Booklovers

Spy novels are driven by a set of interrelated questions: Who or what is really in charge? What is the true mission? And how will they get out of this one? On this episode, we discuss two novels with entertaining responses to these questions. Both Who is Vera Kelly? by Rosalie Knecht and This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone offer surprising twists on the spy novel formula and allow us a way in to talk about the appeal of spy fiction and what we as readers want out of our books.

Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse digs into one family in one place over a span of two very different days, a decade apart. As the Ramsay family spends its day at the blustery northern shore of Scotland, family friend Lily Briscoe attempts to capture the family via painting. Ten years later, what remains of the family returns to the same place, and Lily attempts to complete her painting, although the Ramsays seem to remain just out of reach. But to describe the plot of this novel is to miss the depth and creativity of Woolf’s writing and perspective, which bounces from inner mind to inner mind, visiting everyone from the family matriarch Mrs. Ramsay to the insufferable “brilliant” student Charles Tansley. The team digs into Woolf’s third novel and contrasts it with Céline Sciamma’s beautiful film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which also explores the inner lives of women, with art as a vehicle.

51 years after its publication, Ursula K. Le Guin’s masterwork, The Left Hand of Darkness, continues to inspire and open minds across the globe for its frank explorations of gender, friendship, loyalty and patriotism. If you didn’t think all that could happen in a science fiction-adventure novel, then it’s time to pick up The Left Hand of Darkness yourself, then listen to this episode. We discuss Left Hand and its obvious impact on science fiction released since, and we dig into the novel’s structure and style, what books we’d like to see redesigned as dossiers, and how Le Guin continues to blow our minds, even half a century later.

There’s no questioning the tremendous impact that Kurt Vonnegut has had on writing. The inimitable author penned dozens of novels, short stories, essays and more over his life, and none is better known than Slaughterhouse-Five, the rare beloved school-assigned novel once described to Jess as “World War II, but with aliens”. At 51 years old, Slaughterhouse-Five is still as relevant, biting and comical as ever, but to deepen its legend, a graphic novel adaptation was released in September 2020. The source material is clearly handled with kid gloves by Ryan North and Albert Monteys, who do their best to bring Dresden, time travel, and Tralfamadorians to life. In this episode, we discuss our varied relationships with Slaughterhouse-Five, the story and world that Vonnegut builds, and that time Ryan North got stuck in a skate pit with his dog.

In this episode, we’re looking at two stories of Vietnamese families who immigrate to America, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong and The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui. While the families are pressed into change by the Vietnam War and its impact on the country, the war itself lingers at the very edges of both books, which are centered primarily around relationships between children who carve their own paths and parents who want an American experience for their kids (whatever that means). While On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is an autobiographical novel and The Best We Could Do is a graphic memoir, both tackle the ultimately universal themes of belonging and the need for understanding, along with generational trauma and the search for identity.

It’s our tenth episode! We’re celebrating by discussing Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem and The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. We focus on the in-over-their-heads heroes of both novels, Lionel Essrog and Oedipa Maas, as they try to do right by people who had past impact on them. Despite seeming disparate at the outset, both novels feature mysteries and seedy underbellies, big city semi-noir vibes, and plenty of conspiracy to go around.

Are you looking for a novel that will unnerve you and challenge you to make all of its pieces fit? Do you spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the Satanic Panic? Do you think Ohio is equal parts fascinating and terrifying? If you answered a hesitant yes to any of these questions, then you should check out this episode.

Romance as a genre of pleasure reading has always been looked down upon as lesser when compared to lofty genres like literary fiction and classics, but make no mistake: romance is the bestselling pleasure reading genre in publishing, and in times of crisis—from the Great Depression to the COVID-19 pandemic—book sales overall may drop, but romance sales go through the roof. Why is this? What makes romance so appealing to readers, even when so many people hold such a negative view of it? On this episode, we discuss romance’s role in publishing, in pleasure reading, and in representation, using two smash hit titles from 2018 as a vehicle: Helen Hoang’s The Kiss Quotient, featuring two Asian leads, one of whom lives with high-functioning autism, and Jasmine Guillory’s The Wedding Date, which opens with a meet-cute in an elevator between a white man and a Black woman. Come for the popcorn, stay for the comfort food.

On this episode we discuss Trust Exercise by Susan Choi and New Waves by Kevin Nguyen. This pair of seemingly disparate titles—one about a performing arts high school, the other about a tech startup—seem like they have little in common, but beyond having striking covers, they both explore what it means for the reader to be able to trust a narrator in contemporary reading. We also talk about our online lives and how they differ from our in person lives.

On this episode, Carmanita officially joins Booklovers as a cohost! To celebrate, we discuss two short story collections by award-winning master speculative fiction authors N.K. Jemisin and Ted Chiang. We open with an attempt at defining speculative fiction and then shift to discuss both collections in a general way before finding threads of commonality and contrast across pairs of stories. We close with a discussion of some of our favorite stories from both collections. Come for the dialogue and comity, stay for the publishing awards hot takes and a hilarious anecdote about Tamagotchi.