May 7 Podcast

The hosts of the podcast, Shelf Indulgence, discuss their recent reading experiences. They talk about books they enjoyed, including "Gwen and Art Are Not in Love" and "Rabbit Hutch." They also mention a series called "The Bridge Kingdom" and their disappointment with the fourth book due to a strange plot point. They then discuss their love for the "Ice Planet Barbarians" series and recommend "Take a Hint, Dani Brown" and "The Warm Hands of Ghosts." They express their admiration for the authors and the quality of the books. Did we do that on the first try? We did. Let's fucking go. Let's fucking go. I'm Sophia. And I'm Emily. And welcome to Shelf Indulgence, a comedy podcast about books and besties. You may notice that our energy is more vertical today. That's because today is a standing pod. Yeah, we're both standing at our standing desks. The reason for this is I took apart my desk chair last week because it is so dusty and I was getting mysterious bug bites on the back of my leg and I was like, maybe it's from my desk chair because my partner is not getting bug bites. I was like, it's probably not our bed, but we washed everything we own and I took apart my desk chair and I vacuumed every part of it, but it wasn't my desk chair. We think it was my car, but it has stopped. Oh, good. I'm so glad. That's good. But I haven't reassembled the desk chair yet. I've just been working from the couch. I understand. Yeah, you get it. I get it. I fully understand. Reassembling a desk chair does not sound like a fun task. It's like really heavy and it doesn't help that I don't like my desk chair. So the reward at the end of the task is like a shitty desk chair. It's not like you make a cake and then you get to eat cake. No, it's like you make a cake and then you have to eat. I was trying to think of a bad dessert. Untoasted Udi's bread. Oh my God. Okay. All right. We have so much to kick up about. If we cannot figure out our last pod, we will rerecord about House of Flame and Shadow. Yes. If it has been lost, because there was some good stuff in there. And I think it's worth redoing. But today we are just catching up on pretty much everything. Yeah. It's been a while. I don't think either of us have an unhinged smut masterpiece to bring to the table, but I graduate soon, so watch out world. Let's go. You're about to get some really upsetting recommendations. I have what should have been a smut recommendation and is in fact a not very smutty non-recommendation. So we'll get to that. Terrible. Okay. Well, Emily, darling, what are you reading? I'm so glad you asked. I have been hopping around recently. I have had two five-star reads since we last chatted. I'm thrilled about this because I've been on a little bit of a drought as far as good books go. I read Gwen and Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher, and I loved it. It is vaguely Arthurian. It is so queer. It is fun. Highly recommend it. Super fun. I read Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty, which is weird and Midwestern and unsettling and a little unsatisfying, but in the kind of way that I love. Oh, very different. Very different. Vibes here. Extraordinarily different. Okay. So we've talked about how I was reading the Bridge Kingdom series. Yes. I read the first three, and then I started the fourth, and then I saw that there was a novella that you're supposed to read before the fourth book, and the novella just stole all of my momentum, and now I'm not going to read the fourth book. Yeah. It's not bad. It just wasn't good, and it didn't make me want to keep reading. And it did have, okay, mild spoilers for the 3.5th book in the Bridge Kingdom series, but the sort of main conflict, like one of the main conflicts, is that the two main characters can't have sex because their city has been recently under siege, and so there's very little resources, and so their birth control herbs have run out. Okay. Okay. A reasonable apocalyptic problem. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or faith problem. Okay. Yeah. We love that. I would say an unfortunate resolution is our male main character goes diving and comes back with a sea sponge. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. Which is, he brings it to her, and he's like, my grandmother said you would know what to do. No, no, no, no, no. And she's like, I do. And just, whoop, just it goes in, and then she's like, and now we can just have regular normal sex with this sea sponge inside of me. So I didn't like that. Oh my God. And of course I Googled it, and there is like historical. Yeah, that was like a thing in Brussels. Yeah, this is like a thing, but probably not just like fresh from the sea, you know? The pH of that whole situation. That couldn't have been good. The lengths that authors will go to to maintain the falsity that penis and vagina is sex is crazy. Yeah, for sure. It's crazy. I mean, I just, I haven't, obviously I haven't read them, so I haven't taken the logical leap with the author on getting to that point. Yeah. But were I living in a siege, I just, I can't, I mean, maybe it's because I have access to vibrators, right? Yeah, sure. Part of the issue also is they haven't been able to have sex for a long time because she's been grievously injured. Okay. And now she's feeling better enough that they could get any, but they can't because it's a birth control herbs right now. This is a little difficult to get on board with. So I understand why it curbed your momentum there. And it's really weird coming after three straight books of like very political fantasy. It's very much like, you know, war maps and battle strategies and invasion tactics and yeah. And there is romance, obviously, but. It sounds like Frozen Starlight a little bit. Yeah. It's like, you know what would be fun? Sky fucking and also Christmas. Sky fucking for Christmas. Yay. Which is also the 3.5th book in the series. Yeah, it's just a curse of the 3.5, I guess. Interesting. Anyway, so that, I didn't like that. I'm also very recently back on my Ice Planet Barbarians bullshit. As you should be. Is it because Taylor Swift came out with a song about an alien lover picking up her phone and dropping her back off? Yeah, I did that. Yeah. Yeah, sure. I don't even know what number of the series I'm on right now, but they're not, they're not good. But as soon as I picked it back up, I was like, I want to know about it. Oh. There's just a little smut in these books for being like really famous. Yeah. There's not a lot. And what it is is like very weirdly polite. I don't know. That's nice. Yeah, but I'm enjoying it. Nice. It's reached the point where a lot of the initial couples have kids. There was a whole baby boom. And now this book is about one of the last of the women to find a Ice Planet Barbarian mate. I'm sure that must have been hard for her. It is. Yeah. I have more, but I want to hear what you've been reading. So I have had some of the busiest weeks of my life recently. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Speak on that. You texted me to record recently, and I was like, oh, this stuff went on. And you went, oh, I forgot. You're in hell. And I was like, yes, correct. But I've still managed to read for fun. I have finished two excellent books recently. The first being Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert. She doesn't miss. She doesn't miss. She's like my Zendaya. I'm like, that's a fucking huge compliment. Wow. This book is about a very obviously undiagnosed spectrum-y girl, academic, and a huge, brave, emotionally adept himbo. And oh, I devoured it. I think, because you know I like to read ahead and then go back. I probably read it three times, because I was like, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. It's so good. It's so hot. You read books the way that, like, a parent on a walk with a really hyper-child walks, where the kid will, like, run to the end of the block and back as the parent is walking. Yeah. That's how you read books. Ultimately, it would be faster to walk in a straight line. Yes. You're interested in what's soft and interested in what's shiny. You're interested in getting the wiggles out of your body. And then in a vastly different vibe, I read The Warm Hands of Ghosts, which has been one of my most anticipated of the year, because I love the Winter Night series, the Bear and the Nightingale books. I love going away from the mic to take a deep breath, because I can't breathe through my nose right now, because trees are blooming. Oh, no. You forgot that thing. No, but it didn't fix. My right nostril went back. Oh, fuck. Really? I think I have to get another surgery, yeah. Oh, no. They'll tell me in, like, two weeks. Oh, fuck. Girl, I know. Why doesn't your body work? No, I... We will get to that. And some of my nose is still numb. Oh, no. Also, the allergens in Denver right now are crazy. Like, everyone is down bad. Down bad, crying out loud. Okay. The Warm Hands of Ghosts is a, like, wildly well-researched, beautifully written, and constructed, fairly short, 350-pages book that Catherine Arden wrote. She took four years to write this 350-page book. Whoa. It's so obviously, it's, like, researched with so much love. It's about a brother and a sister in World War I trying to find each other. Oh. And they both fall in love with other people, obviously, along the way. And it's beautiful. It's so beautiful. Like, the romance we get is, it's not even romance, it's love. Like, between, you know what I mean? Like... Yeah. The way that the person who falls in love with the sister main character loves her is, like, so, which is, like, so overwhelmingly perfect to read. Because he loves her practically. Oh. And it's gay. And it's, and it's gay. Whoa. It's so good. This book is so good. This is one of those books where I, like, read all the author's notes and acknowledgments because I wanted to know more of what she was thinking. I wanted to know more about her brain. Oh, yes. She talked about World War I as the most impactful moment of, like, era clashing that humans have experienced. Horses and armor on the same battlefield as tanks and machine guns. Interesting. And folk remedies as people were learning how to transfuse blood. Old world sensibilities and faith systems. Having no way to reconcile with new world destruction and power. It's incredible. Wow. I love, I will read Katherine Arden every time. I need to read her middle grade series, actually. But they look really scary. Which one's that? Grown ups. I don't know. Let me find them. They look kind of creepy. But this is really good. I really recommend. My mom read it and loved it. And my mom is, like, very mean about books she doesn't like. I love a parent book recommendation. My dad and I recommend books to each other all the time. He reads just, like, wordy, intense 20th century sci-fi. And I read gay shit. Like Gideon? Yeah. He loves Gideon. He loves a lot of the weird shit I recommend. And we share a couple of library cards on Libby. So I can see what he checks out and he can see what I check out. And I check out all my smut on the library card we don't share. He just started reading Bunny and he's loving it. He just texted me and was like, I forgot everything you said about this book when you recommended it to me. So I'm going in completely blind. And so far it's giving Heather's in college. And I was like, yes, dad. Her middle grade series is called Small Spaces. Ooh, I don't think I've heard of that. I have a large about to start section because it's the law that when you're in the busiest time of your life, all of your Libby recommendations that you're so excited about will come in. So I'm about to start One Dark Window, Ask Your Age, Eve Brown, Health Houses, which is a piece of Palestinian fiction I've been looking forward to that's been way back up in the library. A Fate Inked in Blood by Daniel Jensen. Someone told me it's Viking romance and I was like, sign me up, I'm there. What else did Daniel Jensen write? Oh, no, I recognize this. Oh, she wrote Bridge Kingdom. Yeah. Oh, OK, great. And I also got Fangirl Down by Tessa Bailey because she said, oh, it's a bad boy golfer. And I felt for the podcast I had to do it. Yeah, that's a fun segue to what I have to talk about. Is that the last one on your list or is there another one? There's two in progress that I'm reading. OK. A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faisal, which so far has major Ketterdam energy. Oh, I love that. So far, a lot of like scrappy orphans, city, underworld, magic and humans. We'll see what we get. Delightful. And I'm reading a Terry Pratchett's Before I Fall Asleep, which is retelling of Macbeth that focuses on the witches and how utterly annoyed they are to have to take a break to fix the kingdom. Beautiful. But tell me about the Tessa Bailey. So I read Secretly Yours by Tessa Bailey. OK. And I gave it a rare one star rating. This book is not good. Sure. It's basically the premise of Fix Her Up by Tessa Bailey, but bad. It's like a small town virgin girl and her high school crush who was like older than her. And now she has a chance with him. The conflict is nothing. They meet and they flirt. And then they have like a hot, well, not actually very hot, just little mutual masturbation sesh on a kitchen counter. And then they just kind of go back to the awkward flirting phase. Yikes. The conflict is she writes him a secret admirer note and then freaks out about it because he like responds or whatever. And he's like, oh, no, I feel bad that I like this secret admirer, but I also like Halle. But in my head, I'm imagining that the secret admirer is Halle. And then she's like, oh, God, it's so cringy that I sent him this note. Oh, it's crazy that he's like responding to this person when he's also interested in me. Does that mean he's not just interested in me? That's the conflict. And it's not like they have an ongoing correspondence. It's like three notes. There's like what feels like a subplot that was just completely axed, but the hooks were left in. She runs a gardening service in Napa. Oh, great. Her rival gardener, who she's just friends with and who keeps asking her out, was tutored by the hot guy in high school. And I was like, oh, we're going to have a bill intern from this guy, obviously. No. He just asked her out again and is fine when she says no. Perfect. There's like one sex scene. That's not... It's not good. And it's like, Tessa. Hey, girl, what are you doing? The last time we talked about a Tessa Bailey book, I said, maybe it's enough books now. Yeah, and you were right. Because if you're not going to give us a good book, you have to give us a good gardener's book. At least make it filthy. I saw this cover. I remembered this cover. Was it supposed to have plus-size rep? It's not like explicit, but she's called curvy a lot. And he like loves her curves and talks about how she jiggles or whatever and makes huge tits and very tight jean shorts. But it's like, it's unclear if she's plus-size or just is wearing ill-fitting clothing. This is why in my contemporary work in progress, I wrote a scene where the main character says out loud, I'm a size 18 to 22, depending on the store. I want your measurements if it's plus-size rep. I want to know. Donald's always being like, she's curvy and he's olive-toned. And then I'm being like, no, this is not all skinny bitches who are white. I promise. I promise. No, no, no. She has tits and he has dark hair. There's potential for melanin. But never brown eyes. Never brown eyes. Never, not ever brown eyes. That's too ethnic. I'll probably read it. I honestly would not recommend it. Even to be mad at? No, it's just boring. Wow, so sad. It's not bad enough to be entertaining. And like the hockey one, her novella, at least it was short and it was much smuttier. And this one is just like, I don't care that your dead grandma's best friend's winery is suffering because there's a new hip winery next door that's doing better. I don't care. They prank call the winery together. Blow stakes. And there's like, he is very anxious and he has panic attacks from when his sister almost died in the fire. And he like, deals with this anxiety by being super regimented, like down to the minute. And she's of course like, I'll just show up whenever. And it's framed as like, she kind of cures him of that. And take a hint, Dani Brown. Dani learns the coping mechanisms, that Zaff uses for his anxiety. And then she just sits with him in the panic. She just stays with him there. Yeah. Better. Yucky. Yucky. Yeah, don't read it. Don't read it. There's better things to do with your time. I'm hoping to read all of those things on my about to start list. Because I'm done with school tomorrow. Yay! I'm going to graduate on Saturday. A full grab, you're getting letters. I just started Daughter of No Worlds, which is by the same author as the book that's like, The Serpent and the Wings of Night, or something like that. That is all over Kindle Unlimited. And I was like, okay. This author wrote a book that is Kindle Unlimited famous romanticy. How good could this be? I'm loving it. Wow. It's shocking. The world building is fascinating. The writing is good. The development of the romance is out. Outstanding. Oh my goodness. There's so much tension. And they're just comfortable with each other. And it's like, emphasize how they just can sit quietly in the same room and in companionship. And like, they love this. And there's so much longing right now. And I'm loving that the main character has a wild backstory. Lots of content warnings there. This is where her whole village was killed. Yeah, and she was sold into slavery. So I read the first 20 pages of this. But I was also, I think this was the same time I was doing a Bardugo backlog and Avatar reread sort of thing. And I was like, I can't do another fantasy world right now. No. Maybe they should return to it. I'd recommend it. I'm only halfway through right now. So I don't know if it'll stick the landing. I've read this series of three books, I think. And I'm having a great time. Main character has big, alien energy. One thing I really enjoy about this that I think speaks to the world building is she is living for the majority of the book in a place where she does not, she's not a native speaker of the language. She has learned the language as an adult. And so she struggles with being able to articulate things sometimes. And so she's trying to learn a monologue and then what she says and then people react to her and vastly underestimate her because she's beautiful and not a fully native speaker. And she uses that to her advantage. That's very cool. It's such a cool thing. That is definitely a complaint I've had about other books I've read recently. Even the Bridge Kingdom series. It's like, okay, so there's these people who have been in conflict for as long as anyone can remember and you're telling me they all speak the same language? No! That is odd. That's very cool. I have been reading Not Another D&D podcast to the point where I want to read a different podcast. I am getting tired of it and I can't stop. I basically can't click another podcast. I'm three episodes old on Sawbones. Wow. I know. Maybe I'll be able to get back into No, I will. I'll get back into other podcasts when a bachelor season starts. But I can't listen to anything else. I love it so much. It's so calming. I'm so excited for you that you still have Campaign 1 ahead of you. I'm really excited. Campaign 1 is so fucking good. I'm excited to meet Pawpaw. Moonshine Sabin Oh my god. Moonshine is everything. She's really Emily Axford at her most unhinged and just wild. She's a druid, which means she can wild shape so she can turn into animals. Her thing is that Emily Axford makes it very explicit that whenever she turns into an animal the animal is heavily pregnant. That's very funny. I re-listened to an episode where there's a little horse race mini game and she's like, I wild shape into a horse so that I can run. Murph is like, that's not okay. You're just supposed to bet on the horse. She's like, I would like to run. She's like, I'm heavily pregnant. Then at the end she's like, I give birth. Then I wild shape back out at the end so it looks like I've given birth to myself. That's so stupid. It's so funny. I'm so impressed by the world building and the amount of information that Murph keeps in his head. Campaign 3 is set in the same world as Campaign 1. Have you gotten to the creek yet? Yeah, I'm in the creek. That's Moonshine. That's her hometown. Have you met Hardwine yet? Okay, you would know. Okay, I would know. He's one of the player characters from the first campaign. Okay, I've met Cooter, father of Glen. You love Cooter the berry boy? I've met Glen several times. Oh, Glen. It's useless in a forest. Cooter was just like a random NPC in the first campaign and then they were like, can we bring him to this huge fight and Murph was like, he's gonna die. A commoner. Okay, but we'll give him these berries that give you 1 HP. He can just distribute these and Murph is like, this bear is gonna die. They're like, it's fine. He didn't die and they insisted to Murph that he got all the XP from this fight and he must level up. That's how he became Cooter the berry boy. I will say that as someone who knows nothing about D&D, I don't know what any of the powers mean. I don't know anything. If you're embarrassing, we might cut it for several episodes. Many episodes. I thought that when they say 2D, 3D, 5D, I thought they were saying like 20, 30, 50 in a fun way. Like 40. Yeah, like 40. You know 2D? For those who are not well versed in Dungeons and Dragons, you have a bunch of different shapes of dice that we refer to as a D and then the number of sides. So a D20 is a 20-sided die. Or like a D6 is a 6-sided die. There are times when you have to roll multiple, which will be said as roll 3D6. I thought that was just roll 3D6. I love it. I thought it was cute. So that's all I'm listening to for the podcast. No, I'm reading. I'm reading so many Dungeons and Dragons books because I am DMing my first campaign this Friday. How proud of you. I'm really excited. I'm so nervous. You're going to do great. I have taken a story from a book and I have... Which god died? Oh no, I haven't. That's going to be my main campaign. I have lots of big brain thoughts about my big campaign but I want to introduce with a little bit more of an existing world. So I took a one shot which is just a short self-contained story from a book and I've set it in a world I want to play around with and I've written a whole hook for it that my characters are excited about and I've introduced some characters. I don't know what I'm going to do with but they're there and I put it in the video. And I'm so excited. Wonderful. I get to introduce one of the characters in this and I keep asking him questions about his character that are stressing him out because I want to talk about Dungeons and Dragons but I can't talk about what I'm prepping because it's secret and he doesn't want to talk about what he's doing because it's stressing him out that I keep asking him all this stuff. So our compromise is that I get to ask him questions about the theoretical second character he's making that is based on a minion. Wonderful. And I get to ask him questions about character voice and backstory and glasses and stuff for his minion build. Is he still being a sentient bowl of custard? He's not. He's pivoted. He's being a tiefling warlock which means nothing to you and to people in OD&D it's very funny because it's the opposite of a sentient custard. For other content that I'm reading with my ears Yeah. I'm reading the song Good Luck Babe every day of my life. Every day of my life. When my brain goes quiet for a single second immediately it fills the spaces. When you wake up next to him and I'm better off than not. For me it's either that or it's think about me baby I know I love that. I love that. Good Luck Babe is everything. I feel that we're in a pop girl renaissance. We have so much to choose from. We have a gluttony of riches when it comes to the pop girlies. Well. Nom nom nom. I just love that Sabrina Carpenter was like Oh you said I look like a Polly Pocket? Okay. I can do that. I can do that. Tiny and blonde. She's like three feet tall. She's so tiny. And her boo is so tiny. And they stand next to Taylor and Travis and they look like pocket birds. It's so cute. I cannot believe how meteoric Chaperone's explosion has been. Criminal that she wasn't at the Met Gala. She would have been so good. She's everywhere. Everybody knows who she is. Well actually my 20 year old cousin didn't know who she was when I quizzed him when I saw him this weekend. I saw my little cousin this past weekend when I went to the Disneyland of Health also known as Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Well wait. Do we need to finish about Chaperone? I mean we could talk about Chaperone forever. I could talk about her forever. I think it's so fun how Good Luck Babe obviously has the literal reading of you're talking to a closeted queer woman who doesn't want to openly date you because she's closeted. But I think it's so fascinating. She also has this fun alternative reading of talking to your own younger closeted self. Yeah. It's amazing. Of like, good luck. I can see the path that you're on and I desperately want you to change. It's so beautiful. It's pop and everything she does is camp and it's so intentional and it's better than any song on Tortured Poets. So we have to talk about that. Okay. We're driving it so I'll talk about Mayo Clinic Okay, we'll finish up with Tortured Poets. For those who don't know, Mayo Clinic is a very elite hospital system. It's like the place where people go when they're really sick. I like how you entered that like somebody who goes to like a southern eye, like a Vanderbilt or something where people don't know. This is like... Well I didn't want to be an asshole and be like, you all know Mayo. Or maybe the healthy people don't know about it. Like I don't know what healthy people do with their time. Like you know how WebMD exists and then there's also Mayo Clinic is like a website that answers a lot of questions. I feel like for a lot of people they think of Mayo Clinic as like WebMD. Oh. But no. No. It is insane. It's like several city blocks and even like the architecture is like spread out and soothing and looks like a nice hotel and not like a clinic. And there's like soft classical playing. And you go there and the security guards, the receptionists, the nurses, everyone smiles at you and asks how they can help you. And the doctor visits, they are 90 minutes. Oh my god. This is the single most affirming healthcare experience I've ever had. Three providers said to me this isn't your fault, you're doing the best you can, you're doing a good job. This has never been your fault. And they all said that sounds really awful, that sounds really hard. Like one of the providers I thought didn't even charge me after an hour of talking to me because she couldn't help me. Oh my god. But she got me in for an ultrasound the following day. Like crazy shit. Crazy shit. It's just like that's how it should be. I know. It's so insane. I went to a doctor's appointment, he sat with me for two hours, completely redid my whole migraine protocol and plan. He is like the headache guy. He is the head of headache fellowships for all three Mayo hospitals. He has a teeny tiny black briefcase, very little, and he has little instruments that he tests reflexes with. He started speaking and I was like, and you're an autistic man. I was like, thank god, your special interest is like my brain function. Yes. Society would be in shambles without autistic special interests. And I mean that entirely sincerely. And he was like, for your other stuff, let's get you to women's health. He called me 45 minutes after I left. The office was like, hey, we heard we need to see you. Can you come in at 1? So I did. She was like, hey, I can't help you out. What I am going to do is just while you're still in town, try to get you an ultrasound and into gynecology. I got a call. We can get you in tomorrow morning at 730 for an ultrasound. The ultrasound was done. I went to the front desk of gynecology. I said, hey, I'm only in town another couple days. Is there any way y'all could see me? They were like, we're going to make it happen. Oh, my God. No. It was crazy. It was very validating to have my folks with me and have them see how hard I have to work on my health and how much I have to explain to people and the way that I have this 10-page document that I've compiled that's like an itemized timeline of my health and different medicines and all this stuff and just how much work it is. It was very validating to just have someone else witness that. Yeah. Also, it was just wild that everything should be like this. Everything should be like this. I got to see my little cousins. They're great. They're so cool. They're so self-assured and confident and they know who they are and they're nice to people and they're nice to their parents. Are they 12 or are they the world's best 14-year-olds? They're 17 and 20. What? No way. Yeah. Wow. My sweet little cousin has a boyfriend. She showed me a picture and I went, oh my God, he's tall. She went 6'5". I looked at her and I said, I'm so happy for you. She looked me full in the face and goes, I know. I was like, I miss you. We're going to go back to Mayo because I have to fly to Minnesota for healthcare now. It's good for you. It's great for me. I'll get to see my cousins again. My neurologist was awesome. He was too autistic to lie to me. I was like, okay. We've made a plan. We've made a medicine plan. Is there anything else I should be doing besides the actions and the routines that I've listed here? Should I be meditating a certain way more? Should I be eating a certain thing? You're fine. I'm so glad somebody besides me told you that. Some people don't have headaches. Some people do have headaches. Some people have too many. You have too many. We're going to try to fix that. I was so proud of myself because I work so hard to just be healthy enough to get up. I'm finishing a master's degree and I'm nice to people. I take care of a dog. I exercise every day. I'm doing a lot. You're doing so much more than me. I have so many few headaches. It was good. It was so exhausting. It was so draining, but it was good. We have to talk about her post. Here's the situation. I didn't like it. Is that the whole situation? Mostly. Here's more of the situation. Taylor has obviously been a confessional songwriter for so long. That is what people expect of her at this point. The media narrative has been, oh my gosh, she's had this huge breakup and very public relationship changes since her last album came out. The public narrative is that she owed us an explanation and that explanation is only going to come through an album. This is her being like, this is what you're getting. Now stop asking me. It's a little rushed and it's the same song over and over and over. There's so much confessional songwriting in here that it disguises the fact that she's not actually saying much about Joe. She doesn't need to. She doesn't owe that to us. This felt very much like an album she needed to get out of her system before she could go back to writing songs that she liked. I don't feel like she likes any of these songs. Yes, I got that feeling too. That doesn't mean that she had to release it. I think a big narrative here and also in Midnight a little bit has been how she feels like her life is so scrutinized and so controlled by the media and the public and the fans and I feel like this is her being like, okay, you asked for this, here it is. You want my diary? Fine. Here it is. Not that interesting, is it? Okay, let me go back to writing bops. I agree with you. I just think it's too confessional to be relatable and I think that it is a really wild thing to say you know I'm a people pleaser you know I won't go to therapy about it you are the assholes for asking a people pleaser to do something when you know she's going to say yes and you know it's going to make her sad. Yeah. That's really weird to me. It's really weird to be like I'm furious and hurt by the way that you turn on people and try to live my life for me and my reputation is mine to ruin about dating a vocally racist man. It's crazy. About people asking her to not have two private jets. I'm going to use an extremely simple analogy. Please. You're going to have to really stretch to make this. I'm here. I'm here for it. Like your neighbor drove over the tulips that you cultivate lovingly every year and then you were like hey could you help me pay for some of the gardening implements I will need to do to fix all of this beautiful stuff. They said well my cat died earlier in the day. What did you expect me to drive in a straight line? How could you? She's like I'm a people pleaser and I'm sad all the time and all I want is some friends and then her billions of fans are like girl we get you, we hear you, we relate to you would you consider not dating a racist misogynist? And she's like he makes me orgasm God damn it! What do you want from me? What do you want? Fine. Do you want to know how sad I am? Here's how sad I am. Now you can't be mad at me. I'm not. It just feels very immature. It does. It feels like she's crafted this persona that is so divorced from who she actually is. Her social media and her speeches and everything besides her songwriting is not her. There's a team of people doing that. Everything about her is intentional and marketing and branding and her songwriting is the only tiny glimpse we get into her actual state and her actual psyche and it's crazy. She's like you guys need to back the fuck off. Can you imagine if she posted this? You know what this is? This is a version of a notes app Instagram story. I'm like hey guys I just came on here because I wanted to address a couple of things. You said she is 2012 and people won't let her be. Yes. I love that. I do think that there's this conflict that's coming up in her public relations right now where she seems to be a very dramatic girl who likes cats and bacon but she's built this lore that she's like a genius mastermind. Dark and twisted. The images aren't really coming together super well. No. There's gotten too many rebrands and too quick a succession. Who is she actually? We don't know. We don't know anymore. It's so weird because so much of her allure is built on her being so honest and open about her life. But we don't have any idea who she actually is. I think if she was more open in social media and talk shows and whatever then people would not go down the same rabbit holes with her lyrics and trying to decode them and stuff like that and I think that's what she's encouraging. If you don't like the decoding stop dropping easter egg puzzles. Yeah. I don't know. I think that all of these albums might have made more sense spaced apart and all of these aesthetic changes might have made more sense spaced apart. It's like she has the money to make things happen before most people working on creative projects are constrained by time and money so they are forced to reflect and edit and she's not. We do have to say it is an unbelievable feat that she wrote and recorded this while doing a world tour. That's insane. I do think she has access to vitamins that we don't. Yes. She's on some B45 shit. I think she's incredibly creatively productive. Yes. Maybe she's always been as productive and she's just cut out the draft for other albums. Yeah. I'm going to misquote this but she said she wrote 100 songs for Red or whatever. She writes so many more songs than she releases. That's why there's a vault. I feel like my interpretation of Taylor Swift just makes so much more sense when I think of her as autistic because she is so brilliant in specific ways and just misses the mark in a lot of things. She had to adhere a social rule and think she has to implement it totally. When she dipped at her reputation, she was like, I thought people didn't want to hear from me anymore so I left. I relate to that so much as being super black and white and literal and then being so confused and angry when people want something different from you but you were trying to do what they said that they wanted and it's so confusing every time. That conflict is what led me to get tested for autism. I feel like she surrounded herself with a team to do this for her of PR professionals to show her how to behave and how to be a celebrity and she doesn't always get the best advice but she's going to follow it because she doesn't really know how to do it herself so she trusts the experts. Does that make sense? I don't know, I'm just so curious about I saw a talk show with someone, with an actress who said she happened to be in the studio with Jack and Margaret Margaret and Taylor Swift was leaving and she complimented Taylor on her purse and Taylor was like, oh do you want it? She just emptied everything out of her purse and gave the purse to this random actress. What? That was to me just so, it made everything make more sense because I've done that. I've been like, oh this would make someone happy so then you just do it and it doesn't really matter if it's a little bit unhinged because that's the thing that they told you would work for happiness and for friendships. So you just keep giving and giving and giving and then you're like, I'm so exhausted why do people keep taking and at some point you need friends to be like, because you keep offering. I think that applies. It's very hard I feel like we're talking in circles because she's making us talk in circles. I know, that's her whole thing. I do really like the song Florida. But I like, I wanted to do a foreign song. I wanted to do a foreign song. Me too. And I like Who's Afraid of Little Old Me specifically in the context of fan edits of fantasy shows and books on TikTok. It's very good for that, yeah. I will say for this album, the maladaptive fantasy book daydream girlies, they're eating. We're fed. I really appreciate and enjoy the songwriting on L.O.M.L. and So Long London. Those are very pretty songs. I have not listened to them enough to tell because I don't find them interesting enough to repeat. Exactly. Yes, I've listened to them exactly twice on my two listens of the album and I was like, I like, these are pretty and I can see the work that went into them and I appreciate the lyricism and I don't need to listen to them again. I think it's difficult for me maybe, I mean, although I'm in a time of my life where everything's really busy and so I'm being, I'm very practical right now and I'm very task-oriented right now and so having someone write 31 songs and show her album when she could have said, I broke up with my long-term boyfriend, got back together with my toxic, on-again-off-again situation that turns out he's racist. Yeah. That's not kind of off-putting to me. Yeah. This could have been an email. It could have been a poem book. Write a poem book. Write a poem book. Produce one album of the bops, Down Pad, Florida, So Terrible Little Me, Love My Life, I Can Do Whatever, I Can Do The Broken Heart, I Hate My Mother, and then produce some poems. It would have been so big for girls aged 13 to 25. Yeah. And beyond maybe. Transition into poems. Yeah. Also, Jack, darling, please don't have a lyceum. Study abroad, Jack. Jack Antonoff, study abroad. I want you coming back to me saying, Barcelona. Barcelona. And I want you putting a little pizzazz on your tracks because you met a friend in Dublin who showed you a new sound. I want you to try spicy food, Jack Antonoff. I want to see if you like it. I, listen, Jack Antonoff made Melodrama and he's been chasing that high ever since. He made the album of all time, Melodrama by Lorde, and And it must be hard. It must be hard knowing that you've peaked. And I, listen, I fuck hard with some Jack Antonoff songs. Yeah, for sure. Like Cruel Summer. Cruel Summer? Are you kidding me? Supercut? But that's my point. That's the song he does well. Right. It's not Fortnite. No. It's not My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys. Like, it's bots. What fidget toy do you have today? Because I have these little beads. I have these little magnetic beads that I really hope, you have a boob. That is a breast implant. I need to get some new fidgets. I really like these, but they're loud and I can't use them near Shantanu because he hates the sound of them. And I learned that because I was using them and he would just quietly turn on music. Cutie. Come back. Did you see the picture that Charity Lawson posted? Yes. Charity Lawson, where she only tagged the surgeon who did her breast implants. And it looked like she was straight up writing . And she was just on top of him on the beads. That is queen shit. I love her. She's possibly my favorite lead to ever come out of this series. She's so tiny. Did you see the interview with Maria from The Bachelor? Oh, the Call Her Daddy one? No. She got the security guard. She lied her way into the security guard of her building, showing her footage from her boyfriend's entryway because she thought she left her purse. She said, I thought they left my purse there. I think he took it. I think I just need to see to catch him with another girl. Holy shit. Then he brought that girl as a guest to a restaurant opening he was hosting. Uh-huh. She stayed silent. She clocked it. She stayed silent. And then they went home and she gave him the video footage, laid out the receipts, the time, like everything. She said he denied it to this day, but she on another night out ran into the girl. Months later, never told her, became friends with her, made out with her to see what her boyfriend was looking for. Oh my. To this day, the interview hasn't told her. I'm speechless. Do you think we could get her on our podcast? Just to like teach us how to be? Yeah. We just really admire you and your strategies. I think that her not being the Bachelorette was the right call, because she needs a Tyler Cameron edit. She needs a whole team. She needs to be dating whatever male version of Gigi Hadid there is. She doesn't need the Bachelorette. She needs Fuckboy Island or something. I thought the Bachelorette needed her. Yeah. They tried. She said no. She's so cool. What a force. How insane is that? Dude. I just feel like there are hot, confident icons right now for young girls. I know. Like, can you imagine us, me, maybe also you, in high school, if we knew bisexuality was an option? We will fully cut this, but I was thinking the other day about how one time, we, you and I almost made out on my couch. Do you remember that? Oh, I don't. We were thinking about watching something, and I was like, I would make out with girls, like Sadie, and you were like, yeah, I would too, and then we just kind of like Oh, I do remember that. And we went home because we were very into our curfew. Yeah. Yeah. Had to be home by 11. Thank goodness we didn't, because now we're podcasting. Now we're podcasting. I think we could have gotten through that all, honestly. I know. I wouldn't want to risk it. I wouldn't want to risk it. Wouldn't want to risk an alt-reality. I know. Imagine if we had Caperone. Literally what we had was Katy Perry singing, I Kissed a Girl. That's diabolical. We had Demi Lovato's Cool for the Summer in college. In college? Not even in high school. Did I put that on every party playlist that I was in charge of? Yes, I did. Imagine if we had even Sabrina Carpenter. Mm-hmm. Billie Eilish, Lunch, The World of You and I. I was watching Pretty Little Liars with my 12-year-old cousin, as one does. In the very beginning of the show, one of the main plot lines is that Emily and Allison hooked up and Emily doesn't want anyone to know about that. My cousin was so confused. She was like, I don't understand. That's amazing. That's amazing. I know. There was Emily dating the swimmer boy, kind of, but it's very obviously in a competitive way. Then she and Maya kiss. My cousin's like, oh my God, she's cheating. I was like, oh, yeah, she is. It was so soul-warming. Now it's fine. I was hanging out with my little cousin. I was like, y'all are great. You're good. You feel good about who you are. You feel good about getting a B sometimes. Yeah. That's crazy. You'll go on dates with your boyfriend in high school in sweatpants. Incredible. It's so good. I bet other generations feel like that about us, though. It's just getting better, except some stuff is getting worse. We're not going to talk about any of that. No bad things. Are we reading anything else? I got really into trying to understand what it is. I watched a TikTok of a woman explaining it to her 11-month-old baby, and that helped. I'm really enjoying it. I'm reading my new electric toothbrush, which comes with an app. You can brush your teeth with it and then sync it to your phone. It'll upload as an unguided session, or you can have the app open while you brush your teeth, and then you'll have done 100% coverage in different areas of your mouth. How long are you supposed to brush your teeth for? Two minutes, twice a day. It's so long, but also if I'm listening to a podcast, I'll brush my teeth for eight minutes, which is also not good. I can't remember when I last went to the dentist. We can cut that. I went several years without going to a dentist, and then I went back, and it was okay. Then I listened to that, and I was like, that's enough for a while. Shantanu went to the dentist and really didn't have a good time at this dentist. He was like, they kept trying to upsell me on shit. Then I went to my dentist, and I was like, oh, I really like my dentist. You could go to my dentist. That was the same dentist. I'm enjoying my electric toothbrush app. The wording is so funny. These are the instructions for my toothbrush. Okay. I'm holding a comically large piece of paper. Where is it? Start brushing. There's a whole paragraph on how to brush your teeth, and then title, brushing reward illumination. The completion of a two minutes brushing event will be rewarded with a colorful light ring illumination. You get rainbow flashing colors. Oh my God! I will be rewarded with the color. It's so dittopian. Is your toothbrush parenting you? My toothbrush is big brothering me. I learned that I was brushing my teeth way too hard because if you push too hard, it glows red, and apparently I'm pushed way too hard. My mom brushes her teeth way too hard, and that's why she had to get a gum transplant. We can cut that. That's very gross. Wrap beef covered on TikTok. Met Gala covered on TikTok. Always. I love it. I love it. The girls did not do what needed to be done on the whole. That's okay. Release the girls from Chanel contracts. Oh my God. I'm also reading The Office for the first, like, real time. I really didn't like the first two seasons. The first two seasons are so hard to watch. Really cringy. Now we're in season four, and just, like, living. I put it on because it would be background noise when I was writing finals, but now I like it enough that it can't be background noise anymore. Although I honestly liked Jim and Pam better when they were secretly in love. Yeah, that's the golden era of their relationship. Yeah, it's like the best Jim and Pam is when the show is the worst. I also find Jim a little sleazy. He is, yeah. He's a salesman. He is, yeah. I've been reading Below Deck, Down Under. Nar. Nar. It's a reality TV show about the crew of a mega yacht. I've heard good things. It's delightful. The most recent season of Below Deck, Down Under goes off the fucking rails in about episode six. It's crazy. It's like a major content warning for sexual assault. I will say the producers do the ethical things, but it's really intense. We in this household have been reading Top Chef. Mmm. Yum, yum. I think it will be my husband's gateway into reality television. They always need one. If someone needs to tell me horrible news, make it Padma Lakshmi. She's so nice to look at. So soothing, and it kind of feels like the world can't be that bad because you're here. If I was in The Hunger Games and I got chosen in the quarter quell, but it was Padma, I'd be like, okay. I'd be like, thank you, Padma. Yeah, that's who Jesse Palmer wishes he was. Jesse Palmer is so many levels below her. But he's still such a big step up from Chris Harrison. It defies logic that Chris Harrison was a woman. Oh my god. I'm so sad about the fall of Lauren Dima. I know. Because Roses and Rose was so entertaining. It was so fun. She's such a good interviewer. She's like so fun to watch, and the fact that she's married to Chris Harrison just ruins her. I will never see her content. I have a few other things on my miscellaneous list. Yeah, what's up? I'm so burnt out that I feel like my body is full of gas tank fumes. Hmm. And my family's coming into town for my graduation. There's a lot of events. But I have a full body meltdown planned for the Monday when they leave. Perfect. I hope that goes to schedule. Thank you. I planned a mini breakdown for yesterday and I'm planning a full one for next Monday. Yesterday did in fact work out, so I feel like I've staved off the big one. Good. This feels like the evolved adult version of high school and college you putting sex in your planner. We can cut that. No, I think it provides some necessary content. It's how far I've come. How far I've come. I'm also rabidly reading Bridgerton promo. Oh. Luke Newton and Nicola Coughlin together are so hot. My friend Dom, friend of the pod, said it best when she said, I don't even need to be their third I'm happy just to watch. I miss you. I will get them towels. I will get them water and I will just be living my best life. Oh my God. Also, seeing promo with a fat woman where all the comments are like, oh my God, she's slaying. It's like healing me in like a deep and real way and the fact that there's going to be double D titties on my screen in a Shondaland production is gold. I haven't read the books or watched season two of the show or Queen Harlow, but here's my really well informed opinion. In the book, she has like a weight loss narrative and that's her glow up and I'm so delighted that they have just said absolutely not for that in the show. My friend Dom, friend of the pod, and I have planned a four hour watching event where we're going to get really high and have a lot of snacks and watch. I saw her at book club and I said, oh, we need to read the book before we watch the show. She's like, oh yeah, we do. We kind of look at each other and she was like, let's not though. Because I don't want to be disappointed. I also don't want any part of a weight loss narrative. I'm so excited. I'm going to read the book. If that lets you down, after House of Broken Shadow, after the Taylor album, I'm burying this shit to the ground. What's even left? What, like the next Gideon book? I can't comprehend that. I can't comprehend that. What are you talking about? And we've had just fucking no word, no word on that for like a year. It's been so long since Nona came out. So long and I still don't understand it. Okay. It's been so long, obviously I'm going to have to re-read the whole series before Electo comes out. Which is literally like a semester of coursework in a grad program for English literature. It is. It is. And I've been studying up on Tumblr, obviously, all of the theories. And I think more to please you when you tell me those theories that you found on Tumblr. And I need it. Where is she? Where is Damson? Damson. I'm Googling you. I'm like my last one. You have like a fairly horrifying zombie short story and then went radio silent. And I'm like goodbye Twitter, Damson. Oh my god. Where are you? I fucking, I knew Twitter so it's not motherfucking When is the next PJO season? They need to start turning those out. Those kids are growing up fast. Oh my god. I did have a little blip of suicidal ideation recently. We're back. And I was like not really resonating with my loved one telling me they wanted me to stay. But then I saw a TikTok edit of the Percy Jackson show and I was like oh my god, Sea of Monsters is next. Oh! Horrifying. But it worked. It worked. What do we have to look forward to? Okay, I just Googled None of the Nines came out September 2022. That was a year and a half ago. Oh, you know what we do have to look forward to? What? Onyx. What is the fourth wing called? Onyx Storm? Is that it? I've said it before, I'll say it again. That is the name of a porn star. Is that what it's called? Yeah, Onyx Storm. It's hard to see. You really have to investigate. January 2025. Okay. What else is there? To live for? Yeah, what else is there to live for is what I was wondering. Let me scroll through. Let me look at my want to read and see what's not yet published. I need Taplerone to be like there's an album in the works or something. I need that. I need the next Lorde album. I think I'm worried we haven't gotten a Lorde album in so long because Jack's been so busy with Taylor. I am excited for the Eros tour to start up again so I can start watching grainy live streams from different parts of the world. Yeah, that's fun. I'd like to see what kind of new choreo there's going to be for Tortured Poets section. Do you think she's going to add a whole section for it? Yeah, she's released rehearsal footage. Oh, really? With new props and new costumes and stuff we haven't seen before. That's really exciting. That'll be fun. Do you think, wow, I feel like performing I Can Do It With A Broken Heart at the Eros tour is so... Like is the crowd going to chant more? They'll be like, is this fucking show about us? Leigh says that there's a third Six of Crows in her brain. Well, put it in a fucking book. That she's cruelly not giving to us. That's so rude. I mean, there's the Three-Faced Goddess, the next Percy Jackson book. I think this is the summer we listen to Call Me Maybe over and over again. Listen, Carly Rae Jepsen is the queen of summer bops. Yes, okay. I genuinely feel that today. Well, this has been a fun journey through books and pods and healthcare. Yes, it has. Thanks for coming along for the ride everybody. Okay, Sophia, if I could give you a piece of advice, it would be sanitize your sea sponges. Wait, first before my advice, do you like chicken salad? Yeah, I'll eat it. Okay, my advice doesn't really work then. No, okay. Do you want me to like it or not like it? I like it. Okay. Make your chicken salad with garam masala on the chicken. Oh, fuck. Like a curry chicken salad? Yeah, like a curry chicken salad and then put that on a Trader Joe's everything bagel with like a very light schmear of cream cheese just so it would stick and conceal it. That sounds delightful and delectable. I genuinely would read that. It's so good. Thank you all for listening, Shelfies. I'm Sophia. And I'm Emily. And remember, anything can be reading.