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Books and Bites
JCPL librarians bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them.
Books and Bites Podcast, Ep. 100
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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. This is our hundredth episode of Books and Bites.
Michael: Woo hoo.
Jacqueline: Yay. That's awesome.
Carrie: I know I've been on Books and Bites since the beginning. Michael, you've been on since 2019.
Michael: Mm-hmm.
Jacqueline, you're the most recent?
Jacqueline: Mm-hmm.
Carrie: Co-host.
Jacqueline: I think my anniversary's coming up in July, I believe.
Carrie: Oh, okay.
Jacqueline: And I think it's two years now.
Carrie: Okay. That sounds about right.
Jacqueline: Yeah. And
Carrie: so what has been your favorite aspect of being on the podcast?
Jacqueline: For me, I usually tend to read the same authors and the same genres. And with the bingo, it really challenged [00:01:00] me to read outside of my normal reading, and I always enjoy what I, what I picked too. So I think it's a, a good way to broaden your horizons.
Carrie: Mm-hmm.
Michael: Yeah, same. You know, reading books in translation, I don't usually go towards, like this month poetry. I also enjoy promoting one of my favorite genres, the horror genre, and, you know, discussing books with, a couple other librarians here.
Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's one of my favorite things.
Like we don't really, you know, get to do that very much, with our colleagues. It used to be, when I first started working here, you know, we had the big reference desk out in the middle of the library, and we were all kind of out there together. And so there were like three different reference librarians out there at the same time.
Jacqueline: Oh, wow.
Carrie: And so we did a little bit more of that, of sharing books and talking about books. We weren't necessarily reading the same books, but just talking about them [00:02:00] together. And so this is a, a nice way for us to do that, and then we get to share it with all of you. So, yeah.
Michael: I mean, we have a job where we, where we get to read.
Jacqueline: Yeah. That's true.
Carrie: Yeah.
Jacqueline: And even if you do the bingo and, and you don't wanna go outside your horizons, you can almost make, a genre of fit. Like we had a co-host Adam. He used to always do manga, but he would make it fit the prompt. So, you know, you don't have to go totally outside your comfort zone and still you can participate.
Carrie: That's right. Yeah. I, I still remember when he chose a biography, a manga biography, but it was about a cat.
Michael: Yes. That one has always stuck in my head.
Jacqueline: So we're,
Michael: that was a real stretch.
Jacqueline: Yeah. We're pretty flexible, right?
Carrie: Yeah.
Jacqueline: On what we'll accept for the bingo.
Carrie: But we haven't always done the bingo challenge or a challenge.
on [00:03:00] Books and Bites. When we first started, we were just giving book recommendations. So that kind of, we started doing that When Melissa was on the podcast. Did we start it when you were on, or had we started it before that?
Michael: Man, I think it was right around when I came on, it was either right before or that year we had started it,
the reading challenge. I wanna say I was, it was, yeah. One of the first things I did was, I think it was that,
Carrie: okay.
Michael: First reading challenge, so,
Jacqueline: The Books and Bites brand is also expanding. We're going to have a program at the Unify Coffee Shop. And so we're gonna meet, we'll buy you a, a treat and talk about books and read silently for a while.
It'll be a lot of fun.
Michael: So that will be happening on Thursday, April 17th at Unified Coffee from 6:30 to 7:30 PM.
Carrie: Yeah. So it'll be a chance for you to do a little silent reading, but also to [00:04:00] interact with some other book lovers if, if you are so inclined.
Michael: And enjoy a coffee or a little snacky snack with us.
Carrie: April is National Poetry Month and to celebrate, we're discussing books of poetry and novels in verse. We have done this prompt before, but it's always a particular favorite of mine because it gives me a chance to catch up on a little bit of the poetry sitting in my TBR pile that I don't always get to.
What about you all?
Michael: I enjoy poetry. I just haven't done a lot of it since I graduated college.
Jacqueline: Yeah.
Michael: But I always enjoy the prompts. I mean, I do enjoy it.
Jacqueline: Yeah. I like listening to the, to poetry and I wish I could write poetry, but we actually, not very much of a poet, but we have a poet here on our...
Carrie, how many books have you written? Quite a few on poetry, right?
Carrie: Well, I have one full length collection and then one chat book, which was a collaboration [00:05:00] with an artist friend of mine. So, yeah. And I don't always get to read it as much as I would like. So hopefully you'll like some of our recommendations.
Michael: Yeah, there's a bunch of cool stuff out there. There's one we talked about not too long ago, it might have been a year or two ago when we did it last, the, erasure poetry where you, you do like a text or something?
Carrie: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Jacqueline: You take out certain words to form.
Carrie: Mm-hmm.
Michael: That's, that's really cool.
Jacqueline: Yeah. Teens really like doing that. It's kind of a fun way to like, do poetry that's not, not too stressful.
Yeah. I read a, what was it? It was like a, a poet, he had taken, I wanna say the Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, and taken words from that text and made poetry out of it, which I thought was a very interesting, uh, thing.
I didn't know you could do that.
Carrie: Yeah. And I think actually I'm, I don't know if I mentioned this on the podcast, but I [00:06:00] remember telling you about this before one of my favorite books is a book of visual poetry and she erased, Stephen King's Misery.
Michael: Yes.
Jacqueline: Oh Wow.
Carrie: And so she uses collage, on the poems to kind of
combine visuals and text, and I've been doing some of that myself. I've been erasing a, an etiquette book from 1937 and have started to publish those, but I use more, embroidery, which I think I might have talked about before, embroidering on paper,
Jacqueline: you, yeah,
Carrie: on the podcast.
Jacqueline: Yeah. You did talk about that. I remember.
Carrie: I did want to mention we received a recommendation from a Books and Bites listener who sent this email into us. And her name is Kristin. She is participating in the Books and Bites Challenge, and she recommends What Kind of a Woman by Kate [00:07:00] Baer and Kristin says, "This is a great read for women in general, although men should definitely read it too,
especially for mothers. I identify deeply with several of these poems as a mom, wife, and a woman. I highly recommend it. Kate touches on something for everyone. I actually read it aloud to my husband, and there were passages that really spoke to him as well on the parental level." Again, that's What Kind of a Woman by Kate Baer, and she is a poet that I follow on Instagram and she uses erasure too.
She gets a lot of hate messages like through her Instagram , and they're often from men who are like offended by her, I guess feminist viewpoint and she will erase them and turn them into poems.
Michael: That is awesome. That's like the ultimate troll.
Jacqueline: Oh wow. Yeah. That is cool that she's able to do that.
Carrie: Yeah. All [00:08:00] right, well hopefully you'll, um, get some new recommendations from us on this episode.
Michael: This month I read Frank X Walker's newest book of poetry Load in Nine Times, which refers to the nine step drill to load and fire a musket during the Civil War. This historical poetry collection by the former poet laureate of Kentucky takes you from the days of slavery in Kentucky to reconstruction and beyond.
He takes you into the lives of the US Colored Troops, including his own ancestors, mustered at Camp Nelson, into the lives of their loved ones. I haven't done much poetry, reading or studying since my English slit days in college. But what I enjoy about poetry is how like art, it tries to evoke emotion and a better and understanding of the world around us.
And this collection really excels at both of those things. Walker humanizes the African American experience during the Civil War by weaving historical documents and [00:09:00] figures into his poetry, bringing the history to life. Why I Don't Stand weaves original lyrics from My Old Kentucky Home and text from the 1853 slave trade ad. Grove and Catch Me
if You Can, are based on historical photos. There are a couple of poems towards the end of the collection, Proud Boys and Oathkeeper that I felt were very powerful by connecting the history presented in this collection to what is happening present day. This collection is even more poignant since much of what Walker presents didn't just happen in the Commonwealth Kentucky, but just down the road at Camp Nelson.
Much like Rednecks, this book had me frequently going to Google to look up several events that were left outta history books, especially the massacre of Fort Pillow, Saltville, and Simpsonville. I studied the Civil War for a long time, but knew next to nothing about those awful events. Coffee was a very important staple for the Union Army.
So I pair this with a cup of black coffee from one of my favorite roasters, Sunergos Coffee, located in Louisville. My favorite is the Tanzania Peaberry Lyamungo, a medium roast with [00:10:00] some awesome flavors of molasses, cacao, blackberry, and hazelnut.
Carrie: Mm, yeah, that sounds good. I also read, not for the podcast, but I also read Load in Nine Times, and.
Some of that history about Camp Nelson, you know, I kind of knew from doing the Jeman History Walks podcast, but I thought he did a really good job of researching and putting that research into that form.
Michael: Yeah, like, I mean, even if you like know, I don't know much about Camp Nelson, but I feel like I have
a little better understanding of it. What happened there and sending the, the refugees out the middle of winter. I mean . It's a heavy book. It's, it's a heavy collection. But important one, I think, especially in Kentucky history.
Carrie: Mm-hmm. And I know he's done a couple of events at Camp Nelson, since publishing the book,
Michael: really.
Carrie: I think he did a, a reading at Camp Nelson and then they always do a, well, not, not always, I guess since it has become a national [00:11:00] monument, they have done a memorial walk to memorialize the people who died when they were, kicked out, the women and children and other refugees who were kicked out of Camp Nelson and, you know, the freezing cold.
And this was by the US Army. And I think he participated in that and gave, a reading as well. So. There may be, you know, there may be other opportunities to hear him read Camp Nelson.
Michael: Yeah, I would love to go if I, if I see him, I'll have to check that out and see. Because I would love to hear him read these live.
Carrie: I read Beowulf, the most recent translation, translated by Maria Dahvana Headley, and I've been wanting to read this translation ever since I read Headley's novel, The Mere Wife. I. A book, which [00:12:00] I've discussed on the podcast before. And The Mere Wife is a Beowulf adaptation that focuses on Grendel's mother and resets the story in a contemporary setting. In Headley's retelling, Grendel's mother is a veteran with PTSD, a fierce warrior who will do what she can to protect her son.
Headley never planned to publish a translation of Beowulf, but as she states in her acknowledgements, people began asking her about it after she published The Mere Wife. With a couple of other exceptions, most translations of Beowulf have been written by men like the me wife. Headley's translation upends some of the traditional patriarchal depictions in the epic poem. For example, where Grendel's mother has usually been translated as a monster or troll.
Headley sees her as a grieving mother seeking revenge. "Now his mother was here, " the translation reads, [00:13:00] "carried on a wave of wrath, crazed with sorrow,/ looking for someone to slay, someone to pay in pain for her heart's loss." Headley's use of contemporary language and idiom upends tradition too.
The first word of the poem usually translated as some variation of "Lo!" is actually, "Bro!" That one word tells you everything you need to know about what is to come. The stuffy epic I struggled to get through in high school suddenly becomes a tale full of swagger and braggadocio, the kind of story men tell each other while swigging beer on a bar stool.
Beowulf the warrior becomes even a tad ridiculous, less a hero, and more a dude who's seeking fame and fortune, Headley's language kept me engaged and laughing through the entire book with her clever turns of phrase. Although she takes some [00:14:00] liberties with the original form, she still relies extensively on Anglo-Saxon alliteration.
Here's a description of Hrothgar's queen, Wealtheow, welcoming Beowulf and his men to their beer hall: "She went round,/ a Helming hostess, treading with purpose, rings shining,/ beer- sounding soldiers, old and young, both of her own house/ and the sea slayers', goblet held to her breast. Hashtag: blessed."
Not really what you expect in a translation of Beowulf,
Jacqueline: that's not what I would've expected.
Michael: Yeah,
Carrie: So if you are a fantasy or action adventure fan, you'll find plenty to keep you entertained, including battles between men, monsters, and dragons. This book would also count for [00:15:00] the books in translation prompt.
I usually skip introductions, but I recommend reading this one for a fascinating glimpse into Headley's thought processes, as well as historical background on the text. I. Apparently other Beowulf translations distinguish between mead, ale, and beer, but Headley just uses the word beer, which seems pretty fitting for the tone.
Pair Beowulf with your favorite Bro-ey beer, whether that's a Coors Light or a craft beer.
Michael: PBR.
Carrie: Yeah, that was one that came into my mind as a bro-ey beer too.
Michael: Oh yeah.
Jacqueline: Oh, that's nasty beer. I don't like it at all. I think there's a bar in Savannah that that's the beer that everyone loves to get that beer because Jimmy Carter drank beer there. And
Michael: that's the house beer or something?
Jacqueline: Yeah, it's like the house, house beer.
And we ordered one [00:16:00] and I was like, oh, I can't,
Michael: it's not for everybody.
Jacqueline: That's not for everybody.
Michael: Wow. And so it, it takes place still during like medieval times. Wow. Yeah.
Carrie: Yeah. I can't really say, you know, it's been so long since I've read Beowulf and I don't think I read the whole thing. Like in school I read like part of it.
Yeah. So I can't say, you know, exact, it seems to follow the action. My husband and I were talking about it 'cause he had read The Seamus Heaney version, translation of it. And so it seemed like the action kind of followed the action that he remembered. But she does, you know, like I said, especially the female characters, she gives them, and I don't even know if I would say she gives them, because it's hard to say what kind of agency they had in the original, you know, this was a text that was an oral text.
Michael: Yeah.
Carrie: And [00:17:00] you know, it didn't actually get written down for, you know, I don't know, maybe at least a hundred years after the story first originated. Mm-hmm. But, you know, having a woman translate it, does give a different point of view, I guess.
Michael: Oh yeah.
Jacqueline: Oh yeah.
Michael: Yeah, I think I'm gonna have to read that one.
That one said
Carrie: it was fun and it, and it didn't take as long as I thought it was going to to read it. You know, you can, you know, just a couple hours really. You can, you can read it.
Michael: Didn't you read The Mere Wife for Books and Bites?
Carrie: I did.
Michael: That sounded familiar.
Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I, and I love that book too.
So, yeah, you could go down a hole, Beowulf rabbit hole. I think you might like that one too.
Michael: Yeah. Okay.
Carrie: So then I also just wanted to mention a couple of other poetry collections that people might be interested in because they're Kentucky writers, and especially if you don't read a lot of poetry.
The first one is The Spoons [00:18:00] in the Grass are There to Dig a Moat by Amelia Martens. And, she is a Paducah- based poet and this book is a book of highly musical prose poems that might be a good way to ease into poetry if you don't normally read it. Though published in 2016, the poems still feel highly relevant to this moment.
They're about life in the Anthropocene: how to live, raise a daughter and find beauty in a world with war, gun violence and climate change. And then the second one is The Bearable Slant of Light by Lynnell Edwards. And she is going to be on the next episode, episode 43 of Prompt to Page, which will release on April 21st.
So her book would also qualify for the a book by a Prompt to Page author prompt. In this book she writes [00:19:00] about her son's mental health crisis and eventual diagnosis with bipolar disease as a college student. And she uses her son's medical records, therapy, transcripts, and medications, as well as first person poems to convey his struggle with mental illness.
So you kind of really get a closeup view.
It's almost like a, like a documentation. And then other poems are about other artists or writers who have struggled with mental illness. So it's a very powerful collection and I don't know if I mentioned it, but she is from Louisville. So there's a couple more options.
Jacqueline: Yeah, yeah. I need to read more from Kentucky authors. I think, know we have quite a few in, in that, write YA as well.
Carrie: Oh yeah. Well, I mean we've had 43 mostly Kentucky poets on Prompt to Page, so, yeah. So, yeah. And you know, I keep thinking, are we gonna run out [00:20:00] of writers? Nope.
Jacqueline: How do you find all the writers?
Carrie: Well, some, I just know, some, you know, it's a partnership with the Carnegie Center, so, between the two of us, you know, a a lot of the authors have done some sort of class with the Carnegie Center or teach, you know, regularly at the Carnegie Center. So, yeah, so there's different ways.
Jacqueline: Sounds like a great collaboration.
Carrie: Oh yeah, it is. I think it's a good way, you know, to bring the kind of programming that the Carnegie Center usually does out to people who maybe can't get to the Carnegie Center, which is in Lexington. So, you know, not everybody from who lives here in Jessamine County can make that trip regularly. And, yeah.
Jacqueline: The book I chose for this month's prompt is Alone, A middle grade novel in [00:21:00] verse by Megan E. Freeman. Freeman uses a variety of prose and poetry forms in her writing. I found that many of the passages that refer to nature tend to be more lyrical than others. The main character, 12-year-old Maddie, shifts alternative weeks from her two parents.
She feels that she does not find much time for herself. Longing for a getaway, Maddie comes up with a scheme to spend a secret weekend with her two best friends at her grandmother's empty apartment. Maddie's plans go awry and she ends up by herself at her grandparents' apartment. When she wakes up in her small Colorado town, it is empty.
Everyone is mysteriously gone, but Maddie is not too concerned knowing that her parents would never leave her behind. However, she begins to worry when she discovers her parents' cell phones abandoned in a massive pile of phones. At this point, she begins to really worry when she comes to the realization that both sets of parents might believe she's with the other. [00:22:00] They might not know she's missing, especially if they've been evacuated to separate locations.
When she finds the neighbor's pet Rottweiler named George, she believes that everyone will be back in a few days. As months pass, Maddie faces the fact that she must learn to survive on her own. Alone, she faces puberty, wild animals, looters, floods, and fires. Prior to the evacuation, Maddie's brother asked for help with his thesis on what challenge would be the hardest to overcome for the protagonist of the historical fiction novel, the Island of the Blue Dolphins.
For those of you who are not familiar with the Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell, it is based on a Native American woman who was accidentally left behind on San Nicholas Island in 1835. When the last of the native inhabitants were conveyed to the mainland at the request of the Santa Barbara Mission Priest, she survived for 18 years by resourcefully, catching her own food, making her own clothes, and building her own shelter.
Maddie thought at the time, finding food and water would be the biggest challenge, but as months go [00:23:00] by, Maddie wonders if loneliness and isolation will be her biggest challenge. How long can she survive alone with only George for company? For my bites, I found a recipe for grilled cheese sandwich served with fresh tomatoes.
Since most of George and Maddie's meals are opened from the can opener, Maddie dreams of a grilled cheese sandwich with sliced tomatoes and wakes up with the slobbered-on pillow. At least she didn't eat the pillow. And I selected a recipe for Sourdough Four Cheese Sandwich from Front Rage Fed, which incidentally recommends it be served with freshed tomatoes.
Michael: Sounds good.
Carrie: It does.
Jacqueline: I always have tomato soup with my grilled cheese, but made fresh tomatoes from Indiana would be good.
Carrie: I loved the Island of the Blue Dolphins when I was a kid. That was one of my favorite books.
Jacqueline: Really?
Carrie: Yeah. Have you ever read it?
Jacqueline: I don't remember ever [00:24:00] reading it, but she refers to it quite often in this book. And I think, it seems to be kind of based on that. On that novel. Well, she actually says somewhere, I think the author talks about how it was based on that.
On that novel, but it's an actual true story that they evacuated the whole tribe, except for her.
Carrie: Mm-hmm.
Jacqueline: And she, I don't know why she got missed or whatever, but she spent 18 years alone.
Carrie: Yeah.
Michael: Geez.
Jacqueline: Yeah, and I don't think she had a Rottweiler.
Carrie: No. I mean, it's been a long time since I've read it, so I don't really remember. Mm-hmm. Too much about it, but I just remember really liking it.
Jacqueline: Yeah.
Carrie: So what was the verse like?
Jacqueline: It seemed almost read like a book, unless she was like talking about like she somehow almost drowned in this, this flood, and she had to like, and she's like drowning.
It's taking her away and she's like having to reach for a branch, and that became a lot more lyrical. She's like, she's like, "pull up, [00:25:00] pull up" as she's trying to pull herself from the water that's drowning her. Well, she survived though, the water . And it seemed like she talked about like, she'd planted a garden and she talked about the fresh foods and that became more of a, as nature, she started to appreciate nature and she usually wrote that more in a poetic form I thought.
Carrie: Mm-hmm. So you can have adventure stories in poetry as well too, all these years on from Beowulf.
There is a sequel, Away, and I have not read it, but it's actually told with four different, in four different perspectives, so that might be interesting.
Cool.
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 [00:26:00] 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.