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.

Here’s to you, 2023. A year of reading and watching (mostly reading for Rea, a LOT of watching for Jess, and the usual extensive amount of both for Joseph). We’re recapping our goals for 2023, how they went, and what we loved most in 2023. We also mention Taylor Alison Swift a lot, because we recorded this episode on her birthday. Happy birthday to Taylor, happy end of year to us, and we’ll see you in 2024!

We found the intersection of Joseph’s conspiracy theory-addled brain and Rea & Jess’s obsession with pop culture: Patricia Wants to Cuddle. Our titular queen just wants what we all want: to love and be loved. So what if she’s a bigfoot? And so what if America’s biggest reality dating competition happens to be in Patricia’s actual backyard? If anything, that just means that she’s more likely to find what she’s looking for. The humans of The Catch land on Otters Island hoping for different kinds of success, from fame and fortune to true love with a sleazy bachelor, but what they find is a musty old bed and breakfast and a very eerie feeling of being watched in a different way than how they want to be watched. In this episode, we’re talking conspiracy theories (mostly Joseph’s), the way writers lift the curtain on behind-the-scenes moments in TV and movies, and the delight of stop-motion animation, as exemplified by Chicken Run.

In America, only 8% of parents had deaf children wish to learn American Sign Language.

A statistic like that seems unfathomable, doesn’t it? But in True Biz, Sara Nović deftly and realistically explores her main character Charlie’s world: Charlie is deaf, but but her divorcing parents, especially her mother, have never attempted to communicate with her on her terms. When Charlie’s father is assigned primarily custody, things change, and Charlie is sent to a school for deaf students, where she and her father learn ASL and where her life breaks open with the help of headmistress February, roommate Kayla and classmate Austin. Nović travels between Charlie, February—a hearing woman of Deaf parents—and Austin—the golden child of a Deaf family—as they encounter various trials and tribulations through the school year. Interspersed in the novel are ASL diagrams, Wikipedia articles, and other supporting literature about Deaf culture and history, all a part of February’s attempt to educate Charlie on the difference between deaf and Deaf.

After hosting Sara Nović at the downtown Spartanburg library, we only thought it appropriate to discuss her seminal work of Deaf writing on the podcast. Jess & Joseph share what the event was like (spoiler: it was incredible!), the group talks about the book, and shares the mostly goofy-spooky things they’re reading in October.

Here in 2023, everyone knows the general meaning of a catch-22. It’s a situation where you can’t win no matter what you do. You’re trapped, you’re stuck, and there’s no other option. But in 1961, when Joseph Heller’s seminal novel Catch-22 was published, there was no phrase for what it meant to be that kind of trapped. Thankfully for us all, Doc Daneeka, the endlessly bummed medical professional of the Air Force Corps on Pianosa, breaks the catch-22 down for Captain Yossarian, an Air Force bombardier trapped in a tremendous amount of bureaucratic red tape while everyone around him succumbs to the horrors of war.

Heller’s novel goes on to describe the absurdities of war, from officers who attempt to one-up each other to the ironies of ailments that put soldiers in the hospital. As Yossarian stumbles his way through scenario after scenario, and tries to do the right thing for himself, he’s reminded over and over that even if he gets out, he’s never REALLY out. In this episode, we’re discussing capitalism, the systems novel, and the fungibility of humans. And, of course, Major Major Major Major.

Mythological retellings seem to be everywhere these days. Since Madeline Miller’s novel The Song of Achilles was released in 2011, many authors—mostly women—have taken up the effort to share the untold stories of the many female, nonbinary and queer characters of ancient mythology. A shining example of this type of storytelling is Pat Barker’s novel The Silence of the Girls, which focuses on a well-known part of Greek mythology, the Trojan War, but tells the story from an altogether unexpected voice: Briseis, the former queen of Lyrnessus and present slave of Achilles. Although she’s considered a minor character in the Iliad, Briseis is a lynchpin to the events of the later part of the war: after Achilles convinces Agamemnon to return his slave Chryseis to her father, Agamemnon takes Briseis as his own in response, which leads Achilles to strike. Ultimately, Achilles’ best friend Patroclus dies while pretending to battle as Achilles, and Achilles returns to war to destroy what so many Trojan women—including Briseis—hold dear. But the whole story, so iconic in ancient history, is told through the eyes of an enslaved woman, one who has lost all ability to make her own decisions and is very clear about the brutality of war and the vicious ends of supposedly brilliant men. In this episode we’re dissecting The Silence of the Girls, including the voice Barker builds for Briseis and the violent, painful contents. We’re also talking about why we as readers return to mythology again and again, despite knowing the stories like the backs of our hands.