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Books and Bites
JCPL librarians bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them.
2_25 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, everybody.
Carrie: So, before we get started with today's topic, we just want to remind you about our upcoming book club discussion of Rednecks by Taylor Brown.
The in person discussion will be on March 18th at 6. 30, and registration is required. I think it's going to open February 18th, the registration will open. And then the books are available. Michael, do you want to talk a little bit about the book?
Michael: We have, yeah, we got quite a, quite a few copies in circulation, so if you want to put a hold on it, you can go ahead and do that.
So this is a very fascinating historical novel about the West Virginia Mine Wars, during 1920 1921. It's a history a lot of people just don't know about. I'm reading it right now, and it is [00:01:00] definitely a page turner. It's one you can fly right through, and there's a lot of good discussion I'm ready to have.
Carrie: Yeah, I agree. I was a little intimidated at first because it's a fairly long book with fairly small type, but it does really read fast, so.
Michael: Really short chapters, too, so.
Carrie: Yeah, and it definitely keeps you engaged. There's a lot going on.
Michael: Oh, yeah.
Carrie: All right, and then next month's podcast, we'll be discussing the book.
Jacqueline has opted to skip that month's discussion, and instead we're going to have John David Hurley, who you may remember was a special guest, I think when we did Appalachian fiction one time, so he has a special interest in Appalachian history and Appalachian fiction. So we're excited to have John David join us.
But we'll miss you, [00:02:00] Jacqueline.
Michael: Yeah.
Jacqueline: Thank you. I'll be getting ready for summer.
Carrie: Yes, yeah, I'm sure you will use your time well. So today we're discussing books set in the 1990s and this is one of the prompts on the Books and Bites Bingo Winter Spring Reading Challenge. And I know I've noticed 1990s seem to be pretty popular right now.
They're having this kind of moment. What do you all make of this trend?
Michael: I feel like all those kids have kind of grown up during that time, are now like, you know, finally adults and have kids and are kind of feeling nostalgic and now looking back on it and, you know, and even some popular fashion trends I see have kind of reappeared.
Carrie: Mm hmm.
Michael: So
Jacqueline: yeah, I've noticed the 20 something year olds are all wearing the 90s clothing.
Michael: Yeah I wonder if they're like raiding their parents
closets [00:03:00] or something?
Jacqueline: Well this book I just read Truly Devious She actually raided her grandparent's closet to get out, so, if you don't feel old enough already.
Carrie: Oh, geez!
Jacqueline: To get this little red raincoat out that she thought was very fashionable now. So, that helps us all feel even better.
Carrie: Well, but speaking of fashion, I know that, I think it might have been last fall, we were around UK campus
when a lot of Students were, I guess, it was, I think it was like a Friday night and students were going, getting ready to go out or going out and I was looking around like these students are wearing what I wore to go out in the 1990s, like, it was, it was so weird. It was like this time warp, except that they, you know, were glued to their phones, which
Michael: They didn't have that back then.
Jacqueline: At least they just [00:04:00] started. When did phones actually, was that 90, early 90s when the cell phone started,
Michael: but they were like bricks.
Carrie: Yeah, but it wasn't like something that everyone had.
Jacqueline: Right, they were just starting to sell them.
Carrie: And they were more like for emergencies. They were not like, you were glued to your phone, internet in your pocket.
Jacqueline: Yeah. What about the mom jeans? They call them mom jeans now. And I remember when I was wearing them and I was like, Oh, you're wearing mom jeans. And I was like, What?
So,
Carrie: Just jeans.
Jacqueline: Yeah. So I got rid of all of those because at the time I was like, I don't want to be wearing mom jeans.
Carrie: Oh yeah. Yeah.
Jacqueline: Mom jeans are the height of fashion right now.
Michael: Wow.
Jacqueline: Skinny pants are out. Mom jeans are in.
Carrie: But other, other than fashion, I mean, we were kind of talking about before we started recording and my book kind of touches on this a little bit, like, the ways that we communicated were so different [00:05:00] and internet was just in its infancy, so people weren't, you know, you had dial up if you had internet, and it took forever to do anything.
Michael: AOL instant messenger was the way to communicate back in the late 90s, early 2000s. Mm hmm.
Jacqueline: Do we even have social media in the 90s? I don't
Michael: No, I think the first one was like MySpace was the first big one.
Jacqueline: That was 2000s, right?.
Michael: Or Facebook.
Carrie: Bands used to use it a lot. And my husband was in bands and so he, I mean that's how they booked shows was through MySpace.
Yeah.
Jacqueline: Yeah, I do remember that music was how it all started, through music, which is interesting because, and then Facebook came.
Carrie: Yeah, that was, when did Facebook start?
Michael: It started like, I'm going to say the early 2000s, but it was very limited to like a certain amount of colleges at the time.
Jacqueline: You had to have an EDU. email address to have a, but when they opened it up to [00:06:00] everybody, like, then, then it really changed when they made, then it became more commercial and they opened it up to people without the education, emails.
Michael: Yeah.
Carrie: Well, anyway, it'll be interesting to see how our books reflect those changes and those
topics.
Jacqueline: So the book I read for this month's prompt was The Face on the Milk Carton. It's a young adult mystery novel by Carolyn B. Cooney. The book's setting is in the late 80s or early 90s. Fifteen year old Janie has a loving home. As the only child of Frank and Miranda Johnson, she had an idyllic childhood. Her parents have given her lots of opportunities, from horseback lessons, music lessons, and swimming lessons.
She and her mother are close and explore crafts and classes that they can do together as mother [00:07:00] and daughter. Janie has a happy life. She has great friends and parents. Her biggest problem is that she wishes her name was not so plain. She questions why her parents would give her such a plain name when she already has a plain last name.
She daydreams about having a more sophisticated name like her best friends, Sarah Charlotte Sherwood or Adair Odell, until she sees herself on a milk carton missing child notice. The name on the milk carton is Jenny Spring, who has been missing for 12 years. When she realized that she may very well have a different name, she quickly concludes that she does not want to have a different name, or a different family.
Janie begins to have an identity crisis when she realizes that she doesn't know if Frank and Miranda are her real parents, or are they kidnappers. Was at least one of them her parent? As one of Janie's classmates pointed out, sometimes the missing children are taken by one of their parents. She realizes that she needs more information before she confronts her parents.
She goes to the [00:08:00] library and looks up articles from the New York Times about the kidnapping of Jenny Spring. As Janie grapples with her discovery, she has no one to confide in except for Reeve, the boy next door. Reeve tries to get her to let go and explains that her entire world will change if she keeps digging into the past.
Janie is afraid. She does not want to hurt her parents, but she cannot forget about the other family. But like Pandora, Janie must really know what happened. Suspense continues to build throughout the story as Janie learns about her past. Cooney knows how to keep the reader engaged throughout the story.
Even at the end, we are still in suspense about what happened next. It's pretty telling the next book of the Janie Johnson series is called Whatever Happened to Janie. The unique premise helps draw the reader to the story. I believe reading a story set in a period before the internet changed the way we find information might appeal to today's teens who like nostalgia.
I really enjoyed the scene where Janie goes to the public library and [00:09:00] uses the microfilm machine. For my bite, I chose a recipe for pot roast from ReynoldsBrand. com recipes. Home style pot roast. Miranda still cooks homemade meals, which Janie, in a fit of pique, calls old fashioned. Growing up, we often had old fashioned meals on Sundays.
So, I did think it was interesting, like, we were talking about looking back and like how the library. Yeah. The library's really changed, if you want to, like, how we, do you remember in college going and, and looking at the old microfilm and microfiche, and instead of just going to a computer, and, and they still show it in movies today, they like drag out the old microfilm machine.
Carrie: Well, I mean, we still have a microfilm machine, like, you have to. There are some things that you have to still use it for, but yeah, not just to look at an article that was in a newspaper, yeah.
Jacqueline: Right, right, yeah. I'm sure, well, what all do we use it [00:10:00] for now? Do we have things we can look on the microfilm?
Carrie: Yeah, the Jessamine Journal we have back
till, like, it started, like, 1887, I think?
Jacqueline: Oh, wow. That's cool.
Michael: Some old, defunct papers that, I think, predate the journal. The Nicholasville News, which is gone now.
Jacqueline: Oh, yeah.
Michael: We have the New Yorker, on microfilm.
Jacqueline: Do we?
Michael: Yeah, a lot. A lot of reels of that, and
Carrie: We have, like, some tax rolls and things like that. I think a lot of that is, has been digitized now, but some of it hasn't, and so
Jacqueline: I still have people asking me about the card catalog, you know, and it's like I mean, they're like, oh, I miss the old card catalog, and I'm like, well We still have it, it's just online.
Carrie: There was something very satisfying, I [00:11:00] think, about searching a card catalog. Like, it's just a very tactile experience. And kind of could lead you down some interesting paths, I think, that you don't always get that experience in a digital catalog setting. At least it's not the same. Yeah. And, you know, I used to have to, like, I mean, and a lot of people do that here as well, but I didn't have my own computer, so I would have to go to the library to use the computer, because not everyone had a computer at that time, you know?
Jacqueline: Yeah, when I was in college, I didn't have my own computer. I had to go to the library to write papers. Now that you mentioned it, I didn't think about that. They don't always portray the librarian in the best possible light in their books, but
Michael: Oh, man. That's terrible.
Jacqueline: They kind of like the, the school [00:12:00] librarian, they kind of liked him, the author kind of played him up, but they weren't necessarily all that kind to the dowdy older woman in the, in the, the librarian in the book.
It's just like, oh, come on.
Carrie: Oh, well, you, you can prove them wrong in the, in the Teen Space.
Michael: This month I read Midnight on Beacon Street by Emily Ruth Verona. This non linear thriller is an exploration and serves as a love letter to one of the most famous horror tropes, the babysitter. This book has a heck of an opener. In October night in 1993, six year old Ben is standing in the kitchen in a pool of blood with a dead body at his feet.
Then we immediately jump back to the beginning of the night when Eleanor Mazinski leaves her two [00:13:00] kids, Ben and 12 year old Mira, in the care of 17 year old Amy, an experienced sitter and horror film buff. Amy suffers from anxiety and panic attacks, and strangely enough finds comfort in horror films because of their predictability.
And if you've watched horror films from the 70s to 80s, you know they are very predictable and many can border on comedy. She takes her job as a sitter very seriously, and as kids go, the Mazinski kids are pretty easy compared to others she's dealt with. Amy's looking forward to later in the evening, after the kids go to bed, when her boyfriend Miles comes over,
which Eleanor did consent to, to watch Night of the Living Dead and Halloween, a couple of Amy's favorites. Things go a little sideways when Miles shows up earlier than expected with his older brother and girlfriend, Amy's former sitter Sadie, and her sister Tess in tow. Amy is furious. Between the mysterious phone calls and talk of the recent rash of break ins in town, with ominous carvings left behind, [00:14:00] Amy finally has had enough and makes everyone leave.
Now alone with the kids upstairs, and finally dark outside, she decides to turn on Halloween to decompress, and that's when knocks at the door start. Dun, dun,
dun.
This book takes place over one night. Clocking in at just under 200 pages, this can easily be read in one sitting. It moves back and forth during that evening with points of view of six year old Ben and Amy.
It is full of references and nods to the horror movies of the 70s and 80s, especially Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street. While a thriller, it does lean into horror territory in the second half of the book. The moving back and forth in time, while important to character development, does lessen the tension and suspense when breaks in action go on a little too long.
I would recommend this to anyone who's a fan of the Halloween movies, the Final Girl trope in general, or have read and enjoyed The Babysitter Lives by Stephen Graham Jones. Much like Amy, Ben, and Mira, I would recommend [00:15:00] enjoying a hot slice of pizza with this one. One of my favorite pizzas is Big City Pizza here in Nicholasville.
Their Tipsy Chicken is my go to, with its beer cheese base, chicken, bacon, and bourbon glaze.
Carrie: Mm hmm.
Jacqueline: Sounds good.
Michael: Very, very good.
Carrie: Can I see the cover? Did you bring the cover?
Michael: I did.
Carrie: Oh yeah, that looks very nostalgic, that cover, something about that pink font.
Michael: Yeah.
Carrie: It's very 90s.
Michael: And the, the faux little creases at the top.
Carrie: Yeah. And, I, I feel like the, the Babysitter's Club books, these came out in the 80s, right? Or
Michael: Probably. I know they were very popular still in the 90s.
Carrie: Yeah,
Jacqueline: I remember the 90s.
Carrie: Oh, okay.
Michael: I feel like they even turned into a movie or TV show at one point, too.
Carrie: Yeah.
Jacqueline: Oh, yeah. They were still popular in the 2000s.
Michael: Really?
Jacqueline: Yeah. At the pub, well, I worked at a public library and they were still [00:16:00] fairly popular.
Michael: And just thinking, like You know, about the nineties and technology. Like all they, all she had was a, is a phone, a cord
phone. That's it.
Jacqueline: But that was, R.L. Stine has a babysitter. He has a lot of babysitters in his horror books.
Michael: I love, I love those, the Goosebumps series got me hooked.
Jacqueline: Oh yeah.
Michael: Love those. And then, you know, transition to the Fear Street series when I got to a little older grades there. But yeah, that's,
Jacqueline: a lot
of babysitters are terrorized in horror books.
Michael: They are.
Jacqueline: The babysitters alone. The kids are upstairs.
Michael: Oh yeah. That's an old trope.
Carrie: With the librarians.
Michael: Librarians coming. Where's your book?
Jacqueline: That's who's at the door. That's funny.
Michael: Stephen King does have a, I think it's a novella or short story called The Library Policeman. [00:17:00] I haven't read it yet.
Jacqueline: Oh, interesting.
Michael: But, I need to. I have to see what that's about.
Carrie: So, yeah, do you know what the premise is?
Michael: I want to say it's kind of like, you ever seen that Seinfeld episode where Jerry Seinfeld has a book, it's like the Cancer of Capricorn or the Tropic of Cancer or something book he's had like overdue for years and the library policeman comes and tries to get it back or get him to pay for it.
Jacqueline: Oh, I remember that.
Michael: I want to say it's kind of along those lines, but I guess a little more horror, but.
Jacqueline: We kind of deserve that one, in a way. Just bring it back, that's all we ask.
Michael: Or else.
Jacqueline: Or else.
Carrie: Not here though, no fines, you can just bring it back.
Jacqueline: That's true, yeah. But I mean.
Carrie: Over the years, yeah.
Jacqueline: Over the years.
Michael: Yeah.
Carrie: So, the book I read [00:18:00] was Now is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson. In the summer of 1996, 16 year old Frankie Budge meets a boy at the local pool in Coalfield, Tennessee. Zeke and his mom are staying with his grandmother for the summer because his father's been having an affair. Frankie's own parents are divorced, and she lives with her mom and three older triplet brothers.
Zeke and Frankie are both awkward, bored kids who yearn to become artists, yet feel isolated from their peers because of it. " Why," Frankie wonders, "was true art so hard to make? Why did it never turn out quite the way that you envisioned it? Why were Zeke and I doomed to live the life of an artist?"
Together, they create a poster, with Zeke illustrating it and Frankie writing its haunting, mysterious words: [00:19:00] "The Edge is a shanty town, filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us. " They make copies to hang around town using the copy machine Frankie's brothers stole years ago.
No one much notices at first, but Frankie and Zeke make more and more copies and start to hang posters everywhere, including at an abandoned house where other teens hang out. When a couple fails to come home after a party there, they make up a story inspired by the poster, telling the police they were kidnapped by the fugitives to avoid getting into trouble.
Soon things spin out of control as Coalfield is caught up in a moral panic. Vigilantes roam the town, hunting the supposed fugitives, and people start coming from all over to see the posters and hang up their own copies. People even die. Zeke gets [00:20:00] spooked the wilder things get, but Frankie is obsessed and wants to hang up more copies.
Can they maintain their relationship, or will the thing that brought them together also tear them apart? Intertwined with the story are chapters from the grown up Frankie's point of view. Now a successful author with a husband and young daughter, Frankie gets a phone call from a New Yorker writer who wants to interview her about the posters.
Frankie has never told anyone about her involvement, and she must decide if she's ready to come clean. This moving, character driven story perfectly captures the aching, lonely feeling of being a teenager who doesn't quite fit in. It also perfectly captures a time when the internet was still in its infancy, and a time when kids could still be bored.
The events of that summer likely wouldn't happen in today's hyper connected world and its short news cycle. As Frankie notes, " I [00:21:00] guess I should say that this was all before you could just Google anyone and anything and actually get results. I had barely even used the internet at this point."
The novel's dialogue is strong, the writing witty. One of the jokes is that Caulfield is so backward, they're even behind the times in their moral panics, with the satanic panic of the 1980s long over. And what would the 1990s, or the 1980s for that matter, be without Little Debbie Snack Cakes?
Michael: Mmm.
Carrie: Frankie's house is well stocked with them, and she and Zeke often eat them in between poster runs. I would say to pair this with what was always my favorite, the fudge brownie with English walnuts, apparently discontinued a couple of years ago.
Michael: I remember those. Those were good.
Carrie: Yeah! They were like the best one!
Michael: Wow.
Carrie: I feel like a part of my childhood has [00:22:00] died because of that. I was telling my mom about that and she was like, those were the best ones! I also did not realize until recently that Little Debbie is headquartered in East Tennessee. So, they're actually an Appalachian snack company.
Michael: Right next to Bush's Baked Beans.
Carrie: Oh, Bush's?
Michael: Yeah, they're right, like, not too
far from Let's see, I saw like Gatlinburg or somewhere.
Carrie: Oh, okay, yeah.
Michael: Near there?
Carrie: Mm hmm. Yeah, I think this is near Chattanooga.
Michael: Okay. I didn't know they were near Chattanooga.
Carrie: Mm hmm.
Jacqueline: Maybe they'll bring the brownies out from the vault.. Sometimes they do have snack cakes that they only bring out like at certain times a year.
Like they have a brownie that comes out during, around Valentine's Day. I don't know. And then at Halloween they have, they have a special pumpkin one, so maybe they'll
Carrie: [00:23:00] We can only hope.
Jacqueline: We can only hope they'll bring those brownies back.
I love brownies with walnuts. What is it with walnuts and brownies?
That's such a good combination. Mm hmm. Now you have to make them for the next Books and Bites.
Carrie: Well, I mean, I can, I can make a brownie, but it's not going to taste like a Little Debbie brownie.
Jacqueline: Shucks. But your book kind of has a little bit of a horror aspect to it with the, sounds like to me.
Carrie: Well, it's not so much that there is scary stuff happening. It's that people interpret, like, people's imaginations run wild about these posters.
You know, these kids just did it for, like, an art project because they wanted to, you know, they wanted people to notice them because they were like, they felt invisible in their community, in their [00:24:00] small town. And it just was taken in a completely different way.
Michael: Because that was the first thing that popped in my head, my mind was, Satanic panic.
Carrie: Yes. Or Yeah. And my, you know, I don't really remember it that much, but my husband is from Greenville, South Carolina, which is where a lot of that started. So he really remembers the, uh, you know, Bob Jones University is in Greenville. And so he really remembers a lot about the satanic panic. I mean, remember like Tipper Gore and the warning labels on.
Jacqueline: It's funny how that we used to communicate so much in so many different ways now, whereas now it's mostly just the internet and signs, just like the milk carton, you know, like looking for those missing children on milk cartons. I mean, they don't do that anymore, but, you know, [00:25:00] we used to be more creative, where now it's just like, oh, just stick it on the internet.
Mm hmm.
Michael: Yeah, anybody can put anything on the internet now.
Jacqueline: This is true.
Carrie: Yeah, and putting it on the internet doesn't guarantee that the people you want to see it are going to see it, you know? A lot of that's controlled by algorithms, and
Jacqueline: Well, that's true.
Carrie: So I think there is, you know, a realization about that.
I know, I mean, bands still hang flyers. That's still, that's still a big part of promoting events, I think. We still have people hang up flyers in our community space.
Jacqueline: That's, oh, that's true.
Carrie: But yeah, it's not as prevalent.
Jacqueline: It was fun going back to the 90s.
Carrie: Yes.
Jacqueline: For a short time, right?
Michael: Yeah.
Carrie: Yeah.
Michael: Totally. As if.
OMG. That was the bomb dot com. Was that 90s?
Jacqueline: Netscape was 90s. Remember [00:26:00] Netscape?
Michael: Yeah.
Jacqueline: It was the first, one of the first, it was actually more popular than like Google. Netscape was like one of the first ones that like gained popularity as far as internet. But I guess they just couldn't keep up with the bigger companies took over.
Michael: I remember in middle school, one of my friends had a computer, which was like, it's the most exciting thing ever. So we, you know, I spent the night there and like we stayed up all night and we just use like, what was the search engines then? It's like Lycos. Was it Ask Jeeves? We were just like, searching things all night and playing these weird little games.
Jacqueline: Well, Yahoo! used to be really
Michael: Yahoo! yeah, that was another one. I think this was before Google was
Carrie: Yeah, I think so.
Jacqueline: I mean, it's still around, but
What was that one that was like, there was one that was really popular in the 90s, it was kind of like, kind of like a sexy email.
Michael: Oh, Hotmail?
Jacqueline: Hotmail.
Carrie: [00:27:00] Sexy.
Michael: Sexy email.
Carrie: That's funny.
[Laughter.]
Jacqueline: What would you call that? I should've used the word spicy.
Michael: Spicy.
Jacqueline: Too late now.
Carrie: No, no, that was funny..
Michael: It's a sexy email.
Jacqueline: Sexy hotmail.
Carrie: Thanks for listening to the Books and Bites podcast. To learn more about Books and Bites Bingo, visit us at jesspublib. org forward slash books hyphen 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, [00:28:00] adoorforadesk.com