Mostly Fictional
Ep. 73: We Both Read Books About Violins?
In this episode, we have 10 finished books to discuss! Plus, Pam did multiple reading challenges.
Books mentioned, in order:
The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt
Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox
The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami
The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb
One Hundred Shadows by Hwang Jungeun
Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn
Not Another Love Song by Julie Soto
Forget Me Not by Julie Soto
Bride by Ali Hazelwood
The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu
Sisters of the Lost Nation by Nick Medina
A Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan
Libro.FM Challenge: https://blog.libro.fm/champions/
Blackoween FAQ: https://blackoweenfaq.carrd.co/
Find Pam and Hallie online!
Follow Hallie’s Substack at wordsmithreads.substack.com
Pam can be found on Youtube and Bookstagram at @pams_inkheart
- Duration:
- 59m
- Broadcast on:
- 31 Jul 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to Mostly Fictional, a podcast about the books of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, my name is Pam. - And I'm Hayley. - Oh, I'm so looking forward to sharing my reading updates day because I attempted two reading challenges in the last, since the last time we spoke. - Two is significant. I'm trying to think of, let's see, is it your buzzword a fun, or like your buzzword? - Oh, wow, that was involved, but not what I was referring to. One of them finished last Friday, and the other one finishes at the end of July, and so, oh boy. (laughs) And through all that, I finished five books, some of them were because of these challenges, and then others were just, things that got thrown at me by the library, we'll put it that way. - Even though we were, even though we said, oh, maybe we'd take a break from the library? These were things that were on hold before we said that. - Okay, okay, that's fair. - Yes, yes. Okay, I really wanna tell you about the challenge that finished last week. I completed at least one of the medals for the Libro.fm audiobook championship that they hosted. So, for our listeners who don't know Libro.fm, it's an alternative to Audible, where you can get audiobooks, and if you pay for a monthly subscription, your credit goes to supporting an independent bookstore. Super fun. I love getting my audiobooks from there, and they love promoting against Amazon. So, they helped this championship that started on Amazon Prime Day, and went all the way from July 16th to 26th, and it was just a challenge to see, it just said, "Listen to as many hours as you could "between those two dates, "and if your number of hours fit into bronze, "10 to 29 hours, silver, 30 to 49 hours, "or gold, 50 plus hours in 10 days." If you got into one of those categories, you were entered to win one of those three prizes, but all participants are gonna get a free audiobook credit too. So fun. I had a blast. I really listened to a few comfort audiobooks' favorites to get through that. I'm not gonna list all of those, but I aimed for silver, and I succeeded with 30 and a half hours. - Wow, I'm very happy. - Wow, that 30 hours is a lot of, was it 30 hours of listen time, or was it what the book is listed as? Does that question make sense? - Yes, it was in their FAQs for the challenge page. It is 30 listening hours. - Oh my gosh. - So like if you listen to a four hours of an audio book at two speed, and you listened for two hours. So, yeah, a count of two hours towards the challenge. Oh my gosh, so that was minorly stressful and having to keep a timer going at the same time because there's no way I was gonna remember how long I was listening. So every time I was listening to an audio book and then my husband would be like, "Pam, I have a question for you." I have to be like, "Hold on a second. "I gotta hit pause on two things." My timer and the audio book. - Because you just wanted to see how you were tracking towards that part. - Exactly, that's how I chose to track it. I'm sure other people just mapped it, like if they listened to one book at the same speed the whole way, then it'd be easy to add up, but I fluctuate between speeds depending on how I'm feeling. So, I needed a separate method that was gonna independently track just my listening time. - I can't believe that they didn't have a tracker built in for you. - That would have been nice, but I also listened to a couple audio books from the library. So that would have been tricky for LibreFM not to have that integrated into their app. - Oh, you just use the honor system and say, "Oh, I got so okay, okay." - Yeah, you submit a little tracking log and it's an honor system of what did you listen to? And then, yeah, there's the surprises to win, including a lot of credits to spend at the LibreFM's collection of audio books. And it was just such a fun way to just push myself to get through a couple very interesting audio books. And I got to just really listen to some favorites so I could focus at work at the same time. Ah, okay, but the first book that I did finish is completely unrelated to that. Shall I jump in to that? - Absolutely. - It's the only book I don't have to hold up for you. It is The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt. Oh, this was a strange little book. I read it right after our last recording session, which for us was two weeks ago. And then I already had returned it to the library and I almost forgot to share it in my notes today. So whoops, happy I did remember it though because it was a strange little experience. I read the first few pages. Okay, first off, bit of context. This book is 70 pages long. - Oh. - It's a tiny, tiny short story, kind of a printed thing. - Okay. - And I had heard about it from, I think the book's unbound people. And I read the first few pages and I almost gave up because there was a French translation choice and it irked me as a Francophone. Just, I didn't like it. It was a word choice I just didn't agree with. Apparently France or Moroccan French view things a little differently, I guess. So the word that bothered me was the French word for suit, like a suit that you would wear to a wedding. - Okay. - In French, I would call that a costume, like a costume or confler, which to me, those are just the words for suit. But the character in this book called it a tiara, which to me, that's the word for tailor, the person who makes the suit. So you wouldn't wear a tailor, not without something horrible happening to the tailor, but okay, but I looked it up and apparently tiara is an accepted translation for suit, but it's actually the last of many translation options. Like if you say suit, what's suit in French? You get all kinds of options. And tiara was the last one on the page, I was like, yeah. - So is it a translated book? Or is it just talking issues she was talking about? - This French. - Character is born to a French mother and an English father. And so her mother being French versus a little bit of French sprinkled through here. So on that first page, it's like, oh, we visited mama one and to get a new tiara with her new fabric, 'cause the English understand wool. Like that's part of the first paragraph or so. And so they said tiara and suit, like in the same sentence or two and I was just like, tiara is the tailor, the person who's making the suit. But I did feel a little vindicated because if you translate tiara, so what I believe to be tailor back into English, tailor comes first and then suit as a translation. Sorry, I felt a little bit, no, not, yeah, vindicated is the word I want. So as I said this follows a girl who grew up with her French mother, not really seeing her English father a lot and she grew up in Machaka. I think it's how you pronounce it. It's a town in Morocco or a big metropolitan town in Morocco. Her mother raised her to always avoid bad taste, which is mauve in French, literally bad taste. But then a big twist, somehow in 70 pages, is pulled out from under us that made everything really interesting because it turned out that there was a cool format to this little book and not is all what it seemed. Characters were revealed to be someone completely unknown. That's what I needed. So this was very low plot because it is just 70 pages. I would recommend it for people who like following a character in like odd, unique situations and watching her connive her way in and out of those situations. - I think it's funny that you were like, I was going to quit this book very early on because it had a mistranslation is maybe the best way to say it. 'Cause that's how sometimes I feel when I find typos, I don't know if I ever am like, I'm gonna quit this, but if I've read a good handful of books recently that have typos or that one that I was talking about in a recent episode, a novel love story that within the first like 4% on my Kindle, it had said the same thing four times, which I was like, okay, come on now. What this is not a good first impression. So I'm glad that both of us stuck it out 'cause I ended up enjoying that one a couple weeks ago and it sounds like you really liked this one. - I did like it. I'm like happy I got it from the library kind of thing, but I enjoyed it once I got to that like interesting element of it and our main character at first seems very naive and then does prove herself to be more than that. So that was a nice journey to follow her. Even in such short, 70 pages. So there's definitely some talent was involved in creating something so condensed, like 70 pages, man. I can't get over that. - I know. It definitely takes skill to write something short. I mean, of course it takes skill both directions, but I feel like for me, I can go on and on and on, but it's hard to condense your story into something short only 70 pages. - Yeah, so that's the first thing I read since we last spoke. - I last time on the pod was listening to Eve, how the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution by Kat Bohannon. And I think I had only just started it and I finished it while in the interim of us chatting and it was about 15 hours, it's science, nonfiction, what the subtitle says of how the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution. The narration on this by the author, which I was really surprised to hear it was the author because she does fantastic narration. She speaks how an audiobook narrator would. She has really great inflection, really great intonation. She's kind of sassy, she's smart, she's quippy. The, it really felt like I was listening/watching a documentary series, like a mini series. - What a great feeling. - There's, I wanna say there's nine chapters and it's split into various things in specifically the female body. So there's a whole chapter on breastfeeding, there's a whole chapter on the womb, there's a whole chapter on menopause and menstruation and there's, then there's some other chapters on just other things in the human body. So how voice works or how perception, how different, how we've evolved as a species, but specifically, the argument that she's that the author is making is that the way we are as a species today because of what female bodies needed to move the species forward. So that is obviously quite, that's why I say it feels like a documentary because sometimes you watch a documentary and you can tell that there's an angle that's being pushed. - Yeah. And I did feel that, you know, she's pushing this angle, but she does seem pretty upfront about, you know, here's the study and here's what other people think, but here's what I think happened and here's what I think is more. So I appreciated that. I also just think, I almost feel like I should reread it with a pin on the paper with like a pencil in hand or a pen or a notebook or something. It's so chock full of interesting tidbits and weird. So like one thing that I keep, I don't know why I find this so fascinating, but this, when she said this, I was like, oh my gosh, that's so wild, is that the motheries, which is called motheries, but basically how you speak to a baby, everyone knows. - Yes, the baby voice, the baby voice, yeah. - The baby voice, it's called motheries or parenties. It is found in every spoken language. - Yeah. - I don't know why I find that so astounding. I think the reason I find it astounding is maybe I thought it was just something that people picked up on because other people do it and so you're kind of pressed into it by society. So if you've seen like a video or a movie where someone does that, it makes sense that you would be inclined to do that as well. But if it's found in every spoken language, you know, not every spoken language is connected with the internet. There are absolutely going to be places that they don't really have access to that. So for it to be found in every language just feels, it's like, wow, that is just ingrained in us probably because she talks about this as well. This is my one little fact that I will share, but I had lots of facts that I learned. But probably with some grained at us because babies literally understand the higher pitch better than a lower pitch. So it makes sense to raise your voice like this, oh, because a baby can understand that better than they can way down here. So anyway, I thought that was absolutely fascinating. I loved the listening experience. If you are a fan, if you're a reader and you're like, oh, I'm kind of interested in this. If you're a fan of Mary Roach at all, who wrote Stiff the Curious Life, oh gosh. It's something about like the curious life of human cadaver or something like that, which I love and I love Mary Roach. It's very that style where it's quippy and funny and snarky. - That's awesome. I loved your fun fact about motheries being in every language 'cause that's actually something I learned in my undergrad in psychology as well. I had a couple of developmental classes and in either a language development class or just a kid psychology class thing, they talked about how motheries has this purpose. It's not just to annoy everyone around us now. It really is geared so that the babies can hear everything better. As you said, they can just distinguish those high pitches more than those low pitches and it has a purpose. And it's so nice to be reminded that yeah, it isn't every language because it has this purpose for babies to absorb the language 'cause they need that. And they also really like contrast. And so hearing the high pitch, it's something different and so picks their interest too. Ah, that's so much fun. Okay, well my next book, as I had started off with a very short one, I have now, next up on the chopping block is a very long book. Oh, I read the absolute book by Elizabeth Knox. How long is it? 18 hours or 626 pages. Ooh, that is a longer one. It is chunky. I wanted an audio book for chores and crocheting and the Libra FM Challenge I mentioned. And this one has been staring at me on my shelf since I got it, but I was so intimidated by the size. I thought listening to the audio book will help me get through this chunky beast. But to me, this also fits the July buzz word of thumb prompt of measurement because you can have an absolute value of the measurement and absolute zero is the coldest possible temperature ever measurable. So to me, that fit. And it's also one of the unread books I bought in the last two years. So bam, two goals and one. Raff. So the audio book narrator's name and Marie Duff, she has a very, okay, actually she put on a very classic British accent, but then at the end she's like, this is Anne Marie Duff and she was American. I was like, oh my God, how do you do this? I think we both had that experience where a narrator puts on an accent and sounds just so flawlessly and then their voice was just classically American at the end. So having a British accent was very immersive for me and then she switched to Scottish for certain characters and wow, it was just such a fun time. The tagline at the top of the synopsis, I know I'm sighing a lot. I'm getting to why I'm sighing a lot. Oh no. The tagline at the top of the synopsis says they'd be witching epic fantasy about a revenge killing a mysterious scroll box that has survived centuries of fires and the book that changed everything. Sounds intriguing. I love me an ambitious book. I love like this. It felt like urban fantasy because we travel from to to to to England to Auckland to a magical fairy land to purgatory. But partway through this book and by the end, I realized I made some mistakes and I'm gonna have to reread this book in order to properly review it. Oh no. My mistakes include listening to the audiobook too fast, like I'm just not grasping things enough. And my other mistake was that I just have my, it's not really a mistake, it's more just an issue. I have like, I don't really have a movie play in my head or at least not as much or not a very vivid movie. So like with these visualization issues, this book being very action heavy, I struggled big time trying to understand those action scenes in my head. Like this is one entire chapter. It's like a really long chapter. And these two characters are, I'll be vague enough, struggling to escape something. And they have to maneuver a lot to escape the situation that they're in. And I was so confused as to how they were in, how they were caught up. Like, yeah. So this actually, this book is quite a genre blending thing, which I do normally like. Like I leave a list of the things I think it puts in a blender and spits us out. We have murder mystery. We have fantasy adventure in a magical land. We have, our main character is kind of a contemporary author of our day, kind of contemporary, dealing with like, what does she wanna work on next? But then you also have this tense survival thriller element with that scene I was talking about where these two characters are trapped. You also have this overall treatise on the power of storytelling. And there is an importance of focus, a small focus on libraries. And then you have slight horror because of demons and purgatory. I don't know, I'm feeling so bad that I cannot better describe this mess of a book. It was an accomplished, I feel accomplished anyway, that I did finish it, but I do wanna reread it to give it the proper attention it deserves because I just was not grasping what was happening most of the time. Like there was a point, I was like, wait, one of the characters we've been following is not in the group, where is he? And who knows where he was? I don't know where he was. I was just- - Oh no. - When I was paying attention or when I was grasping things, it was fun, I think. But I think I also struggled to get into our main character, Taryn Cornick. I struggled a bit to get into her head. I think that might have been the third person, past or present, third person past. And I think that just had a bit, a bit, wow. A bit of distance for myself. And again, I listened to the audiobook just too fast. I wasn't grasping at the speed I was listening to it. So it's just gonna have to be a sit down and reread with my eyeballs kind of experienced. And who knows when that'll be? But I've read it once, kind of technically. And so I will give it another shot at some point. - I'm so sorry to hear that you have to re-do it. - Now I wanna know how fast were you listening to it? - Two speed, TX. - Oh my gosh, it was too fast. - If I do something on 2X, I have to work up so slowly to it. I do, you know, I'm on one and then I'm on 1.25 and then maybe I get to 1.5. And then I can really only do two. If I am sitting there doing nothing, but like, I don't know, like a coloring app on my phone. - Yeah. - Sure, I'm just like doing nothing. So I'm impressed if you were doing chores and stuff at 2X. - I, maybe the issue was I didn't build myself up to 2X speed. Maybe I jumped into that too fast. I feel like I worked myself up a little bit to it, but maybe not gradually enough. So that could've been part of the issue. But the library has the audio book so I can re-borrow that at some point in the future. And I've got the physical one to chain myself to a chair and actually read slowly. - Oh no. - It's not that bad, I don't think it's that bad. I just feel bad that I can't properly explain to you what happened. - Yeah. - That's the end of my notes, I'm done. - Well, if it makes you feel any better, my next book on my list, I did read with my eyeballs. And I still can't really explain to you what happened. - Oh, do tell. - But I got, so I know I have actually been pretty good about not getting a whole bunch of stuff from new stuff, I should say. I'm not putting anything new on the holds for library, for the library. But I happened to remember the existence of NetGalley, which we have talked about before. For any listener who is like, what is that? It is a way for readers to get access to advanced copies of books that aren't out yet, or that have yet to be published. It's basically how reviewers get advanced access and then they can write a review and give buzz for a book. So I heard that the new Murakami was available on NetGalley to read now. You didn't even have to go request it. - Get approved, yeah. - So I was like, okay, I'll give it a whirl. All right, so the new Murakami comes out in November. It's already been released in Japanese, but it's going to be released in English 'cause it had to be translated in November. Okay, so the book is called The City and It's Uncertain Walls. I will preface this review by saying I have only read one other Murakami book and I was in high school. So it has been a long time. That said, I do know kind of like, the stereotype is in the right word, but like the-- - His vibe. - His vibe, the things that he's known for. And I do think that if you are a Murakami fan, that this book probably fits really well with the rest of his discography. - Bibliography? - No, that's theography. - Is that the right word? - It can be. Love is works, okay. - Yeah, that's why I said, that's the first word. - So the French word and what is sometimes used in English for someone's body of work. - Oh, yes, yes, I know what we're talking about. Okay, yeah. So the plot, the one-cented summary for this, if I have to be one-cented summary, is this a story about a man and his shadow and a trip that he takes to this imaginary city that has kind of fluid walls. That's essentially what the book is about. - I did explain this book in its entirety to my husband and his friend at dinner and they were asking me questions 'cause at one point, I'm just gonna throw out a couple things. You're gonna be like, what? At one point, we keep hearing about these beasts and I was like, "beast." And then at one point, the main character is like something, the horn out of their head. And then he was like, "Oh yeah, yeah, the unicorns." And I was like, "What?" (laughing) "What, what?" And then we'd like go back to this other area and it was hard because there's kind of two timelines slash two realities going on, but it takes you, maybe I'm just a dumb reader. It felt like it took me way too long to figure out what was going on. In fact, it wasn't until I was explaining the book in its entirety to my husband and his friend that they were like, "Oh, so so-and-so." And I was like, "Oh, you're right, you're right." I understand the book a little bit. So I did enjoy this. I don't think I enjoyed it as much as I would have, if I had knew more of Murakami's works and was more familiar with them. I will say, I read the author's note at the end and apparently he has been working on this story for like his entire career. - Oh, it's one of those. - He originally wrote like a small version of it and published it in like a little magazine or something and then was like, "No, I needed to write more." And so took it and worked on it more and thought he was done. And then he was like, "No, I need to..." And so he's been working on this on and off his whole career. So that's why I really think if you're someone who enjoys Murakami books, and they're just kind of weird. There's just like a weird vibe. And yeah, it's very solidly magical realism and it's actually like a good magical realism. I just, I think I'm maybe not like a huge Murakami fan is maybe my issue, but if you like Murakami or you like Murakami-esque stories/tales, this is a good, this would be a good book to read 'cause I did enjoy it and I will say it made for a very entertaining dinner conversation of trying to explain the entire plot to someone else. So some books are boring and don't like retell well. So I will give, I gotta give it props for being entertaining in that regard. - That's awesome. Okay. Well, even if it wasn't like enjoyable, like you said, you enjoyed that dinner conversation part of it. Oh, my only experience with Murakami is being two thirds of the way through one Q84. (laughs) That's still haunting me a little bit, but that's either here nor there. Okay, well, the next thing I read was chosen by the other book challenge thing I participated or am participating in 'cause it ends soon. I attempted to read three books for July Noire, which is a smaller version of the readathon known as Blackoween where the focus is to read crime fiction by Black authors and July Noire covers the last two weeks of July. I really enjoyed my summer ween experience and when I heard about this one, I wanted to jump in. So Blackoween was created by the locked booktition who is a booktuber, bookstagrammer person and basically it covers different characters, visiting many different locations and it goes for the 31 days of October, whereas July Noire was like a mini version. So everyone had the same character and you just picked one set of prompts to complete throughout the two weeks. I picked a set of prompts that was easiest for me to fulfill with the books on my shelf and they were the prompts for the location Joe's library on the Blackoween map. I hope I've explained that well. I will link to the FAQ page of this readathon. We'll link to that in the show notes. So I did indeed read The Violin Conspiracy by Brandon Slocum. This is the only book I finished for this readathon and it ends in a couple of days. So I'll probably only be able to like start the second one I picked, but still. The Violin Conspiracy fits the prompts of written by a black man and with a musical element. Oh, yeah, I had a super fun time listening to the audiobook for this. And that again coincided with the Libra fam audiobook championship. This is about Ray McMillan, a young black man who is a stunning violinist. He has faced a lot of racism and discrimination, subtle and not from the classical music world. It's a very white dominated place. His grandmother gifted him his great grandfather's fiddle and he lovingly takes care of it. And as it is a family heirloom, it's really impressive to have an instrument in one family for so long. But as he's getting it like fixed up and ready for some of his first shows as he's in college, it's discovered that his violin is a stratovarius, a super rare, super old, super special model of violin. Suddenly, like it says on the bag, like Ray's dreams, they seem within reach. And so he enters the Chikovsky competition, which is on the back here, it says, the Olympics of classical music. That's so cool, which is, I guess, coincides with the Olympics we have right now, but I finished this a few days ago. Anyway, the inciting incident of this book, the whole reason this is a crime fiction book and I put it solidly in mystery. In the first chapter, his violin is stolen and there's a ransom note for $5 million. Oh, so the book floats back in time to Ray, proving himself as an excellent violinist and getting the violin from his grandmother and then meeting his mentor who guides him into the soloist world, working back towards the present day of dealing with the theft and actually being in the Chikovsky competition. Ray is such a strong character. He's so determined and absolutely in love with music. I really felt the loss of his violin with him. I felt the emptiness he was feeling, like he felt like he lost a part of himself, truly. I felt his anxiety at not knowing what happened to this violin. Oh, and the descriptions of music were so moving. And even in the audiobook, we got little samplings of a violin piece to cover the title page of each part of the book. - Oh, wow. - So lovely. I would highly recommend the audiobook. Oh my gosh, as for the whole mystery part, I was enthralled. I stayed up late more than once, wanting just one more chapter. I was living the, oh, just for one more chapter. This reminded me that mysteries could be so fun. Wondering what happens next or trying to solve what really happened. I predicted one aspect of the mystery, which was, I was so happy about that. I got one piece of the puzzle, right? But I was definitely surprised by the twist reveal at the end. It at first, it frustrated me. But as all the pieces came together, I felt more comfortable. And in the end, I really liked it. And overall, I loved this book. This was so much fun. I needed this. - I definitely, when you were first talking about it, I was like, I feel like I remember when she hauled this. - It was within the last two years. So probably, yeah. - So you probably got, did that check mark as well? - Yes, exactly. - And I looked up, 'cause I was like, I wonder if that Tchaikovsky thing is real. So I looked it up and that is, it is a real thing. And it's held every four years, which makes sense why it's compared to the Olympics. - Oh, I guess so, yeah. I hadn't thought of that element. I just thought that it was like, a lot of people come together to play classical music and you're judged and then there's rounds and you've been to get to the top three or 10 or whatever. So anyway, yeah. Oh, what a fun time that was. - I am so pleased for you. I almost wanna go, we're gonna do it. We're gonna go, no, I'll wait, I will wait. I was gonna go out of order with my books that I read, but I'm too organized. I like having my things in order. - I read a second book from NetGalley because chaos. So I read this book called "100 Shadows" by Huang Zhang Un. And what to say about this one? This is also magical realism. I just so happened that I read two books in a row that are like from NetGalley that were both magical realism, both translated from somewhere from like the Eastern Hemisphere and both had shadows as like a major component of the plot. - What a strange coincidence. - I was like, okay. So I was like, then I was trying to kind of think about myself of like, oh, is there like, maybe there's something more in Eastern culture that like is more tied to shadows or is this just like a coincidence or am I missing a component of something here? So I almost, because I had just finished the Murakami book about shadows, I probably should have waited on this one, but I was like, whatever, I already have it available. And I, this is a short one. It's less than two, it's shorter than 200 pages. So it reads kind of fast. I didn't love this one. You know, I think, again, I think it, it maybe suffered a little bit in my standing because I had just read the other shadow book and was like, there's a lot of magical realism. And I'm not sure magical realism is really my genre. I feel like that's your genre. - It's for me. I love magical realism. - And enjoy a lot of that in that genre. So it's kind of about these two different characters and they're, it's sort of unclear how old they are. I think they're like maybe late teens, early twenties and they are, one of them works at this like electronics repair shop. And she, you know, is organizing everything and the like for lack of a better descriptor strip mall that they work in her and then her friend, he works at another shop in this, like I said, for lack of a better descriptor strip mall, the whole building area is going to be torn down. And at the same time that that kind of conflict is happening, there are people, different people in the story have their shadows are what they're calling rising and like the shadow like stands up and it's like kind of this malevolent entity. And it's unclear what the shadows want or do but all we are told is like, do not follow your shadow. They, we hear about this one guy who followed his shadow and then he died. He like came home and died in his bed. So it's, it's very strange. It's very, this one was even weirder than the Murakami one where I'm like, I don't even know what to, what to say about this. I think it's probably well written. I saw that it was in response to a certain financial crisis. So I'm like, oh, well that went completely over my head because I did not get that at all. I am very uninformed of, you know, what's happening. You know, what, what this was in response to. I did appreciate that the end, the way that the book ends felt so circular in nature that I actually like I finished and then was like, wait a minute. And so I flipped back to the beginning to be like, is this story a circle? And you know, I couldn't tell you. I, it could be, it might not be and I can't decide what I want the answer to be. So I, if, you know, if anyone else reads it, I'm curious in what people, if it is supposed to be a circle or if I'm just putting my, my, my own thoughts on top of it. So that's 100 shadows. Yeah, those, and thoughts. Okay, funny enough, my next book can't be described as magical realism. So I'm enjoying this back and forth. I finished Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kavai Strong, Washburn, and I only realized recently that his name is stylized on the front where the W in Kavai, which I went and looked at pronunciation, it's pronounced Kavai, so W but V sound. But anyway, it's stylized on the cover as if it was like three V squished together or like a W with an extra V. So I thought that was interesting. I only noticed that and he has Washburn. So there is a normal W on here, but then on the cover, oh, the glare is strong. The, like, W, his first name is, anyway, I just thought that was interesting. - It looks like the M in Time as well. - Oh my God, you got that. I do not see that, I only know that. Thank you for spotting that. - Maybe it's like a bunch of shark fins. - Maybe, ah, that would make sense, okay. Ah, so this was my first pick for the buzzword on July prompt. And so I've now completed two, the absolute book, and Sharks in the Time of Saviors. Time is something you can measure. This, okay, I have, I have good thoughts and I have, oh no, I think it's overall good. - Okay, okay good. - So this is about Nainoa, a boy who falls into the ocean when he's a kid and he was brought back to the both, both, both, both in the mouth of a shark. My brains wished all of that together. His family takes it as a sign of goodness from the old Hawaiian gods, but his younger sister and his older brother, though, they don't feel that same magic and are feeling like a little ignored by their parents. So this book follows them into adulthood where they all leave Hawaii for the US mainland, where they have new struggles, but now they're facing these on their own. They don't have their family supporting them in the same way. I struggled through the second half of this book. The first half was enjoyable in the, oh, everyone is struggling and hurting and I understand kind of way. And then on the back, there's the sentence from the description, I feel like, that covers things pretty well. So it says, "When supernatural events revisit "the Flores family in Hawaii with tragic consequences, "they are all forced to reckon with the bonds of family, "the meaning of heritage and the cost of survival." So once we, I was struggling to get through this book, we then reach those supernatural events and I was hooked for a little bit again and then the force to reckon with the bonds of family, the meaning of heritage and the cost of arrival was very slow or very low plot vibes of the second half of this. The characters felt like lost and unmoored and they were just moving from place to place because they had to. They didn't feel like they were doing things as much. So I was almost close to DNFing this. - Hello. - But mainly because I wanted to jump into something else, something I'm currently reading, but I also didn't want to leave sharks. I didn't want to leave it unfinished. I also was really enjoying the beautiful writing. I tabbed so many beautiful quotes. Of course, the camera does not want to focus on. I've got at least like 15 tabs in there. There was some beautiful writing in here. And you know what though? The ending, it picked things up for me. The family was like on the mend by the end and like each child had their part in on that mending kind of journey. And I'm glad I read this. It lived up to the hype of beautiful writing, which is what a couple of the blurbs of this mention, but like even if, and that beautiful writing carried this because even though the characters sometimes were difficult to love, it was more due to like the unfortunate situations they were thrown in. But the beautiful writing just carried them all to the end. So that's sharks in the time of saviors. - Well, I'm glad that it's like a, it ended up being ultimately sounds like a positive experience, even if it wasn't a new favorite. - That puts it well, yep. - Okay, my next book, the reason I went, I went back and forth and like, oh, maybe I should have it skip the line. Is that mine, this next one is also about violins? - Ooh. - So we just both happened to read books about violins in this. - How does that happen? - Okay, so this one was a romance. I, it's not another love song by Julie Soto. So I really, really enjoy Julie Soto's debut, which was "Forget Me Not", Julie Soto is from my hometown and "Forget Me Not", which was her debut novel, was set in my hometown, and was like following this wedding plan. So I was like, this is so fun. And I did not know that she had another book coming out. I don't know where I saw, I probably got a newsletter from one of my hometown bookstores and was like, oh, she has a new book coming out. So I put it on hold, 'cause I was like, cool, it'll come up whenever. And it came up quite quickly for me. I was like, oh my gosh, here it is. So I read this in like 24 hours. I, oh gosh, I so enjoyed this. I liked it. It's me. You know, and not that I have a perfect memory of every romance that I've read, but I feel like this is maybe the top romance that I have read. - I love it. - I love it. - So, so enjoyed it. Okay, so the plot of this follows two musicians. One plays the cello, and our main character, Gwen, plays the violin. She plays in the Manhattan Pops, which is like a stand in for like a, oh gosh, New York Pops, anyway, it's like a little orchestra. And she is, she plays the violin. She doesn't really have a lot of people in her life because they have been taken by cancer in one way or another. But she loves being part of this little orchestra and she kind of gets involved, I say kind of. She gets involved with the lead cellist in this orchestra who is named Zander Thorne, which is what a name. And also to note, Zander Thorne is part of like a classical rock group. - Cool. - The best way I can describe this is like, like a Lindsey Sterling level. - Oh yeah. - Where it's like electric violin, electric cello. And he and his bandmates are in a band called Thorne and Roses, which is just hilarious. And they all play like electric classical instruments, but they play, you know, like covers of Nirvana and whatever. So that's him and he is just, for some reason, is part of this little orchestra. And so a romance, they're very tense. There's like the tension, oh my gosh, the tension and the angst between the two of them is so good. And I, you said, you were like, oh, I love the descriptions of music. Usually when I'm reading something and it talks about like the rise and fall of music or if it talks about someone dancing or cooking, I'm like, you know, pass. Like for some reason that doesn't do anything for me. This, I don't know. I really thought that that Julie Soto did a great job. I was like, oh my God, I wish I could hear this song. Like I wanna hear this, I wanna hear this song that's being talked about right now. It is very, oh, it follows the like third act breakup. I can say that that's a trope. That's like a well established trope. - Yes, it is a well established trope. - Well established trope, but I will say, I thought that this was one of the more believable third act breakups where I completely, completely, completely understood both peoples, both of them, their stance of why they felt and the way they felt. And I was like, yeah, I don't want either one of them to have to cave or compromise here. Like, is there a third option? Can there be a third option where everyone gets what they want? - So I will say there's a couple callbacks to characters from the first book, which I appreciated having read the first book, but I think that there was maybe a tiny too much of that, like a tiny bit too much of that. Like if you have not read the first one, you'd be like, why are we spending so much time with these random characters? - Okay, so anyway, I'll have to say I super enjoyed it. I love, and this is, she's gonna be an auto read for me now. And also she's like best friends with Ally Hazelwood, which I think is just so cute. That is so cute. And you're, oh my gosh, okay. I'm trying to get to my last book then. - Okay. - I read one of those books that has one purpose, as we say, and a bit of plot. And I cannot believe I'm about to say this. My husband and I, we read Bride by Ally Hazelwood together. So like you're talking about this romance you read. I was like, hmm, next one guy, I was also a romance. And then you're like, oh, she's best friends with Ally Hazelwood. I was like, you have no idea what's coming, Haley. - Oh my gosh, perfect. - Oh my God, I never thought I would read an Ally Hazelwood. I never thought her books would be for me. And then she came out with a paranormal romance with a vampire and a werewolf this year. I love vampires, my husband loves werewolves. So I put this on hold of the library months ago and it finally came in. Oh, so misery lark is an outcast of a vampire. She was used as a collateral, basically. She grew up in the human world and then a human child was put into the vampire world to grow up, to like keep the balance in their alliances between the vampires and the humans. Once misery grows out of this, she's not welcomed home with the vampires 'cause she never learned any of their customs. She was like, shunned, you know? So she's like, all right, screw you. I'm gonna stay in the human world. And she then was on her own, but she also gets to be with her like best friend, found family, sister named Serena, a human she met while she was this collateral pawn, I guess. And then our love interest, Lo Marland is the new alpha werewolf of the pack, neighboring like these vampire and human territories. And then with other like political worldly tensions between these three territories. Misery's father, who is the head of the vampire council, calls her back to the vampire territory and basically says, yeah, you're gonna marry Lo as a show of good alliance between us vampires and them werewolves. Poor Ms. Meredith convenience. She's just like just sent over here, sent over there. Like she doesn't have any life of her own poor thing. Yeah, she's a very spunky character and she wants to be really independent. So when she agrees to marry this unknown werewolf, we the reader are just like, okay, why did you say yes? There must be another motive. There must be a reason. And indeed, Misery has her own reason for agreeing to this. And when she reveals it to us the reader, it creates a mystery that we get to follow throughout the book alongside the budding slow burn romance. All right, at least, okay, I'm saying slow burn. I don't know if anybody would agree. But my husband and I, we had such a great time reading this. We were entertained. We laughed at the banter and Misery's like snarky comebacks. There was a third act breakup because there always is and there always is. It was annoying because it was, it was one of the characters using something new new about the other one against them to push them away after there was like so much honesty between them. And it was so such a sudden third act breakup. It was right after like an intimate scene. And my husband and I, we were like, we stayed up until midnight reading this quietly together because we had to finish it. We couldn't just know. But like right after the third act breakup, the plot picked up right away so that we could resolve the mystery that I mentioned. And then the breakup is resolved soon after the mystery. I had a very fun time. I'm not feeling I want to jump into Ali Hazlewood's other books because I really enjoyed this since it was a paranormal romance. I would have chosen to read something like this even if it was written by somebody else. Like Ali Hazlewood part was not what intrigued me. It was the vampire and werewolf part that intrigued me. It was a fun time. It's definitely on my list of successful books from the library I might buy. So it was a win for me. And I think my husband also really enjoyed it. We were just entertained. - That's how a lot of her, I mean, I grant and I say a lot of them. I've read two of them and that's how they are. They're just, they're fun. You're like, this is silly, but I'm having a fun time. - Yeah. - So I am so glad that you got to have the paranormal aspect of it. - Yes, so much fun. I love vampires. They're one of my favorite things. So entertaining and like, it's almost 400 pages or the font is enormous or at least relatively large. So it did not feel like 400 pages or something. - Yeah. - So how I'll put that. So yeah, that's everything I read. Oh my gosh, we had a lot to cover. - I have one left. - I'm excited to hear it. - My last one, I finally finished. I feel like I've been reading it for months. The three body problem by Lewis Machine. So this was, again, you and I are on the same wavelength. A buddy read with my husband and I. - Yeah. - I don't think he's finished quite yet, but I think he's in like the last chunk. So I will say, I went into this with pretty high expectations because everyone talks about, oh my gosh, this book is so amazing. It's like one of my favorite sci-fi books. - Yeah. - Whatever, whatever. - And so I was like, okay, this book, you know, has to be astounding. And while I absolutely enjoyed the read, I don't know if in my personal opinion, I would give it that high of praise. It certainly is thought provoking. And I think that there are some very fascinating themes of what it kind of talks about. Like there's like some propaganda, like not propaganda. There's like pulling a part of how propaganda works and how the military works. And, you know, oh, so and so said that. So we have to kind of talk about cancel culture without talking about cancel culture. And then, you know, what do humans owe to the world? So you could kind of make like a climate change. It's not about climate change, but you could make a climate change argument out of it. And again, I really enjoyed, okay, I think I would come down to if I just read this on my own, I think this would be like a meh for me. But because I've been reading it bit by bit and we've, I guess when I have been discussing it and what about this and what do you think about that and what do you think is gonna happen next? I have enjoyed it more. But if I just like the book by itself, it's, I don't know. And I know that there's other books in, I think it's a trilogy. And I'm like, you know, I don't know. I don't know if I need to read the other ones. I wish that I would have enjoyed this more because I know that it's such a beloved like touch stone, not touch stone, cornerstone in the sci-fi, you know, my brain corner of the internet. The sci-fi works, uvah, universe, but I don't know. Yeah, I know I'm kind of all over the place here, but that's just kind of how I feel about the book. And because my husband has a finish yet, we haven't had our final discussion. So maybe I, you know, it's possible that after he and I talk that I, it will lift up a little bit, but I just don't know if I, the fact also that it took us so long to finish to me kind of implies that neither of us were like, oh my God, this is amazing. So there, let's take it, take, make what you will of that. Yeah, well, that's, that's really too bad. 'Cause like, that's one of the great things about reading is when you enjoy a book and then you're like, oh, there's more 'cause there's a series to follow through. But okay, and did you pick this up before or after the TV show or you want to watch the TV show after reading it? We have not watched the TV show. We are probably planning to. So we will see how they adapted it. Yeah, 'cause maybe the adaptation kind of helps fix some of the issues you were having with it. So, oh my goodness, woo. I know, oh my gosh, 10 books finished between the two of us. Yeah, that's a lot to cover from all ends of the spectrum, I'd say. But weirdly, lots of things similar this week, the violence, the romance, there's a buddy reading with our husband, Bazaar. We're just on the same, we were just, and we didn't do that on purpose listeners, we were just, we were just not living our own reading lives. We just aligned. Yes, Bazaar, so we're aligning. I only have one thing that I will mention that I'm reading. What would you, what's on your list? I also have one thing to mention. I've been very good. I was probably reading four or five things at once and then I knocked them all out and now I just want them. I am very impressed with that. Okay, so what is the one thing that is so holding your interest? Oh, I am currently reading Sisters of the Lost Nation by Nick Medina. I'm only 45 pages in though, okay? So this is my second black-o-ween pick to fill the Joe's library prompts or two prompts. This covers the prompts of, it was written by an indigenous man and it falls under the bubble of crime fiction because this is a thriller and horror kind of melding book. This is something I hauled earlier this year. I'm not too far into it, but I like the unsettling nature we have so far. I was also able to snag the audio book from the library, thinking I would squeeze it into the Libra fam challenge, but I didn't, it's fine. So I listened a bit to the audio book while holding the book in my hand, looking at the pages and I wasn't sure about that experience. The narrator has a bit of raspiness to her voice. It's a lovely voice, it suits the character so far, but something about it made it harder to understand at the speed I was listening to to follow along at the same time. So for me, this won't be an immersive reading experience. It'll probably be flipping between the two. If I do continue with the audio book, like read a chapter on the page. If I'm gonna go up and do something, put on the audio book for the next chapter. This follows Anna Horne. She is tormented by bullies and she feels like something is following her. An ancient tribal myth come to life. She lives on a reservation in, I'm not sure what state I should know. I think Illinois, maybe. Nope, I should not quote, I should not quote, I don't know. So apparently like the strange sinister things happening around the casino that's on a reservation, which has brought a lot of money to the area where money was needed. And Anna's just like, something is wrong and no one's really listening to her, but then her own little sister disappears. And Anna's like, I'm gonna do anything to bring her home. And there's demons plaguing the reservation, both ancient and new. They're strong and sometimes it's the stories that never get told that are the most important part. And then I love this line. It's part propulsive thriller and part mythological horror. I don't know why, but those two things together sound like the greatest time. So, and Paul Trumbly has blurb this and a couple other people have blurped it in ways that seem like really interesting. And it's just, I think it's gonna be a fun story about sisters and I do really like sister stories. So I'm like, this is what I'm gonna read before bed tonight. - I mean, yeah, I mean, to have that be your bedtime read doesn't sound like the most relaxing story. No, but I like to read anything before bed 'cause it's at least better than scrolling on my phone for too long. - Oh, definitely agree with that, definitely agree with that. Okay, my currently reading, I am, so okay, I have mentioned that I have my bookshelf blackout bingo where I'm trying to read. - Oh yeah. 25 books from my bookshelf. And I actually, I did a little updating 'cause I was like, oh, I think I haven't, could've been keeping this up today. And I have read 15 from my shelf. Some of them I have acquired this year, but it still counts. Okay, yes, still okay. So I have 10 more spaces. So I went through and said, okay, let's look at the spaces that are, you know, next up on being immediately, if I cross out these couple, then I complete more bingos, basically. And so if I read this next book, I will complete another row of bingo, and then I will only have nine books left. So the bingo square for this one is book that was gifted to me. So I am reading A Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan. This was a birthday gift from one of my really good high school friends, she went and looked on my birthday, what was a book on the New York Times Best Seller List, which I thought was just a unique gift for just a unique idea for someone who enjoys reading. So I don't really, I went into this book completely not knowing anything. I didn't read the inside flap at all. I was like, okay, here we go, we're just gonna read it. We're just gonna see what it's about. And I'm about 80 pages in so far. There's, I think it's just under 400 pages. So that's right. I would say in my sweet spot in terms of the length of book for me, so that already feels good. It's in first person so far. It is about this young woman. I say young woman, I'm not entirely certain how old she is. I'm thinking maybe in her mid to late 30s, her name is Olivia. She is half Chinese and half, I'm not sure what her mom is. I don't wanna just say half American because that's obviously not half Caucasian, I guess. Half European, I don't remember what her mom is. And she finds out when she's like five or six that she has a half sister. And it's like the secret half sister that her dad fathered years ago in China. And so after her father passes, this half sister comes to live with her and her family in America. And the main character Olivia is very embarrassed about this half sister because she has very different customs and a very different culture. And that's kind of all I know so far. I really enjoy Olivia's first person dialogue with them. Or now that I'm getting more into the book, we're switching into, we learned that when Olivia was a small girl, she and her sister, Kwan, they shared a room and Kwan would just talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. And so as Olivia would be falling asleep, Kwan would be talking, talking, talking. And so we kind of hear about Olivia's side of the memory of being a child and then we switched to the back half of the chapter is Kwan's first person perspective of everything that she would be saying as Olivia was falling asleep, if that makes sense. So we're getting two different first person perspectives and I'm just really enjoying it so far. So I have good hopes, decent hopes for the rest of this one. - Oh, I'm so happy to hear that. Well, I think we're both feeling good and helpful. And I just noticed there's a frog on the cover of Sister the Lost Nation, but like down in the bottom of like the stylized fire on this cover. - Oh, it's a little teeny, teeny, tiny frog. - Little frog, almost like sitting on an arrow too. I wonder how the arrow is gonna come into play. I think I might know how the frog comes into play, at least like minorly, but yeah. Okay, sorry for that little tangent, but I'm glad that you're finally getting to read a gift. How long ago did you receive this gift if you remember? - Within the last two years, within the last two years. And I had a couple books that I could have chosen and I just was like, okay, let's go with this one. I would just, you have to give it a shot at some point. - Gotta pick one at one point. And like I said, I still have lots of other boxes that other books can feel it. - All right, I think those are all our, my goodness, so many reading updates this week. Those are all our reading updates for this week, so we will place the bookmark and pick it up next time. Thanks for listening, everyone. Bye. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]