Episode 3: The books of our lives
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Summary
Episode 3: nicholae cline, Jen Brown, Sofia Leung discuss what makes their favorite books particularly potent. They consider how each of these books shaped them and their current reading interests.
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Intro
nicholae: You’re listening to the We Reads podcast where we: nicholae,
Jen: Jen,
Sofia: and Sofia talk about books, the authors we love and how our identities show up while we’re reading.
Jen: These books have brought us joy, nourished us and changed us for the better. We’re excited to discuss them with you!
Jen
Okay. okay Okay. Okay. [laughter] We have a big, we have a big episode and I'm excited about it because this is going to be us kind of spinning around and talking about like the books of our lives, like what books influenced us, moved us, held us. And so I'm very curious, especially for you both: what were some of the earliest books or significant books from youth, childhood? Like what were the things that shaped you?
Sofia
I actually mentioned these in our previous episode and or previous episodes where I think I talked about Howl's Moving Castle and actually don't remember um the premise of the book or at least most of it, except that there is a moving castle flying around and there's magic and wizardry and like, who doesn't love that?
Jen
Right.
Sofia
Um, and I think I must have read most of Diana Wynne Jones's books, but I don't remember any of them right now off the top of my head. But obviously that was like one of my first fantasy books.Oh, this is reminding me. There was also that book. This is my problem. I can't remember any of the titles. Um, something with coins, a half piece, a half coin, three coins.
Jen
right
Sofia
I don't know. Someone maybe will be shouting it into their headphone. Um, Yeah, just like anything where there was magic, traveling, of course, Narnia. I loved the Narnia series.
Jen
That was almost on my list. Yes, yes, yes.
Sofia
Almost, but wait, why not?
Jen
Almost. Well, was, you know, with this question, I was struggling because I was like, okay, what are the books that I kind of chose books that I've returned to? Like things that not just hit me in my youth, but also things that like I still think about fondly today with one exception.
Sofia
Oh, okay. Okay.
Jen
And it's not that Narnia doesn't, I think it was still a good book, but I think as I got older and I was like, oh and there was all this sort of religious, yeah.
Sofia
Other stuff. Yeah.
Jen
But it was definitely in in that time.
Sofia
I know.
Jen
Yeah, it was formative.
Sofia
That makes sense. Yeah.
Sofia
Um The other book that I was thinking about and which I mentioned in one of our last episodes was The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine Bonaparte by Sandra Gulland, which is the first book in her Josephine Bonaparte series. Because I remember it being like one of the first like historical fiction books I really liked. And I know we talked last time about genre and actually I don't even really read historical fiction that often anymore, but that I think shaped a lot of, it was like, you know, I mean, the title says it all secret sorrows [laughter], this poor woman's like dragged around by Napoleon and forced to do all these things.
Jen
Mm-hmm.
Sofia
And then at the same time, It's like a romance because she's you know she loves him deeply. Yeah, but lots of tragedy, etc. So it just I think that really, in a way, was formative in thinking about, well, as nicholae likes to think of them as romance, and we've called them romantic tragedy. like
nicholae
Alright, alright. (all laugh) Slander.
Sofia
Yeah. So you might like this series, actually. Yeah.
nicholae
The darker the better. I don't want a happy ending ever.
Sofia
Yeah, I don't think it has a happy ending because it is historical fiction and Napoleon does get, oh wow, I don't remember. Is he killed? Is he imprisoned? Or actually maybe he lives a nice long life because he's a conqueror. I don't quite know.
Jen
Oh.
Sofia
He gets he gets uh sent away to a little island jail, I think.
Jen
oh
Sofia
Or my thinking is that Napoleon III? Well, anyway, no one quote me on anything historical because I do not have the memory for it. But what about you, Jen or nicholae?
nicholae
I've got to give some love to C.S. Lewis though. You know, he didn't make my list, although I think he would. He had two very significant series for me, a more sci-fi series called the space trilogy.And then of course the Chronicles of Narnia, which were incredibly important and significant for me when I was a kid in one of the very earliest fantasy books series that I read. Yeah, I found, I think there was a part of my time, a part of my life when I would have kind of rejected it as a result of the Christian symbolism.You know, the fact that it is in a lot of his work, works within Christian allegory. But I think I really appreciate that now, actually in ways that I didn't at the time and feel a lot more I'm not religious, I'm not Christian, but I feel a lot more comfortable working with and acknowledging how extensively Christian symbology suffused my life and how influential it is inI don't know how I think, but certainly it's a part of my life that I can't reject fully. And nor would I necessarily try to, besides the fact that I don't believe in any of those things anymore. But they, I they're books that I do think about actually quite frequently, even if I have not returned to them in many, many years.
But I think alongside that, the Lord of the Rings series, not just the trilogy, but also the Hobbit, but also not just the Hobbit or the trilogy, but also the Silmarillion, the you know Unfinished Tales, all of the books that were published posthumously. I really loved understanding the the mythology and lore. I'm a lore queen.
If there's lore to be had and understood, I'm there and I want to know about it. So that was something that I really appreciated about Tolkien's really comprehensive mentality in creating a world, right? Not just a story, but building out a world in a way that like includes languages and drawings and entire cultures. You know, there are all kinds of problems with the, with Tolkien's, you know, racism, but still it's a really formative series for me. And then I would also add to that just on the, on the sort of fantasy train, A Wrinkle in Time and the time quartet. It's not a quartet anymore, right?
It's six books now. I don't remember how many there are at this point, but when I was reading them, there were only four.
Jen
Wow.
nicholae
And then another series that I've mentioned before and have nothing but effusive praise for, which is the Earthsea series and Ursula K.Le Guinn, whose work I just, almost universally love.
And yeah there are others that I can mention, you know, Watership Down, the Weetzie Bat books, the Martian Chronicles. I had a, remember there was a summer when I was maybe eight or nine, when I read, I think just everything in the library that Ray Bradbury wrote, like, like all the novels, all the stories.
So I really felt that's the kind of reader that I was as a kid too. I would discover an author and then I would read everything I could find by them.
Sofia
Heck Yeah.
nicholae
and it's, yeah, I love doing that. And I aspire to do that in the present, but my attention is pulled in so many directions that I'm always, there's just too many things to read to to do that so comprehensively, but I still want to do that in the present.But yeah, what about you, Jen?
Sofia
Yeah. You're a completist.
nicholae
Yeah, I'm a completist. I'm like that with so many things too.
Jen
Yes.
nicholae
you know I'm that person who wants to watch every Criterion movie in order, or if I you know if I come across an artist that I love, I want to listen to all of their work so that I can kind of really be enmeshed in the world that they're creating in their sort of creative output.
Sofia
Wait, a quick question. On the flip side, are you like, if you read one thing that you don't like, you give that person another chance? Are you like, no, that's it. The end.
nicholae
Oh, absolutely. I can be convinced to read just about anything, even if it's by an author whose work that I didn't really like before, or if it's in a genre that I don't really like before.
Shout out to our genre episode. But if I read something that I don't like, I'm certainly not, or if it's a genre that I don't typically read, I'm not going to seek it out. Like I'm not going to go out of my way to read one of those things. But if someone recommends it to me, if it's something that they really loved, even if I've had a negative or just mid experience, which is more what I'm likely to have, I just didn't really care that much about it.I'll give it a try for sure.
Jen
That's real. And I feel very drawn to the like completionist vibe because one of my favorites from childhood is actually when I just, I reread and reread. And then I went through for a long time. I was like, Gail Carson Levine is my favorite author [all laugh]. Right.
No one else touches her work! And so I kind of have this like, don't know, I had this hyper fixation with certain books in childhood. um a Wrinkle in Time was mentioned and I loved that one. But something about Ella Enchanted, just I don't know what it was. I think there was something very empowering about this young woman figuring out how to say no and kind of like the journey of um how how she was able to sort of draw boundaries toward the end. I am fully an Ella Enchanted stan. I still have a copy of it. I read it as recently as two years ago and I still loved it. um It's one of those books that, I don't know, it just, it really, ah rocked with it. And then, because I loved that so much, I read the other book that of Gales that didn't make my list, but it was like the two princesses of ah Barrymore or something, which wasn't quite as good, but I still liked.
And so there's this vibe, I think of, in my youth, I would find a particular series or a particular author. And if if that spoke to me, I would just go oh down the rabbit hole of all of that person's books. But I also have some books here that I... but and So there's two there's two ends of the spectrum. The first book I loved like as a baby, and I just bought this from my boss's baby. She had a baby like a year and a half ago. um and At her baby shower at work, we we gave them books. And I was like, this was my favorite book. I'm going to give it to her son. And it's going to be lovely. I loved The Monster at the End of this Book, which is like a Sesame Street.
nicholae
Oh yeah, yeah.
Jen
Oh, my God.
nicholae
So good.
Jen
It's so good! Like that one, I have strong memories of my mom and dad reading it to me at bedtime. And even though I knew the ending, don't know. It was just something about like, I just, the whole premise is, I think it's, is it Oscar?I don't remember which. so
Sofia
Grover.
Jen
Grover, thank you.
Jen
I think it's Grover. And Grover, the whole book is like, don't turn the page. There's a monster at the end of this book. You don't want to get to him. He's scary. And I was like, no, I'm going to do what I want. I'm going to turn this page. And all of the art is like Grover building like brick walls to try to keep you from turning the page. Grover like putting, but like as a kid, there was this agency of like, oh, I turned the page and I have destroyed this brick wall. And Grover's like, don't keep going, but I get to choose to. It kind of set my reading tone of like, oh, books can be transportive and also agency giving. And I think, I guess I as I look at my little list here, I think I was continually drawn to books where characters had agency. And then I was living through that feeling like I was gaining agency by seeing their journeys. But then on the other end of the spectrum are my shame books that I almost didn't put on this list.
nicholae
So meta too.
Jen
I was like, you know what? It was formative at the time.It was at the time. So I have to say I am a full, I was a full Twilight stan
Sofia
Fascinating!
Jen
God, Jesus, Team Edward Child, I know.
Jen
And, you know, I would not put that book there on any important list to me now. But as a teenager, like that, I don't know. I remember being in bookstores at the time and feeling like, you know, there was it was that in-between period for me as a reader where there was… There were books, um you know, kind of Babysitter's Club and um other types of books that I felt like were marketed towards young adults, but that felt not juvenile, but I felt like, oh, I want something different, something darker. And then here's this book with this all black cover and this very pale hand holding this red apple of temptation [Sofia laughs].
And suddenly I'm like reading this and I'm like, wait a minute. wait a minute. The whole series is unhinged, as are the films. But for it a time, that was like that was that was a big... and the Stephanie Meyer was another one of those authors. I was like following her for a while and I was reading other stuff by her. So yeah, I have hyper fixations, I guess, is what I realized, building my list. Or I did it in childhood.
Sofia
Well, to be fair, I probably would have liked her too, but I think I was too old because I'm a little bit older than, well, more than a little bit older than you. So that I think when I tried to read it, I was like, um this is a little young. Like, I don't, why are they talking like this?
Jen
Right.
Sofia
it's But actually both of you reminded me, oh, sorry, Jen, are you done? Oh, okay.
Jen
I'm done. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sofia
Both of you reminded me of, um nicholae, you said lore and I was like, oh yes. I used to fucking love this book with a yellow cover called Dolaire's Book of Greek Myths.
Sofia
Do you guys know that book? I'll put it in the on the thing for you, Imani.
Jen
No.
Sofia
But yeah, it has like this bright yellow cover with like four white horses ah pulling a chariot of, I'm guessing Apollo. And I loved all of it. I would reread it. I was like fully immersed in Greek mythology to the day. like Even now, if someone in like a show or a book is mentioned some obscure Greek myth thing, I'm like, I know exactly what you're talking about because I have this weird memory of And then don't know if you guys ever read anything by Patricia C. Reed.I forgot that she's like the most formative.
Jen
Mm-mm.
Sofia
She had this book called Dealing with Dragons. And it was like this princess who essentially like saves herself. She gets sent. I can't remember if she gets sent to a dragon or something happens where she's, you know, princess sacrifice. And then all these knights try and come to save her and none of them are actually able to. And she ends up being like, actually, I'm just gonna stay with the dragons, hang out, and like this is now my life. um And I think that that was a really formative series of books for me, and all of her books, really. Because back then, I also was a completist, and I would read everything of an author if I loved the first book of anything they had.
Jen
Mmm.
nicholae
The mythology was really formative for me too, Sofia. I remember that book. The one for me was Edith Hamilton's, the mythology book that I loved.
Sofia
Oh, I read that one too. Yes, yes, yes.
nicholae
And I really got into when I was just a little older, Joseph Campbell. So a lot of his books around the the the hero story and a lot of different kinds of folk tales, but also Greek mythology. He has several books. He was a probably a sociologist.I don't remember exactly what field he was in, but he was another formative one for me. And then I there weren't quite as many of them when I was a kid, but I also really loved these meta moments and stories, you know, so the monster at the end of this book, there's also, We Are In a Book where the characters realize they're in a book. I don't remember exactly what year that was published. We, we carry it at the bookstore and I always, it reminds me of some of these other books that I loved as a kid, right? And of course, when I was a kid, the monster at the end of this book, it's a little golden book. And I love the little golden books.
Jen
Right.
nicholae
like And I think about this book all the time, The Shy Little Kitten, which just, I loved cats. I was a shy little kid, bookish shy little kid. So I always related to The Shy Little Kitten in that golden book.
Jen
That sounds so cute. Now I want to read that and it right now.
Sofia
I know. think know that book. I can like imagine it in my head. Okay, but what about now? like what are we What did we read more recently that you're like, this has never left? I know we've probably talked about about some of these already, but.
Jen
Yes. I think for me, there was a shift because of course I started writing fiction. Well, mostly like fan fiction and and little stories of my own making as young as like 12. But there was a shift for me where in my twenties, I started to be like, you know, I really, I'm learning sort of craft-level analysis from the things I'm reading and I'm understanding why a story really hits.
I'm starting to question kind of, um, my assumptions about characters, about embodiment in a way that when I was younger or a young reader, I wish I could say I was doing, but I definitely wasn't.
um And the book that ah did that like really kind of opened things for me So I remember being in, I'm pretty sure it was at Barnes & Noble, and I was looking in the sci-fi fantasy section, and I was like, I'm i'm done. I'm not interested in any of the YA kind of um stuff I had been reading. I felt like, there for me, there was like a marked transition to adult fiction. And again, I wish I was like a smart reader who had been reading adult books and seeing the value in them and in youth, but I I just... I felt like my brain, my frontal lobe had to fully develop for me to be.
Sofia
Yeah, don't make know don't apologize. dont and of those things are true for any of us.
Jen
Yes. Right. But I think where I think part of it was like needing to find something where a that hit all the right beats. So a fantastical universe in the setting, um Black characters at at the center of them. And that for me was like N.K. Jemisin. And not the Broken Earth trilogy, which I know we've talked about before, but the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, which I think we touched on briefly.
Sofia
Yeah, we did.
Jen
But that first book...really like woke something up in me. um I think it's funny because I think I've heard N.K. Jemisin talk in interviews about how that was, she wrote that book from a place of like feeling like she had to write a traditional adventure fantasy, but
Sofia
Oh.
Jen
I know. And I I could be mis... I hope I'm not misquoting. I think that's what she talked about was like, as she continued writing, she realized fantasy and and speculative fiction could be so much more than just sort of an adventure or hero's journey.But that book in particular, I don't know I think it was, there was something about the scale of the world that she was playing with, the centeredness on um legacies of brutality and pain, because this was a world where gods had been enslaved and And kind of like also coming from a religious background where sort of God was positioned as this like, it was just a different way to think about the relationship between individuals and higher beings or deities blurring the line between, like what is holy. Blurring the lines between what is holy, like holy desire is holy. It was the themes in that book. just It just hit a spot. I was like, “nothing else I've read has hit this.” And there have obviously been books throughout time that have done that. But for me, that was that was my first exposure to it.
And then from there, I feel like my tastes went toward looking for fiction that would challenge me or challenge what I expected traditional speculative forms to do. So like Uprooted by Naomi Novick is continually that book for me. And it's, it just, it takes the the framing of a fairy tale and just kind of not necessarily turns it on its head, but it does some interesting things with it that I still reread that book to this day. The Jade City Trilogy by Fonda Lee does something so good with like, I don't know, this idea of family and legacy and community, especially in the face of colonialism. um I love that series. And then The Goblet Emperor by Katherine Addison is almost like a comfort read. Again, it was like, oh, this is going to be, it's not just about like court intrigues and politics, but it's about
Sofia
hmm
Jen
I don't know, almost like belonging and and where you how you move through the world as other. And I thought it was really well done. So I don't know. I think fantasy is the genre of my heart. And I think these are more recent books that in different ways kind of all touched on what I like to read, but also how I want to challenge myself as a writer.
Sofia
Great picks. In fact, many of mine overlap with yours. I also felt that way about the Inheritance trilogy. I even remember like seeing it on the bookshelf because it was like it turned out you know where they show the cover in the bookstore.
It's when I lived in Seattle and I remember seeing that book and it just won some award. It wasn't the Hugo, I don't think. It was like one of the other ones.
Jen
Nebula, maybe?
Sofia
Maybe.
Jen
Or World Fantasy?
Sofia
It was either, is yeah, one of those. And I just remember thinking, oh, I've never heard of this book. Let me try it. And yes, same thing, like mind boggling, totally different type of fantasy than I ever imagined reading.um Not coming from a religious background, but I was still like, whoa, this is, this is it.
Jen
Yes.
Sofia
um And then I mentioned this last time, but the or in our genre episode, ah but the Machineries of Empire series by Yoon Ha Lee, the first one's Nine Fox Gambit.
Same thing where I was like, oh, this is military sci-fi technically, but it's also about so much more than that and also turns things on its head. It's like super character driven because, as I mentioned, the main character gets inhabited by the consciousness of a military genius who's like literally going insane because he's been picked up and dropped into so many different bodies.um So his mind is like starting to lose it. um And that was just like such a imaginative and interesting way of talking about all these issues that I care about, but in a sci-fi setting with amazing characters. I also loved the Goblin Empire. It is weirdly like a ah comfort read. And I also, it's like weird because they're like, they're literally goblins.
Jen
Right.
Sofia
It's almost about him like learning how to be a good or like, it's not learning how to be a good person, but he is someone who was placed into a circumstance of not of his own creating and now is like trying to like in some ways live his values despite what everybody around him is like forcing him to do and yeah I mean there is a lot of court intrigue but it's also like he's literally setting up house in a way
Jen
Yeah. Yeah.
Sofia
And that's also very fun and comforting. And then one of my like favorite recent, it's not even that recent anymore, maybe like five or something years ago, I read The Luckiest Lady in London by Sherry Thomas, who is an amazing author. I've also read all of her books.
um It's the first in this trilogy of essentially like second chance romances-ish, where it's all about, well, they're all historical um romance. And in this one, this is like one of the only romance books that's made me cry. I don't really cry when reading romance, because you know usually it's like, you know what's gonna happen.
Jen
Right.
Sofia
um But this one was like, something about it really like clicked. And one of the reasons I like reading romance is because it also, if it's a really good one, helps me understand something about myself or other people in my life who have like, you know, I have might have difficult relationships with or difficult points in our relationship.
And something about the romance will make it click for me to be like, oh, this thing that I never understood about myself or this other person um is like really coming to the forefront in this character. So that's what I like about it. One of the reasons I like romance. um And then I'll quickly go through a few more, but Kindred by Octavia Butler, like that was such a visceral read.Talk about speculative fiction because in some ways it's also historical fiction
Jen
Oh, yeah.
Sofia
And it's, you know, there's not really like magic in the sense of like fantasy, and I wouldn't really call it a fantasy [laughs]. But yeah, something about it's like so visceral, so like realistic. And then the main character, was trying to think about like what I really liked about it too, or like what is like the the central thread in a lot of these books. It's like, there's a main character who's strong and doesn't allow like other people to They just got a backbone.You know, I like a character with backbone.
And I think that's true in almost all of the books I read, that no one's going to walk all over this person, despite whatever is going around them. Um even when they're surrounded by idiots. Something so thing about a person surrounded by idiots is also a comfort read, I guess, for me. And this is not anywhere on the same line of anything else I just talked about, but of course, Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. was like, that kicked off my, like, I worked in kitchens for a while, basically because of that book, I think, like a lot of people, I think, ended up doing.
Jen
Wow.
Sofia
um And then most recent probably would be Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Marie Brown, which I think I read in 2017 when it came out. And that was like life changing for me when I was going through a tough time at work.And to like read that book and know that there was a different way to do things was, yeah, very necessary.
nicholae, what about you?
nicholae
Yeah, I was trying to sort of set aside some that I've already mentioned. You know, I've already mentioned House of Leaves. I've already mentioned Octavia Butler. I think my... There are some things that are similar and some things that are different for me. So one thing that's different is I think I I jumped perhaps too quickly, or I will just say very quickly, into like, quote, adult literature. I just started to discover things when I was a kid that were probably in many ways not age-appropriate for me. And certainly my father didn't think was age-appropriate for me, but I just started to find different kinds of literature that I loved. And I, I went for it. You know, I didn't stay, I was a little more promiscuous. I didn't just stay in the kids or young adult section.
i immediately wanted to go to the adult section to find the kind, the kind of literature that was exploring and doing things that were really resonant for me and compelling to me. And What that really looked like for me, especially as I was moving into kind of being an older kid and adolescent and teenager was things that were exploring much darker emotional territory, which was what I think I found very compelling about certain stories when I was a kid.
So I feel that there are slight, maybe like two tracks to my reading, at least in terms of fiction and poetry. There's of course the fantasy and sci-fi path where you know, there are there are things like House of Leaves, of course, Harlan Ellison's Deathbird Stories, things like I started to understand that there was something called magical realism. So I got really indeed into Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
And then literature that I would say is somewhat realist, but things are just a little off in certain ways, like Catherine Dunn's Geek Love or Iain Banks, who is ah is a quite well-known, like,
hard sci-fi author, but who wrote something a little more realist, but it was quite dark called The Wasp Factory. And then things like the art lover where, you know, in these stories, it's an otherwise realist world, but there's a certain experimentation to it. um Maybe they have something more modernist leanings where it's a bit more stream of consciousness or experimental. You're not quite sure exactly what's going on. There's a sort of, um,
an impressionist mode to these, right? Where you're getting the impression of the story and the impression of characters, where you're getting people's emotional states expressed somewhat slant-wise because it's hard to express certain affects, certain so certain experiences, certain traumas in a realist mode, right?
So those were sort of on the one hand. And then on the other, I think I was really getting into Things like the heart, I really loved the heart of the lonely Hunter, Winesburg, Ohio.
I loved Lolita as a teenager. And, you know, these were all exploring things that are quite tragic, really difficult experiences. Angels in America, right, was a play that I loved when I was a teenager, which was of course exploring HIV and AIDS in the eighties.
Beloved, which I maybe, probably mentioned Toni Morrison before. ah Giovanni's Room was, you know, one of my early introductions, James Baldwin, one of my early introductions to queer literature. So I think this is where I was sort of going as a teenager, exploring things that were a little maybe be harder to read, ah little more difficult emotional terrain. And that's something that I was just really into when I got younger, which I think eventually led me to read things besides fiction. mean, certainly I read a lot of poetry, but it,it led me as I was getting, becoming an older teenager and moving into college, just a lot more theory because there were these theorists who were able to really evocatively and poetically explain real life experiences, psychic states, trauma, et cetera, through theory, but written in a way that was so beautiful and compelling that it didn't feel like fiction, but it's often felt like poetry and ah in a certain way. And I don't need to to name drop a bunch of them, but I'm thinking of like Zami, Audre Lorde, you know, et cetera.
AD BREAK:
Sofia
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Now, back to the books.
Sofia
Wait, I want to go back to one of the books you mentioned, because it's one of the places we overlap nicholae with Geek Love. Because I saw it in your list and I was like, oh yes, I did love this book.
nicholae
Yeah.
Sofia
Jen, do you know this book?
Jen
I have not heard about Geek Love.
Sofia
Oh, yeah, it's it's this, well, I'm gonna let nicholae summarize it, but it's got this bright orange cover.
nicholae
it's basically about a family of circus freaks, and you get to understand their lives living in a circus living in this particular family, I believe they're... This was a long time ago that I read it and I really loved it. But the parents, I believe, maybe run the circus or... I don't know. They're they're obviously involved in some way in their children being part of the circus. And it's it's it's sort of like... I don't know.
Royal Tenenbaums meets Carmen Maria Machado, you know, it's it's very strange. And it was just something that I really loved because it was ah it was an early novel that I came across where it's otherwise realist, but it's the world just, something's not right about this world.
And the characters are all these like little freaks, but with like such like clear subjectivity and I think there's a lot of care given to the characters too and the way that they're represented in the text so that was I think very very resonant to me I don't know what your experience of reading it was like Sofia what do you remember about it
Sofia
Yeah, well, I I had to like reread the summary and also listen to what you said. But yes, the parents do run the circus and they actually um create, like they turn their kids into these freaks on purpose. like they use drugs and other things to like and radiation to like cause these abnormal growths and things to their kids in order, like on purpose to make so that they can be a part of the circus. um but yeah I just remember being like it was a really tender book um I can't quite remember like it like actually what happened or anything about it but I just remember being like afterwards like this like very strong feelings of like oh that was sort of mind-boggling like that parents would do that but then they also clearly like loved each other a lot and there was just like a lot of It was just like a really interesting and like so different from anything else I've ever read. And I feel like this, yeah.
nicholae
Yeah, they're... Well, I was just going to say you know, they're not a found family, but they sort of feel like a found family.
Sofia
Right. Yes, that's what it is.
nicholae
You know, there's this kind of like... like just wild, spectacular otherness that each of them experiences.
Sofia
Yes.
nicholae
And yet they are drawn together as family, but they also of course work for this carnival. And to me, it allows us to, not that I thought about it this consciously back then, but ah I feel like it gave me, or it has in thinking about it, given me some language to, think about the ways that... So I guess just sort of question conventional assumptions about what is ah normal body, what is ability versus disability, what does it mean to have some sort of a disability or ah really different kind of body and they develop these like really beautiful ways of relating to each other and they still feel like a family despite how other they also feel at times is part of my memory of it.
And you can see the ways in which within a family dynamic, parents and older siblings can exploit each other, but also offer such deep care for each other, too. And that to me, I like books that are complex, that don't have sort of easy lessons or easy morals, that really question typical assumptions about things. And I appreciated that about the book in a
in a very sort of subliminal experiential way back then. I of course have different language to understand it now, but it was very resonant back then for all kinds of reasons.
Sofia
Yeah. Yeah, I feel that too. And now I'm thinking, nicholae, you might like dark romance.
nicholae
All right, pop those recs.
Sofia
I got to find the right one for you.
Jen
nicholae and Sofia's reading energies because I was definitely not able to, I think, wrap my head around like very complicated works, especially when younger. [cat meowing] Oh, do we hear Hammy or is that Beckett also?
nicholae
That's Hamlet. The doors, they're evicted from the room, so they're not happy about it.
Sofia
That's so funny. It actually sounds a little bit like Nima.
nicholae
Well, that's my child.
[laughter]
Jen
Did y'all know, though, I heard cats meow in the same frequency as babies cry.
Sofia
That makes so much sense
nicholae
They're so manipulative, and I love it. Queens, all of them.
Jen
Cats are babies. And babies are like cats.
Jen
I'm impressed by y'all though. Truly.
Sofia
Oh, I don't think I was like that young.
Jen
The way y'all described it is so beautifully
Sofia
Oh I wasn't that young when I read Geek Love. Remember, I'm like at least I'm probably 10 years older than you. And I think I'm older than you too, nicholae.
Jen
Are you 10 years older than me?
Sofia
I don't know, I'm 40.
Jen
I'm 35.
nicholae
Okay, you're you're two years older than me.
Sofia
Oh, okay.
nicholae
I'm 38.
Jen
Okay, five years, two years. Okay. Okay.
nicholae
Old people always think they're so much older than everyone.
[laughter]
Sofia
Okay, going back to, I said, a dark romance for nicholae, and I actually did do a little bit of digging for you, nicholae.
Jen
Right.
Sofia
And one of the authors I think you might like, well, the book is called, oh shoot, I just looked it up and then forgot, is Infinity Alchemist by Kacen Callender.
Jen
Hmm.
Jen
Ooh.
nicholae
Ooh, I like an alchemist.
Jen
Right?
Sofia
for And, you know,
nicholae
Oh, Kacen Callender. Yes, yes.
Sofia
They mostly write YA, I think, but um this is a fantasy. There is romance. It is queer and it takes place.
nicholae
I've read Felix Ever After, which I really loved.
Sofia
Oh, okay. And then also I haven't read yet because it's new, but I was actually wondering if you would like bury our bones in the midnight soil.
Jen
Mmmm
Sofia
What do you think, Jen?
Jen
I started it. I feel like that would, I feel like you would dig that, Nicolai.
nicholae
I've heard good things about Schwab. Is that their last name? Something like that?
Sofia
Yeah, V.E. Schwab
nicholae
A thrilling lesbian vampire novel? All right.
[laughter]
I'm in.
Jen
There you go.
nicholae
Have you all read Dead Collections? Do you know that book?
Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman? something Something like that. It is also...
Jen
Hmm. Hmm.
nicholae
I mean, you wouldn't I wouldn't say a lesbian vampire novel, but it is a queer vampire novel featuring a queer archivist who is also a vampire.
Sofia
Oh, okay. I think you've mentioned this book to me before, actually.
nicholae
It's really fascinating. It's an interesting book for librarians in certain respects. So I would recommend that as well.
Jen
Okay, Imma check that out. That sounds good.
Sofia
those are my recs for now. And then every new episode, I'll give you a couple more.
Jen
Ooh.
nicholae
Sofia's recommendations corner, but they're just for me.
Sofia
Yes. Yeah, they're for them. Nobody else can read them.
Jen
that's it
Sofia
Oh, but yes, speaking even more and more recently, I can't remember if I mentioned this book or not, but I really love the Stardust Grail um by Yume Kitase.
ah So that's another like sci-fi, almost space opera-y because I don't know if I mentioned this in any of the other episodes, but one of my favorite micro genres is like a space opera like sort of, I don't know if any of you have read Lois McMaster Bujold or is it Bujold McMaster?
Jen
mmm mmm
Sofia
don't know. It's another three named person. love her Vorkosigan Saga. I don't know. There's like a million books in the series.
Jen
mmm
Sofia
I've read all of them. um And it's about this, well, originally it starts with the parents, but then it's mostly about like their kid who grows up um and he has a physical disability, but he's like so fucking brilliant that he he manages to get himself into and out of like situations all across the galaxy.
um So like in ah in a wide ranging…how to describe it's almost found family in the sense that you know there's like there's travel we're going on a journey we got to do a thing we're gonna we're gonna pick up people along the way they're gonna become you know part of our crew and we're gonna do this thing together and so that's sort of the vein of books I really like and Stardust Grail is right up there with them it's a PhD student who used to be an art thief who stole from like all sorts of different cultures all across space um and they got to go back for one more heist.
Jen
Hmm.
Sofia
So you know how that goes. Love a heist, got to do it one more time. Yeah.
Jen
Hmm. Right. And I'm out. But is it ever that true?
Sofia
yeah
Jen
That's dope. My only one for the most recent significant one is Babel. That's, as we've talked about, all of us before, so good. And I think because it captures the academic violence, the violence of academia, I think as all of us having worked in or still working in academic libraries, it just hits.
nicholae
It's so good.
Sofia
Actually, that reminds me. Have you guys read Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou?
Jen
No.
Sofia
Or is it Chou? Yeah, it's one of those. um It's a satire. Takes place in academia.
Jen
Hmm.
Sofia
She's a PhD student who um is in, I think, East Asian Studies and is like working on this obscure Chinese-American poet and then shenanigans ensue.
Jen
Hmm. said it's called Disorientation?
Sofia
I don't want to say much more. Yeah, it's called disorientation. and don't want to say too much more because you just keep, if there's like layers.
Jen
Spoilers.
Sofia
Yeah. And I don't want to spoil anything.
nicholae
ah pretty recent one for me that I've loved is a novel, Rejection, by Tony Tulathimutte. ah could be saying the name horribly wrong, and I'm sorry to Tony if so.
But it's sometimes billed as the first incel not novel, but first incel story collection. And I don't relate to incel.
Jen
What?
Sofia
I have read that before.
nicholae
I don't relate to incel life at all in any way, but I've, I found it fascinating and horrifying in just like exploring, like really taking seriously to some degree, incel subjectivity, right? Like this particular kind of millennial masculinity that thinks about, I mean, the book kind of thinks about that refracted through digital mediation and how there are these particular kinds of social frustrations created through technological, like socio-technological mechanism, like dating apps, for example.
And it also thinks through some of the more frustrating aspects of like liberal identity politics, It's just some of these characters are horribly skewered, but also I feel like they're given a lot of care and room to to showcase their individual like subjective experiences.
And that I appreciated. Also, sometimes it's incredibly funny and really weird. And each story focuses on a different different character, but they are to some degree interconnected and it has some formal experimentation as well, which I really appreciated. I did not expect to love this set of stories as much as I did. I thought it was going to be kind of cringe and hard to read. And I read it as a part of a group of people. And frankly, a lot of people hated it
But I think the reasons they hated it, which was that it's really hard to read and how cringe it is sometimes, like how seriously it takes particular ways of being in the world and ways of like relating to rejection and alienation.
I found it fascinating and really compelling. So I would highly recommend another, that's very recent. Another one, that probably the book, I would say the book that I have loved more than any other in the past six or seven years is Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz, who is a Mojave poet.
And it's just incredibly beautiful, incredibly erotic. You know, she's thinking, she's basically creating love poems that that also explore you know indigenous identity and cultural and environmental destruction and the ongoing effects of colonialism. But they're like woven together in a way that, you know, it's not heavy handed, it's not overwrought. It's just like beautiful, almost little story poems that also come at things differently from slightly different directions that nevertheless help you understand the ah you know the affect experience of being Indigenous and being in love. So that obviously feels very resonant to me in particular, but I also just think it's really, really beautiful.
um And then another one that I'll just briefly mention is Sexuality Beyond Consent, which is a work of psychoanalytic theory, which is by, and and I also don't know exactly how to say her name, but it's something like Avgi Saketopoulou, and I'm sure you're hearing my cat now, who still sounds like baby again.
[laughter]
But yeah, that book is really exploring, you know, it's kind of a critique of not the concept of consent, but like liberal and normative forms of consent. It's thinking about unconscious desire and racial dynamics and trauma and how, trauma complicates really overly simplistic models of sexual autonomy and ethical relating. It's really challenging. It's a really challenging book. It's heavy on the theory, but it's, and it's, it's, it's emotionally difficult to read too. It explores some like really difficult concepts and experiences. And Avi, they, they are a clinical, like a practicing clinical, psychoanalyst psychotherapist so they bring in some of their own clinical work as well as they do and in another book that they wrote just after this with another author which is also really good Gender Without Identity but yeah these are some of the ones that I just have really loved recently and as I mentioned I think in another episode i've been getting into psychoanalytic theory again
so I will, you're welcome. And also apologies for bringing that up sometimes because it's not the most ah relatable to to talk about, but it's really good. And I would definitely recommend, I don't know that I recommend that one to everyone, but would recommend Postcolonial Love Poem and Rejection for sure.
Sofia
Actually, everyone I've heard talk about Rejection has loved it.
nicholae
It's incredibly written.
Sofia
But...
nicholae
Like it's so well-written. And there are times when I was reading it where I was just thinking, this must be the most well-read literate gay dude in the world. I don't know how he identifies, but it's just so, you know, acerbic and so pointed and so smart in how it's written. And the references are just all over the place and off the charts.
I really appreciated it
Sofia
Yeah, interesting. I know, I've heard so much about it, but everything I've heard about it makes me think I'm not going to like it, so I'm probably not going read it, but I am so curious about it.
nicholae
Totally fair. Totally fair. I won't recommend it for our We Reads podcast reading group.
Sofia
Oh, when we talked about reading Mexican Gothic, right.
nicholae
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jen
right
Sofia
that That's the book we're reading. Oh, that reminds me. She has a new book, The Bewitching, want to say. That's also supposed to be like a queer vampire story, I thought.
nicholae
We're back.
Queer vampires are back.
Thank you, interview with a vampire.
Sofia
I still need to watch that.
Jen
I know, right? And I need this moment to last. I don't want it to be back for um a year. I need a decade.
nicholae
Truth.
Jen
I need a long stretch.
Sofia
Agree. The last book I'll mention of favorite significant recent books is Kulti by Mariana Zapata. And if you've ever read any of Mariana Zapata's books, they're all the slowest fucking burn that you've ever, ever read. Like literally her books are like hundreds of pages.
And you until you get to like the 90th percent of the book, then that's when you finally get like some... some follow through on the romance and they all are romances, but somehow she like drags out the burn so long. You're like, are these people ever gonna get together? And there's some books where I don't mind because like she's really good at it. She's not, not all of her books follow are able to like actually do this, but her best one, I think, and the first one of hers I read was Kulti, which is about two soccer players. um And that like I said before, I think I mentioned this in one of our other but ah other episodes, I really like a sports romance where both of the characters are athletes, not just like the man, for example. Well they’re both soccer players, but the main female character is still playing because she’s a bit younger. And the male character is this world famous soccer player who everybody knows and he comes to coach her team. Um I don’t want to well I don’t think any of you will read it but just to spoil it if you are just skip ahead 15 seconds but the main reason he comes to coach her team – he’s world famous he can go wherever the fuck he wants – is because he watches videos of her playing and was like oh this is someone with potential I want to coach this person. But the whole time he’s a big asshole and like I said Mariana Zapata her books are hundreds of pages long because she does the slowest burn possible and you really don’t get the culmination of their romance until 85% sometimes 75% in.
Jen
Torture.
Sofia
Yes, torture. But if she’s at the top of her game, which I think Kulti is one example of this, then you’re along for the ride.
Jen
Then you’re like this is great torture. I love it.
Sofia
Yes. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. The other thing she’s really good at is side characters. She’s really good at writing fun families. She has another one with an ice skater couple and the family plays a big role and that’s really fun.
Oh, there's another one for nicholae and well also for Jen. It’s two hockey players in the NHL. As someone who doesn’t watch hockey, I had to guess–those are the right initials. They are intense rivals on the ice, and then turns out off the ice, they’re fucking in secret. Are they in love? Maybe.
All
[shared laughter]
nicholae
I’ve never, I guess that’s also a genre–sports fiction–that I would say I’m not interested in? But you know, make it queer, and who knows what can happen.
Jen
Mmhm
Sofia
Well, again, I’m only interested in sports, in romance. So, Heated Rivalry, that’s what it’s called.
nicholae
I also didn’t think I would ever be into royal drama fiction, but I really loved Red, White, and Royal Blue. The book, and the adaptation honestly.
Sofia
Oh, so the movie was good too?
nicholae
I thought it was pretty decent, yeah. And I think there’s gonna be a sequel.
Sofia
A sequel movie? Or a sequel book?
nicholae
I think a sequel movie. At least I heard tell that the actors were maybe in talks to do another one, a follow up.
Sofia
Interesting. I also liked Red, White, and Royal Blue. But I didn’t like the book after that. I forgot the name of it. It’s a lesbian romance.
Jen
Is it something about a train?
Sofia
Yes
Jen
Last Stop On Something?
Sofia
She falls in love with a ghost.
Jen
Oh? I didn’t know there was a ghost in that book. Wow.
Sofia
Yeah, it’s a lesbian romance. It’s like–they’re in time. Like the ghost’s from the 70s or 80s, and she’s in present day. Only problem is, I never finished the book because she has a few BIPOC side characters, and the love interest is also, I think, Asian, and there’s this weird scene—some of the banter from the roommates was not that cute. A little like, a person of color would never say this to a white person. Like, stop playing. So, then I could not finish.
Jen
[laughter] Be so for real.
[shared laughter]
Jen
Wow. So many good books. People have tons to dig into.
Sofia
Are you reading anything fun right now?
Jen
What am I reading right now…Oh, I’m reading Saint Death’s Daughter by CSE Cooney.
Sofia
How is that?
Jen
I like it! It’s weird. As weird as Gideon the Ninth is, or was, in terms of necromancy and weird death magic. And very, not steampunk, but it has a sort of victorian-esque vibe to it.
nicholae
I need to finish that series. The Gideon the Ninth series.
Sofia
You like them?
nicholae
I really liked the first one a lot.
Sofia
Yes. Like, off this podcast, Jen and I have talked about Gideon the Ninth, cause I couldn’t get into the writing at all, for some reason. I really wanted to like the book, cause it sounded right up my alley. But something about the writing really turned me off.
Jen
Mmhm.
nicholae
Yeah, I can feel that. I don’t, I read it around when it first came out, so I don’t totally remember what the prose style is, but I know other people said that, too. I just found the world and the characters so fascinating.
Jen
Yeah
Sofia
I mean, me too!
nicholae
Pretty unique take.
Sofia
Yeah. Are you reading anything?
nicholae
I’m reading Hangman. Have you all heard about this? I also don’t totally know how to say her name, Maya Binyam. Who, I think, is Ethiopian? Ethiopian-American? But the book is about an unnamed guy who returns to his unnamed sub-sarahan african country after being, i think, the united states? All these places and characters are unnamed. And he’s summoned there by this mysterious arrangement to search for his dying or maybe dead brother. He goes back home after a long time and recognizes it, but also doesn’t recognize it. And maybe like, a third of the way through it right now, and I”m enjoying it, but getting to a point where I”m feeling like it could end at any moment. But also, is it going to end at any moment? I know it’s not like I have a lot left to go, but I’m unsure where it’s heading. And I like that, but I’m also feeling a little unmoored in the story right now. So, I would say I recommend it for now. Check back later to see how I feel once I finish it. But the writing’s really interesting and it reminds me of books in translation I’d read, and it reminds me of certain styles that translators would have, particularly Spanish, hard to describe in words, you’d have to read it to see, but there’s a humorous detachment to the prose, I would say. But it’s pretty good. I enjoy it so far.
Sofia
I am still reading Sky Daddy, and it took a little downturn, but actually I’m back on the upturn–and, I think there’s some queer undertones that I’m picking up. But I still got some ways to go. I also started The Town of Babylon by Alejandro Varela and it’s interesting. I want to like it more than I actually do. I think it’s well written, but there’s definitely some moments where I’m like, you’re writing to a white audience in a way that’s a little too…you know those TV specials where it’s like, this is too TV special for me. It’s like, you’re trying to teach me a lesson or something?
Jen
MM. Okay.
Sofia
And I want you to just believe that I know what you’re talking about, and just move on.
[Credits]
Thanks for listening! This has been the We Reads Podcast. The We Reads podcast is produced by Imani Spence and hosted by Jen Brown, nicholae cline, and Sofia Leung. Our intro/outro music was created by Kamari WV. This podcast is supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation as part of We Here’s dream-shaping project. Big thank you to the We Here Grant advisory team and the rest of the We Here family for all their support to help make this podcast possible. Special shout-out to our pets: Blue, Junior, Hamlet and Beckett for keeping it real on the recordings.
Show Notes
We hope you enjoyed this episode! Below, you’ll find links to topics & resources that came up during our episode.
Books, Authors, and Media Mentioned
Series
The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine Bonaparte, Sandra Gulland
The Chronicles of Narnia, C. S. Lewis
The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
Earthsea series, Ursula K. Le Guin
Weetzie Bat books, Francescia Lia Block
Twilight series, Stephenie Meyer
Broken Earth trilogy, N. K. Jemison
The Jade City trilogy, Fonda Lee
Inheritance trilogy, N. K. Jemison
Machineries of Empire series, Yoon Ha Lee
Vorkosigan Saga, Lois McMaster Bujold
Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb series), Tamsyn Muir
Standalone
The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien
The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
Watership Down, Richard Adams
Ella Enchanted, Gail Carson Levine
The Two Princesses of Bamarre, Gail Carson Levine
The Monster at the End of this Book, Jon Stone
Book of Greek Myths, Ingri d'Aulaire
Dealing with Dragons, Patricia C. Wrede
Mythology, Edith Hamilton
We Are in a Book, Mo Willems
The Shy Little Kitten, Cathleen Schurr
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemison
Uprooted, Naomi Novick
The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
Nine Fox Gambit, Yoon Ha Lee
The Luckiest Lady in London, Sherry Thomas
Kindred, Octavia Butler
Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain
Emergent Strategy, adrienne marie brown
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
Geek Love, Katherine Dunn
The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
The Art Lover, Carole Maso
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
Angels in America, Tony Kushner
Beloved, Toni Morrison
Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin
Zami, Audre Lorde
Infinity Alchemist, Kacen Callender
Felix Ever After, Kacen Callender
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, V. E. Schwab
Dead Collections, Isaac Fellman
Stardust Grail, Yume Kitase
Babel, R. F. Kuang
Disorientation, Elaine Hsieh Chou
Rejection, Tony Tulathimutte
Postcolonial Love Poem, Natalie Diaz
Sexuality Beyond Consent, Avgi Saketopoulou
Gender Without Identity, Ann Pellegrini & Avgi Saketopoulou
The Bewitching, Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Kulti, Mariana Zapata
From Lukov with Love, Mariana Zapata
Heated Rivalry, Rachel Reid
Red, White, and Royal Blue, Casey McQuiston
Saint Death’s Daughter, C. S. E. Cooney
Hangman, Maya Binyam
The Town of Babylon, Alejandro Varela
Authors
Gail Carson Levine
Joseph Campbell
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Carmen Maria Machado
Credits
Hosts: Sofia Leung, nicholae cline, and Jen Brown
Producer: Imani Spence
Copyright: Copyright © 2025 We Reads Podcast. All rights reserved.This podcast and its contents are the property of We Here LLC and its hosts, and may not be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except for brief quotations used in reviews or promotional content.
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