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We're kicking off the New Year with Books and Bites Bingo, our new reading challenge! Learn more about it and get recommendations for great books about books for your bingo sheet.
Books and Bites
JCPL librarians bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them.
1_23 Books and Bites
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[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 co-hosts, Michael Cunningham and Jacqueline Cooper.
[00:00:12] Michael: Hello.
[00:00:13] Jacqueline: Hi everybody.
[00:00:15] Carrie: We're kicking off the new year with a new Books and Bites challenge, and this year we're changing it up a little with Books and Bites bingo.
[00:00:22] Michael: Ooh. Fun.
[00:00:25] Jacqueline: Yeah, it's gonna be fun.
[00:00:27] Carrie: Every time you get a Bingo, you'll earn a Books and Bites sticker and be able to enter a quarterly drawing for a $25 gift card to Joseph Beth booksellers. If you complete all the bingo squares and get a blackout, you'll earn a special Books and Bites enamel pin. We know from past giveaways that people love enamel pins.
[00:00:51] Michael: People love pins.
[00:00:51] Jacqueline: Yeah, they're hot right now.
[00:00:53] Carrie: And you'll qualify to enter the grand prize drawing for a Kindle Paperwhite or a $125 gift card to Joseph Beth booksellers. There are a lot more prompts to choose from with Bingo, but not all of them are to read a whole book. Jacqueline and Michael what are some of your favorite prompts that we have lined up.
[00:01:14] Michael: Let's see. The Gothic book, of course.
[00:01:18] Carrie: Mm-hmm.
[00:01:18] Michael: is one. I'm looking to looking forward to reading. Adventure story, next month's prompt, the Afrofuturism or Afro fantasy book,
[00:01:30] Carrie: and you know, you're talking about next month, but that's just because we're, as in past issues of the podcast, we, we cover one of the prompts every month, but you don't have to read along with us.
[00:01:45] Michael: Yes. Sorry, I'm stuck in that old mindset.
[00:01:46] Carrie: Yeah. . You can, you can read in any order you want but in order to provide you some recommendations, we already have picked out what month we're doing what.
[00:01:58] Michael: Yes, yes.
[00:01:59] Jacqueline: Yeah, I'm interested in reading a book outside. I think that would be fun. And of course, I always like fantasy books.
So a book about magic would be
[00:02:08] Michael: Yes.
[00:02:08] Jacqueline: One I'm interested in, in reading. And adventure, like Michael, I, I do like adventure books as well. What about you, Carrie? What are you looking forward to?
[00:02:20] Carrie: I am interested in the set in or about Appalachia. That's one that that I like to do. I also am excited about an epistolary book which is a
[00:02:33] Michael: yes,
[00:02:34] Carrie: a book written in letters because Michael and I have tried to do that one for a while now.
And Adam always nixed it
So I'm glad Jacqueline was up for an epistolary book.
[00:02:50] Michael: Thanks, Jackie.
[00:02:51] Jacqueline: You're welcome. I, I think I've read one a long time ago, but it's, I, I'm willing to give it a new try.
[00:02:58] Michael: There's a bunch out there.
[00:02:59] Jacqueline: Another try. Yeah.
[00:03:00] Carrie: Mm-hmm. ,
[00:03:02] Jacqueline: also gothic fiction. I really like gothic fiction, so
[00:03:05] Carrie: Me too.
[00:03:06] Jacqueline: I wonder how much gothic fiction we actually have in our library.
[00:03:08] Michael: Oh, we've got a a bunch.
[00:03:09] Carrie: Oh yeah, I think, I think we, we'll have a lot to talk about.
[00:03:13] Michael: Cause that's definitely horror adjacent right there.
[00:03:15] Jacqueline: So. I may have to get some recommendations from you, Michael.
[00:03:19] Carrie: And then, you know, some of our prompts are things like, like you already mentioned, read outside or read a short story so
if you're short on time, you can just read one short story and that will count. And then some of them count double, like listen to an audiobook or read an ebook. So. Don't be intimidated by it. We've got lots of, lots of fun options. And one of them is listen to an episode of the Books and Bites podcast.
So if you're listening today, you've already
[00:03:52] Michael: Yep.
[00:03:52] Carrie: Completed a Books and Bites square.
[00:03:56] Jacqueline: Yay.
[00:03:57] Carrie: Today we're talking about the books about books square, which I think might be my favorite prompt because I feel like I read a lot of books about books just in general, and they're really available in just about any genre, including non-fiction.
I, I know they're, I've seen horror books about books. There's lots of fantasy about books and libraries. Non-fiction. A couple of non-fiction books that I've read in the past, The Library Book by Susan Orlean.
[00:04:30] Michael: That was really good.
[00:04:31] Carrie: I think I might have talked about it on the podcast. And then I know Melissa talked about 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanffe, and it's actually would qualify for the epistolary book too, because it's correspondence between a writer and a used book dealer.
And that's this, this really slim, really lovely book. . So there are lots of options. And we will post a bunch of those options on our website. So if you for some reason don't wanna read the three books we're gonna talk about today, then we'll, we'll have a lot of different options for you.
We are also, we've started a Books and Bites Facebook group, so you can exchange ideas with us and with other participants for the Bingo challenge this year. So we've got all kinds of good things in store for you.
[00:05:36] Michael: My book about books is Dark Archives: A Librarian's Investigation into the Science and the History of Books Bound In Human Skin by Megan Rosenblum, which intersects quite nicely with the darker subjects. I typically read about. This book delves into a surprising dark corner of the history books, anthropodermic bibliopegy, the fancy word .
[00:05:56] Carrie: Wait, what? .
[00:05:57] Michael: An anthrop. Yeah. It's the fancy word for books found in human skin. Coincidentally, I first discovered this macab practice at the same place as the author, the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. Here in this book, Megan Rosenblum, a medical librarian herself, examines how and why these books were created in the first place.
When she first encountered these books in Philly, they were all just alleged rumors passed down over time. No one had scientifically tested these beyond examining the hair follicle patterns on the binding, which isn't all that accurate. So the author with two scientists worked together to track down these books, rumored to be covered in human skin and libraries across the world, and tested them using peptide mass fingerprinting, which uses protein markers that can distinguish the family and even species of animals.
When it comes to humans, it can only distinguish down to the great ape family, since there isn't enough evolutionary time for specific markers. Since there hasn't been alleged book bound in the skin of another great ape, the books that test positive are most decidedly human. And along the way of her journey of distinguishing the real from the fakes, the author grapples with their existence and place in libraries.
Some librarians want them destroyed or buried, while others say with with the right context, they have a lot to teach us, especially in the medical field, since the author finds that many doctors were largely the ones to procure the skin from deceased patients in cadavers, to bind books as collector items for their own massive libraries.
But she also finds that there are exceptions like the imprisoned highway man in New England who requested his personal narrative to be bound in his own skin when he died. And as she goes on to explore the providence, a fancy library word for ownership of these anthropodermic books throughout the years, she reckons with how the history of medical science with its cold clinical gaze along with medicine's long history of exploitation of marginalized communities, created the right environment for these books to be created.
Interestingly enough, there are actually two of these so far 17 confirmed anthropodermic books located not too far from here in Cincinnati, Ohio. One at the Cincinnati Public Library and the other at the University of Cincinnati. Both books are poetry by Phyllis Wheatley. .
[00:08:11] Carrie: What?
[00:08:12] Michael: Yeah.
[00:08:13] Carrie: Oh my gosh.
[00:08:15] Michael: So they did this to, to create a collector's item, to make it more valuable.
Sometimes these doctors would just cut some skin and have it tanned and then just kind of save it till they have a book. They want to be bound in it.
[00:08:33] Carrie: Wow.
[00:08:34] Michael: Yeah.
[00:08:35] Carrie: Like where did they get the cadavers from?
[00:08:38] Michael: Most of 'em happened it seems to be in the, the 18th and 19th century. Mostly the 19th century.
So at hospitals, sick patients. In England, a lot of murderers. So one thing they would do for murderers to deter that crime would be to have them dissected and put it on display.
[00:09:02] Carrie: Oh my Gosh.
[00:09:02] Michael: So they used to put 'em in these I can't remember the term. They're like these giant, almost like a cage.
I can't remember the, the term for it. But they would put murderers in there after they had been hanged and you know, animals would just get at 'em. So instead of that, they'd give 'em to doctors to dissect.
[00:09:21] Carrie: Wow.
[00:09:22] Michael: Yeah. And also it would go into resurrectionists, if you ever heard of that term?
So doctors here, and I think also in England, the medical schools will need cadavers. . So resu, they needed bodies. And so people would dig up corpses and sell 'em to the doctors. And there was two that actually decided, well, if I could just murder people and I could just sell the freshest cadavers and make a bunch of money, it was it was a term.
It was what? James Burke, the last name was Burke, and they, that, that term of killing people in that fashion was called Burking in a
[00:10:01] Carrie: Oh wow.
[00:10:02] Michael: Where like, you pretty much like would smother them sometimes they would lay their body over 'em to smother 'em. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, medicine , there's a dark, pretty dark, dark side to it.
[00:10:16] Carrie: Yeah.
[00:10:16] Michael: As well. . So if you have an interest in the medical history or even like rare books and like in librarianship I would highly recommend checking this book out. We have it in our non-fiction collection and it's also currently available on Hoopla Digital as an eAudio book. So, with Cincinnati containing two of these Beder books, my pairing this month is a staple restaurant of the Queen City, Skyline Chili. And it just so happens that we have one right here in Nicholasville at Brannon Crossing.
I get the same thing every time, a four-way, which is spaghetti covered with chili and a mound of cheese, plus diced, onions, and two cheese cones, which has mustard chili, diced onions, and a mound of cheese as well. Delicious.
[00:11:04] Carrie: Okay. I see the pairing now, but I'm still not sure I could do it. . So you said these were collectors items, like so people sought out books bound in human skin?
[00:11:17] Michael: Oh, they still do. The laws regarding human remains and like doing. binding in, in human skin now, it depends on the state and the federal laws. It, that's really kind of, I guess, a gray area in the United States comparing, you know, what is human remains and what is something for like a I guess, , something made outta human remains.
I can't remember what that term was again. She used in the book, but apparently there is a lot of private collectors that have 'em. She thought there's, there's way more out there than what you think. When it comes to like, like she, some private collectors in France contacted her.
[00:11:56] Carrie: Mm-hmm. .
[00:11:58] Michael: And they wanted, a couple of 'em tested.
They, they were collectors of like occult books, so, you know, they've never found one in a occult book on witchcraft, whatever, been bound in human skin. But surprisingly enough there was a, an Edgar Allen Poe, The Gold Bug, that was bound in human skin, . So, but she found a book in the French library that from like, I wanna say the thirties, that pictures of just, , all kinds books that are in private collectors.
So, and in, in France their laws are a lot stricter, so those people might not be, care to come forward to have 'em tested.
[00:12:36] Carrie: Mm-hmm. .
[00:12:37] Michael: So because the, well, and also the peptide, mass fingerprinting, that is a destructive test. Even though it's very minuscule, they do have to take a piece of the book
[00:12:48] Carrie: mm-hmm.
[00:12:48] Michael: to, to test it. So, . It's very fascinating.
[00:12:53] Carrie: Yeah. I mean, I remember when that book came out, but it was one I decided to stay away from. But, but I'm glad that you read it cuz it does sound really interesting.
[00:13:05] Michael: Yeah. I think I, I requested for us to buy it and I've been meaning to read it for years and I'm finally glad I got to
[00:13:22] Carrie: So my book is The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki. While grieving his musician father's sudden, accidental death. 14 year old Benny Oh begins to hear objects speaking. The objects don't speak in words, but in sounds that can sometimes be sad, angry, and demanding. Meanwhile, Benny's mother Annabelle has begun hoarding objects to cope with her grief.
She is struggling to keep her job and to keep her and Benny's lives together. All those extra belongings she collects means at home is a very noisy and stressful place for Benny. Benny is eventually hospitalized in a pediatric psychiatry ward where he meets and develops a crush on a fellow patient and artist who calls herself the Aleph.
When Benny is released from the hospital, he takes refuge at the San Francisco Public Library. Reading in the library calms the voices. The Aleph finds sanctuary in the library too, and Benny reconnects with her and meets her mentor, an unhoused Slovenian poet who goes by the nickname, the B-Man, short for Bottleman. The Aleph, and the B-Man help Benny harness his voices and realize his own creative potential.
The novel moves back and forth between Benny's and Annabelle's points of view. It also includes chapters from the point of view of the Book, a Metafictional third wall voice that converses with Benny. In addition to the talking objects, there are other elements of magical realism, including crows who protect Anabelle, and a haunted book bindery inside the library.
if it sounds like there's a lot going on, there is. The Book of Form and Emptiness is a coming of age tale about books and libraries, but it's also about consumerism, grief, homelessness, and mental illness. Although the voice of the book sometimes feels like a trick, the novel is so empathetic, funny, and wise that I didn't mind the flaws.
The author portrays an urban library and its diverse mix of patrons very realistically, with writers, dreamers and professionals visiting alongside those needing Narcan injections in a safe, warm place. This is one of those books where I wanted to highlight practically every sentence, especially the ones about libraries, art and writing.
Here's one of my favorite passages from the B-man. "'Poetry is a problem of form and emptiness. Ze moment I put one word onto an empty page, I hef created a problem for myself. Ze poem that emerges is form trying to find a solution to my problem.' He sighed. 'In ze end, of course, there are no solutions, only more problems, but this is a good thing.
Without problems, there would be no poems.'" Anabelle wants to cook healthy meals for Benny and herself, but she's too overwhelmed to actually do it. Most nights she gets Chinese takeout instead: "Tonight, she declared, they were having a banquet. In addition to the spare ribs, she'd bought egg rolls, steamed dumplings, pork buns, Chongqing chicken and house special fried rice."
Pair The Book of Form and Emptiness with your favorite Chinese takeout. I love the Ma Po Tofu and Garlic Green Beans at Panda Cuisine in Lexington. But if you'd like to make the dishes yourself, you'll find both in Diana Koan's The Chinese Takeout Cookbook: Quick and Easy Dishes to Prepare At Home. It's available in print at JCPL or on the Libby app.
[00:17:16] Michael: I love Chinese takeout. I was thinking about getting that tonight actually.
[00:17:23] Carrie: you got a good place you get it from?
[00:17:25] Michael: Right at, right over here by Kroger. The, is it the Great Wall? Is it Great Wall, China King. That's what it is, China King.
[00:17:33] Carrie: Okay.
[00:17:33] Michael: That's really pretty. That's really good takeout.
[00:17:36] Carrie: That's, Kelly got some the other day and she said that's where she got it from. Panda Cuisine,
have you ever been there, Jacqueline?
[00:17:45] Jacqueline: No.
[00:17:45] Michael: Where?
[00:17:46] Carrie: It's on Nicholasville Road. But it's actually like, from what I understand, it's actually real Chinese food.
[00:17:54] Michael: Yes. I've been there a couple years ago. It was like Chinese China television like and like, I
was like, wow.
[00:18:01] Carrie: They are, they are really good.
Another place we like in Lexington is Asian Wind, which is like the corner of Harrodsburg and Man O War, and they have a lot of like, you know, the typical, the classic Chinese takeout, but they do a lot of vegetarian and vegan versions. So they get, there's a lot of the things that like orange chicken, but it's made with kwachic.
It's really good . That's a good comfort food, Chinese place. But anyway. I think any of those would go with this book, which has a lot going on, but was very rewarding at the same time.
[00:18:39] Jacqueline: Yeah, my book has quite a bit going on too. There seems like there's like three plots going on, which makes it really hard to write about.
[00:18:47] Carrie: It does.
[00:18:47] Jacqueline: So I did struggle quite a bit with this one, so I hope
[00:18:51] Carrie: it does.
[00:18:53] Jacqueline: I hope everyone will bear with me on this .
[00:18:55] Carrie: I'm sure it's fine.
[00:19:07] Jacqueline: For this month's prompt, a book about a book, I selected The Book Jumper by Mechthild Gläser. The setting is a fictional island in Scotland called Stormsay. One of the main characters, Amy and Amy's mother, Alexis Lennox, live in Germany. They have been having a tough go of things. Amy is suffering from bullying and her mother from a broken heart.
They both decide they need to get away and recover from some of their trauma. Amy has a past history of running away, and in this instance, Amy is returning to the place where she grew up and she didn't have to face the harsher realities of life. I believe the author uses this trope to emphasize the genre of escapist literature.
As readers, we often use literature to immerse ourselves in a fictional reality to escape our troubles and problems, even if it is just for a little while. So I think this, this is a pretty unique premise. As Amy and her mother prepare to leave for Scotland, we learn that Amy is a huge reader. She can't bear to be apart from her beloved books. So much so,
she has more books in her suitcase than clothes. When they get to Stormsay, Amy learns that from her grandmother, Lady Mareid, about a secret library, which has text over 2000 years old and come from the famous library of Alexandria. The library is owned by two families, the Lennox's and the McAllisters, and some of their texts are of course priceless.
The families have feuded with each other since the Middle Ages, but the feud ended with a truce over 300 years ago when a fight in the library destroyed a valuable, one-of the kind manuscript. Only scraps of the legend remain. So with most of the only existing copies of the tale destroyed the families decide they now must work together to protect the world of literature.
And as long as Amy is on the. . Amy's grandmother Lady Mareid, insists that Amy must read. Well, amy loves to read, so she doesn't mind reading, but she doesn't want to attend a school with her two McAllister's cousins, Betsy and Will. However, when Amy discovers that it's not an ordinary school, but one will that will be teaching her how to use a power that she didn't know she possessed her.
Has been passed down through generations and she finds that her gift is the power to leap into stories and interact with the world inside. Although Amy, Betsy and Will can interact with the story's characters, they must not interfere with the story in any way. They are supposed to just use their skills to jump into literature and check that everything is in order. Because of something that happened to Amy's mom
when she was a reader, she insists that Amy must read a children's book as her learning book. So Amy chooses the Jungle Book and gets to know Shere Khan and other characters from literature. So when someone starts stealing objects and story ideas such as rabbit's watch and waistcoat from Allice in Wonderland and other stories that Amy visits, she's determined to
discover who is stealing from the books. As Amy unravels the mystery with the help of characters such as Shere Khan from the Jungle Book and Werther from the Sorrows of Young Werther, she investigate the mystery and several incidents happen to her. She believes their accidents, but then when they keep happening, she soon concludes that someone is trying to kill her.
The author uses several literary devices throughout the novel to teach the reader about literature. This book would be a fun book for a literature teacher to use to teach young people about literature or writing, but you do have to pay close attention. As the title suggests, the reader briefly jumps, pun intended, into many stories from Macbeth to Snow White in the seven Doors.
I really like the book, but I think it's definitely for older readers. I chose to pair this book with Jam Tarts because of the appearance of Alice and scenes including the Tea Party from Alice in Wonderland. Amy eats quite a few jam sandwiches in the books, so I thought it would be appropriate to include a jam tart recipe from the geekychef.com.
[00:23:32] Carrie: So what age group is this? Is this a YA novel or...
[00:23:38] Jacqueline: yeah, it's in the, it's in the young adult.
[00:23:40] Carrie: Okay.
[00:23:40] Jacqueline: Not so much middle school, but it ha it mentions so many stories and books. I feel like that it, it almost needs to be, it could be taught to older.
[00:23:51] Carrie: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:52] Jacqueline: older readers.
[00:23:52] Carrie: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:53] Jacqueline: as a way to teach writing and literature is, there's a lot of talk about plots and margins and, mm.
And device literary devices like that.
[00:24:02] Carrie: Mm-hmm. .
No, it sounds really good. I think, I think some of our Books and Bites, you know, people that come to our meetings have talked about that book before.
[00:24:13] Jacqueline: Oh.
Hmm. . That's cool. Maybe we can have a great discussion this week, .
[00:24:19] Carrie: Yeah.
[00:24:21] Jacqueline: At the program?
[00:24:22] Carrie: Yeah. An in an in-person mini book club discussion.
[00:24:26] Jacqueline: There you go. Have you all ever had jam tarts?
[00:24:29] Michael: I don't think so. Hmm. I've had jam cake.
[00:24:36] Carrie: I don't think I have either, but it sounds good.
[00:24:39] Jacqueline: It seems not. Not too hard. Once you make the pastry, then you just put different jams in there.
[00:24:44] Carrie: Mm-hmm. ,
[00:24:44] Jacqueline: heat it up.
[00:24:45] Michael: Yeah.
[00:24:46] Carrie: Mm-hmm. , what's not to like? . . [laughter]
[00:24:51] Jacqueline: Yep.
[00:24:56] 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.