Episode 142: Transcript
Episode: 142: Winter Entertainment Guide-Books
Transcription by Keffy
Charlie Jane: [00:00:00] Annalee, do you think that there is any frigate that is in any way like a book?
Annalee: [00:00:06] Well, I've been thinking a lot about this question ever since you posed it to me a couple of days ago, and I think that, yeah, okay, you could have a book, that carried, like, say, a group of insects across a river.
Charlie Jane: [00:00:25] Sure.
Annalee: [00:00:26] The book might have to be mounted on top of something else. Like, I don't think the book would float them all the way across, but, say, you were a group of cockroaches making war on a group of cockroaches across the river. You could get a book, put it on a miniature raft, and then float across and fight the other cockroaches. So thank you for asking that question. Now you know.
Charlie Jane: [00:00:48] I mean, I feel like a book would float for a short period of time, but also you could have a frigate that was sort of book shaped. You could have a, like, this is the thing Emily Dickinson asked about and I'm like, is there any frigate like a book? Well, you could have a frigate that was sort of had little kind of jagged edges, like the pages of a book and was kind of V-shaped.
[00:01:07] And it would superficially resemble a book. You could have a lot of writing all over the frigate.
Annalee: [00:01:13] On the frigate, mm-hmm.
Charlie Jane: [00:01:13] That would make it more of a book. The frigate could be a book. I feel like somebody needs to do this. Someone in the world of shipping needs to do this.
Annalee: [00:01:19] Yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:01:20] It needs to exist.
Annalee: [00:01:20] I'm sorry that my mind immediately went to…
Charlie Jane: [00:01:24] No, I love the cockroaches.
Annalee: [00:01:27] War ships cockroaches. I, you know, it just seemed like the most natural answer.
Charlie Jane: [00:01:30] That’s super legit. And I feel like nautical cockroaches are a big, important part of the book consuming audience for sure.
Annalee: [00:01:40] It's a growing subgenre.
Charlie Jane: [00:01:42] I have a new favorite T-shirt, which is a T-shirt I got from a bookstore called Space Cowboy.
Annalee: [00:01:47] Yes!
Charlie Jane: [00:01:47] Which is down in Joshua Tree, and it says, Books are time machines, which just feels right to me. I feel like that's better than saying that books are like frigates, because I feel like reading a book is a time machine in the sense that you read a book and it makes time move faster or slower, depending on what kind of book you're reading. But also, when you're reading a book, you can visit other times and places. It's really cool. It's like a TARDIS.
Annalee: [00:02:09] I think so, too. Books are not just time machines transporting you to the past or the future, but also they can bring you into alternate timelines, they can be portals into other worlds, and that's why we love them so much.
Charlie Jane: [00:02:25] Every book is a portal fantasy, for sure. And you know, this year, more than most years, I'm really appreciating being able to have a good book to get lost in. It’s winter, the weather is about to get weathery. The world is not in a super great place right now. So we thought we would share another kind of subjective and completely incomplete list of books that you can just burrow inside of, like a nice cozy nest during these frozen months.
[00:02:53] Or, if you're in the southern hemisphere, here are some great beach reads.
Annalee: [00:02:57] Right!
Charlie Jane: [00:02:57] For your summer.
Annalee: [00:02:58] Exactly. So, it could be for the winter. It could be for the summer. Just like, pick your hemisphere.
Charlie Jane: [00:03:03] Whatever it is where you are. So you're listening to Our Opinions Are Correct, which is our cozy nest that we climb into, and it's a podcast about science fiction and the futurism and just everything.
[00:03:14] I'm Charlie Jane Anders. I'm a science fiction writer. My latest book is Promises Stronger Than Darkness.
Annalee: [00:03:22] And I'm Annalee Newitz. I'm a science journalist who writes science fiction, and my latest novel is called The Terraformers.
Charlie Jane: [00:03:30] Yeah, and on our mini episode next week, we'll be talking about the things that make us quit reading a book halfway through, or sometimes things that make us wish that we had quit reading sooner. Join us as we vent about our reading pet peeves.
Annalee: [00:03:45] And speaking of venting, did you know that this podcast is entirely independent and funded by you, our listeners, through Patreon? That is absolutely right. And if you become a patron, just throw us, like, five bucks a month, you know, ten bucks, a billion bucks, you know, you can pay us in cyber bucks, that just makes our opinions way more correct. You'll get mini episodes every other week. You can hang out with us on Discord and talk about the books that you like. The non-lethal cockroach related weapons that you like, all of that can be just completely yours for a few bucks a month and anything you give goes right back into the podcast and to paying our awesome producer and making sure that we just keep nattering in your ears.
[00:04:32] So, find us at patreon.com/ouropinionsarecorrect.
Charlie Jane: [00:04:36] Okay, let's get into it.
[00:04:38] [OOAC theme plays. Science fictiony synth noises over an energetic, jazzy drum line.]
Charlie Jane: [00:05:12] And before we get started, I just wanted to say that we're going to be talking about what happens in these books, and there's going to be some minor spoilers. Nothing that… we won't give away like any major plot twists, but if you're super spoiler averse, you might want to stop listening now and just get the list of books from the show notes.
[00:05:28] So, we're going to start off by talking about some friendly books, some books that are kind of maybe light or cozy or just comfort reads during the middle of a kind of a difficult time.
[00:05:36] Annalee, do you have a pick for us?
Annalee: [00:05:38] I'm going to start with a nonfiction book. Deb Chachra, who is a engineering professor, just came out with a book a couple of weeks ago called How Infrastructure Works.
[00:05:51] And it's all about the infrastructures that make up our cities, our farms, our water resources, and it is delightful. I think that it is simultaneously kind of almost like a travel log, where you visit all of these incredible, charismatic megastructures, along with Chachra, but also it's an explanation of, how you build infrastructure and how important it is and how little we notice it when it works.
[00:06:19] And the thing I liked best about it was the fact that she emphasized that infrastructure is a collective effort. It's really a call to community, to think about caring for your community, including things like making sure we have roads, making sure we have good water resources, making sure that we're keeping the water clean. And the other thing that I think is really important is she emphasizes that we're in a world where everybody's obsessed with optimization, and that's the opposite of what you want from infrastructure.
[00:06:50] You want infrastructure to be not optimized, but actually redundant and constantly in a state of being maintained. You don't want your infrastructure to be so optimal that if you have a horrible freeze, all of your pipes freeze. You want to have lots of extra stuff to help people get their water.
[00:07:08] So those were two really awesome lessons I took away from the book. And if you want to know more, I reviewed it for The Washington Post and you can find my review there.
Charlie Jane: [00:07:17] Yeah. Infrastructure is just an inherently comforting topic because it's there for us. It’s what enables us to have our cozy spaces and to make it to and from our cozy spaces.
[00:07:28] And I love that lesson that efficiency isn't always efficient. Optimization isn't always optimal. Sometimes you actually want things to be a little bit more robust than that.
Annalee: [00:07:38] Mm-hmm. Especially when it comes to things that are urgent for keeping you warm and keeping you safe and keeping you hydrated, you want that to be really redundant and you want a lot of human workers working on it all the time and making sure that it's being maintained and that's not wasteful. That's actually what we have to do.
[00:08:01] So, okay. You tell me about a book that you are excited about that's cozy and warm.
Charlie Jane: [00:08:07] Okay, so I'll tell you about a book I just read, which is A River of Golden Bones by A.K. Mulford. Which, I've been hearing about A.K. Mulford for a while. They're kind of, I guess they're big on TikTok. Their books are fantasy with a lot of queer stuff in them. And this book was just, it was delightful. It was basically set in a secondary world where the ruling families of all the kingdoms are werewolves, basically. It's like werewolves are in charge of everything and like humans are kind of like just, you know, the subjects of these werewolf rulers.
[00:08:40] The main character is a werewolf who, a girl, a werewolf girl, but by the end of the book, minor spoiler alert. the main character realizes that they're not really a girl, they're actually non-binary and they meet some non-binary people and kind of start thinking about their non-binary identity more, which is awesome, and they have like a special word for non-binary in that world, which is like the word for river, and it just means that things kind of flow, and it's really cool.
[00:09:10] But this young, non-binary werewolf is the sibling of the person who's in line for the throne of their kingdom, which they've been in hiding for like their whole life until they were old enough, because there was a coup and their parents were deposed and so they're waiting to come back and reclaim their throne.
[00:09:28] But then everything goes horribly wrong. There's a witch who shows up and witches everything up and they have to go on a quest to basically save their sibling who was supposed to be in line for the throne. And along the way they kind of start to realize that actually there needs to be a change. Werewolves need to be nicer to humans and also they kind of realize that they're non-binary and they fall in love with this person who they've known their whole life who's actually a really kind of a good example of a very kind and supportive romantic interest.
[00:10:00] It's a dude who actually is just like, yeah you should be in charge. You're really awesome. I support you. I support your non-binary identity and like, they just have a really good relationship and you know, it's a really exciting read. It's a really fun read, but it's not, it doesn't get ever super scary or anything. And the action scenes are so well done. Like the action scenes are like, I could totally see the action in my mind, which we talked about action scenes a couple of our recent episodes. So, I know how hard they are to do.
Annalee: [00:10:28] Yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:10:28] So that’s A River of Golden Bones by A. K. Wilford. I really enjoyed it. Now I know why people are so into their work.
Annalee: [00:10:35] Yeah. Wow. I really want to read that. I'm always sold on a book where the central romance is about people supporting each other instead of—
Charlie Jane: [00:10:45] Yes!
Annalee: [00:10:45] I know that we're all about enemies to lovers right now, but, I’m much more into friends to lovers. Like, I think that's—
Charlie Jane: [00:10:52] Same, same. Billion percent.
Annalee: [00:10:52] A narrative structure that really appeals to me. And, like, it doesn't mean that it's better. That’s just what appeals to me.
[00:10:59] Okay. So, speaking of relationships.
Charlie Jane: [00:11:03] Yeah. Give us another pick. Give us a pick.
Annalee: [00:11:03] So, I love the central relationship in Malka Older's new series, which starts with the book, The Mimicking of Known Successes. And it's about a detective and her bestie, who's also her partner, who's also a scientist.
Charlie Jane: [00:11:24] It's her ex, but then, spoiler alert, there's some romantic tension between them in the present.
Annalee: [00:11:31] Yeah, it's not. I think that, I mean, there's two books in the series now. There's a third one that's coming that I know you've taken a look at already, Charlie Jane. And basically, the premise is that Earth has been abandoned due to environmental horrors that are never fully explained. And all of humanity is living in these ring-shaped structures around Jupiter.
Charlie Jane: [00:11:57] It's so cool.
Annalee: [00:11:58] And the setting is really amazing. The ring-shaped structures are railroad tracks and all of the humans are living in little towns and cities attached to the railroad tracks. They're surrounded by these kind of permeable membranes that let in some of Jupiter's atmosphere. They're way, way in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter. And so it lets in some of the atmosphere of Jupiter to give a sense of weather, but it also protects people from cosmic radiation and all the other stuff.
[00:12:29] And so the result is that every part of this world looks like London in the 19th century because they're all on trains. There's cold mist everywhere. People are constantly cozying up to fireplaces. And it starts with a murder mystery, which is actually deeply connected to all of these environmental questions about like how we're going to get back to earth and how we live in space.
[00:12:52] And so it's incredibly great science fiction worldbuilding and also a cozy mystery about these two characters trying to figure out this murder. And that's the sort of trajectory of the series, is that each book will be continuing these murder mysteries and figuring out this larger question about Earth. So, highly recommended that's called—
Charlie Jane: [00:13:11] Love them.
Annalee: [00:13:11] Yeah, the first book is called The Mimicking of Known Successes. It's by Malka Older. And they're all novellas. So, they're quick reads and just such a delight.
Charlie Jane: [00:13:21] They're so delightful. And they're just such… You know, I can't say enough about these books. It's rare to see a science fiction murder mystery done that well where the murder mystery is actually a really strong component of the story and not just kind of tacked on and the romance is utterly beautiful. I swooned when I got to a certain part of The Mimicking of Known Successes. It’s so good.
Annalee: [00:13:44] It has the friends to lovers vibe, which I really like.
Charlie Jane: [00:13:48] It does. It really does. And I think that there's a theme emerging. We really like friends to lovers and we're just going to say it. So, we're not going to…
Annalee: [00:13:57] We’re just gonna admit it. I'm sorry. That's just how it’s gonna be.
Charlie Jane: [00:13:59] We can’t lie. So Malka Older, of course is a friend of the pod. And if you're hanging out in our Discord, you might see her there.
[00:14:06] Another friend of the pod is the incredible Maggie Tokuda-Hall, which we had in one of the earliest episodes about animals. And she's incredible. She's just like one of my heroes. And so we might or might not have talked to you about her first YA book, which was called, The Mermaid, The Witch and the Sea, but now the sequel is out, The Siren, The Song, and The Spy. And I had a chance to read an early [unclear] version of it. It takes all of the stuff from The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea and just opens out the world, introduces a bunch of new characters, kind of deals with… Because the first book is about pirates and about an empire and people who are on the run from the empire, but also it's a really beautiful romance, also including a lot of queerness and a lot of friends to lovers vibes.
[00:14:58] But the second book, I think it gets more complicated and we get to see more of how the empire operates and we get to see stuff more from the point of view of people who've been colonized as well as people who… there's actually a really gripping storyline about a character who has kind of been absorbed into the empire and has kind of taken on that culture but is kind of now reconnecting with her roots. It's such a great, it's such a great book and like it's a duology so you could get both of those books right now and you've got the complete set and it's so amazing.
Annalee: [00:15:29] Yeah, I just love those books and I think that since that series started, there's been so much great pirate culture that's really caught on, like, Our Flag Means Death. Which, I think, if you like Our Flag Means Death, you will definitely like these books. They aren't as goofy, they're not as silly, but they have the same ambient—
Charlie Jane: [00:15:48] They're a little bit goofy in places.
Annalee: [00:15:50] But they’re not, like, broadly humorous, and they, but they have the same sense of anti-colonial queer pirates trying to do good in the world, essentially. Although in Our Flag Means Death, it's like, are they trying to do good or just be pirates? It's hard to say. But certainly, in Maggie's books, they are trying to, make the world better. So yeah, definitely check those out. They're delightful.
[00:16:19] My next recommendation is a novel that I and many people across the world have been waiting for many, many years. It's by Nicola Griffith. It's called Menewood, and it is a sequel to her book Hild, which is an incredible evocation of medieval England, and it's about Saint Hilda, who I knew nothing about before reading this book, and so I was actually, I was halfway through the book before I realized, oh, this is like a real life saint. Because she doesn't act like a saint in the first book. She's an amazing warrior and, has lots of delightful bisexual experiences, and is bringing Christianity to Britain.
[00:17:03] Which is really interesting because the way that Nicola Griffith portrays that is in this really practical, interesting narrative where we learn that it's not so much that Hild is persuaded by Christianity. It's just that she sees it as politically efficacious and she learns to read and write, unlike a lot of her contemporaries. And so she sees writing as a way to do spycraft, but also to engage in international trade and Christianity is kind of part of that. So, it's a really realistic take on a heavily mythologized figure, but also there is some stuff that seems maybe a little magic in the book and Hild herself is an incredible warrior.
[00:17:57] This is the thing I love about Nicola Griffith, is she writes—she herself has a lot of experience doing fighting and martial arts. She writes very athletic, combat-oriented female characters super well, and she makes them super sexy.
[00:18:15] And so, Menewood is the sequel to this book, so Hild is about the early life of St. Hilda, and now we're gonna see what happens when she actually comes into power as a leader in Britain, and really brings the church into the burgeoning nation, which is still not united yet. So, if you love historical tales that are queer and full of amazing female heroes, you are just going to be in heaven. I would say start with Hild. That's your whole vacation. You got Hild, you got Menewood, you're set.
Charlie Jane: [00:18:50] 100%.
Annalee: [00:18:50] Okay, give us another tip for a cozy book.
Charlie Jane: [00:18:55] Yeah, well, okay, so I've got a really good one, which is, Mammoths at the Gates by Nghi Vo, which is part of the Singing Hills Cycle.
Annalee: [00:19:05] Love those.
Charlie Jane: [00:19:05] And so basically these are like, I think there's four of these so far. They're all novellas, just like Malka's books. They're also published by Tor.com. There's four right now.
Annalee: [00:19:16] I think there might be more than four.
Charlie Jane: [00:19:15] There's a fifth one coming.
Annalee: [00:19:17] Oh, okay. Sorry.
Charlie Jane: [00:19:17] There's a fifth one coming next year. I've already got it on my radar.
Annalee: [00:19:20] Yay.
Charlie Jane: [00:19:20] And basically these are the stories of a character named Cleric Chih, who is a non-binary person who's in a monastery, who's a non-binary monk in this monastery. And they have these special birds that have eidetic memory that travel around with the Cleric Chih and kind of remember people's stories.
[00:19:43] And the first book in this series is The Empress of Salt and Fortune, which is also just frickin’ brilliant and amazing. Mammoths at the Gates is just gorgeous. It's such a gorgeous book. It's basically, Cleric Chih comes back to the monastery, to the Singing Hills Monastery, and then these people show up with mammoths, which are basically in that world, they're like the ultimate war machine. Like if you have a couple of mammoths, you can knock down anything. And they want the dead body of their grandfather, who was actually the abbot of the monastery. And so it's like these two, it's kind of about who can lay claim to this guy's body, but also who's going to take over now that the abbot is dead? And how do we remember people and how do we lay claim to the people who have gone?
[00:20:35] It’s got a lot of dense ideas. It's very chewy. It's not a book that ever becomes scary or violent even though there's these mammoths that are kind of threatening. It’s always a book that's just very kind of thoughtful and full of stuff about community. I found it really gorgeous and uplifting and just a lovely escape from the world and when that fifth book comes out, I am all over it.
[00:20:57] Annalee, hit me with another recommendation.
Annalee: [00:21:01] Yeah, so I really loved Mia Tsai's debut novel Bitter Medicine. It came out earlier this year. I probably raved about it here before. It is part of a new subgenre that I'm seeing more and more of, which I would call the fantasy medical thriller or the fantasy forensic thriller, which—
Charlie Jane: [00:21:22] Sort of like The Bruising of Qilwa.
Annalee: [00:21:24] Yeah, I was thinking Naseem Jamnia's Bruising of Qilwa is in the same vein. Bitter Medicine is much more light and romantic than Bruising of Qilwa. It's basically combining fairy mythos with international spy craft. So imagine James Bond as a fae with healing powers.
[00:21:52] So, the main character, has these healing powers and does these spells to help out these international fae spies who are doing all kinds of incredible conspiracies and trying to influence international events.
[00:22:05] And, there's also this slow burn romance that I love. It is so satisfying, and it's just a delight. Like, it's a perfect, cozy read, and it's, I believe, the beginning of something bigger, I hope. But it's also totally self-contained. It’s not like it ends on a cliffhanger. And if you need medical fae romance with, spy craft, this is your book, and a lot of people felt that way. It really, has taken off and people have really been loving it.
[00:22:39] So it's Mia Tsai, Bitter Medicine.
Charlie Jane: [00:22:43] Yeah, so we're about to go to a break, but really quickly before we do, I just wanted to mention a couple other things.
Annalee: [00:22:48] Yes.
Charlie Jane: [00:22:50] Everybody already loves Murderbot, the series by Martha Wells. There's a new one coming out in November called System Collapse that I'm excited to dive into.
Annalee: [00:22:58] Yes.
Charlie Jane: [00:22:58] Similarly, everybody loved Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree, and now he has a prequel coming out, which I'm also excited to get to, called Bookshops & Bonedust, which is about the same character, but earlier in her life when she was working at a bookstore. Super excited to dive into that one.
[00:23:13] And finally, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention another friend of the pod, Karen Lord, who has this wonderful trilogy that starts with The Best of All Possible Worlds. It's a space opera trilogy, but it's very gentle space opera, and it's mostly just very personal stories. The other two books in the trilogy are The Galaxy Game and then the most recent one, which just came out, is The Blue, Beautiful World, and they’re a very unconventional take on space operas that are much more character-focused and kind of gentle than what you're expecting from a space opera.
Annalee: [00:23:47] They're character focused and she's really interested in how diplomacy would fit into the story of first contact with aliens, which I love. Karen has a background in diplomacy and it's just something you don't hear about very often, even though it seems obvious once you think about it. Of course, diplomats would be involved in first contact.
Charlie Jane: [00:24:08] So we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we're going to talk about books that are maybe slightly sterner stuff.
[00:24:14] OOAC session break music, a quick little synth bwoop bwoo.
Charlie Jane: [00:24:20] All right. So, here's some books that maybe have a little bit more of an edge to them. And like, Annalee, why don't you start us off by telling us about a book that maybe is a little bit more kind of serious and intense?
Annalee: [00:24:32] Well, I've been reading the latest book by the psychologist Judith Herman, who became famous in the ‘90s for writing a book called Trauma and Recovery, which was looking at how people, specifically she looked at rape victims and former soldiers who were in combat and how their experience of trauma was very similar and she talked about what it takes to recover from trauma and it's a very thoughtful book that, helped a lot of people. It helped me, actually, deal with, with my own trauma.
[00:25:06] And so now she has a book that's basically a sequel. She talks in the introduction to this book. It's called Truth and Repair. And she talks about how this is kind of the final chapter of Trauma and Recovery because she's gone back to a lot of the people she talked to for Trauma and Recovery. And she's talked to another group of folks, as well, about how they, as trauma victims, imagine justice and how they imagine a larger social context for recovering from trauma. It's not just about going to therapy individually and just like feeling better about yourself. How do you actually change a community that's engaged in systemic injustice or has set up a carceral system that's designed to punish perpetrators but doesn't help victims in any way.
[00:25:56] It's a really fantastic book. Again, like her other work, it's very clear. It's very personal in the sense that she grounds it in real people's stories. And the theme that emerges is that What we really need now is to do community work, and that means reforming the justice system, and it means abolishing the police. It means, perhaps not abolishing them, but absolutely changing the role of police in dealing with people who are victims of violence.
[00:26:26] It also means having a much more formalized system for acknowledging the ways that people have been victimized and traumatized. There needs to be more public acknowledgment, she finds, and her, the folks that she speaks with, all say that one of the biggest traumas for them, or the re-traumatization, is when people just refuse to acknowledge what's happened to them, and they're like, okay, fine, well, the guy who hurt you went to prison. So, you're all done now. You're fine.
[00:26:58] It is a hard read. It's also really thoughtful. And it's definitely something that I think is important right now, especially in our culture.
Annalee: Give us another thoughtful read here, Charlie.
Charlie Jane: [00:27:06] Yeah, that’s another conversation that we really need to be having.
[00:27:12] Okay. So a book that I literally just finished like an hour ago, which I'm just still vibrating about is The Reformatory by Tananarive Due. It came out October 31st. So, it's really brand new. Tananarive Due, as hopefully you all know is like one of the luminaries of horror noir, of Black horror, has taught a class at UCLA about it. And Jordan Peele came and spoke to her class and she's the master. In fact, this is her second book this year. She also published an incredible short story collection called The Wishing Pool and Other Stories, but The Reformatory, holy cow, that is one of the most mind blowing books I've read in a long time.
[00:27:53] Very upsetting, but in a very worthwhile way. It's basically set in 1950, and it's about this 12 year old kid who gets, this 12 year old Black kid who gets sent to a reform school for boys where unfortunately, a lot of the kids who get sent there don't ever make it out again, and there's there's ghosts in the school. Their school is full of ghosts of the kids who've died there and woof, you know, that was a book that I gotta say. I usually read late at night. I read at bedtime and I was like, yeah, at a certain point, I was like, I'm going to read this book during the day because it gave me really upsetting dreams, but it's such a beautiful book.
[00:28:37] And in the end, it's like, I won't give away any spoilers, but it is very worthwhile and it's very moving and very beautifully written and also devastating. It's just utterly devastating in the best possible way.
Annalee: [00:28:52] Yeah. Tananarive Due is one of those writers whose work never fails to terrify me. It's hard to terrify me in a novel, it takes a special kind of brain to do that.
[00:29:07] Holy moly, so, but also, I was gonna say, she did do research, a lot of research for this book.
Annalee: [00:29:12] Oh yeah. It's so well researched. Yeah, it's set in Florida where she grew up and where her family is. And it's based on a real school. Obviously, there's not real hauntings, but it's one of those books that's powerful because a lot of it is real, even though it's obviously a fantasy.
Charlie Jane: [00:29:29] Okay, Annalee, hit us with another slightly darker recommendation.
Annalee: [00:29:36] Yeah, so I wanted to recommend, Jessica John's novel, Bad Cree. We had Jessica Johns on an episode about hauntings, and so if you want to go back and listen to that, she’s an incredibly interesting writer and has a lot of good thoughts about how to kind of put trauma into fiction in a way that's compelling and healing.
[00:30:01] This is a story that's set in northern Alberta on a First Nations reserve and it's about, again, hauntings, and about how that community is haunted not just by the past colonization by white settlers but also by present day environmental extraction, you know, the oil sands and what that has done to the community in the present day.
[00:30:27] So it's the ghosts, in a sense, the ghosts of the present, not just the distant past. And that's what I think makes it really interesting is that it's not placing indigenous experience sometime back in the 19th century. It's like, no, this is actually still going on. And these families are dealing with these issues right now.
[00:30:49] It's also very queer and is full of sister bonding, which is something I really like. Yeah, if you liked, Reservation Dogs, you'll definitely like this book. It has that kind of magical realism and deals with a lot of the same issues, and it's just really beautiful, so check it out, Bad Cree by Jessica Johns.
Charlie Jane: [00:31:13] Yeah. So another book I want to recommend is Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh, which is a really fun space opera. It's kind of dark. It's not as dark as the ones that we just mentioned, but it's basically like humans have been living on this kind of space station made out of a bunch of battle state ships stuck together.
[00:31:32] And it has a very Battlestar Galactica feel to it, actually. Humans, it's like, this group of humans who are kind of in this very militaristic situation where they're kind of the last humans who are fighting back against these aliens that destroyed our home world and we're going to try to get revenge against them.
[00:31:51] But the main character starts to realize that maybe everything she's been told is a lie and that actually, she—spoiler alert—she kind of starts to realize that the war is actually over and has been over for a long time and that most humans are just living their lives now and that actually it’s fine. And you don't need to keep fighting this war that was over a long time ago. And it's really creepy because I'm skipping around a little bit, but early on in the book, she's the best fighter in her unit. She's this super badass fighter and she's expecting to be given this fighter role, but instead she gets assigned to basically be a part of the breeding stock in this colony.
[00:32:33] They basically assigned her to become part of their breeding. Certain cis women are selected to just be impregnated over and over and over again. And they have nonconsensual sex.
Annalee: [00:32:50] That’s my worst nightmare.
Charlie Jane: [00:32:50] It's everybody's worst nightmare. Have nonconsensual sex with like a bunch of really skeevy, mostly older dudes who want to preserve their genes or whatever. And her brother goes missing so she basically runs away. And that's when she starts to realize that everything she's been taught is not true, and that actually, there's a lot more going on.
[00:33:11] It gets very trippy. That book gets super trippy, it goes to a lot of really weird places where she kind of visits alternate timelines and stuff. But it's a really fun, gripping book about basically getting trapped in a forever war, and having to kind of think your way out of it, which I feel might be a little relevant to us. I don't know if you feel like forever war…
Annalee: [00:33:33] That feels… that does feel a little relevant.
Charlie Jane: [00:33:36] Possibly.
Annalee: [00:33:36] That brings me to another nonfiction selection, which is Naomi Klein's new book called Doppelganger. Naomi Klein got famous in the ‘90 for writing a book called No Logo, which was all about brands and how brands were trying to humanize themselves. And this is kind of coming back to some of those issues. She's dealing a lot with online propaganda.
The doppelganger of the title is multiple. It's partly because people confuse Naomi Klein with Naomi Wolf online a lot. And Naomi Wolf is this right wing conspiracy nut. And the larger question in the book, though, isn't who is Naomi Wolf versus Naomi Klein, but how does a nation, an entire nation like the United States, just suddenly switch over, go from a democratic nation to an authoritarian nation? And the question is, are we doing that? And how is it happening? Why is it that so many people who were deeply invested in the democratic process are now like, let's throw democracy in the trash can? Because elections are all fraudulent and the deep state, etc.
[00:34:48] And one of the things that is particularly was prescient about the book is that a huge part of it deals with the conflict in Gaza. And of course, she wrote it, obviously, before the present day conflict that's raging right now, as we record. But she, is talking about, sort of, the ongoing antagonism, what, the Zionist government in Israel has done to Palestinians. She talks about a trip that she took into Gaza City at one point, and where she gets harassed by, Israeli guards.
[00:35:27] I should say, Naomi Klein is Jewish, and she's part of, a group called Jews for Peace that have long advocated for peace between Palestine and Israel. And that whole section of the book just reads so differently now that this current attack is taking place, it's still totally relevant. In fact, way more relevant than, than I had realized when I first read it. It's just an incredible book.
[00:35:50] And it's really, a clear explanation for what's happening and how to tell the difference between propaganda and actual evidence-based reality.
[00:36:03] And it's also just very endearingly written. You feel like you get to know Naomi Klein and trust her and that's a really good part of the journalism that she's doing, actually.
[00:36:13] So, highly recommend, probably another book that you mostly want to read while it's light outside because it is really scary.
Charlie Jane: [00:36:21] Yeah, I feel like we're developing a theme here of like trauma and propaganda. People who are super traumatized and who are meanwhile being bombarded with propaganda to tell us how we should, I don't know…
Annalee: [00:36:36] People being re-traumatized, yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:36:39] Yeah, people being re-traumatized by propaganda or like the propaganda tells you to ignore your trauma, one or the other.
Annalee: [00:36:44] Yeah, that's really true.
Charlie Jane: [00:36:47] Yeah, so actually a book that I keep thinking about a lot is The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei. I reviewed it in The Washington Post a while ago. Much like Malka's books, it's another murder mystery that actually really works as a murder mystery. It's set on board a starship where it's the first ship to leave the solar system, which I love.
[00:37:10] That's one of my favorite things in books is like the first ship to leave the solar system. I feel like that's always going to be fun. And it's basically like, you know, it's all your usual tropes. Earth is fucked and humans are trying to colonize another planet and basically this is a private venture that picks, I think it's 80 people, all of whom are people with uteruses because they want to be able to impregnate them on the journey.
[00:37:36] Which that's the one part of the book where I was like, why would you impregnate people in space? Why not just wait until they… like, keep them in suspended animation and knock them up when they get to the planet, but whatever. So, it's like women and non-binary people, all of whom have uteruses, on this starship that's like getting out of the solar system and heading for another planet.
[00:37:55] And there's an explosion on board and a couple of people are killed and the main character basically has to investigate. But there's a couple of problems that she has in her investigation. One is that she has a VR setup, which everybody, everybody on the ship has like a kind of implanted VR setup that allows them to have a virtual environment so they don't just stare at these spaceship walls all the time.
Annalee: [00:38:21] Makes sense.
Charlie Jane: [00:38:21] They can have, like, a custom VR setup, but her VR setup is malfunctioning so that whenever she comes near someone else, it's actually showing her their VR, their kind of virtual environment instead of her own.
Annalee: [00:38:34] Interesting.
Charlie Jane: [00:38:34] Which is a really clever way of giving us more kind of backstory about some of the other characters, and also winds up being kind of a clue. There's a reason why that happened. It didn't just happen by accident.
[00:38:45] And also, the other problem she has is that she finds out that the captain of the ship, who I think is one of the people who was killed in the explosion was a white nationalist, was like, basically infiltrating the crew on behalf of this group of white nationalists back on Earth. And also, some of the members of the crew belong to a kind of eco-terrorist group who want to sabotage the ship because they feel like we should be fixing the environment on earth instead of colonizing other planets.
[00:39:14] It’s this rich stew of all these ideologies that they've brought with them from Earth and also all of this stuff about like seeing other people's realities. It's a really fascinating, well done book.
[00:39:25] The main character is also Japanese-American and struggles with whether she's there representing Japan in this international mission and she struggles with whether she's Japanese enough. And there’s going on in that book and it's all handled extremely well. I just really love that book a lot.
Annalee: [00:39:44] That sounds amazing.
Charlie Jane: [00:39:44] Okay, my final pick is Wole Talabi Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, which is a fantastic, brilliant fantasy novel. It's set in a world where basically all of the world's major religions have become capitalist enterprises. And so Shigidi is a minor god who's part of the Orisha Spirit Company, which is the for profit entity that represents the Orishas of Western Africa, the Yoruba peoples and other peoples of Western Africa.
[00:40:16] And so, basically they're, they're competing with other major religions and there's some bits in there where they talk about like how Christians keep trying to seize market share by basically forcibly converting people to Christianity and how they’re now trying to get market share back by repackaging their religion in different ways.
[00:40:40] And basically the whole book is about a corporate power struggle inside the Orisha Spirit Company. And Shigidi and his partner have been asked to steal this Brass Head of Obalufon, which is in a museum. It's in the British Museum, actually, where, you know, everything taken from other cultures resides. They have to steal this brass head and get it to this meeting in time for this—this is a minor spoiler—but in time for this corporate meeting that's going to happen.
[00:41:08] And so it's a classic heist novel and actually, the book starts out with the heist and then kind of jumps around in time a lot. It does that thing of like, you know, we're in the present, we're in the past, we're in the present, and it jumps around. Sometimes we're in the 1500s, sometimes we're in the 1920s and like you get to meet some famous figures from history who kind of turn up.
[00:41:29] But also it’s a really wild romp about this relationship between these two, this minor god and this succubus who have teamed up to be partners in crime. It just gets wilder and wilder. It gets completely off the chain and it's such a fun read But it also has a bunch of really serious stuff embedded in it. And yeah, before we wrap up I'm just gonna do a quick plug for another non-fiction book that I really love which I feel like everybody should be reading right now called Burn It Down by Maureen Ryan.
Annalee: [00:42:00] Oh yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:42:00] Maureen Ryan is a longtime friend of ours who writes about pop culture and she's been talking, long before anybody else was like kind of talking about this in mainstream outlets, she's been talking about like harassment and abuse in Hollywood. And now she's written a book about the toxic culture of Hollywood and it is mind blowing and upsetting, but super necessary. And she ends the book by talking a lot about how we can basically have the same stuff that Judith Herman talks about, like how we can have restorative justice, how we can build better systems going forward, but specifically focused around Hollywood. So highly recommend that book. It's a must read.
[00:42:39] So these are books that have made our lives a lot better lately, and we hope they make yours better. And, you know, please come in on Discord and tell us about the books that you've been reading lately.
[00:42:49] Thank you so much for listening. As always, this is Our Opinions Are Correct, and you can find it wherever you find podcasts. If you find us on Apple Podcasts or someplace else where you can leave a review, please do leave a review. It helps a lot. You can also find us on Mastodon, Patreon, Instagram, and Bluesky.
Annalee: [00:43:07] Woo!
Charlie Jane: [00:43:07] Woo-hoo! And I think we're still on Facebook, maybe.
[00:43:10] Thanks so much to Veronica Simonetti, our heroic producer who makes us sound so much smarter than we actually are. And thanks a lot to Chris Palmer and Katya Lopez Nichols for the incredible music. And thanks again to you for listening. We'll see you in two weeks with another episode, unless you're a patron, in which case we'll be back next week with a mini episode. And we'll be seeing you in Discord.
Together: [00:43:33] Bye!
[00:43:33] [OOAC theme plays. Science fictiony synth noises over an energetic, jazzy drum line.]