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Books and Bites
JCPL librarians bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them.
12_24 BB edit 1
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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: Hello, everyone.
Carrie: So we're wrapping up another Books and Bites Bingo reading challenge.
Michael, what should people know about turning in their bingo cards?
Michael: So yeah, so anytime between December 1st and December 30th, you can turn in your bingo card at the Customer Service Desk, and then we will happily take it and we'll get you entered in that drawing for either the 100 Joseph Beth gift card or an Amazon Kindle.
Your choice.
Carrie: That's right, and you can also earn an enamel pin when supplies last.
Michael: We still got that awesome Books and Bites limited edition pin.
Carrie: Mm hmm.
Michael: And there's a couple of other choices.
Carrie: That's right, I think the sewing machine and the tech [00:01:00] computer.
Michael: And there's the headphones for the audiobook, if you're an audiobook listener.
Carrie: Mm hmm. Yeah, I think the other one, the book one we might be.
Michael: Yeah, that was super popular.
Carrie: Yeah, that was the most popular one. We're glad that books are the most popular one. All right. So, as we're finishing up our bingo cards, what have been your favorite books from the summer, fall bingo sheet?
Jacqueline: One of mine was Emergency Contact, which was an AAPI author, which I really was I hadn't read a lot by this group and I really thought that was a really good book. I really like Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross and she has several other books once you've read that one and you're looking for more. And Stephanie Garber is always really popular.
She has a new series called Once Upon a Broken Heart. That was really good. So just to name a few.
Michael: Probably a couple of my favorites I did this year was [00:02:00] What Moves the Dead by T. King Fisher. I also really liked The Great State of West Florida by Kent Wascombe. I covered that in an earlier podcast. House of Cotton was really interesting for Southern Gothic by Monica Brashears.
That was a really interesting take on the, that genre.
Carrie: You know, you were not here the day that we talked about that book in the Books and Bites book club, and I have to say I remember the participants having a lot of questions about that book.
Michael: Really?
Carrie: That we were not able to answer. Do you remember what they were?
Jacqueline: I don't remember what they were, but Yeah, you said you were gonna check with Michael.
Carrie: I know, and then I forgot. I think it had to do with like, because I think, wasn't there a character who dressed up like people's dead relatives? So I think they were curious about like, the particulars of that. Like, how that worked.
Michael: It was makeup and hair. Like, this Cotton sister [00:03:00] who, or no, it's not sister, it was aunt, . She had this really just uncanny ability with makeup and hair to make anybody look like anybody. She herself changed, you know, her look from Dolly Parton to, to whoever.
Carrie: Wow.
Michael: So yeah, just makeup and kind of prosthetics like it's just you know,
Carrie: okay.
Michael: Yeah,
Carrie: so that would be a good a good skill to have for live people as well as dead people. [Laughter.]
So a couple of my favorite books that I didn't talk about on the podcast because we don't talk about every prompt. One of them was The Lost Journals of Sacajawea by Debra Magpie Earling and that counts for the historical fiction by an Indigenous author prompt. And it was, you know, the, the book was written kind of like an epistolary novel, cause it was the journals of [00:04:00] Sacajawea and it was just really good.
The language was really original and lyrical and it really kind of captured what it might have been like for, you know, Sacajawea was just a child when she was taken away from her family. So what it must have been like for her. It was also extremely suspenseful, like, and, you know, some really bad things happened, of course.
Michael, I think you might have might like it too, like I couldn't read it at night because it was just one of those books that you have to find out what happens at the end. But I was really glad that I, you know, I went through it really fast because of that. And then another book that I just finished recently, and this was just for the ebook prompt, was Shakespeare's Kitchen by Lore Segal.
And she died recently. I think she was 96. [00:05:00] She was an Austrian Jewish refugee who was, on a Kindertransport from Austria to England when she was a child. And her life story is fascinating. She was just an amazing person and she wrote a lot of different novels and a lot of them were kind of based on her own life.
And this one was It's not novel, but a series of connected short stories about characters that she wrote about in some of her other work. A lot of these stories appeared originally in The New Yorker. Anyway, it was, that was a really good book as well. My favorite that we talked about? was probably Still Life, the one I talked about last month, and just because it was just a book I really, I think I really needed to read that book at that particular time.
Jacqueline: It seems like that my [00:06:00] favorite books are often the last book I've read.
Carrie: Well, yeah, maybe so. It is, it can be hard to pick a, pick a favorite sometimes.
Jacqueline: Yeah, for me it often feels that way.
Carrie: Yeah, that is, that is always a question that you know, if somebody asks you, What's your favorite book?
Michael: I don't know!
Carrie: Yeah..
That kind of shuts down conversation.
Michael: What genre are we talking about here?
Carrie: Yeah.
Jacqueline: That's a good response. Then you can narrow it down a little bit.
Michael: Yeah.
Carrie: But even then, yeah, I don't know. That's a hard, that's always a hard one to answer. All right, well, today we are talking about books published in 2024. So these are going to be recent reads.
This is, again, one of the Prompts on the Books and Bites Bingo Summer Fall Reading Challenge.[00:07:00]
Michael: My 2024 recommendation is We Used to Live Here by Marcus Cleaver. This book is adapted from a story originally posted on the NoSleep Reddit and has been all over BookTok this year. This book opens with Eve Palmer answering the door on a cold, snowy night to a family wanting to know if they could take a quick look around since the father, Thomas, used to live there as a child.
Eve and her partner, Charlie, just purchased the dilapidated Victorian located deep in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. Eve, still waiting for Charlie to get home, reluctantly invites them in. As they're touring the house, Thomas's daughter goes missing. Eve and Thomas begin their search in the basement and that's when Eve notices some disconcerting things and some odd behavior in Thomas.
As the visit wears on, Eve tries to piece together what's really going on with this family in house and leads her to stumble upon [00:08:00] some increasingly strange and impossible things. She's not sure if this is all actually happening or it's just in her head. The mind blowing ending will probably leave more questions than answers, but a planned follow up to this book is in the works.
I don't mean to be super vague, but the less you know, the better the reading experience, I think. And this book is more than just a mere novel. It's part of an ever evolving, immersive, alternate reality game. There's an epistolary component to the book, with transcripts of message boards, excerpts from journals and newspapers that are inserted between the chapters that you might want to take a closer look at.
The email accounts are real. It will send you responses if you email them. The Reddit and other user accounts are real social media accounts. The websites are real with hidden messages even in the code of the webpages. There are anagrams and hidden messages within these documents. The Reddit old house archives mentioned in the book exists and discusses found clues.
The author is continually posting new clues and Morse codes and messages to [00:09:00] decipher. You can very much enjoy the book without getting involved in all the clue hunting and message deciphering outside of the book itself. It's a super compulsive read, blending genres and inverting the haunted house trope.
This would be perfect for fans of the TV series Lost, or Mark. Daniel Lusky's book, House of Leaves, and we have it just available in just about every format, e book, e audiobook, book on CD, large type, and regular print. I pair this with a fine delicacy from the Pacific Northwest, tachos, a. k. a. tater tot nachos.
You need all the classic ingredients for nachos, cheese, sour cream, ground beef, pico de gallo, guacamole, and anything else you like. I use pulled pork to kick it up a notch. But it's super delicious and really easy to make.
Carrie: Yeah, that sounds good.
Michael: Oh yeah.
Carrie: Makes it a little, I guess, more of like a meal if it's on tater tots.
Yeah,
Michael: I don't know why I didn't really think of that myself before.
Carrie: Yeah, and they're like [00:10:00] crispy and sounds good.
Michael: Yeah.
Carrie: That's it. That sounds like an interesting book.
Michael: Yeah.
Carrie: Did you, like, look at some of those sources, like, online as well, or are they all in the book, or, like?
So, yeah, I found this on BookTok, and someone highly, one of the persons, those influencers, recommended it.
Said it was, like, the greatest book she's read this year, super scary. So I picked it up, and I started reading it, and, you know, they, it has little Morse code at the end of each chapter. So it's a word each. So at the end of the book, you have this saying the sentence. And then within I started, what was it?
So after I finished it, I kind of like, what happened, you know, is there going to be a followup or, you know, kind of leaves in your cliffhanger. So kind of researching and found, found all this, this, this Reddit, which had these codes that are posted. There's things within the book that I didn't even realize or I might have noticed but it really give much attention to at first like one thing there's like [00:11:00] a capital word or capital letter this kind of throughout this little transcript But if you kind of add all those letters up it makes this one sentence And it kind of feeds into the rest of it.
It's pretty
Interesting
yeah.
So it's kind of like a puzzle.
Michael: Yeah, this is kind of ever evolving growing puzzle and he's constantly putting things out like In the, you know, the web code, like you go to this one website that's in the book and you look at the web code and there's a whole message in there somewhere.
Carrie: Wow.
Michael: Yeah, it's, it's wild.
Yeah.
Jacqueline: Yeah, just keep reading. The book, you can just keep on
Michael: pretty much
Jacqueline: with the book. That's an interesting concept. Kind of
Carrie: sounds like your Book Ventures a little bit, except, except online and not in the book.
Jacqueline: Yeah. Yeah. This is an immersion, where the, when they read the book, they'll, It'll come to a place and it'll give them, it'll let them know that there's an envelope they can open and they can kind of immerse themselves [00:12:00] inside the book.
So yeah, kind of.
Carrie: Mm hmm. Yeah. And just for a little sneak peek, the Book Venture, you can, that'll be a thing you can try out if you want to on the next Books and Bites bingo card. So
Jacqueline: Yay. That's awesome. I love it.
Carrie: So the book I read was James by Percival Everett. This National Book Award winning novel retells Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn through the point of view of Jim, the enslaved man who travels down the Mississippi River with Huck. While the novel pays homage to the original, and Everett makes his respect for Twain clear in his acknowledgments, it also challenges some of Twain's 19th century conventions and assumptions, [00:13:00] and deepens Jim's humanity.
Jim's ability to code switch is one of the biggest and most subversive differences between the two novels. He and the other enslaved characters speak in the black dialect of Twain's book only when white people are around. In fact, Jim knows how to read and write, and his voice is more educated than the voices of most of the white people in the novel, including Huck's.
He reads books in Judge Thacker's library and, in his dreams, converses with philosophers like John Locke and Robespierre. He even teaches his daughter and the other enslaved children how to speak around white people. " White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don't disappoint them," he tells the children.
"The only ones who suffer when they are made to feel inferior is us. Perhaps [00:14:00] I should say, when they don't feel superior." Initially, the plot follows the loose outline of the original, or at least what I remember of it-- it has been a while since I've read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Jim, who eventually decides to take the name James, learns that he's going to be separated from his wife and daughter and sold down the river to New Orleans.
Under cover of night, he sets out for an island in the Mississippi, where he'll hide until he can make a better plan. The next morning, James realizes he has company, and is relieved to find that it's Huck. As in Twain's novel, Huck has faked his own death to escape his abusive Pap. James and Huck decide to head north together, but miss their turn and end up traveling downriver, further from James's freedom.
Though Huck is a vulnerable child, Everett makes sure the reader [00:15:00] understands how much more dangerous life is for James, especially when he becomes separated from Huck. When they are together, Huck pretends to be James's master, which offers him some protection. But without that protection, tenuous as it is, James is constantly at risk of capture and worse.
The risks James faces, his love for his family, and for Huck, all make for a compelling, suspenseful read. I finished this lyrical, witty book in just a couple of days. While having read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn would add to your appreciation of this adaptation, the novel stands alone. It's a thought provoking take on an American classic.
James and Huck survive on catfish and blackberries, foods that are delicious on their own but sound even better combined in a recipe from Heartland Catfish, [00:16:00] Grilled Catfish with Tomato Blackberry Salsa. In addition to tomatoes and blackberries, the salsa calls for Bel pepper, chili peppers, onion, basil, lemon juice, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and salt and pepper.
Serve over catfish grilled with Worcestershire sauce and black pepper. We'll link to the recipe on our blog.
Michael: Wow. So that book is on my TBR and I've been looking at, I thought about reading it for , the prompt, the historical fiction.
Carrie: Uh huh.
Yeah. So it does qualify for that prompt as well.
Michael: But I just ran out of time. But, does it cover the events of Huckleberry Finn?
Carrie: Well, it kind of departs from the novel, Huck and Jim are separated at one point and from there it kind of really diverges from the original, which I don't want to tell too much about it, or give any spoilers or [00:17:00] anything, but it, it does have a very satisfying ending.
Jacqueline: Is that written by an African American author?
Carrie: Yes, Percival Everett wrote, also wrote the book Erasure, which was made into the movie American Fiction, and I didn't read that novel, but I did see the movie, and it has some similar themes with code switching and the way that the characters talk, or not talk, in this case it's, it's writing, how they write, um, for a white audience, versus,
it's not just limited to white audiences, but they write in a way that kind of appeals to their white publishers, I guess I should say.
Jacqueline: It feels, that seems like a book that, Would really be helpful for so many people to read just to learn about how some people were [00:18:00] treated and just how they coped with with some of the treatments and stuff
Carrie: oh, yeah, definitely and I think it's just the conventions of how Huckleberry Finn was written a lot of it just doesn't sound right to us anymore, which as, you know, as it shouldn't.
And so it really brings this whole other side to the novel that I think is, that is missing in the original, so.
Jacqueline: Sounds like a good read to me.
Carrie: Yeah, it is, and I think a couple of people in our book club mentioned how fast of a read it was, and it was, it was for me too, you know, we went, we went away that weekend, so I had a little more time to read that weekend, but I started it on, Friday night, and I think I finished it by Saturday night, so.
Michael: Oh wow.
Carrie: So really it was like, a day. And it's, you know.
Jacqueline: Couldn't put it down, huh?
Michael: It's [00:19:00] a decent sized book.
Carrie: Yeah, it's not like, it's not a novella. It's like, it's a pretty decent sized book, yeah. But it's just that compelling.
Jacqueline: I chose the young adult mystery, The Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson. This mystery takes place 16 years ago when Bel Price's mother, Rachel, disappeared. She disappeared not just once, but twice in one day. The first time Rachel disappeared, she and two year old Bel went into the mall, but according to mall security, neither of them ever left.
Later that evening, Rachel's friend found two year old Bel alone in the car along the roadside in the middle of a freezing winter day. Bel has not seen her mother since, not once, in 16 years. Bel's father, Charlie, was arrested and went to jail for murdering Rachel. The jury found Charlie not [00:20:00] guilty, but losing her mother and briefly losing her father left a profound effect on Bel.
She suffers from anxiety and abandonment issues. According to her, people just leave so there's not any point in letting anyone get close. " It was easy to push people away when you know how. She was very, very good at it. Make people leave before they chose to go anywhere. The same result in the end, because everybody left eventually, but it hurt less.
That's what life was, choosing the way that hurt less." She pushes everyone away except her dad. Charlie will never leave her because they are a team. When a struggling British documentary filmmaker makes a documentary about the mysterious disappearance of Rachel Price, when he receives an anonymous tip that Rachel's story would make an interesting film.
Bel's father, Charlie, agrees to the film because he needs the money to take care of his elderly father, Pat. Pat suffered a stroke about a year ago and suffers from memory problems. [00:21:00] The film brings reporters and renewed interest in the disappearance, since this is the first time the family has discussed Rachel's story with the media.
A lot of family memories and feelings surface because of the case. One evening, she sees a woman who looks just like her mother stumbling around in front of her house. At first, she thinks it's the actor playing Rachel during the reenactment scene. But the woman claims she is the real Rachel and captors let her go after holding her for 16 years.
Bel finds Rachel's story unbelievable. When DNA tests show she is really her mother, Bel still believes there's too many inconsistencies with Rachel's account of her reappearance. Bel feels she is lying about what happened to her and is determined to find out why. Because if Rachel is lying, then was she lying all this time?
Was Charlie acting so strangely? Charlie claimed to the filmmakers that he would do anything to get his wife back, [00:22:00] but he doesn't seem too happy about his wife's return. He is distant and stays away from home more often, leaving Bel alone with Rachel. Bel cannot lose Charlie, but the more she investigates the reappearance, the more she fears for her family.
The family she had before Rachel reappeared. She must know the truth because if Rachel is lying about her reappearance, what else is she lying about? What will Bel search for the truth and cover? This story is good for people who love good suspense with lots of twists and turns. Holly Jackson knows how to build suspense and keeps her readers attention in this complex and compelling tale.
Baking cookies was one of the first things Bel agrees to do with her mother. Bel and her mother's baking peanut butter cookies is very symbolic of the mother daughter relationship. So I thought I would share this salty sweet recipe from Delish. com for peanut butter cookies.
Do they make the documentary? ?
They, they did, but a lot of things happened and [00:23:00] they really had to do a redo a lot of the film because Charlie disappears and some other people disappear so they had to really Lot of people disappearing in the film.
Michael: Is there a supernatural element to this story?
Jacqueline: There's not
Michael: no
Jacqueline: I don't want to give it away.
Michael: Yeah,
Jacqueline: but there's a lot about memory and you know, like a lot of people have information, but they've lost their memories So they're not disclosing the information that this really would help the documenta ry filmmaker find a
Michael: Like repressed memories type thing.
Jacqueline: Yeah, well the he's had a stroke, so he doesn't remember anything but he's the key so that he seems to be a key into what happened years ago that's not that Rachel is trying to cover up a little bit about what happened.
So she is lying about a few things and
and
and Bel keeps like [00:24:00] discovering these lies and she just doesn't understand why her mother's lying about these things and She keeps lying what's gonna happen
Michael: Do we know if she's really lying or if it's a little bit of both? Is that part of the story trying to figure out who's telling the truth?
And
Jacqueline: yeah, that's part of the story. Who's lying is, is Charlie lying or is the mom lying or, and, what does Pat know that he can't remember the father, Charlie's father's Pat. So, and where was she all these years? You know, she's saying she was locked up, but then there's no proof of anywhere that she's locked up in her story.
It just seems to be inconsistent. Like, she's just, she was, she says, she makes slip ups, like she says 15 years, when she was really gone for 16 years. So why is her story have all these holes in it?
Michael: Interesting.
Jacqueline: So I don't want to tell too much, because it'll really give the story away. And this seems to be a [00:25:00] lot about memory and loss and dealing with, with letting people in, because she's pushed so many people away.
And then we hear her mother comes back after. Being gone for 16 years and she's just like, you know, well, no, I don't you would think you would want your mother back like she's been gone You don't know where she is and I've been looking for and now she or she is and and Bel can't let her in
Carrie: And so how old is she?
Bel yeah, how old is she in the novel?
Jacqueline: She is 18. So she was two years old when when her mom disappeared. So now she's back and she just doesn't, she doesn't believe her, but she can't understand why she would lie about all this stuff.
Carrie: Sounds a little less fantasy than some of your past reads this year.
Jacqueline: Yeah, there's not much fantasy in this one, other than
Carrie: Sounds more like a thriller.
Michael: Yeah, a [00:26:00] psychological type thriller, almost.
Jacqueline: That is true, because you're trying to figure out what, what is happening? I couldn't, I didn't know what was happening for the longest time. I mean, I, I felt like she was lying too, and I was like, but why would she lie?
It doesn't make much sense.
Michael: Yeah, so I feel like there could be some crossover between maybe young adult and an adult.
Jacqueline: Oh yeah, I think adults would like this as well. I think
it's a really good book.
Carrie: Thanks for listening to the Books and Bites podcast. To learn more about Books and Bites Bingo, visit us at jesspublib.org/books-bites. 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