Checked Out with Green Hills Public Library District

Episode 12 - School's In!

• Green Hills Public Library District • Season 1 • Episode 12

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School’s back in session with this month’s episode of Checked Out. “School’s In,” follows Tessa and Sara as they go through their class schedules and give recommendations based on each course. From PE to History this will be an episode full of homework for your TBR. 


Interested in hearing your favorite book, topic, or genre discussed? 
Send a recommendation to ghpl@greenhillslibrary.org  

Find all the titles we talked about here: 

https://ghs.swanlibraries.net/MyAccount/MyList/83755

SPEAKER_00:

Hi everyone, welcome back to our podcast. This is episode 12, School's In. I'm Sarah. I'm Tessa, and this is checked out the Greenhouse Public Library. In today's episode, we're going back to school. Fall is here, leaves are crunchy, and we are taking you through our class schedule with book recommendations, movie recommendations, and music recommendations for each of our classes.

SPEAKER_02:

We are going to start with homeroom. And for this, obviously, there's not like a strict topic. We thought we would talk about what we're currently reading, what we read recently, kind of like a free, a free period, if you will. My current read is A Shadow in the Ember by Jennifer L. Armantrout. It is technically a prequel series for a different series that I started literally years ago and didn't like. But everyone says this series is like her best work. And technically, I think I'm supposed to read them in publication order. I'm not doing that because I don't want to read the other series. So I'm just reading that one. But so far, so good. I'm like 200 pages in. And yeah, so far, so good. My most recent read, other than that, was Fairy Tale by Veronica Lancet. I have zero pitch for this. And you keep telling me that. It's the weirdest thing I've ever read. I can't explain any of it without the weirdest thing I ever read is not true. Fundamentally not true. Restaur by Matt Cassidy exists. Yep. It's the strangest constructed fantasy, paranormal, gothic romance I've ever encountered. It um was previously published independently and now it's being traditionally published. I'm reading or I read the indie published version. I don't know how much will change of it, but it's kind of long. It drags in some parts, and I have literally zero pitch other than gothic, many different timelines, love triangle. Those are three good things.

SPEAKER_00:

I like those.

SPEAKER_02:

I really like it. Yeah. It's dragging a little bit for me, but not to not to be that girl. But post-challenge, um, there's a slight slump occurring in my life. Yes. I am 100% there with you on the slump. The last one that I want to talk about that I recently read was City of Smoke and Brimstone, which was the fourth book in the House of Devil, City of Gods and Monsters. Series that I truly never shut up about. And she was so good. I was scared for my life, their lives, everyone's lives. But it was so good. It's definitely the most action-heavy of the whole series, but I think it was time for that to happen. And there's at least one more book coming out, but it's gonna be a long time. But it was good. I gave it five stars. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Solid. I was also scared for my life while you were reading that. Yeah, I had a lot of updates about those characters, everyone. So for my homeroom or current reads, I have been slowly, like molasses, making my way through Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil. You're still reading it? Actually, genuinely. Actually, genuinely. I I think you should just DNF it. I've thought about it so much. I don't think you'll like it. I told you. I have such a hard time with that present-day character. Alice? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, she's rough.

SPEAKER_00:

But I do love the character that we talked about last episode, Sabine, that is slightly unhinged and toxic and problematic.

SPEAKER_01:

Slightly?

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, she's she's good though. Oh, I love her. I love her.

SPEAKER_02:

I like Charlotte too.

SPEAKER_00:

I haven't gotten to Charlotte's POV. Okay. So Alice is just, I don't think we needed her. I don't either. And I zone out on her parts, and I don't know. And she's kind of whiny. She is, and I don't just I don't like her.

SPEAKER_02:

She's just like very whiny, and I get it. Like you got turned into a vampire and you did not ask for that. Like, fair enough, whatever.

SPEAKER_00:

But like so whiny. I might just DNF at everyone. But I'm also reading Soul Searching by Lila Sage. And I was desperate for fall reads. I love fall, and this is fall in a book. It follows a photographer that sees ghosts and ends up meeting a carpenter, and he thinks that there's just this crazy lady that talks to herself because she's talking to ghosts all the time. And again, Lila Sage kills it with the covers every time, so really happy with that. I haven't quite started it. I just downloaded it, the ARC, and so I'm hoping to get it finished before it officially releases this month.

SPEAKER_02:

I was under the impression that she was in love with a ghost.

SPEAKER_00:

I don't think so. Boom, suddenly I don't want to read it. I think that he's a regular mortal man. Oh. Unless he's a ghost and he doesn't know he's a ghost. Like we're getting a little sixth sense. Yeah, I was gonna say, are we gonna sixth sense it? Maybe she is, but promos so far have shown him to be like a man. Like a mortal man. Like a human man.

SPEAKER_02:

Like a living male. A living man. You keep saying mortal, like that matter.

SPEAKER_01:

But like I feel that mortal is the opposite of ghost. Living is the opposite of ghost. I retract my previous. Yeah, mortal is the opposite of immortal.

SPEAKER_02:

But like, aren't ghosts immortal? Like they exist I think inherently immortal, immortal means living.

SPEAKER_00:

I don't know. Alright, that's where we're at. That was homeroom. So stay tuned for all the other debates that we have in this episode. Um, moving on to English, because arguably this is the best subject. For me, I took a few different routes with this. The first is just highlighting a book that I read in high school that I didn't really see the value in until I was in college, and then even after college, and that's Macbeth by Shakespeare. When I read it, I was 16 and just thought, okay, yeah, cool, there's some witches and some guy that's kind of going crazy, like whatever. But then in college, I ended up going and seeing the play, and that like sparked something for me. And I took a Shakespeare class later on that focused on reading the Shakespeare version of a play, and then a non-Western version of that play. And so for Macbeth, we read Umbatha, which is a Zulu version of it, and that just gave me a newfound respect for Macbeth and all of the little intricate details that are in it that were reworked for a different culture, and I thought it was really interesting and really opened my eyes to the story of Macbeth.

SPEAKER_02:

I have a lot of thoughts about required reading. I have some that I can list that I really enjoyed, but I have two that are very overrated to me. One is to kill a mockingbird. Okay. It's fine. I think it's very digestible for a classic. It makes sense that it's read in schools.

SPEAKER_00:

I think that there are also different books and stories that teach that, like teach the lessons that are in To Kill a Mockingbird and do it in a better way.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So yeah. And then this one's really controversial, and I truly don't know if this one will be here. I don't like the great Gatsby. Hear me out. Hear me out. I am. I'll I'll hear you out on this. Actually, it's not that I don't like the Great Gatsby. I think it's entirely overrated. At least in my experience, I see a lot of Jay Gatsby like love, if you will. And I I don't understand how we get there. I think like technically the book is written very well. I think the characters are flawed in a good way that makes it compelling. I think it's overrated as a whole.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, so it's not my favorite text. Um I do think that the reason it is taught in high school so much is because it's so easy to break down into themes, motifs, symbols. Like it's a very good intro to like how you can analyze a piece of work and easy to follow. So I think that that's the reason that it's stood the test of time because it just it is just one of those texts that it's easy.

SPEAKER_02:

It does feel like F. Scott Fitzgerald was like, let me take every literary device and make it. Yeah, I guess maybe that is why. Maybe that's why I think both of them are overrated. On a different lighter note, uh, Lord of the Flies and Frankenstein, love them. Two of my favorites. Loved reading them. I think that they are just the right amount of challenging.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, both of those are yeah, my favorites from high school, I would say. I look back on them very fondly. Have my notes from high school still, because I'm insane a little bit, but it's fine. I do too. Okay, cool.

SPEAKER_02:

You'll never know when you want to go back to it. Exactly. Am I ever gonna go back to the Pythagorean theorem? No. No, but will I want to read my annotated play of Hamlet? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, for sure. Um, I got two more things that I wanted to cover for English. The first is a book that I think should be taught in English classes now. That's They're There by Tommy Orange. And the reasoning is I don't feel that, at least in my experience with English classes, that we had enough focus on native writing and native stories. I think that there's a lot to be said there, and it's important to appreciate those stories and spend time on them. And there, there does a really good job of being a story that is easy to follow, that has a lot of those themes, motifs. There's a lot to analyze there. So going into that, like, you know, great Gatsby situation. And it's interesting. I think that students would be compelled by that story. So I would like to see that taught in schools.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think that brings up a really good point that there's not enough modern things taught in English classes, in my experience. I don't know. Obviously, every school and curriculum is different, and I'm several years out of high school now. So the most modern thing that I had to read in high school was the kite runner, and everything else was classics, and I think that that's where a lot of students get lost if they don't have like a love for English. There's plenty of modern literature that I think could do the same job, if not better, in some of these cases. In college, there's more focused classes that focus specifically on women's lit and like things like native lit. Yeah. But as far as high school goes, we can definitely make them a little bit more well-rounded, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00:

Agreed. And then my last note for English class is um elliptic, and that is Pew by Katherine Lacey. Following there, there, Great Gatsby, it's got a lot to unpack, which is the English teacher favorite word to use. So I think that that would be an interesting thing to share with students and to see their perspective on it.

SPEAKER_02:

I did start that and then I forgot I started it. But what I read of it, I liked.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's pretty cool. And for listeners that are not familiar with it, it was a staff book club pick that we had. Um, and it follows a character that shows up in a town and is nonverbal, and the people of the town are kind of figuring out what to do with this character. And we are unsure of the character's gender, of the character's background, ethnicity, race, religion, and the character kind of jumps around from house to house, and we see how everyone in the town is reacting to this character and how they push upon their own ideas and impressions on this character. And so it's it's a very interesting take. And I think that it would do well in a high school. It's a shorter book. It's again, there's a lot there to unpack about society and how we see people.

SPEAKER_02:

It is pretty short, like sub-300 pages, I think. Yeah. And I think that's where a lot of students also get off track when it's over that 300 page mark. Good luck. Okay. Math. Oh man. I don't have a lot to say about math. Neither do I. As you can probably assume with how much we talk about books and literature and things of that nature. Not big math girls. Math is not for us.

SPEAKER_00:

Not at all. I wanted to say unfortunately, but it's really not. No. Unfortunately, I'm not mad about it.

SPEAKER_02:

Same. I do have two pieces of media. They're not books. One is Goodwill Hunting. It's a classic. Have honestly, I should rewatch it. Haven't seen it in a very long time. If you haven't seen it, watch it. And unlikely man solves a very hard math problem.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's the end of the movie.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

That's it.

SPEAKER_02:

But it's a very good, like, fall time movie, too.

SPEAKER_00:

It's so good. Like that in Dead Poet Society. Exactly what I was thinking. They go hand in hand for me.

SPEAKER_02:

They do. We're stretching slightly on the math, but my other recommendation is a mini-series, and it's The Queen's Gambit. It follows Beth. She is an orphan. At her orphanage, there's a janitor who teaches her how to play chess. Chess is inherently mathematical, and she becomes kind of a prodigy. And you follow her story through the highs and lows and how chess changes her life, destroys her life. Probably one of my top television shows of all time. I think it's perfectly done. It's perfectly paced. Like you would think it's a niche thing because she it's so focused on chess, but it's just really not. The obsession that she has with being perfect at it and the love that she has for it, I feel like is universal to anything that anybody feels passionate about. And it's been out for a few years, and unfortunately, it is only on Netflix. But if you can watch it, you absolutely should.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, also one of my favorites, too, and I'm not even a big show person, but just the obsession that she has with chess. And again, like you said, the way it changes her life for better or for worse was really interesting to follow. My math pick is also chess related. Thank you, Tessa. Um, it is Check and Mate by Allie Hazelwood, because I cannot go through an episode without mentioning Allie Hazlewood. And this is her only YA book, and it follows a chess. I would say she's sort of a prodigy here, um, who gives up chess due to some family drama that occurs at one of her tournaments. And then because she is sort of obsessed with it and enjoys it and is good at it, finds her way back to chess where she unknowingly beats one of the current chess champions, and they sort of fall into a relationship, and it's but I don't think that this book gets enough hype for an Allie Hazelwood book. It's one of her her best books, in my opinion. I loved him.

SPEAKER_02:

I didn't really care about her, no offense. I also listened to it on audio pretty fast right before we went to a signing for Allie Hazelwood. And I think if I gave it a better I just need to stop trying to listen to romance books on audio because I end up being like meh, okay. It's just not for me. But a fantasy romance, I can do that on audio all day. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I I don't make sense. I don't have any tips for that because I just recently got into romance on audio this year. It just it took one, it took one very good one. Lights out by Novessa Allen. That like just changed it for me. So that's it. Maybe you'll find it one day. Maybe you won't, and that's okay. Maybe that's all we got for math. We're not math girls. No.

SPEAKER_02:

We've got chess and we've got an old movie, and that's all.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's okay. We'll do science now. Okay. I liked science in high school. I'm still fascinated by science. And I like when books incorporate some scientific elements to them a little bit.

SPEAKER_02:

Are you going Allie Hazel one again?

SPEAKER_00:

No, that would just be too obvious. Okay. You know, I went I went the psych route first, and I did matchmaking for psychopaths by Tasha Coriel, and I just recently finished this on audio. It follows a character whose parents are mysteriously not in the picture. Um, and her father passes away, and she has a strained relationship with her mother, and she works at a matchmaking office and pairs psychopaths together to help them find love. That sounds fun. Yeah. There's a lot at play here. I rated it about three stars. Um I wanted more from it. Someone online said that it was like the materialists but with murder. I didn't watch the materialists yet, so I can't really say if that's accurate, but I did want some more from it. But I did feel that, you know, it fell under the psych, psych category.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. I have some psych things, and then I have some just like general science, more like sci-fi business. Following the psych route, though, Girl Interrupted. Respectfully, it might be overrated. I like it. I like the book more than I like the movie, but the movie is decent in what it's trying to do, even though it's obviously dated. But at the same time, it is someone's real well, based upon someone's real story in the time period that it was taking place. So Oh yeah, there's that. Um Black Swan. You ever see that movie?

SPEAKER_00:

That I haven't seen it. I read the synopsis and watched a lot of YouTube analysis videos. It's crazy. That's yeah. Psych is where it needs to be. Thank you. Yep.

SPEAKER_02:

Um, we'll go more classic movie route. Psycho? Yeah. Like, what were we gonna do? Not talk about psycho. We're talking about psych. I don't think I need to introduce psycho. Norman Bates, Weird Hotel, bad vibe. We'll go more fun route with this one. Yeah, please. Let's do God of Malice by Rena Kent. He's a psychopath, but we love him. We love him. We do. We love fictional psychopaths. Yeah. Yeah. I'm thinking of ending things by Ian Reed. It is a book, and then Netflix turned it into a movie. Movie bad. Movie not good. It's like a fever dream, and it would have been very hard to execute properly. And so I'm not surprised that it wasn't. And then my last psych one is gonna be Alone With You in the Ether by Livy Blake. The bulk of the story is built around the mental health of our main two characters and how they help themselves, help each other. I think it does the representation of bipolar disorder very well. And I think it depicts the inner monologue of having depression very well. I think it is a really beautiful story of two people learning how to manage their mental health while also caring for someone else who has their own mental health struggles. That's what I got for psych, but I have some other science things too.

SPEAKER_00:

I do too. I went with a health route, and I don't know, I was just really pulling from my experience with health class. We were each given a topic that focused on a mental health diagnosis and asked to present on that. So think deep depression, think anxiety, bipolar, etc. And one that I picked, um, like a book that I picked that recalled this memory was Promise Me Sunshine by Caribbe Stone. And the main character is dealing with a bout of depression after the loss of her best friend. And it deals a lot with grief and the physical manifestations of depression as well. So I thought that that was an interesting viewpoint to have in a romance novel, because that's what this is. I know that we've talked about in the past books being a love story versus a romance, and I think that that's kind of what this leans more into.

SPEAKER_02:

That makes a lot of sense because the subtitle for Alone With You in the Ether is a love story. We've kind of dissected that, that it's not necessarily a romance, but the love is a huge part of it, but it's not the be-all end-all of what the story actually is trying to tackle.

SPEAKER_00:

Exactly. And so I think Caribust Stone does a really good job at showcasing that, and it's really important to highlight that health and health class is so much more than just the physical, it is very much mental. And so it's important to have that representation in our books too.

SPEAKER_02:

I agree. And I don't really know what class um I would put like my sci-fi business in regarding science, but I would be remiss to not talk about them. I don't think I've ever talked about this book on the podcast before. Alert, alert, alert. Red Rising by Pierce Brown. The first book is compared a lot to the Hunger Games in Space. I see where we came from there, but I don't that's not how I would pitch it. Our main character is Darrow. He lives on oh god, Mars. Basically, Earth. We can't be using her anymore. So there are different like factions of people, and based on like their blood and where they rank in society, you are different colors. And he is a red. Honestly, bear with me. It's been like three years. He is the lowest of the low, and he gets brought into the higher, I want to say gold, somewhere in there, as a spy undercover. And to do all these things, whatever, he has to do this trial that all of them do. And it is reminiscent of the Hunger Games, but it's a lot more war-focused, which is an interesting take because you're reading a sci-fi. And then when he's in that world, like he's in that trial, it feels very like straight fantasy. Um, and then the rest of the series is very different from where you start, but in like a really good way. Like the world just continues expanding, but in a way that's like really well built. That's why it's hard to talk about the first book because like that's not where we are any longer. It's very emotional. First book, it's it's heavy. Second book, emotional, and then you don't, it doesn't stop. Like it's just a domino effect of every bad thing that could ever happen to this world continuously happening. The books get longer as you go on, but Red Rising for being as broad and everything that it tackles is pretty short. Is this a finished series? The first three books are like its own self-contained story, and then I think there are two or three, I haven't read those ones, uh, that continue to branch. I don't know if there's a time jump or what, but like the main focus of the first like arc wraps up in the first three. And then I think there's two more, and he might be coming out with one more.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, I'll add that to my TBR. It seems really interesting.

SPEAKER_02:

Audiobook is good.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. And then, oh, Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant. I did, in fact, just DNF Overgrowth by Mira Grant, but uh Into the Drowning Deep is it's Sean and Maguire's pen name, Mira Grant. I talk about how I love wayward children all the time. Into the Drowning Deep is truly a dream for me. It is about uh killer mermaids. They're really scary, like very scary. It's like horror mixed with a sci-fi because like these mermaids are real. They are studying these mermaids. They're not mermaids like they you think they are, they're more of a creature than what like Ariel presents as. Um, and this ship goes missing that was studying them. The main character's sister was on the ship that went missing, and they go back out on another exhibition to try to find out what happened, try to study these mermaids, whatever. And the story really goes from there. It's very science-heavy in parts, but it doesn't feel as heavy because the science isn't real. Like Mira Grant does a great job at making the science feel like it's accurate and it's coming from somewhere, but like end of the day, the mermaids aren't real. So it might feel a little bit science heavy in some parts, and then you're like, oh, but it's not like I don't actually have to take these statistics in and like apply them to my real life. Yeah. Um, so pretty science heavy, but very fun. I love a ship. We know this. I'll get there. Don't worry, I'll get there in our little school journey. But I think if you like horror books and you're looking to try out sci-fi, that's a really good one to start with.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, we'll be adding that to the TBR as well. The bell has rung on science, and we're going to our next class, and that's history.

SPEAKER_02:

As I said, we'll talk about a shipwreck. Uh, it is no secret to literally anyone that knows me, and I know that I've talked about it on the podcast before as well. I am a Titanic kid through and through. I think the entire story of the honestly, I the science behind it all, but also what it meant for history and what it did for the ship industry as a whole is very interesting. There are so many things that were changed about shipping and cruise cruises and ocean liners because of what happened with Titanic. And I will read anything about Titanic, I will watch anything about Titanic, I love the movie. Listen, do not say anything about it. It is not the best movie on earth. I love that movie. Um, the sinking of the ship, not accurate. Lots of things in it, not accurate. I'm gonna give it to James Cameron though. He's made multiple documentaries post-Titanic film addressing what they have learned because you also have to take into account that movie came out in '97, but they were making it for several years before. We are in 2025, way more research is can be done, different tools exist now. He has proven and disproven many a thing. I I love the Titanic. I think the whole the whole story of it, very tragic, but also very it really humbles you, I think, to learn about it and how certain they were that that ship would never sink and all the mistakes that they made. No offense to Thomas Andrews. Sorry, man. But uh, I think it pulls at heartstrings, but also I'm just fascinated generally by shipwreck.

SPEAKER_00:

Love her so bad. Just know that if there's ever a course given on the Titanic anywhere ever, Tessa is teaching the course.

SPEAKER_02:

I do know way more than the average person should know.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's okay, it's just your niche.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's my special interest. It's where we end up. I don't really read historical fiction, so I don't have a lot on that. Uh Alchemy of Secrets by Stephanie Garber, who's the author of Carval, one of my favorite YA fantasies. She's coming out with a new book, Alchemy of Secrets. And I can't remember what time period. I want to say the 20s. And it's adult, and I'm very intrigued in how she's gonna be doing all this. There is definitely still a fantastical element involved, but I have stayed away from the actual description of it because with really anticipated reads from authors that I like, I like to go in with as little knowledge as possible because it makes it more exciting for me that way. Um, and my one nonfiction that I have is Last Call: a True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York by Elon Green. I don't really read nonfiction, but this one really captured me. I found it easy to read physically as well as listening to it on audio. I think either one is a great experience, and it covers the story of a serial killer in New York during the AIDS epidemic, and how people did not take well to queer people and queer men at this time very easily. And this man who was committing murders was very easily found when they started actually putting their minds to it, but nobody was putting their minds to it or putting two and two together that it was the same person for a long time because they were deemed as people who they didn't need to care about. And it was sad but satisfying because by the end, everything's figured out and wrapped up. It was just very interesting to me. I had never heard of these murders in this serial killer before, and I've consumed a lot of true crime in my life. I've moved away from it for the most part, but this one was very interesting because it wasn't anything that I had ever heard of before.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that does seem interesting. And you are, I think, still very much true crime crime.

SPEAKER_02:

Just because you watch Dateline doesn't mean that I'm super into true crime. Listen, my dad made me watch Dateline in 2020 growing up, and now it's just a part of who I am. Yeah, you're still in the true crime. I don't consume it as much as I used to. Okay, I'll give you that. That's what I said. Yeah. I don't. I don't consume it at the rate that I used to. Yeah. Or at a much lower volume than I used to. But last call was probably the first like deep dive I've done into things recently. And yeah, I don't I don't really like nonfic, but it was short. There was a definite narrative to what was going on, and I think that's why I enjoyed it so much.

SPEAKER_00:

For history for me, I'm kind of all over the place here. I want to start with my most outlandish one, and that is Game of Thrones. Stay with me here, everyone.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm here.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm holding your hand, I'm walking with you. Thank you. I feel that while this is not real history, there is so much history in this series, and even their like prequel series that they've got, The House of Dragons. So whether you're reading the book or you are watching the show, there's so much to keep track of. Family lineages, wars, kings, battles. You know, there's a lot there that if you're into history and like real life history, this is like a nice little segue.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I mean, Fire and Blood, the book is literally just a history of the Targaryen family, like all the way through. I've heard a lot of people say it literally reads like a textbook.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and sometimes for me, I kind of like that fake history more than real history because there's a like dragons and stuff, and I'm into that.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and there's there's always parallels. We talked about that a lot in the fantasy episode with Patrick. There's always gonna be parallels to the real world and what goes on within our own realm, shall we say? That no, I don't think it's outlandish.

SPEAKER_00:

I think Game of Thrones works. Thank you. My next one, we're gonna keep up with this little outlandish thing that I've got. Recently, Tessa and I went to a Grady Hendricks event. And if you haven't been to a Grady Hendricks event before, I definitely recommend it. It was like a crash course in witchcraft, because that's what his latest book was about at the time. And there was so much history there that I walked out and I was like, whoa, I felt like I needed to have my notebook out taking notes.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, we got in the car and we were like, okay, let's unpack what was just explained to us. And yeah, very much crash course-esque, like the Green Brothers, with a lot more comedy thrown in. But it definitely gave me because I I think way uh witchcraft for Waybird Girls is not one of his strongest. But leaving that, I was like, I think I need to reread that because I think I understand the perspective a little bit more and what he was doing with the witches, because that was our huge, our huge problem with it was what route the witches took. And so I think knowing where he was coming from and all of that, I think a reread, I would end up enjoying it a lot more.

SPEAKER_00:

Agreed. And then my final note for history is I like looking at the everyday normal lives that people live in history. And I think that it's interesting to see our current day and how that's put into books and how that that will become something that we'll look back on in like 20 years and be like, oh, that's changed so much. So, for example, Such a Fun Age by Kylie Reed, it's kind of giving the nanny that movie with Scarlett Johansson. This 20-something year old becomes a nanny for this very wealthy family, and the mother of the family is kind of a figure in social media and in the world, and like has a brand that she upkeeps and a lifestyle that she showcases to people. And I think that that's gonna be really interesting to look back on and be like, white, this is this is kind of real. There are lifestyle content creators and people that are showcasing their family online, and we have books that break this down and have commentary on it. And so that's interesting, and also just seeing like this is an everyday life of someone that is like 20-something years old in the mid, you know, 2010s or early 2020s.

SPEAKER_02:

Two things. Uh, I it's on my TBR, but I haven't read it. I think it's called Allow Me to Introduce Myself or Reintroduce Myself. Yeah, Allow Me to Introduce Myself, I think. Um, which follows a adult who was exploited as a child by their parents on social media. And I think the main character's sister is still in that situation and she's trying to get her out of it. I could be wrong, but I think that that's what the premise is. Um, but then also Sherry Frankie from uh the eight passengers, Ruby Frankie legal proceedings that have just recently occurred, like real life um experience of a family vlogger parent who is now in jail for child uh abuse, neglect, endangerment, and the oldest child um who is now, um, she's around our age, after everything happened, came out with a book that like explained her experience and what was going on behind the scenes. And it is I haven't read the whole thing, but I've heard like clips of it and read excerpts, and it is rough. But I feel like that's one of those things that in 20, 30 years, people are gonna be like, What in the world? Like, because there is such lax laws around that, and as time goes on and whatnot, I think that things will become a lot stricter. But yeah, definitely like a time capsule in literature.

SPEAKER_00:

So that's what we've got for history. We've got Titanic, true crime, game of thrones, Grady Hendricks. It got weird. It did, it got a little weird, but we're moving on now. To some electives. Got art class up next, and I took a few different routes with this one. Starting off, I chose a no skip album that I think is like a work of art. Musically, even though we have a music class, but just stay tuned. Okay. And I picked Mechanical Bowl by Kings of Leon. This is one of my favorite albums. I think that the cover art is sick. I have absolutely no skips on this album. Every song just is it hits for lack of a better term. The lyrics are great. The music is great. So one of my favorites. And then I wanted to look at cover art of books. And Lady Macbeth by Ava Reed. So good.

SPEAKER_02:

Incredible.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Not one of my favorite books. Again, another book that gave me like another type of love for Macbeth. But the cover art is really, really good. And I have to shout out Lila Sage's Rebel Blue Ranch series because we always rave about the cover art there. The artist does a really wonderful job at making those covers look different and stand out in the romance genre. And then I have a film. So pretty well-rounded here. My film is The Mona Lisa Smile with Julia Roberts. I do, in fact, love a Julia Roberts movie. Um, and this follows 1950s. She is an art history professor that teaches at an all-women's college. And there are some societal norms and standards of the time for women that these students fall into. And that's getting married, having the traditional like house that they're taking care of, and you know, the husband, and then soon children, and that takes them away from schooling. And that's like a big point in the film is focusing on women's education, and we see the tension between Julia Roberts' character and her students, and how they are kind of at a tug of war with these standards and these, you know, the status quo and challenging that in this society. So one of my favorite movies, I would say.

SPEAKER_02:

I've never seen it, but I'll add it to the list. I took a different route than what you did. So we're really all over the place with art. Uh, I took a graphic novel route. Yes. Thank you. Uh, we've talked about saga at length. I don't need to do this, but I I can't not say it. Um, Tender. It is a horror graphic novel. It's so good, and I don't want you to know anything.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Because I didn't. I was just like, this cover looks crazy. This art is really cool. Let me see what happens. I finished it and immediately went back and read the whole thing again. I was shocked, surprised, and awed. A much lighter note, Heartstopper by Alice Oseman. So cute, YA, queer romance, teens finding themselves and dealing with hard things that teens are always dealing with, but people don't necessarily always want to acknowledge in them. The Netflix adaptation is pretty good. Uh, I prefer the graphic novels, but I think the casting goes crazy for that. Like if you look at how she has originally drawn those two main characters next to the author or next to the actors, insane. Don't know how they found those people. It's wild. They're really good though. And then uh my last one is Nimona by Andy Stevenson. There is also a Netflix animated adaptation, I think. I haven't watched that. But it is a young girl who decides that she's going to be a supervillain's sidekick and he wants nothing to do with it. It's very cute. I think it teeters on YANJ, YA and juvenile fiction. Uh, but it's still a really fun read, and the art is incredible.

SPEAKER_00:

I guess we can move on to Lunch and Recess. So during this time, it's where my friends and I kind of got together and talked about the shows or books that we were reading outside of school. And we sort of had a little bit of a book club, so to say, where we would read the book and then we would go to the movie theater, watch the movie, and then get chilies. That was just what we did. And so we did this for the Divergent series and for the Maze Runner series. And I wouldn't change a thing. I loved it, it was fantastic. That's very fun.

SPEAKER_02:

I love that. For me, Cassandra Clare, her Shadow Hunter's World. I started reading the Mortal Instruments and subsequent series when I was 12. And so I'm committed. I'm so many books deep. There's nothing I can do. That was a big era of that time. I would also like to send a big shout out to middle school, high school, me, One Direction, Five Seconds of Summer shaped me as a child.

SPEAKER_00:

Agreed. I'm right there with you. I remember leaving one of my classes and going to the bathroom to watch the One Direction music video that had dropped.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Yeah. Take Me Home is an absolute no-skip album. Yeah, that's a work of art there. Truly it is. Ugh. Love them. And then, yeah, the only other ones that I wanna shout out is Six of Crows by Lee Bardugo, Standing the Test of Time, The Girls Still Love Her. And The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer. It's um like a sci-fi fantasy take on fairy tale retellings. They're very fun. I reread Cinder not that long ago because I was like, is this still fun? It's so fun. It's nothing serious, but it's just it's a really fun time. And that's what I was up to in high school. Middle school, high school.

SPEAKER_00:

I fear that we just need to have a nostalgia episode.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. We're gonna table this conversation.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Um, okay. Jim. Hey, Jim. All I'm gonna say about this is that I'm a sports romance girly. I don't play sports. So I live vicariously through the characters in these books. Um, recently just finished the DC Stars series by Chelsea Curto. Um, it follows, you know, a hockey team in the NHL. I liked it. The first one was kind of rough for me, but the following three I really liked, and there's three more.

SPEAKER_01:

And she is there's three more?

SPEAKER_00:

There's seven in the series. Whoa. And she's cranking them out. Like there's one coming out later this year, and then two in 2026. Um, and then I have to shout out Stick It, the gymnastics movie.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, make it or break it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, what else you got for gym?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's it.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, I wasn't a gym girl. Yeah. On my notes, I have written Boys of Tommen question marks. It was the only sport romance I could think of. So, whatever. You did you ever have to do like the the fitness testing, like the pacer and whatnot? Yeah. So then I picked two fantasies that have like trials that required a lot of physical activity. Thank you. Servant of Earth, which I talked about um in the challenge episode. She goes through, well, she helps the girl that she has to work with through a bunch of trials. And so she does all the heavy lifting and they make it look like the other girl does. And then The Prison Healer by Lynette Noni. It is a YA, and the first book specifically has very well-defined physical trial challenges that are not the pacer test, but I'm sure it provokes the same emotion. The pacer test is like training for the hunger games. It's really scary. Like you listen to the audio of it as like an adult who's not doing it. It's very frightening. It's triggering, yeah. Scary. Okay, film.

SPEAKER_00:

All right, so for this one, I have a little nonfiction that I recently read, and it is your favorite scary movie, how the Scream Films rewrote The Rules of Horror by Ashley Collins. And I liked this. And one thing about me, I love the Scream movies. Um Yeah. Yeah. We both do. So good. Right? Classics. And there was a lot in this that I already knew just because I'm a Scream fanatic. But if you don't know much about how the Scream movies were made or some history and lore behind them, I would definitely recommend reading it. It was still very interesting for me to listen to it, just because I love the movie so much, and also sparked a movie marathon that I'm in the process of finishing up.

SPEAKER_02:

I would like you to say that you think that you are wrong about Scream 3.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. If you're a longtime listener and you listened to our horror episode last year, you might recall me saying that I don't think Scream 3 is that bad. That I just think it exists in the world and I just it's just it exists. I do, after listening to the book, take that back. Okay. I retract the statement. I think it's I said it. It's on can't it's on tape now. Okay. Um, and then my second is a book I'd like to see on film. And I know we said we weren't gonna talk about saga, but that's what I have on here. I just think that it would be sick to to see that brought to life.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think they could do it very well in the similar style of arcane, yeah. And the animated oh yeah, yeah. I don't think they can do a live action, and if they tried, I would scream and cry and throw up. Same. It would be too much CGI, yeah, too much in how the characters present. Yeah. That you you can't do it practically. No. So it would be too much CGI and it would look terrible. But if you did it all, I mean it's already drawn. So if you did it, you just have to animate it. So that's that's what I've got for film. How about you? Obviously, Scream. We'll go back to the horror episode. Hereditaries, probably my favorite movie of all time. I think it is a true masterpiece, and it does not matter how many times I watch that movie, I always leave it feeling sick to my stomach. Like there's just so much, so much dread. I also think the marketing of that movie is was incredible. I don't need to like fully go into it, but something happens within the first 30 minutes that completely changes everything about the movie, and the trailer gives absolutely zero of that away. Like it makes you think that the first 30 minutes of that movie is exactly the trajectory that it's going, and it's just not. And the Ari Aster universe, Midsummer. I prefer hereditary. I know a lot of people prefer Midsummer. I think they're both great. Whiplash, that's like a deep cut. I don't know if you've seen that movie. I don't think I have. Uh, it's Miles Teller. Oh, he's a drummer. Yes. Yes, yeah. He is a drummer at, I don't think it's Juilliard, but it's like a music school. He gets put into um like the first string of their band, and it's all just like very intense. I don't know. Their character dynamics, the way it's shot is so good.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, that was a really good segue into our music class. One class I wish I had in high school, but we didn't, unfortunately. Um, for this one, I have a non-fic again, and this is Britney Spears, the woman in me. I just learned a lot about Britney in this that I didn't know before. And of course, it gives some intel into her life as a pop singer. And I think they're making a film about her life. So I'd like to see how that goes. And then the second book I have is Never Been Shipped by Alicia Thompson, which I recently found out is based on Paramour. And Haley Williams, the singer of Paramour, was in a relationship, got divorced or broke up, and is now like madly in love with someone else in the band. And that's like kind of the situation here. And I loved it. I ate it up. I think I love this book even more finding out that it's based on Paramour. Okay. Yeah. That's fun. Um, and then I have a show, and you can't laugh. It's Glee. I love Glee. Okay, cool. I do also think that some Glee songs are low-key better than the original. Yeah, I said it there. So that's what I've got. Um, I've got high school musical too. That's like a little summer one. We love her. And then I have Sabrina Carpenter's emails I can't send, but specifically that song. Okay. Came on Shuffle the other day, and I was like, hold on. This is so good. This is so good. We need to listen to this on repeat until I'm ill.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I'm so glad we both do that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. There's something going on there, some underlying thing, but like it's okay. It's not what we're gonna talk about in this episode.

SPEAKER_02:

Um, I went very, very straightforward for music. I have a few artists that I want to talk about. I'll give a song or two for each of them. We talk about Noah Khan at length. We are his biggest fans. On the same vein, when I saw Noah Khan in concert in Colorado, Jensen McCrae opened for him. Literally love her. Love her to the moon and back. She'll take your heart out, stomp on it, but we'll then also put it back in and give you a hug. Okay. Um, Mother Wound would highly recommend. Savannah, so good. Praying for your downfall, funny. We'll give you a lighter one. Fleetwood Mac, but right. Like what's yeah, what else is there to say? That's just Fleetwood Mac, period. Right. I'm not listing songs. They're they're all great. Actually, if I had to list one, probably Silver Springs. Doesn't matter. Landslide for me. Okay. Landslide makes me cry.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it does. It makes me cry. That's why that's why it's there. Uh Josier. Yeah. Of course. Of course. Just saw him live.

SPEAKER_02:

Loved it. Love that for you. Uh, The Lumineers. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So nostalgic there for me. Agreed, but then I like brought them back into my life. So now it just feels normal. Stubborn Love and Slow It Down. Um, and then Laney. Yes. Yeah. Um also thick covers on their albums. Agreed. Thick and Thin, uh, if you see her and Run is what I would recommend on that one.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow, we have very similar music tastes here.

SPEAKER_02:

You didn't know that?

SPEAKER_00:

I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

The more you know. All right, moving on to our final elective here. We've got Creative Writing, which has a place in my heart. The first book that I picked was You Between the Lines by Katie Naaman, and it follows two characters in an MFA program. And I felt like it was really relatable because the struggles of one of the main characters is that, you know, she kind of suffers from imposter syndrome, imposter syndrome. And I felt like that going through my master's program as well. The second thing I have is Anne Lamont's Shitty First Drafts, which is a section in her book Bird by Bird. I love this, and I think that any person that is interested in writing should read this. It just shows you that yeah, your first draft is going to be bad, and it should be bad, and that's perfectly okay. And it's an essay that I look back on a lot. There's always something new to take away from it.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, creative writing as a whole really, really pulls me back to high school. I don't write much anymore, but it was a big part of my formative years. Specifically poetry. But one thing that my creative writing teacher did always say is you have to write the good or you have to write the bad before you write the good. So obviously, like I said, poetry, big part for me. We've talked about the belljar. I love Sylvia Plath to the moon and back. Um, truly like such a voice. Very unfortunate how little we got from her. Uh, Lady Lazarus, I had to memorize and recite a poem in high school, and I did Lady Lazarus. I could probably still do it if I tried hard enough. I have also literally read all of her journals that are cur that are published. It's depressing but empowering at the same time. I don't know. And then Alan Ginsburg, uh Beat Poet, Howl by Him, very, very good. And Kill Your Darlings is a movie that is quote unquote loosely based on something that happened in Allen Ginsburg and the other beats uh personal lives. They all say different things about it. No one's really no one's really sure what the truth of it is. Um, but it has Daniel Radcliffe in it. It's one of the and he does it very well. That movie is so good. If you haven't seen it, it's beautiful to watch, like to look at, and the story is just so engrossing. And if especially if you don't know anything about them and what their life was like in that period of time, it's so good. Like start to finish, you're just so sucked in. And I also I gotta give a shout out to Eric LaRocca and his short stories. Love them. The collections as a whole don't always hit 100%, but there's always at least one story in them where I'm like, whoa. And that's that's what I got. That's creative writing. Gotta love it. We do. We do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

All right. Well, before we conclude this episode, we're gonna touch base with our book club pick that we read. Um, and we finished up Aftertaste by Daria Lavelle, which is a book that we both read for the challenge from last episode. And we both pretty we enjoyed it, I would say. I think it's a pretty cool premise. It focuses a lot on food and grief, which I've recently said are two things that go hand in hand for me. And I really love books that take a look at grief and have characters that are dealing with grief. And I'm just a really big foodie. So all of the meals that were created, all of the restaurant talk was really interesting to me.

SPEAKER_02:

I agree. I think that the premise it was super unique. The characters were very, very like the other was very sure of who her characters were, which I really respected. I think I think I gave it either a 3.5 or a four, somewhere in there. At it was really the end that I couldn't like fully it got a little. Bit too fantastical without fully explaining itself. It was very vague, and I feel like it was intentionally vague. Like I don't think that it was something that Daria Lavelle did wrong. I think it's what she set out to do. But me as a person who I really like world building. I like understanding the rules of magic, quote unquote systems and things. Something was just missing for me there. And it felt very rushed in what we were doing at the end. And that was really my my qual with it. I also didn't love like the very ending ending. But the beg I would say probably into like 60%, I absolutely loved it. No complaints.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I will say I reached out to her on social media. She's really great and answered a lot of my questions. And I had some issues with the ending too. And after talking to her, and she explained that, and maybe this is a spoiler, but she said that it when she set out to write it, she always envisioned this as being a happily ever like afterlife situation. Um, so then I felt more like, okay, this was all kind of intentional. I did feel that there was like there's a food court element to it that I wish that there was more explanation with that.

SPEAKER_02:

I needed stricter rules. Yeah. And like I said, that's definitely what she meant to do. Yeah. Like what she published and put out there was absolutely what she intended to do. Yeah. And I think because that's what she intended to do and that was obvious, she did that well. It just doesn't, it doesn't work for me in my brain to like fully, fully commit to loving that part of it.

SPEAKER_00:

That's fair. That concludes this month's episode. For next month's book club, we are both going to be reading Soul Searching by Lila Sage. And hopefully we'll have some fun things to talk about with that. If you have any questions or comments, please send them to our email, ghpl at greenhillslibrary.org.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you guys so much for listening. This has been episode 12, Schools In. I'm Tessa.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm Sarah, and we are checked out.