You Might Hate This Book: Recent Episodes
Hannah Graves and Stephanie Pearson
Hi! We're co-hosts Hannah and Stephanie. We're both avid readers, but we have VERY different tastes. Each week one of us will recommend a book to the other - a book we loved that we think our co-host might hate. We’ll read the recommended book, then come back together to discuss it - and maybe fight about it. Was it as awful as we expected? Did we secretly love it? Did we throw it across the room? Join us each week as we argue about what makes a good book, and broaden our horizons. Maybe you'll find a book you love (or hate).
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BONUS EPISODE FROM THE VAULT!
For this month’s guest episode, Stephanie and Hannah are joined by their good friend and fellow reader, Ann Marie, to discuss a book that Ann Marie loved and Stephanie hated: The Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. (Hannah hasn’t read it, but we all know she doesn’t care about spoilers.) Join these three friends as they discuss print vs. audio books, the perils of listening to books at work, and the awkwardness of dragon sex (yes, you read that right) in this New Adult fantasy romance novel. And be prepared to laugh. A lot.
Ann Marie’s bookstagram account: @annmariereads
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BONUS EPISODE FROM THE VAULT
This month, Hannah shares with Stephanie summaries and reviews of some of the worst-rated books on Goodreads. There is no “might” about how much these reviewers hate these books! Join the ladies as they discuss everything from authors behaving badly on social media to the perils of self-publishing.
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SURPRISE! We've released another BONUS EPISODE FROM THE VAULT!
This month, Stephanie and Hannah make good on a previous idea and review the movie adaptation of one of the books featured on the show. Together they watched the 2017 adaptation of Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending, and then reconvened to answer the all-important question: Was the book really better than the movie?
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SURPRISE! An episode from the vault!
For this June’s guest episode, Stephanie and Hannah again return to their book club and invite English professor, Dr. Loren Warf, to share two books: one that she loved to read but hated to teach, and another that she loved to teach but hated to read. Join these three friends as they discuss Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Neal Shusterman’s Scythe, and what there is to love and hate about both.
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SURPRISE! An episode from the vault!
For this month’s bonus topical episode, Hannah and Stephanie share all the other books they’re reading. You know, the books they actually choose for enjoyment. Join them as they discuss everything from celebrity memoirs to parenting books to collections of short stories and more!
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SURPRISE! An episode from the vault!
For May’s bonus guest episode, Stephanie and Hannah invite their friend and fellow book club member, Marla Record, to the show. Marla asked Hannah and Stephanie to read Abbott, the limited run comic series about a Black female detective in Detroit in the 1970s who encounters not only systemic racism, but a supernatural threat to her city. Join the ladies this month as they have a lively discussion about the medium of comics and graphic novels (and why you definitely shouldn’t hate them).
Resources:
Detroit Under Fire: https://policing.umhistorylabs.lsa.umich.edu/s/detroitunderfire/page/home
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SURPRISE! An episode from the vault!
For this April’s bonus topical episode, Stephanie and Hannah sit down with their friend Kacye to discuss common tropes in the genres they love! As they enumerate the tropes they love and, of course, hate from the romance, fantasy, and thriller genres, they find they have more in common than they thought.
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This week, Hannah takes Stephanie back to their very first episode by assigning another Kazuo Ishiguro novel, The Buried Giant. Will Stephanie hate this one as much as she disliked Never Let Me Go?
In post-Arthurian Britain, where a dragon sleeps guarded by Sir Gawain and a mist of forgetfulness covers the land, an elderly couple named Axl and Beatrice search for their son. As they encounter neighbors who can no longer remember the war that once pitted them against each other, the couple slowly starts to recover their memory and finds that their love will be tested. Join Hannah and Stephanie this week as they discuss fantasy, allegory, and literary fiction, and how these things do (or don’t, depending on who you ask) work together.
Resources:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/the-book-of-sorrow-and-forgetting/384968/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/23/the-uses-of-oblivion
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/books/review/kazuo-ishiguros-the-buried-giant.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/20/books/for-kazuo-ishiguro-the-buried-giant-is-a-departure.html
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36. A History of Wild Places
This week, Stephanie assigns Hannah another thriller: A History of Wild Places by Shea Ernshaw. Will Hannah hate this thriller as much as some of the previous Stephanie has made her read?
Maggie, a children’s author, goes missing in the woods. Travis, a private detective with a supernatural gift, follows her in the dead of winter. And Theo, his wife Calla, and her blind sister Bee, live in a mysterious commune called Pastoral, trying to avoid a deadly disease spread by the trees. As these characters' narratives collide, they all discover something new about each other and themselves. Join Stephanie and Hannah this week as they discuss everything from hypnosis and cults to beach reads and celebrity crushes.
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This month, Hannah shares with Stephanie summaries and reviews of some of the worst-rated books on Goodreads. There is no “might” about how much these reviewers hate these books! Join the ladies as they discuss everything from authors behaving badly on social media to the perils of self-publishing.
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This week, Hannah takes Stephanie back to her childhood with the podcast’s first children’s book: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster! But will adult Stephanie have enough whimsy to enjoy the ride into the Lands Beyond?
Milo, home from school with nothing to do, is bored. Then a mysterious package arrives in his room, taking him to the Kingdom of Wisdom bereft of its Princesses, Rhyme and Reason. Milo’s journey to restore the princesses is rife with word-play and whimsical adventures as he learns just how fun it can be to learn. Join Hannah and Stephanie this week as they discuss puns, learning, strange 70s cartoons, and the experience of reading children’s book for the first time as an adult.
Resources:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/17/broken-kingdom
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/63166/11-whimsical-facts-about-phantom-tollbooth
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SURPRISE! An episode from the vault!
For April's bonus guest episode, Hannah and Stephanie sit down with Hannah’s husband, Brandyn! He has decided to attempt to “unite” them by bringing two books, one they will both love and one they will both hate (though he loves them both). Join them as they discuss Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir and Embassytown by China Mieville (and see if you can guess which one Brandyn thinks both ladies will hate).
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This week, Stephanie tries again to help Hannah see the popular appeal of author Jodi Picoult by assigning her friend to read the novel Wish You Were Here. Will Hannah simply wish she was reading something else?
Diana lives and works in New York City in March of 2020. She and her boyfriend Finn, who is a surgical resident at an NYC hospital, have been planning a vacation to the Galapagos Islands for months, but when the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic begin to affect the city’s hospitals, Finn tells her she should take the trip alone. What neither of them knew was that Diana would get stuck on a remote island during quarantine, or just how much the experience would change them both. Join Stephanie and Hannah this week as they discuss one of the first popular novels to center around our recent pandemic and speculate about what writing and art will look like in a post-Covid world.
Resources:
https://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2020/05/icu-delirium/611155/
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This week, Hannah assigns Stephanie her first nonfiction read for the podcast: Lynne Truss’s 2003 “runaway bestseller” Eats, Shoots and Leaves. But will Stephanie simply want to run away from this very British book about punctuation?
What’s the difference between a panda who eats shoots and leaves and a panda who eats, shoots, and leaves? The first is holding bamboo while the second is holding a gun, of course! In her book that takes its name from this joke, Lynne Truss discusses the history, correct usage, and egregious misuse of our most common English punctuation with biting, British wit. Join Hannah and Stephanie this week as they discuss commas, apostrophes, and the evolution of language (alongside no less than three Office references).
Resources:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/06/28/bad-comma
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/eats-shoots-leaves-a-humorous-approach-to-punctuation-1.4596010
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To wrap up June, Stephanie assigned Hannah a book that she thinks her friend will love, but that she herself hated. Will Hannah like Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney as much as Stephanie hated it, or will this assignment simply be a mutual rant between friends?
Frances and Bobbi, female college students in Dublin, are best friends with a romantic history and a creative connection. As they perform spoken-word poetry throughout the city, they catch the attention of author and photographer, Melissa, and her actor husband, Nick. The four form a close but fraught relationship, much of it centering on an affair between Nick and Frances. Join Stephanie and Hannah this week as they discuss this book whose author has been hailed as the voice of their generation and the importance of cultivating emotional intelligence.
Resources:
A New Kind of Adultery Novel | The New Yorker
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney review – young, gifted and self-destructive | Fiction | The Guardian
Refinery 29 Review
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When Hannah read Naomi Alderman’s The Power, she was not a fan. However, she thought Stephanie might be. Will she be correct?
One day, women around the world wake up and realize they have a new physical power: the ability to conduct electricity through their hands. This evolutionary leap leads to an upheaval of cultural and social structures world-wide as women take back the power that has been withheld from them in places like government, business, media, and religion. But the things that the women do with their new power are not always an improvement. Join Hannah and Stephanie this week as they discuss themes of gender, religion, and–of course–power, in Alderman’s dystopian take on the female revenge narrative.
Resources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/books/review/naomi-alderman-power.html
https://www.vogue.com/article/the-power-naomi-alderman
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Stephanie thinks Hannah will love–or at least, not hate–Laura Sebastian’s take on the Arthurian legend, Half Sick of Shadows. Will Stephanie’s prediction, unlike many of the Lady of Shalott’s visions in the novel, come true?
Elaine, only daughter of the kingdom of Shalott, has a secret: she sees visions of the future. After leaving her oppressive mother in the court of Camelot, Elaine grows up on the fay-inhabited island of Avalon alongside Arthur, Lancelot, Guinevere, and Morgana. When the five friends must return to court to help Arthur claim his throne, Elaine’s visions of the future will be tested, and the heavy weight of all their choices will continually haunt her. Join Stephanie and Hannah this week as they discuss this female-centered revision of the story of Camelot and why they would definitely not want to see the future.
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We're releasing this guest episode from the vault!
For the March 2023 bonus guest episode, Hannah and Stephanie sat down with Hannah’s sister! Rachel is a public school librarian, and Hannah asked her to bring a book that she loves and a book she hates from her YA shelves to share with the podcast. Join these three ladies as they discuss the joys and frustrations that sometimes accompany reading!
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This June we’re breaking the formula! Hannah and Stephanie each assign the other a book that they think their friend will like. Hannah’s pick for Stephanie is a book she has wanted her to read since they were in college together: Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson.
As she begins her freshman year of high school, Melinda is coping with a trauma that is not immediately apparent to the reader, but is revealed to be a sexual assault by an older classmate at a party during the summer. In shock after her rape, Melinda calls 911, but then disappears, leaving all her peers to label her as simply the girl who “called the cops” on their party and then ostracize her at school. The novel’s action centers on Melinda’s attempts to cope with her trauma, most notably of which is her stubborn refusal to speak. Join Hannah and Stephanie this week as they share two different but valuable perspectives on this book and the issues it brings to light.
Resources:
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/404125/pdf
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This week Stephanie makes yet another attempt at romance, assigning Hannah to read Lyssa Kay Adams’ The Bromance Book Club. Will she finally find a romance that Hannah doesn’t hate?
Gavin and Thea Scott’s marriage is in jeopardy. The final straw is Gavin’s revelation that his wife has been faking it in the bedroom during their three-year marriage. Then Gavin’s friends and fellow MLB teammates bring him help from the most unlikely of places: an induction into their club of men who read romance novels. Join Stephanie and Hannah this week as they discuss romance tropes, marriage, and a broader definition of both masculinity and femininity.
Resources:
https://thenerddaily.com/lyssa-kay-adams-author-interview/
https://theeverydaymagazine.co.uk/fictionandpoetry/talking-to-lyssa-kay-adams
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To get back at Stephanie for assigning her a sad book, Hannah assigns Stephanie Yu Miri’s Tokyo Ueno Station. Will Stephanie find its bleak story as upsetting as Hannah found The Four Winds?
Kazu has lived his whole life in poverty, resulting in his last place of residence being a makeshift tent outside Ueno Station in Tokyo. As a ghost, he continues to reside in this busy park and must now contemplate the life–or lack thereof–he left behind. Join Hannah and Stephanie this week as they discuss the issues of poverty and isolation that this book attempts to highlight, while also trying to discern which types of “sadness” they can each handle in a book.
Resources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/books/yu-miri-tokyo-ueno-station.html
https://chireviewofbooks.com/2020/06/25/tokyo-ueno-station/
https://electricliterature.com/a-ghost-haunts-the-tokyo-olympics/
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This week Stephanie assigns Hannah to read Blake Crouch’s sci-fi thriller Upgrade. But will Hannah be thrilled with it at all?
In a near-future world, genetic modifications have been outlawed after an environmental experiment gone wrong wipes out a large portion of the Earth’s population. Then Logan Ramsey, son of the geneticist behind the Great Famine and agent for the Gene Protection Agency, receives an illegal genetic upgrade and the resources to expose all of humanity to it. Now he has to decide what he is willing to sacrifice in order to save humanity. Join Stephanie and Hannah this week as they discuss everything from genetics and philosophy to Marvel movies and Taylor Swift concerts.
Resources:
https://time.com/6189737/blake-crouch-interview-upgrade/
https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/blake-crouch-upgrade-interview
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This week Hannah takes Stephanie to the British countryside with Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle. Will Stephanie be enchanted by its quaintness, repulsed by its decaying aristocracy, or just plain bored?
Cassandra Mortmain lives with her impoverished family in a crumbling castle, but attempts to keep her spirits up by “capturing” it all in a series of diaries. When an American family moves in nearby, and their sons begin to take an interest in Cassandra and her sister Rose, the Mortmain think their luck might be about to change–but of course, nothing resolves in the way anyone, least of all Cassandra, expects. Join Hannah and Stephanie this week as they discuss dry British wit, the dying English aristocracy, and the merits (or lack thereof) of keeping a diary.
Resources:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/20/rereading-i-capture-the-castle-sex-money-evie-wyld
https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/10/20/16503280/i-capture-the-castle-dodie-smith
https://newrepublic.com/article/105921/capture-castle-dodie-smith
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This week Stephanie assigns Hannah The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah, not knowing that Hannah has a particular aversion for historical fiction set during the Dust Bowl. Will Hannah be so depressed by this Depression-era novel that she hates it?
Elsa Martinelli has struggled her entire life to be loved. She endures not only a hasty marriage and a headstrong daughter, but the trials of the Dust Bowl and subsequent hardships of becoming a migrant worker. Join Stephanie and Hannah this week as they discuss themes of motherhood, female friendship, and poverty through the lens of historical fiction.
Resources:
https://www.noapologybookreviews.com/interview-with-kristin-hannah-the-four-winds/
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This week Hannah assigns Stephanie the first book in a series…again. Will Stephanie be as reluctant to recommend Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake as she was to begin reading it?
Snowman believes he is the last human, living in trees and keeping watch over a humanoid species he calls “Crakers.” As his present day narrative unfolds, which is part survival story, part weird documentary of the Crakers and their budding culture, Snowman reflects on the events that brought him to this state. Join Hannah and Stephanie this week as they tackle some heavy philosophical and existential questions while at the same time enjoy cavorting in the language and satire that is Atwood’s writing.
Resources:
https://research.ncsu.edu/ges/2019/11/margaret-atwood-discusses-prophetic-novel/
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/18/books/present-at-the-re-creation.html
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Stephanie tries to get Hannah to like a thriller…again. But will Hannah hate The Sun Down Motel as much as the previous thrillers her friend has assigned her to read?
It’s 2017, and Carly Kirk decides to drop out of college to go looking for her Aunt Vivian, who disappeared in 1982 in the small town of Fell, New York. While seeking answers to her aunt’s disappearance, Carly takes a job as the night clerk at a motel, the same exact job that her Aunt Viv was working when she was last seen. Join Stephanie and Hannah this week as they discuss ghosts, thrillers, and why women often become fans of true crime.
Resources:
http://crimebythebook.com/blog/2020/2/16/book-review-the-sun-down-motel-by-simone-st-james
https://www.jeanbooknerd.com/2020/10/simone-st-james-interview-sun-down-motel.html
https://www.magellantv.com/articles/research-reveals-why-women-love-true-crime
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Will Stephanie want to die reading this book? Will Faulkner be the death of this friendship? The puns are just too numerous and easy this week as Stephanie reads William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.
Addie Bundren’s dying wish is to be buried in her hometown, but her poor, rural family finds this to be no easy task after her passing. While her husband, Anse, leads the family on this odyssey with varying degrees of success, her five children must each deal with their mother’s death (or not) in their own way. Join Hannah and Stephanie this week as they add their own perspectives to this novel, itself written from 15 different character perspectives, and discuss everything from the Southern gothic genre to the black comedies they enjoy watching on film.
Resources:
https://www.rowanoak.com/about/the-house/
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Spring is here, and love is in the air! But will Hannah hate The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood, a book that Stephanie and so many others love?
Olive Smith “accidentally” kisses the most hateful and hated professor in her Stanford lab: Dr. Adam Carlsen. This meet-cute that she wishes had never occurred leads to a fake-dating situation in which Olive slowly falls in love with a man she thought she knew, but didn’t. Join Stephanie and Hannah this week as they discuss common romance tropes, fan-fiction and the publishing industry, and one of BookTok’s most talked about romance novels.
Resources:
https://thetempest.co/2021/12/28/books/ali-hazelwood-the-love-hypothesis-interview/
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For this month’s bonus topical episode, Stephanie and Hannah discuss children’s books in honor of their friends, Brad and Kristi Montague, and the launch of their new book The Fantastic Bureau of Imagination. But…who really hates children’s books? Hannah and Stephanie don’t, but it turns out a lot of other people do. Join the two friends as Hannah shares and Stephanie reacts to a list of some commonly banned or challenged picture books (and share a few of their favorites at the end).
Order Brad and Kristi’s new book! http://montagueworkshop.com/fbi1
Resources:
https://epl.bibliocommons.com/list/share/69128707/70680896?page=3
https://www.epl.org/booklist/shhhh-these-kids-books-have-been-banned-or-challenged/
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This week Stephanie assigned Hannah Leaving Time by popular novelist Jodi Picoult. Hannah is skeptical about the often touchy-feely nature of Picoult’s writing. Will she hate it as much as she and Stephanie both think she will?
Jenna Metcalf is thirteen and doesn’t know if her mother Alice is alive or dead. She hasn’t seen Alice since was three, on the day of a tragic accident at her parents’ elephant sanctuary that resulted in the death of one worker and her father’s permanent mental collapse. Now Jenna enlists the help of two unlikely allies, a disgraced psychic named Serenity and an ex-cop turned private detective named Virgil. Join Hannah and Stephanie as they discuss this novel and their own views on everything from grief and memory to elephants and motherhood.
Resources:
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This week Hannah and Stephanie return to an author they mentioned in the episode on O Caledonia: Maggie O’Farrell and her historical fiction novel, Hamnet. Will Stephanie appreciate her Shakespeare-loving friend’s assignment this week?
Everyone knows about Shakespeare, the man behind Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet, and, perhaps most famously, The Tragedy of Hamlet: Prince of Denmark. But what do we know about Agnes, the woman who married him, who took care of their home in Stratford while he made a name for himself in London, who bore his children, one of whom shared an eerily similar name to Shakespeare’s most famous protagonist and died at an early age? Join Hannah and Stephanie this week as they discuss Shakespeare, plague, and the reclamation of a woman’s story of love and grief in a time not so far removed from our own.
Resources:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/12/shakespearean-sisterhood-maggie-ofarrell-on-hamnet
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This week Stephanie chose Verity by Colleen Hoover for her thriller-hating friend Hannah to read. Will Hannah hate it as much as the previous thrillers she’s been assigned, or will Stephanie finally succeed in bringing her friend into this genre?
Lowen, a struggling New York writer who’s facing imminent eviction, is offered the deal of a lifetime: the chance to ghostwrite the last three novels of a wildly popular series by Verity Crawford. However, as Lowen becomes more familiar with Verity’s family (her husband Jeremy in particular) and the circumstances that led Verity to need a co-author in the first place, what once seemed like an opportunity too good to pass up now seems like one better left on the shelf. Join Stephanie and Hannah as they discuss one of BookTok’s most popular novels and give their opinions on that ending.
Resources:
https://slate.com/culture/2022/08/colleen-hoover-books-it-ends-with-us-verity.html
https://anasattic.com/verity-colleen-hoover-review-interview/
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This week Hannah assigns Stephanie a book by an author she knows her friend historically has hated: Stephen King. As she embarks on the journey of the Dark Tower with The Gunslinger, will Stephanie find “long days and pleasant nights” or…just some long days?
Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger in a world that has “moved on,” tracks the elusive man in black, a sorcerer that has answers Roland needs on his quest for the Dark Tower. While on his journey he meets Jake Chambers, a boy that seems to have crossed over into Roland’s world from our own. Join Hannah and Stephanie as they discuss the first book in Stephen King’s fantasy series, The Dark Tower. Hopefully they will be able to “remember the face of their father” as they discuss their differing opinions.
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This week Stephanie assigns Hannah the show’s first YA novel: Heroine by Mindy McGinnis. Will Hannah hate it or find it…addicting?
Mickey Catalan’s world is shaken when she suffers a severe hip injury in a car crash months before the start of her senior softball season. Defined by the sport that she loves and the comfort she derives from the field, she does everything she can to heal her body, but that healing comes with a price: an addiction to prescription pain medications. Her spiraling opioid addiction and the lies she tells others and herself to mask her descent begins to threaten everything she worked to rebuild. Join Stephanie and Hannah as they discuss everything from trigger warnings to grandma drug dealers.
Resources:
https://mikeschlossbergauthor.com/2019/05/09/six-questions-an-interview-with-mindy-mcginnis-author-of-heroine/
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This week Hannah takes Stephanie into the Scottish highland’s with Elspeth Barker’s O Caledonia. Will Steph come willingly, or be dragged kicking and screaming?
Janet lies dead on the floor of her family’s crumbling castle. But as Maggie O’Farrell writes in the introduction, this is “not a whodunit,” but an “account of Janet’s life, from birth to early death, taking in sibling bonds and betrayals, parental intolerance, the horrors and discomforts of adolescence, and the saving grace of books.” Join Stephanie and Hannah this week as the discuss Gothic literature, dark humor, purple prose, and the intriguing life of the woman behind this spare character study that is O Caledonia.
Resources:
Elspeth Barker’s obituary: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/may/03/elspeth-barker-obituary
Noir for the Anthropocene (an eco-critical look at O Caledonia)
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/noir-for-the-anthropocene-on-elspeth-barkers-o-caledonia/
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The world is in peril! Well, not really. But Hannah and Stephanie’s friendship might be if Hannah hates Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir as much as Stephanie fears she will.
In the not so distant future, Earth is threatened by an alien life form that is stealing energy from the sun. Ryland Grace, disgraced scientist and devoted middle school teacher, awakes aboard the Hail Mary, Earth’s last ditch attempt to discover a cure for their dying sun. This week, Stephanie and Hannah discuss the sci-fi genre, the benefits and pitfalls of first-person narration, and the way our brains work (among other things).
Resources:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/articles/andy-weir-interview/
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Elves! Spiders! Matriarchy! Oh my! This week, Hannah assigns Stephanie a classic fantasy novel, Homeland by R.A. Salvatore. Will Stephanie hate her first foray into the Forgotten Realms?
Deep in the Underdark, a murderous matriarchal society of drow serve Lolth, the Spider Queen. Then one day, a lowly, third-born male, Drizzt Do’Urden, decides to challenge the status quo and question the very culture in which he was raised. Join Hannah and Stephanie as they unpack the origin story of one of Dungeons & Dragons most beloved characters.
Resources:
https://gizmodo.com/dungeons-dragons-novels-drizzt-homeland-rasalvatore-1849785575
https://www.polygon.com/22585687/dungeons-dragons-r-a-salvatore-drizzt-black-controversy-race-interview
https://www.tlbranson.com/drizzt-books-in-order/
https://ultimatepopculture.fandom.com/wiki/Drizzt_Do%27Urden#Other_media
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This week, Stephanie makes a second attempt to present Hannah with a revenge thriller. Will Hannah hate it as much as she did Razorblade Tears?
On the campus of Gorman University, English professor Scarlett and English student Carly couldn’t be more different. Carly is a shy, anxious freshman whose roommate, the vivacious theater major Allison, attempts to break her out of her shell. Scarlett is a fiercely confident English scholar who happens to make a hobby of killing predatory men on campus. Join Stephanie and Hannah as they discuss how these two characters collide in this rage-driven thriller.
Resources:
https://www.feministbookclub.com/they-never-learn/
https://christina-mcdonald.com/layne-fargo/
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This week, Hannah assigns Stephanie Hannah Webster Foster’s 1797 epistolary novel The Coquette. Will Stephanie be an unwilling and resentful student of this early American seduction novel?
Eliza Wharton suddenly finds herself free of an advantageous but undesired engagement. Writing of her joy to her female friends, she expresses a desire to remain “free.” As she encounters further proposals of marriage and other less virtuous activities from male suitors, her correspondence with her friends–and theirs about her–reveal a longing for friendship and personal fulfillment at odds with the social values of her day. Join Stephanie and Hannah as they discuss despicable characters, delightfully aged language, and the importance of who lives, who dies, and who tells your story.
Resources:
Schweitzer, Ivy. "Foster's Coquette: Resurrecting Friendship from the Tomb of Marriage." Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, vol. 61 no. 2, 2005, p. 1-32. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/arq.2005.0009.
Ball, Molly. “The Liminal Time of Friendship: Narrative Delay in Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette.” Liminality, Hybridity, and American Women’s Literature: Thresholds in Women’s Writing, edited by Kristin J. Jacobson et al., Palgrave Macmillan (London), 2018, pp. 57-75.
https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2011/12/hannah-foster.html
Books Hannah and Stephanie mention at the top of the podcast:
The Atlas Six by Olivie Barker
The Atlas Paradox by Olivie Barker
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
Notes on an Execution by Danya Kokafka
Tokyo Ueno Station by Miri Yu
People from My Neighborhood by Hiromi Kawakami
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
Hester by Laurie Albanese
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk
The Anthropocene Review by John Green
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This week, Stephanie assigns Hannah a book whose title alone would turn many (Hannah included) away from reading: Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows. But is there more to this book than the title suggests?
Nikki is 22, single, and living above a pub in London when she takes on a job teaching Punjabi widows how to read and write. However, the widows defy Nikki’s expectations and end up teaching her the most important lessons about their shared cultural heritage and the power of story-telling. As Stephanie and Hannah discuss this genre-bending novel, they explore themes of tradition vs modernity, love and intimacy, and narrative ownership.
Resources:
https://medium.com/swlh/literary-vs-genre-fiction-9173e11e77df
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/contemporary-fiction
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This week, Hannah tries to atone for the lack of resolution in her previous assignment by making Stephanie read The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. But will Hannah be able to convince Stephanie that this book deserves its many accolades?
Tony Webster receives a puzzling bequest from the mother of his high school girlfriend, Veronica. Now in his sixties, he tries to make sense of the past and his role in it, including the suicide of his friend Adrian. As Hannah and Stephanie discuss the voice, themes, and other tightly-packed intricacies of this short novel, they consider how time and memory might make us all unreliable narrators.
Resources:
https://dactylreview.com/2017/07/09/the-sense-of-an-ending-by-julian-barnes/
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/books/review/the-sense-of-an-ending-by-julian-barnes-book-review.html
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Surprise! After all this talk of books they hate, Stephanie and Hannah want to end the year on a positive note. In this bonus episode, they each present three books they read in 2022 that they not only loved, but think the other would love too! They are friends for a reason, after all.
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Stephanie and Hannah tackle true crime this week with Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark. Will Hannah find her introduction to true crime as enlightening as Stephanie hopes, or would she have rather stayed in the dark?
Written by popular true-crime blogger Michelle McNamara, and published posthumously by her husband Patton Oswalt, this book take a deep dive into one woman’s obsessive search for the Golden State Killer, who committed numerous burglaries, rapes, and murders throughout California in the 1970s-80s. McNamara recounts these crimes and the trail of evidence they left behind, convinced that the sheer amount of clues begged for a conclusion to this infamous cold-case. This week Hannah and Stephanie discuss true crime, taking note of the style and tone that differentiates good true crime from victim exploitation and serial killer fan-girling.
Resources:
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/626749/ill-be-gone-dark-true-crime-facts
https://abc11.com/golden-state-killer-joseph-deangelo-timeline-caught/7515045/#:~:text=DeAngelo%20became%20the%20first%20public,DNA%20to%20public%20genealogy%20databases
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-08/man-in-the-window
For full list of victims and details of his convictions:
http://www.goldenstatekiller.com/
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This week, Hannah sends Stephanie into the dream-like surrealism of Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore. Will it be sweet dreams for Stephanie, or will she just want to wake up?
Kafka Tamura is a fifteen-year-old boy running from both his past and his future with nowhere to hide. Nakata is a sixty-year-old man who can’t read or write, but he can find your lost house cat by conversing with neighborhood felines. Their stories converge in surprising, unconventional ways that lead to…well, somewhere. As Stephanie and Hannah try to make sense of this novel, they discuss endings, plot holes, the power of metaphors, and both the trials and merits of reading a book in translation from a different cultural viewpoint.
Resources:
Where My Characters Come From
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/12/haruki-murakami-book-novelist-as-a-vocation/671845/
Haruki Murakami, The Art of Fiction No. 182
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2/the-art-of-fiction-no-182-haruki-murakami
Kafka on the Shore’s Reality Cul-de-Sacs
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/06/books/review/kafka-on-the-shore-realitys-culdesacs.html
Subconscious Tunnels
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/01/24/subconscious-tunnels
Questions for Murakami about Kafka on the Shore
https://www.harukimurakami.com/q_and_a/questions-for-haruki-murakami-about-kafka-on-the-shore
Kill Me or the Cat Gets It
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jan/08/fiction.harukimurakami
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This week, Stephanie assigned Hannah a book from a genre that she knows Hannah hates: romance. However, there’s a reason this romance novel holds particular interest for Stephanie.
April Whittier and Marcus Caster-Rupp embark on a whirlwind romance after he comes to her aid–much like the Greek hero he portrays on television–when internet trolls leave nasty Twitter comments on her recent cosplay photo. As April, in her quest for self-acceptance, begins to reveal herself to the world through her fan-fiction, Marcus grapples with his own hidden demons. With their first foray into romance, Stephanie and Hannah discuss what they find both comforting and uncomfortable about the genre while also celebrating ways that representation in books makes readers feel more empowered to embrace themselves as they are, much like Dade's characters learn to do.
Book Content Warning: This book contains detailed sex scenes and foul language, including cursing and fat-phobic language.
Resources For This Episode:
https://bitchbookshelf.com/2022/05/15/spoiler-alert-by-olivia-dade-review/
https://oliviadade.com/2021/11/15/on-and-off-the-page/
This week, Hannah takes Stephanie back in time with Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. Although she loves this book, Hannah is confident Stephanie will hate it.
On the eve of the Industrial Revolution, the inhabitants of Winesburg, Ohio feel isolated from both the broader world and from their neighbors. As they tentatively reach out to each other and to George Willard, the town’s lone journalist, their attempts to combat their growing sense of alienation leave them feeling more lonely than ever. Join Stephanie and Hannah as they discuss the merits [or lack thereof] of these deeply troubled characters, the author that brought them to life, and their place in the literary canon.
Resources For This Episode:
Sherwood Anderson’s Revolutionary Small Town
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/opinion/winesburg-ohio-sherwood-anderson.html
Et in Ohio Ego: On Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio
https://www.clereviewofbooks.com/home/sherwood-anderson-winesburg-ohio-ray-lewis-white-review
All Roads Lead to Winesburg, Ohio
https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/books/ct-xpm-2014-03-07-chi-sherwood-anderson-20140307-story.html
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This week, Hannah and Stephanie discuss a book that Stephanie loves, Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby. Will Hannah hate it as much as Stephanie fears?
Two grief-stricken fathers from different worlds–a low-income white man and a black ex-con–seek revenge for their sons’ murders. In their quest for revenge, they also seek their own redemption, having never accepted their sons’ marriage while they were alive. This week Hannah and Stephanie discuss everything from genre, pacing, and bad similes to the tensions surrounding race, the LGBTQ community, and southern identity that are captured in this book.
Book Content Warning: This book contains graphic violence and language, including racial and homophobic slurs, that could be unwelcome or triggering to some readers.
Resources For This Episode:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jul/31/sa-cosby-the-holy-trinity-of-southern-fiction-is-race-class-and-sex
This week, Hannah and Stephanie discuss Never Let Me Go by Kazou Ishiguro, a book Hannah loves. Will Stephanie hate it?
Ishiguro’s novel follows the friendship and heartaches of Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy. They grow up together at Hailsham, a seemingly idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. However, their futures are not entirely in their hands, and they must come to terms with their reality before it's too late. Through this novel (which was the inspiration for this podcast), Hannah and Stephanie discuss how where a person is at in life can affect how she reads a book, and that the way a book is marketed and discussed (even if it differs from the author’s intent) can color a reader’s judgment and enjoyment.
Resources For This Episode:
“9 Fascinating Facts About Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Never Let Me Go’” https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/never-let-me-go-kazuo-ishiguro-book-facts
“Kazuo Ishiguro discusses his intention behind writing the novel, Never Let Me Go” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jCB59pPG7k
“Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Never Let Me Go’ is a Masterpiece of Racial Metaphor” https://electricliterature.com/kazuo-ishiguros-never-let-me-go-is-a-masterpiece-of-racial-metaphor/
“‘Never Let Me Go’ Drama lands FX/Hulu Series Order” https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/hulu-fx-never-let-me-go-series-1235248398/
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Special thanks to Montague Workshop!
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Hi! We're Hannah and Stephanie, and we're so excited to introduce our new podcast You Might Hate This Book, a podcast about best friends with VERY different tastes in books. Follow us at HateThisBookPod on Instagram and Twitter, and hit subscribe so that you never miss an episode!
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