Popcorn Book Club

When you’re talking about books being adapted into movies and TV, the cliché that comes to mind is “the book was better.” But if you’ve listened to our last couple of episodes about Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (hint hint… you should go do that if you haven’t), you’ve heard our myriad issues with it. Well this week, we’re getting into the adaptation for NBC’s Peacock and now you’ll get to hear our numerous issues with that as well!

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Next week we are going goth in time for Halloween. Not like dressing-in-black, listening-to-The-Cure goth… we’re discussing the Gothic novel “Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier, soon to be a film on Netflix.

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Last week, we started in on Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, now a series on NBC’s Peacock. We discussed a whole bunch of people in it, none of whom—as it turns out—are the main character. If you haven’t heard our previous show, definitely go back and start there.

Today, we'll get into the thick of Huxley’s story about sex, drugs, and a complete lack of rock and roll.

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@DanaSchwartzzz

@JenAshleyWright

@koramadrama

@MelissaFTW

and Tien has wisely gotten off Twitter but is on Insta @hanktina

Next week we'll get to our Screen Time conversation about the adaptation of Brave New World!

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I know one thing I’m fond of saying is that this show is not English class — there’s no required reading... or watching for that matter. But this week we are diving into our first piece of bona fide English lit required reading — Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. There’s a pretty good chance you had to read this in 11th grade, and we are reading it now because it’s been adapted into a series on the NBC streaming service Peacock. But trust me, this will NOT be a high school English class discussion.

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@DanaSchwartzzz

@JenAshleyWright

@koramadrama

@MelissaFTW

and Tien has wisely gotten off Twitter but is on Insta @hanktina

Next week we will continue our discussion of Brave New World and then we'll get to our Screen Time conversation about the adaptation!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I don’t know what your Twitter timeline looks like, but if it’s anything like ours, every week, like clockwork, it has been filled with people absolutely freaking out about HBO’s Lovecraft Country—how scary it is, how surprising, how interesting and refreshing a show it is. We covered the book a few episodes ago and now that the show is about halfway through its season, we are returning to Lovecraft Country to talk about how the adaptation compares to the source material.

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@DanaSchwartzzz

@JenAshleyWright

@koramadrama

@MelissaFTW

and Tien has wisely gotten off Twitter but is on Insta @hanktina

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of the cool things about doing a show about books by contemporary writers is that…they are contemporaries. Like, if you have a question about Frankenstein, you can’t go ask Mary Shelley, she’s dead. But after our conversations about The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, we all had questions. And so we asked her! We’ve been really excited to bring you this episode because as you’re about to hear, Angie Thomas is brilliant and cool and nice and everything you’d hope for in a young adult author. This week, she’ll talk to us about what it’s like seeing your work adapted to the screen.

Angie Thomas was born, raised, and still lives in Jackson, Mississippi. She is a former teen rapper… and we will get into that. The Hate U Give is her debut novel and is a #1 New York Times Bestseller. Of course she is a working writer, and her second novel, On The Come Up, is on shelves now.

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@DanaSchwartzzz

@JenAshleyWright

@koramadrama

@MelissaFTW

and Tien has wisely gotten off Twitter but is on Insta @hanktina

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week we continue our discussion of Angie Thomas’ novel “The Hate U Give.” The book follows 16-year-old Starr Carter, a young black woman, who sees her best friend Khalil shot and killed by police in front of her during a routine traffic stop.

Now, we recorded this discussion a few weeks ago, and I want to say that it is heartbreaking that this work of fiction from 2017 is so immediately relevant in our world. It shouldn’t be. But as long as it is, we are proud to be having this discussion and just to make it clear, Popcorn Book Club says Black Lives Matter.

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@DanaSchwartzzz

@JenAshleyWright

@koramadrama

@MelissaFTW

and Tien has wisely gotten off Twitter but is on Insta @hanktina

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Just in case you are listening to this from the future, here’s a quick refresher that the summer of 2020 was… “unusual,” though there are a lot of other words we could use. It was notable for the Black Lives Matter protests and violent clashes with cops in cities across the country sparked by a number of black people being killed by police officers.

So it might be tempting to look at Angie Thomas’ 2017 novel The Hate U Give as prescient. But really, she’s writing about something that has been happening for decades, for centuries. This week we’re talking about Thomas’ novel and its 2018 film adaptation.

Follow us on Twitter!

@DanaSchwartzzz

@JenAshleyWright

@koramadrama

@MelissaFTW

and Tien has wisely gotten off Twitter but is on Insta @hanktina

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a show about books and adaptations and one subject we’ve returned to a couple of times is who gets to tell stories. Today we’re continuing our discussion of Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff. Now, Matt is white, and the adaptation now on HBO counts Misha Green and Jordan Peele among its executive producers. And that is significant because not only are these black creators taking control of a black story, but also Jordan Peele helped to give us the language to be able to talk about this. I mean, Get Out is iconic for a reason.

This is part two of our discussion, jump back an episode if you want to start at the beginning.

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@DanaSchwartzzz

@JenAshleyWright

@koramadrama

@MelissaFTW

and Tien has wisely gotten off Twitter but is on Insta @hanktina

Next week we’ll move from telling black stories through sci-fi to telling black stories in young adult literature with The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas.

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We don’t necessarily need to seek out literature to fill us with a creeping sense of existential dread, seeing as how we have… everything else happening right now. But there is something to be said for using horror to reclaim power. This week, we’re starting up a discussion of Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff, now a series on HBO premiering August 17th. We’ll talk about the terrifying monsters hiding in the woods AND the ones right out in the open.

Follow us on Twitter!

@DanaSchwartzzz

@JenAshleyWright

@koramadrama

@MelissaFTW

and Tien has wisely gotten off Twitter but is on Insta @hanktina

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dana and Korama's friendship goes back many years, and they have mutually decided to throw all that away for an episode of Food Court with Richard Blais. We're sharing an excerpt of this week's episode, a fight between french fries and sweet potato fries.

Hear the full episode with Blais' final verdict here! And subscribe to Food Court with Richard Blais wherever you get your podcasts!

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