We're a Bit Dark Over Here!

Books mentioned in this episode:

Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher
In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune
Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica
The Whispers by Ashley Audrain
A House with Good Bones by T Kingfisher
Gibberish by Young Vo

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Transcript

June 28

Shanna: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to the Inher Good Books podcast. 

Jen: I'm Shanna. And I'm Jen. And this is a podcast where two friends talk about books. It's 

Shanna: working. Yeah. Well, it's working. Confidence. It's working well. That never happens. Yeah. 

Jen: Don't even know what to do now. Well, it's working, so I guess. We're officially professional podcasters.

Yeah, we finally did it. First try. How are you, Jen? Oh, boy. Good. No you're not. No, I'm sick. 

Shanna: Yeah, you're sick. You're tired. Tired. Cut your bangs. 

Jen: Yes. I, I guess I tried growing 'em out for about six weeks and then I was like, no, I'm sick of being ugly. I need them back. Yeah. So I cut them, uh, just came back from camping with the kids.

Drove into [00:01:00] town immediately canceled our next camping trip. Smart. Because it was terrible. 

Shanna: So, camping with children three and under? No. 

Jen: Yeah. No, no, no. Three was okay. Callie was actually pretty good. Well, except for bedtime, but that's normal. But under, under two, no. 

Shanna: But Veda specifically was just not great.

Jen: No. Well, she was, she was good. I guess. She was happy and smiley and having a great time. It was just us that was having a terrible time chasing them. Chasing, yeah. She's a, she's just a, she just runs off. 

Shanna: Yeah. Don't let her run too much. She's gonna lose 

Jen: those roles. I know. She is. She's getting skinny No, from just running and climbing.

Anytime you put her down, she's running. Yeah. Running or climbing up onto the table 100,000 times. Yeah. And I know it doesn't sound like it's that bad. It is though. It's it's really, really bad. So yeah, we're [00:02:00] like, no, this was supposed to be our trial camping trip for two nights. The next one was like four nights.

We're like, no, absolutely no trial, no failed. Failed. Good thing going to Mexico with them in four days or something. 

Shanna: Yeah. Do a trial, Mexico run for, what is it, 10 days? Something like that. 10 days. Wow. Yeah. You're gonna die. I'm, I'm day four. You're gonna cry. I'm just, I'm scared. You're gonna cry 

Jen: so hard.

Shanna: This is supposed to be fun. You're gonna question motherhood entirely. Ugh. No, you probably won't. You'll be great. You'll have a great time. 

Jen: Yeah. Well, I'm gonna be there for a long time, so we're probably gonna be a little wonky on the podcast because I had this thought. Well, I could just bring my microphone and like record.

She has recorded from Mexico before. Yeah. What are you? A whim? Yeah. But I was like, but. I have the kids. 

Shanna: Yeah. I didn't bring my kids. Yeah, 

Jen: they would be there. Yeah. In the room. We have one room. Ooh. Yeah. It's not gonna happen. I don't recommend. It's 

Shanna: not gonna happen unless Callie is [00:03:00] co-hosting because she'll be talking at least that much.

Yes, she will. Well, you know how she told me that She cut her bang guys a picture. Her hair in the sink. I was like, oh, you weak, weak fool. Yeah. But no, it looks great. It looked 

Jen: beautiful. Of course, I was, uh, putting my makeup on in the car yesterday and I looked over at Sam. I was like, how did you get someone as good as me?

Yeah. He's like, what? Why are you saying that? I'm like, well, I'm looking at myself in the mirror thinking. Damn, I'm camping. And look at me. Yeah, look at me. 

Shanna: Absolutely Amazing. Yeah. 

Jen: Anyways, yeah. Um, I hear you read one book. I've read 

Shanna: one book. I read Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher, and it was three hours and six minutes long, 

Jen: but that's hilarious.

Shanna: Yeah. Um, We just had our other book club and we realized that we needed to pick a book for next month. And I was like, let's read a biography because that's all my [00:04:00] brain can do. And then our friend who's there with us, Demi, she's like, oh, Carrie Fisher has biographies. And I'm like, I know. You're like, shut up.

I know she does. We're trying not to talk about them right now. But yeah, so Carrie Fisher, who is Princess Leia, uh, I read one of her books and it was so good. She is so funny and she's so smart and she's so honest. And yeah, so she's got, um, bipolar and drug and alcohol problems and she's got the weirdest life ever.

Both of her parents were ultra famous, so she was born famous and just has only had a really, really strange life. So it was really fun to listen to. And she's talking about like all of her different traumas, but she's so. What was one of my favorite parts. Um, so it was Carrie Fisher reading the audiobook and she's saying, well, you know, since my dad left when I was two.

Jen: Boohoo poor Carrie. [00:05:00] 

Shanna: Uh, I don't know. She was really funny and I really, really liked it. So that's all, that's all I know. But recommend it. Yeah. Yeah. Good job. Thank you. I read a book, but rather. I listened to Carrie, a three hour long Carrie Fisher podcast. 

Jen: What made you pick that one up? Um, well 

Shanna: I love her and, um, I am a sober person, so it was just very relatable.

Turns out I relate to crazy people. Can you believe it? Um, I saved a bunch of quotes. Okay. If my life wasn't funny, it would just be true, and that is unacceptable. Which is basically my life philosophy. Yes. At least crazy shit is always happening. I mean, it could be boring. That would be worse, right? 

Jen: Pretty sure it would be worse.[00:06:00] 

I think so, 

Shanna: yeah. I enjoy having the kind of life where clowns walk by me on the street and you know, 

Jen: sometimes I just tell people like what I think are just regular stories. Yeah. And people like, they're like, Your life is crazy. I'm like, what do you mean this is normal? These are just normal things that 

Shanna: happen.

This isn't normal. You're never just on your deck and then an actual full on sailor gets out of his car and starts talking to you in a thick accent. Like yeah. That's just the kind of thing that happens. That's okay. Yeah. I have a really cool expansion pack on my 

Jen: simulation. Yes. 

Shanna: Um, I like, but ultimately I feel I'm very sane about how crazy I am.

Sometimes you can only find heaven by slowly backing away from hell ask me how I know. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. About a year after that, I was invited to go to a mental hospital and you know, you don't wanna be rude, so you go[00:07:00] 

or, okay. Sorry. Last one. Um, and it doesn't have anything to do with anything. All the other ones, I was like, oh yes, I feel that because I'm also a crazy divorced person. You know what's funny about death? I mean, other than absolutely nothing at all. You think we could remember finding out that we weren't immortal?

Sometimes I see children sobbing in air airports and I think, ah, they've just been told.

Jen: That is funny. Yeah, 

Shanna: it's, I swear the whole book is just one liners. Yeah. And she's so funny. She just tells you everything. It's, yeah, it's really good. Recommend if you got an extra three hours. Not even if you listen, do it a little fast. Yeah. So what do you read? Oh, I did read one more book. I'll tell you about it after you tell me about a book.

Jen: Okay. Um, well, we just talked about this one because like Shana said, we just had our book club. So Shanna's gonna pretend that she hasn't heard any of this before. I've never, [00:08:00] it's go.

Um, so I read In The Lives of Puppets by TJ Clune. Shanna, read the first five minutes. I did read the first 

Shanna: five minutes. I wasn't a fan. 

Jen: You obviously can't trust anything she says right now. She's absolutely not crazy person. As she said, readless drinking. You'll know how I feel. She's admitted to it. So this is TJ CLOs newest book, and it's the third book in his unofficial series.

First one, the House in the Saru Sea, the second one under the whispering drawer. Third one in the lives of Puppets. Why would you have an unofficial series? I know, just make it a series, but it, I can't say it's a series cuz it isn't. But he calls it one, he calls it an unofficial series, so don't love it.

It's the Kindness series, right? That's what he called 

Shanna: it. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. I heard this one wasn't especially kind. 

Jen: Well, [00:09:00] no, it. So this one is 

Shanna: about, you literally told me that robot murdered a baby. Yes, that did 

Jen: happen. So he said that a lot of his other books, his older books are a bit more on the darker side and we've gotten used to nice cozy TJ Clune.

So this book, he mixed that coziness with the darkness and it was really obvious. And it was unexpected at some parts. It's a Pinocchio we're telling, um, but it's about robots. So it's in a post-human world, except for there is one human named Victor and he lives with his dad, Giovanni in some tree houses, Giovanni's an inventor, and Giovanni is also a robot, a humanoid type fella, and they have their little robot sidekicks.

And then they find another robot in like the scrap [00:10:00] yards named Hap, and he also looks human. And they take him home and they fix him up and they bring him back to life and he becomes friends with them. And then Giovanni gets abducted or like taken in by the authority and kind of rips out his own heart so that they can't find Victor and they take him away.

And now Victor and his friends have to go on an adventure to. Get him back because they're gonna get him back no matter what. Even if he doesn't remember who they are anymore, even if he has made human killing machines, doesn't matter. They forgive him. They love him. It's his dad. They're going for him.

And they do end the end. Was it good? It was good. I didn't love it. I didn't cry, I didn't have any emotions, but I really like TJ Klan's humor. I think he's really funny. So, um, we read the Lightning Struck Heart, uh, last year by [00:11:00] him that, and it's fun's, hilarious and ridiculous. And it's the first in a series, but it was so ridiculous that I couldn't go on with the series cuz I couldn't No.

Have any more of that? Yeah, you need to, well, once a year. Yeah. You can read one of those books. Yeah. Um. And so this book had some more of that humor, that kind of humor in it. And I, I listened to a podcast where there's two gals talking about it and they're like, I just don't understand why they kept making jokes about poo and dicks.

I was like, ah, you haven't read. Yeah, with other stuff. You wouldn't 

Shanna: believe what 

Jen: he said. Yeah, cuz this was really tamed down. But if you're going into it looking for Ilian Sea mm-hmm. You, you have to dig a little bit. It was still there, it was still kind of cartoony. Um, it had, you know, a lesson, uh, the Ilian Sea was, you know, accepting [00:12:00] others and the whispering door was, um, forgiving yourself.

And this one was supposed to be forgiving others who have done bad things. And so there is a lot of that. But it felt a little bit more forced. Felt like he was being like, this is the lesson that we're learning in this book. Forgive others even if they've killed babies. Ah, 

Shanna: no. I've got a firm baby killing line.

Jen: Yeah, just there was a few scenes that were especially dark, which I am, I'm all for. I liked it. It was a surprise and it would be a surprise to anyone else. Well, if you're reading this 

Shanna: series, mm-hmm. Is that why it's unofficial? I probably just in case people don't agree that it should be a series, then 

Jen: he'd be like, well, it's unofficial probably.

And Ceil C was written to be for all ages. So it kind of seems weird to go so far away from that by this book where, but I mean, I guess that happens in series sometimes where they start out. Yeah. Like Harry Potter 

Shanna: started like kind of aged [00:13:00] with 

Jen: the kids. Yeah. Yeah, it was really good. Um, I was gonna mention, I forgot to mention this in book club, but in the acknowledgements, he does say something about like, this isn't the book that I intended to write.

This isn't the book that I wanted to write, and that he had to change it, or whatever reason. Mm-hmm. So I don't know if that was, I mean, I assume the publisher saying, don't do this, but I don't know what this was. So I wonder what it was supposed to be and, oh, the audiobook. I didn't like the audiobook at all.

I thought that voices were really annoying. I've been finding this lately, a lot actually is like the narrator's voice will be good and they'll do a good job of the narration and the protagonist voices, but then all the side characters are the worst. Yeah. And I find it so hard to, I was having a hard time listening.

Yeah. But Demi really liked the audiobook, so. Mm-hmm. I don't know, maybe it was just [00:14:00] me, but I read about three quarters of the book in, in my physical book, and I was really liking it a lot more. And then when I switched I was like, Ugh. It was like grating on my ears. Yeah. So yeah. I don't know if I recommend the audio book.

And yeah, 

Shanna: I can't be trusted, so who knows. Yeah, she's a liar. I'm a liar. Just kidding. That's extreme actually. I can't lie. No, 

Jen: absolutely not. Um, okay, so you said you were gonna tell me about your second book. 

Shanna: My second book, which, um, I thought I was being so funny. I was at the mall, um, doing something who knows what with me and I was in, I.

I still call it chapters, even though it's been indigo for 

Jen: like a decade. I know. 

Shanna: And it was called Gibberish by Young vo, and it's got this really cute art style. Oh yeah. And it's about a little boy. He looks to be like, I don't know, Chinese or something. And him and his mom, they're talking and you can [00:15:00] read their bubbles.

Like they're talking just in English to each other. And she's saying to him as he is going to his new school, um, Everybody is going to sound like gibberish. And so he goes, and then everybody's speech bubbles turns into like shapes and whatever with like tiny little, he can only understand his name. So the only thing he can actually hear in the things is his name.

And then nobody's being his friend cuz nobody understands. And then a little girl and him start talking and she starts teaching him words. And so the bubbles start filling up with more words instead of the gibberish. Yeah. And. Then when, oh, it's so cute. Like it's such a good little children's book. It's just a picture book.

It's not long, but it was really, really well done. So if you have little kids, I recommend it. I thought it was super, 

Jen: super cute. Yeah, I think I'll be getting that. I love it. It's so cute. Nice. Good one. 

Shanna: Thank you. Yeah, I, I, I read it just in case I didn't read any books.

Jen: You did [00:16:00] your homework. Yes. Yeah. Kindergarten homework. Yes. Honestly, 

Shanna: if that's the best I could do, I'd be like, sorry man. But it's actually a great recommendation. 

Jen: Yeah. Sounds really good. Um, well, we're just gonna go real dark here. Okay. From that, um, I read Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bester Rica. Hey, thanks.

Hey. Um, so this one has been on my list for a long time, but something about it just keeps making me not pick it up. Um, is 

Shanna: it the word tender? 

Jen: Or flesh I like the most. I mean, considering the subject matter of this book, I take that back actually. It is about a world where there's a virus that infects animals and it makes it so humans can't eat them.

If humans eat them, they'll die. [00:17:00] Hmm. So suddenly all the animals in the world get this virus. They all become. Inedible inedible. And what does the world do? Keeps eating them. No, no. They start farming other things like people. Oh, 

Shanna: soil grain is people. 

Jen: Uh, so, so, yes. Uh, you know how the world loves their meat and, uh, they can never give it up.

So, 

Shanna: um, didn't anybody tell them about mushrooms or 

Jen: sine Yep. Satan. Satan, Satan. Yeah. Um, well, the thing is, you know how anytime anything happens and suddenly they're scientists that say, look at all these studies that we've just done that says, those things are crap. You need meat to live. Oh, no. And then all the people were like, we read a scientific study about this.

And now everybody's [00:18:00] experts. Yep. So, um, also there's a, a conspiracy that the virus wasn't even real. Mm-hmm. That the government made it up so that they could start farming people. I don't know why they would want to do that, but, um, it is a conspiracy in the book. Sorry, this is 

a 

Shanna: little, uh, sidestep, but this morning Benedict, my oldest son, said, mom, can we play covid?

And I was like, what? He's like, yeah, where we don't leave the house because it's Covid. And I was like, okay, sure. Playing it now. Yeah. So we started playing that and then he'd be like, oh, we need to get this to the store. I'm like, sorry, it's Covid. 

Jen: Oh yeah. 

Shanna: Tomorrow won't be Covid anymore. 

Jen: Perfect. So, so imagine that, except for if you go out, people could just kill you.

They make for my meat. Yeah. But they make rules about it. You can't just, you can't just go killing people. And if [00:19:00] you've seen any factory farm documentary, which I have, yeah. Just replace the animals people. Have you heard 

Shanna: that they're gonna, or like they've been working on, um, like growing meat in a lab?

Jen: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It freaks me out. I've read Margaret hat books. That is exactly how. That starts so, so they start farming humans and they're treated just like animals and they're like bred just to be farmed and to be slaughtered. So like their hair shaved off, their vocal cords are cut. They can't scream.

It's like pretty gruesome. But it's kind of weird because I'm listening to this. Because I've seen this before in documentaries with animals, and I know how terrible it is. I just felt kind of removed from the fact that it was humans and it was just very obvious throughout the book that it's like, it's saying that like, mm-hmm.

Yeah. This is the same as what we [00:20:00] are already doing. Mm-hmm. It's terrible and we are doing it. So you can say, oh, that's terrible. This book is so dark and gruesome and gross, but we are doing it. Yeah. So did I like it? I don't think so. Yeah, it sounds, I don't know, because it's, it was uncomfortable. It was very uncomfortable and, but I'd just seen another cover of one of her other books and I was like, Ooh, I wanna read that one too.

And I was like, Ooh, do I like, why? No, I don't know. It was gross. It was gross and uncomfortable. But it sounds like you liked it. Yeah, it was a long too, it was like a novella. So it's like, maybe not quite novella, but like, Short novel. It's okay. 257 pages. Yeah, something like that. It's okay. I think all my, my books are kind of depressing.

Yeah. I'm already depressed. The next one's gonna be worse.

Um, I read The Whispers by Ashley [00:21:00] Audra, so she is the author of the Push, oh no, this is her new book that just came out. Is this one about 

Shanna: killing the babies faster. It's 

Jen: about 

Shanna: killing babies. 

Jen: Almost certainly. Uh, you know, not really, but how many babies die? None but one. Why do one falls out of a window Oh.

And lives third from the third's floor? Or we just know how it does. Yeah, you, you know it. No, that's good. Okay. So it's about this woman named Whitney who. Like the book starts out, she's having this like backyard barbecue. Everyone from the neighborhood is there. She's the one that everyone's like, oh, Whitney, she's the best.

And one of her kids, Xavier is a bit challenging and she finds him up in his room. He's 10. She finds him up in his room and he has taken all like. The favors from the party, which are little cookies that she had made that [00:22:00] has everyone's names on them and he's eaten them all and she like, lets him have it.

She screams her head off at him and then realizes that the window's open and then everyone at barbecue has heard this. So then she has to go downstairs, face all of her friends. Yeah. Oh, that's the worst her, her worst moment. Mm-hmm. Which is a nightmare. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then 10 months later or so, I think 10 months later, that kid Xavier falls from his bedroom window from the third floor and she finds him there and takes him to the hospital.

He's in a coma, he's doing really bad. They don't know if he's gonna live or he is gonna wake up. And because everybody was at this barbecue and heard how she treated him, and then were able to look back at other times that they've kind of. Seen that same behavior from her. And they're all, everyone's thinking that she pushed him or she did something to him.[00:23:00] 

And then there's another side story about they're thinking that maybe he's, he tried to commit suicide because his mom was so bad, his mom was so bad and his stuff was happening at school. 

Shanna: And I think this is all the stuff your friend said about you. Like what? 

Jen: It's brutal. So, Ashley adr in the push, she also really goes into this dark side of motherhood where in that book, the mother can't connect with her child, and then it goes towards her thinking that there's like actually something wrong, that they're actually psychopathic.

Oh. Like they're 

Shanna: actually not, I thought you meant like supernatural. No, no. Like actually like mentally bad. Yeah. 

Jen: And then you never know whether or not the kid actually is. Mm-hmm. The moms or if the moms. The mom's The psycho. Yeah. Or if the, yeah, and there's a cycle in the room, but yeah, you don't know which one it is.

And this book is like, it just really shines [00:24:00] light on. How much she hates moms. Yeah. There's just so many times in the book where this mom is like yelling at her kid for whatever reason, and I'm like, I've done that. Yeah, I've done that recently and I've done that and I've done that and, but it's like, imagine if you do all that and then your kid falls out of a window.

Imagine if you do all that and everybody hears it. Mm-hmm. Imagine if you do all that, you do all these things that you already hate yourself for. Yeah. As a mother. Now you're being judged by everyone you know, and also your kid hates you. Yeah. So it's just like, I've been way nicer as a mom since reading this book.

I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no. I don't like this. I don't like it. It made me also really uncomfortable. But, um, 

Shanna: I've been thinking about how every time I, I yell and I realize the windows are open or something lately. I sold my house, everyone. Woohoo. Woohoo. Oh, thank [00:25:00] God I'm not gonna live here much longer. 

Jen: Yeah, that's helpful.

I just moved into my place and I know my neighbors and it's a very close knit little community of everybody knowing each other. So I'm like, watch your mouth. I'm close. Don't scream the F word today, I guess. Uh, Not yelling is the answer, not making sure the windows are closed. 

Shanna: Honestly, it depends on 

the 

Jen: day.

Oh man. Sometimes. Yeah. So yeah. Again, was this a good book? I don't know. You made me really uncomfortable and feel bad, which 

Shanna: is kind of what you're into in a book. 

Jen: Yeah. So I mean, it was, it was good. I, I. It was good. It wasn't as good as the push. The push was a better storyline altogether. Um, this one was more kind of character driven and you get really into these women's lives and ugh.

It was kind of like sometimes if I'm not [00:26:00] really clicking with a book, if I can picture the characters as some kind of show that I like mm-hmm. Then it helps. So one of the moms I pictured as Shauna from Yellow Jackets and that. It was good. Yeah, it helped. It made it like really good. Thanks. So I enjoyed that.

And then I read a House With Good Bones by T King Fisher, and this one is gonna be interesting because I opened up my list of the books that I've read and I saw it and I was like, oh, I read that. Hmm. Do I remember reading that? I don't know this 

Shanna: book at all. Oh, the 

Jen: title sounds familiar. So t King Fisher, the last book I read from her was What Moves the Dead?

Um, which was good. It was a, uh, fungal fiction. Mm. You love fungal fiction. I, I don't know if I do, but I just can't stop reading them. It's so bizarre. But, uh, t King Fisher is a pen [00:27:00] name. Her actual name is Ursula Vernon and she writes kids' books. T. King Fisher is her adult book. I love the new author name.

Me too. So this one is about a woman who is a, she is a bug woman. She's a, like a ophthalmologist. Yeah. Yeah. That's what she does. Cool. Um, so she supposed to go on like an archeological dig, but it got canceled. She was supposed to go there and dig for bugs, and then she couldn't do it anymore. So she goes to stay with her mom instead, and her mom's acting all weird.

She lives in her grandma's house and her grandma was, you know, How old kind of racist grannies are? Yep. We all have one, I think. Um, but grandma's long dead. Um, but the mom is now suddenly like putting up all of her grandma's [00:28:00] old racist artwork and doing weird things, just acting really weird. And she's like, what the heck?

And then it turns out that something in the house is haunting them. It's a ghost. I don't know. Everything seems like a spoiler, 

Shanna: but I have no idea what this book is about. I, I, 

Jen: yeah, this woman goes, stays with her mom. Her mom's acting really weird. Is she being controlled by some supernatural force, or is she just getting old and needs to be seen by a doctor?

It's not sure. So I would 

Shanna: start with the doctor. Yeah. Yeah. Work my way up to ghosts. 

Jen: They started with the ghosts, although I was kind of forced upon them a little bit. So yeah, she's, her thing is bugs. Her grandma's thing was plants. She has this really beautiful garden, um, specifically a rose garden, and she [00:29:00] finds out that her like great grandpa was supposed to be some kind of, Wizard or sorcerer racist something.

Yes. Yeah. And she's like, yeah, okay. That's stupid. It doesn't believe it, but is it true? Maybe. Maybe that's why weird things are happening in the house. This also was just like a little short, kind of novella sized book. Um, it was really good. The imagery was really cool. There's one part where. Ladybugs kind of infest.

Ooh. Um, well, they infest multiple times, but one time they kind of like swarm in the bathroom and it's just kind of described as like dripping and pouring of ladybugs and they're like coming out things and it's like, but they're red, so this is like red dripping down the walls and stuff, and it's. And they're everywhere.

So she's trying to like step down and she's crunching them under her feet and they're [00:30:00] like climbing up her and like, and there's such a pretty 

Shanna: bug. Yeah. But she makes them 

Jen: scary. Yeah. Which is cool. Um, so she really uses a lot of like bugs and plants to kind of create some pretty creepy, spooky seeds.

And I think she does a really good job of it. Um, it did feel like a little bit cartoony, but. I think I might like that. I think I might like that. Which is weird. I don't like cartoons, but cartoony books maybe. 

Shanna: I don't know. Let's wait until Cartoon Horror Night and see 

Jen: how you feel after that. Yeah. Well apparently I have to watch Pinocchio cuz I went into in the Lives of Puppets and was like, this is a Pinocchio retelling.

I don't know if I've ever seen Pinocchio 

Shanna: and it's so scary. And she loves scary things. I do. So yeah, we're gonna have to watch Pinocchio. And then I have a whole, I was, I was not a chicken, I just [00:31:00] found lots of movies, very scary. And I watched them many, many times. Mm-hmm. Despite the fact, They terrified me.

Yeah. 

Jen: Well, movies, when we were kids also were really weird. They were, I watched all Dogs Go to Heaven in the last few years, and I was like, um, what? Everything about this movie is bad. And then some parts are actually scary and terrible. Mm-hmm. I watched Honey, 

Shanna: A UNK of the 

Jen: kids. Oh, that's so good. So good.

Um, yeah, so that's, that's all I read. Pretty, uh, little bit on the darker side. Yep. 

Shanna: Yep. Carrie Fisher's book opens with her telling you about her best friend died in her bed while he was sleeping beside her. Oh yeah. So she opens with that. She's like, so I'm just gonna get this bummer story out of the way.

Oh my gosh. And she actually tells it really funny. But yeah. 

Jen: Um, yeah, I don't know what the next episode [00:32:00] will be or when it will be. I mean, ideally really we start on a better schedule where you don't have your kids when we record. Yes, that's true. So this might be, it just might work out, but although, no, that doesn't work out.

Cuz I don't read. No, actually I work out. It might, it will, it will probably work out, but we'll have to skip one. Really Song of Achilles episode one. Yeah. Ready guys. We're, we'll figure it out. He, he wants a three 

Shanna: hour episode of Achilles. Always. Yeah. 

Jen: Actually it's a great one. I was thinking I miss our book Deep Dives.

I was thinking of that earlier too. Sometimes I just read a book, like even just the lives of puppets where I just, there's just so many little things that you could kind of pick at, or especially when it's a re-imagining and. Then you can go back to like the original text and talk about that as well.

And there's other stuff that I was thinking about but that I didn't mention when I was talking about it cuz it's just, you know, you can only talk about it so much when you have only an hour, but if we had a whole hour [00:33:00] it's, its can be really fun. But that just reminded me because I thought that night film would've been good as a deep dive.

Then it reminded me that you said that you disagreed with everything I said about night 

Shanna: film. Yes. Well, not everything, but there was one thing. Oh, I should have made notes. I said I was gonna make notes, you know? So you said that you didn't see the jump scare? Yeah. And that's because you didn't see. The book.

Oh, okay. So it was, um, one part where they're talking about something in a Cordova film, and I don't know if it's just the way my font was, that was perfect, but they're describing this scene and then the next one was just, The closeup of like a person kind of threw plastic. Okay. Yeah. And it was like, you've just kind of been imagining it and then all of a sudden it's there.

Yeah. And I was like, oh, ooh. Yeah. So I was like, ah, she can't know 

Jen: because she didn't see it with your eye? No. Cause I saw the picture, but it was just like I, I went through and was like, oh, look at all these pictures. The timing 

Shanna: of it in the [00:34:00] book Yeah. Was spooky. I wanna see the actual 

Jen: physical copy. I want a physical copy for sure.

Bet you was awesome. Yeah, I think that one would've been really fun. Do you know one that would be torture for both of us? What House of Leaves? Oh my God. Actual torture. True. We would be, uh, releasing that episode in two years. 

Shanna: Yeah. So everybody, uh, tuned in October, 2025. Yeah. We will be doing a deep dive of House of Leaves.

I would like to formally apologize to future Jen and future Shanna. Who I've just committed to 

Jen: quite the read. It's, it's intimidating, but I do, I love books that have fun formatting, so. Oh yeah. 

Shanna: And that's like the pinnacle. Yeah. The creme de la creme. 

Jen: Mm-hmm. Uh, yeah. I guess that's all we have for you this week.

That's all we 

Shanna: got for you this week. If you know us, you know where to find us. But if you don't, where can they find us? Jen, 

Jen: you can find us@goodbookspodcast.com, and we are in Her Good Books podcast on Facebook, [00:35:00] Instagram, and TikTok. So head over there to give us a follow so you never miss out on what we're doing.

Otherwise, we'll see you next week. We'll see you in maybe three weeks, maybe two weeks, maybe one week. I don't know. It's hard to say. We'll see. We'll see. But we will be back. 

Shanna: Yes. Have a nice vacation, Jen. 

Jen: I will. It's not a vacation. It's parenting with kids in another country. Yeah. 

Shanna: Yeah. Have a beautiful time.

Yeah, 

Jen: I will. Thanks. Okay, bye. Yay. Bye.