678. The Osmanification of Fiction Covers with Kayleigh Donaldson

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Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to episode number 678 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and my guest today is Kayleigh Donaldson. Recently on Smart Bitches I posted a collection of cozy, mostly British mysteries that all mimic the Richard Osman Thursday Murder Club covers in just about every way. There’ll be a link in the show notes. I posted to social media about it, because that’s what you’re supposed to do, apparently, and Kayleigh Donaldson commented that she had many thoughts about them. One of the worst things that you can do is be one of my favorite people to listen to and then tell me that you have thoughts about something that I posted about. I, I want to hear the thoughts, I want to hear all the thoughts, and you know I have a podcast, right? So here we are! We’re going to talk about the Osman aesthetic in cozy mystery, where it comes from, why it works, and what’s happening next. We talk about a lot of books and a lot of links, and they’re all in the show notes. Do not miss them.

I have a compliment this week, which is really fun. This compliment is for a fellow podcaster who does a trivia podcast that my husband Adam has appeared on a couple of times.

To SkilletBrew, also known as Chris: No matter how much you might think otherwise, people do listen to your show, and they really like it because your personality comes through. Your work and your enthusiasm for what you do is legend- – wait for it – -dary, and to be honest, you’re better than all the Barneys. All of them.

If you would like a compliment of your very own, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Your support keeps me going, makes sure we have a transcript from garlicknitter – hi, garlicknitter! [Hi, Sarah! – gk] – and if you join you get to be part of a wonderful community, you get to do our rear, year-end episodes if you’d like – I almost said rear-end episodes, but that’s not what those are called. It would be lovely to have you in our community.

And if Patreon support is not in the cards right now, no worries! May I humbly request that you leave a review wherever you listen, because it really, truly helps grow the show! Most of all, thank you for listening. I’m honored to keep you company.

Ooh! One more quick thing: inspired by other Patreon folks, including Chris DeRosa at Fixing Famous People, I’ve put together a collection of some of our exclusive bonus content free so you can sample what we’ve got. For example, do you want to do a crossword puzzle from the May 1995 issue of RT? The crossword puzzle is available for free on Patreon right now. If you’d like to read an issue of RT Magazine, the entire issue from December 1997 is now available for your perusal, and the covers are amazing. And if you’d like to try one of our bonus episodes, you can join Amanda and me as we look back at our 2024 predictions about romance and publishing. This collection of special previews is available now to all listeners; there’s a link in the show notes to dive in. And if you like our free samples, join us in the Patreon community where there’s bonus content and much, much more.

Before we get started, I have a CONTENT WARNING: we have mentions of a book that contains on-page sexual assault and discussion of that writer, who is terrible, plus the effects of her politics on Scotland. That discussion starts at about thirty-five minutes and thirty seconds [35:30], and you’re going to want to skip forward about one minute.

And now, on with the show.

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Sarah: Thank you so much for agreeing to do, do this. I’ve been, like, thinking about, like, Oh, I can’t wait to talk to Kayleigh about all this. I want to hear, like, every thought and opinion, ‘cause I know you’ve got many.

Kayleigh Donaldson: [Laughs] I’m never short of an opinion. It has been said about me, yeah. Every time I go to the bookshop now there’s sort of like three divisions of books now. There is like the, there’s romantasy; there is cute cartoon cover romance, the BookTok-ification of it; and then there is this sort of very Osman-esque version of cozy crime? Where they all have that sort of a cover you were talking about, where they’re all very parochial; they’re all very much about, you know, being in the countryside and having a sort of almost, like, postcard image of Englishness specifically? There are sort of… I mean they’re, talk about there being Scottish ones or Welsh ones and stuff too, but, like, I have this very specific kind of like English vibe from a lot of stuff –

Sarah: Oh –

Kayleigh: – that’s so fascinating to me!

Sarah: I think this is why I love talking to you, because you and I both take a sort of thirty-four-thousand-foot view of cultural trends and how, what they mean and how they’re changing. And when I posted on Facebook about the, the, the Osman-ification of cozy mystery, you were like, I have so many thoughts! And I was like, Yes! I want to hear all your thoughts, and I want to press Record before you tell me, so thank you for being here to do this, Kayleigh! I’m so excited.

Kayleigh: Oh, I’m also happy to, that you had me back; thank you very much.

Sarah: Yay! So I, I know my guests will know who you are, but would you please introduce yourself, introduce yourself and tell everyone who you are and what you do, in case they’ve never heard wisdom before.

Kayleigh: My name’s Kayleigh Donaldson. I’m a pop culture writer and critic. I’ve been doing this professionally for about eight years now, I believe. I largely, my, my main stomping ground is Pajiba.com, where I’m one of the head features writers and I largely talk about, I do reviews, I do pop culture and entertainment industry shop talk. My main specialty is celebrity gossip and the kind of analysis and understanding of it, and I do a lot of that over on Substack, where I have a newsletter called the Gossip Reading Club.

Sarah: Well, I mean, who better to talk about The Thursday Murder Club than the writer of the Gossip Reading Club, right?

Kayleigh: [Laughs]

Sarah: Obviously this was meant to be.

Kayleigh: That just feels like I should be spending reading time on murder mystery at some point, right?

Sarah: Or! Or, hear me out, just start killing people.

Kayleigh: [Laughs] You know what? The economy’s tight right now. The, there’s, we all have a lot of feelings that we need to get out of, get off our chests, so.

Sarah: [Laughs] You, you commented, after I posted all these covers, that you had a lot of thoughts about both the books and the cover motif. So what is your opinion of the Thursday Murder aesthetic, as I’ve been calling it? And then also the books themselves, because I think it’s, there’s two things going on here, and I’d love to hear your perspective.

Kayleigh: So I think you can’t, to do that I’m going to have to discuss who Richard Osman is, so I’m…

Sarah: Please do introduce the audience, yes.

Kayleigh: ‘Cause in Britain, Richard Osman is a very big deal. He is huge, and I mean that literally: he is six foot seven.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kayleigh: He is one of the tallest people in entertainment. I mean, the only person who’s taller than him is Greg Davies, and they were both on Taskmaster together. But for the longest time, Richard Osman was a TV producer and writer. He worked on a lot of panel shows, which are like the main vehicle of comedy in Britain, so if you’ve ever watched like 8 out of 10 Cats or Whose Line is It Anyway?, the original version, like things like that, that was what he was a producer on. He did a lot of writing for things like this. He eventually broke out in his own way in the early 2010s, I believe, or late 2000s, with a game show called Pointless, which is, the basic setup is you, a hundred people are asked a question or to name a certain thing, kind of like Family Feud? And you get more points the less people who know the answer, but this thing is on five nights a week in the UK. It is basically to us what Jeopardy! is to America. We now have our own Jeopardy!, but it’s not as big a deal as that is over across the pond, but Osman was like the co-host of that show and was introduced to a wider audience. So he was on TV five nights a week. He is still on TV all – he actually left Pointless as like a host. He’s still, it’s still his show.

But he left because he wrote a book called The Thursday Murder Club, which is, I’ve been calling it an all-crumbs cozy mystery, because I think that there is, like, a difference between American and British cozy mysteries?

Sarah: Oh yes.

Kayleigh: The basic plot is it’s about a group of pensioners in England who get together to solve mysteries, and then there is a murder of a property developer in the area, in their sort of like retirement village that is somewhere in Kent, I believe, and they all decide to figure it out. But this book was immediately a very big deal in Britain. It became the fast-selling adult crime debut in history. I think at one point it was the highest-selling book in Britain in many, many years. It is –

Sarah: Wow!

Kayleigh: – huge. Like – but yes.

Sarah: Listen, I don’t mean to be, I don’t mean to be judgmental but y’all have some crime narratives. You have a very long history of killing people in books, and this was the fastest-selling novel in, in that genre? Wow!

Kayleigh: Well, yeah! I mean, again, this thing went to, when it went to auction, I believe it was a ten-way auction fight to get the rights to it, and according to The Guardian, I think it got, it was a seven-figure sum for the debut, which publishing doesn’t have money anymore unless you’re a celebrity, and Richard Osman is a really big celebrity! And again, this book was such a massive deal! And I believe it’s like one of the highest-selling debut novels of all time in Britain as well.

And then it was very quickly picked up by Stephen Spielberg’s company, Amblin’, for a movie, and that movie is coming out I believe this summer with the most incredible cast of people. It’s like Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren and Ben Kingsley and Jonathan Pryce. It’s like the great character actors of British film and TV are all doing it. It’s like, David Tennant is in it?

And there’re sequels to these books as well, but what this has now inspired is a ton of books that are the Osman-ised version of crime fiction. They all tend to have very similar covers to The Thursday Murder Club, which is like a very simple cover. It is really very, not cartoonish in the way that, like, the romance novels are now, but, like, very simple, very sharp graphic.

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: Maybe there’ll be, like, a cute animal on it or, like, a village or something or a, a pen with blood coming out of it, but it’s not – I think if you look at, like, the cozy murder mysteries of America?

Sarah: Yep.

Kayleigh: Their covers tend to be a lot more detailed. They tend to have, like, a very, they are very cozy from the get-go. You look at those covers and you know exactly what you’re going to get.

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: And I think the British ones, it doesn’t necessarily give away too much of the tone or the content, but just by association with the Richard Osman of it all, I think everyone kind of knows what they’re getting into with this. So there’s a whole stream of books like this now. A number of, like, other British celebrities have gotten in writing them? There’s a, the Reverend Richard Coles, who is like, who used to be in the pop band The Communards, and he’s now a, a minister of the Church of England and is, like, always on TV in the UK. He has written one that has a very similar cover.

There’s a TV show in Britain called Death in Paradise. Do you know of it?

Sarah: Oh, I do! I watched some of the first season during the COVID times, and I was reading about it because I was like, What is this show? And I read that it was filmed in such a great location that actors were just trying to get on as a guest spot because it was being filmed in this wonderfully warm, beautiful, like, tropical location, and they all wanted to be on it as a guest show, as a guest star – [laughs] – ‘cause it was a nice place to be.

Kayleigh: Yeah, basically, Death in Paradise is set in the, sort of the, the West Indies, and the big plot is that a very stiff-upper-lip British police detective is stationed there, and like Midsomer, people get murdered in a way that would make you think that there is something, you know – that you would never want to actually go to these places ‘cause so many people are getting murdered.

Sarah: Really, really high body count, yeah. Like –

Kayleigh: Yeah.

Sarah: – you know that would show up on Trip Advisor.

Kayleigh: Exactly! [Laughs] And that’s another really big thing in the UK as well. That show is huge, and every time they bring in a new actor to take the lead role, it is essentially done with the same excitement as when there’s a new Doctor in Doctor Who, except for like a slightly older demographic, but that, that show’s creator, Robert Thorogood, who’s always written crime books, his books now all have these Osman-esque covers.

But the thing that started fascinating me about this development as well is it’s not just the, the way that crime fiction in general is getting to this kind of style, this kind of content, tone, and so on, is that this is the brand new way, at least in Britain, for celebrities and their probably ghostwritten novels to become a thing? Like, I mentioned Richard Coles. Rob Rinder, who’s a judge who had a show called Judge Rinder, which is like our version of Judge Judy that no one watched, he’s got one of these books. Jeremy Vine, who is a youth TV journalist, who’s sort of a rent-a-gob individual, he now has one about murder. Andy Murray’s mother has one about, like, tennis, but there’s murder too. This is sort of the thing: I think, I believe one of the judges on our version of Dancing with the Stars has one like this now. This is just, it used to be that you just throw your memoir, or you’d write a children’s book, right, and…

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: – there’s heavy air quotes around this. But now the new, like, thing for these people to bank in on is, Oh, I’ll have a novel and I’ll get someone else to write it, but it’ll be murder-y, and people like crime fictions because they all love Thursday Murder Club. Which as far as I know was actually written by Richard Osman, but, you know, publishing is nothing if not determined to stick to the rails when it comes to a hit.

Sarah: Oh yeah. You’ve got to stay on the path.

I find this whole thing very fascinating because, you know, you and I have both been around long enough in publishing to see a few trends cycle through. I often joke that we’re sitting in rocking chairs on the romance novel, romance old folks’ home being like, Oh, are we, are we debating about whether or not the HEA is relevant again? Oh, awesome. We did that like six times; I already know what to say. So with the, with the, like, the aesthetic and the way that they all look and how many books are copying that formula – cream background, color bar border, large script font at an angle, little graphic in the middle of a thing, like an animal or a dog or a quill or something else, and then the author name at the bottom, maybe three total colors, could go to four if you’re feeling spicy – there are so many! I think when I did that post I had like sixty different covers in my file, and I was like, I need to just select the best ones, because this is making my, my eyes cross, like legitimately.

I, we’ve, we’ve done this before, right? Like, we did this with Fifty Shades, we did this with Twilight, we did this a little bit with some of the special editions, where they’re all starting to mimic each others’ style. Romantasy has the visual aesthetic: you know, crowns, skulls, roses, flowers, sharp things, ice, fire, blood. Please mix and make cover. We grab an aesthetic and, like, beat it to death. [Laughs]

Kayleigh: Yeah, whether or not it’s appropriate for the book. I mean, I’ve been doing this, I, I started book blogging 2010, 2009, 2010, and I’ve been writing professionally eight years, and I, I was there for the Twilight-ification of all fiction; I was there for the Hunger Games-ification…

Sarah: Oh yes.

Kayleigh: – and, like, dystopian sci-fi stuff. You know, I remember the days when every classic fiction had a book cover like Twilight, you know. I remember when a lot of books were trying to do this with Harry Potter, too. But it’s been so fascinating over the past few years how this has really tied into a very annoying marketing requirement, not just on the part of publishers, but authors. I mean, every author now has to essentially be their own publicist on TikTok and Instagram and all these things. Like, I’m really fascinated by this trend of people advertising their books by, like, having a picture of the book and then, like, the tropes of it surrounding it, where it’s like –

Sarah: Yes!

Kayleigh: …grumpy to sunshine, and you see that not just with romance! I mean, you see that with, with these sort of crime books as well, and I get it. I mean, I, I certainly, sometimes as a reader it’s really handy to know the specific things you kind of want and you’re going to get.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kayleigh: The diminishing returns of it are inevitable, though. And also just kind of occasional false advertising. I think I’ve mentioned this before to you, but, like, one of the reasons I don’t really like the current cartoon cover trend of romance is I think that, one, it makes them all look like YA novels, and I think –

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: – it’s, it’s weird to see, like, Red, White & Royal Blue in the YA section, not because way too much sex in it to be a YA –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kayleigh: – they’re not teenagers! So a lot of these books, it kind of conceals the true nature of them and really sort of softens their edges and the things that make them unique and would make them readable. I now find myself kind of put off by a lot of these covers, even with authors I love! And a lot of these authors didn’t have these covers to begin with, you know. They had the beefcake covers, but readers, I think, are sort of more drawn right now, or at least the, the, the common wisdom is that readers are currently more drawn to this idea of, like, homogeny, I guess?

Which again, publishing has always been like that. They’re not taking massive swings and risks. This chasing of trends, the chasing of very specific online trends and online desires, I think, is, is one of the reasons that this sort of Osman-ification of fiction is so fascinating, because in many ways it’s still a very conventional piece of publishing wisdom: like, get a famous person, get them to write a book, book is hit, and get a bunch of copycats. I really haven’t seen, like, The Hunger Games inspired a ton of dystopian YA that people latched onto. Like, people loved Divergent; whatever everybody thought of it, that thing had a fan base. I really haven’t seen, like, the Divergent or the Fourth Wing of this sort of particular genre of crime yet. There was a certain level of organic hype to the Osman book; it wasn’t just because people like Osman. Like, you don’t sell that, continue to sell that many books after your first couple of weeks unless people love the book.

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: Unless there is something going on there, and I, I believe I mentioned this to you as well: the thing that I find so fascinating about Osman as a celebrity as well as a writer is, I think he is ruthlessly efficient at making mainstream populist entertainment, and that book was practically primed in a lab to be really popular with as many people as possible. And, you know, to his credit, he’s done it! You know, he made the most popular game show on British TV right now, and he made one of the most popular books. Like, he’s kind of unstoppable! And I wouldn’t want to try and stop him; he’s six foot seven!

Sarah: No. I don’t want to tangle with him. He would step on me.

So why do you think his technique is ruthlessly efficient? I hate to use the word formula, because I know that gets thrown at romance so much, but what do you think is the formula to this ruthless efficiency?

Kayleigh: I think a lot of what Osman does – and this is, I think, one of the reasons he’s so successful is because he is incredibly good at his job; he knows what the people want, and he has a really sharp understanding of the industry and how to make that happen. Like, he has this podcast called The Rest is Entertainment, which I, I kind of hate listening to because it’s him and this journalist called Marina Hyde, who’s kind of like every centrist dad’s favorite columnist? And they do a lot of talk on that podcast about, like, Here is how a thing gets made in television or film; here’s how deals are made. And that stuff’s really interesting, but then they’ll go talk about, like, their opinions on certain things; it’s like, oh, actually, you know, this is dumb. But I think Osman is very smart in knowing what people want, and with The Thursday Murder Club, you can trace that thing’s lineage back to Agatha Christie. Like –

Sarah: Oh yes.

Kayleigh: – cozy mystery has been a thing – I think really you could argue that she created it, and granted a lot of Christie’s work is really dark – like, And Then There Were None is one of the darkest books ever written. Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, there is a certain degree of, of warmth and approachability. You know, these are nice people that you want to spend time with, and you get the satisfaction of figuring out the mystery. And with The Thursday Murder Club, it’s a book about older people, who are often not depicted in entertainment. They are not usually depicted as the heroes.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kayleigh: He has savvily created, like, an interesting, diverse group of people. A lot of cozy mysteries, I think by design, are kind – and they’re not necessarily simple in their execution, but they are not massively convoluted or detailed, like, ‘cause, with a lot of murder mysteries that are designed in the cozy genre, they are not centered on cops. They are not centered on actual detectives? It is amateurs, as is The Thursday Murder Club. It is, you know, the, the woman who runs the pancake place on the corner and has a really fat cat, and people just constantly die, but they’ll figure things out, and at the end everyone’ll be happy and have pancakes. And there’ll be a recipe for pancakes at the back of the book. [Laughs] I actually like a lot of those books, especially if they come with a recipe! But that’s what makes it sort of approachable.

I think if The Thursday Murder Club was actually about the devastation of the aging population of Britain in a, a painful working-class neighborhood struggling with the trauma of having to watch people die? No one would read it. It would be seen as more of a subversion of the genre, and I don’t think he’s subverting it; I think he really is playing very savvily into the tropes of it. And I’m, I’m in favor of tropes and formula. Like, as a romance write-, reader, I obviously, I have big issues with people who dismiss stuff like that. The formulas exist for a reason. Poirot’s formula exists for a reason! But what it has made is something that I, I describe as ruthlessly efficient, because I don’t think you’re ever going to pick up this book, put it down, and really feel like you were put through the wringer.

Sarah: Yes! Yeah, that’s the promise –

Kayleigh: And you know –

Sarah: – of that cover.

Kayleigh: Things are dark and miserable right now? I don’t think –

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: – people necessarily want that from book culture. That’s the argument you always hear is that, like, in times of, like, economic and political distress, we turn to romance, we turn to fantasy, that sort of thing, and I, I don’t know how much we really see that in the current situation. I think that are certain cases, but with, with Osman, I think he really just had something people were hungry for.

And people are always hungry for! Like, people like crime fiction. Crime fiction, I believe, is still the most-read genre in at least British fiction? Like, it is, crime will take up most of the book, like, shelf space; at least, certainly my local Waterstones, I think the only thing that currently takes up more space than crime is manga? Because apparently teenagers have gotten really into manga lately, which, good for them, because that is a pricey habit.

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: I do not have manga money. [Laughs]

Sarah: My library’s manga collection is staggeringly good. And these series, they go on. They go on; they don’t – they just goooo! [Laughs]

Kayleigh: A friend of mine recently started watching, her boyfriend got her into One Piece, and they managed to actually finish it, and One Piece is about a thousand episodes long right now, so you can imagine how long that thing is in manga form.

Sarah: Dear God.

Kayleigh: My manga habit tends to be, favorite manga is called 20th Century Boys, and that was in the mega volumes, which was two, two volumes per book. I think it was twelve.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

What do you think is the signal that what you call the cozy oh-crumbs mystery, the Osman cream color with the spare illustration, what do you think that is saying to readers? Why has it worked so well, and what is this cover as a marketing tool doing? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Kayleigh: I think that the trope-ification of the, of not just this genre, of kind of every genre – like, you, fanfiction is actually kind of the perfect way to describe it. I was reading a romance novel recently – I won’t name it; it’s not fair, but, like, I just, it was not that it was bad, but I, it – [sputters] – there was such a lack of heft to it, it really did just feel like trope after trope, like someone had this checklist, and I just found myself grasping for a real emotion in it.

Sarah: Yes!

Kayleigh: And it just felt very empty, and I, I put the book down, and I just, I ended up turning to a crime novel, actually. [Laughs] Not a cozy one; I’ve been reading a lot of James Ellroy recently? He wrote L. A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia, and his books are like the opposite of cozy crime. Basically, everyone in them is dark and evil and corrupt, and also there are real life people in them.

But with crime in general, I think that, the great satisfaction of a good crime novel is, is closure. It’s the idea that at the end of it, the bad guy is caught and the day is saved. It is the reason why Law & Order: SVU has been on the air for like twenty-plus years or something like that? But with something like cozy crime, I think that you have this kind of comforting distance from both the actual troubles and agonies of the legal and justice system?

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: As well as the, the copaganda of it. The idea of, like, normal people just living their lives in tune with the community and who know that people are more than statistics being the ones that figure things out while often useless, comedically inept versions of the police don’t know what they’re doing, there is something very satisfying about that.

Sarah: There’s almost a parallel in the way that cops are portrayed in the media and the way fathers are portrayed in media? They’re either overbearing, bumbling and don’t know what they’re doing, completely disconnected from the world, and every now and again you get a good father. The same is true of the portrayal of cops: they’re either bumbling or buried under their own biases and can’t see what’s happening, or they’re completely disinterested and don’t give a shit, or they actually are good at their job, but the last one is kind of rare.

Kayleigh: Honestly, one of the reasons I can’t watch SVU anymore, like, I stopped it watching it when it got a little too ripped-from-the-headlines with its stories.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Kayleigh: Remember when they did their Chris Brown/Rihanna episode and was like, Actually, I’m out. But also I, I really couldn’t escape the, like, my own politics started to make it really difficult for me to watch this show where these people, you know, they’re, simultaneously you have the fantasy world where people actually believe women who have been sexually assaulted and want to do something about it, but then you have this other side which is We can do whatever the hell he want in the name of justice, civil liberties be damned. Like, if Elliot Stabler was a real cop, he would either be in jail for life, or he would be president. [Laughs] He is so evil and so crooked, but because he’s Christopher Meloni we all love him. But I, I really started to have trouble watching it.

Sarah: It doesn’t matter what his morals are. Have you seen his ass?

Kayleigh: Oh, I mean, that man’s leaning into the thirst trap nature of himself as he’s gotten older is, like, incredible satisfying. [Laughs]

Sarah: I want to see a buddy road trip movie or series with him and Pierce Brosnan? Like, I think the chemistry –

Kayleigh: Pierce Brosnan’s future star of The Thursday Murder Club, so, you know, Osman, give them a call.

Sarah: I’m very curious about that, because I know a bunch of people were critiquing the idea of Pierce Brosnan: he’s too handsome, he’s too posh, he can’t do this working-class role? And I, I think he’s got the chops to do it; I’m kind of looking forward to it? But my impression of working class versus posh is way different from somebody who is actually much more fluent in the obsession with class system that exists in the UK.

Kayleigh: Yeah, I think that’s another thing is, you know, there’s sort of an interesting diversity of class in Osman’s books that you often don’t get elsewhere, which I think adds to the kind of calculating nature of it. Again, I’m being really cynical, but there does seem to be, like, cozy crime tends to be seen as very middle class, very upper middle class. Like, even in the American versions, it’s people who have money who have small, the weirdest small businesses. Like, you run a snow globe shop? How much money are you pulling in that you have enough time not only to pay your bills but go off and solve crime? Like –

Sarah: [Laughs] Snow globe shop!

Kayleigh: – you are living the kind of life that, you know – [laughs] – doesn’t exist anymore. I’m sure that book exists, so I’m going to look it up later. If you have, someone hasn’t read snow globe shop murder mystery, do it now!

Sarah: I’m crying! [Laughs] You’re so right! And especially in the American ones. There’s always, like, a dog or a cat or some pet that is magically solving these mysteries. All these cats preternaturally solving crime? I mean, look, look at my cat: he’s asleep. This is the most you’re going to get?

Kayleigh: Aw! [Laughs]

Sarah: There, there’s no solving crime, unless the crime is why he wasn’t fed. And there’s always a bookshop or a tea shop or both or something super – snow globe shop nearly killed me. [Laughs]

Kayleigh: And I’m going to have to look that up. That must exist, and if it doesn’t, someone, you, you have dibs to write it. If you’re listening to this and you want that idea, take it!

Sarah: I think you should take that and run, my friend. I think you should take that and run.

Kayleigh: But yeah, there is this interesting class element of it, because when I think of, like, crime fiction that tends to be working class, it is, certainly with Britain, there’s this, often this divide that working class stories are inherently grim and miserable in a way that if you have money you can sort of solve that problem?

And there are wonderful examples of this. Just being Scottish, like, Scottish crime fiction has a long and rich history, like Ian Rankin’s Rebus novels, which I was obsessed with as a teenager, and they just did a new TV show about a couple years ago, which is really good, are very much rooted in the, the clash between, like, the working class and the middle class of, of Edinburgh and the sort of growing gentrification of the city, which is now completely taken over from when Rankin started writing those books.

But coziness, you’re supposed to be able to sort of like put your troubles aside and have an escapist element in the same way that, like, a lot of romance novels provide. Like, people like billionaire romances not because they like these, you know, guys who don’t pay their taxes and vote for the worst people in the world; they like it ‘cause money solves problems, and –

Sarah: Yes!

Kayleigh: – and it’s a plot convenience.

Sarah: Oh, it’s absolutely a plot convenience! This guy can send two email messages and then stalk some girl, and his business is still doing just great!

Kayleigh: There’s also just something about the image of, like, the English countryside –

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: – and beautiful cottages and, you know, everyone up in everyone else’s business. I get the appeal. I mean, again, I read a lot of these books, ‘cause there is an escapist element, and there is a satisfaction in – I, I, I would love to see more twists on it.

One of my favorite – I think I mentioned this last time I talked to you – was Mia Manansala, who writes the Tita Rosie series, which is basically a Filipino-American woman who works in her family’s restaurant, and then people die. But those books, as they go on, carry on the fact that this woman is becoming increasingly tired and traumatized by the fact that everyone is dying on her?

Sarah: Yes, that is an actual factor! [Laughs]

Kayleigh: And they’re still – yeah, and the, the books are still, you know, very greasy reads. They, you know, they’re full of incredible Filipino food porn; they’re full of, like, you know, the fun family members and all those sorts of things. But there is a heft to it that I found really satisfying, ‘cause I, I liked the emotional weight that came with that. I really liked just someone who didn’t take joy in the fact that all these people were dying around her. ‘Cause there is something to be said about stories where you are kind of like almost laughing in the face of death.

Like, I think the reason that, like, wacky True Crime podcasts where people are like, Hey, Murderinos! Today we’re going to talk about this gang rape! Today is sponsored by Casper Mattresses! Like, they do that because, I think, for some people the, the idea is it gives you an emotional distance, and it allows you to tackle these very scary topics in an easy way. I think the flip side of that is it very quickly slides into exploitation.

Sarah: Absolutely.

Kayleigh: And crime fiction, I think, can sometimes be like that. I’ve read crime books where, you know, the victims are women, often sex workers, and they are talked about and described in ways where it’s like, Oh, you are either enjoying this too much or hate this woman.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kayleigh: And this is not a reflection of the system hating women; this is you hating women. Like –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Kayleigh: – you can sense so much indifference in a lot of these books. So the idea of, you know, almost making death something that’s mundane to the point of wacky, like, I get it! And I don’t think all these books need to get into, like, I don’t need you to offer me a dense psychological examination of, like, like, it’s fine. I don’t need, you know – if that’s not your lane, you don’t have to fall into that lane! It is perfectly okay. You’re, the lane is busy, but, you know, and there’s a lot of demand for it. But I think as with, as a genre phenomenon becomes more oversaturated, as it becomes more impossible to escape and there’s diminishing returns, it’s really hard to ignore the worst elements.

Like, to tie back into kind of romance, I have basically had to check out on the concept of dark romance. I get its appeal entirely. I…plenty of dark fanfictions in my time, and it’s a very fanfic-y subgenre. I just can’t deal with the brutalization of women under the guise of, Well, you know, this is what we’re tackling! And, you know, if you don’t like it, leave. And I was like, Okay, I’m, I’m going to leave, ‘cause it’s clearly not for me. And a lot of these books are just not good! And a lot of them are just not able to pull off the really narrow tonal and psychological tightrope of that, and I feel that way about a lot of these crime novels. I feel, frankly, I feel that way about a lot of genres. It’s, you know, the, the mimeograph of the mimeograph of the mimeograph, unless you’re a really talented writer. But once it gets into, like, the dark romance elements, it gets into just stories where you’re, you know, of murder, of justice, of a system that we know does not work –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kayleigh: – it starts to get tough, but, you know – I, I, I find myself very torn with a lot of this stuff…

Sarah: I do too.

Kayleigh: – my job just to work…anyway, but I, you know, there’s a lot of romance almost I just don’t, I can’t get into anymore. There’s a lot of crime stuff I can’t get into. I’ve actually found it really difficult to just read stuff this year, and I don’t know if it is the weight of the world on my shoulders or if it’s just that this, the big stuff is just not clicking for me. I, I really find myself just kind of reading a lot of manga and books that were published a hundred and twenty years ago. [Laughs]

Sarah: Hey, I think that makes total sense. But I also think that we collectively, especially in fictional media, really got into the thinly veiled real people fiction? And you see it in crime, you see it in romance; like, how many sports hero/pop star books have we seen where they just change the hair color – [mumbles] – but it’s Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Like, we are doing a very close to real people fiction-ification of a lot of genres, and I, that makes me super uncomfortable.

Kayleigh: Yeah, I, I like that genre of, like, fanfiction readers who are just like, you, you were always told never to cross the streams. It, it was really absolutely unthinkable for you to let the people know that you’re, even if you’re writing RPF wherever you went, like, you wouldn’t let people know that you were doing that. That was ridiculous! And now, you know, editors are trawling AO3 and fanfiction generally looking for these stories, and the fact that three Harry Potter fanfictions are getting published this year that are all Harry – no, they’re not – they’re, they’re Draco/Hermione –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kayleigh: – and, which feels very inline with the current dark romance trends. Like, that, that one fanfiction, “Manacled,” for people who don’t know, it’s a thousand-page fanfiction – or at least my copy came out a thousand pages on my Kindle – that is a crossover with The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s basically Voldemort wins, there is a breeding program to get the numbers up, Hermione’s forced to be the handmaid to Draco, there is a lot of rape for like the first couple hundred pages, and then it – I can’t claim that the book is necessarily bad, ‘cause, like, again, it is a genuinely dense psychological examination of being traumatized by war from your childhood onwards. Like, I think the writer actually does a solid job, but it is also – [laughs] – an erotic fanfiction about Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger. One of them’s a wizard Nazi, or is he? And the other one is, they’re a sex slave.

And I find myself, as a, you know, maybe I’m, ‘cause I’m getting older, or maybe just I have read too much fanfiction, but there is something about that that I find very – I don’t know if troubling is the word. First of all, I love, if it pisses off J. K. Rowling, I kind of have to root for it anyway, but just in terms of the, the door it opens, both in terms of copyright and trademark and, you know, the commodification of fan spaces, I, I don’t like that.

And also, just, as you mentioned, like, the, the royal – not the royal – I guess – [indistinct] – books are clearly about Prince Harry. Like, I, I have concerns about that. But, like, the RPF of it all, like, where it is so clearly, this book only works if you understand that the person at the heart of it is a real person, I would love to get the statistics on this, I don’t have it myself, but I am really convinced that there is, like, a direct pipeline between the largely women – and largely older women! I think people see this as a teenage girl problem –

Sarah: No!

Kayleigh: – it’s actually not; it’s people my age and older – to, like, QAnon, Pizzagate, like, that level, because –

Sarah: Hundred percent.

Kayleigh: – it’s, it is terrifying. But yeah, seeing that and the publishing just realizing that they can now do this in a post Fifty Shades of Grey world or post, after the Harry Styles one that really makes him out to be just, like, kind of an abusive dick? Like. And, and, and like a macho dick as well, which is very un-Harry Styles, so it didn’t even make a lot of sense. I am always curious to see where that leads to next, ‘cause, like, I didn’t, I never thought they’d break down the door where Harry Potter fanfiction would get published. I always thought that –

Sarah: Nope.

Kayleigh: – TERF-y McGee would sue. So –

Sarah: [Snorts]

Kayleigh: – she’s too busy picking the mold off of her house and trying to destroy my country, so, you know –

Sarah: Girl.

Kayleigh: Oh.

Sarah: I have said so many times, You, you could have been like Enya. You could have bought a castle, filled it with cats, and fucked off and been joyously by yourself. You could be like Stevie Nicks and have a background pool where no men are allowed and it’s just you and your friends and all your friends’ kids. Nonononono, you have to go and be literally the worst human alive. I’m so sorry that you, like, share a country with her? Bleah!

Kayleigh: Yeah, it’s, I was in Edinburgh a few weeks ago for a concert, and I was walking around Victoria Street, which is one of the streets that Diagon Alley was based on, and there were so many Harry Potter fans. Like, the most of them without children, it must be said, who were queuing to get into, like, the tat shops and were taking their pictures and stuff. Like, I was, I was so genuinely pissed off. The, when the Supreme Court ruling came through that basically completely screwed over trans people in this country, my favorite response to that is someone said, Why does she look like a villain in a Caddyshack sequel?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kayleigh: Yeah, she doesn’t even get to be the first – she doesn’t even get to be the main villain…

Sarah: She’s a…

Kayleigh: – with Chevy Chase. She has to be in the Jackie Mason version. But yeah –

Sarah: Well played!

Kayleigh: – I went to a trans rights protest after that happened, and there was someone who had a sign that said READ ANOTHER BOOK, and it was like, Yes! This is another thing that bugs me as well is, like – getting off at a tangent, but, like – the two, two of the most read authors in Britain are J. K. Rowling and David Walliams. David Walliams who is a piece of shit.

Sarah: Large piece of crap, yes.

Kayleigh: A disgusting Sieg Heil-ing, Nazi-saluting on British TV piece of shit –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kayleigh: – that’s the thing that might actually do him in, not the multiple accusations of being just an absolute sex criminal. And good! It should do him in. But, you know – and, and frankly, I don’t think he writes most of his own books, either, but I remember someone saying, Well, if kids can’t read Rowling and Walliams, what will they read? And it’s like, What do you mean, what will they read? Have you not been to any bookshop ever? We are in a boom of amazing children’s fiction! You know, and not all of it’s written by celebrities! We have an incredible array of books for your child to read. And you’re – [sputters] – are you genuinely this ignorant, or are you just, like, dumb?

Sarah: I think it’s a threat to class status –

Kayleigh: That’s what does me.

Sarah: I think for them, in-, in-, it is interpreted as a threat to their class status. If children aren’t reading the things that they read and they read other things, that’s an unacceptable – that, that mean, that means a divergence from the order, and one thing that Tressie McMillan Cottom, who’s a sociologist in North Carolina who’s super smart? She was saying – super smart is actually putting it mildly – that in times of upheaval, especially social and economic upheaval, people cling to class even harder, because if you know who’s above you, then you know who’s below you, and, and breaking away from these white authors that everyone has read for how many generations? That’s a break of order. We can’t have that.

I had asked on the list of questions if you had any books you wanted to shout out, and you have shouted out so many books, but if there’s anything you want to mention, I would love to hear it. Please, please do.

Kayleigh: Yeah! So I haven’t been – like, I will say that I started reading, bouncing between, like, manga and classics; I decided I want to read a lot more classics. I read Persuasion by Jane Austen for the first time this year and completely fell in love with it. You know that she, like, totally knew what she was doing, Austen: incredible, succinct, witty, scheming writer that I found. And I’m glad I read Persuasion when I was a little older than, like, when I read Pride and Prejudice. It’s such a great book of, like, second chances and looking back on your life and wondering about the decisions you’ve made and if your family really, really suck. [Laughs] But I, I found that to be so beautiful.

I recently, I, I mentioned James Ellroy, the crime writer. If you’re looking for, like, the polar opposite of cozy crime, James Ellroy writes, like, hard-bitten LA noirs that are really dark and seedy and kind of fascinating. Like, conspiratorial, actually. He, I rec-, my holiday read this year was American Tabloid, which is basically what if every conspiracy theory you heard about the JFK assassination was real? What if it did involve Howard Hughes and Jimmy Hoffa and Marilyn Monroe and all of these people? And he turns it into this, like, actually very gripping crime novel that feels like the most raw and, like, corrupt version of, of, of crime fiction in a way that I found really deeply fascinating.

I’ve been kinda behind on romance, actually. I will say, actually, I came to the book like ten, twelve years after everyone else. I read Bared to You by Sylvia Day? And I can’t remember why I decided to read it. I think it was just on sale on Amazon or something. And I’d always avoided reading it ‘cause it was, like, marketed as the other Fifty Shades of Grey book.

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: And it was like, Oh, this woman actually has, like, a really interesting idea about writing a book, two traumatized people trying to be in love and trying to navigate it. And I think if I’d read it when Fifty Shades was out I would have been like, Oh God, no, another one of this. It was like, Oh, this is what happens when someone who is a romance writer is try- – and has been doing this for a while – has kind of a better grasp on, on the material. So I was really taken by that, actually. I don’t know if I’ll read the next one. I, I need to –

I, I, I miss being a bit more active with my reading, but I’ve been trying to slow down. I, I actually, I started to get really kind of bitter about the, like, the ways that people were racing through so many books and, like, the way people on BookTok are like, I listen to books at two times the speed on, on Audible, and I – this is, I…read two hundred – it’s like, do you absorb any of it? Do you remember any – I wanted to come back to reading being sort of a slow pleasure.

Sarah: Yes, I completely –

Kayleigh: So –

Sarah: – understand that. I listen to audio at a high speed –

Kayleigh: Yeah.

Sarah: – but reading is a very, like, reading text is a very slow process. Yeah.

Kayleigh: I really enjoyed that.

Sarah: Yeah. I also think, by the way that – and we can, we should definitely connect to talk about this? The fact that reading has become an aesthetic?

Kayleigh: Mmm.

Sarah: Is, is partially about wealth, because by showing off how much you annotate your books, you’re showing off how much time you have to devote to one singular process of reading. That is an indication of time wealth, and so people are showing off their, their wealth of time, and then the books themselves, especially the candy-colored ones, they have to match the person’s aesthetic if they’re doing something with cameras involved. I remain fascinated by all of that.

Kayleigh: And then there’s the other version, which is got to forever be optimizing and which is why you’ve got to read all these books really, really quickly and, you know, I saw one TikTok where someone was complaining there were so many words on the page, and it’s like, ‘cause it’s not double-spaced in the way a lot of these BookTok books are?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kayleigh: Okay, I will give a shout-out to two other ones.

So the first one is a manga. It’s called Pluto by Naoki Urusawa.

Sarah: Oh!

Kayleigh: Naoki Urusawa I think is a genius. I think he is probably my favorite manga writer. This is a story from Astro Boy, who’s sort of like the, one of the icons of Japanese animation, but it’s rewritten as a, as a mystery and philosophical tale about, basically, the most intelligent robots in the world are all being killed off one by one, and one of them is a detective and has to try and figure out, and it’s actually this really beautiful examination of what it means to be human and, and when do you stop being a robot and when do you become an autonomous being? I find his work to be so moving and so – he’s, he, all of his illustrations, everyone looks like the coolest character actor from the 1970s? They all –

Sarah: Yes!

Kayleigh: – have the most incredible faces?

Sarah: Yes.

Kayleigh: And I’m such a fan of him for that.

I’ve also recently fallen in love – I needed something that was like, What if Dan Brown was good?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kayleigh: I’ve really fallen in love with Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s Pendergast series? Are you familiar with this?

Sarah: No!

Kayleigh: Okay, so Pendergast is like, obviously, this absolute wish-fulfillment character created by these two men. He’s like, What if Benedict Cumberbatch spoke like Daniel Craig in Knives Out but also had white hair –

Sarah: Okay.

Kayleigh: – and was a Southern dandy FBI detective who solved crimes involving time travel and dinosaurs and immortality? And they’re so much fun. They’re clearly written by two guys who know how to write, like, good airport novel trash? And I, they were so propulsive, and it’s like, I can use like half my brain reading this, but also, this is like a well-done version of this! So I’ve, like, kind of powered through the first of these few books. It is the kind of thing that if it was, like, a syndicated TV show in 1997, I would own every single copy taped off the TV. [Laughs]

And that has just been kind of very weirdly comforting right now, ‘cause I, I’ve been trying to find a romance novel that I have to click with. I’m just finding myself kind of turned off by a lot of stuff, which I’m really saddened by, but also I’m trying to find stuff that I’m, I, I feel has, like, good emotional heft without being so hard that it wears me down, ‘cause, like, my favorite genre of thing to read outside of romance is, like, dark literary novels where not much happens and everyone dies horribly? [Laughs] I don’t, just not in the mood for that right now, funnily enough!

Sarah: I can’t imagine why?

Kayleigh: …am in the mood for.

Sarah: Fair enough! I get it!

Kayleigh: Also, I have to give a, I have to give a shout-out, my favorite book I’ve read recently. To go back to classic fiction, I read The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, which is, like, you know how you read a book and you have that moment of, Oh, this is actually one of the greatest things ever written, and everyone who said good things about it was right? Like, reading Persuasion I got that, but Age of Innocence is one of my favorite films, the Martin Scorsese film with Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder. So I knew the story, but I was like, I want to see what this reads on the page. I want to see how, how it fits in with social mores, ‘cause, again, we’re talking about the Gilded Age. Like, so many of those social mores feel weirdly back now, and not in a good way!

Sarah: Nooo!

Kayleigh: And I found that book to be just such a moving and, like, aching story of longing and class and, and realizing that you will never have the thing you want, for no good reason other than because everyone told you you can’t have it. I’m so taken by it and, like, thoroughly, like, ah, bawling by the end, even when I knew what was coming! Like, I knew the exact words that were coming ‘cause I’ve seen that film so many time.

But that was so rewarding. I’ve actually found going back to a lot of the books that I have always said I would read and never got round to and, like, actually having time to sit with a bigger book like that?

Sarah: Mm-hmm?

Kayleigh: Has been really satisfying. And, like, and it’s not homework! Like, I really did, after – I think anyone who’s ever studied English literature at university like I did gets into the trap of feeling like I don’t want to read for homework anymore. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes!

Kayleigh: But it’s not homework! You should actually –

Sarah: Nooo!

Kayleigh: – try and take time of it. It’s so wonderful. So not to sound like everyone’s English teacher, but honestly, go read one of those classics that’s gathering dust on your shelves! They are an absolute riot, I promise.

Sarah: Especially when you read something like The Age of Innocence and then you see all of the pieces of it that have appeared elsewhere?

Kayleigh: Mm, yes.

Sarah: Like all of the references, all of the pieces, all of the motifs and some of the archetypes, they show up in what are not necessarily derivative works, but they are clearly inspired by this, and then you can sort of see the lineage into contemporary portrayals about clath and, class and wealth and status and all of that.

Kayleigh: And it really gave me a, a, a brand-new way to appreciate this film that I love so much, to see how just genuinely great an adaptation it actually is, ‘cause a lot of, like, a lot of fiction can be really hard to adapt. Like, I think we’re getting a new Sense and Sensibility movie soon, even though we have a really perfect one, but, you know, these stories get recycled over and over again, so it is, there is something kind of comforting about going back to the source and really seeing what stands up.

Like, people are still reading Austen for a reason. There are so many Austen romance novel retellings out there for a reason, and, like, I’m finally, having read so many versions of Persuasion and then going back to actually read Persuasion, and it’s like, it, it’s kind of amazing how so much is, of these books are, you know, the more things change, the more they stay the same. And frankly, at a time when I think a lot of us are, or certainly I have felt like all I need at this time is kind of like clarity? Not necessarily I don’t even know what I need it on. I, I sort of know it when I find it, and there was just something about so many of these books that I find, like, has really been good at lifting a veil, and rather than letting me sit in darkness, and that’s, that’s why I read books! That’s why I write things in general, but this is definitely why I have found so much comfort in books, even at times when I just don’t want to read anything other than manga and fanfiction.

Sarah: I get it! Whatever refills your well is so vital right now.

Kayleigh: Yeah, and also I think frankly the thing I read most is I have a, is just reading old issues of Vanity Fair, which I call research for my job, but, like, it is, I’m, my next profile for the Gossip Reading Club – spoiler – is going to be on the classic k. d. lang cover story –

Sarah: [Gasps!]

Kayleigh: – where she’s being shaved by Cindy Crawford.

Sarah: Like that wasn’t the sexual awakening for an entire generation of people!

Kayleigh: Basically, like the entire, like, era of lesbian chic in the ‘90s was essentially kicked off by k. d. lang and everyone being like, But she’s so hot! How are we going to deal with this? It’s like, Yeah, of course she’s hot! She’s still hot! [Laughs] So I…

Sarah: She’s always been hot.

Kayleigh: So yeah. If you’re ever bored, like, go read some classic, like, Vanity Fair pieces from like the ‘90s. Go read old Hollywood issues? I recently did an issue of my, my own newsletter on the very first Hollywood issue from 1995. You know Nancy Reagan’s in it?

Sarah: Oh, the Throat GOAT! No way!

Kayleigh: Yeah, they don’t call her that, funnily enough; they call her the hometown girl. I think, you know, they were underselling her really there, but –

Sarah: Oh my!

Kayleigh: It you want a, like, insight into celebrity, how it’s changed then versus now, go read things from when Vanity Fair had the money to do this stuff.

Sarah: Oh, and they had –

Kayleigh: Graydon Carter has a book out, a former writer at Vanity Fair, where he talks about this. I haven’t read it yet; I have it on my Kindle. But I don’t know if I’m going to be able to read it without just crying, remembering the days when people got four dollars a word for an article, because I don’t get that! [Laughs] Like, there’s a moment in Sex and the City where Carrie Bradshaw says something like she doesn’t know how much money she makes, but she gets four dollars a word from Vogue, and I’m like, I, I can’t…

Sarah: Fuck you! [Laughs]

Kayleigh: This is why you’re the villain of the show.

Sarah: This is why everyone hates you! Yeah. Oh my God, four dollars a word. Holy shit…

Kayleigh: This is why we all hate-watch And Just Like That…

Sarah: Yes. That’s literally, this is the show of hate-watching. It’s kind of incredible.

If you ever wanted to do a pop culture discussion podcast, I volunteer as tribute?

Kayleigh: Hell yeah. I would totally be up for that. [Laughs]

Sarah: I don’t know where I’m going to find the time –

Kayleigh: Yeah.

Sarah: – but I’ll circle back to that idea, because I, I really –

Kayleigh: I do miss doing the Hollywood read, ‘cause Sara worked like eighty hours a week when she – you know, she still works eighty hours; she has a full-time job and is the deputy editor at LaineyGossip, so she…time to do it, so.

Sarah: I love your, I love your podcast. I loved that podcast so much. I listen to it all the time, even when I – and when she would be like, And this person directed this and screenwrote that, and I’m like, I don’t even know who these people are, but obviously that lineage is very clear. I love that kind of shit, so I, I understand why it’s not possible, but I love that show, and if you ever wanted to do another podcast I, I volunteer as tribute.

Kayleigh: One hundred percent. [Laughs]

Sarah: Thank you again for your time. You’ve been so generous with your brain and your time. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I hope I can email you again.

Kayleigh: …I love doing this, and I don’t get a chance to blab on podcasts very often anymore – [laughs] – so I love having this chance to do this, so.

[outro]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you profoundly to Kayleigh Donaldson for hanging out with me for so long. A special note for our Patreon folks: our bonus episode next week is going to be over an hour of Kayleigh and me talking about pop culture, concepts of masculinity and femininity and celebrity personae, and a lot more, so if you would like to hear that it’ll probably drop most likely on Tuesday, should the editing go well.

I also want to say, because I forgot to ask, where you can find Kayleigh Donaldson! You can find her at her website kayleighdonaldson.com, and you can also follow her at Gossip Reading Club, which is her Substack, and I will have links in the show notes to her site, and I will have links to all of her bylines at The Daily Beast and Pajiba.

As usual, I end with a terrible joke. This one is bad, and I love it.

Did you hear about the pirate who walked into a bar with a paper towel on his head?

Yeah, pirate walked into a bar with a paper towel on his head, and when the bartender said, What the hell is that?

Pirate said, Argh! I’ve got a Bounty on my head.

[Laughs] Any pirate joke is very welcome in my household. I actually have a sign in the front room of my house that says A Pirate and His Saucy Wench Live Here. We, we like pirates, apparently. It’s probably being from Pittsburgh, but either way, Argh! I’ve got a Bounty on me head!

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend; we’ll see you back here next week! And in the words of my favorite retired podcast Friendshipping, thank you for listening; you’re welcome for talking.

[end of music]