted out, I think it’s 190 cats already.

Sarah: That is so awesome. Congratulations!

Richard: So yeah, I get to make, make and sell delicious coffees and stuff like that, and hang out with cats often. So it’s, it’s a fantastic job. You can visit us on the interwebs, get material for us. Probably my favorite item that I’ve ever bought from The Pawffee Shop is if you go to our Facebook page – sorry, little plug here; my apologies – if you got to our, our either Facebook page or our website, that, there’s a link on our merchandise down at the bottom to Bonfire –

Sarah: Yep!

Richard: – and so our store on Bonfire, you can get items that we don’t regularly have in the shop, and one of ‘em is, I got a sweatshirt that says on it, “My Cat & I Talk Sh!t About You”?

Sarah: I love that sweatshirt so much. Do you get lots of commentary on it?

Richard: Yeah, it is absolutely my favorite sweatshirt to wear while traveling?

Sarah: Yes!

Richard: Just because of the looks you get in airports and stuff. I’ve actually had a TSA agent pull me over and ask why my cat’s talking shit about them?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Richard: And this was when, this was when Sweet Lady Pudding was still around, and I said, Well, she, you know, she’s an old Siamese, you know, so she talks shit about everybody. She’d, she’d be the old lady that if your ball fell in their yard when you were playing as a kid, they’d go out, pick it up, and walk back in the house.

Sarah: Yep. So tell me what is a book that rocked your world this year?

Richard: Probably one of the ones that, that I would have to say was the best was Starter Villain by John Scalzi. I don’t know if it’s going to be a standalone book, if it’s going to continue in any way, but the book was just amazing. The, the main character has a relative, his uncle passes away, and he discovers that his uncle was a, like, super villain? And now he has to take over the family business. One of the bigger surprises is the cats that he had, the cat he had and then the kitten that he had just found in the beginning of the book, both are sentient, and the cat he’d had for quite some time had been spying on him and actually was into real estate and had her own house just down the street.

Sarah: Uh, ah –

Richard: Much nicer house than his, actually.

Sarah: I completely can see a cat acquiring their own house to get away from the humans.

Richard: Yeah! Yeah, just, you know, whenever you need to just be alone and stuff like that. Of late – ‘cause I’m, as, as, as we’ve talked about before, I’m dyslexic – I find reading, or listening to audiobooks is easier for me –

Sarah: Oh, for sure.

Richard: – often than, than reading, so I’ve been doing a lot of that, and, like, I will be doing the dishes and, like, snort-laughing to the point where Elyse will come in, and she’s like, Are you okay?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Richard: And I’m like, Yeah, it’s just the book –

Sarah: Yeah, I’m fine.

Richard: – I’m listening to. It’s –

Sarah: It’s not asthma –

Richard: – hard to explain.

Sarah: – it’s laughter! [Laughs]

Richard: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was probably my favorite book of, of the year. One of the things I really enjoy about Scalzi is often there are twists and stuff, and sometimes you can see ‘em coming, sometimes you can try and guess them, other times they’re out of the blue, but it’s, it’s sort of fun to try and guess what’s going to happen next in a situation where it’s, it’s like a, you know, evolving type evil person thing. And it was just a delight, ‘cause the main character was just like a “normal guy,” and suddenly he’s in charge of this entire evil empire. So.

Sarah: As you do, right?

Richard: Oh yeah! Yeah, it happens all the time.

Sarah: Do you have any holiday wishes for everyone who will be listening?

Richard: Yeah, I do. Probably my fondest wish is that people take the stop, the time to stop and enjoy their found family, because often the, the, the found family that you have, not necessarily the biologic family or the family you married into, are the ones that have the biggest impact on your life, so making sure you set aside time during the holidays to try and get together with them – you know, it doesn’t have to be huge gift exchanges. Just, you know, hanging out; having, like, snacky food; and just relaxing and enjoying the laughter. I, I think that doesn’t get enough, doesn’t get enough press often.

Sarah: Yeah. Well, thank you, Rich!

Richard: You are very welcome! This was delightful!

Sarah: Yay!

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you so very much to Elyse and Verity and Rich and Carrie for hanging out and telling me all of the things. As I mentioned in the intro, you can find all of the books and links in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast under episode 594!

I had asked for reviews, and y’all came through, and I am so honored. Thank you. MelodyPrime said so many nice things about me – thank you! – and said that the podcast:

>> Alternates interesting and hilarious author interviews, both romance-related and not, with content about gaming, Cover Snark, food, and just any and all the things.

Any and All the Things would be a really good name for this show, actually.

>> All of it is approached from a foundation of intense love for the genre in all its pink and fuchsia glory.

Leaving reviews is a huge ask, and I’m so honored that you took the time to do that. Thank you.

I always end with a terrible joke, and this week’s joke comes from JF Hobbit in our Discord, which is a wonderful place. Are you ready?

How do farmers party?

Give up? How do farmers party?

They turnip the beets.

[Laughs] That’s so bad! I do like jokes about food.

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful week, and we will see you back here next week!

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find many outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.

Turnip the beets! [Laughs]

[pretty music]