693. Holiday Wishes I with Susie, Elizabeth, Alanna

Sarah Wendell: On September 12th I shared that a listener had contacted me to let me know that an ad for ICE had run before the start of my show and that they were very upset about it. Since then I have been recording intros each week to ask for your help. The campaign, which I have been calling the FICE campaign, is very simple. I made about two hundred dollars a month from Acast running these ads, and these ads are very, very lucrative for Acast and also for me. They offer a larger percentage of revenue, because as I have been saying, right-wing grift is very well-funded. If I can increase Patreon pledges by two hundred dollars a month, I will turn off all of the ads that are dynamically inserted before and after the show for everyone. So instead of joining a Patreon for ad-free episodes, you can join the Patreon to turn off dynamic ads for everyone.

It is now November the 19th, and I am one dollar away from the goal. Thank you, thank you, thank you for everything that you have done to make this campaign a success. We are one dollar away from turning off all dynamic ads from beginning and end of this show.

If you’ve been thinking about joining the Patreon, now would be a fabulous time, and you can gift a membership. Patreon pledges, in addition to eliminating all those dynamic ads, cover hosting, distribution, paying for transcripts from garlicknitter, and keep me going week after week. As I’ve said, it’s like buying me one nice cocktail a month, and thank you very much for doing so. Your benefits for being a Patreon include being guests on these episodes, plus a lovely Discord community, full PDF scans of Romantic Times, and monthly crafty Zoomy hangouts.

I am honored to have all of you in the Patreon, in my community, and I invite you to join us. Thank you so much for your support and your understanding. On with the show.

[music]

Sarah: Hello, and welcome to episode number 693 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell with about, mm, seventy-five percent of my voice, and it is time for Holiday Wishes. We do this every year, and I know how much you love it, and I am so excited to share these episodes with you. If you’re new, let me explain how this works: every year members of the podcast Patreon, and this year Smart Bitches After Dark, are invited to connect with me to share a book that they loved, wishes for everyone for 2026, and, if they wish, a terrible joke. This means that for the next few weeks my guests are all of you.

In this episode, we’re going to talk with Susie, Elizabeth, and Alanna. We’ve got classics, new mysteries, series romances, and Sapphic yearning. I have a record number of people signed up to do Holiday Wishes conversations with me, and these episodes are so uplifting and delightful, I am so excited, and there is still time to sign up if you would like to join in. I promise it’s not scary; it’s super easy; it’s just you and me having a conversation. If you are in the podcast Patreon, you can find a post inside Patreon with a link, or you can message or email me. Easy as pie!

I also get to have a compliment in this episode, which is so great!

To Emily Jane: All the animals that you observe and admire are doing the exact same thing when you appear at the window, because they admire how thoughtful, careful, and very, very kind you are.

If you would like a compliment of your own, head over to patreon.com/SmartBitches. We would love to have you join the Patreon community.

Support for this episode comes from Puck You by Flynn Novak. If you like steamy, sexy rivals-to-lovers romances with intense competition and chemistry both on and off the ice, you are going to love this book. I’ve said this before on Smart Bitches, but I love romances where both characters are athletes. Same sport, different sport, I don’t care. Athlete characters create some of my favorite conflicts: there’s the public and private persona, which are sometimes at odds, and the behind-the-scenes practice and training sessions, leading to games where the stakes increase every time. It’s like rivalry and competence porn. I love it. In Puck You, not only are both characters hockey players, but the story highlights the disparity between women’s and men’s sports teams on the college level.

When Grace Gillman transfers to Dallard University for her senior year, she’s excited to play top-level hockey with a high-ranking team, where she expects top-tier facilities and opportunities. But her excitement quickly fades when she learns that the women’s team is not a priority. Sebastian Evans needs this year to go perfectly. It’s his last chance to prove himself to scouts for a professional hockey career, but he’s juggling school, an old injury, and the pressure to perform is tough enough. Dealing with Grace, the fiery star from the women’s team, makes everything harder. Neither Grace nor Sebastian wants to compete with each other, but when Grace sees how much better the men’s team is treated, she cannot stay silent. The two quickly become rivals, both on and off the ice, but when their personal conflict starts affecting their game, they risk being benched permanently. Despite the tension, sparks fly between them, and what began as a bitter rivalry might ignite into something hot enough to melt the ice they skate on.

With chapters from both Grace and Sebastian’s points of view, you get the full story of this angsty and very steamy rivals-to-lovers romance, and many readers have said they had a hard time putting it down. Puck You by Flynn Novak is available now from W by Wattpad Books wherever books are sold.

All right, are you ready to start the first of our holiday wishes? My first guest is Susie Felber, who I forgot to ask to introduce herself. Go me! On with the podcast.

[music]

Sarah: First question: what is a book or books – I, I understand it’s hard to limit – that you really enjoyed this year? Does not have to be a 2025 book.

Susie Felber: I’m going to make it really quick, and I brought visual aids for you. Number one was Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations!

Sarah: I was not expecting that, but okay!

Susie: I don’t know why I never read Dickens before this year! This was my first. So –

Sarah: No kidding!

Susie: I’m embarrassed to say that. I maybe just didn’t think it was for me, and I completely loved it, so that’s A number one. That was great. Did you read it? Did you love it?

Sarah: Oh yeah, I had to read it in school, but I remember it. I also remember by memory the last paragraph of Great Expectations?

Susie: Get out!

Sarah: Yeah!

>> And as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so the evening mists were rising now, and with all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.

Susie: Oh, that is really good.

Sarah: I could probably be doing something good with that brain cell, but that’s its job.

Susie: How did you, did you have to do that for school? Did you present it?

Sarah: I had to present – and we did a lot of – this was an English teacher who really liked to do a lot of things with names, like, what do all the names in this story mean? But that I remember – this is kind of embarrassing, actually – that I memorized –

Susie: You nailed it.

Sarah: I nailed it?

Susie: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Yep! I saw no shadow of another parting from her. I mem-, ended up memorizing it because it was part of the TV show Beauty and the Beast with Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton, which as a young Sarah I was obsessed with? This is the one with Vincent where he’s like, you know, looks like a, a big, tall cat man? Yeah, that was part of the show, and I, for some reason, I’d watched it enough times, but I, hearing the voice really embeds it in my memory. So yeah, that’s what lives in my brain cell. What did you like about it?

Susie: I’m, I am so impressed. I just want to say, though, at the ending, I read the ending, I loved it, but all of a sudden it, it, it hit like a wrong, like a piano out of tune, and I went, That ending feels like a weird wrap-it-up edit. Like, it just didn’t feel right to me. it was a bit weird, and then I read the footnote, and it was right there.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Susie: It said that the happy ending was not the original, was not his original ending!

Sarah: Hm!

Susie: And I was like, He, he went to friends asking for advice, and, and it, there was no suggestion in his original draft that they would end up together with a happy ending. So I think that is a romance, you know, the, he went there, but I’m not saying he gave it the wrong ending, but did you know that?

Sarah: I did not know that, actually.

Susie: But I kind of loved it. I love that he went with the happy ending, but it did, it just kind of sounded like maybe he wasn’t convinced. I don’t know. Anyway.

What I loved about it? Like, literally everything, in that it didn’t, I didn’t expect it to not feel dated. I mean, just that simply?

Sarah: For sure!

Susie: It felt so fresh and alive, so that’s why I loved it.

So I can move onto another book. So I had a lot of friends who wrote books this year.

Sarah: Oh!

Susie: This one I’m sharing is Mrs. Christie at the Mystery Guild Library by Amanda Chapman. That’s her penname, ‘cause she also wrote cozies under her real name, Amy Pershing, but she’s my neighbor! She lives two blocks away, and this was her first – you know, because she wrote three cozies, you know, paperbacks, and this is her first hardback! And this is a woman, like, we should all be inspired because she had the full-time job doing PR for a bank, and, you know, she had to do what she had to do to pay the college tuitions, and after retirement she decided she wanted to try to become a novelist, and she did! She got Elizabeth Gilbert’s quote on the back there?

Sarah: Daaamn! Congrats to her! That’s awesome!

Susie: Yeah. So I, I really enjoyed the book, not just ‘cause she’s my friend, but it takes place in New York City. I live right across – you know, you swim, you can swim to New York City if you jump in the Hudson.

Sarah: Not that you should do that, though. I, I discourage it.

Susie: I would discourage it too.

Sarah: Yeah.

Susie: But that was really good.

And then I’m in the midst of another – this is someone who’s a friend long ago, but I’m almost done with The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, which is Kiran Desai, and I went to college with her. And we, she also won the Man Booker Prize –

Sarah: Daaamn!

Susie: – for her last book. She was the youngest ever Man Booker Prize winner – or maybe they just say Booker Prize now – and it took her twenty years to come out with her next novel. Twenty years!

Sarah: I can understand that pressure, you know what I mean?

Susie: Yeah! I mean, I don’t know. It was pressure and her commitment to craft.

Oh! I’m going to share one more book with you…

Sarah: Please do!

Susie: This was from a Little Free Library, and there’s a way you will understand. I was walking with my daughter, and we got this out of the Little Free Library: Snowbound with a Baby.

Sarah: Snowbound with a Baby! Oh, look at that!

Susie: Snowbound with a Baby. And the joy of this is just that, you know, it’s not bad. It’s not bad!

Sarah: Nope!

Susie: It’s what I can say, and my daughter had never experienced a Harlequin romance, and of course the title made her laugh, and I’m like, We’re reading this together! So now it’s like –

Sarah: Aww!

Susie: – a bonding experience with my soon-to-be-sixteen-year-old daughter, and just to say, like, you can laugh at the title, but you’ve got to respect the game. It’s readable, and it’s, and it’s enjoyable, and I had never introduced my daughter to modern romance.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Susie: That, does that make me a bad mom?

Sarah: No! I don’t know.

Susie: [Laughs]

Sarah: I think it was Kathleen O’Reilly who used to write Harlequin novels who said that they are the perfect bathtub book because you can finish the whole thing and only really have to add hot water one time, because they are short, and they get it done. I think Nora calls it dancing Swan Lake in a phone booth? Because you have such a tiny amount of space to make a really big story, and there are so many people who use them as writing technique instruction, like, guides? Like, look at the character work in this one paragraph. Look at the plot progression in – look how much has been shown to you in this one page that you have all of this backstory based on this very economical use of words. They’re, they’re studied as economical ways of telling stories that are very rich in a little itty-bitty space.

Susie: Everything you just said there was so brilliant.

Sarah: Oh, thank you!

Susie: And I’m still digesting the Swan Lake in a phone booth, but –

Sarah: That’s Nora. ‘Cause she used to write ‘em too. She’s like, It’s dancing Snow White in a phone booth. You’ve got no room, full ballet.

Susie: You just so smartly described, described the, the platform…

Sarah: Isn’t it great? It’s not even my words, either. It’s, it’s – I love them? They’re, they’re not always – there are some books, some series books that I’ve found that really want to reinforce gender roles and, and they do so with a really big hammer. We don’t need that. Some of them are so exquisite, and when you find a good one it’s just like, Ah! Sarah Morgan writes incredible Harlequins. She writes single title now, but her Harlequins – she used to write medicals, ‘cause she was a nurse? She once –

Susie: I’m writing this down now so I have it.

Sarah: She – [laughs] – Sarah Morgan once told me she was a nurse, and one of the reasons she loved to write medicals is because the doctors had to listen to the nurses when she wrote them.

Susie: Ohhh!

Sarah: She’s like, My doctors are going to be respectful, they’re going to listen to the nurses, and they’re going to take, take on board their criticisms. I’m like, This is so hot! [Laughs]

Susie: I just love that. And I mean, that’s why I love – I’m not just saying this – why I love what you do, because look, back in the day I’d go with my mother [NB: Edith Layton, author of historical romances] to conventions, and I’d get bags of books, and I’d read everything, and I was able to find the gems for myself, you know?

Sarah: Yeah.

Susie: And I learned that. Like, I know what you’re saying is absolutely true, but in my current life, where I read everything – romance is just one thing on my plate that I read –

Sarah: Of course!

Susie: – and I know that’s true for you as well, but, like, where you have always helped me is to be able to, like, I can always dip in and find the best picks of the stuff that I don’t normally read, and I don’t have to have a bag of books, you know?

Sarah: Thank you!

Susie: So your recommendations, I’m always clicking on the links and going through.

Sarah: Thank you! That’s really cool! I appreciate that. It, it is a weird service to help people find books they want to read. It’s the same thing we’ve been doing for twenty years, and now it’s both easier and harder. There are so many more books, and there’s so many more people talking about books, but the way the, that readers who are coming to my site want to learn about books, we’re pretty – you’re, we’re a pretty unique service in the way in which we discuss books and go very in-depth as to what they’re doing.

Susie: And you’re more important now, because of curation being, and reliability, you know, is, and with the rise of AI. Like, what you do is –

Sarah: Oh yes.

Susie: – so much more important now.

Sarah: Oh yes. [Laughs] You know I’m not AI! I screw up all the time! Well, thank you. I really appreciate that.

Susie: It’s so true! It’s where you, you rule, and even more so now. The personality, the authenticity, the knowledge that I – you show your cards, you know? You show your biases, you show your cards, and you give your honest and extremely informed opinion, so that’s what I love!

Sarah: Thank you! That’s so cool of you to say! I really appreciate it. And sometimes I really need to hear that, because if it’s me in my own head, the message is very different. [Laughs]

Susie: You know, honestly, I hesitated to say that, ‘cause I was like, it just seemed so obvious to me, but I really should say that. Again, as someone who, I don’t think I’ve read a romance without, you know – unless it’s, a friend has written it?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Susie: I don’t think I’ve read a romance without it being a SPTB recommendation and link. I just, why? Life is short! I know that you guys are, are getting me the real deal, so yeah.

Sarah: Thank you! I appreciate that very much.

Do you have wishes for 2026 that you would like to share?

Susie: You know, the wishes are just for everyone to feel you’re not alone. Like, especially this time now and this climate, and going down rabbit holes on social media. We’re not alone, and we, I wish that people would get out into the world more, too, because frankly, we have our online lives, but things seem more dire when we’re online than –

Sarah: Yes.

Susie: – in reality, and I’ve learned that lesson. I’m, I’m engaging with – [laughs] – certain community organizations that people have different political opinions than me –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Susie: – right? And I hang out at places where people are different than me, and that has been the best, most productive use of my time, because you can’t other someone if you get to know them and you’re friends with them, right?

Sarah: Oh, for sure. For sure, for sure. It, it is really hard, I think, to go out, because the pressure is Stay inside; everyone hates you; it’s dangerous. And the, the, the way in which this political climate operates is it wants you alone and scared –

Susie: Yep.

Sarah: – and that’s not so great!

Susie: A hundred, a hundred percent. Hundred percent.

Sarah: Did you bring a bad joke? It is okay if you did not.

Susie: I did! Of course I did. So –

Sarah: Oh, I’m so excited!

Susie: The thing is, look, I’m a comedian. I get paid to write and perform comedy. What I’m doing here is a joke of someone else’s that is short and sweet! Right?

Sarah: Yes.

Susie: Okay. Here we go; I want to make sure I get it right.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Susie: Hey, I’ve been driving – okay, you ready?

Sarah: I’m ready.

Susie: A Jew dies, goes to Heaven, and meets God.

Sarah: ‘Kay.

Susie: He tells Him a Holocaust joke. God says, That’s not funny. The old man pauses, replies, Well, I guess You had to be there.

Sarah: Ohhh shiiit! [Laughs]

Susie: And that one was told to me by a dear friend who –

Sarah: God, I love dark humor.

Susie: – is the cantor who married me and a director for the short film I’m working on, helping with now, and he said Freddie Roman told it to him. Freddie –

Sarah: Amazing.

Susie: – Roman was a Catskills comic.

Sarah: Well, thank you so much for doing this! It is –

Susie: I want to thank you so much! Thank you a million.

Sarah: Thank you a million! I really appreciate you connecting with me to do these. You, by the way, are my first Holiday Wishes! You are the inaugural Holiday Wishes.

Susie: Aww! I’m just your, I’m your lurker! You don’t understand; like, I’ve been lurking – I mean, I’m on Patreon, but, like, I lurk. I lurk, I lurk…

Sarah: So do I, everywhere else. I get it.

Susie: So when I saw the call-out, I was like, I would just like to see her, and that’s – and, and I thought your recommending a book, tell a joke, like, it’s all frankly fricking lovely.

[music]

Elizabeth: Good afternoon! I’m Elizabeth! I am from central Connecticut, and I work in the aerospace business.

Sarah: Oh cool!

Elizabeth: Yeah…

Sarah: Very cool! That is very cool! I love a cool job.

So my first question is always what book or books have you read this year that rocked your world?

Elizabeth: I have two recommendations. I will first say that the new – I hope I say her name correct – novella by Amal El-Mohad? Mohtar?

Sarah: I think that’s it.

Elizabeth: Who wrote This Is How You Lose the Time War?

Sarah: Yes.

Elizabeth: She issued a new novella, The River Has Roots, and the audio version of that is spectacular.

Sarah: Really!

Elizabeth: It’s four hours. It’s beautiful.

Sarah: I love that, and I also love the proliferation of novellas?

Elizabeth: Yes.

Sarah: Like –

Elizabeth: Yes –

Sarah: I was –

Elizabeth: – definitely.

Sarah: – I was just talking to Amanda, who was ranting at me ‘cause she’s reading a book and she’s like, I’m never finishing this book; why am I never making progress? And it’s seven hundred pages. She’s like –

Elizabeth: Oh no. Give me –

Sarah: – no one needs that.

Elizabeth: Give me three two-hundred-page books instead. I’ll take it.

Sarah: Yes! Yes! You want the, the little digestible – like, you want it, you want –

Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – you want the satisfaction of the entire story arc within a reasonable timeframe of your energy. Otherwise it’s like –

Elizabeth: I feel –

Sarah: Right? Like, I’m going to put it down and be like, Where was I? Who are these people? I don’t know. Who cares? I’ll just move on.

Elizabeth: Mm, mm-hmm.

Sarah: That is a great rec. What is this about?

Elizabeth: This is, it’s a, it’s a fairytale. It’s about a fa-, two sisters who live in a family, who are near a willow grove on a river, and it borders Faerie land, and so it just follows the fairytale of, you know, one of the sisters falling in love with a fairy and, you know, how that all works out.

Sarah: That’s –

Elizabeth: Or doesn’t.

Sarah: – very cool, and, and quite on trend, I might add.

Elizabeth: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: And in, in –

Elizabeth: Or it’s, it’s, it’s more classic fairy than, like –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth: – Sarah J. Maas type fairy?

Sarah: Horny fairy?

Elizabeth: So –

Sarah: You mean it’s more classic fairy than horny fairy.

Elizabeth: Yes. Oh yes.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elizabeth: Yes, yes, yes.

Sarah: She is a good person to, to, to embark in that world. She’d be very good at it. I’m very excited to read this. Thank you. Do you have any more books, other books that you want –

Elizabeth: Yes! The other one I read that I absolutely loved was geeky, steampunk, Victorian romance, and that’s the Love’s Academic series by India Holton.

Sarah: Ohhh! India!

Elizabeth: So it’s – yeah, it’s The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love and The Geographer’s Map to Romance, and she has a third one coming out about the sister/cousin, who is a historian, and I think that comes out next year.

Sarah: I am so excited there’s a third one. Are you excited?

Elizabeth: Yes! Oh, I’m, I’m thrilled. I’m thrilled. I was like, when I, I found the second one in a local bookstore –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Elizabeth: – and then I was like, Oh, there’s a first one! Maybe I should read the first one first before I get the second one! And when I did the first one I was like, Well, I didn’t have to do this to do the second one, but I’m glad I did.

Sarah: I enjoyed it! Yep.

Elizabeth: I enjoyed it. It’s, it’s, they’re all, both of them are trippy rides, and I, I have high hopes for the third.

Sarah: My experience reading the first one was, This is so great. Where has this been?

Elizabeth: Yes! Yes.

Sarah: Right? Like, I am jonesing on this; I love this so much.

Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Where has this been? Why have I not had this before?

Elizabeth: Right. And, and I hope there is more!

Sarah: Please, please, let us put it into the universe.

What wishes do you have for people in 2026?

Elizabeth: In 2- – well, I took my pre-teen nieces to see Hamilton on Broadway in Boston. This was their first Broadway musical. They had been to The Nutcracker for three years in Boston, and just the joy and delight those two girls experienced from the musical – I just wish, I would wish everyone to just have that kind of fresh-out-of-a-musical joy and delight in their lives in 2026.

Sarah: That is such a specific, ebullient feeling?

Elizabeth: Yes!

Sarah: Like, I have just seen –

Elizabeth: Yes.

Sarah: – live theater, and the thing about theater is that it only exists when it’s being performed?

Elizabeth: Yes.

Sarah: It’s very temporal? Like, it –

Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – you can read a screenplay, you can read a libretto, but it only exists when it’s happening.

Elizabeth: Right, and –

Sarah: And so you got to be part of that happening. It’s such a –

Elizabeth: Yes.

Sarah: – unique joy.

Elizabeth: Yeah, and, and it was great, because even the next – the, the show was at 8 o’clock at night, so we didn’t get home until, you know, late –

Sarah: Uh-huh.

Elizabeth: – but the next morning the girls were up and they were arguing which was the second best song of Hamilton?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Elizabeth: Because they agreed on the first best song.

Sarah: Which did they think was the first best?

Elizabeth: The first best song was all the king’s parts.

Sarah: Fair! Absolutely fair.

Elizabeth: Yes, yes.

Sarah: They make good choices.

Elizabeth: And the second, the second favorite was “The Room Where It Happens.”

Sarah: Mmm. That’s a, that’s a tough one to assign number two. That’s great, though!

Elizabeth: Yeah. Yeah. So they, they truly enjoyed it, and they were truly joyful, and I just wish everyone kind of had that joy at least once next year.

Sarah: See, that’s a really lovely wish. And, and you know, it’s doable. There is always a local theater production of something, and you can get cheap tickets for things everywhere. Reminding us that the arts are a thing that we can experience as a community is never a bad thing, right?

Elizabeth: Right, right. And the arts are important in our lives.

Sarah: Yes!

Elizabeth: The arts add value to our life.

Sarah: Yes, they are very important! Like, I, I remain baffled that anyone can argue that that’s not true, but lots of people are, and I just do not understand.

Elizabeth: I do not either.

Sarah: Nope.

Did you bring a bad joke?

Elizabeth: Courtesy of my brother, who is the father –

Sarah: Please thank your brother for me.

Elizabeth: – who is the father of the two girls. I will thank my brother. His bad joke is this:

When does a regular joke become a dad joke?

Sarah: When?

Elizabeth: When it becomes apparent.

Sarah: Ohhh, that’s a good one! Please thank your brother for me. That was –

Elizabeth: I will thank my brother for you. [Laughs]

Sarah: That was definitely a high-level groan out of me. Well done, well done.

Thank you so much for doing this. I love doing these at the end of the year, and you are my second interview of the season.

Elizabeth: Oh, hey! Thank you! I love how you edit these and put these together. It’s just sheer genius.

Sarah: Oh, thank you!

Elizabeth: So thank you.

Sarah: They’re so fun! They’re so fun, and it’s like my guests are all of you! Yay! And I’m starting earlier this year because last year I had such a turnout. I was like, Oh crap! I might not have enough weeks in the calendar! So –

Elizabeth: [Laughs]

Sarah: – thank you, thank you, thank you for signing up to do one. It makes me so happy to, to talk to everybody face to face, so thank you!

Elizabeth: Yes! Well, I appreciate your having me. It’s always a – I did this last year, and it’s fun to do it again this year.

[music]

Sarah: Hang on, my guy. Hey, Alanna! I’m playing blanket game.

Alanna: Hi! Blanket game!

Sarah: Oh no, where are the treats? Where are they? Where’d they go? Are they in a blanket? Oh no! How did they get there? What are we going to do? Ah! You’re so smart!

Alanna: He’s clearly the smartest. Very orange.

Sarah: Oh, he’s, he’s the very smartest orange who has ever oranged, yes. Yes, this is his favorite game, to the point where he knows the words for it, and I have to tell the pet sitters how to play it. Otherwise he just follows them around the house and screams at them for their lack of knowledge.

Alanna: [Laughs] Obviously the only, the only response to that.

Sarah: Clearly unacceptable otherwise. How ya doing?

Alanna: Okay. It’s been, it’s been a week.

Sarah: Yeah!

Alanna: The time change happened a week early for us?

Sarah: That’s right, you guys are first, and we’re way after by a week. That’s right –

Alanna: Yeah.

Sarah: – that’s right.

Alanna: So, like –

Sarah: Yeah, it sucks for that week.

Alanna: That, plus the fact that the store, like, stores are all closed on, in our state, on the 1st of November? And –

Sarah: Why? Is it a, is it a holiday?

Alanna: Yeah, so it’s All Saints’ Day, and they…

Sarah: Oh! Okay! I mean, I knew it was All Saints’ Day, but I didn’t think that that’d be a German holiday. Okay!

Alanna: Some of the states, not all.

Sarah: Not all of them.

Alanna: But ours specifically, and it meant that stores were closed for two days, and I –

Sarah: Oh, and so of course everyone panicked buy, went to panic-buy milk and beer and, like, like a snowstorm, they’re all stocking up.

Alanna: Yeah! It, it really is, it’s like a natural disaster.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Alanna: We’re like, Oh no! What will we do if you can’t buy bread for two days?

Sarah: What will happen if I have a whim for some beer and I cannot get my hands upon it? Oh no! So that’s exhausting.

Alanna: So – yeah. It was quite the, it’s been quite the week of just lots of things.

Sarah: Are you still the emperor of the sushi bar? [Laughs]

Alanna: I don’t know, I don’t know that I would call myself the emperor. More like a semi-willing grunt.

Sarah: [Laughs] I, I think it’s very cool, actually, that you work at the sushi bar. I think that’s a pretty awesome, awesome job, because at least you get to, like, see people and – you know, you’re not in a back room.

Alanna: Yeah, yeah. I definitely, definitely right in the middle of everything.

Sarah: Yep.

Alanna: My favorite thing is when people come up to us and ask us where stuff is in the store?

Sarah: Like, I can tell you where the salmon is; it’s right here.

Alanna: Yeah. I mean, I’m like –

Sarah: And my knife is in my hand! [Laughs]

Alanna: Sometimes I know, and I’m just like, Yeah, no, it’s over there.

Sarah: Yeah. That way!

Alanna: Sometimes, sometimes I’m like, I have as much knowledge of this as you do? I just, I only work here. This is my job.

Sarah: I can tell you about sushi, and that is the extent –

Alanna: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – of my knowledge. I totally skipped the part, you know, where you introduce yourself, so –

Alanna: Oh yeah!

Sarah: – who are you?

Alanna: [Laughs] So my name is Alanna, also known as JFHobbit, and as you may have guessed from the previous conversation, I am currently living in Germany. Well, I say currently: we are permanently moved here to Germany as of about two years ago.

Sarah: I was just thinking, when I was looking at my calendar, I was like, Oh, I’m talking to Alanna today! I spoke to you, like, right, right, right after you moved or right before, two years ago. It was like right around your move, and you were like, I have no brain cells, I am so stressed. And then a year later you were settling in. And here you are two years later: you have a new place; you have a, a better apartment; and you have a job; and you’ve gotten through so much bureaucracy and the, I know that the German culture is Olympic level when it comes to bureaucracy.

Alanna: Yes.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Alanna: Yeah. I have to, I actually have to renew my residence permit this, in the next month.

Sarah: Oh, may the Force be with you.

Alanna: So I’m very, very familiar with that, but at least I can mostly read the letters and emails now.

Sarah: That’s good! I mean, just look at how much has changed for you in two years! Like, I love checking in with you because in, in the course of a year, like, you have got so much language facility; you are kicking ass and taking names. Like, it’s so cool! Well done!

Alanna: Thank you. It feels a little bit more stressful most of the time, but yes. It, it has been a lot of, a lot, especially looking back at two years ago, when I was just like –

Sarah: Ahhh! Too much stuff!

Alanna: So many things.

Sarah: I was just in Spain, and I was, you know, speaking Spanish –

Alanna: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and one thing I realized is that I know a lot! Like, I know how to say a lot of things, but I don’t know how to say all the things, and so I am constantly aware how much I don’t know. Do you know that, do you know what I mean?

Alanna: Yeah.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Alanna: Yes. Very much.

Sarah: You, you know this feeling like, Whoa! I’m doing okay, but I could really tell how much I do not know! [Laughs]

Alanna: Every day. And one thing I’ve noticed, being like my actual training is as an educator, is that I had what probably may have been considered language delays, like, in speaking and listening specifically –

Sarah: Oh wow!

Alanna: – in English, but because I was so good with language just in general, I kind of managed to get around it to where I could, like, if I didn’t hear every single thing a person said I could fill in the gaps or –

Sarah: Yeah, your, your, your parsing got way, way leveled up, yeah.

Alanna: Mm-hmm. But then I got to German, and I’m like –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Alanna: – people will try, come by and, like, like, other people who work at the store, but not for the sushi place, will come by and, like, try and chat, and I’ll, like, be smiling and nodding and five minutes later be like, Oh! Now I know how to respond to that –

Sarah: Yes!

Alanna: – what you just said.

Sarah: Yes. Yes. I know this exact feeling. And it’s, it’s like, I know how to do these superficial reactions; why did my brain just restart?

Alanna: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: I didn’t need the –

Alanna: Yeah.

Sarah: – blue screen of death right now; what the hell?

Alanna: I’m just like, There’s a response there. I know it’s there.

Sarah: I know I have –

Alanna: I probably know what it is.

Sarah: Yes. I will, it’s, it’s the worst spirit of the staircase, like they say in French? Like –

Alanna: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – three or four minutes later you remember what you’re supposed to say.

Alanna: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: That is the worst.

Alanna: Yeah, and sometimes I just tell them I’m sorry, like, Sorry, my German’s still slow. Like, it’s okay, but it’s still slow.

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Alanna: It takes me a minute to get there.

Sarah: Oh yeah. You’ve got to connect all those synapses every morning, one by one. Doo-doo-doo-doo.

Alanna: Gosh!

[Laughter]

Sarah: So tell me – I love doing these interviews, and I love that you’re doing one for the third, fourth year in a row. Thank you!

Alanna: I think fourth year.

Sarah: Is this – hell yeah! So –

Alanna: Yeah.

Sarah: – thank you for doing this. What book or books rocked your world this year?

Alanna: So I, I have a list. It may even be a little bit shorter than last year?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Alanna: I’ve been, the last like month I fell into a Pokémon hole in, partially in preparation for and then playing obsessively Pokémon Legends: Z-A? Which, in terms of storytelling –

Sarah: Uh-huh.

Alanna: – is, I think, probably one of the best games of this, like, modern era of Pokémon that they, that they’ve done so far. It’s got a really good story.

Sarah: That’s excellent! That’s excellent. I love how hard they work on the story.

Alanna: It is, they, they have always had a pretty solid, a pretty solid story format?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Alanna: But they’ve really gotten better at building up different characters –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Alanna: – to, like, pop-, like, the, the cast of this game in particular, some of the characters are very divisive, but that means they just, they were written really well, ‘cause people have very strong reactions to them.

Sarah: Yes. ‘Cause if you wrote a, like a boring, milquetoast character, no one would give a shit.

Alanna: Yeah, exactly.

Sarah: That’s super great. So is one of the things that got you through this year Pokémon?

Alanna: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I started playing, actually, about a year ago, Pokémon Go again, a year and a half ago? Which helped me when I wasn’t working outside of the house, working mostly from home –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Alanna: – to get out and, like, explore?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Alanna: And take in the surroundings.

Sarah: Yep.

Alanna: And so now that it still helps me, like, remember that the outside exists when I’m not working. Yeah, I haven’t found anyone local who plays it. I finally got my spouse to start playing it.

Sarah: Well done.

Alanna: Kind of grumbling-ly.

Sarah: [Laughs] It’s ‘cause you’re nice! It’s ‘cause you’re nice!

Alanna: Yeah. And they’re like, It’s ‘cause I love you.

Sarah: Yep.

Alanna: But yes.

Sarah: So books. Got any –

Alanna: So books, yes. The first one was the very, very beginning of the year: Heartwaves by Anita Kelly?

Sarah: Oh!

Alanna: It was, it was, she independently published it because she couldn’t get publishers to take it, and I read it and I was like, I don’t know what they’re on about, because it was, it was, it was a deep book. But it was just so focused on, like, queer joy in the face of the existential crisis of living in America? That it just, it was so, so good. Queer joy, found family –

Sarah: All your favorite things!

Alanna: All of my favorite things. So yeah, I read it, and I was like, Oh my gosh! I was, easily my first favorite, ‘cause I read it like the first week of the year.

I also did a, I did a lot of rereading this year? I think I’ve only reread Murderbot one time this year, which is maybe – like, I’m like, Wow, how did I get away with only one time? It’s because I, we listened to, like, the second half of the Psy-Changeling series –

Sarah: That’ll take some time!

Alanna: – and all of Psy-Changeling Trinity.

Sarah: Yep, okay! You and I were rereading the same things, by the way.

Alanna: [Laughs] Yeah. And I started listening to the audiobooks for Ice Planet Barbarians over the last –

Sarah: Ohhh!

Alanna: – couple months, which I had never done. I’d always read them in eBook form. So that has been interesting.

Sarah: All right, so I’ve got a question for you.

Alanna: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: All right, that’s a lot of sexytimes. It’s a lot of sexytimes being described to you. How, how are you with explicit, frequent sex in audio?

Alanna: It depends on the book, and it depends on my mood. So, like, sometimes, ‘cause I’ll sometimes listen to them at work with – and then I’m, like, literally on display in a kiosk with –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Alanna: – glass walls while walking around preparing sushi ingredients and listening to Ice Planet Barbarians.

Sarah: See, okay, I’m sorry, that is so fabulous. You’re in a booth making sushi in the German grocery store listening to Ice Planet Barbarians. This is so perfect; thank you for sharing this with me; I’m delighted.

Alanna: And, like, sometimes I’m totally fine with that, it’s great, and sometimes I, like, get to a particularly spicy scene, and I’m like, nah, I don’t think I can listen to this with a straight face right now.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Alanna: I am guilty of listening just, like, on my phone’s speaker when my spouse is still asleep, and then they’ll wake up and be like, What are you listening to?

Sarah: [Laughs more]

Alanna: So yeah, sometimes I have to be like, Oh, yes, I do have headphones; I could, I could actually wear those.

That’s like three of my rereads. I also reread the entirety of the Bright Fall, Bright Falls trilogy by Ashley Herring Blake?

Sarah: Ohhh!

Alanna: Like, I think I reread it twice this year. Because I just, ah, it’s something about the characters in particular –

Sarah: Yeah!

Alanna: – just, like, really hit me, and I, I love a good Sapphic yearn? And there’s so much of it.

Sarah: Is there a lot? I mean, I mean –

Alanna: So much yearning.

Sarah: Well, I mean, Ashley Herring Blake is pretty great yearning.

Alanna: Yeah. And the next book, too, Aubrey McFadden Is Never Getting Married by Georgia Beers. Also like enemies-to-lovers, forced proximity, all around weddings of mutual friends, and so much yearning.

Sarah: So not only do you have yearning, but you have wedding drama.

Alanna: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, other people – I’m such a terrible person – other people’s wedding drama, even fictional, I am fascinated. I wish to know it all.

Alanna: It is! It is so fascinating –

Sarah: Right?

Alanna: – and then I’m like, but also like, Oh my gosh, I would die. Our wedding was so non-dramatic?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Alanna: That it, it just, like, all kind of, it was all very casual and kind of worked out perfectly? In a very short amount of time, so I’m like, What is all this – like, I don’t know if I could handle the months of lead-up.

Sarah: [Laughs] No.

Alanna: So another good book for Sapphic yearning: Make Room for Love by Darcy Liao. It was, one, it was Asian-American rep, which was awesome. It was also a butch woman with a trans woman and, again, a little bit of forced proximity? And great yearning.

I reread, multiple times, Meeting Millie and Tempting Olivia by Clare Ashton to prepare for Discovering Nicola, which dropped in May and was easily one of my favorite books of the year.

Sarah: Yay! Oh, isn’t it lovely when the third of a trilogy just makes you happy?

Alanna: It, she just, she landed it so perfectly?

Sarah: Yes, yes!

Alanna: Pulling together, like, all of these threads from the first two books –

Sarah: That is the best!

Alanna: – that I was just like, Ohhh! Oh, this is a perfect third book. Plus, it was like the older Sapphics?

Sarah: Yep.

Alanna: And, like, the self-discovery post-menopause Sapphics?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Alanna: That I was like, Oh! ‘Cause I remember being a teenager and reading books about, like, young adults and being like, Oh my gosh! This is what my life will be like in ten years, and now I read books about twenty-two-year-olds and I’m like, Oh, oh honey. And I’m like, Oh, okay, yeah. Oh yeah, you definitely are, that is, that is a thing –

Sarah: Yep.

Alanna: – that I thought and acted and did at twenty-two, yes.

Sarah: Yeah, twenty, your twenties are a mess. Like, one, one of my children just turned twenty, and I, and I’m not telling him this, but I’m like, The next decade is just messy, and it’s okay. It’s going to be –

Alanna: It’s just messy.

Sarah: It’s just messy.

Alanna: So – but it is nice I found a few books this year that have been written about older people and older Sapphics, like older Sapphic women in particular.

Sarah: Love it!

Alanna: And that was definitely the best of them, where I’m like, Okay, I can have this experience again of, like, this is a view of, like, what life might be like.

Sarah: Yes.

Alanna: So that, that was great.

I was deeply influenced by this podcast to read Earl Crush and Ladies in Hating by Alexandra Vasti. Both of, both of the episodes with her this year, I like immediately went and got the book.

Sarah: I’m so happy to hear that. Honest to God, Alexandra Vasti’s one of my favorite guests, because it’s just like, I know you have many brilliant things to say. How about this? I will just turn on Record; you can say whatever you want. And I’m like, I’ve got to come up –

Alanna: Yeah.

Sarah: – with questions and make sure that I hit questions that are going to nail all of the important things that she has to say, because she has so much knowledge.

Alanna: So much knowledge, and, like –

Sarah: Right?

Alanna: Yeah. It’s just the, the depth of worldbuilding that she puts into –

Sarah: Yes!

Alanna: – her –

Sarah: Hundred percent.

Alanna: – her version of England times –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Alanna: – is, is just like, it’s so delicious that…

Sarah: Her version of England times! Hell yes.

Alanna: So yes. And then the last one, Gay the Pray Away by Natalie – I don’t know how to say her last name – Natalie Naudus, I think?

Sarah: I would say [Nod-us], yeah, or [Now-dus].

Alanna: Yeah.

Sarah: But I think you’re close. You start by being respectful in your attempt, so let’s go with that.

Alanna: Yeah. So it was a, it’s a YA of a girl in a deeply conservative Christian cult –

Sarah: Yep.

Alanna: – discovering that she’s queer and finding someone who kind of, like, sidestepped into the community in her senior year, who, like, shows her there’s maybe another world that she could explore. And it was –

Sarah: Did you hear the good news about lesbians?

Alanna: It was really, it was really well done in the look at, like, how the community functions? The structures that they put up to keep people in line?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Alanna: And also how you can get out, and it hit me very deep in the recovering evangelical queer feels.

Sarah: It’s a very specific set of feels, does, isn’t it?

Alanna: Mm-hmm. Especially with the homeschool, the homeschool element, ‘cause I was homeschooled. That in particular, I was like, my experience was not as extreme?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Alanna: But I know of people and know people whose experience was? And have seen them go in vastly different directions in their life –

Sarah: Yep.

Alanna: – after getting out.

Sarah: Yep. And it’s a very specific kind of nostalgia, because if someone gets it right and all of the nuances are correct, it’s both deeply familiar and deeply scary in some ways?

Alanna: Mm-hmm. But also deeply cathartic to be like, Okay –

Sarah: Yes.

Alanna: – I was not the only one who experienced some of these things.

Sarah: You’re, you’re not the only one who heard the good news about lesbians? Yeah. [Laughs]

Alanna: About lesbians. I had the advantage of having basically free, unlimited access to my local library?

Sarah: [Sings] Hell yes!

Alanna: And then I had to throw in an honorable mention to The Very Virile Viking –

Sarah: Yeess!

Alanna: – because –

Sarah: Oh my God!

Alanna: – I –

Sarah: You reading this was one of the highlights of my year! You in the Discord reading this book was one of the highlights of my year. [Laughs] Please tell me!

Alanna: I can’t, I can’t say that I liked it?

Sarah: No! [Laughs]

Alanna: But it did leave an impression on me. I was like, I kept reading it, and I even, I actually started reading it last year and then got distracted by a bunch of other stuff and came back to it in the middle of all the moving craziness in early August and was like, I just need something that is completely detached from reality, and that was –

Sarah: That was it!

Alanna: – very much it. But, like, the nine, the early 2000s jokes about women’s roles –

Sarah: Oh yes.

Alanna: – and the very frank way that he discussed his virility and the, like, weird supernatural whales and just – [laughs] – there’s so much about it?

Sarah: Yep! All the children coming with him. Yep.

Alanna: All the kids coming with him and, like, being, this woman is basically like, Oh, here’s, like, this dream guy, but also, like, his nine kids was –

Sarah: All nine of them. Yeah.

Alanna: All nine of them.

Sarah: All nine.

Alanna: From like sixteen to two.

Sarah: Yep! And they are all in the future with him; they all had to come along too.

Alanna: Yeah.

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Alanna: And all discovering the joys of Domino’s –

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Oh yeah!

Alanna: – pizza. Which, you know, fair.

Sarah: It’s, it is a very silly book. It’s like a nine out of ten on silly. Which is, which he have more of now in romance, but when that was published we had comedy, we had slapstick, but we didn’t have a whole lot of, like, deep-commitment-to-the-bit silly. But however, this is the same woman who writes the Viking vampire Navy SEAL angel vampires.

Alanna: Okay then!

Sarah: She is the one who wrote one of my favorite books, The Angel Wore Fangs, and this is about a centuries-old Viking vampire angel named – okay, it’s C-N-U-T; I’m going to go with [K’newt]?

Alanna: Yeah, I think that’s how you –

Sarah: So Cnut Sigurdsson is a lean, mean vampire-devil fighting machine. His new, his new job is ridding the world of a threat called ISIS while keeping Lucipires at bay. Like, let’s just, let’s just mel- – oh my God – [laughs] – Alanna has her face in her hands. Let’s just meld something truly, truly present, deadly, scary, and deeply dangerous with, you know, Viking vampire angel SEAL demon vampires. Sure, absolutely.

Alanna: Am I going to have to go read that?

Sarah: Yeah, I think you are.

Alanna: Okay.

Sarah: Okay, it’s not going to be good! But yes. Yes, you, I think you do have to read it. Just, you know –

Alanna: I do?

Sarah: – for yourself.

Alanna: Yeah. I did, I did read, I think it was on a Cover Snark about the, The Otter and the Officer, an otter shifter book –

Sarah: Yes.

Alanna: – and I think my favorite part of that was the names?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Alanna: Like, the, the swan nobles were, like, Lord and Lady Cygnus. It was okay! It was a book.

Sarah: [Laughs] It was a book is, is the only thing you can say. it’s so funny! Like, if one of the reviewers is trying to write a C review, a lot of the times they’re like, Okay, well, it was a book, and I’m like, Yeah, that’s what a C book is. Those were some words. They were in that order! Okay!

What wishes do you have for 2026 for everybody?

Alanna: So, as mentioned, we’ve been moving and once again trying to acquire furniture, currently on a budget. So we’ve been, we’ve been trying to acquire furniture; also dealing with just the mental health exhaustion of moving and getting settled in a new place.

Sarah: It is so many pieces of energy to lose all of your autopilot all at one time. Right? It’s like you have to think about how you do every single thing, and it is exhausting, on top of being, you know, already arduous act of moving all your shit around.

Alanna: Mm-mm. And this time it was like, Oh, I also have to find, like, what are the new bus routes to work? Or, like, what are the new bus times that I have to memorize?

Sarah: Yep.

Alanna: But my wish is that you find a good place for all of your things, physical or otherwise.

Sarah: That’s such a good wish!

Alanna: ‘Cause I was like, I was thinking whether you’re dealing with the doom box or the existential dread from doom scrolling –

Sarah: Yes.

Alanna: – just, sometimes you need a place to put something, and I hope that you find that place.

Sarah: That is, that is really lovely and a very good wish. Thank you!

Did you bring a bad joke?

Alanna: Of course.

Sarah: See, you’re here for me. Thank you. I’m prepared to groan.

Alanna: Yes. This actually, this came from a conversation that spouse and I had where we were trading puns, and then I edited it to make it question and answer.

So, what did the baby sheep say to the ram?

Sarah: What did the baby sheep say to the ram?

Alanna: Stop lamb-basting me with puns.

Sarah: [Laughs, groans] Ooh.

Thank you so much for doing this! It is really lovely to connect with you, and I’m, I’m really happy that you are doing so well.

Alanna: Yes. It, I love doing these every year. It’s been, it’s like, I’m like, It’s been one of the only constants, which is weird to say but also kind of true.

Sarah: Well, I’m, I’m really, I’m really gratified to be a constant! That’s, that’s a lovely compliment. Thank you!

Alanna: Yes!

[outro]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you tremendously to Susie, Elizabeth, and Alanna for connecting with me. We have got more Holiday Wishes episodes coming each week through the holidays and into the new year, and I am so excited to host all of you as my guests. And we get great book recommendations and some bad jokes!

I also want to let you know, as I mentioned in the intro, if you’re in the podcast Patreon or in Smart Bitches After Dark, you can still sign up to connect with me to be part of the Holiday Wishes episodes. You can find a link in the podcast Patreon or in Smart Bitches After Dark. If you’re wondering where to find it, please email me. I love connecting with everybody, and I promise, promise, promise it’s not scary. Really, really, really it’s not. [Can confirm! – gk]

While there were many, many jokes in this episode, I have one more, and I love this joke ‘cause it’s terrible. That’s why I tell them to you. [Laughs]

Did you hear that Julie the Sultana has been cheating on her husband, Steve the Raisin?

What do you mean you don’t care? I have to keep you up to date with currant affairs!

[Laughs] Current affairs! I should write this as a blind item. Currant affairs! Up to date! Oh, so many puns! I love a good pun.

My apologies for the state of my voice. This is actually an improvement, but I really appreciate your sticking with me.

Before I go, if I could humbly ask you to leave a review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, it makes a tremendous difference for the show.

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 for more Holiday Wishes. And in the words of my favorite retired podcast Friendshipping, thank you for listening. You’re welcome for talking!

[end of music]