Bonus Episode: New Year New Books!

If you're thinking of branching out to some fiction and non-fiction this is a quick bonus episode with a couple of recommendations of our favourite non-fantasy books we read last year.
Back to your irregularly scheduled fantasy coverage soon...

Transcript

Jen: [00:00:00] Hi, and welcome to If We Survive This. this is a different kind of episode. 

Ellie: A bonus New Year's episode. 

Jen: Yeah, a bonus chill discussion for, you know, helping set these New Year's goals. lots of people, you know, we all want to read more books. We want to try new things and The podcast is obviously on fantasy books and you will have heard a lot about the kind of books that we like, the fantasy, what we do and don't like, with the books that we have read, but we also read a lot of other kinds of books.

Ellie: Indeed. 

Jen: So, what we're going to do today is just go through like a handful of recommendations for like different non fantasy genres. Just in case you're looking to branch out from fantasy and you don't even know where to start. So if your tastes line up with mine, you can like aim for what I'm saying or if they line up with Ellie's aim with her recommendations just to give you a little in into the non fantasy [00:01:00] book world.

Ellie: I almost feel sacrilegious to be honest. 

Jen: Not saying you have to do it, I'm not saying it's a good idea, but you know, it's there. Some people set this as their goal in the year. 

Ellie: I do have a non fantasy. book goal that I want to achieve by my birthday in July, actually. Ooh, what's the goal? to read five literary classics, which I, which I set myself like my birthday last July and I've so far read zero.

Spoiler on possible recommendations, but I don't know. I have picked them out at least. I've picked all short ones, but yeah, so, so I, I guess I understand people wanting, more than just fantasy in their life as I too am trying to incorporate some more things outside of my comfort zone. 

Jen: Nice. Yeah, like, I found I only [00:02:00] really started reading, nonfiction books when I discovered audiobooks.

Mm. I just, I can't do nonfiction in written book form, but audiobooks, they're perfect. 

Ellie: It really varies for me. Like. Audiobooks are so fussy in my brain. like I've just finished a fantasy series and it was fantastic, but let's say the Crescent City books that we've done, I tried to listen to one of those, like I listened to the sample of audio book and I was like, no, definitely not.

Does not work. Strong no. But then some of the nonfiction that I like to read, I think I just like to kind of go over passages multiple times and highlight or write down or I, I don't know, I like having the physical book for that as well. So yeah, it's very much a case by case. study, which sometimes is really annoying because there's one or two, running books actually that I've wanted to read and I saw they're on, on, like as an audio book and I was like, Oh, great.

But then like the [00:03:00] audio quality of the recording just wouldn't be good enough or something. 

Jen: Oh, some 

of them are so bad 

or like the, it's done by a guy with a really bassy voice and doesn't matter how high it is. You can't hear him. 

Ellie: Yeah. Yeah.

But yeah, so Jen, how was your, how was your reading for 2024? 

Jen: in general, it was not good. I read a lot fewer books than I usually would and had many, many, reading slumps. But I've found that I, I read a ton of nonfiction, and there's, there's so many books on this list. Like I'm looking at my story graph at the moment and there's so many like nonfiction books here that I was like, what do you mean I only read that last year?

I read it years ago. Of course I read that year. And it's like, nope, last year. Ooh. Okay. so I think, I think my favorite nonfiction. That I read, was Into [00:04:00] Thin Air by John Krakauer, which is a book by John Krakauer and he's a writer. He's like an outdoor adventure. Well, he's not, he's, he's like an investigative journalist, I think, but he, he has some stuff in, in that era.

Like he started in the outdoors stuff and he went on an expedition of Everest and It was a complete disaster. It was horrible. Tons of people died. It was like, everything that could go wrong went wrong. storms came in. People had like weird medical conditions that no one knew about popped up. Things happened with all their support.

Random like people on the mountains of communication went wrong. And it was one of those books that, like, we're about into outdoorsy stuff. We, we know a lot about this kind of [00:05:00] mountaineering, but we don't really do mountaineering, but like, you know a lot about it. Yeah, yeah. You consume a lot of stuff about it.

Yeah. Yeah. And there's that common goal of everybody like, Oh, of course you have to climb Mount Everest, but it's turned into such like a consumerist goal now that like you pay to go up the mountain and essentially get carried up and carried down. But this book is talking about like, even though you have those things and even though you can be like, yeah, this is.

Cause it was looking into the idea of the more commercial trip up Everest when this was starting out. So it's, it, it's all happened, I think it's like the nineties or something. and it's looking at, you know, you can have all these like comforts and supports and a lot of people in the group are quite experienced, a lot more experienced than a lot of people trying Everest these days and all you need is for some things to go wrong.

And once you're at a certain place, one thing going wrong will snowball and everything will go [00:06:00] wrong. And it was, yeah, it was, it was, horrifying, but it was super interesting and just really insightful into the reality of doing something that's an actual. Extreme sport, but also an extreme sport that people are trying to make not an extreme sport.

Mm 

Ellie: hmm. Mm hmm. 

Jen: so yeah, I found, I thought that was 

Ellie: fantastic. Yeah, that that book has been on my list for quite a while. I think I've actually now bought it in my audiobook app. so it's, it's really good. Very, very literally on the TBR, yeah, I'm looking forward to getting to it. yeah, I don't know whether to say it's infamous or, famous, but it's definitely, yeah, well known out there and supposed to be an amazing read.

Jen: Okay. Do you have any nonfiction? I 

Ellie: do. I do. so last year I reread. Braiding Sweetgrass and read for the first time Gathering [00:07:00] Moss and these are both by the author Robin Wall Kimmerer and she is a Native American who is also a fully like

She's a Native American who has a huge background in Like very traditional science as well, I guess. Western science. so she studied biology and botany and is now an expert in her field in the like very classical academic way has. Also kind of realized and is now incorporating so much more of her, like Native American, like the traditional knowledges that they grew up learning and understanding.

And I reread Braiding Sweetgrass because it was one of my favorite reads of a couple of years ago. And I wanted to read Gathering Moss as well, which was her first book, or at least it was out before Braiding Sweetgrass. [00:08:00] And I kind of wanted to give myself some context and stuff again. I think what draws me to her writing and to other people's writing in this kind of sphere of how people engage with the world and how Positively or negatively, we impact it, I think there's a very specific kind of writing that weaves research and personal storytelling together in a really, really magical way that Robin and I think Got like started in gathering moss and executed really well in burning sweet grass.

It was interesting to go I guess backwards in her Bibliography, is that what you say? Is that what you call when people have written books? Her bibliography, like things that she has written. Yeah, there we go. A secret into my my current condition We have run out of [00:09:00] coffee. I've only had one coffee today, Jen.

What? How are you? 

Jen: Are you propped up? 

Ellie: Oh yeah, yeah, I'm fully supported. I'm fully supported, but I might just drift off, you know? Anyway, sorry. Very, very, Random aside, but it was definitely a skill she was still learning in Gathering Moss. Gathering Moss is a much more scientific book and it still kind of like reflects on, I guess, man's want to control nature and the absolute ridiculousness of that, But it's also very heavy in actually educating you about mosses and you start learning about the spangiophores and like it really, really, really, I was gonna say gets into the weeds, but gets into the tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny details of moss and like about the different, like the different ways they produce and male and female and like, do they have spores?

Do [00:10:00] they like all the, like, it got really, really, really into that. So if you're interested in. Very like technical scientific names and learning extreme detail about moss and then some asides on how it connects to the wider world and that book is good, but I think Braiding Sweetgrass is definitely. A more readable, more engaging book, she kind of nailed that balance between storytelling and information and it kind of just also brings you through her own life journey of going from like, well, no, no, no, I need to know the scientific way to do it to embracing that the like indigenous knowledge that she grew up with has a place and has a much stronger, meaning behind it.

Than what you learned in college. So, yeah, that was definitely, definitely my favorite, Non fiction read of 2024. [00:11:00] 

Jen: Nice. I, I find it kind of funny that like, both of our recommendations are about nature, whereas yours is, yours is like, oh, you know, this is about learning about nature and how you impact in the world and kind of nice and informative and learning and mine is, nature will kill you.

Nature will kill you when you disrespect it. Stop it. You will die. Stop Same concept, different ways into it. 

Ellie: Exactly. Exactly. And actually normally I read quite a few, or listen or consume or whatever, quite a few books, in that kind of, that sports genre. If we want to call mountaineering a sport, which yeah, it is, and it was interesting that you said that, the guy who wrote this is kind of an investigative journalist that then became a mountaineer because something that you and I have shared previously is the, it's really, really tricky if you're a sports person who decides to write a book versus somebody who works with words and decides to [00:12:00] write about a sport.

They're, they're, they're, they're different skills and just because you're a good sports person does not mean that you're going to be a good communicator of that sport. And finding the balance is, is really, really interesting. so I guess that's why Inch Thin Air. is so famous in, in, in this genre because it is actually written by somebody who was a words person first, or at least has words credentials.

Oh yeah, 

Jen: like, yeah, I posted about reading this, and a friend of mine came back and he was like, Oh, I've never heard of Into Thin Air, but have you read? Under the Banner of Heaven, which is another one of Crack Arrow's books, but it's on Mormonism. Oh, whoa. And it's, it's one of these great things that really just kind of hammers home that like, this is a, this is a writing person who talks about a sport thing that happened as opposed to, you know.

Like, there's nothing wrong with, with a sports person wanting to, to tell their story and [00:13:00] stuff, but it's, it's kind of the case of, you know, it's a difference between a documentary filmmaker and somebody filming their own run on YouTube for the first time. Like your first time doing it, it's probably not going to be great and that's okay because we learn these skills, but just because what you're doing is cool doesn't mean you can document it and convey it in a very good way.

Ellie: Yeah. Yeah. Like there are some people who are sports people that I think have become very good communicators. but you're not just going to naturally have that skill. 

Jen: Oh yeah, like, yeah, I, I read a bunch of more like sporty, sporty books this year as well. Like, I have a few from a Darren and Finn, Christopher McDougall, both of them write like running books, read one by Nuala Moore, who is a endurance, long distance hyper endurance swimmer.

She swam, she swam a relay around the coast of Ireland. 

Ellie: Yes, I do know her. I met her at, [00:14:00] I met her at something. She seems really, really cool. 

Jen: Yeah, her, her book is really good. It's Oh, cool. I don't, I don't mean this badly. It was so much better than I thought it was going to be. Like, I was enjoying it as an actual book on top of it being about something that I thought was quite interesting.

so yeah. Oh cool, I have 

Ellie: to, I have to remind myself to write that down after this. But how about fiction world? If we try and stay out of the kind of strictly fantasy side, did you have any standout fiction from the last year? 

Jen: Oh, so. That was not a. Fiction in the last 

Ellie: year. 

Jen: I was going 

Ellie: to 

Jen: say that was not, that 

Ellie: was not 

Jen: a 

Ellie: good noise, Jen.

Jen: I. Like, I, I really, I did a lot of non, sorry, I did a lot of nonfiction, a lot of fantasy and then a lot of random books for work last year. so when it comes to like fiction and like, [00:15:00] basically I have a handful of literary fiction or contemporary fiction and then I've got a bunch of not so great romance books that I listened to knowing they were bad just because I needed to turn my brain off.

Yes. Yes. so I'm going to go with, I'm going to go with butter, which, okay. I only finished in December and I'm, reading it for a book club, so it wasn't my choice, but I really enjoyed it. it's by Asako Yuzuki, who is a Japanese author and this is translated fiction. and it's about A woman, a woman who's a rapporteur and she really wants to, to get this interview with, a woman who is a serial killer who is currently in prison.

and the weird thing about the serial killer is like, it's, it's, there's a big question on like, [00:16:00] Did she actually kill these people? She's accused of killing like three of her boyfriends. Oh wow. and there is this question on like, did she actually kill them? Because like one of them committed suicide and it's like, well, did she make him commit suicide or did it just happen?

and, I think one of them had like a heart attack and died. And the big thing that, that keeps coming up is that she is, she's not very attractive. She's overweight. What was she doing to make these men want to be with her and that like societal, like hatred of a kind of woman leading to, of course she must have manipulated them and made them do this thing and it's therefore the killer.

Ellie: Yeah. 

Jen: but it's, it's really, it's, it's a weird, a weird book. so, the reporter. Kind of like starts getting an in with her by asking her about her recipes because she loves to cook and her big thing was, is all French cuisine. And it starts off with [00:17:00] talking about her love of butter and putting butter on different things and how that changes flavors and how society is moving to margarine, which is disgusting and artificial and is against like all, you know, nature's rules and you eat butter instead.

but it really goes into this massive exploration on like societal expectation of women, attitudes of, Men to women, women to other women, your, your role in your life, and also coming at it from multiple different perspectives because you have the journalist who has their own perspective.

You're getting a lot of what the like serial killer lady thinks and then you're also getting the journalist's best friend who's in a very different like life situation to the journalist and they're all. End up grappling with these different things about what it means to be a woman, what it means to exist in this society and have these kind of expectations on them.

And how that basically [00:18:00] either rules their life or them like avoiding those rules, rules their life. And it's just, it's really like, it's just a really interesting examination of all that kind of stuff. 

Ellie: Ooh, that does, it does sound like, again, yeah, not a book that I think I would reflexively pick up, but that does sound really interesting.

Yeah. 

Jen: Yeah, same. Like I wouldn't have. I grabbed this in a shop, but like it was a recommendation from someone in the book club. And I was just told, yeah, the next pick is Butter and I was like, I think I've got time. I'll try reading this. So I went in completely blind. All I knew was that it's called Butter.

It is a Japanese author. Go for it. I was like. Okay. Cool. but yeah, I'm, I'm really, I'm happy I read it. 

Ellie: I will say that with you describing the book about her three boyfriends dying and then how she gets an in and they're just talking about butter, [00:19:00] it immediately made me think she was a cannibal. I'm sure that's not the vibe of the book at all, but that's just the way my brain went.

I was like, Oh yes, everything's better with butter. And I was like, wait, dead boyfriends? Maybe? Who knows? Who knows? That's where my, where my brain went, while you were talking. 

Jen: There's also like, there's just this small element of it that I found very kind of strange in like, a me reading it context or someone like us reading it context, which is the amount of, position.

Butter gets given in, cuisine in Japan. Now, I'm assuming this is like, according to this author, I don't know, someone else in Japan could be like, no one fucking cares about butter, fine. but like there's a limit on the amount of butter that comes in. It's a big deal to get like this imported stuff.

The book is set when there's like a butter shortage and people wouldn't use these things. Whereas in Ireland, it's just kind of [00:20:00] like. Of course everyone has bricks of butter all the time, why wouldn't you have a brick of butter at all, like, no matter what it's so, there's just like this little kind of like, Oh yeah, this is, yeah, yeah, farmers, 

Ellie: farmers have like a maximum cap on the amount of dairy that they can produce most of the time.

Like we are overflowing with dairy. 

Jen: It also reminds you of like. Irish butter is considered one of the better butters in the world and it's like, Oh, I guess. Yeah. It's kind of weird to be like, Oh yes, our, our standard, like bog standard stuff you just grab on the shops is it's good, is considered really good by a lot of standards.

Ellie: If you want the weirdest aside I can ever tell you, I once ended up doing, a photo shoots for butter. In, I was taking the photos. so I, I had a friend who worked in the German branch of this, I very big Irish Butcher brand, and their photographer had pulled out last minute to [00:21:00] photograph, basically just nice pictures to go in their catalog for German suppliers to pick what things they wanted to distribute and the things that this butter brand was sending to Germany.

I was like, why do we not have this for sale in Ireland? This all looks incredible! You mean you make, like, butter shortbread biscuits? I didn't know you did that, all I know is that you make butter. But, so some of the really big Irish butter companies export, like, tenfold to what they sell in Ireland, which also just kind of blew my mind.

Yeah, I also got to take some of them home, which was nice because, you know, I had to open the packages to photograph them properly. And therefore, you know, of course, yeah, I let it go to waste. 

Jen: So I recently made the mistake of making shortbread at home, like proper shortbread, which is so easy to make.

It's really, really simple. It was delicious and now every time, like I haven't made shortbread [00:22:00] in ages and now every time that I have a shortbread biscuit that I've bought in a shop, I'm like, this is terrible compared to what I made. 

Ellie: I make these like, so I'm holding up to the webcams, Jen, I have a shortbread chocolate chip cookie.

just, just. They're so easy to make and they're so much better. So much better. I keep like a log of frozen dough in my fridge. And whenever I want to make another batch I just cut off some rings. That is the truly, that is the truly dangerous path to fall down. So be careful. I used to 

Jen: have that with chocolate chip cookies, and just like put them in my freezer, the raw dough, and then you just pop it in the.

The oven for 15 minutes and boom, fresh chocolate chip, any, oh my God, total aside. So what about, what about you for, fiction that is not fantasy? 

Ellie: It depends. So the book that I'm going to say technically has fantasy elements. And so I thought [00:23:00] it was way more of a fantasy book than it was, and my probably, so, okay, the book is Babel by R.

F. Kwang, and, they're definitely way more popular or way more well known, for the Poppy War trilogy, I think it's a trilogy, but Babel is a book set in like the height of the British colonial empire, and the premise of this book is that. Language holds power and people who are polyglots and truly understand the like, the nuances of a word can combine two words on a gold bar.

And then the, the kind of the lost in translation bit in the middle is the bit of kind of quote unquote magic that this gold bar then creates. and it's how they get around, like they don't create steam engines. Because they find these two words that work together that [00:24:00] have like, they're like propulsion or whatever.

So, yes, technically that is the kind of, that is the fantasy bit. I think when I read this book, I was actually, like, I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I was going to be because it was way less fantasy. And way More about the politics of colonialism and using the native resources, of people. So it, the, the, the book, centers around five young students, four or five, I should remember this.

I read this book this year, apparently, or last year, apparently. Young students who have all been brought to, like, Cambridge or Oxford, one of these big universities that has the the home of this, what's it even called? The, oh my god. [00:25:00] I swear I read the book. Huang is it Jay? Here to go. Yeah. Kay. what is the,

I'm so sorry I No go. I don't want Good reads.

Oxygen University,

silver working silver bars. What's, what's the name of that process though? so this also highlights. How, like, what kind of a reader I am. The fact that I'm like, what is the name, like, of the magical process in this book? I don't know. I am very much one of those readers that, like, you finish the book and they're like, what's the main character's name?

And I'm like, he had this kind of energy, like, I can't, apparently I can't remember details afterwards, but this book did like a really, really interesting job of putting these [00:26:00] five, putting this group of, of, of young, like, just out of teenagehood, kids. Into this Oxford University, give them this power and have them slowly realize the power they've been given, the kind of the golden cage they've found themselves in, and, I guess really start to question and wonder as to how what they're doing now is going to impact their home countries that they've been taken from.

It was, it was really, really good, like politics. Like, questioning how colonialism changed the world by just changing one or two of the elements. I think we talked about this recently where it's like, you used a nice phrase, you named it a certain kind of fiction, speculative fiction. Is that what you said?

Where like one big thing [00:27:00] changes, but the rest of the world is very much the same. So in this, it's this like magical power with the, with the silver bars to, to make these quote unquote kind of magic things happen. and then of course, who owns the most silver becomes a whole thing as well because you need these silver bars to power.

so then it's about like which countries are silver rich and. And, and how can England remain the colonial power that it wants to be, but it then also needs the intellect from the nations that it's colonizing. yeah, basically, it was really, really good. I really, really enjoyed it. I think at the time I was disappointed because I thought it was going to be more fantasy and it was definitely more of a socio political commentary than my brain was expecting.

but yeah, I feel bad cheating and picking something that does have fantastical elements, but I read So few [00:28:00] books in 2024, it was definitely a low, a low, low year for me. Like I read a third of the books that I normally read. So yeah, yeah, like every one of those years, yeah, yeah. Everyone has their own like, like a normally.

It's, it's, it's almost like saying what like pace do you run at, like saying how many books you read in a year feels like, like I'm baring my soul to the listeners. I normally read like between 50 and 60 books a year and last year I read 20. So, you know, it was just, it was just one of those years, as you said, this year I'm already off to a much better start.

We're still in January and I'm a couple of books in. So nice. Yeah. Yeah. It feels, it feels good. It feels good to be back. 

Jen: Oh, okay. do you have like, do you have any books that you're really looking forward to this year? Oh, particularly excited for. Ooh. Yeah. Like they don't necessarily need to be new books, but like books that you're like, I really, [00:29:00] I really want to get to this. 

Ellie: So in general, my favorite author is Rebecca Solnit, and I've, it was one of these things where I thought I was almost rationing her books to myself because I didn't want to like Read them all and then I was like, but what if I died tomorrow and I'd never read every Solnit book?

So I've kind of set myself the goal of trying to read as many of her books in Like or try and read her whole Bibliography biography whatever in the next couple of years because she has written like a lot of books so for Christmas, I was given by several different people some of her books that I have not yet read So they're all sitting quite high on my TV or And, the only book, well actually no, I, I do have two books pre ordered that fall into extremely different categories.

I do have Onyx Storm pre ordered, of Fourth Wing fame, I have not, it is already January and I [00:30:00] haven't re read Fourth Wing or, what's the second book? Iron Flame, thank you, geez. Or Iron Flame re read, like, like the rest of the internet is doing. 

Jen: I think Onyx Storm comes out in like. Two, three days, like it's gonna be for the time this episode gets out.

Ellie: Oh, yeah, it is. Yeah. Yeah So I haven't reread them. I don't know if I if I'll get around to beforehand or not I'm traveling when the book comes out So I probably won't read it as it comes out But that's that's the closest period or I have and the only other pre order I have for this year is everything is tuberculosis by John Green, which is a very Nonfiction book examining how TB, a very curable disease, still exists in the world and still kills more people than, than our malaria, homicide, and, all of our other deadliest things combined on any given year.

So, [00:31:00] yeah, it's looking at how this, John Green, the author kind of became fixated on this illness and has realized that everything in the way that we interact with the world means the TV still exists because all, all the rich countries are, are free of it. Why not everywhere else? So yeah, I'm looking forward to that.

I think it's going to be a really interesting critique of Western civilization. We all love, we all love a good critique. How about you? How about you? What are you looking forward to in 2025? 

Jen: Oh, you see, I asked that question. I was like, good God, I do not have an answer. Way to put me on the spot. Yeah.

See, I knew you had pre ordered books though, so I was like, oh, you can just go for those. Yeah. yeah, I don't know. I tend to be really bad at planning reading in advance. yeah, I, I'm looking forward to reading Song of Achilles, which I'm pretty sure we'll do an episode on this year. [00:32:00] and then after that, I don't. I don't know. I really, 

Ellie: like, The world is your oyster. 

Jen: Yeah, like absolutely anything, probably anything as long as it's not a book I already own because for some reason when I buy a book it goes onto my TBR and then never gets into my brain.

though in saying that. you were over at my house the other day, and you pointed out a book that I have on my shelf called Still Life. Yes. and I bought that like a long time ago. Okay. It's not, it's not super old, but like it's, I think I got it when it came out or something. and it's, one second, I'm going to check.

Ellie: It's supposed to be really good. Like that's what I've seen from it. And I will say that the edition that you have is a beautiful. Beautiful edition. 

Jen: yeah, so it came out in 2021 and I, I probably got it in like 2022 and it's been on my shelf. Oh, whoa. [00:33:00] Whoa. And yesterday I started it. I was like, I need a new book.

I just finished a book and I was like, I need a new one. Boom. You mentioned it, it stayed in my brain, I've started. 

Ellie: Nice. Nice. Sweet. I'm glad that I, contributed.

Jen: Um, okay, I think that, yeah, I think that's it for our little random book and baking recommendation episode. we'll go back to your regularly scheduled fantasy survival book podcast next episode. 

Ellie: Yes, but first off we just need to survive January and talk about nice easy topics of our favorite books of last year and yeah, what's ahead of us.

Cool. thanks for listening. We'll see you next 

Jen: time. 

Ellie: Okay. 

Jen: Bye.