Books & Bites, Ep. 110: Books set on a train or ship === Carrie: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Books and Bites podcast. Each month we bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them. I'm Carrie Green, and I'm here with my co-hosts, Michael Cunningham and Jacqueline Cooper. Michael: Hello. Jacqueline: Hi everyone. Carrie: So we are a third of the way through our winter bingo sheet. Michael: Yay. Carrie: And how are you all doing so far? Michael: Pretty good. Jacqueline: Yeah. I'm enjoying it so far. Carrie: So we've had some appropriate weather for reading the bingo sheet. Michael: Oh yeah. Jacqueline: That is true. Carrie: Maybe giving people a little more time to get those bingo sheets done. I know I sort of ended up doing some house projects and didn't quite get in the reading that I would've hoped for. How about you guys? I know you had kids at home. Michael: Yeah, but I got in some reading time, surprisingly. Carrie: Oh, good. Michael: So, yeah. Carrie: [00:01:00] Okay. How about you, Jacqueline? Jacqueline: I got two, well, almost two books read over the five days. Carrie: Oh. Michael: nice. Carrie: Yeah. Good. We had a discussion on our Books and Bites Facebook group about what people have been reading, and one of the books that someone mentioned kind of stuck out to me because it's called Wintering by Katherine May. And it would fit the card or the prompt of books about mental health, and that book "offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat" from winter. I know that's something I need to convince myself of, the usefulness of winter. Michael: Yeah. Jacqueline: I love winter. Carrie: Oh, do you? Jacqueline: I don't like to be this quite, not quite as cold as we have it, but I like the snow [00:02:00] and how pretty it is and stuff like that. I don't necessarily like six degrees though. Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. Or even negative with the windchill and everything. Jacqueline: Yeah. Titanic would be a good book to read if you wanted for the ship and it could also, it was in, would it count as winter since there was the iceberg or not? Was it in the winter when they-- Michael: No, that was, it went down in April. Jacqueline: Did it? Carrie: Yeah. But it doesn't have to be, winter is not a prompt. It's just a book set on a train or a ship. So, yeah. Jacqueline: Well, weather, I meant weather. Like I was thinking of the weather part of it. Carrie: Oh, okay. Yeah. Jacqueline: Snow. If it was in April, that won't, that won't count. Carrie: Well, but weather is not in, weather is independent of season. Michael: Weather happens every day. Whether or not you like it. [Laughter] Jacqueline: Well then maybe it does. Maybe they can read that. Carrie: You know, we'll say you can read whatever you want to pretty much, so. Jacqueline: That's true. Yeah. Michael: Weather formed the iceberg, right? [00:03:00] It counts.[Laughter] Jacqueline: There you go. Kinda trying to get that iceberg in somehow. Carrie: Yeah. Actually, the book that I am gonna talk about today is set on a ship that that goes from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Jacqueline: Ooh. Carrie: So winter is a big--or cold, I guess I should say. Cold is a big part of that one too. So speaking of, today we're talking about books set on a train or ship, and as always, we are taking the word ship fairly loosely, so it could be a spaceship or I don't know what other kind of ships? Michael: Pirate ship, cruise ship. Carrie: Oh, yeah. Um, like one of those blimps. What is Michael: Oh yeah. Air ships. Carrie: Air ship. Oh yeah. Yes. Yeah. Michael: Yeah. Carrie: So, yeah. So there's a lot of Michael: planes Carrie: vehicles [00:04:00] that use the word ship in them. Michael: Yeah Jacqueline: It's true. Carrie: A train, I guess is just a train. Michael: Train. Yeah. [Laughter] Jacqueline: Train. Train. Carrie: But you have more options than you might realize. Michael: Subway might work for that one. Carrie: Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Jacqueline: Yeah. Is there, hmm. It'd be an interesting book that was all written on the subway. Michael: Remember it, write it down, right? Jacqueline: Yeah. Carrie: I actually listened to a book. It was called Miss Subways, and it is actually by David Duchovny and, it was really good. It doesn't take place totally on the subway, so I don't know if I would count it for that prompt, but quite a bit of it took place on the subway. Michael: Well, I mean, Jacqueline: Can it be partial? 'cause mine, like my book is like set. Sometimes they're on the ship and sometimes they're not. Is that Michael: Yeah. Yeah. Jacqueline: Okay. Michael: I mean I got, I just thought of two books that horror of [00:05:00] course that take place on the subway. Coup de Grace, which is a short novella, came out last year and there's a vampire novel. I read it--The Lesser Dead by Christopher Buehlman, and it takes place in the seventies in the New York subway system. Carrie: Oh, okay. Michael: Is where all these vampiress live. Carrie: Oh, yeah, yeah. Michael: So, I was like, Jacqueline: that would be good. For the, for all the horror buffs that listen to the podcast. Carrie: Yeah. I would say the subway system has a lot of room for horror. [Laughter] Michael: Oh, yeah. Carrie: Oh, enclosed. Michael: Yeah. Carrie: Underground. Michael: Yep. The Midnight Meat Train by Clive Barker is another. Man, they're just coming to me, left or right. Jacqueline: All kinds of things to read. [Laughter] Carrie: All right. Jacqueline: And we got The Anxious Generation book club coming up too, which is on the 26th, I believe Michael: that is actually happening on February 25th. Jacqueline: Oh, 25th. Michael: And that'll be in our Davis Conference Room from 5:00 to 6:00 [00:06:00] PM. So we have 12 copies of the book that are available at the customer service desk. If you would like one, you just need to stop by the desk to register for the book talk. Pick up your copy. You don't have to have a copy of the book or take one. You can have already read it. We also have it available in our digital library if you would like to read it that way. But it, the book talk is for anyone pretty much 18 years old and up, and registration is required. Just to reiterate, you go to customer service desk and we'll sign you up. It's not done online for this particular event. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Jacqueline: But it's a bingo prompt though. Michael: It is. Jacqueline: It's Carrie: Well, it's one of the options. So you don't have to do that. But you could read The Anxious Generation, and of course, while you're reading it, you might as well go talk to some humans. Jacqueline: Right. Carrie: And get off of your device for a little bit because that's what it's kind of about, [00:07:00] is how kids' mental health is being negatively affected by their use of devices. Michael: Mm-hmm. Carrie: And social media and things like that. Michael: Yeah. Carrie: Or you can also read another book about mental health, so it doesn't have to be that one. Michael: So, please sign up. Jacqueline: Yeah. That one has lots of asterisks. Michael: If you read that book and go, the event, that takes off two squares right there. Jacqueline: Mm-hmm. Carrie: No. Michael: No. Wait, I'm wrong. Nope. Cut it. [Laughter] Jacqueline: It's one square. But it could, Michael: Sorry. Jacqueline: It could also be like, Michael: yep. Jacqueline: A book that's. Michael: Sorry that, yeah, I had a book that was a short novella that was about mental health, so Jacqueline: Oh, Michael: Okay. Different situation. Thinking about myself. Jacqueline: Depending on what you do, Carrie: We have done that in the past where you get an extra square if you attend in person. We didn't do that this time because there's only nine squares as opposed to 25. So we do want you to [00:08:00] read something for the Books and Bites Bingo. Jacqueline: I like the squares. I like the nine squares though. I think it's gonna, I think it'll encourage a lot more people to join up. 'cause it's not as intimidating for some people. Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we hope so. Yeah. Michael: Yeah. Carrie: So we have mentioned this before, but if you complete the bingo sheet, everyone who completes it gets a bookmark. We have seen the designs. They're very cool looking. They're gonna be these little wooden bookmarks that have Books and Bites imagery on it. You'll want to have one to use on your book, and next week Michael and I are going to learn how to UV print them. Michael: Oh yeah. We should live stream it. No. [Laughter] Carrie: So we're gonna be using the Creative Space to make your bookmarks, so personally, JCPL staff will have their hands on [00:09:00] these bookmarks. So, made with love. Michael: Yes. Jacqueline: Aww. That's cute. Michael: So just a reminder, these bingo sheets are due on the 31st of March. Carrie: Yes. Michael: So it'll be here before you know it. Carrie: All right. I guess that's everything. [Laughter] Michael: Sea of Sorrows is a graphic novel written by Rich Douek and illustrated by Alex Cormack. Set aboard a ship in the North Atlantic shortly after World War I in 1926, the SS Vagabond is hired by a former German U-boat officer to recover gold from a sunken submarine lost during the war. The ship's captain, Mr. Harlow, is deeply in debt to a gangster whose men are on board to make sure the gold is recovered and handed over. Rounding [00:10:00] out the crew are Sophia, Harlow's sharp and capable first mate, and Nick, the ship diver and a former dough boy still haunted by the trenches of World War I. From the start, there's a sense that something isn't quite right. Once the wreck of the Bremen is located, the promise of gold creates a simmering tension aboard the ship. Crew members begin scheming, eyeing ways to double cross one another and claim the fortune for themselves. The former U-boat officer clearly knows more about the wreck than he is letting on, and that secrecy only fuels that paranoia. Things quickly turn deadly. During a dive to stabilize the wreck, one of the crew is taken by something in the water, assumed at first to be a shark. Soon after one of the gangsters loses his mind and attempts to jump overboard after hearing something singing to him from the sea. As tempers flare and trust erodes, Nick descends once more to the Bremen and encounters a mermaid-like creature within the wreck, its song calling to him in a way that could doom the entire ship. Visually, the book is stunning. Alex Cormack's artwork [00:11:00] leans heavily into shadow with deep blacks that perfectly capture the crushing darkness of the North Atlantic abyss. The creature design is especially striking. Their mermaid is both beautiful and deeply unsettling, and the twist involving it is genuinely unique. I'm absolutely here for mermaid horror and there aren't many works that really explore the concept of killer mermaids that I'm aware of. That said, the story did feel very familiar to me. The plot closely mirrors the criminally underrated 2002 film Ghost Ship, which also centers on its salvage crew lured out to sea by the promise of gold. That might sound like a knock, but it really isn't. While the setup is familiar, Sea of Sorrows manages to keep things fresh, especially with its strong atmosphere and its Lovecraftian turn in the final act. Overall, it delivers a bleak maritime horror story that sticks the landing and offers something memorable beneath the waves. I pair this with creamy seafood chowder from a recipe I found on the spendwithpennies.com website. This recipe calls for quite a bit of seafood: clams, shrimp, [00:12:00] scallops, and white fish like cod or haddock, along with potato, celery, and carrots. A perfect dish for a frigid day looking for gold on the North Atlantic. Carrie: Hmm. Yeah, that sounds really good. Michael: Yeah. Especially right now this morning. Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. I want some, yeah. Mermaids are scarier than the Disney mermaid. Michael: Yeah. They are not Arielle. Carrie: Yeah. Jacqueline: Holly Black's mermaids are pretty scary. Michael: Does she do some? Jacqueline: Yeah. Michael: Mermaids. Jacqueline: She's got some mermaids. Yeah. Michael: Really? Okay. Jacqueline: Mm-hmm. They have really sharp teeth. Michael: Yeah. I've only known one other mermaid horror story and then I found this one so, Jacqueline: Well, this isn't a horror story. Michael: Yeah. Scary mermaids. I think still Jacqueline: they're just part of the overall Michael: more terrifying than, Jacqueline: yeah.[00:13:00] Carrie: Okay, so I read Migrations by Charlotte McConaughy. Migrations has been on my reading list for a long time, and I'm glad I finally got to it. The novel is both lyrical and suspenseful, and I found myself torn between wanting to savor its language and wanting to turn the pages to see what would happen next. The book opens in a near-future Greenland. Across the globe, animals, birds, and sea life are disappearing in mass extinctions. Franny Stone, an Irish-Australian, wants to follow a flock of Arctic Terns on what might be their final migration from the Arctic to the Antarctic. "Maybe I was hoping it would lead me to where they'd all fled. All those of its kind, all the creatures we thought we'd killed," Frannie [00:14:00] says on the first page, "maybe I thought I'd discover whatever cruel thing drove me to leave people and places and everything, always." Franny convinces Captain Ennis Malone to take her on board his fishing boat, one of the last vessels allowed to fish for the disappearing schools of Atlantic herring. The birds, Franny tells him will lead them to the fish. Franny wants to find these birds so badly, she's willing to offer the fish as a kind of sacrifice. She has an uneasy alliance with the crew. They mistrust her, at least initially, seeing her inexperience as a liability. And their suspicions about her may be warranted. Franny, we learn, is not who she pretends to be. In fact, she's broken parole to make this trip. The story of this journey is interspersed with scenes from Franny's [00:15:00] past: her childhood in Ireland, and after her mother disappears, Australia, where she's sent to live with her grandmother. We also glimpse her as a young woman who moves back to Ireland to search for her mother. She meets her husband there when she sits in on one of his college ornithology classes, igniting her passion for birds. She writes letters to her husband from the ship, collecting them in her backpack, unable, or possibly unwilling, to send them. The non-linear structure increases the novel's suspense as the reader attempts to understand the mystery of Franny. Who is she really? What is she running from? What crime did she commit? Migrations is a character-driven adventure story about people trying desperately to hold on to what they love--whether animals or people--before they vanish [00:16:00] completely. It's elegiac, but also ultimately hopeful. It's the kind of book we need in our current moment when, "things are yet to be done." When one of the crew members has a medical emergency, the ship takes port in his hometown in Newfoundland. There the ship's cook avoids what Franny calls "his usual ridiculousness" of minuscule portions of haute cuisine to serve a winter vegetable stew with rosemary and lemon. Mashed Winter Vegetable Stew from the Riverford website sounds like the perfect dish to fortify you on a cold journey. Potatoes, carrots, leeks, and kale are cooked with garlic and fresh thyme or rosemary, then mashed and topped off with olive oil and lemon for a touch of brightness. We'll link to the recipe on our blog. [00:17:00] Jacqueline: You have lots of warming dishes Michael: Oh, yeah. Jacqueline: this time. Carrie: yeah. [Laughter] Jacqueline: Sounds really good. That book sounds really interesting that the, I have, so all the imagery with the birds and the animals and stuff. Carrie: Yeah. I mean, and the way they're just, you know. I read another book recently, a book by Ian, Ian McKewan? That also, that was the post-apocalyptic book I read last time, for the last bingo sheet. And I gotta say after reading these two books, I'm like, that's it for a while. Like, because they're just, you know, talking about this loss of animal life. Michael: Oh, man. Carrie: You know? Jacqueline: Yeah. That's sad. Carrie: Birds and fish. And you know, even in that one it was talking about plants that, you know, could potentially die off. Yeah. So it, it's a very sad book. [00:18:00] But also the Arctic tern, you know, I hadn't heard of this bird before. They, their migration is from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back. They, and in their lifetime they, during their migrations, they could fly to the moon and back. Jacqueline: Wow. ' Carrie: Because they fly so far during their migration. Michael: Dang. Jacqueline: That's amazing. Carrie: Yeah. Jacqueline: Hopefully I'm, my hope is that a lot of these animals and plants will adapt. And the book sounds amazing. I mean, and interesting. I like that there's a mystery and stuff too. Carrie: Yeah. I didn't wanna give away too much of the plot because you really need that mystery to kind of pull you through, but it's also, you know, I think all of our copies right now are checked out, so it is a pretty popular book right now. Although we do have the book on CD, so if you're wanting to listen to it on [00:19:00] CD, you can listen to it on CD right now Jacqueline: or place those holds. [Laughter] Carrie: Yeah. Jacqueline: My pick for this podcast is Challenger Deep by Neil Shusterman, a young adult novel that follows 15-year-old Caden Bosch, an artist who is slowly disconnecting from reality and living in two overlapping worlds. In the real world, Caden is a good student and a caring big brother. Early in the story, we see him painting dolphins on his little sister in Mckenzie's bedroom wall, only later to feel that those same dolphins are glaring at him. As his anxiety increases, he tells his parents that his classmates are threatening him. When pressed for details, he insists that one of the boys wants to kill him and has a knife even though he's never seen one. Caden tries [00:20:00] to talk himself out of these thoughts, reminding himself that it's impossible for monsters to impersonate his parents, but he's no longer sure. As his connection to reality weakens, Caden spends more and more time in his second world. He is a crew member aboard a ship bound for the Mariana Trench. His job is to run back and forth across the deck to keep the ship even. Time doesn't behave normally there. The captain and his parrot are locked in a power struggle each trying to recruit Caden. At one point, the captain asked him to kill the parrot, who may or may not be plotting mutiny. This world mirrors Caden's growing fear that terrible things will happen if he doesn't perform certain rituals. The book's short chapters alternate between these two realities, and the narration shifts from first person to second person, mirroring the increasing fragmentation of Caden's mind. As a reader, I felt the same anxiety he does, [00:21:00] especially as I began to realize that the crew on the ship were actually people from his real life. In particular, I was worried about the parrot. There seems to be quite a bit of symbolism in how these figures appear. Sometimes they show up on the ship in symbolic or transformed versions of themselves, like Calliope, the carved, female figurehead who rescues him when he is forced off the plank. She shares her name with the girl from the mental health facility who befriends him once he's finally admitted for treatment. The deeper the ship travels toward the Challenger Deep, the deepest, known part of the ocean, the deeper Caden sinks into mental illness. Like the creatures living in the crushing darkness of the trench, he struggles to survive in both worlds, but with supportive parents', therapy, and medication, he begins the long swim towards the surface. Neil Shusterman wrote this story with insight from his son, who's experienced mental illness. That personal connection gives the [00:22:00] novel authenticity that resonates. Challenger Deep is ultimately a powerful story about a teen who slowly disconnects from and then begins to reconnect with his world. It is moving, imaginative, and an important look at mental health from a compassionate perspective. The pirate imagery and the dark humor aboard the ship will help balance the heavier themes and keep the story engaging even in its most intense moments. To lighten the mood for our bites portion, although Caden himself celebrates with ice cream, I thought it would be fun to pair this book with a Rum Runner, a little nod to the pirate storyline. I found a recipe from Southernliving.com for a Rum Runner, which combines pineapple juice, light and dark rum, lime juice, banana liqueur, blackberry liqueur, and a splash of Grenadine shaken with ice and served in a hurricane glass. Michael: That sounds delicious. [Laughter] Carrie: It does. [00:23:00] Not for teens though, but. Jacqueline: No, not for teens, no. With this cold weather, I was thinking, I was kind of debating of the beach and cocktails and being onboard the ship and all that. I was like, be nice to be warm at a warm ocean. And I thought it was pretty interesting because all the symbolism in the book was very interesting. Carrie: Mm-hmm. And it sounds like you could also read that one for the books about mental health as well. Jacqueline: Yeah. That, that's true. That would be a good one for that. I just realized that. I didn't even think about that, but I was looking for one on it. It is a ship in his imagination, I think. Oh yeah. For that too. But yeah, and at first it was a little confusing at first 'cause I didn't realize, you know, all of a sudden he's on a ship and I'm like, what? What? And then, then I realized that he was mentally having some issues as the story progressed, so. Carrie: mm-hmm. [00:24:00] Jacqueline: It kind of reminded me of, Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye in some ways. If you like that book, you might enjoy this. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Michael: What is the Challenger Deep? Is that a, like a part of the ocean or, Jacqueline: yeah, it's the deepest part of the ocean. It's like deeper than if you were going to Mount Everest. It's long, it's deeper than Mount Everest. Michael: Is. Is that in the Mariana Trench area? Jacqueline: Yes, it's in the Mariana Trench. Carrie: Yeah. So my book also mentioned that, they, I don't think that they went there, but the captain, you know, when she was, when Franny was talking to him about you know, their route and everything. They talked about the Challenger Deep as well, so that's kind of funny that both our books mentioned that. Jacqueline: I think it's very symbolic. They actually found in, I don't remember the exact year, but they actually found some new species, mostly bacteria in the, when they went down there, it takes a lot to go down [00:25:00] there 'cause it's so, like, it's so deep. It's very challenging. Carrie: Yeah. Jacqueline: So Michael: crushing, Jacqueline: yeah. Michael: Pressure. Have they ever, has anybody ever been to the very bottom of it, do you? Jacqueline: Yeah. They've allegedly, this, they've had several, um, sorry. The historic dive of the Mariner is the first and only time humans descended into the Challenger Deep was more than 50 years ago in 1960. Jacques Picard and the Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh reached this goal in the US Navy submersible ship, the Trieste, and it took them a five hour descent. The pair only, they said they weren't able to take any photographs because of the clouds and stuff in the passage. So I think this is the one and only dive. Michael: So we don't really know what's down there. Jacqueline: No, but there's. Carrie: Yeah. Jacqueline: Yeah. It's really dark and stuff too. Carrie: I'm kind of [00:26:00] surprised they were able to do that, especially back then. Jacqueline: Mm-hmm. Carrie: I would think now it might be easier with like underwater drones and things like that, but Michael: Yeah. Carrie: Interesting. Jacqueline: Yeah. Yeah. I guess they found out one thing they wanted to know was if there was life down there, and that was one of the main things that They found out there was. Michael: Interesting. Carrie: Thanks for listening to the Books and Bites podcast. Our theme music is The Breakers from the album, In Close Quarters with the Enemy by Scott Whiddon. You can learn more about Scott and his music at his website, adoorforadesk.com.