What is Booklovers without Rea? Jess & Joseph find out on this episode, as they're left to their own devices to discuss both the 96th Academy Awards and Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton.

To start with the Oscars, we're talking about the big shift in Oscar-nominated film watching, because it's rare to have a year where so many nominated movies were already available to watch. From Anatomy of a Fall and Poor Things to (of course) Barbenheimer, viewer access to Oscar films was much higher in 2023 than in years previous, leading to a more invested viewership--and way longer holds lists at the library, too.

Then we're taking the leap into a discussion of Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton, which takes its name from a Macbeth reference, but pivots to discuss environmental destruction, guerrilla gardening, illegal fracking, and what a bunch of Kiwi Millennials think they're going to do to fix it all. Birnam Wood's twists and turns, combined with Catton's stream of consciousness writing style and wide cast of characters, combine to create a cerebral quasi-thriller that leaves readers thinking about what it means to do "good" in the period of late stage capitalism.

We've talked about romance novels before on the podcast, but this episode takes a different approach, because Joseph has a lot of questions about the genre. Why do we read romance? What are the implications of the genre on readers, and how do we as a society view romance novels? For that matter, what’s the difference between a romance book and a romance movie? Jess and Rea explain the importance of romance, the reimagining of the marriage plot, and major trends in romance, all whilst swooning over the many romance novels they’ve read recently.

Who gets to tell what stories? It’s a question authors—and all of us—have grappled with for years now, and R. F. Kuang’s novel Yellowface digs into that question and pulls out a very sloppy and difficult main character. A skewering, funny, intense look at the publishing industry warts and all, Yellowface also digs into the messy world of female friendships, jealousy, and cultural appropriation.

In this episode, we’re talking through Kuang’s latest novel, plus sharing our feelings about improv (not great, per Jess), and catching up on Joseph’s challenge to watch all the Twilight movies.