BookLovers: A Podcast from Spartanburg County Public Libraries
Spartanburg County Public Libraries
We’re pop culture obsessives, animal lovers and professional food fans. Our opinions and interests are wide and deep, so the podcast reflects that. We dissect o...
What is Booklovers without Rea? Jess & Joseph find out on this episode, as they're left to their own devices to discuss both the 96th Academy Awards and Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton.
To start with the Oscars, we're talking about the big shift in Oscar-nominated film watching, because it's rare to have a year where so many nominated movies were already available to watch. From Anatomy of a Fall and Poor Things to (of course) Barbenheimer, viewer access to Oscar films was much higher in 2023 than in years previous, leading to a more invested viewership--and way longer holds lists at the library, too.
Then we're taking the leap into a discussion of Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton, which takes its name from a Macbeth reference, but pivots to discuss environmental destruction, guerrilla gardening, illegal fracking, and what a bunch of Kiwi Millennials think they're going to do to fix it all. Birnam Wood's twists and turns, combined with Catton's stream of consciousness writing style and wide cast of characters, combine to create a cerebral quasi-thriller that leaves readers thinking about what it means to do "good" in the period of late stage capitalism.
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1:10:32
Romance Redux
We've talked about romance novels before on the podcast, but this episode takes a different approach, because Joseph has a lot of questions about the genre. Why do we read romance? What are the implications of the genre on readers, and how do we as a society view romance novels? For that matter, what’s the difference between a romance book and a romance movie? Jess and Rea explain the importance of romance, the reimagining of the marriage plot, and major trends in romance, all whilst swooning over the many romance novels they’ve read recently.
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1:25:02
Yellowface
Who gets to tell what stories? It’s a question authors—and all of us—have grappled with for years now, and R. F. Kuang’s novel Yellowface digs into that question and pulls out a very sloppy and difficult main character. A skewering, funny, intense look at the publishing industry warts and all, Yellowface also digs into the messy world of female friendships, jealousy, and cultural appropriation.
In this episode, we’re talking through Kuang’s latest novel, plus sharing our feelings about improv (not great, per Jess), and catching up on Joseph’s challenge to watch all the Twilight movies.
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1:11:32
2023 Year-End Roundup
Here’s to you, 2023. A year of reading and watching (mostly reading for Rea, a LOT of watching for Jess, and the usual extensive amount of both for Joseph). We’re recapping our goals for 2023, how they went, and what we loved most in 2023. We also mention Taylor Alison Swift a lot, because we recorded this episode on her birthday. Happy birthday to Taylor, happy end of year to us, and we’ll see you in 2024!
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1:17:36
Patricia Wants to Cuddle
We found the intersection of Joseph’s conspiracy theory-addled brain and Rea & Jess’s obsession with pop culture: Patricia Wants to Cuddle. Our titular queen just wants what we all want: to love and be loved. So what if she’s a bigfoot? And so what if America’s biggest reality dating competition happens to be in Patricia’s actual backyard? If anything, that just means that she’s more likely to find what she’s looking for. The humans of The Catch land on Otters Island hoping for different kinds of success, from fame and fortune to true love with a sleazy bachelor, but what they find is a musty old bed and breakfast and a very eerie feeling of being watched in a different way than how they want to be watched. In this episode, we’re talking conspiracy theories (mostly Joseph’s), the way writers lift the curtain on behind-the-scenes moments in TV and movies, and the delight of stop-motion animation, as exemplified by Chicken Run.
Om BookLovers: A Podcast from Spartanburg County Public Libraries
We’re pop culture obsessives, animal lovers and professional food fans. Our opinions and interests are wide and deep, so the podcast reflects that. We dissect old titles that need a fresh take, brand new stuff that everyone’s talking about, and off-the-beaten-path works that deserve some love. We release episodes every month. The current iteration of Booklovers is focused on sharing our reads with listeners, doing a deep dive on a specific book or topic, and then talking about readalikes in our Reader’s Advisory Corner.
We also keep a running list of all of the titles we discuss, from books
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