Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Books and Bites
JCPL librarians bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them.
Books About the Internet or Social Media: Books & Bites Podcase, Ep. 103
===
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 on this episode we're kicking off the summer fall Books and Bites Bingo reading challenge, and we've got some great prompts in store for you.
Which ones are you all excited about?
Michael: I'm pretty excited about the one we're covering today. I thought that was really interesting. Dystopian or post apocalyptic is right up my alley and then. Romantasy. I don't know if that's, that one's gonna really challenge me for sure.
Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's not gonna challenge Jacqueline too much, but. [All laugh] But it's a reach for me too.
How about you, Jacqueline?
Jacqueline: I'm really looking forward to a book with a dragon. ,
Michael: That'll be fun. Yeah. [00:01:00]
Jacqueline: And a romantasy, which I read a lot of those. Oh yeah. I'm glad that's on there. And, I also wanna go on vacation and take a book for sure. [Laughter]
Michael: What about you?
Carrie: Well, I am, I'm excited about the book club read that we picked out The Dark Library.
Michael: Yeah.
Carrie: By, I think Mary Anna Evans, I think. And that is a dark academia novel. It's a World War II era mystery that takes place at a university, I think primarily. So I think that one's gonna be really fun.
And we had, we had a really good book club discussion of the last book that we did, Rednecks. So I hope that this one will generate some good discussion too.
Michael: I'm just a few chapters in, but it's, it's, it's good.
Carrie: Oh, yeah?
Michael: Yeah. I'm liking it. [00:02:00]
Carrie: Good. I read a few pages when we were first, you know, starting when we were thinking about what book we wanted to read, but I haven't really gotten too far into it yet, other than, you know,
the murder that happens at the beginning.
Michael: Yeah, that's right off the bat.
Carrie: Yeah, so we haven't set a date for the book club discussion, but it's gonna be in October and the podcast episode where we talk about it, will air in October too, but I think it'll be a good spooky month kind of read.
Michael: Yeah.
Yeah.
Carrie: So today we're talking about books about the internet or social media, which I think is a topic that a lot of people are paying more attention to these days.
Michael: Oh yeah. TikTok and
Jacqueline: BookTok.
Michael: BookTok. YouTube, what is it? And that's not Twitter anymore. It's X. [Laughter] Facebook.
Carrie: Yeah. [00:03:00] And there's so many, I think, negative aspects of social media that we're just now kind of learning about.
Michael: Yeah. And I feel like, like social media is just as a topic, is just now kind of getting into the world of fiction.
Carrie: Mm-hmm.
Michael: There's quite a bit out there in nonfiction. But I feel like there's not quite as much fiction books that are about or feature social media or the internet a whole lot.
That I've noticed.
Jacqueline: Lots of things happen too, like for people who are on social media, they to become viral. Some of the things that people are willing to, the chances they're willing to take or maybe they regret something they did put on there later on, so. There are some pretty dark things that happen.
Carrie: I noticed when I was looking for books about the topic, a lot of [00:04:00] the fiction that did come up was romance novels.
Michael: Oh, there is? There is. Yes. [Laughter].
Carrie: 'Cause I guess that's how people meet each other. These days. I'm so glad I met my husband before dating apps and [Laughter] and that kind of thing. Ugh.
Jacqueline: I know. I know someone who got married, they met online and they got married and
Carrie: Oh, I know lots of people.
Yeah.
Jacqueline: It's like, I don't know that I would've been able to be that risk taking, but I don't know. Maybe it's just a different time, I guess.
Michael: I found you got the romance, but I found there's a lot of horror too. [Laughter]
Carrie: Yeah, that's true.
Jacqueline: True. True stories. There's a lot of like, one of the books I looked at was based on a true story.
They went and blogged and they were blogging their lives and then something happened. So lots of things can happen.
Carrie: Yep. Well, we've got [00:05:00] some examples for you
today.
Michael: I have two books for you this month, a bonus book since my first recommendation is, long overdue and not sure when it might make its way back to the library. So first up is The Handyman Method by Nick Cutter and Andrew F. Sullivan. This one follows the Saban family, the very first residents of a brand new exclusive development.
Their house is the only one that's been built so far. So right away, you've got that eerie isolated setting. On move-in day, they discover a crack in the wall of the walk-in closet, and that's where things start to spiral. The dad, Trent, is a lawyer by trade, but currently out of work. And he's wrestling with feelings of inadequacy
now that his wife, Rita, is a sole breadwinner. He decides to fix the crack himself, which leads him to a YouTube channel called The Handyman Method. At first, it only has a handful of [00:06:00] subscribers, but suddenly it's flooded with hundreds of newer videos along with a podcast. I think this book is best described as a retaliate of Stephen King's Shining for the social media age.
You've got the isolated family, a slow psychological unraveling, and an underlying sense of dread. But instead of alcoholism, the story digs into toxic masculinity, identity, and what happens when someone clings too tightly to a false sense of control. Trent becomes obsessed with a DIY videos and the ultra masculine rhetoric of handyman Hank, who Trent hears talking to him all the time,
like Lloyd, the bartender in the Shining. Meanwhile, their son, Milo, starts having disturbing nightmares. He begins building strange devices, unearthing creepy wooden structures with large uncanny dolls in them. Rita, the mom, seems meek at first, but there's something more to her. She has the quiet awareness, like she knows something about the land or these dolls or whatever really is going on.
Something's off with this family from the very beginning, and that tension just ratchets up as the story [00:07:00] progresses. If you like your horror psychological, a little surreal and soaked in dread, this one delivers. You can always submit a purchase request to have the library look at getting another copy of it.
My second recommendation is a much shorter read, but it packs a punch. It's, We Had to Remove This Post by Hannah Bervoets, translated from the Dutch by Emma Rault. This is a novella with a simple setup. Kayleigh is recounting her time working as a content moderator for a major social media platform. Her job is to analyze flagged content,
often violent, disturbing, or offensive, and determine if it violates community guidelines. At first, it's just a job, but as time goes on, it starts to wear on her and her coworkers. She begins their relationship with someone on her team and as a relationship deepens, everything starts to unravel. The things they see day in and day out begin to seep into their lives,
their relationships, and their sense of reality. This book asks some really powerful questions. What does it do to a person to consume that much trauma every day, [00:08:00] even if it's just a job? How do we separate ourselves from the content we scroll past and maybe most importantly, what are we doing as consumers and participants in this digital world?
What won't we do for a like or follow? It's short. You can read it in one sitting, but it lingers. It's unsettling in a very real world way. No ghosts or demons in this one. Just the stuff we see or choose not to see every day online. And for this month's pairing, I went with a super manly Smoked Old Fashioned. Trent would love this.
This cocktail was a classic. It made with bourbon, simple syrup, bitters, and finished off with an orange peel or a maraschino cherry. Strong, moody, and a little dramatic, like both these books. One of the best versions I've ever had is the Rock Old Fashioned at OCB Kitchen, a great spot in Lexington. If you go, make sure to ask about getting it smoked, that little extra touch really sets the vibe.
Carrie: Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah. That second novel I have read, like, [00:09:00] nonfiction accounts, articles about people who do that kind of thing as a living and how really traumatizing it is to see that kind of thing over and over again.
Michael: I had no idea that people did that. I thought it was like an algorithm to just decide it.
But people sit there and watch that. She had a, there was like, what do you call it, in the back of the, like a bibliography or something, like a list of things, of other resources you can go and see. And there was a bunch of articles about those content moderators. And it was just, whew.
I couldn't imagine. The stuff, I mean, the stuff that, that, that, you know, we see posting that's so disturbing already. But all the other stuff doesn't make it through. Just whew.
Jacqueline: Yeah. Yeah. What about the dolls?
Michael: In the first book?
Jacqueline: Yeah. Is that, are they, was that like a horror book?
Michael: The first, yeah, The Handyman Method.
Jacqueline: Yeah. There's a lot of dolls in horror, right? I mean. [All laugh]
Michael: There is that, [00:10:00] that is a big trope in horror.
Jacqueline: It seems to be, yeah.
Michael: Annabelle and, well that's, I guess that's technically the film, but yeah. Yeah, there's quite a, quite a bit. It was big in the seventies and in lit in horror literature.
Jacqueline: In the sixties too. I remember when I was a child, my TV wasn't really monitored and I watched this
movie about this girl with a doll thinking, you know, this was gonna be, you know, a children's thing and the doll was vicious. [All laugh]
Michael: I mean, like,
like they're just empty vessels pretty much. And so I guess any kind of spirit can inhabit those.
Jacqueline: R.L. Stine likes to have this,
Michael: the dummy,
Jacqueline: the dummies in his Yeah.
That are some of the, they're kinda a little twisted sometimes.
Carrie: That's what,
Michael: oh yeah.
Carrie: That's what got Michael [Laughter].
Michael: That's what got me into it.
Jacqueline: Yeah?
Michael: Slappy?
Jacqueline: Slappy.
Michael: The the living dummy! [Laughter]
Jacqueline: Slappy was scary.
Michael: Was It a Werewolf, A Fever Swamp. Say Cheese and [00:11:00] Die. Those are classics.
Carrie: Yeah, definitely the seedier side of the internet. [Laughter]
Michael: Mm-hmm. Yeah,
that's where I went.
Carrie: I read Gliff by Ali Smith. I'm always amazed by how quickly Scottish writer Ali Smith responds to what's happening in the world politically and by how prescient her work is. Her latest novel Gliff, published in 2024, is no exception. I first read it a few months ago after putting it off more than I usually would for an Ali Smith novel because it's dystopian.
Our current moment is dystopian enough, thank you very much. But Gliff is my favorite kind of [00:12:00] dystopian fiction, the kind that, if not exactly offering Hope does offer a way forward a model, not just for how to survive, but for how to resist the authoritarian governments so often depicted in them. Gliff takes place in a near future society where an unnamed state is surveilling people with biometrics, CCTV and smartphones. The country is divided into verifiables-- people who live within the system-- and unverifiables.
Unverifiables lack a digital identity, are often poor, and have had their homes seized by the government. They have been made unverifiable by the state, though the details of this are hazy-- partly because we are told this story through the point of view of a young adult looking back on events that happened when they were 13, and partly because that's how oppression works. Keeping people in the dark,
whether [00:13:00] through disinformation or lack of information, keeps people afraid. And fear means the people in power stay in power. What we do know is this: narrator, Bri, which is short for Briar, and their younger sister Rose, are living on their own after being separated from their mother, a former PR professional who was fired for whistle blowing.
Her partner Leif claims he's going to look for her when he leaves the children in an abandoned house with 36 cans of meatballs and sauce, two cans of creamed rice, and some cash. Bri's mother has never let them have smartphones, so they have no way of contacting each other. "And that's what people, somewhere in their unconscious, think about smartphones,"
their mother had told them when they asked for phones, "that if they don't keep attending to them and pressing their buttons, always making them light up [00:14:00] and answering every little baby chicken automated cheep they make, then there's sure to be a death. But this time it'll be you, the owner of the phone.
It'll be a new kind of dead." Rose discovers a field of horses near the house and befriends a gray horse that she names Gliff. Bri, too, is taken with it. "You could see light in its dark [eye]," they note, "and it also had in it both at once, two things I had never seen together in one place.
Gentleness and what? Politeness? Indifference? Distance? I won't know the word for it till now, years after, right this minute, walking to wherever in the dark and permitting myself to think back to the moment I first ever saw, so close to my own eyes, any horse's, this horse's eye. The [00:15:00] word is equanimity."
Equanimity is a quality that the children desperately need in their current situation, and it's one that the younger Rose seems to possess more than Bri. When Rose learns that the horses are meant for the slaughterhouse, she and Bri buy Gliff with the money Leif gave them for emergencies. Eventually they move-- horse and all-- into an abandoned school where a community of unverifiables lives.
I don't want to give away much more of the plot than that. The novel flashes back to memories of their mother. It also flashes forward five years to Bri's current life, where they work at a preserved goods factory supervising older workers in a delivery area. They're now verified and living under an assumed male name, but they've lost their freedom and their non-binary identity. Despite the heavy subject matter,
[00:16:00] Smith's trademark wit and wordplay kept this reader from descending into complete despair. There is kindness too, both among the unverifiables and from a few people who help the children along the way. The children's relationship with Gliff, especially Rose's deep kinship with the animal gives the novel a mythic feel.
It's thoughts of Rose and the horse that sustain Bri in a particularly difficult time: "...my sister so steadfast on that horse's back that they'd melted into one single form moving at the kind of gallop that horses, horses in legends, I mean, the ones that are immortal, can move at... the one whose tail catches on fire
he's going so fast and the one so swift and gifted that he was named after lightning and the gods used him to carry thunder... I mean the one called Pegasus, the horse whose [00:17:00] name became synonymous with mass spyware, the legendary one, with the wings." Since they only have two cans, Bri and Rose decide to save their creamed rice,
another phrase for rice pudding for a good day. But if you have electricity, why not make the real thing? Lemon Rice Pudding with Roasted Peaches sounds like the perfect summer comfort food. Roast peaches in the oven with a little brown sugar and butter. Meanwhile, cook the rice with milk, heavy cream, lemon zest, sugar, and spices.
You can find the recipe in Apples for Jam by Tessa Kiros. And if you prefer dairy free rice pudding, the Minimalist Baker has a recipe you could adapt. And we'll link to that on our blog.
Jacqueline: I love that Minimalist Baker recipes, they're really usually very good. The lemon thing, lemon rice sounds really good.
I don't think [00:18:00] I've ever had lemon rice.
Carrie: Lemon rice pudding.
Jacqueline: Pudding.
Carrie: So yeah. So it's like a sweet dessert. Yeah.
Michael: I've seen, I've seen that book pop up on several different lists. It sounds pretty interesting. So she does a pretty good job of balancing the dystopian elements with
Carrie: Yeah, it never feels overwhelming. I mean, 'cause I ended up reading it twice, but when I read it the first time, I felt you know, a lot more anxious.
But, you know, then I kind of, you know, knew, and it's not that necessarily that everything turns out all right in the end. It's just that they survive. You know, they figure out how to live and how to resist in this society, which, you know, and then reading it the second time, just this past weekend, it was like, man, she gets a lot right with this.
Michael: You were talking about unverifiables, so I was like, that was a, that was a little close to home right now.
Carrie: It totally is. Yeah.
Jacqueline: It sounds like it's beautifully written too. [00:19:00] The
Carrie: It is. Yeah.
Jacqueline: passage that you wrote sounds like it's just very well written and I guess it just captures you and you really wanna keep reading, I'm sure.
Carrie: Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and that's one of the things that attracts me to Ali Smith's writing in general, is she's just very lyrical and she plays around so much with language and, and yeah. Even, you know, her books aren't necessarily plot heavy. Even this one, like some of the details are a little bit hazy.
There's mystery, I guess, in what's happening, but if you're someone who's attracted to language like I am, that kind of carries you through the book.
Jacqueline: Yeah, yeah. It just sounded really, it sounded really good.
Michael: What else has she written? I feel like I know that name.
Carrie: Well, I, it's not the first Ali Smith.
Ali Smith is my, uh, Holly Black. [All laugh]
Jacqueline: Okay.
Carrie: Yeah. I, I [00:20:00] pretty much read everything, but she has the seasonal quartet, which like started off with Autumn. It's like Autumn, Winter, Summer. Or Spring, Summer. But there's been a couple other books after that. I think those first came out in 2020. And they were very topical too. It's like she seems to write really fast and respond really fast to what's happening.
Michael: Really tapping into that zeitgeist.
Carrie: Yes, for sure. So this one would qualify for a dystopian novel, which is another of our prompts that Michael mentioned.
Jacqueline: The book I chose for this month's prompt is Influenced by Sarah Shepard and Lila Buckingham. Shepard, a well-known young adult mystery writer teams up with Buckingham to create a mystery that [00:21:00] explores the darker side of social media fame. Influence delves into the struggles of teenagers whose social media accounts propel them into fame at an early age.
The novel opens with a prologue by a dead influencer, offering readers a haunting overview of her life online as an influencer to her fans. We do not know who the narrator is. Only that her carefully crafted social media persona was not real. She justifies her actions by claiming that she's only giving her fans what they wanted, insisting that she is not the only one to blame.
The novel unfolds through the first person perspective of four social media stars, Delilah Scarlet, Fiona, and Jasmine navigating their lives as influencers in Hollywood. These four high school girls are at various places in their careers. Delilah the newest to rise to fame meets the others at an elite influencer party. Feeling a bit out of place,
she slips off to a nearby [00:22:00] restaurant where she meets a charming boy named Jack. They really hit it off. As Jack leaves, she realized that he is Jacklet, one half of the famous internet couple, Jack and Scarlet. Delilah instantly becomes a target when photographers splatter a picture of them at a restaurant on social media.
Jasmine, a former child star, and Fiona, whose boyfriend was stolen by another, also faces in intense scrutiny. The girls share their stories, the readers learn negative and toxic aspects of social media. None of them commit to their fans that they are under immense pressure and that their lives are far from perfect.
Each of the girls have possibly career ending secrets, from a stolen boyfriend to hidden sexuality that can destroy their careers if exposed, but would one of them kill to protect those secrets? If you're a Sarah Shepard fan or wonder about the high cost of internet fame, Influence is a must read mystery.
And for my bites, I chose a recipe for Crostino Tomato Burrata by a [00:23:00] top food influencer, the Pasta Queen. It's a great summer recipe featuring cherry tomatoes and fresh basil leaves. And you can find this recipe at PastaQueen.cooking.
Michael: When it comes to influencers and stuff like that, especially online in Facebook, have you ever watched like reels, like the, I guess they're like Tiktoks or reels or whatever.
Jacqueline: Yeah. You can get sucked down a hole though.
Michael: You can, and it does, and then like. You're just like, some, there's some things as people just like, how, why are you doing that for just a like, or a share, like, you're really like,
Jacqueline: yeah. And they really, I guess
Michael: some of the things they do
Jacqueline: and like, like I've kind of been following a little bit of, kind of like Justin Bieber and Hailey Bieber.
Well, evidently he used to date Selena Gomez and like people are just really upset and they, they like say horrible things about Hailey constantly because they want him to be with this other woman and he's like been married, he's got a kid and stuff. And it's just like, why do they don't [00:24:00] give up? [All laugh]
Michael: Why do they care?
Jacqueline: They care. They really do. It's like,
Michael: that's crazy.
Jacqueline: It's insane the way they care. And they're like, well, he's upset because. It's, there's a lot of drama on there too, and I don't know how much that they, you know, does it, it helps them maybe make more money. Like now she, you know, is, are they helping feed the drama, is what I'm not really sure about sometimes.
Like he says he doesn't want all this drama, but then he'll post something and then, but the fans are just, stop posting stuff if you don't want people to talk about you. I'm not so sure he doesn't, like, and she just made, Hailey Bieber just made like a million dollars selling her makeup, but she was doing all these makeup things online and so people are buying up her lemon compacts and [Laughter]
Michael: like you almost have to sell your soul to these companies.
Carrie: Totally. Yeah.
Michael: For to, to influence.
Carrie: Yeah.
Michael: Hey guys, did you see this new makeup it's totally a game [00:25:00] changer? [Jacqueline and Carrie laugh]
Carrie: Hey, you sound like you've watched a few of those so far.
Michael: Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Jacqueline: And it's like they're 20 years old. Of course their faces look good.
Carrie: I know. Right? Especially when you add those filters on top.
Jacqueline: Right. [Laughter]
Michael: I've been down a few rabbit holes.
Jacqueline: Me too. I know why I went down this rabbit hole, but it. I actually read a book also that, I realized we didn't have it. And, it was about Gabby Petito, the girl that was, it's based, loosely based, I would say, on, and she was like, evidently she was killed by her boyfriend, but they've, they've rewritten like they were bloggers and they were going around blogging in the world on this little camper and stuff like that.
But evidently she was killed by her boyfriend and, you know, people were like, where's Gabby? And there was like all this social media.
Michael: Oh yeah, I remember. You remember that? Oh, yeah.
Jacqueline: So there's a book called Only She Came Back, they kind of reversed it where [00:26:00] only the girl came back. It's, and it's, it kind of, it's not a lot of it's based on her, but there is it not, the total thing is like,
you know, there's a lot of mystery to it. So it's not just her story. They've added things. They're very different.
Carrie: Mm-hmm.
Michael: And that's a YA novel?
Jacqueline: I'm pretty sure it is. It seems like it. 'Cause it's, I think it is. I looked it up. I always, I always look it up and usually almost it's YA. So it's pretty, it's, it's interesting because, well they're the, one of the girls is like,
wants to get close to her because she wants to blog about what happened when she only came, when only her, she came back with like blood all over her and, you know, but there's no body.
Carrie: Mm. Yeah. So is that just to generate attention and likes and is that the question? [00:27:00]
Jacqueline: Yeah. In the mystery at first. Is like, is what is she doing it for? And you know, where is he at and did she. And then the girl's, like she's feeling guilty 'cause like she's befriended her, but she really wants to write about her, but she doesn't wanna be like all the other photographers and social media people out there posting about her.
So she's kind of torn between that too.
Carrie: Mm-hmm. So there's lots of nonfiction, like Michael said about this topic. We didn't get to any of it, but yeah, I know I, there were, there were a lot of nonfiction titles that I thought sounded interesting, but I also thought they sounded really depressing.
[Laughter] So,
Jacqueline: yeah, that's true.
Michael: There's a lot about the dark web.
We have a bunch on our display right by the reference desk, so please check those out.
Carrie: Yep. And a lot on the list that we posted as well on the Books and Bites page. So if you are interested [00:28:00] in going down that particular rabbit hole, we've got you covered.
Michael: Yeah. Doug! [Michael and Carrie laugh]
Jacqueline: And Interlibrary loan too.
Don't forget. If we don't have it.
If it's older, like the Influence, maybe we can, we still have a copy of that right now, but. The Gabby Petito one, Only She Came Back. We don't have a copy, but I'm sure we could probably get one from,
Michael: Yeah.
Jacqueline: Interlibrary loan maybe.
Carrie: All right. Well thanks for kicking off the new reading challenge with us.
Michael: Yay! [Laughter]
Carrie: 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 the Enemy from Scott Whiddon. You can learn more about [00:29:00] Scott and his music at his website, adoorforadesk.com.