648. Welcome and Comfort: New Year’s Wishes from Sarah Jane, Lilisonna, and Martin

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello there! Happy New Year, and welcome to episode number 648 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and we are still traveling around the world. This week we are talking to Sarah Jane, Lilisonna, and Martin to gather recs and wishes and terrible jokes. We’ve got recommendations for AJ Sherwood, we’ve got cozy games, we’ve got pop culture, and cats, excellent cats. We have one more episode featuring listeners in various parts of the world. Thank you again to everyone who signed up. We had a record turnout this year, and I really enjoyed it, so thank you so, so much.

I also have a compliment this week – woohoo!

To Rebecca G.: I don’t know if you know this, but there are fourteen Wi-Fi networks, eight pets, and three cars with names that were inspired by you, your kindness, and your sense of humor!

If you would like a compliment of your very own, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Every pledge helps keep me going, makes sure the episode is accessible with a fine, handcrafted transcript from garlicknitter – hey, garlicknitter! Happy New Year – [Happy New Year! – gk] – and you get cool benefits, like an amazing Discord full of really lovely human beings who are all talking about different reading challenges right now. And of course, bonus episodes! If you would like to join, it would be great to have you: patreon.com/SmartBitches.

And those are all the words I have for right now, so let’s do some other words with other people! On with the podcast.

[music]

Sarah Jane: So my name is Sarah Jane, and my pronouns are any pronouns – I’m pronoun-indifferent – and I’m coming from Indianapolis, Indiana!

SB Sarah: Well, hello there! I don’t think I’ve talked to anybody from Indianapolis yet.

Sarah Jane: [Laughs]

SB Sarah: Let’s start with books! What book that you read – or books! People have brought more than one – that you want to recommend that you read this year?

Sarah Jane: I’ve really been reading a lot of AJ Sherwood? And she finished up the Jon’s Mysteries series with book six, and I just love it. I reread the whole series in preparation for reading book six. It’s, the title of that one is Jon’s Helter Skelter Cold Case. And it just really ticks all my, ticks all my switches. I really like a romance novel a la X-Files and queer? And she just hits it perfectly.

SB Sarah: So it’s queer, and it’s creepy –

Sarah Jane: Yes.

SB Sarah: – and there’s romance –

Sarah Jane: Yeah.

SB Sarah: – and there’s –

Sarah Jane: Yeah.

SB Sarah: – looks like a bunch of mystery stuff going on too.

Sarah Jane: Yes. I, I, I real-, I don’t know exactly the name of this trope, but I love it when we are two competent bad-asses who are beating ghosts together. It’s my favorite story –

SB Sarah: [Laughs]

Sarah Jane: – I could read it a million times. [Laughs]

SB Sarah: I love competence. I love it so much.

Sarah Jane: Oh! So much.

SB Sarah: I also think that it is extremely funny that you have mentioned this, because my prior person who I recorded with yesterday also had a lot of wonderful things to say about AJ Sherwood, so somewhere in the world –

Sarah Jane: Oh!

SB Sarah: – AJ Sherwood’s ears are burning, and they know something’s going on, and they don’t know what it is. [Laughs] It’s everybody coming to me to tell me how great they are!

Sarah Jane: So many, so many of their books are just rereaders for me. Actually, their second one, which is The Tribulations of Ross Young, Supernat PA, which is a series of shorts that they did originally and then have now published, and I just, I reread that all the time; it’s, it’s definitely a happy book for me.

SB Sarah: Oh, that’s amazing. I’m so happy to have this recommendation.

Sarah Jane: I have been playing a lot of cozy games –

SB Sarah: Oh yeah?

Sarah Jane: – and the two that I have to mention there are A Little to the Left and PowerWash Simulator.

SB Sarah: Oh, PowerWash Simulator!

Sarah Jane: It’s so nice!

SB Sarah: It’s, I, I don’t know why it works on my brain so well, but honest to God, putting on a podcast and power-washing things virtually, like washing a bunch of gnomes’ –

Sarah Jane: Yeah.

SB Sarah: – asses in a big fountain for hours –

Sarah Jane: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SB Sarah: – I am so relaxed. I can handle anything after like an hour of that. It’s so great.

Sarah Jane: I love the skate park!

SB Sarah: Yes!

Sarah Jane: I just, I love just power-washing the skate park over and over. [Laughs]

SB Sarah: I like when it’s a building or a thing and not a vehicle –

Sarah Jane: Mm-hmm.

SB Sarah: – because vehicles have those little finicky parts?

Sarah Jane: Little fiddly bits, yeah.

SB Sarah: I hit this three times; don’t tell me I didn’t clean it.

Sarah Jane: [Laughs]

SB Sarah: I love the, I love the gnome fountain.

Sarah Jane: Yeah.

SB Sarah: I love the skate park. I like the playground?

Sarah Jane: Mm-hmm?

SB Sarah: And then the, the big shoe; you do a big shoe early on?

Sarah Jane: Yeah, the, the, yeah.

SB Sarah: And there’s, like, children’s laughter when you get to –

Sarah Jane: Little old woman who lives in a shoe, yeah.

SB Sarah: Yes, and you can hear children’s laughter when you get too close to the building, and I’m like, What was that? What, what – what was that?

So what is A Little to the Left? I have not heard of this one!

Sarah Jane: A Little to the Left is – it’s hard to, it’s just organizing things?

SB Sarah: Perfect.

Sarah Jane: It’s just like puzzles that you organize things, and it’s very calm and cozy, and there’s no stress and there’s no stakes, and you just put all the little keys in the row and you put all the pencils in a row. And it’s –

SB Sarah: Honest to God –

Sarah Jane: – nice. [Laughs]

SB Sarah: This is going to be a genuine problem for how, for me, how much I’m going to like this. Like, I’m the type of person where I tidy a drawer, and then, or a closet or a shelf –

Sarah Jane: Mm-hmm.

SB Sarah: – or something, and then I keep going back to admire it. Like, I’ll open the drawer and…

Sarah Jane: Yeah!

SB Sarah: – look what I did!

Sarah Jane: Well, exactly! It’s a lovely thing –

SB Sarah: Ah!

Sarah Jane: – to have all your things all tidy!

SB Sarah: I love tidiness. This is so up my street. Thank you.

Sarah Jane: You’re so welcome!

SB Sarah: What are your wishes for 2025?

Sarah Jane: So my wish for 2025 – I had, I have my notes here – my wish for 2025 is that we all find ways to put good into the world.

SB Sarah: Yes. And there’s, there’s so many ways to do that. Like, I think a lot of us have been sold this idea that if you can’t fix all the problems all at once by yourself that there’s no point. But, like, no! If you do a small thing, that adds up to a lot of other small things.

Sarah Jane: I’m a, I’m a small person, but I can put my little, small bit of good in the world.

SB Sarah: Yes. I got to vote for Cory Booker three times? Think it was three times –

Sarah Jane: Uh-huh.

SB Sarah: – before I moved, and they have a very frequent quote that I’ve repeated to myself:

>> Never let your inability to do everything undermine your determination to do something.

Sarah Jane: Mm-hmm.

SB Sarah: Which I appreciate very much.

Sarah Jane: Is that Wilbur? No, who’s in the background?

SB Sarah: That is Wilbur. He is having a snack.

Sarah Jane: Hi, Wilbur!

SB Sarah: Hi, Willie! What’s going on? He had a snack – what are you doing?

Sarah Jane: [Laughs]

SB Sarah: Oh. Wilbur doesn’t have any teeth. He only has two in the bottom.

Sarah Jane: Oh.

SB Sarah: So his favorite thing to do is to pick up a giant mouthful of food, wander somewhere else, drop it, and then eat it piece by piece.

Sarah Jane: [Laughs]

SB Sarah: The problem is he drops it often in the litter – or not in the litter – in the, in the –

Sarah Jane: Oh, yeah.

SB Sarah: – in the water bowl?  And I’m like, what are you – are you making soup? What is this? Every day, I have to empty out the food from the water dish, and it’s disgusting. Ugh.

Sarah Jane: We also have our orange senior cat over here. His name is Min, M-I-N. We have another little tuxedo cat somewhere; her name is Salem –

SB Sarah: Aw!

Sarah Jane: – and she is a Cyclops, so she’s only got one eye.

SB Sarah: I have Wilbur behind me, and I have Katie, who’s over on the heating pad in the window –

Sarah Jane: Mm-hmm.

SB Sarah: – and Kat-, Katie’s like –

Sarah Jane: A+, Katie. [Laughs] I also wish to be in a window on a heating pad.

SB Sarah: Right? Like I envy her life –

Sarah Jane: That sounds delightful!

SB Sarah: I envy her life so much.

Did you bring a bad joke? It is okay if you didn’t.

Sarah Jane: I did!

SB Sarah: Excellent!

Sarah Jane: I did. We workshopped it all week.

SB Sarah: Oh, I’m honored!

Sarah Jane: [Laughs] Why can’t you trust a clock on Thanksgiving?

SB Sarah: Ooh! Why can’t you trust a clock on Thanksgiving? Why?

Sarah Jane: It keeps going back four seconds.

[Laughter]

SB Sarah: That’s a good one! I hadn’t heard that before! Thank you for that! Okay, that’s awesome.

Sarah Jane: Thank you!

SB Sarah: Thank you for, so much for doing this, and thank you for, for being on the show. I love doing these, and I love talking to everybody, and it’s just really lovely that so many people signed up. Thank you so, so much for doing that.

Sarah Jane: Thank you so much! Smart Bitches is really one of my happy places, and I’m thrilled to be able to be a part of it.

[music]

Sarah: Thank you so much for signing up to do an interview! Thank you for doing this!

Lilisonna: These are fun, and they’re a lovely way to, like, end the year and do all those things, and I, I have very deliberately not listened to the last couple of, of episodes so that I am not biased with which book I recommend? ‘Cause I –

Sarah: Fair enough, fair enough.

Lilisonna: – I’m absolutely certain that we have all recommended the same one.

Sarah: Well, I will tell you that the – so I divide these up, and I start doing the interviews, and then I hit about an hour worth of audio and I’ll start a new file, and I’ll move tracks in between if, like, this one –

Lilisonna: Sure!

Sarah: – edits down, I’ll just add more to the end. So in the track that I’m currently recording, both of my prior guests have recommended books by the same author? So, like, you are so cleared to do anything you want.

Lilisonna: [Laughs] Oh, and, and I absolutely have more than one book, so…

Sarah: Oh, fantastic! All right.

Lilisonna: Right? Like, clearly. But yes. This was a, this was a weird year for reading.

Sarah: It really was a year, weird year for reading for me too.

Lilisonna: It was a weird year for reading. Like, I found myself deeply into horror briefly?

Sarah: Makes sense.

Lilisonna: Which, not usually my bag.

Sarah: Yep.

Lilisonna: I, there was a very long period of time this year where romance was just off the table.

Sarah: Yep! I’ve, I’ve been there, and it’s terrifying. I hate it.

Lilisonna: Right? Don’t love that, ‘cause that is usually my happy comfort space?

Sarah: Yes.

Lilisonna: Yeah…go read the happy comfort romance, and it’s grand, and then I was like, Mm-mm. No. Happy Ever Afters, don’t like them right now, and I was like, That’s very weird! So.

Sarah: And I had forgotten how much I have sort of come to depend on the nice wash of brain chemicals that comes from reading a happy end-, happy ending and meeting characters, and I’m like, What is, what is wrong with my brain, and how do I fix it? And I realized, All right, we’re just going to try lots of different things and see what happens. I found some short stories that worked; I found some romantic historical mysteries that worked for me; I have a bunch of audiobooks that I have saved for the end of the year vacation, so –

Lilisonna: Very nice. My, my in-laws are deeply into mysteries.

Sarah: Ohhh!

Lilisonna: Which, which is not my thing, never has been my thing, but every so often they will slip one in, and I was like, Oh, okay! I can go do that. But, like, they read all of, like, the medieval mysteries and the historical mysteries; they love them.

Sarah: It’s very cute that they both like the same genre. That’s –

Lilisonna: Isn’t it?

Sarah: That’s super, super adorable. Like –

Lilisonna: It’s adorable.

Sarah: – extremely cute.

Lilisonna: Yeah. [Laughs] The only thing they disagree about is, so my, my father-in-law is a science nerd –

Sarah: Right.

Lilisonna: – to the highest degree.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Lilisonna: My mother-in-law is also a nerd, but she is an arts nerd. So she taught color theory and graphic design and all of those things, and so when it comes to television, they both like educational stuff, but they differ wildly on Should we go listen to the complicated astronomy lecture from MIT? [Laughs] Or should – and so they’re just like, they rotate? They have a list; they just sort of rotate through them.

Sarah: Yeah.

Lilisonna: But yes, they, they don’t always agree on the, the, the intellectual rigor that they want in their particular course. [Laughs]

Sarah: I have been loving the documentaries on Hulu that are like, Dark Side of the ‘90s, Dark Side of the 2000s; there’s a boy band documentary. I’m like, Okay, documentary footage of stuff that’s like thirty years ago, twenty years ago, I am in! This sounds great! It’s –

Lilisonna: Fabulous.

Sarah: It’s, it’s just the right amount of difference where I can be like, Oh yeah! I love a good pop culture documentary. I might have to put up a post –

Lilisonna: Oh yeah!

Sarah: – asking for recommendations, ‘cause it’s, like, one of my new favorite genres. And they’re, they’re not very rigorous in their science. They’re about boy bands, which is about all I want when I’m eating dinner. [Laughs]

Lilisonna: That’s all I need, honestly –

Sarah: Yeah.

Lilisonna: – is, like, just a light coating of intellectual interest, but –

Sarah: Yes.

Lilisonna: – nothing too deep.

Sarah: Yes.

Lilisonna: So my name is Lilisonna. I am entirely anonymous on the internet, as much as I possibly can be.

Sarah: Wow, what’s that like? I went out here on the internet in my real name. Do not recommend, by the way.

Lilisonna: Hooo! You made a choice! [Laughs]

Sarah: I sure did!

Lilisonna: I, I was on the internet in the late ‘80s –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Lilisonna: – and learned very, very quickly that I didn’t want anyone to perceive me. I was happy to participate in conversations and all of it, but I did not want to be known for who I was, and I have stuck with that.

Sarah: Yep. I did not have that awareness and only recognized my desire to not be perceived after I had started Smart Bitches, and I honestly thought no one was going to read it, and I was really wrong about that!

Lilisonna: [Laughs]

Sarah: So, oh well! Too late now.

Lilisonna: Many of us are very grateful that you made that choice.

So I am located in Georgia?

Sarah: Fabulous!

Lilisonna: It is actually cold right now?

Sarah: It’s –

Lilisonna: Like –

Sarah: – stupid cold; I hate it.

What book or books do you want to recommend to everyone that you read this year?

Lilisonna: I have five.

Sarah: Fantastic! Bring it on!

Lilisonna: All right. So the first one, Peter S. Beagle put out a new book this year! It’s called I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons, and it’s delightful.

Sarah: Oh, awesome!

Lilisonna: Yeah. It is not super deep. It is not super serious. But it is fun and lovely, and he writes just as beautifully as he’s always written, and it was a gorgeous book.

Sarah: That’s quite a, quite a distance between books for –

Lilisonna: Right?

Sarah: – for, for Mr. Beagle.

Lilisonna: To go completely in the opposite direction, How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying.

Sarah: Did you like that one?

Lilisonna: I did. It is hyperviolent but very satisfying.

Sarah: Excellent!

Lilisonna: It is the beginning of a series; I don’t remember if it’s a duology or a trilogy or something, but, so the next one is not out yet. It’s very sad, but –

Sarah: June, come, gives us something to look forward to.

Lilisonna: Right? The characterization is fun. It’s a really neat take on a book that I have, look, honestly, read before, where, like, there are books of what happens when the protagonist needs to become the villain and – [mumble] – all that? But they did a lot of fun things with it, and I, I really appreciated that one, so that was great.

Also kind of dark, but also delightful: T., T. Kingfisher? A Sorceress Comes to Call. Technically not one of her horror books.

Sarah: Technically not, buuut – [laughs]

Lilisonna: But, like, hoo-boy! Loved it! That has always been one of my favorite fairytales? So one day she is going to write “Snow White and Rose Red,” and I’m going to lose my mind.

Sarah: Oh boy.

Lilisonna: Right?

Sarah: I can’t even think of what T. Kingfisher will do with “Snow White and Rose Red.” Ho boy!

Lilisonna: That was, I had a book of fairytales when I was very small, and I, I literally pulled the pages out of that particular fairytale. It’s one of my favorites, so very curious.

Book number four?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Lilisonna: Which I just finished, actually, is called The Last Hour Between Worlds.

Sarah: Ohhh!

Lilisonna: It’s fascinating! Also part of a series. Again, I don’t know if it’s a duology or a trilogy, but it does conclude. So, like, it is not a cliffhanger ending. I think I described it as gaslamp sapphic horror fantasy?

Sarah: Sure! And in that, nothing will surprise me at this point about how genres are being mixed together?

Lilisonna: Right!

Sarah: But that sounds like a great combo.

Lilisonna: It was; it’s lovely. So that was super fun and entirely unexpected. This was one of the ones that I picked up from a recommendation from a list of books –

Sarah: Yep.

Lilisonna: – or possibly an author on Bluesky mentioned someone who mentioned, you mentioned – you know. Picked it up, and that was my Thanksgiving. It was lovely.

Sarah: What a good way to spend Thanksgiving.

Lilisonna: Right? It was fantastic.

And then, to honor the traditions of the podcast and actually return to a romance novel –

[Laughter]

Lilisonna: – my very last recommendation that – this book made me cry?

Sarah: Oh!

Lilisonna: Twice.

Sarah: Ooh!

Lilisonna: Like – and I was not expecting it – Not Here to Make Friends.

Sarah: Ohhh! That’s, okay. I, I’m so curious what you thought of that one.

Lilisonna: I adored it. I have reread it twice.

Sarah: Wow! It didn’t come out that long ago! That’s fantastic!

Lilisonna: [Laughs] Look, I told you I was in, like, a romance slump.

Sarah: Yeah!

Lilisonna: So I read the entire series over just because, you know, it’s all connected, and I wanted to see how it, how it all worked. And then I have, in fact, reread the last one again, because it is my favorite of the three. Utterly unexpected. I, I don’t watch reality TV? Like, I watch baking shows, and I watch the non-stressful baking shows. I am not interested in the baking shows of, like, We are here at a cutthroat competition. No, I want happy people making happy things.

Sarah: Yes.

Lilisonna: So I, I don’t watch The Bachelor. I do read the Smart Bitches recaps of The Bachelor, which are delightful?

Sarah: I read those, and I don’t watch the show, and it has surprised me how much borderline, like basic fluency editing the recaps has given me into the whole Bachelor universe. Like, I have not watched more than a few of these shows. I used to get all frustrated that, like, if Elyse was away, Amanda and I would recap. These things were like two, two and a half, three hours? I’m like, There’s very little in my life that I want to watch for three hours. But ultimately what I learned, I think from Jodi, is that you’re supposed to be drinking and sitting on the couch with your friends, so they keep going over plotlines and re-showing scenes because they think that you’re drunk and forgot! [Laughs]

Lilisonna: And that makes perfect sense!

Sarah: And I was like, Okay! You are truly addressing your audience; I get it.

Lilisonna: But that, that audience is not me.

Sarah: Nope, not me either.

Lilisonna: So I, I was interested in these books, and so I picked up the first one, and I was like, I’ll give it a shot.

Sarah: Yeah.

Lilisonna: Turned out the first one was really good.

Sarah: Yep.

Lilisonna: But I absolutely did not expect to go for the one about the villain –

Sarah: Yes.

Lilisonna: – of the show?

Sarah: Yes.

Lilisonna: She did a masterful job of making the, both the hero and the heroine complicated, broken –

Sarah: Yep.

Lilisonna: – and very gray? But still someone I wanted to root for.

Sarah: Yes.

Lilisonna: That’s hard.

Sarah: It’s very hard, because you have to show just enough of their motivations to give you justification to, to cheer for these people? But you don’t want to diminish the fact that one of them is the villain and one of them is the producer, and they’re both trying to manipulate the narrative, and they have a job to do and they’re not really seeing the people around them as people? They’re seeing them as pawns, and that’s a real hard perspective to be like, Yes, I’m cheering for you to be happy! But it wor-, it worked! It worked really well!

Lilisonna: So well? And I just, I absolutely loved it. Not expected…

Sarah: No!

Lilisonna: But just delightful. So. I’m hoping to go tear through her backlist if she’s got one at some point in the new year, so.

Sarah: She has a couple of books; some of them are YA. That’s one of my –

Lilisonna: Okay.

Sarah: – that’s one of my favorite things that happened this year: Amanda and I had known about this trilogy, and we had been waiting and waiting and waiting for it to be available in the United States, and at some point we, I think Amanda posted about it and was like, This isn’t on sale in the US, but you can get it through international vendors – here are a couple I use – but we’ve heard great things about this trilogy, and here’s the newest one. Well, her Australian publisher decided to make the eBook available in the US, because that’s apparently, apparently a button where they just go US! And Sale! And so we had access to all three digitally for the first time, and apparently the publisher did that based on Amanda talking about it and us talking about it online and being like, This is really good! How come I can’t read it? It’s very rare for us to be on the dark side of geographic restrictions, but I’m glad it worked out, and I’m so happy you enjoyed it!

Lilisonna: So good. So.

Sarah: Yay! Thank you.

Lilisonna: And those are not remotely all of the books that I read, but those are my, those are the ones that I’m limiting myself to for –

Sarah: Have you read Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan?

Lilisonna: I am about a quarter of the way through it.

Sarah: Yeah.

Lilisonna: I really like it, but also it does strange things to my brain –

Sarah: Yes?

Lilisonna: – and so it is one of those where I’m sort of measuring my way through it?

Sarah: Yes.

Lilisonna: It –

Sarah: It has a lot going on, and for all of the action there is an equal and possibly greater amount of emotional impact?

Lilisonna: Yes.

Sarah: It is a big, emotional book that also has a lot of action and adventure and MacGuffin chasing. I understand portioning out that book, but in terms of evil and gray villainy and characters you don’t really expect to root for, but then you do? That book was perfect for that.

Lilisonna: I’ve hit a couple points in it as I’m reading through it where I just realized that it hit a couple of emotional chords, and I need to be like, Okay, I’m going to go absorb that for a little while –

Sarah: Yep.

Lilisonna: – come back. It stays at the top – so I, I, I use a, a Barnes & Noble Nook app –

Sarah: Yep.

Lilisonna: – to do almost all of my reading, so it says at the top –

Sarah: Right.

Lilisonna: – because I keep going through it. Sometimes books just vanish into the ether of, like, you didn’t hold my attention –

Sarah: Yep.

Lilisonna: – I don’t – and – but no, that one, that one continues to be at, like, my top page. I’m just slowly making my way through it.

Sarah: Portioning it makes a lot of sense, given how much of a wallop is in that book.

Lilisonna: It’s been delightful and I want to finish it, because then I’ve got a couple people that I know I can talk to it about?

Sarah: Oh yes! Oh yes.

Lilisonna: But I haven’t, I’ve got to get through that, so.

Sarah: What are your wishes for 2025?

Lilisonna: I am really wishing everyone a comfortable and welcoming community.

Sarah: Oh, that is a good wish.

Lilisonna: Like, all of the things that I’m looking at as we’re going into 2025, I want people to have a space that loves them.

Sarah: Yes.

Lilisonna: And I want us to be working to create that space? It was really weird; so my in-laws are in, they’re in DC. One of them has been working in government most of his life, and he retired several years ago, but, like, they are involved in politics.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Lilisonna: And DC, you know, my husband described it as like sort of the local sport?

Sarah: Oh, absolutely!

Lilisonna: And so in the past, my, my, my in-laws are liberal –

Sarah: Right.

Lilisonna: – right; they are, they are aligned with my politics and my family’s politics fairly well.

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Lilisonna: We’re, we’re pretty much in line; we pretty much agree; but in the past, when we’ve gone up for holidays or visits or vacations, eventually I get to a point where I’m like, I need to stop talking about politics –

Sarah: Yes.

Lilisonna: – because we are in violent agreement –

Sarah: But we’re just shouting at each other anyway.

Lilisonna: Right! We’re, we’re shouting at each other; and we’re just making each other miserable; and, like, we need to stop. And my daughters occasionally express this, and so, you know, but every time! You know, that’s the conversation. We get up to Thanksgiving this year, and there’s nothing. No politics.

Sarah: Wooow! Who, who sent them a memo?

Lilisonna: Well, at some point both my father and I were, were sort of talking, and what we came to sort of express was, We’re done with the armchair quarterbacking part of politics.

Sarah: Yes.

Lilisonna: If we’re not talking about something we can do?

Sarah: Yes.

Lilisonna: We, I don’t care! And so we had a few small, targeted conversations about, like, what are we doing?

Sarah: Yes.

Lilisonna: But the whole, Did you see who’s being nominated? Did you – nothing! Not a word! My, my brother-in-law came over, and his family, and normally same thing? Nothing.

Sarah: Wooow!

Lilisonna: …all collectively agreed, without talking about it, that we were done! It was, it was fabulous. It was so much less stressful than I was afraid it was going to be?

Sarah: You are so lucky, and I am so impressed.

Lilisonna: Yeah!

Sarah: Because it’s really hard for armchair quarterbacks to get up out of the chair.

Lilisonna: Right?

Sarah: They do not like to leave the quarterback chair.

Lilisonna: No, it’s comfy!

Sarah: Yeah!

Lilisonna: Interesting and –

Sarah: Talking about it and yelling about it feels like doing something, but it’s not actually doing something.

Lilisonna: Not actually doing anything. And so I really, this year I hope people find their communities, they grow their communities, and they work to make them better!

Sarah: I hope so too. That’s a really good wish. And I’m really glad your Thanksgiving was so chill. Hell yeah!

Lilisonna: I’m always grateful, right, because I don’t have people that I regularly spend time with or am required to interact with – like, I don’t have a MAGA uncle.

Sarah: Yeah, for sure.

Lilisonna: Or, if I do, I have not interacted with said MAGA uncle for fifty years, and it just doesn’t matter. I’m always grateful for that because I have friends where that is not true, you know, and they moan about the Thanksgiving or the, you know, winter holiday or whatever every year –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Lilisonna: – and I’m like, Just not go!

Sarah: Yeah. Just, just opt out.

Lilisonna: Just opt out.

Sarah: I think –

Lilisonna: Have a…

Sarah: Two years ago, I think? You know how everyone picks a, a word of the year; they pick a word that’s going to im-, you know, im-, you know, fulfill and, and define the year. One year I picked Opt-out – which is technically two words, but there’s a hyphen – and wow, did I opt out of so much crap that year? I was like, Wow, I like this word! I think I should just keep this going!

Lilisonna: Good word. Like, I, I talk with my friends that, particularly post COVID –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Lilisonna: – right, like, during COVID we all had to really buckle down – at least those of us who were thinking about it – buckle down and pay attention to who were the important people we wanted in our life?

Sarah: Yes.

Lilisonna: Because it was extremely limited who we could have in our life!

Sarah: Yeah, you had to be deliberate if you were going to form a bubble.

Lilisonna: Yes!

Sarah: Yes.

Lilisonna: You had to be extremely deliberate; you had to trust the people; you had to, you know, be comfortable with them.

Sarah: And you had to choose what you were going to do, right? Everything is canceled, so when things started again, you had to ask, Is this something I choose to do? Like, everything was, was off the calendar; now when you add back thing, back in, it’s even more deliberate.

Lilisonna: Yes! And so now we’re looking at, Are these people who I haven’t seen in four years people that I actually want to spend my time with?

Sarah: Big question.

Lilisonna: Is this worth my energy? And sometimes yes, and many times the answer is no.

Sarah: Nope.

Lilisonna: I could just not.

Sarah: And I think that, because of social media and because of the ways in which we stay connected to each other long past the normal lifespan of a relationship, you know, I know things about people I went to high school that I wouldn’t know. I don’t live in my home town, and I don’t see these people; I just see them on Facebook. And I think the long continuity of relationships that would otherwise just fall away because of time and you’re no longer doing the same things, that doesn’t happen, and so you, when you have a chance to be deliberate about how, who you’re spending time with and how or what people you let into your life, it makes a very big difference into how you feel about how you’re spending your time. It’s not an obligation; it’s a choice.

Lilisonna: Yeah!

Sarah: Yeah.

Lilisonna: I, I am doing this because I like these people –

Sarah: Yeah.

Lilisonna: – and I want to engage with them and have a connection to them, rather than, Uh, I guess I’m going to the party because that’s what you do?

Sarah: Like, no, what if I don’t want to? I had a friend who was struggling about whether or not to go to Thanksgiving ‘cause they were dreading it, so I texted them Monday, and I was like, Okay, so now is about the time you start making noise that something’s up with the baby? Okay, Tuesday you want to talk about some throwing up, maybe a fever. Wednesday: fever, not going anywhere. You have laid the groundwork; you are free and clear; you are cleared for takeoff on Thursday; go to a restaurant. Like, I was like, Here’s how you plot this out. You don’t have to do anything.

Lilisonna: Mm-mm. And that’s just, I think that’s so freeing.

Sarah: Yes.

Lilisonna: And such an increase in community – going back to my word.

Sarah: Yes.

Lilisonna: Do make that decision to go be with people.

Sarah: Yeah! Being deliberate about community also undermines a lot of the social conditioning that people who move through the world as women are forced to undertake and absorb that, you know, we are the ones who have to sustain community; we’re the ones who take responsibility for all relationships; and, like, how ‘bout no? How ‘bout we don’t?

Lilisonna: No!

Sarah: How ‘bout we say, No, that’s not my interest and I’m not interested and someone else can do that; I’m not doing it.

Lilisonna: Yes, you know, the, the year that I decided to tell my spouse that he was responsible for shopping for presents for all of his family –

Sarah: Hell yeah!

Lilisonna: – I was like, Why am – I don’t know your family!

Sarah: Why am I doing this?

Lilisonna: Why would I do that?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Lilisonna: And some of the bafflement that I get from coworkers who are like, You don’t, you don’t shop for –

Sarah: No!

Lilisonna: No!

Sarah: Absolutely not.

Lilisonna: He’s a grown-ass adult.

Sarah: Yeah.

Lilisonna: [Laughs] He, he can go pick out a pair of socks –

Sarah: Yeah!

Lilisonna: – or whatever.

Sarah: Oh yeah. It helps to, also to be partnered with someone who’s like, Oh yeah! I can do that.

Lilisonna: If I could sometimes just take people by the shoulders and shake them and be like, There are men out there who are lovely?

Sarah: Yes!

Lilisonna: You could just marry those.

Sarah: Yes. You don’t have to be here with this business right now. Like, we don’t have to do –

Lilisonna: No, you don’t.

Sarah: – any of this. Yeah.

Lilisonna: [Laughs]

Sarah: Did you bring a joke? It is okay if you did not.

Lilisonna: I did not bring a joke.

Sarah: It is –

Lilisonna: I looked.

Sarah: But that is okay; I will have –

Lilisonna: All of the jokes that I have work better written.

Sarah: That is true for many of the jokes I find, and I think, Can I – no, there’s no way for me to make this clear.

Lilisonna: …actually do this.

Sarah: And a couple of them have been like verbal puns where I’m like, If you think about how it’s written, this is even funnier? But yeah, you’re right; a lot of them are written down.

Lilisonna: Yeah, so no joke today.

Sarah: No worries! I will, I will be happy to –

Lilisonna: [Laughs]

Sarah: I have, I have a deep, deep supply of them. [Laughs]

Lilisonna: I will say that it is one of the things that I love most about our Discord is, I can go look at terrible jokes and it just makes me happy! Like –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Lilisonna: [Laughs]

Sarah: The jokes channel is one of my favorites.

Lilisonna: They’re so delightful!

Sarah: I know! It’s so fun!

[music]

Sarah: Hello! Hvordan har du det.

Martin Bull Gudmundsen: [Replies in Norwegian]

Sarah: Excellent! That’s the extent of my Norwegian; I’m very sorry. I’m learning very small pieces.

Martin: You’re dropping a bit more Norwegian every time we speak.

Sarah: Yeah, I’m trying and trying and trying, yes.

Martin: Yeah. My name is Martin Bull Gudmundsen, or Bull as I am sometimes referred to in the podcast, because I am a frequent contributor to the joke section.

Sarah: Yes! It’s great.

Martin: I’m sort of a compulsive punster, which is nice for those around me who like that kind of thing.

Sarah: Cheers to that!

Martin: I’m from Norway.

Sarah: Tell me about all the books.

Martin: Yeah. My reading year has been sort of rote, reading more by rote than by inspiration?

Sarah: Mm-hmm?

Martin: Which is the next phase of getting over the reading slump I had a few years ago. So I don’t have that many memorable reading experiences. What I have, what I’ve been doing for the second half of the year is rereading The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, which is a fantasy series that he began writing in the mid ‘90s or early ‘90s maybe? Yeah, early ‘90s.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Martin: It was incomplete at his death in two thousand and, I believe, seven, but it was completed by Brandon Sanderson in collaboration with his widow, with Jordan’s widow –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Martin: – ended in a total of fourteen books.

Sarah: That’ll keep you very busy. If you’re going to reread the series, that’ll occupy you for a nice long time.

Martin: Yeah, and that was kind of the point, that I wanted something very voluminous to test my teeth on.

Sarah: Yes.

Martin: And then the speed of the reading has varied because I started out when I was in my cabin in Sweden where I don’t have immediate internet access –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Martin: – which means there was a lot of time to read, and then I got home and got even more obsessed than usual with Stardew Valley?

Sarah: Ohhh!

Martin: So I didn’t have that much time to read?

Sarah: I understand that completely.

Martin: My back and shoulders told me I should probably be a little less obsessed with Stardew Valley the few months…

Sarah: [Laughs] Having that problem right now!

Martin: Yeah – in the few months after that again, I actually managed to listen to them?

Sarah: Oh! Well, that’s –

Martin: Which is –

Sarah: – that’s the hard part.

Martin: So for the past, past month I’ve been reading three of the books.

Sarah: That’s excellent. I just want to tell you that on the 2nd of December –

Martin: Yeah.

Sarah: – a newspaper article, or an online article was published saying that Stardew Valley is officially the best game for reducing stress, according to a study of over twenty games looking at how they reduced stress in a cohort of people. So –

Martin: Yeah!

Sarah: – it is the number one stress-relieving game. Which I totally believe!

Martin: Nice to hear if I can only teach myself to play it that way. After Stardew Valley I went back to reading The Wheel of Time?

Sarah: Hey, listen, if you’re going to spend all your time in Wheel of Time and Stardew Valley, these seem like really good choices!

Martin: And my experience from reading The Wheel of Time is that I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would? I see more than I did before that in the middle part especially the series is very much a character-centered project. One thing I actually discovered in the fifth books, fifth book, The Fires of Heaven –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Martin: – is that during this book you can see the transition from a plot-based to a character-based narrative. I can’t point to exactly where it’s happening, but I can, when I read the first –

Sarah: Somewhere in there.

Martin: – when I read the first four books I saw that there were a lot of, the, the scenes were fewer than I thought that they would be, because I remember all the action taking place?

Sarah: Yeah.

Martin: And didn’t remember how economically it was actually written. When I get to the fifth books, fifth book, not from the beginning but throughout the book, I see that the scenes get more and more detailed and that the details I remember are actually in the books and not my mind filling out the blanks.

Sarah: Wow!

Martin: I wondered for a while what, what’s going on here, but now I see that it is because when it turns into a character-oriented series and with the very close to character point of view narration it employs, the details put us much more into the character. Seeing these things and these things as craft and also seeing these things as being when I know it’s about character it guides my reading, guides my attention, I’m able to enjoy, enjoy it a lot more and see, among other things, the, the creeping darkness that is kind of the, the overlying thing with the books –

Sarah: Yeah.

Martin: – where I’ve been talking as if absolutely everybody knows what the books are about.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Martin: It’s a fantasy series where a group of young people that grow up in a remote village, very isolated from the rest of the world –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Martin: – suddenly find, suddenly finds that they are, as a group, but one of them in particular, burdened with the job of getting the world through the coming of the dark one.

Sarah: Oh, piece of cake! And that’s a really good world to get lost in, because the stakes are high, but it’s fourteen books, so you know you’re going to be there a while, and you can just, once you know the world, you can just sort of relax into it.

Martin: Yeah, exactly.

Sarah: Yeah! That seems like a really solid choice; that and Stardew Valley.

Martin: If you, as, as you said, if you like to lose yourself in the world and get to really know a world –

Sarah: Yes.

Martin: – world with, that has extensive and detailed and very waterproof worldbuilding, you’ll get a lot of that from these books?

Sarah: So what are your wishes for people for 2025?

Martin: I’ve thought about it. I think that many of your listeners are in the US?

Sarah: Yeah.

Martin: And many of your listeners are not straight, cis men.

Sarah: Yes.

Martin: And you are going into a two thousand twenty, twenty-five that is likely to be stressful, to be, to say the least, and I’m so sorry for your, you folk, so I tried to carefully formulate a wish that says, May you find comfort, inspiration, and moments of escape in whatever form of fiction you have the capacity to take in.

Sarah: That is such a good wish. And thank you for being so careful and considerate and thoughtful when constructing it, yes. And that is also exactly what you’ve done this year, so I love that you’re recommending that for everyone else. Go find a world; go be in it; it’s fine. That’s a good thing to do. But yes, comfort in, in fiction is so important right now. Thank you very, very much!

Did you bring a bad joke?

Martin: Did I not? Or would I not?

Sarah: Well, I figured you would, but I always ask.

Martin: I have lots of them, but the one I’ve been saving up is sort of theme-relevant.

Sarah: Go for it!

Martin: What do you call a love story that takes place in the kayaking community?

Sarah: What do you call a love story that takes place in the kayaking community? I don’t know; what?

Martin: A row-mance.

Sarah: [Laughs] Well played, sir; well played. Row-mance! Thank you very much.

[outro]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. As I mentioned in the intro, we have one more reader/listener episode coming up. I am so excited to finally have the whole collection! Like, this is, this has been so much fun.

I also, of course, will link to all the books that we talked about and some of the games and things that we mentioned also, and link to the article about how Stardew Valley is allegedly the best game for reducing stress? Unless you stress out about it, which can happen. And I would love to know, what games do you think reduce stress? Are you also a PowerWash Simulator person?

I love hearing from you. You can email me at [email protected], or you can leave a comment on the website at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast under episode 648. You know, there’s a, lots of different ways. I’m around. I’m on the internet all the time, so come tell me what you think!

As always, I end with an absolutely terrible joke. This is really bad.

Why was sixty-nine afraid of seventy?

Give up? Why was sixty-nine afraid of seventy?

Well, they had a fight, and seventy-one.

[Laughs] So bad! That probably works better visually, but you got it, right? You know, seventy won! I should definitely stay away from number jokes.

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you a great weekend. Have a wonderful, wonderful New Year with lots of excellent books. Thank you for listening, and we will see you back here next week.

[end of music]