Cliterature the Podcast
Books. Babes. Bold opinions. A queer lit podcast.
Cliterature the Podcast
Time War Cottagecore
Letters tucked into the rings of a tree. Messages hidden in the dance of a flame. A love story woven across centuries, galaxies, and battlefields. In this episode of Cliterature, we dive headfirst into Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's award winning novella, This is How You Lose the Time War.
We're talking enemies to lovers at its most poetic, queer longing that transcends time, and why epistolary form makes this book one of the most devastatingly romantic reads in sapphic literature.
Join us as we gush, analyze, and sigh over Red and Blue's impossible love story. If you haven't read the book, consider this your sign. If you have, let's lose this time war together!
In the words of V.E. Schwab, holy shit this was good.
SPEAKER_01:Queer lit, no chill. Some crumbs of academia, mostly chaos. If queer lit is your love language, we're fluent. Heads up babes, we're not here to tease. We spill everything. Listener discretion is strongly encouraged, but honestly, you knew that. Welcome to Clitterature, the podcast. All right, guys, it's episode two. We're back. If you're new, welcome. We're so happy that you're joining us. You joined at a good time. This is going to be a journey. A journey. Through time. And space. And a lot of things. And a lot of universes. Emotions. My psyche.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. All right. Episode two. Today we're going to talk about This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Motar and Max Gladstone. It was published in 2019 and it is a sci-fi novella. It's only 209 pages. You can read it in one sitting. It's so great. Super short, but it has everything. Mostly it just hits you right in the feels.
SPEAKER_02:Oh my God. You have no idea. It snuck up on me, honestly. Yeah? Yeah. I started reading it and I was just like, I don't know. I don't know how I feel about this. I don't really understand what's going on. yeah and then like halfway through I was like I
SPEAKER_01:can't put it
SPEAKER_02:down yeah it grips you for sure it's yeah and it just
SPEAKER_01:like all of a sudden had me a vice around the heart oh well I've read it twice and the first time that I read it I I honestly just I had no idea what I just read I was confused I had so many questions it was absolutely gorgeous the first time because it's absolutely gorgeous the prose is just lovely but I was confused and I had a lot of questions because it is a novella and it is shorter and it's sci-fi and usually when it's like you read a sci-fi or fantasy there's so much world building like it's usually like 700 pages in the first like 300 pages is just setting up where you are in the world and like what's happening and yeah the different people and the different like it you just have you have to have that or you're not going to understand the story but this is a novella they threw you right into it you just had to accept it yeah if you can't just accept it this book might not be for you and
SPEAKER_02:that's okay but there's a lot of like just accepting the unknown or or filling in gaps with your imagination in this one, for sure. And I read it twice too. The first time I was like you, I put it down and I was like, I don't even know what that was, but I loved it. And I think reading it twice was kind of key because reading it the second time, you aren't so caught up in trying to figure out what's going on. And you can really just appreciate what is building between these two characters for what it is. And also probably pick up on some things. I definitely picked up on some of the world build and plot things that I missed the first time around because I wasn't so distraught about not understanding some things.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's the whole thing. I really spent a lot of time the first time around trying to figure out, I don't know, how are they time traveling? And like, why is there a war? And like, what are they fighting for? Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:because you basically like as a reader get dropped into the end of a battle and one of the characters leaves a letter for their enemy. Yep. They're like... like enemy counterpart, as it read to me, like very much like a taunting, teasing, ha ha, I can one up you letter between these two people on the opposite sides of this time war. And yeah, you just get dropped into that moment and you have to go from there. But I will say the dedication in this book is probably one of my favorites of all the dedications. It's so simple, but I don't know. It just hit me in the feels. It was just to you, P.S. Yes, you. Yeah. And I was like, me? To me? To me? Yes, you.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. It's to you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let me read. I'm going to read the back of the book. If you pick this book up, one, it's gorgeous. And two, you won't know. I don't know. Like, I feel like you're not going to know that it is sci-fi. But let's be honest. This is a romance. Like a romance.
SPEAKER_02:And a lot of it reads as like a classical romance. Yeah. As far as the way that they speak to each other.
SPEAKER_01:Super literary. Once it gets that far. Super heady, prose, poetry, all of it. But okay, I'm going to read the back of the book. In the ashes of a dying world, Red finds a letter marked burn before reading. So begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents in a war that stretches through the vast reaches of time and space. Red belongs to the agency, a post singularity technotopia. Blue belongs to Garden, a single vast consciousness embedded in all organic matter. Their pasts are bloody and their futures mutually exclusive. They have nothing in common. say that they're the best and they're alone. Now what began as a battlefield boast grows into a dangerous game. One both red and blue are determined to win because winning's what you do in war. Isn't it? Isn't it? Maybe not in this war. I don't know. Are time wars different? I don't know. I still, I'm still, there's still a lot of questions. Well, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:One of the things that I don't think you really learn for certain is what does winning this time war look like? What is the goal? Because you have these two sides, that are one is very tech driven, one is very organic. What is their ultimate end game? Yeah, obviously, what does they want their side to win? But what does that look like for each side? And you have these warriors that
SPEAKER_01:like mercenaries,
SPEAKER_02:mercenaries, yeah, that are kind of out there on their own winning or trying to win this.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, or like making small changes. And that's the whole thing. Just if you haven't read this book, this is going to sound absolutely bonkers. If you haven't read it, you need to go back and read it so that you can to understand a little bit better what we're talking about. If you have read it, then you know that both sides send these mercenaries, red and blue, which is what the two characters are called in this book, back into different time periods or strands, as they call it. And when they're in these different strands, they make small or big changes that will affect the future that they're actually living in to what they want. Like it affects the future to help them win this overarching war.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's very much like a multiverse situation. Yeah, because like, Red will go back and save America.
SPEAKER_01:mathematician from dying so that he can create this formula that will help whatever whatever and affect them positively in the future but then garden might send blue back in the same timeline to kill that guy kill the mathematician so that he doesn't create this formula and it doesn't affect yeah red you know i felt like
SPEAKER_02:it was very much a tug of war like i didn't feel like throughout the book and it didn't even sound like in the parts of this war that we don't see that we just kind of can infer or hear about It didn't feel like either side had made a lot of progress towards their goal. It was really just like a back and forth.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, even in the first letter that Blue writes to Red that we see on that first, in the first chapter, that is a taunt. She says, this is more like a game of tic-tac-toe. And she's bored. I mean... Which is why she chose to leave a letter. To leave a letter. You know, I guess a trap or try and kill her enemy. Or just a taunt. Like, I'm bored with this war. And I've seen you multiple times and multiple time periods and... Well, yeah, they talk about making eye contact at one point. Yeah, at another battle somewhere. And she knew that they had unfinished business, which... So what was that eye contact? That's what I want to know. Steamy.
SPEAKER_02:So the book is written in the form of basically letters back and forth. It's alternating point of view. Alternating point of view. And you get to see the development of their relationship, not only in what they say, but how they're addressing each other throughout the book. And I think it's very interesting. You and I had had many conversations on trying to guess how we thought the authors wrote this yes and our top guess was that or i think maybe what we hoped yeah they wrote it as letters to each other right it was somewhat like that i will say i did learn in reading up a little bit more about this that the authors are friends and do write each other letters in real life so i think that that pen pal i think that that helped translate really well into the book but they physically wrote this to where one would write one letter and the other would be writing the scene in which the letter is delivered so Max wrote Red the character of Red and Amal wrote Blue so Max would be writing Red's letter at this time and Amal would be writing the scene in which that letter would appear independently and then pass their laptops I think back and forth to each other to read what they had just written that's so cool and keep moving so they wrote it like sitting I think they said in a gazebo across from each other just
SPEAKER_01:I I love the idea of collaborating on a work like this. I love the idea of writing a chapter back and forth to a writing pal to create something fantastic because two imaginations can have completely different experiences when they're thinking about these characters, especially if you're writing one character and that's how you experience it and how you would speak and how you would respond. It'd be so organic. And these characters fundamentally
SPEAKER_02:are supposed to be polar opposites. Polar opposites, yeah. With, you know, the tech versus organic side of things Right. So I feel like writing that point of view and writing a letter, not knowing what scene it was going to show up in, you just have to write in that character and that other person's going to deliver it essentially for you is really cool. It was, it just kind of made it, I don't know, a little bit more romantic for me.
SPEAKER_01:It was so romantic. I mean, you always talk about like in romances, you have these huge gestures, like, like the lawnmower and the boombox and showing up on your 16th birthday and really running into Stop a wedding from happening. Or the fist punch in the air, you know, on the football field. Like you, you have all of these grand gestures, but this, this book takes that to a whole new level in the delivery of all of these letters because they aren't actual letters. Yeah. They're not written on paper
SPEAKER_02:letters. They're a glass of water in an MRI machine or tea leaves at the bottom of a cup of tea or ash and an animal. Yeah. And my favorite one. I mean, they're all wonderful. wonderful. But I think my favorite, I think the most creative for me was the the water in the MRI machine. Yeah, the bubbles like super nerdy. And I loved the science behind it. But I think my favorite was the rings in a in the tree. Oh, yeah, where she hid the letter in the rings of a tree. And I think they said it took like 10 years for each ring to form. And I mean, you're committing yourself to writing this letter over hundreds of years.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Which also makes me think about are they immortal? And if it's a multiverse, or we're talking about talking about time we just have to accept that they can just live forever like they well time doesn't really it's not linear nothing about this book is linear i feel like i'm all over the place because i can't because the book is all my thoughts in a line because there is no line to follow there's no there's just not not i just get it's beautiful and gorgeous and like wonderful but then you're like what did you just do i'm where are we
SPEAKER_02:now it definitely jumps all over the place and the references are also all over the place and you know the more of the letters you read there are a pop culture references there's literary quotes they talk about an etiquette book a lot yeah and using the etiquette like how to write letters yeah um which i thought mrs levitz or miss levitz yeah how to write a letter there's a mario reference on page 29 where red calls blue bluser
SPEAKER_01:yeah and and so i'm like they quote percy shelly yeah talk about Romeo and Juliet they I mean really and truly Romeo and Juliet this book is very reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet oh yeah because two warring factions two houses that are at odds you know we haven't even got to the fact one of them dies by poison oh yeah spoiler alert sorry guys you should have already read the book we are a spoiler alert we are I feel like you just have to know what you're getting when you go into this
SPEAKER_02:yeah it does take a little bit of I think pondering
SPEAKER_00:um
SPEAKER_02:to wrap your head around the way that the time works in this book and i don't even know after two reads if i really have a grasp on it but i do think that uh time as far as like their lifespan doesn't matter yeah i mean if they can commit 100 plus years to writing a letter um but that also brings up a thought that i kept having and i kept seeing this a lot when i was looking at things about the book about the way that letter writing in itself is kind of people kept referring to letter writing as time travel because you were kind of writing this letter to a future person not the person that was the moment you're writing this letter but you know they're going to receive that letter days or weeks or months or hundreds of years in this case later and you're writing it to the person they are now but they may not be that person when they get that letter and especially I think that's why the rings of the tree really kind of caught me is because so much time passed from the time that that letter was created or maybe it didn't because of the way the strands work but in my head i just pictured like hundreds of years passing before
SPEAKER_01:well the way the two warring factions the agency which is red's warlords they're they they're destruction they blow things up that's how they go about winning the time war and then garden which is where blue is from is all about growth and rebuilding and slow it's very slow so her job my most of the time she would be embedded in a strand for years at a time. So this particular one where she wrote the letter in the rings of a tree, like she was there for that long and she took her time and she really put thought into every line that she wrote because it was 10 years at a time, which sounds really frustrating, but also so romantic.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I also really loved how the salutations changed because there is a very noticeable progression of they're talking to each other as enemies and taunting each other yeah and threatening each other like oh this could be poisoned or this could be a trap to kind of just kind of friends still a little taunting but also getting more familiar yeah to very much intimate love letters
SPEAKER_01:profound and
SPEAKER_02:the way the salutations change through that they go from calling each other names to just my dear lapis
SPEAKER_01:or my red sky in the morning yeah like
SPEAKER_02:yeah
SPEAKER_01:just heart-wrenching yeah I mean just and that's a whole okay I've read a lot of reviews about this book because I knew that it was divisive and I knew that there were going to be very different opinions when people were reading this book because you and I are both English majors we both have a degree in English we love literature we read all the time we also have done a lot of extra higher education study on literature and different things like I took a class on poetry so I love reading poetry just all these different literature types we've got a we've got a lot of background in English and in prose and in like all of you know all the different types of literature so I feel like us reading this would be completely different than somebody who didn't have that background and they just picked it up because they thought it was a sci-fi book you know like if they didn't know that what they were getting into and they started reading it definitely not your
SPEAKER_02:average sci-fi book I
SPEAKER_01:don't yeah I've even read some reviews that called it pretentious like they were like it's the writing is very pretentious and it's obviously trying to make itself elevated and which I mean it is I can I mean, it's a choice for sure the way that they're written. But I
SPEAKER_02:also think that that's a great like juxtaposition to what is actually happening with these characters in real life is that they're writing these very romanticized letters in a world that is destructive and chaotic and the letters are peaceful and soft and soft. And I think that without that contrast of the softness and the vulnerability of the letters in the destruction that it keeps talking about happening yeah in all of these different strands i don't think that it would have been near as successful without that
SPEAKER_01:yeah same i agree and i mean the fact that their whole purpose both of our characters their whole purpose is war like their whole purpose in life is to win the time war to win this war and so i mean talks about red like she's a cyborg like half the time she talks about like organs being shut off but She has weapons under her skin. Yeah, because the, but she's, I don't know. It's just so bizarre. But then the way that she writes, it's the complete opposite of the way that they're supposed to be. She's different than everybody else. It talks about her empathy when she kills people on the battlefield, whereas all of the other people that are a part of the agency don't have that empathy. Like they don't care. They're just machines and they just kill and they don't think about it. But she thinks about it and it bothers her sometimes, which is So
SPEAKER_02:I have a theory about her empathy, but we'll get to that later because it has to do with the ending. But I do also think that the way that they write, if you take a look at how poetic the prose is, how many pop culture references there are, how many works of literature are quoted, mythology, all of the things that are sprinkled in to all of these letters. If you think about these people who are from a time so far forward removed from everything that they're quoting, probably in a time where traditional communication, written communication, even just like spoken communication at times isn't necessary anymore. Because I think there's even some references to Blue talking about kind of like a hive mind situation or like a telepathic bond that they all have. And so, you know, if you think of that, all they know is what they have learned during their time in the past. Yeah. That is their education. They've absorbed everything from all of these strands that they've been embedded in for however many years or hundreds of years or whatever the time frame is. And so that's the only frame of reference they have for communication with each other. So yeah, of course, they're going to quote all of these things because that's the only thing that they know to use as language.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it talks about Red being 13 and reading books and that was antiquated. Everybody kind of made fun of her. She talked about like downloading it from the cloud was much easier. Yeah. From the cloud. She was like a download would be so much faster and I would be able to retain. Did she not say the cloud? Did I just make that up? She did not say the cloud. It was not the cloud, but it basically. Yeah. Same thing. Same premise. In my head it was the cloud. It could be. It could be. I don't think it had that name. But yeah, she was like a download would be so much faster and I'd be able to retain all of the information way quicker because I could just download it into my brain. But she liked to read
SPEAKER_02:yeah
SPEAKER_01:and everybody thought that she was weird for that and she was 13 years old and so she was already showing differences from everybody else that was a part of the agency that early and then blue talks about loving libraries and loving books and loving this book and she suggests you know go if you ever are in london at this time period on this day go check out this book from the library and then sit down with a cup of tea and then at the bottom of the tea in the tea leaves there's a letter oh my god be still my heart
SPEAKER_02:okay so yeah you just talked about red being different yeah as when she was younger we also hear about blue having an incident when she was little where she was infected kind of contaminated contaminated i think's what they said by the enemy and was cut off from garden and because she was contaminated yeah
SPEAKER_01:they didn't want everybody to be contaminated so whatever she was contaminated to
SPEAKER_02:save everybody else they kind of isolated her which kind of i feel like stunted her in a way and As the warrior they were, you know, trying to create like everyone else around her, but it ended up working out and making her the person that she is, but we have two instances where each of them have kind of something that makes them different. Yeah. warns
SPEAKER_01:her don't read my last letter yeah don't read this letter don't i love you don't read the last letter it's a trap it's not good they found no uncertain terms don't read don't read it yeah and blue
SPEAKER_02:can't help herself she has to read it and she reads it and she dies yeah and i think a little part of my soul died with her me
SPEAKER_01:too because i thought something i mean i didn't i as she was eating and dying terribly horrifically painfully painfully i i thought something was gonna i thought red was gonna show up i thought that somebody was gonna eat her fear like there's no way there's no way that she's gonna eat all of this poison and well there's no way we've
SPEAKER_02:done all this work and then she's gonna eat a letter and die yeah like there's something's gonna save her and she dies she dies and you're like what where do we go from here because and
SPEAKER_01:then you just see Red like wailing at the sky beating her chest and questioning God and if there is one why did they and like what are we you know like just coming apart absolutely coming apart at the seams
SPEAKER_02:and then she gets a sign from blue in the form of a poster it was a little boy but it was set up the exact scene of the way that red found her after she had died and it kind of answered a question and we haven't touched on this yet but throughout the book red keeps talking about a shadow right she feels like she's being watched or followed yeah and at the end of almost every scene whatever remnants are left because they try their best to destroy these letters or any evidence of right because they are illicit. Whatever little evidence is left, like the water in the jar in the MRI machine, it says the shadow comes and drinks it or picks up the ashes and ingests them or whatever. And so the entire book, you're kind of led to believe that they're being watched. Yeah, they're being watched. There's some sort of spy following them and trying to gather evidence. That's what I thought the entire time. And then as Red is looking at this poster, that's obviously a sign that Blue has left for her somehow. She gets It's the idea of how to fix it. Yeah. And so she goes back through all the strands for all the letters and all of the evidence. And you find out that she was her shadow. The entire time. The entire time. And this scene where she like, she set a trap for herself. She didn't realize it was herself, but she set a trap for the shadow and like pretended to cry on this riverbank and then ended up getting into a fight with it and like breaking her hip and getting really hurt. And seeing that scene with her as the shadow where She sees herself and she can't help but try and comfort herself and reaches out and touches her own shoulder. And then that's what's into a fight with herself. But I felt the desperation in all of those actions. Yeah. Because her plan was so crazy. Yeah. So harebrained. And she ended up gathering pieces of blue. Through the letters. Through the letters. Little pieces of DNA and little touches of this and little touches of that. and ingesting them into herself and physically changing her body to be able to fool garden and sneak in in a strand where Blue is a child. And is contaminated. And she contaminates Blue and causes her to be cut off. And my head was like, what? Like really mind blown doesn't even begin to describe how I felt reading the scene where she sneaks in and contaminates a young Blue. Which is a story you've already heard. Right. So
SPEAKER_01:was this... And Blue didn't know that she was the reason that she was contaminated or either she did. And like, that's the whole question. Like, did she know? And she's telling Red this so that she's like planting that seed. No pun intended, but also pun intended. Like planting that seed in Red that, you know, this is what made me different. I was cut off. I was contaminated. I was whatever. I was given this hunger for more, you know? Oh, the hunger that they talk about. Yeah. Continuous. Hunger
SPEAKER_02:in every way. Hunger for each other. Hunger for knowledge. Hunger for physical food and
SPEAKER_01:experience. Everything. Everything. Hunger. I looked it up. It's mentioned 30 times in the book. Yeah. Because everybody's hungry in this book. Not everybody. We only have two characters. Really. But they're real hungry. They're real hungry. I
SPEAKER_02:and this this goes to like I think where there's a lot of room for interpretation for the reader. Right. You can kind of make a lot of this book what you want it to be. Especially at the end. I kind of feel like they were in a time loop yeah so they kept trying to be together and you know red kept trying to go and save blue and for whatever reason it wouldn't work out after that and so they would kind of reset
SPEAKER_01:yeah and do it all over again yeah i mean the way that this multiverse like all these different time strands like the way that it sounded is that they like i said like are they immortal like can they actually die we see blue die but she's not dead because she's also living in other strands in another place yeah right in a different time in a different and like it's not linear so you can just hop skip and jump to whatever you want whenever you want yeah but if that's the case and red's time didn't overlap with blue's time blue would be in a different headspace or blue wouldn't know red in a different strand yeah so this strand that they were in together that they were writing these letters to each other that they were conscious of each other in a bigger way i feel it could have been a loop that they got stuck in
SPEAKER_02:and i wonder if that explains some of Red's surprising empathy is that the longer they were in this loop she picked up more and more empathy from interacting with Blue and changing and evolving as a person. So she sneaks in and she poisons Blue and there's a huge battle. That's one of like probably the biggest and it's a very short part of the book but it was a very vivid scene of her escape out of Garden. Yeah. Into a
SPEAKER_01:place
SPEAKER_02:that
SPEAKER_01:is kind of beyond strands.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And she gets caught. Commandant finds her and they arrest her and they put her in jail and they torture her to find out what happened. Or why she's doing it. Yeah. You know. And she keeps her mouth shut and just hoping that all the work she did to Blue and all the work was worth it. And it ends with her getting another letter. It ends with a letter from Blue. And it just, yeah. Yeah. It just ends. But you pointed something out. I didn't notice that the first and the last letter
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah, right. So the first letter and the last letter reflect each other. The first one is from Blue to Red. And it's taunting and they aren't in love yet. No. This is actually on the battlefield. First letter ever. They're real smart asses too, which I like. Yeah, and Blue is like, Blue is, she's telling her about all of the things that the garden does better. And if you tell your superiors about this letter, then I've already infiltrated. You're going to be
SPEAKER_02:telling on
SPEAKER_01:yourself. You're going to tell on yourself because you've already infiltrated. ingested this letter basically because the first letter is just in flames the first letter is just fire and she's reading the letter as the fire burns but as the fire burns out the letters gone there's nothing left but ashes so you have to just absorb it as you're reading it and that's what she's saying she's like you've already absorbed this letter like I've already infiltrated you and so I've already won basically and she says in order to report my words to your superiors you must admit yourself already infiltrated another casualty of this most unfortunate day this is how we'll win and she talking about garden at that point. The very last letter that she sends to Red, she says, but maybe this is how we win, Red. You and me. This is how we'll win. And it's just so good. I mean, it's just like, I mean, that in and of itself, like the way that it started and the way that it ended are the same, but so vastly different.
SPEAKER_02:But yeah, you're left with Red in a cell with this letter and the desire to escape because now she has confirmation that Blue is out there and has found her. But we don't know. Does she she make it? Does she not make it? Do they ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after? Yeah. That's the only way I believe in that.
SPEAKER_01:That's the only way. Yeah. No, they're together on some like random strand on an island with some chickens, you know. And some books. And some books. And some tea. And some
SPEAKER_02:tea.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. They're
SPEAKER_02:living like their best time war cottage core life. Absolutely. Yeah. That's the only future I choose to believe happened. But yeah, it just kind of ends and it just hits you right in the face. It does. So hard. Yeah. Can we read some of our favorite quotes? Absolutely. Because they're all so gorgeous. And the way that- I mean, I could just quote the entire book probably, but- How much time you got?
SPEAKER_01:Let's just read it
SPEAKER_02:all. There was one. I was going back through my annotations. Yeah. Like preparing for this episode. And at the end of one of the letters, I just wrote, quote, this entire letter. Yeah. The whole thing. The whole letter. So good. Yeah. There were so many. So I had two really standout ones for me. Page 95, red writing to blue. I have built a you within me or you have. I wonder what of me there is in you. And I just got to thinking like they didn't spend time together in person. This entire relationship was through quote unquote written communication. Yeah. And sometimes them physically absorbing or ingesting or taking into themselves somehow the words that the other person had left for them and whatever that form. was but also just when you share so much of yourself with someone it is impossible I feel like not to take in what they give you in return and vice versa and this idea of wondering what of me you have taken in is just lovely absolutely gorgeous my other one also read writing to blue I felt like I identified with blue more but I think red like red's writing spoke to me a little harder for some reason but page 142 i want flowers from cephalus and diamonds from neptune and i want to scorch the thousand earths between us to see what blooms from the ash so we can discover it hand in hand content in context intelligible only to each other i want to meet you in every place i have loved i mean come on
SPEAKER_01:i mean i
SPEAKER_02:want to meet you in every place i have loved again the idea of just sharing the things that you love and that make you you with this person that you love so much and be like look look at this this is me love this and love me yeah and yeah oh my gosh
SPEAKER_01:oh
SPEAKER_02:it makes me melt
SPEAKER_01:it does it really does like we're reading and that's the whole thing like this whole book you're reading like and red reached inside of the dead body and like crushed its spine and dropped its body on the ground and then you get a letter that's like i want you to love every place i've ever loved like i like it the like you said the juxtaposition between absolute chaos and war and these beautiful words beautiful words and admissions of love yeah yeah it's so like also can we like love just it spans time and space and that is what this entire book is about
SPEAKER_00:it's a literal and it's a like a metaphor and a literal
SPEAKER_01:metaphor of love time space everything like universe we don't know where we are but they're in love that's all we know and that's all we care about really like who really cares about how they time jump I just want to know that they're together also
SPEAKER_02:you and I are self-proclaimed romantics I mean honestly let's be real we are and so I think maybe that's why this book hit us a little harder is the romance of the letters yeah the wooing from a distance
SPEAKER_01:oh my
SPEAKER_02:god the wooing the wooing
SPEAKER_01:yeah it's next level but it had to be because they couldn't be together Yeah. Because they were both. They had no choice. They had no choice. That's all they had. All they had was. It was
SPEAKER_02:the ultimate long distance relationship. Yeah. 100%. Like. Distance.
SPEAKER_01:Time. I'm sorry. I'm living in Atlantis before it sinks. And she's like, oh, I'm in London in the 19th century. But I see you girl. Does anybody care how
SPEAKER_02:many times Atlantis sunk in this book? Because it was
SPEAKER_01:a lot. It was a lot. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:They, one of them even said like, I'm so tired of
SPEAKER_01:Atlantis. I'm so tired of Atlantis. It ends this way every time. Like in every strand. I hate it. I loathe Atlantis, she said. Alright, what's your quote? Okay, so my favorite quote was, and I think this is because I am also a writer. It says, Red wrote too much too fast. Her pen had a hardened side, and the nib was a wound in a vein. She stained the page with herself. She sometimes forgets what she wrote, save that it was true, and the writing hurt. But butterfly wings break when touched. Red knows her own weaknesses as well as anyone. She presses too hard, breaks what she would embrace, tears what she would touch to her teeth and i'm just i'm just yeah i mean if you are a writer or if you have written anything ever i feel like writing in and of itself is so vulnerable and you're putting you're putting yourself out feelings and the and your heart out on paper and the way that that was described just made me feel from
SPEAKER_02:a character who's supposed to be hardened and emotionless
SPEAKER_01:yeah and i think that i like like you said i think i identified more with with blue just being, I don't know, I don't identify with a war-torn cyborg. I don't know why that is, but it's just not me. Maybe in another strand. Maybe in another strand I'd be badass like that, but right now I'd rather just sip tea in London. Red was badass. Yeah, Red was so badass. But her growth and her empathy and her feelings, even in the very first letter that she wrote back to Blue, before they were even in love, when she was just writing back, she was just figuring out how to write a letter which is why they brought up miss levitt's like guide to etiquette she looked it up
SPEAKER_02:because she was talking about the different parts of a letter and i had like flashback to elementary school when they were written on the chalkboard yeah
SPEAKER_01:or like opening what was it like
SPEAKER_02:the salutation
SPEAKER_01:all
SPEAKER_02:of it all the different parts of the good i did have to look up what the beginning of a letter was called and learned that it was salutation i totally forgot that part but yeah i think she did have to learn how to communicate so she researched it and which is cute cute. It's very
SPEAKER_01:cute. It's really cute. It's dedicated. She's like, if I'm going to write a letter back to this girl, it's going to be a damn good letter. I
SPEAKER_02:mean, I feel like it was essentially learning a new language for someone almost.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Okay. I also want to talk about the narrators because I did listen to this book as well as read it because most of the time, like I said in episode one, I will read and listen to the book because I listen during the day and I read at night.
SPEAKER_02:And I read. I mean, I listen to audiobooks, but for this purpose, I just
SPEAKER_01:have to have a physical book. Listening to audiobooks just helps me make mundane tasks a little bit more fun if i go on a walk i listen to an audiobook if i do the dishes i listen to an audiobook laundry audiobook it's just i'm trying to get better about
SPEAKER_02:that i'm trying to like like i took a little speaker into the bathroom so like when i'm getting ready or whatever like the audiobook is playing or like when i'm doing tasks around the house instead of listening music i'll put on audiobooks sometimes my problem with audiobooks is that like my mind wonders yeah so i end up losing track and having to rewind
SPEAKER_01:yeah i think if i'm doing an action this is probably my ADHD. But if I'm doing something with my hands, like if I'm washing the dishes, then I can listen and focus. It's just like in school, when I'm writing notes, I had to doodle while I was listening to the teacher or the professor. And I would retain so much more if I had my hands moving. But if I was just sitting still and listening, I would not understand. I love this
SPEAKER_02:because I think it's my ADHD that makes me not able to listen to them all the time. So I just love that it manifests in like opposite ways. Like we're so quirky, but In different ways. But like, even when I'm, I think reading, that's why I pick retain a little bit better because my brain has to focus on the words, but I also have to fidget a lot. Like I have like fidgets or I'm playing with a pen or something while I'm reading. I also, I love all forms, audio books, eBooks, physical books. But when I really want to like dig into something like for this podcast, the physical book and annotating is the only way like my brain can really dig in if i'm just reading for just straight up fun any old form will do yeah but like when i really need to get into it uh and i was the same way in school i would have to like handwrite stuff like hand copy stuff and then read the
SPEAKER_01:physical form of it yeah or like recopy your notes to help yourself oh all the time yeah so many recopies also that's i'm just a perfectionist when it comes to handwriting and so if it was ugly i had to rewrite it anyway oh i love that for you mine looks terrible that's why i love my kindle scribe because it lets me write and write beautifully. I don't know if it's just, I don't know if it's the scribe or if it's my beautiful handwriting and the scribe. You do have really nice handwriting. Thank you. I agree. I have really great handwriting. I love my handwriting and I take pride in it. I have a good personality. Well, I mean, handwriting is going away. Like nobody can read cursive anymore. So like, who cares? No, they're bringing it back in a lot of schools. I feel like it's a waste of time now, but like, whatever. I know. I mean, I feel
SPEAKER_02:like it's, I mean, it's less of a waste of time than like us learning the recorder That's, I mean,
SPEAKER_01:that was hand-eye coordination and like breath work. I don't know. I feel like playing a recorder would calm you down. Yeah, no one would play hot
SPEAKER_02:cross buns on a like plastic flute has really served me in adulthood.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, I'll give you that. But also, I don't know. I just don't feel like, I don't feel like time should be wasted on cursive when nobody's even having to sign anything anymore. Everything's e-sign and you could just
SPEAKER_00:tap it and it signs it for you. I mean, have you seen people's
SPEAKER_01:e-signatures? Crap, it's horrible. That's true. Mine looks like I sneezed.
UNKNOWN:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Holding a pen. Well, anyway, I have beautiful handwriting and I love my Kindle Scribe because it lets me write beautifully on the margins of my book while I'm
SPEAKER_02:reading. I would just love a stranger to get a hold of all the books that I've annotated. Yeah. And my just chaos. That is my notes and the margins and the scribbles.
SPEAKER_01:I love that though. I love that. I mean, if you really cared about somebody and you gave them a book that you annotated, it would be spectacular. Yeah. Somebody did that. for me and it was pretty cool it's a fantastic book that's a really great gift because then you get to see what they were thinking when they were reading the same pages it's like
SPEAKER_02:reading a book with somebody yeah like along and getting the an insight into their brain yeah I love
SPEAKER_01:that
SPEAKER_02:so much I turned around and annotated the same book and not that same copy but a copy of that same book and sent it back so that they could read my reaction but yeah I love that I love that that's such a great gift yeah it was really sweet and probably one of the coolest gifts that I've ever gotten it's also now my favorite book and maybe that had something to do with it I don't know but I probably never would have read that book had someone not gifted it to me that's
SPEAKER_01:fantastic okay well I loved the narration it was really fantastic there were two narrators because it is alternating point of view and I know that one voice actor can do two characters and they do it all the time and they do it well but this one I feel like called for two narrators and they 100% nailed it their names are Cynthia Farrell and Emily Woo Zeller and I gave the audiobook five stars because it was just so like the characters had character I mean it was like shocking wow but they had very distinct voices blue was grounded and earthy and a little flirty and just more I don't know not fluid but kind of more fluid and then red was also warm and wonderful but also kind of calculated in a way like kind of harder but you got to see the character arc of red through the voice you got to hear more and more emotion as she got closer and closer to blue and i really enjoyed that
SPEAKER_02:i did not listen to this one or i have not listened to it yet but after hearing you talk about it i think i'm gonna put it on my list to listen to very soon but that i feel like would absolutely make sense for that character and kudos to those narrators
SPEAKER_01:yeah they did such a good job really bringing
SPEAKER_02:it in it
SPEAKER_01:was only like four and a half hours for like it wasn't i don't even think it was five hours. It's like a really short audio book. I
SPEAKER_02:wonder if a lot of the people and I'm sure there are people who are just not going to like this book. And that's totally that's fine. Yeah. But I wonder if some of the people who didn't like it, yeah, maybe only tried to read it, if it would change if they listen to it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I know that for me, listening to it, and being able to use my imagination for the world or for the characters or whatever, while I was listening was different than me reading it. And like having to to use my imagination there. I don't know. It was just easier for me to hear the emotion and hear the flow and just experience it versus working to read it. And maybe because it is
SPEAKER_02:a novella and we don't have a lot of chance to build the world and learn what's going on and you just have to jump right in the middle of it. Maybe listening to it kind of eases a little bit of that learning curve. I also think too, like some, it is, we've talked about this plenty of times in this episode, but it is very like heavy prose. at times a lot of times yeah and i think sometimes like like shakespeare reading shakespeare and then watching shakespeare being performed
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_02:can be a completely different experience
SPEAKER_01:right because you have to work really hard to understand shakespeare and pentameter and how it's supposed to sound and where you're supposed to pause and all of that and then if you watch a stage play they do that work for you and it's kind of like that yeah like so
SPEAKER_02:maybe if you didn't like reading it
SPEAKER_01:give it a listen
SPEAKER_02:maybe give it a listen let us know hit us up in the comments somewhere and let us know if that changed anything because i'm curious i do want to talk
SPEAKER_01:about all of the awards that this novella won so many yeah it won the hugo award for best novella in 2020 the nebula award for best novella in 2019 which is when it came out the locus award for the best novella in 2020 the british sci-fi fiction association award for best shorter fiction in 2019 when it came out and the shirley jackson award for best novella in 2020 so it just i didn't even have that many girl scout badges like dang I mean it just keeps gaining accolades because I feel like it's timeless which is ironic because it's all about a time war but is it about a time war I'm still in that loop I'm still in that loop in my mind it's not about the time war it's about love
SPEAKER_02:there's our episode
SPEAKER_01:title it's not a love story it's not about the time war it's about love it is it's romantic and it's wonderful the way they speak to each other like I swear I would just sit here and read all of the letters
SPEAKER_02:I'm gonna read this book a hundred more times yeah like this is this is easily permanently in my top 10 high in the top 10 probably top five yeah I think this is top five for me for sure and so yeah uh I can't wait to hear what all the listeners think about it
SPEAKER_01:if you hate it let us know I really want to hear I want to hear from you guys that hate it yeah
SPEAKER_02:either way we're curious ratings so there's not really any spice there is there's spice in the hunger kind of but not spice in the traditional sense of they get it on they don't they don't they're never in the same space so ever oh
SPEAKER_01:well not when they're both alive at least well that would no no there's no spice
SPEAKER_02:there's no
SPEAKER_01:spice there's also no necrophilia so let's not go there that's not what i
SPEAKER_02:meant and you know it so uh spice rating is really uh irrelevant i wrote non-existent but oh the love but oh the love i don't even the yearning the yearning rating on this is like
SPEAKER_01:10 i mean god yeah and i'm i'm telling you i didn't even miss this i didn't even miss spice in this because i was so your girl loves some spice like oh yeah really love some spice we're
SPEAKER_02:here for did not miss it at all no because it just kept giving everything else
SPEAKER_01:so i was so satiated by all of the just absolute gorgeous yeah like love letters just reading love letters in general satiated that's a good word for it yeah good job yeah
SPEAKER_02:um
SPEAKER_01:right regular star rating I said 4.5 I'm not gonna give anything a 5 because I just can't but I you know what it's close though
SPEAKER_02:you know what I know okay I'm really hard on my fives and this one gets a 5 whoa this one hit it it hit the marks
SPEAKER_01:yeah I heard somebody talking about one time like a perfect album you know like the like you get a you get a CD or you get a record and you listen to every single song and there's not a dud and it's like one of those that you can put on and you're not not gonna skip anything and you're not gonna like hate a song and have to like go to the end you're gonna listen to it from front to back and it's all great and it's perfect and they said that this book to them was a perfect album same it's like the perfect book I wouldn't change like give or take anything I think my frustration not frustration because I'm not frustrated with this book like I said I'm satiated but I think the reason that I can't give it a five is that I wanted more like I want to read more yeah I mean I get that it's a novella So it's perfect for a novella. You know you're not getting it. I know. You know what you signed up for. I do. I do. Maybe like a 4.75. 4.99. Almost a five. I just refuse to give it a five.
SPEAKER_02:I honestly. It should be a five. I'm really hard with my fives. I don't throw them out there very easily. This one, for what it is, hits every mark for me. Like you said, every track is a banger. I could not, would not make any changes to this book. 10 out of 10 will read again. So. Oh. 100% we'll read it again so five stars for me it'll be one of the few but yeah I feel like an asshole I mean you are but not for that reason
SPEAKER_01:and in the first episode I'm like I'm like Oprah with my stars I just give them out to everybody and I'm like there is no way that
SPEAKER_02:I'm giving anyone a five ever I loved everything about this book 4.5 oh my god and now for the Russian judges score
SPEAKER_01:I do want to revisit the fact that we're both English majors and we love this book i don't want anybody to think that i'm being pretentious when i talk about the fact that i have an english degree
SPEAKER_02:revisiting this because i told her
SPEAKER_01:she was like wow you're being pretentious i'm not trying to be pretentious and i don't think that this book is pretentious i just think that because i've had so many classes of higher education in english that i like it more because other people who haven't been forced to sit through bronte aren't gonna
SPEAKER_02:really vibe with forced to sit through bronte is an accurate description of how you get Get an English degree. 100%. Forced to sit through Bronte. We're
SPEAKER_01:like, hey, Percy Shelley. Hey,
SPEAKER_02:Bronte. With your diploma, you should get a shirt that says, I survived Bronte.
SPEAKER_01:Both sisters. Not even just one. Both Brontes. Yeah. No, I think that I love this book because I have already been exposed to all kinds of prose and poetry like this. I actually sent it to my poetry professor from college and told him that he would absolutely adore it. And he questioned my motives because it was sci-fi And I'm like, just read it. Just read it. Just read it and then report back. It's so short. Just read it. And he absolutely loved it. I wonder if there
SPEAKER_02:are, if there are classes that are using this.
SPEAKER_01:Man, I don't know. It would be a good one. It would be really good. Like genre crossover. And it's so short. You can read it in a day. Just, just read it.
SPEAKER_02:If you haven't read it, just read it. I actually read it the first time on my birthday. Yeah. Sitting next to a pool in Mexico. Oh. So.
SPEAKER_01:Nice. That's a good way to read. It was a
SPEAKER_02:family trip. It just.
SPEAKER_01:Happened to be. I don't roll like that, but. Talk about pretension. When I was poolside in Mexico. The
SPEAKER_02:cabana boy bringing me drinks. That was, I mean, that actually did happen.
SPEAKER_01:It was the drink she was looking at, though, not the cabana boy.
SPEAKER_00:Let's get
SPEAKER_01:that straight. Yeah, let's be for real. Keep that
SPEAKER_02:speedo, son. It was 100% the Mai Tais. Okay, everybody. Enough of our pretentiousness.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:We've delved into Cabana Boys and Speedos. I think it's time for us to sign off. That's the time to cut it off. That is the time war that we are losing tonight. Okay. Thank you so much for being here with us. We really enjoy doing this. Absolutely. If you enjoyed doing it with us and listening to our episodes, let us know because we want to hear, I mean, positive reinforcement. I am a millennial. I love to hear good feedback. So please let me know. Please
SPEAKER_02:tell her how awesome
SPEAKER_01:she is. how great it is so I don't have to if you hate it keep it to yourself no I'm just kidding tell us gently gently no I'm just kidding I have a I have a thick
SPEAKER_02:skin I can hear it I can I can be okay with it I'll let you hear it and then you can tell it to me a little gentler cause
SPEAKER_01:deal cry hey I mean it's true but hey hit us up on all the things follow us on Instagram at clitterturepod
SPEAKER_02:the website clitterturepod.com clitterturepod.com dot com and by the time this comes out the patreon will also be live absolutely so if you're liking what you're hearing and you want to help support us and keep us doing this get better and improve things yeah go hit us up there's all kinds of options for support on there and you get some goodies yeah we'll send you some goodies and some extras and some behind the scenes you can support us on there if you like hit us up on instagram all the other places let us know what you think we can't wait to read your comments
SPEAKER_01:yes and episode three will drop October 1st. Don't forget to check out the book ahead of time. We're going to be reviewing The Narrow by Kate Alice Marshall, which is one of my favorite thriller authors. I absolutely adore her and have read a lot of her books. It has queer representation. It's almost YA, but set in a boarding school. It's super great. And I think everybody's going to enjoy it. So read The Narrow and then hit us back up on October 1st to hear all of our thoughts. Until then, thanks for being here. See you next time. See you next time.