Does CIRCE live up to the hype?

This episode's pick: Circe by Madeline Miller is a beautifully written retelling of Greek myth that puts the infamous witch from The Odyssey centre stage. Banished to a lonely island for angering the gods, Circe slowly discovers her own strange, dangerous powers and starts to shape a life on her own terms. Along the way, gods, heroes and mortals drift in and out of her world - including Odysseus - and along the way Circe learns the true extent of her power and strength.

This week’s guest is our friend and saviour, superstar virtual assistant, Annie Bucknall. As well as helping us get this pod off the ground, creating our gorgeous branding and rescuing Anthea from many a tech disaster, Annie is a historian/librarian by day and an aspiring writer by night.

In this episode, we cover:

Greek Gods - our passion or lack thereof for them.

Necessity of universal of emotions in fiction.

The many loves of Circe.

Feminine rage and vengeance

Things Anthea doesn’t believe in

💋 And, of course, we rate CIRCE: Kiss, Kill, or Marry.

Which way did the votes fall? You’ll have to listen to find out.

📚 Books Mentioned in this Ep

The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

The Housemaid by Freida McFadden

The Bronze Horseman by Paulina Simons

Road to Paradise by Paulina Simons

Tully by Paulina Simons

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Alchemised

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

What Happened to Nina by Dervla McTiernan

Cold Truth by Ashley Kaligian Blunt

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Lady of Hay by Barbara Erskine

And podcasts - Creative Pep Talk and Haptic and Hue.

⏰ Timestamps

1.0 - Intro our fab guest

2.35 - The best eras of history (Anthea’s pretty historical because she can remember the 70’s..)

4.30 - Shout out to long suffering Annie our RBD Queen - who managed to teach Anthea about the computer machines

7.10 - Zeus, deserted Islands and multiple book blurbs - (Are Greek gods kind of arseholes?)

8.56 - Judging Madeline’s bio - Anthea thinks it needs a few chickens.

11.24 - Circe, Goddess of magic and sorcery - (probably got her edits in on time…)

13.02 - Kiss, Kill or turn some nymph into a sea monster

14.18 - Anthea finally finishes CIRCE and enjoys time in Greece with Hermes

17.25 - Rach enjoys every one of the 124000 words of Circe as much as Prometheus enjoyed feeding his liver to that eagle.

21.14 - Annie loves the language almost as much as Circe loves love (no judgement..)

24. - Men are pigs! (Hey, Homer said it in the Odyssey, not us!)

27.48 - Circe - kind of epic - congrats, Madeline Miller. (Rach has probably had enough now..!)

30. Question Time

33.46 - Annie’s hot tip - spending a weekend with a book, then dumping it and never calling again… harsh but fair.

36. The fear of re-reading.

38. Trigger warnings - yay or nay

44.40 Annie recommends a weird podcast. Bring it on!

46.10 Rachael has us reading about pumpkins and serial killers. In that order - Goodluck!

📖 Coming up next:

👉Next Ep, we’re diving into The Pumpkin Spice Cafe by Laurie Gilmore (Feb 14th)

On Feb 28th guest author Kayte Nunn will make us read My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite.

In March we’re reading The Crash by Freida McFadden and our guest John Purcell will make us read The Friend by Sigrid Nunez.

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