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Books and Bites
JCPL librarians bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them.
Science Fiction: Books & Bites Podcast, Ep. 102
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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: On this episode. We're wrapping up Winter-Spring bingo. Are you guys almost finished? Are you finished?
Michael: I got a few squares left.
Carrie: Mm-hmm.
Jacqueline: Yeah, I do too. I have maybe four left.
Michael: Gonna be close. It's gonna be close.
Carrie: Okay. Well then that makes me feel good about my only having two squares left.
Jacqueline: That is good.
Carrie: So what has been your favorite read so far? Maybe why don't we start off with a book that we talked about on the podcast and then maybe if you have, 'cause we don't. Talk about every prompt.
Michael: Probably my favorite that we talked [00:01:00] about was the first one. A book set in winter. A winter book.
The Boys in the Valley by Philip Fracassi. It was the one about the all boys orphanage and demon possession.
Carrie: Yep. I remember that one.
Michael: What about you, Carrie?
Carrie: Yeah, well I think my favorite one is the one that I'm gonna talk about today, so I will just leave it at that and--
Michael: Okay.
Carrie: Keep you in suspense. But as far as books that we haven't talked about, it is of course, always
hard to choose a favorite even, even when it's from a limited pool. But I really liked The Magnetic Girl by Jessica Handler, and I talked a little bit about that. I think it was last episode. She was a Prompt to Page author, and it's historical fiction about a girl who [00:02:00] believes she has supernatural powers.
Michael: Okay.
And that was, I listened to that on audio and the, I think it was on Hoopla and the narrator was really good. How about you?
Probably my favorite one outside of the prompts would be When the Wolf Comes Home by Nate Cassidy. It was just released back in April into April. And it's, it takes a lot of horror tropes.
Like, it kind of, kind of reminded me of Fire Starter Steven King's Fire Starter meets The Terminator. So it's kind of a werewolf, but also it's more like shape shifting, but it's, it got the found family trope.
Michael: And it, it is, it's, it's, there's a lot of emotional kind of complexity to it.
It's really, yeah.
I would highly recommend that one. And that one fits, what was it? The book with an animal on a cover.
Carrie: Oh, okay.
Michael: Yeah.
Jacqueline: I actually did like The Beast Player really well. It, it was really outta my wheelhouse of what I usually read, but I think that was really good 'cause it [00:03:00] really, it was so different.
'Cause a lot of ya books do seem to have like a lot of the same tropes. And, with it being a book in translation, I, I think it really made it more stick out in my mind more.
Carrie: Mm-hmm.
Jacqueline: And just, it was just so d it was different. It wasn't the usual tropes, like in, in the storyline was quite different too.
With the girl going off and you like go, went through like a big portion of her life, which usually in YA you just, it's just like a short time period.
Michael: That's the one you just read, right? The last,
Jacqueline: but yeah, the time before. The books in translation.
Michael: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Carrie: Mm-hmm. The end of this month is the deadline for turning in your Winter-Spring
bingo card. So make sure you either bring them up to one of the service desks here in the library, or we also have an online form which you can access from the Books and Bites page and turn it in that way. Although if you want to [00:04:00] get that enamel pin, then you'll need to come in and do it in person.
Michael: Yeah. We got those at the front desk. They're very cool. Limited edition, very exclusive.
Jacqueline: They're really nice pins.
Carrie: And then we also have the new bingo cards ready. So when you turn, they're not online yet, but you can pick them up at the library. They're already out on the display in the adult collection.
You can pick one up when you turn your card in and we'll, we'll talk a little bit more about that card next month and, and all the great prompts we have in store for you.
Jacqueline: If you are a teenager or if you know some teens out there, you can also do the Books and Bites bingo as well.
Carrie: Yes, absolutely. So in today's episode we're talking about science fiction novels, and I, I know a lot of people think that they don't like science fiction [00:05:00] or that they just have this, this one notion of what science fiction novels are, and I have found recently, that there is science fiction out there that is for people who
think that they don't like science fiction. What do you guys think?
Michael: Yeah, I mean, I mean it encompasses post-apocalyptic or dystopian novels and one that always, I, when I was building the display the other day, the Wild Song, the Wild, the Song for the Wild Robot, which kind of a
Carrie: Song for the Wild Built?
Michael: Yes. That's it.
Carrie: Yes. Yeah. Anything by Becky Chambers. Yeah. Yeah. I think Melissa turned me onto her and yeah, I like her books a lot.
Michael: And that's not one you would typically kind of, typical sci-fi novel.
Jacqueline: Yeah. YA sci-fi is actually it's quite different. Like they're not all the same, you know?
I think it's like some of the other books, especially like paranormal and stuff with the [00:06:00] romance and all that. I think they don't have, you don't have as much of that in science fiction. So for people for YA that want to read, don't wanna read a whole bunch of romance, I think it's a good
Michael: Is YA sci-fi, does it tend to be more
dystopian?
Jacqueline: Yeah, it's usually a set in the future. And there's usually, there's usually like some kind of, somebody's always trying to kill 'em, I guess. I don't know. Like is that pretty true for a lot of the adult stuff too?
Michael: Uh, I feel like there's a lot of like space opera out there, you know, spaceships fighting each other.
Fighting aliens, you know, you've got your dystopian.
Jacqueline: Yeah, I think most of it, the YA is dystopian. I guess that's probably why I sometimes get it confused. Like I'll say dystopian instead of sci-fi.
Carrie: I just read, it was for the book that had been on my TBR the longest. But actually I could have used it as a sci-fi novel too.
Never Let Me Go by [00:07:00] Kazuo Ishiguro. And it's dystopian. It does involve like science as well. I don't wanna give too much of the plot the way, although I think if you're familiar with the movie, then you probably kind of know the plot, but it, it actually takes place in the nineties. So it was written, I think it was published early two thousands.
So it's interesting to have like this kind of dystopian technology, but it's set in the not too far, you know, not too distant past. Or as my nieces say, the 19 hundreds!
Jacqueline: Oh dear.
Michael: Yeah. Kids are calling 19 hundreds now.
Jacqueline: Yeah, that is that, that, that's. Sometimes I, when I hear that, I'm like, what?
Carrie: Well, anyway, hopefully we'll have plenty of options for you, even if [00:08:00] you think that you don't like science fiction.
Jacqueline: The book I chose for this month's prompt is Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins. This is the latest novel in the science fiction Hunger Games series. While it is the second prequel in the series, it is the sixth book in the overall franchise. This series is set in a dystopian future where the United States has been destroyed.
Okay. As the country rebuilds with limited resources, it is divided into 12 districts and a capital. The capital, being the wealthiest and most powerful, rules over the districts. After a failed rebellion by the districts, the capital enforce a brutal punishment. Each district must send two children age 12 to 18 to fight to the death in a televised arena,
an event inspired by the ancient Roman [00:09:00] Gladiator games. However, this year marks the anniversary of the war known as the Quarter Quell. As a result, these rules are changed and each district must send four tributes instead of two. This novel tells the story of Haymitch Abernathy, a character first, introduced to the readers in 2008 while he played a significant role in the original trilogy,
the book gives us a deeper look into his past and the events that shaped him. This novel highlights the deep unfairness of the Hunger Games and reveals more about the vindictiveness and viciousness of President Snow. Collins not only gives us a deeper understanding of Hamit, but also sheds light on several of the peripheral characters from the previous books whose stories you may
have previously wondered about. As a science fiction novel, it is packed with genetically engineered creatures, intense scenes, and complex characters. But if you're looking for a story with lots of happy endings, this may not be the book for you. This book brings the [00:10:00] unfairness of war in an emotional and heartbreaking story.
The novel is a must read for fans of young adult dystopian fiction. For my bite, I chose a recipe for white rolls sent from a sponsor that is delivered to Haymitch and Marisol, a fellow district tribute in the arena. They make a picnic with the rolls with some hard cheese and grape juice, and you can find this recipe at thecompletelydelicious.com.
Michael: Okay, so I got a couple questions.
Jacqueline: Okay.
Michael: Is this like a sequel to the Songbirds and Snakes or The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes?
Jacqueline: Yeah, it's, this happens before the Hunger Games trilogies, but it happens after The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
Michael: Okay, so there's like a gap, time gap there?
Jacqueline: Yeah, there's a, it's about 15 years time gap.
Michael: Okay.
Jacqueline: Between that, so. So the first one is The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is President Snow's, kind of his story of how he became the president. And then, this is Haymitch's, who was one [00:11:00] of, he was like the sponsor for Katniss, and he was supposed to like show her how to win the games because he won the games.
Michael: Yeah.
Jacqueline: From his district. And so this is his story. He kind of turns to alcohol in the story and we don't really know why. He's just like, he's just like an alcoholic and sad and has won't like anybody in--
Michael: in the Hunger Games.
Jacqueline: Yeah. And we don't know why, but this is his story and it tells you all about, okay.
What happened to him when he was in the Hunger Games and he had to fight, like, because it was a quarter quell, he had to fight like twice as many people as they usually have in the games.
Michael: Gotcha.
Jacqueline: And it really, you can't, it's sad because you really don't, no matter what, you don't win, even if you are the winner.
Like, I guess 'cause it's kind of based on war and is it really a winner in war? Like who really wins and you know. And is it even worth all the fighting over. Whatever land resources, you know, things that, [00:12:00] it's not an uplifting book necessarily in any way, really, but if you're just really into the series, you know, it's like you're gonna wanna read it.
And a lot of people really love Haymitch, so
Michael: I, I watched the movies and, you know, Woody Harrelson played him.
Jacqueline: Oh yeah. Woody Harrelson is great.
He's really good in that. So,
Michael: Did, did you like this one better than the first one? Then that's, I mean, The Ballad of, or just, they're very different.
Jacqueline: They're very different. I think this one wraps up a lot of things in the book, like a lot of missing things, like of the different characters that are kind of introduced in throughout the Hunger Games that we don't really know much about. And we kind of won. You kind of wonder about these characters because they're just kind of like, they don't, they're not fully flushed out, so this really flush, fully flushes out him and why he acts the way he does and that kind of thing.
But I don't know. I kind of feel like I've really like The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Better.
Michael: Better. [00:13:00] Okay.
Jacqueline: Even though it's the villain story.
Michael: Yeah.
These villains are pretty interesting characters.
Jacqueline: Yeah.
My, one of our coworkers says that the teens are like crazy about him.
And she's like, no, you can't be crazy about him. He's a villain.
Michael: I mean, they did write those teen series that were all, um, like wasn't it a teen series where they did like the Disney villains?
Jacqueline: Yes. There is
Michael: the stories from the perspective of the Disney villains.
Jacqueline: There is, yeah. That, that is, I actually read a story called Stepsister, and it is about Cinderella's.
They're not Disney villains, but it's, it is Cinderella's stepsisters and her story, and it's a really good book and it, it kind of tells like, why would you go to these extremes to like cut your, you know, your heel off, you know, to please your mother and to try to get 'em a maid, I guess. And what led these young ladies into doing these things?
Michael: Hmm.
Carrie: Well, I [00:14:00] mean, Wicked by Gregory McGuire. That's another good example of that genre.
Michael: Yes.
Jacqueline: Yeah, that's, that is true.
Michael: My daughter loves Wicked.
Carrie: Does she?
Michael: Yeah.
Jacqueline: Yeah. The book is not, the book is really heavy. If you've ever, have you read the book?
Michael: I have not read the book. Is it pretty?
Jacqueline: It's. It's really, it's pretty heavy.
It, there's a lot. It does impact a, like, it really does, like Carrie was saying, it really impacts her story. What's the name of
Michael: Elphaba
Jacqueline: Elphaba's story. Yeah. And you like get, you do feel a lot of sympathy for Elphaba.
Carrie: Mm-hmm.
Michael: I'm excited for the sequel actually. Have you watched the movie? Sorry. This is, we hope we're not getting too off track.
Carrie: I haven't. I've heard it. I've heard it was good, but I haven't seen it.
Jacqueline: I have not seen the movie, but I've read the book.
Michael: I'll have to read the book.[00:15:00]
I read The Scourge Between Stars by Ness Brown, a riveting and atmospheric novella set aboard the Calypso, a battered, aging generation ship limping back to earth after a failed colonization attempt on the planet Proxima b. The story follows Jacklyn Albright, the first mate who is now acting captain. Her father, the ship's official captain, has locked himself away in his quarters following Jacklyn's mother's suicide, leaving Jacklyn to keep everything afloat. As she juggles ship repairs, food shortages, and the threat of hunger, riots breaking out, Jacklyn starts investigating strange noises reported on board.
What she discovers is chilling. They're not alone. Something, or someone is stalking the crew. When bodies start turning up in gruesome fashion, Jacklyn teams up with Watson, an Android she initially distrusts, to hunt down the deadly intruder before it's too late. If you're a fan of sci-fi TV or movies, much of this will feel familiar in a good [00:16:00] way.
It draws clear inspiration from aliens and Battlestar Galactica. Personally, it reminded me a lot of Star Trek First Contact. That's not a knock. It's part of what made it so enjoyable. My only real complaint is that it's too short. There are so many intriguing threads left unexplored: why they left Earth,
the failure of the colony, and the mysterious cosmic entities attacking their ships. This book could easily be expanded to a full-blown space opera. Also, Jacklyn is a fantastic protagonist, someone you can easily root for. She's tough, likable, and resilient, but definite Ellen Ripley vibes. If you're in the mood for a high octane one-sitting space horror, this is absolutely worth picking up.
And since the book has clear nods to aliens, I decided to pair it with the perfect sci-fi theme snack, a recipe I found on 2geekswhoeat.com: Xenomorph egg cups. Super simple, delicious. They're made with puff pastry, eggs, and black forest ham. You can find the recipe on our blog.
Carrie: Hmm. Sounds good. [00:17:00] And Jacqueline, that would be a good book for a character with one of your names for you.
Michael: Oh yeah.
Jacqueline: That's true. That would be good. It's gonna be hard.
Michael: There you go.
Jacqueline: Like, maybe you can pass it to me when you're finished.
Carrie: I think I put that in a Book Match Bundle recently. Yeah. The title sounds familiar. Or maybe I just saw it on, did you add it to our list or something?
Michael: I might have.
Carrie: Anyway.
Yep. Sounds good.
Jacqueline: Yeah, it really does. I like Star Trek and Star Wars and all that kinda stuff. So
Michael: if you've seen Star Trek: First Contact, when the board, you know, they get on, they beam a board and they kind of start picking off. I was like,
Jacqueline: Hmm.
Michael: Yeah. That's probably, that's my favorite Star Trek movie. So,
Carrie: So did it have like a lot of world building that you kind of had to like wade through, or was it more like just [00:18:00] here, here's the world.
Michael: Yeah. You're like, you're on this ship and you're kind of. Investigating and finding these bodies and trying to find out what's going on. With being so short, there wasn't a lot of world bending building, but there were so many like, interesting threads. Like, you know, you have the intruders, but plus they ha you know, they have these things out there that's kind of like taking out ships and knocking them around like.
What is it? What are those things? That's kind of cool, but you don't go any more detail. So maybe she'll expand it or write another one in the series.
Jacqueline: Yeah, it's kind of like, genetically engineered creatures. Like where they just come out of nowhere.
Michael: Yeah. Like where, who made those came up those, yeah.
Jacqueline: Like, and they only have to fight each other. They have to fight all these creatures. Wow. It can be crazy.
Michael: You know those, what were those things called? The, the waspers, jacket waspers?
Jacqueline: Yeah, I think so. They had like flowers that were poison.
Michael: Yeah.
Jacqueline: And this one, and they had all kinds of genetic creatures that were, would attack [00:19:00] bees.
Michael: Zero fun.
Jacqueline: Yeah, zero fun. So even though a lot of 'em didn't even kill each other. It was the, the game, I guess they called it, the game is what killed them.
Michael: It doesn't sound fun to me.
Not a fun game.
Carrie: So I read Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino. Adina Giorno is born to a human mother in Philadelphia in September, 1977, the same moment that the Voyager I space probe is launched into space. It is Bertino writes, " an interstellar crisscross applesauce." Just as the United States launches the spacecraft with its audio recordings of life on Earth, Adina's people [00:20:00] on a distant planet have sent her to Earth to observe humans.
In her early childhood, Adina believes she's as human as her parents, if perhaps somewhat different from them. But when she's four years old, her father pushes her down some concrete steps, knocking her out. She resumes consciousness to find that not only is her father gone, but she's been "activated.".
At night she begins to "wake up" to classrooms where her Superiors, who appear to her as what she calls a Shimmering Area, instruct her through intuition. Adina is to report her observations to them through the fax machine her mother found on the street and set up, coincidentally enough, in Adina's room. The book is written in short, lyrical,
often humorous fragments. [00:21:00] Adinas faxes to and from her Superiors are especially amusing and always sharply observant. We see her meet her best friend Toni in the fourth grade, and the two of them attend a Catholic girls high school on scholarship. Adina visits the shore with a neighbor one summer. She briefly attends community college and works in a diner.
She moves to New York City where she gets a job and a little dog named Butternut. Through it all, Adina lives with her secret identity, afraid to tell anyone because, "she has seen what humans do to extra terrestrials in film and television. ET, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Small Wonder, ALF."
The few times she does confess, the humans either shrug it off or are unable to take her claim seriously. It's easy for the [00:22:00] reader to question Adina's identity too. The novel is nothing if not ambiguous. Adina feels alien, othered. Is this a story she tells herself to cope with her loneliness? Eventually, Toni convinces Adina to publish her observations as a chapbook titled Alien Opus, and it is a hit for her small publisher.
Some of Adina's readers call her a fraud, and others believe wholeheartedly in her story. I don't want to give the plot away, but I will say that in the final third of the novel, Adina experiences the kind of losses that any human being who has loved experiences. But Bertino doesn't tie things up all nice and neat. Like poetry, like Adina, the ending can be read in multiple ways.
If you're uncomfortable with that kind of conclusion, this probably isn't the book for you. I for one, am [00:23:00] glad just to have known this character for a while. "She was American in that she rarely traveled," Bertino writes. "Alien, in that she was remote. Human in that she never admitted how remote she felt."
Near the end of the book, Adina faxes, "When you reach 15 years living in New York, they surgically replace your heart with a bagel." Pair Beautyland with a sesame seed bagel, the kind Adina says always sells out first. I recently had a wood-fired sesame seed bagel at Pearl's Pizza in Lexington, which serves bagels on weekend mornings.
Although it didn't have the same chewy texture as the traditional boiled bagels I remember from my own New York City days, it was still delicious, especially when paired with salmon, vegan cream cheese, capers, and other [00:24:00] toppings.
Michael: That sounds good.
Jacqueline: It sounds very unique and it's this, the way it's told through the alien perspective and stuff.
Carrie: Yeah. And it's funny that, you know, we were talking, I was talking about that book that took place in the nineties. This one also kind of takes place in the nineties and has some of those, well, it kind of covers her whole life. So it's not just the nineties, but there is a pretty big period in the nineties and those old television shows and fax machine.
Jacqueline: Yeah.
Carrie: To communicate with the aliens.
Michael: ALF.
Jacqueline: Oh yeah. Did they, so. What did they, her Superiors want to know? Like they just wanna know about life on
Carrie: Yeah.
Jacqueline: Did they ever really say?
Carrie: The information that we get, she intuits from them. Like they don't speak in like a language. Well, they do have their own language.
She says it kind of sounds like [00:25:00] crickets.
Jacqueline: Okay.
Carrie: But yeah, so they don't really talk. They communicate, but they don't really talk. But yeah, they just wanna know about people. It's kind of like, I don't know if you remember that Voyager I spacecraft. She talked a lot about that at the beginning of the book with Carl Sagan, you know, his turtleneck and like telling people.
You know, telling Alien life forms about human culture. And so, yeah, they just kind of wanna know, kind of wanna know about us.
Jacqueline: Okay. Sounds like a really, it sounds very good. I'd be interested in reading it.
Carrie: Yeah, it is really good. It's kind of a coming of age story, so I think it might appeal to you and it is very funny.
I don't think it won the awards, but I think it was, it was a finalist for quite a few awards this past year.
Michael: I know I've heard of it and that sounds really familiar.
Jacqueline: And it's adult. It is [00:26:00] an adult book.
Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it has a, has this great cover too. It's very, it's like a graphic cover that kind of gives you the idea of an alien spacecraft without really like showing an alien spacecraft.
Jacqueline: Yeah. I always am very interested in the, the whole alien concept.
Because it does seem like there has to be other life out there in this vast universe to me. So I may be wrong, but it does seem like there should be, I don't know. What do you think, Michael? You think there's other people out there?
Michael: I want to believe.
Jacqueline: Okay. Well, maybe they're right here with us. We just don't know.
Carrie: Could be.
Michael: So when she fell and, and hit her head, is she, is there any ambiguity? If this is like, if she's really talking to aliens or if she's like, it's in her head.
Carrie: The whole novel is ambiguous about that. Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, you, she definitely [00:27:00] believes it.
So there's no ambiguity in her mind.
Michael: Yeah. Yeah.
Carrie: But as a reader, and like she doesn't tell anyone until she is older. And like I said, then they are kind of like. Yeah, whatever, or you know, like they don't, they don't quite get what she's saying, I think.
Michael: Okay.
Jacqueline: Okay. Do they fax back, I wonder?
Carrie: No, no.
Jacqueline: Fax machine's kinda weird.
Carrie: Yeah. No. Do they? Yeah, I think they do. It's been a while since I've read it, but yeah, I think they do. They do fax her back. Mostly they communicate with her at night though.
Jacqueline: Mm. Okay.
Carrie: But they do, they like, and then they'll even say like, in, in their return faxes, they'll be like. Yeah, we don't care about this. Tell us something else. Like,
Jacqueline: that's hilarious. [00:28:00]
I hear that sometimes people,
yeah.
Carrie: Yeah,
Jacqueline: The teens' eyes start to glaze over.
So we hope you all enjoyed this bingo sheet. We had fun reading along with you.
Michael: Next one's gonna be even better.
Jacqueline: I know. I'm going forward to the next, some of the prompts and then it's done really good. Yeah, I guess since we picked him, I guess.
Carrie: Yeah.
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 [00:29:00] The Enemy by Scott Whiddon. You can learn more about Scott and his music at his website, adoorforadesk.com.