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On this episode, we discuss the fourth prompt in the Books and Bites 2022 Reading Challenge, a biography or autobiography. You may be surprised to find biographies and autobiographies come in varied formats and styles to match any reader's tastes.
Books and Bites
JCPL librarians bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them.
4_22 Books and Bites
[00:00:00] Carrie: 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 cohosts Michael Cunningham and Adam Wheeler.
[00:00:12] Michael: Hello!
[00:00:13] Adam: Hey!
[00:00:15] Carrie: So today we're talking about the fourth prompt in the 2022 Books and Bites reading challenge,
biographies. And I know we have somewhat mixed feelings about biographies among us.
[00:00:27] Adam: Don't look at me.
[00:00:32] Carrie: Hey, this is, this is audio. No one, no one would have known that.
[00:00:36] Adam: I mean, I think they would. Seems very pointed
Yeah, no, I mean, biographies are not my go-to at all. I mean, non-fiction isn't really. And when it's non-fiction I just, the thought of someone reading something that someone wrote about themselves or wrote about like, someone else. I feel like it's missing something for me. A lot of the times I think of biography as not being really narrative.
It's just being descriptive and like a history book.
[00:01:18] Carrie: Yeah. I, I mean, I understand that, like, I, I think I gravitate more naturally to memoir which often is, is more narrative or you know, more descriptive about a life like descriptive through the senses rather than through facts. For me, I think I appreciate biographies that yeah, rely less on kind of dry history, but really bring the person to life.
How about you, Michael? Yeah,
[00:01:49] Michael: I mean, I, I definitely get what Adam's saying, you know, in, you know, and I love, I love history, but, you know, I think going back to high school and college and you think just a repetition of facts and it seems daunting and a lot of them are door stoppers. So, you know, it's, it seems like it's a challenging one to tackle.
But I do like to, I've been. Kind of gravitate toward memoirs I recently you know, read Dave Grohl's memoir The Storyteller and just how he gets kind of, yeah, it's definitely more narrative. And he takes you to these little snapshots in his life and kind of recount them and through his own view, you know, that I can get, but where, if you like read a biography on George Washington or Lincoln, and he just kind of get, he was born.
[00:02:38] Carrie: Yeah
[00:02:39] Michael: in Illinois and you know, and a lot of stuff's been rehashed so much times when we've been through it,
[00:02:45] Carrie: but that's what, you know, it's a challenge, right? So, so we're trying something different. And I would also remind everyone to look at the notes in the back and, and take that into consideration when you're reading.
Because a lot of times, if there's footnotes in a biography, it'll take up a lot of that page count.
[00:03:06] Michael: Yes, you'll go from like 350 to 200 real quick.
[00:03:11] Adam: There is also always the option of an audio book. So if you are really stressed out at the thought of sitting down and reading through like a compendium of facts about a person's life, like, feel like you're back in doing a grade school report.
If you download an audio book, you can just listen and, you know, tune into the parts you think are interesting.
Okay. So, I mean, who would've thought I found a way to, well, actually I didn't. I didn't, I was going to read a normal standard biography. But Michael suggested Junji Ito�s Cat Diary. And it is a manga. It's an autobiographical manga. Yeah.
[00:04:07] Carrie: So all that talk about it, being a challenge and, and trying something new�
[00:04:15] Adam: Listen, the challenge can also be finding the stories that you connect with because that fosters your love of reading and I as a librarian support that.
[00:04:27] Carrie: Well, I'm just giving you a hard time. I actually, I think I fudged mine a little bit too, so I'm totally with you.
[00:04:34] Adam: Sounds like we all did maybe.
[00:04:35] Michael: I did a true biography.
[00:04:38] Adam: Yeah. So I am supporting Michael's collection development.
By reading this book.
[00:04:46] Michael: Thank you.
[00:04:47] Adam: So, yes. Okay. Junji Ito�s Cat Diary: Yon & Mu�is a comedic autobiographical manga following the master of horror�s move into a newly built house along with his fianc�and unexpected company in the form of two uncanny cats. While the short stories in the book are built on true events, Ito plays with the lines between fantasy and reality � such as concluding one of his cats, laying like a long loaf in a dark room, resembled a giant slug.
Ito is credited with a talent for writing the �uncanny�. In an included interview, he is quoted as saying �the word �uncanny�, in the sense of describing something unsettling,unknown, or unfamiliar, applies to things you fear. I suppose it�s not the fear of a big scary monster rushing to attack you, but the fear of feeling like something you don�t understand is creeping closer and closer�.
And Honestly, you can really feel this uncanniness translated into the comedic horror of�Cat Diary. �This is supposedly the first time Junji Ito has lived with cats, leading to hilarious misunderstandings, exaggeratedly visceral responses to weird cat anatomy and behaviors, and trying entirely too hard to win feline affection. The beginning of the story sees Ito nearly lusting for aspects of his new home such as the pristine walls & floors. This fantasy is soon punctured when time came for cat-prep � temporarily tacking sheets of plastic to the lower half of walls to prevent clawing. This was followed by finely scratched floors from running cats, as any cat owner knows the dreaded �Zoomies� leads to frantic running, sharp turns, and jumps that inevitably result in claws touching all surfaces.
Cats can be difficult to understand for the uninitiated. Folks who are looking for the animated response of dogs can read apathy, and others who look for human expression in feline faces might mistakenly read a sense of omniscience, contempt, or outright sociopathy. Ito really builds a sense of �unknowing� in his illustrations of the cats� unblinking, expressionless faces � which leaves the reader to draw their own conclusions about the cats� thoughts�or lack thereof.
I�d say one of the funniest included stories is when Ito, in a bought of childish humor, tricked his wife (the span of the book is fairly long, and I believe they�d married by this point) with some freshly-bought prank poop � going so far as to trick her into thinking the cats pooped on the stairs and then throwing it directly at her. He�s paid back doubly when, upon finding a pile on his own some time later and assuming his wife was seeking revenge, he grabbed it only to meet fresh horror any cat owner is familiar with � the shocking, chunky, squish of suddenly coming into contact with unexpected cat vomit.
Overall,�Junji Ito�s Cat Diary�is an autobiographical manga that leans into the idea that comedy and horror are two sides of the same coin, and it�s chock-full of insights into the author�s life and way of thinking with an entirely entertaining delivery. I don�t want to give spoilers, but do be warned it takes a sad turn at the very end � I was both teary-eyed and very angry at Michael for recommending the book and not warning me about that part. However, it�s still entirely worth anyone�s time to read and would honestly be appropriate for both teen and adult readers.
Indulge Juji It�s love for the�.Lovecraftian with an Earl Grey Bourbon Pomegranate Punch, aptly titled�Under the Scarlet Sea. This dark scarlet drink mixes fruity flavors, the bitterness of tea and bourbon, and some intrigue through club soda and black tapioca pearls. Find the recipe at feastinthyme.com
[00:09:32] Carrie:
That sounds really fancy
[00:09:34] Adam: It does. My only complaint is that I hate bourbon. So I'd need to touch it up with something different or, you know, if
[00:09:42] Carrie: You probably wouldn't need the bourbon, I mean, it's got so much other stuff.
[00:09:46] Adam: It could just be a tea drink.
If you want to go non alcoholic.
[00:09:48] Michael: What were the cat's names? Did he, what was it?
[00:09:52] Adam: The short for them as Yon and Mu. So I think Yon is the one that his fiance already had. And then she convinced him to adopt another long haired cat named Mu to keep each other company. So Yon is funny. His first interaction with the cat.
I want to say, he says, it's the one with the accursed face. You see it come out of his cage. And it has like an abnormally long swoopy neck. And there's like an animated sound. What are onomatopoeia, is that what it is? Like a whoop!
And he notices the cat has a pattern on it, like it's a white cat and it's got a black pattern on its back. That looks like a skull. Just really leaning into horror author meeting these animals for the first time and bringing his own thoughts to the process of how awkward and strange it is and how otherworldly they feel to someone who is used to dogs.
There's also a really cute part where he and his wife have gone to bed and they have their own little separate beds. Maybe that's a cultural thing. I don't know, but the cats have both gone to his wife's bed and he cannot do anything for the life of him to get both of them, to get either of them to come sleep with him.
So he just lays there in his deep jealousy and s eething But in the middle of the night, he is very heartwarming to, to feel some far behind him. And he's like, oh, the little younger cat's come to sleep with me. And he's so excited. And he wakes up in the morning later and is still happy and excited.
And he goes, To say hi to the cat. And it turns out it was just like a sweater that was laying on the back of the bed.
[00:11:48] Carrie: Well, that's better than it could be. I was thinking like hairball or something.
[00:11:51] Adam: Yeah, no, that's vile. And that would be cold and wet and nasty.
[00:11:58] Carrie: All right. Well, you know, it sounds, it sounds like a good book. I might read it for, for the manga challenge.
[00:12:15] Michael: My recommendation for a biography this month is you never forget your first a biography of George Washington by Lexus co. When people think of George Washington, usually the first things that pop into their mind are the infamous cherry tree incident in his famous wooden teeth, which are both completely.
And if you've ever read one of his numerous other biographies, you've probably have a picture of him as a deified masculine military hero and accomplished statesman. The author refers to these previous biographies. Most notably Ron Chernow, who predominantly white males as the quote unquote fireman referring to their overt obsession with Washington's virility and masculinity constantly focusing on his quote unquote well-developed in muscular thighs coat.
So that sets out to change the image and narrative of mythical first present and has been perpetuated repeatedly with this new book. This book helps to break him out of the mode has previous bog versus set for him. Cole looks at Washington's life through a different lens and focuses on the aspects of his life that are less talked about.
Instead of retreading over his past military campaigns, she looks at his other critical work during the war, like his wartime propaganda campaign and his work as a spymaster Washington would clip stories of British soldiers, war crimes, and very intentionally placed them in newspapers and even. The continental Congress in a funding, his own paper called the New Jersey journal.
Why she didn't realized he needed a better spy network. After Nathan Hale was caught in an executed codename agent seven 11, he was spymaster for the famous and successful coper led by Benjamin Talmudge. This books gives you a real sense of the complexity of George Washington. The man, he was a man who blundered into firing the first shots of the French and Indian war yet.
He was also quite the savvy businessmen, a statesman. He bought huge tracks of prime real estate. As a survey before the war owning thousands of acres of land in the Shenandoah valley. By the age 18 during the war, he played hardball with both general house is probably gained. Sway public opinion and a successful work of the spymaster.
We're all integral in winning the war. During his presidency. George was a man who railed against Parsons partisanship in America yet became increasingly partisan. His two terms were anything but a smooth ride members of his cabinet were out to get him, especially Jefferson creating newspapers that were anti ministry.
From letters and notes included in the book, the founding fathers threw a lot of shade, each other and were quite petty. So from the front of me section, I would like to read what Thomas paint that a Washington before and after he was president. So before the war quote, I shall never suffer a hint of dishonor or even a deficiency of respect to you to pass unnoticed unquote after Washington became president quote in is to you, sir, treacherous in private friends.
Four. So you have been to me and that in a day of danger, in a hypocrite in public life, the role the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an imposter, whether you have abandoned in principles or whether you ever had any. Oh, and it probably didn't help that a Washington left Thomas paint kind of rod in a French jail cell during the French revolution either.
So there were some tough feelings there.
[00:15:34] Carrie: Yeah. Maybe, maybe so.
[00:15:36] Michael: Washington was also someone who lived well above his means he had really expensive European tastes with no money to support them because he had a large amount of debt, which was exasperated because he refused to take a salary during his or time service and a numerous crop failures in Mount Vernon experienced.
Also the author does not let them off the hook or gloss over the fact of us as policy of his fight for freedom and independence, while the same time owning hundreds of. He personally beat them and he fervently chased own a judge and escaped slave for a very long time. Washington talked about it makes the patient, but in nothing during his life, he kept passing the buck, not even freeing his own, leaving that from Martha.
So I, I found this overall to be concise and highly accessible biography with right humor sprinkled throughout. And while it does make big leaps throughout his life, it is still makes for a great entry for anyone looking for a different view of the first us president. So one of George Washington's favorite foods was hoecakes swimming in honey, and this book included a recipe for it.
Couple of chapters. It calls for a half, a teaspoon active dry yeast, two and a half cups of white cornmeal, three to four cups of water, one large egg vegetable oil, or lard and salt making about 15 hoecakes server. The way Washington hasn't had his served with plenty of melted butter and honey washed down with three cups of tea.
[00:17:00] Adam: Yeah, I do like the idea of a book that looks at him in a more realistic context. Like all this, like it's the burn book about George Washington.
[00:17:12] Michael: Yeah, We have deified these founding fathers. And they were just, they were men and they were petty, very petty like Jefferson, you know, he would collude with these people to write these papers and articles about Washington, but like, I would never do that, but everybody knew he was doing it.
I mean, it's, I mean, we're seeing the same stuff today. I mean, it's a lot of same stuff going on today that went on in the late 18th century.
[00:17:46] Carrie: But it's much more public. And it also, it seems like it's also a lot more a part of our everyday lives, you know, because it's on, we're on social media, we're online all the time.
So maybe it just feels a lot more persistent because we see more of it?
[00:18:05] Michael: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:18:07] Carrie: But it does sound like a lively biography.
[00:18:10] Michael: Oh yeah.
[00:18:11] Adam: Does the book talk about what his dentures were actually made of? Because I've heard a theory about it and it fits into him being anunapologetic, slave owner.
[00:18:24] Michael: Slaves, teeth, animal teeth, and hide some of his own that have fallen out if they were of, and were not able to
be reused, but some, they did use some of them again to make us dentures. But I mean, you just think about it when teeth, mouth saliva, that ain't going to work.
[00:18:48] Carrie: And it's good that even though he has been written about so much that, like you said, some of that stuff, you know, has just been ignored by some biographers. So it's good that it's coming out now.
[00:19:02] Michael: One of the interesting things was like how they just kind of really demonized his mother in a lot of these biographies, Mary Washington and you know, she was like this kind of like I don't know how to put it nicely.
You know, this kind of shrieking, shrill woman, who was very a tough taskmaster. While they didn't have the best relationship it seemed like cause he definitely didn't visit her very much later in life, but like, I mean, there's real, no evidence for this. I mean, he definitely learned a lot from her, but like there's no evidence, that like she was this terrible person that he was trying to overcome, like a lot of biographies apparently include in there.
[00:19:45] Carrie: Maybe there was like, there was an early account of her like that, and then everybody just keeps repeating it or, yeah, there
[00:19:52] Michael: was, there was like a, there was like a very vague statement. I think they keep repeating and then just kind of kept drawing conclusions from it. But there's like real, no evidence of anything.
[00:20:04] Adam: Or maybe some historians inserted their own opinions about their own mothers and really just needed to go to therapy.
[00:20:10] Michael: Yeah, that's probably, yeah. Yeah. That's kinda what I was thinking maybe.
[00:20:14] Carrie: But probably there wasn't, it kind of ties into the book that I'm going to talk about where it was about, partially about an 18th century woman, and there was no historical record of her, you know, it was all through the men in her life.
And there's another book by Jill Lepore, about Benjamin Franklin's sister, which is very similar. Like she, you know, she left very little record of her own life. So, you know, they just get--their stories get twisted or erased.
[00:20:48] Michael: Yeah,
it's just like in there, you're just kind of relying on letters to correspondence and then like one of them, like, I think it wasn't a lot of letters between Martha and George are, they they're gone.
She hid them or destroyed them or something. So there's a lot of stuff we still don't even know. So it's very fascinating.
[00:21:17] Carrie: So my book is A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann N� Ghr�ofa. A Ghost in the Throat is a genre-bending book that combines biography, memoir, and--perhaps fittingly since April is National Poetry Month--poetry. Author Doireann N� Ghr�ofa is a contemporary Irish poet and mother who is obsessed with the eighteenth-century Irish poet Eibhl�n Dubh N� Chonaill. Eibhl�n Dubh, as�N� Ghr�ofa usually refers to her, wrote Caoineadh Airt U� Laoghaire, an oral lament or keen for her murdered husband, whose name is anglicized as Art O'Leary.
N� Ghr�ofa first read Eibhl�n Dubh's poem when she was a child in school. Years later, she finds herself wanting to learn more about her and is dissatisfied with the flimsy accounts she finds. She sets out to research Dubh's life using letters and genealogical records. Often, she must turn to the more well documented men's lives to uncover what little she can about Dubh, filling in the rest with her imagination.
The book moves back and forth between the author's story and Eibhl�n Dubh's story, documenting both as N� Ghr�ofa attempts to rectify the historical erasure of women's lives and discover herself in the life of another. Much of�N� Ghr�ofa's own story focuses on her life as a mother, including the difficult birth of her daughter, who was born prematurely. At the time she wrote this book, she had four children under the age of six. She explores her desire to keep having children, even though they leave her little time for anything else, including her own writing.
I started listening to this lyrical book on audio, and I do highly recommend that form. The audiobook narrator is Irish, and I wouldn't have known how to pronounce any of the Irish names or quotes that appear in the book without hearing her read it. However, because the book is not a linear narrative, I sometimes found it difficult to follow while driving and listening, so I checked the print book out to read, too. I especially appreciated having access to both when I reached N� Ghr�ofa's translation of the Caoineadh, which is presented side by side in Irish and English. Even though I don't understand Irish, it was lovely to listen to these incantatory rhymes written by an eighteenth-century woman.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in poetry, the buried history of women, or anyone interested in works that challenge traditional notions of biography. In structure and topic, it reminded me of a book I've talked about on the podcast before, The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life's Work at 72 by poet and nonfiction writer Molly Peacock. You might also like it if you enjoyed Jill Lepore's Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin--though I prefer A Ghost in the Throat's approach to the unknown part of women's history. Lepore's more scholarly book frequently relies on conjecture rather than imagination.
We have several books about Irish cooking, including Real Irish Food by David Bowers and The Farmette Cookbook: Recipes and Adventures from My Life on an Irish Farm by Imen McDonnell. There appears to be A LOT of dairy in traditional Irish cooking--which is perhaps fitting, as milk is a recurring image in A Ghost in the Throat. I chose to make colcannon, a dish I've never had, because I could easily swap nondairy butter and milk for the real thing. For those of you who don't know, colcannon is basically mashed potatoes with cooked greens mixed in. Contrary to popular belief, Bowers says the Irish most often use kale in this dish, not cabbage, so that's what I did. My husband and I both thought it was delicious. I mean, what's not to love about a base of mashed potatoes? These just feel a little healthier than usual because of the greens. Find the recipe in Real Irish Food, available on Hoopla and in hard copy from JCPL.
[00:26:12] Michael: I remember I made that two years ago for a book I did previously.
Yeah. Colcannon, that stuff was good.
[00:26:21] Carrie: And did you make it with cabbage or with?
[00:26:23] Michael: I think we did cabbage. We didn't do the kale. But kale would be good. Okay.
[00:26:28] Carrie: Yeah. And I feel like we, I don't know. We, we always have kale around a lot more than cabbage. So, but I think it can pretty much swap any green that you wanted and you can make it with sweet potatoes or I've seen other root vegetables.
[00:26:44] Adam: I'm so hungry,
[00:26:45] Michael: You can't go wrong with mashed potatoes.
[00:26:50] Adam: This isn't that dish at all. But we. My boyfriend and I, we, we learned to make cheesy garlicky grits with like greens in them. It was so good.
[00:27:00] Carrie: Oh, that does sound good.
[00:27:02] Adam: We went to a workshop, the Pie Queen is what she calls herself. I don't remember her actual actual name, but
[00:27:10] Carrie: I know people sometimes put greens in macaroni and cheese too, or like broccoli or something, you know, kind of the same idea.
Get a vegetable in there too, instead of just the starch or carb.
[00:27:25] Adam: Yeah. But as far as the book goes, listening to poetry with an Irish reader, that sounds really nice.
[00:27:33] Carrie: Yes, it was, it was very soothing. Even just to listen to it without the translation in front of myself, it was just really nice to hear it.
But having the book in front of me, where I could see both was also really good. And, you know, not something I think, especially with poetry, it's, it's great to hear it as well as read it. And don't always take the time to do that when reading a book. So so it was really, really a nice way to do it.
[00:28:07] Adam: It seems like it'd be really interesting to see how they've pieced together women's history with what little record there was. Due to, I guess, being not recorded or, you know, actively suppressed.
[00:28:23] Carrie: Yeah. I mean, even she doesn't have a gravestone, the author couldn't find her gravestone and she was in a very prominent family.
All of the men had stones. So the author doesn't even know like where she's buried. Was she buried with them and just not, didn't get a stone or?
So a lot of the story was about her search and this kind of, you know, false, false starts, you know, and how you think this is going to take you somewhere, but then it just totally dries up.
[00:29:01] Adam: And so does it read kind of like going on the investigation with the author and learning the information with them.
[00:29:09] Carrie: Yeah. A part, partly. But like I said, she, she does also you know, she presents things more in scenes, I think, than a scholarly writer would one of the things that always frustrates me about scholarly biographies where they don't have a lot of information is they�ll be like, it's possible that, you know, rather than just like, she's just, you know, she doesn't have anything, but she's just going to imagine what happened, which, you know, I think there's maybe a little more useful as a way of understanding a life or you're attempting to understand a life.
[00:29:48] Michael: Yeah.
[00:29:49] Adam: Certainly make them feel more human. Yes. And not just this like mythological figure, like George Washington.
[00:29:59] Carrie: Yeah. All right. Well, I think that we did a pretty good job picking a variety of choices for people, hopefully listeners out there will find something that they enjoy reading
[00:30:14] Michael: If you're listening,
Doug, this one's for you.
[00:30:17] Adam: Is there a biography in
it?
[00:30:19] Michael: Well, it goes, it's like see 300 pages, 261 pages, and then you can cut it down like 200 because of notes and indexes.
[00:30:31] Adam: I said the wrong word. I said, biography. I mean, bibliography.
[00:30:34] Michael: Yeah.
A lot of notes and bibliography indexes. So right up Doug's alley.
[00:30:46] Carrie: Thanks for listening to the Books and Bites podcast. For more information about the books and bites reading challenge, visit our website at jesspublib.org/books-bites. Our theme music is �The Breakers� by Scott Whiddon from his album �In Close Quarters with the Enemy.� Find out more about Scott and his music on his website, adoorforadesk.com.