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Episode 73: Hidden Gems · The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast

0:11
SPEAKER_02: This is The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast.
0:14
SPEAKER_02: Hello, everybody.
0:15
SPEAKER_02: This is Trevor Beamishly, Paul.
0:19
SPEAKER_02: Paul, how are you doing today?
0:21
SPEAKER_01: I'm doing well.
0:22
SPEAKER_01: I don't even know how to respond to Beamishly.
0:24
SPEAKER_01: So I will just go on from there.
0:26
SPEAKER_01: No, I'm doing I'm doing well having a good morning so far.
0:29
SPEAKER_01: And as usual, just
0:31
SPEAKER_01: drinking some coffee and getting ready to talk books.
0:33
SPEAKER_01: How are you doing?
0:33
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I'm doing great.
0:34
SPEAKER_02: I am very, very excited too.
0:36
SPEAKER_02: And we have a special guest today who, you know, one of our favorite athletes when it comes to reading.
0:45
SPEAKER_02: Sean the Book Maniac wearing his reading is my favorite sport shirt.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: And that's about as athletic as it gets.
0:55
SPEAKER_02: Well, Sean, we're so excited to have you.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: How are you doing today?
0:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm doing great, and this is a real special treat for me, so thank you for inviting me.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: I think in the spirit of athleticism, Paul should get on that treadmill or whatever it is behind him while he's holding forth.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that would make for some really good listening for people, I'm sure.
1:17
SPEAKER_02: No, it's all good.
1:18
SPEAKER_02: Well, Sean, we want to introduce you.
1:20
SPEAKER_02: I do imagine many of our listeners know who you are already,
1:24
SPEAKER_02: you know bookish social media luminary that you are returning the favor there.
1:29
SPEAKER_02: Sean is a booktuber also great you know to follow on Instagram and on Twitter but so much content on YouTube and so much delightful content you've had Paul and me join you offer some conversations in the past always been a pleasure but I'd like if you wouldn't mind taking a second to
1:49
SPEAKER_02: Let our listeners know how you Introduce your show Sure.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm not sure how I do, but I will do my best So yeah, my channel is called Sean the Book Maniac and I started it I think well just over six years ago when I was living in Tokyo.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: I lived in Tokyo for 13 years and so my channel matured over those years and
2:13
SPEAKER_00: About a year and a half ago, I moved back to my hometown, which is I moved from the world's largest city to one of the quietest, smallest cities on the planet, Saskatoon in Saskatchewan, in Canada, to be closer to family.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: And my channel carries on from here.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: I put out a lot of content, I think because I'm lonely.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm waiting for my husband to join me here in Canada.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: The immigration process has taken a while.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: I put out four or five videos a week.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: standalone book reviews.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: Every Friday, I do a weekly Friday Reads video where I just talk about what I've been reading.
2:50
SPEAKER_00: And recently on Friday Reads, I have
2:54
SPEAKER_00: started featuring mystery guests, writers, and other bookish luminaries.
2:59
SPEAKER_00: Trevor has been a guest at least once and I'm waiting for Paul to get a little less busy so I can get him involved in that.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: Last week I couldn't believe that I landed this get.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: Nancy Pearl was my mystery guest.
3:16
SPEAKER_00: Having a good time with that and I do a bunch of other things.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if anybody hasn't checked that out, definitely do because there's every week, there's just all kinds of treasures.
3:24
SPEAKER_01: And it's such a wonderful, warm place to hang out.
3:27
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, definitely take advantage.
3:29
SPEAKER_02: Well, there are so many times that you you get guests there who are people that I've known for years on, you know, social media in some form or another.
3:37
SPEAKER_02: And it's so nice to see and hear from them on YouTube, you know, in person, you know, hear their voice, see their face.
3:44
SPEAKER_02: It's just nice.
3:45
SPEAKER_02: And then there, of course, many times where you introduce someone to me that I've never met before.
3:50
SPEAKER_02: Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems
4:08
SPEAKER_02: And that does lead us into today's topic.
4:11
SPEAKER_02: And that's that wasn't I mean, I realized what I was doing, but I wasn't a deliberate.
4:17
SPEAKER_02: Let's see if I can throw this in there.
4:18
SPEAKER_02: It's a genuine, genuine thought that I have is oftentimes I'm like, Oh, I didn't know that book existed.
4:25
SPEAKER_02: I need to learn more about that.
4:27
SPEAKER_02: So I appreciate that always.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: Well, I am known as a bit of a community builder on BookTube and I like to get lots of collaborations going with other BookTubers and writers and podcasters.
4:40
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
4:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
4:42
SPEAKER_01: I mean, speaking of, Sean gave our podcast a huge boost when we first started, when we had our bucket list books, you know, idea for our first one, and you created a hashtag on YouTube that got lots of nice traffic.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: And honestly, that really did give us a really good boost as we started out.
4:57
SPEAKER_01: So.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, one of the things that happens on booktube is there's a lot and I think it's youtube wide not only booktube where there's tags, tag videos where somebody comes up with a series of prompts around a theme and then everybody else does that tag and so I created the Mookse and the Gripes Podcast tag, a bucket list tag and it really got a lot of mileage on booktube and I think got some subscribers.
5:21
SPEAKER_02: People that I don't even think knew either one of us started picking up on it as well.
5:25
SPEAKER_02: It just kind of kept on, like, I remember a lot of people who were like, I'm doing the Mookse bucket list that I've seen other people do.
5:36
SPEAKER_02: And you know, it was it was a lot of fun.
5:39
SPEAKER_02: I think people can still search for that on YouTube, and it'll it'll pull up people's videos on books that they're looking forward to reading.
5:46
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
5:48
SPEAKER_02: But
5:49
SPEAKER_02: Well, we're going to get into our topic here shortly, but I do have someone that I want to thank, a new Substack subscriber, who we've actually gotten a lot of Substack subscribers over the past week, and we'll talk about why in just a moment.
6:04
SPEAKER_02: But a new paid subscriber, Nico, I very much appreciate it.
6:08
SPEAKER_02: I saw your email just come over before we recorded it.
6:11
SPEAKER_02: We are recording this a little bit earlier than usual when it comes to our relative release date.
6:16
SPEAKER_02: Today is Saturday, January 27th.
6:19
SPEAKER_02: And the reason we're doing it this weekend instead of, you know, the weekend right before our release is that Paul and I will be gone, not able to record on our normal time.
6:29
SPEAKER_02: So, Nico, I just saw your email come across.
6:33
SPEAKER_02: Thank you very much.
6:34
SPEAKER_02: And the reason we're getting more and more and more subscribers on Substack, Paul, do you want to
6:42
SPEAKER_02: Do you want to explain what's going on?
6:44
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
6:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we've hinted I think a couple times or at least once that we would be doing a group read.
6:51
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, so yesterday, or was it two days ago, Trevor launched some really cool graphics and other things related around.
6:57
SPEAKER_01: We're going to be reading Roberto Bolaño's Savage Detectives.
7:02
SPEAKER_01: So we have sent some things out on Substack.
7:05
SPEAKER_01: We've also shared on social media with the hashtag Savage 24.
7:10
SPEAKER_01: Savage 2024.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: Oh, Savage 2024.
7:12
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
7:14
SPEAKER_02: It'll become its own thing.
7:16
SPEAKER_02: You know, people will do it.
7:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, Savage 2024.
7:20
SPEAKER_02: so anyway yeah we're really looking forward to that and Trevor created a nice graphic that has the schedule all laid out inspired I'm sure by Ken McNeil's mastery in that area but no we're really looking forward to it and it's nice to see you know some excitement and some traction already building yeah it starts on February 10th that's Saturday and the first week we're reading like 74, 75, 76 pages I can't remember exactly what it is and then there will be a sub stack thread that will go up
7:50
SPEAKER_02: on Saturday, February 17th to discuss the first week's reading.
7:56
SPEAKER_02: And that will carry on about 75 pages per week with an accompanying thread on Substack until the final day is April 13th, after which we're planning on recording an episode to commemorate and share thoughts and, you know, kind of talk about Bolaño and the Savage Detectives and the whole experience.
8:17
SPEAKER_02: We've never used Substack for this purpose before, but I held back on putting our podcast on Substack for a while because I'd never done it before and that turned out to be a wonderful thing.
8:30
SPEAKER_02: And it sounds like the threads option there is also wonderful.
8:34
SPEAKER_02: I do think you need to be a subscriber, not a paid subscriber.
8:37
SPEAKER_02: You can be any kind of subscriber and you'll get those notifications that that goes up.
8:42
SPEAKER_02: And then the threads is, I don't know if it's like Twitter or Reddit or I don't know, but I think you can get in there and post comments and people can respond to yours.
8:53
SPEAKER_02: And it's supposed to keep it pretty nicely organized.
8:57
SPEAKER_02: We'll see.
8:59
SPEAKER_02: But we thought it might be nice to have a place that we could meet up and do that better organized than Twitter where it seems like it's, you know, more like looking up at the sky at night and trying to find various posts that people are, you know, there's one clear over there and you know somewhere close to the horizon and I missed a bunch.
9:19
SPEAKER_02: Hopefully this will help collect things a little bit better.
9:22
SPEAKER_02: At the same time, you don't have to join in that way if you would prefer to just post thoughts on Twitter or Instagram or wherever you do your thing and participate that way.
9:34
SPEAKER_02: We would love to see it and we'd love to communicate with you, but maybe you're someone who just wants to read it now and this is spurring you on and you don't want to communicate, you know, your thoughts.
9:44
SPEAKER_02: That's fine too.
9:45
SPEAKER_02: You know, whatever, whatever works.
9:47
SPEAKER_02: We just want to,
9:48
SPEAKER_02: Have some fun with this, see how it all goes.
9:51
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, it's just it's about dang time we're both finally reading The Savage Detectives, one of the masterpieces by one of our favorite authors.
10:01
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
10:02
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
10:02
SPEAKER_01: So really looking forward to it.
10:04
SPEAKER_01: And as Trevor said, there's all kinds of different ways that you can reach out or just read it on your own.
10:09
SPEAKER_01: But we thought the hashtag would be nice, even though a lot of the conversations will hopefully be taking place on Substack.
10:14
SPEAKER_01: Episode 73 Hidden Gems
10:31
SPEAKER_02: Kind of a regular creep up in subscribers on substack when we release episodes But nothing nothing like what we got when we posted the notice about the read-along It's just been been climbing.
10:46
SPEAKER_02: So hopefully that means there are people who will be on there and today You know, this will be up before people know it on the other end of the recording when we release it But today here in just a little bit we're releasing
10:57
SPEAKER_02: kind of a preliminary chat thread.
10:59
SPEAKER_02: People can get to know each other, talk about whether they've read the book, what translation they're reading it from.
11:05
SPEAKER_02: In English, we have Natasha Wimmers, but there may be others joining in with other languages or the original Spanish.
11:12
SPEAKER_02: And hopefully it'll give people a chance to get to know each other just a little bit.
11:16
SPEAKER_02: So that'll be up.
11:18
SPEAKER_02: We'll see how it goes.
11:19
SPEAKER_02: I'm excited.
11:19
SPEAKER_02: I am too.
11:21
SPEAKER_02: Can't wait.
11:22
SPEAKER_02: All right.
11:23
SPEAKER_02: Well, with that all being said, we are now
11:27
SPEAKER_02: ready to ask the best question of the show.
11:32
SPEAKER_02: What have you been reading?
11:34
SPEAKER_02: Why don't we start with you, Sean?
11:36
SPEAKER_02: Paul and I just talked for a few minutes about what we're going to read, and I'd rather us be quiet for a minute so we can hear what you've been reading.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: Well, I am just getting a start on a indigenous novel, Mean Spirit by Linda Hogan, published in 1990.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: I think it was nominated for a National Book Award.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: in 1991 and it is about it is a fictional treatment of the same topic that is all the rage now because of the movie now what let me
12:08
SPEAKER_00: You guys know about it, I'm sure.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: What's the movie called?
12:10
SPEAKER_00: The movie and the book is called Killers of the Flower Moon, The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: And this novel is about this same topic.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: It's set in Oklahoma in the early 1920s when all those murders started happening.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: Linda Hogan is a member of the Chickasaw Nation and
12:32
SPEAKER_00: I found out about this novel because there's been some complaints from Indigenous, I think more, the complaints have been more about the movie perhaps than the non-fiction book by David Grahn about the representation and about kind of white saviour complex stuff that maybe got into the movie that might not have been there in the book.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: I haven't seen the movie or read the book
12:56
SPEAKER_00: but an Indigenous luminary who I follow on Twitter, Paul C. Sequasis, at the time the movie came out tweeted that if you want the real story, if you want an in-depth Indigenous perspective on it, read Mean Spirit by Linda Hogan, this novel.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: So that gave me an opportunity to contact him because I've been a big fan of his since I read his non-fiction book
13:22
SPEAKER_00: Midnight Sun Blank Toss, I believe is the title.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: And I've wanted to interview him or do some kind of collaboration with him.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: He lives locally here in Saskatoon.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: So a little bit audaciously, I contacted him and said, let's read Mean Spirit together and talk about it.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: So that's why I'm reading it.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: And that collaborative discussion will be coming to my channel.
13:41
SPEAKER_02: Excellent.
13:42
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's a that sounds excellent.
13:44
SPEAKER_02: I love the book.
13:45
SPEAKER_02: And I loved the movie.
13:47
SPEAKER_02: But I want to learn more about these criticisms and about this.
13:52
SPEAKER_02: And this sounds like the perfect opportunity for that too.
13:55
SPEAKER_02: So, I mean, beyond just that, that's an excellent conversation waiting to happen on this book in and of itself.
14:01
SPEAKER_02: I do appreciate someone saying, hey, here's another resource.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: And it's a really rich fictional narrative.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm loving it so far.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: Wonderful.
14:14
SPEAKER_02: All right, Paul.
14:16
SPEAKER_02: What have you been reading?
14:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so mine does not fit the criteria today for any kind of book that's not very well known.
14:24
SPEAKER_01: Mine is very well known and gets a lot of press, but it's Michael Cunningham's latest novel, Day.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: Which, you know, Cunningham is one of those authors that I think we talk about sometimes who's just so consistently good that it's almost easy to take him for granted sometimes.
14:40
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I've read and loved quite a few of his books over the years, including, of course, The Hours, which was just amazing.
14:47
SPEAKER_01: And every time I find myself kind of falling into them really effortlessly, and that was the case again with this one.
14:52
SPEAKER_01: I think it's his ability to create such interesting and believable characters but then he's also so good at portraying you know their lives and relationships and kind of intricacies of time so over the past year or so we've started to see a surge of these pandemic novels which I think I mentioned in a previous episode that's not
15:10
SPEAKER_01: Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems
15:34
SPEAKER_01: following the same character so it's kind of an interesting way to go about things and those who read his books before know he has a penchant for maybe these trios like he did with The Hours where he'll kind of focus on these triads like that so he's continuing to do that but yet in a very different way so this one largely takes place in Brooklyn in the apartment of a couple Dan and Isabel and they're a middle-aged couple who you know they're struggling a little bit in their relationship and with parenthood and some other things and then
16:03
SPEAKER_01: Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems
16:21
SPEAKER_01: and then I came across a review that said something that made me feel a little better it says in a novel as thinly plotted as day everything depends upon the exquisite flow of Cunningham's language but quotations don't do his work justice you have to read these sentences yourself in context so that's my cheat but also I think it's true you know I think this is one of those like many of his works where if you're not immersed in it you won't get the same value and magic that you would if I just tried to pull out a pull quote so
16:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's what I've been reading and I would encourage anybody who hasn't read this one to pick it up.
16:53
SPEAKER_01: Have either one of you?
16:54
SPEAKER_01: read day yet?
16:55
SPEAKER_00: No, not yet.
16:56
SPEAKER_00: Not on me.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: No, but I'm literally looking forward to it.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: Michael Cunningham at one time and when I was a much younger man was I considered to be my favorite writer.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, certainly now in my still in my top 10.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: And his early novel, A Home at the End of the World was he spoke to me as a young gay man and read that novel several times.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, he's a fantastic, very important writer to me personally.
17:22
SPEAKER_01: Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems
17:50
SPEAKER_02: It does seem to be getting a universal.
17:52
SPEAKER_02: I mean, praise makes it sound like, oh, the masterpiece and all that.
17:55
SPEAKER_02: But I guess what I would say is I'm seeing more universal.
17:59
SPEAKER_02: I am really loving this or just, you know, a universal.
18:03
SPEAKER_02: Oh, so nice to be in the hands of a great writer.
18:07
SPEAKER_02: You know, that's right.
18:09
SPEAKER_01: That's exactly it.
18:09
SPEAKER_01: All right.
18:11
SPEAKER_02: Trevor, what have you been reading?
18:12
SPEAKER_02: All right.
18:14
SPEAKER_02: I told Paul last week after we were recording that I was maybe going to start
18:20
SPEAKER_02: Miss Macintosh, My Darling by Margaret Young.
18:26
SPEAKER_02: Margaret Young?
18:26
SPEAKER_02: Am I saying right?
18:28
SPEAKER_02: Marguerite Young?
18:30
SPEAKER_02: Because I read the introduction of the new Dahlke edition that's going to be out in print soon, I hope.
18:38
SPEAKER_02: You know, I don't know exactly when.
18:39
SPEAKER_02: It says March, but I don't know if that's going to be hit or not.
18:43
SPEAKER_02: But there's an introduction by Megan O'Giblin.
18:47
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if I'm saying her name even close to right.
18:49
SPEAKER_02: Okjiblin, I'm not sure.
18:51
SPEAKER_02: I apologize.
18:53
SPEAKER_02: But this is one of the best introductions to any book anywhere I've ever read.
18:58
SPEAKER_02: I've actually already reread the introduction.
19:01
SPEAKER_02: Who does that?
19:02
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's because this is such a beautifully written introduction that I think does the great job of introducing the book, making me excited to read the book.
19:14
SPEAKER_02: But in its own way, it is an accomplished essay
19:19
SPEAKER_02: that just is inspiring.
19:22
SPEAKER_02: And so I did start Miss McIntosh, my darling, this past week, but I wanted to start with one of the paragraphs from the introduction.
19:32
SPEAKER_02: And she's talking about the, you know, a variety of ways to approach the book and how strange but beautiful and, you know, all of these things.
19:43
SPEAKER_02: And then it's like, here we go.
19:46
SPEAKER_02: It's now time to turn it over to you, dear reader.
19:49
SPEAKER_02: And she says, The last time I mentioned the book in conversation was about a year ago to some friends who'd gathered at my apartment one frigid Wisconsin evening.
19:58
SPEAKER_02: I don't remember what I said about the book, but it sparked the interest of one of the men, a poet, who asked if he could see it.
20:06
SPEAKER_02: As soon as it was in his hands, he absconded to a corner to pore over the first pages alone.
20:11
SPEAKER_02: Ten minutes later, he rushed back to our circle and read aloud the passage describing the clothing of Madge Capehorn,
20:18
SPEAKER_02: What a great way to say here you go reader, you know, you're in for a beautiful
20:48
SPEAKER_02: mysterious, long, you know, unknowable journey where you're probably going to see more of the, you know, the, of what you don't know, and get, you know, intimations of something, you know, eternal and beautiful and, and, and strange.
21:04
SPEAKER_02: And so I've read, I sat down to read the first chapter the other night is one of the best reading experiences I've had in a long time, I was thoroughly in the zone and, and just leaked into this
21:14
SPEAKER_02: Rhythmic poetic description of first a bus ride There's a bus driver and there are three people on the bus besides the bus driver one of them is our I don't know if you'd call her our narrator necessarily, but maybe the the person who is watching for seeking for Miss Macintosh and
21:39
SPEAKER_02: but this just it's in her thoughts.
21:42
SPEAKER_02: I mean this is some of the most beautiful but also most accessible stream of consciousness writing I've ever read.
21:47
SPEAKER_02: You know sometimes I like what the modernists did with stream of consciousness but sometimes I'll finish and I'm like I have no idea what's going on here.
21:56
SPEAKER_02: This just is one kind of lovely you know swaying dream-like but a kind of dream that again has intimations of something
22:07
SPEAKER_02: true or beyond just a weird, a weird, you know, thing the brain is building up.
22:14
SPEAKER_02: And
22:14
SPEAKER_02: They're just highlighted so much on just these few pages.
22:21
SPEAKER_02: Oh, there's so much.
22:22
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I could probably, I would love to just sit down and read this first chapter again to both of you.
22:26
SPEAKER_02: I really think you would enjoy it.
22:29
SPEAKER_02: Maybe not me reading it.
22:30
SPEAKER_02: I really think you'd enjoy the first chapter.
22:32
SPEAKER_02: But I'm going to read this part where we first meet the narrator's name, Vera Cartwheel.
22:39
SPEAKER_02: It says, Long nights searching for one who was dead.
22:44
SPEAKER_02: I, Vera Cartwell, I, the imploring daughter of a mother under the sway of opium, a mother more beautiful than angels of light, I, Vera Cartwell, had wandered through the streets of great, mysterious harbor cities, those which, at night, seemed all like each other, there where were the spectral faces appearing like foam, disappearing, faces as lost as mine, voices crying underwater,
23:12
SPEAKER_02: Seaweed locked in the hair of the drowned swimmer.
23:15
SPEAKER_02: I had slept in shelters for lost souls, those no one should miss, searching for one who was lost forever outside, alone, the one person not dreaming, and yet who had seemed, with the passage of years since her disappearance from my life, the central heart, the heart of all hearts, the face of all faces, the dead steersman,
23:39
SPEAKER_02: Miss McIntosh, my darling, an old redheaded nursemaid with her face uplifted toward the watery sky.
23:47
SPEAKER_02: There's so many beautiful passages and the way she describes Miss McIntosh and the way she describes her upbringing just, you know, as a young girl, Vera's, she gets so much into this strange, you know, wordy first chapter that it really could probably stand on its own.
24:07
SPEAKER_02: We get to know her imaginings and this very practical Midwestern Miss McIntosh, who is her nursemaid.
24:16
SPEAKER_02: and goes through all of these things.
24:19
SPEAKER_02: I just I just loved it.
24:20
SPEAKER_02: And long ago, however, and by great effort, I had escaped my mother's darkened and secluded house that I might find a life which needed no dream of death.
24:29
SPEAKER_02: That life Miss McIntosh had spoken of in no uncertain terms.
24:32
SPEAKER_02: And I had wandered from darkened harbor to darkened harbor and from employment to employment, always with one clear purpose in mind, the search
24:41
SPEAKER_02: for a lost companion who was, for all I knew, already dead, swept up upon the other shore.
24:48
SPEAKER_02: Anyway, again, it's so easy to just get wrapped up into this.
24:52
SPEAKER_02: And so I've read the first 13 pages.
24:55
SPEAKER_02: I only have 1340 left or so.
24:59
SPEAKER_01: But luckily you don't have any other big book projects going right now.
25:04
SPEAKER_02: Right.
25:05
SPEAKER_02: This is, I mean, I don't know what I'd be doing if I weren't reading this.
25:10
SPEAKER_02: But I'm, I just, I'm sure there will be times where I'm tired or, you know, who knows what, but that reading experience in and of itself, one of the best I've had in, in a long time, just that first chapter, loved it.
25:24
SPEAKER_02: so all right well thanks for putting up with that kind of long discursion but I do hope there are some listeners who are like oh that sounds like a book for me and well I'm one of them I'm one of them I was gonna say I am too what are you doing to me here I already have like you know Rebecca West and all these other giant books on my plate but no that sounds absolutely amazing I can't wait well it probably took me
25:48
SPEAKER_02: It didn't take me quite an hour, but it probably took me 45 minutes to read those 10 pages because I was, again, rereading and just in, I was just in it and I was highlighting things.
26:00
SPEAKER_02: It was a, it was just a good experience.
26:03
SPEAKER_02: I never felt like having to highlight took me out of it.
26:06
SPEAKER_02: It was like, I'm like reading, you know, something that is life changing as I'm doing it.
26:11
SPEAKER_02: So anyway.
26:13
SPEAKER_02: Episode 73 Hidden Gems
26:30
SPEAKER_01: Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden G
27:00
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I can't stop now, I'm not kidding.
27:05
SPEAKER_02: Alright, well through all of that preliminary stuff, we have a really exciting topic this week.
27:11
SPEAKER_02: I'll admit, Sean, one that intimidated me, and I'll explain why in a moment, but are we calling this Hidden Gems?
27:20
SPEAKER_02: Reading hidden gems or finding hidden gems.
27:22
SPEAKER_02: What do you do with these hidden gems?
27:25
SPEAKER_02: Why don't you explain it was your idea your and I was excited about it from the get-go But I'd like to hear what your interest was and what brought you to select this as a topic Absolutely.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: So I am a bit of an odd duck and I read a lot of
27:43
SPEAKER_00: what I eventually often discover to be hidden gems, but my eye is always drawn in the library or in a bookstore to the title or author, especially the author that I've never heard of before.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: And I've been that way ever since I can remember.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: So I read a lot of stuff that's off the beaten track or more obscure stuff, not exclusively, but, you know, more than anybody else I know, I tend to read stuff that nobody's ever heard of.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: And I enjoy proselytizing about the hidden gems that I find.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: So that's why I suggested it because it's kind of a key aspect of my readerly personality.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: And so I've got a short, small stack of books that I'm excited to tell you about that I've discovered that way.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, my channel is a small channel compared to people like Eric Carl Anderson, but I have kind of a little niche, a little corner of BookTube where people say, yeah, you talk about books that nobody else on BookTube does.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: And so in that spirit, here I am.
28:48
SPEAKER_02: Well, I appreciate it.
28:50
SPEAKER_02: The reason I was intimidated by it is maybe I always feel like I get my reading recommendations from two sources, my favorite publishers, you know, it's very nice to have them curating and just, you know, a steady stream of new books, most of which I've never heard of before, you know, coming from them or books in translation.
29:12
SPEAKER_02: Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems
29:28
SPEAKER_02: Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems
29:47
SPEAKER_02: Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems
30:07
SPEAKER_02: I figured most of my friends have read it.
30:12
SPEAKER_02: But I think I've got some.
30:13
SPEAKER_02: I think I've got some that folks will be like, I don't even know what that is or who that is.
30:18
SPEAKER_02: We'll see.
30:18
SPEAKER_02: We'll see.
30:20
SPEAKER_01: I'm glad to hear you say that because that's very, very similar to the thought process I went through is like compared to, I would think, you know, a big majority of people out there and even readers out there, a lot of the stuff we discussed would probably be considered, you know, somewhat of a hidden gem with, like you said, translated fiction or just small publishers.
30:38
SPEAKER_01: But within our listener circle and our friend circle online, I went through the same worries that you just described of like,
30:47
SPEAKER_01: I don't think this is a hidden gem for them.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: They probably introduced me to it.
30:50
SPEAKER_01: So same thing.
30:52
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
30:52
SPEAKER_01: You guys will have to determine.
30:53
SPEAKER_01: I know this is a safe place, but I'm hoping I found three that are at least close to fitting the criteria.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think the intimidation or the concern you've both expressed is completely explainable by the fact that maybe the wide reach of The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast, these books that you're going to might be talking about were formerly obscure until you introduced the world to them.
31:18
SPEAKER_02: Or even if they were we have now talked about them so often like like You know, there are some books that would pop up probably but we've done publisher episodes You know, I don't think that many people have read Eric Cheviard's Demolishing Nisar
31:33
SPEAKER_02: But I've already talked about it.
31:35
SPEAKER_02: I would say that was a hidden gem for me for sure and has kind of remained hidden.
31:40
SPEAKER_02: So that's maybe the track that I took is which of these books, maybe they came out and there was a little bit of a buzz, you know, yay, there's this new book that came out.
31:49
SPEAKER_02: But ever since then, I haven't heard anybody talk about them.
31:53
SPEAKER_02: And so the three that I chose are books that I have actually written about on The Mookse and the Gripes, you know, years ago.
32:00
SPEAKER_02: and that I really thought were amazing and deserve a wider readership, but I don't believe I have ever, ever, ever, ever seen them pop up again since I wrote about them.
32:13
SPEAKER_02: That shows the power of The Mookse and the Gripes, Sean.
32:15
SPEAKER_02: No one ever picked them up.
32:18
SPEAKER_02: At least I've seen them in general places, you know, on my weekly, what are you reading this weekend?
32:25
SPEAKER_02: These books have, I know, never popped up on there.
32:28
SPEAKER_02: On Twitter, I don't see anybody saying, oh, look at my new book stack, you know, the books I picked up this week or what I've read this past month.
32:35
SPEAKER_02: I've never seen them pop up.
32:38
SPEAKER_02: But I think at a time, they probably did have a readership, a fairly enthusiastic readership.
32:43
SPEAKER_02: And so I think those can be hidden gems, too, that, you know, I mean, I imagine all the books we're talking about have been published.
32:51
SPEAKER_02: And so there was, you know, there was some enthusiasm that maybe it died out.
32:56
SPEAKER_02: And I'm curious about listener feedback too.
32:59
SPEAKER_02: Which of these books have you heard about?
33:01
SPEAKER_02: Which were surprises like, that's hidden?
33:03
SPEAKER_02: Jeez, my whole community has read that book.
33:07
SPEAKER_02: Or which ones stand out as of interest to you?
33:11
SPEAKER_02: Please share so that we can continue to experience this joy of talking about these hidden gems.
33:18
SPEAKER_02: And I guess maybe that's another thing I wanted to ask you about, Sean.
33:23
SPEAKER_02: I think you rightfully take some pride, even if you're not always intentionally.
33:27
SPEAKER_02: You don't go to the bookstore and think, I'd like to surprise my viewers with another hidden gem.
33:32
SPEAKER_02: It just is natural to you.
33:33
SPEAKER_02: But I think you rightfully are proud that you were able to do that.
33:37
SPEAKER_02: What kind of joy do you get from uncovering these for yourself?
33:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a great question.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: And I do pride or certainly it's very rewarding when other when, you know, all six of my 16 viewers will go out and buy a book that they hadn't heard of before.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that is a really special feeling.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: Um,
34:02
SPEAKER_00: I think that my tastes just run to the stuff that other people aren't talking about.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: I have always been in like, as a kid, I hated rock music and pop music because everybody was listening to it.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: So there I was 12 years old listening to Scott Joplin.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: Episode 73 Hidden Gems
34:37
SPEAKER_00: what other people are talking about, but I'm not as much as I am in just discovering for myself something that's out of print or that's regionally known, especially in a region that I don't live in.
34:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm very attracted to those kind of books, books in translation that maybe are out of print or that people haven't been haven't discovered so much yet.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I just find that a joyful perch for my reading life.
35:05
SPEAKER_02: Is there an aspect of it, too, that kind of keeps it?
35:09
SPEAKER_02: Well, while you run a community and you are a community builder, but is there an aspect of it, too?
35:14
SPEAKER_02: Because I think I feel this way of finding a treasure and having it be a personal treasure for a period and then being able to go out and share it.
35:23
SPEAKER_02: But but at least that that moment where it's kind of your own, you know, you haven't heard a lot of people talking about it.
35:31
SPEAKER_02: and so it can be yours for a little while.
35:34
SPEAKER_02: Tainted's the wrong word because I think that conversation, even preliminary conversation about books is wonderful.
35:40
SPEAKER_02: We're doing it today.
35:42
SPEAKER_02: But where it hasn't gotten the color, the hues of other people's voices, I mean, does that part of it too for you, that it keeps it very personal and yours for a little while, or does that not necessarily play into it?
35:56
SPEAKER_02: I'm just, I'm trying to explore the various ways that someone might approach this.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: these these things.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: I love the way you put that because that is very much at the core of my interest in it and part of it is that I
36:12
SPEAKER_00: It's so much easier to go into a book blind when nobody else in the world has read it, at least that you've heard of.
36:19
SPEAKER_00: And I am unduly influenced by what I hear about people's opinions about books.
36:25
SPEAKER_00: And if I hear too many reviews of a book, then I don't want to read it for at least two years until I've kind of forgotten what people have said about it.
36:34
SPEAKER_00: And so the more obscure, off-the-beaten-path books, I don't have to deal with that dynamic at all.
36:41
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
36:42
SPEAKER_02: It's kind of a fun little, I feel this way, where reading is personal and it's my own thing, and then we get on here and we talk about it and share it.
36:51
SPEAKER_02: I mean, they're both joys, but it is fun to still have that be your reading experience and your time
37:00
SPEAKER_02: Episode 73 Hidden Gems
37:07
SPEAKER_02: and I think oh I don't know anything about this I'll read the first couple pages see if it appeals and all of a sudden I'm you know 50 pages in and so excited to finish it and I've never heard anyone talk about it before even even if it's a popular book maybe I've never read the blurbs or avoided reviews I just picked it up off the you know off the bestseller table because it had a cool cover you know who knows but that can still be so such a personal
37:33
SPEAKER_01: uh moment of of joy that you found a new friend or something like that well i wanted to ask you sean sorry just so with the hidden treasure aspect of things obviously if there's not been a lot of buzz or if you're just picking something up at a used bookstore that's tucked away in a dusty corner obviously there's always that possibility there but i would also assume that there's a fair amount of times where maybe there's a reason that some of these books you know didn't make it big so i guess my question is like when you're
38:03
SPEAKER_01: uncovering these hidden gems what is your process of this one is just not going to be worth it I'm going to ditch it like versus you know how much time do you give these books since Trevor mentioned like some of these publishers they curate these books so at the very least we know that if NYRB Classics or Archipelago has put something out even if we've never heard of it there's a pretty good chance that it's high quality you know what I mean so if you're picking up some of these random books that you don't know much about is there the risk of them having faded away for a reason
38:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, great question.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: And I wasn't sure if we were going to go there in this conversation.
38:37
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, let's talk about bailing.
38:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's the other thing I'm famous for.
38:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm a big bailer.
38:45
SPEAKER_00: And so far, we're at the end of January.
38:47
SPEAKER_00: I haven't bailed on anything.
38:49
SPEAKER_00: I gotta get my bailing mojo back.
38:51
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I start a lot of books that I don't finish.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: And I would say more of them are books that are popular than books that nobody's heard of.
38:58
SPEAKER_00: But
39:00
SPEAKER_00: I have bailed on books on page one, and I've bailed on books 20 pages from the end.
39:05
SPEAKER_00: But typically, nowadays, I will read about half of it.
39:12
SPEAKER_00: And if I'm not really invested at that point, I'll put it down.
39:17
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I don't take as much stock maybe as other readers do of the conventional opinion or think that everything a publisher publishes, for example, NYRB books, half of the ones that I've read,
39:30
SPEAKER_00: that they've put out I've loved and the other half I've bailed on so yeah I'm not uh conventional I kind of go so the word I want to circle back to that Trevor used it's one of my favorite words is visceral for me my visceral response to what I'm reading is is the most important thing and so as much as I can I like to keep all of the
39:51
SPEAKER_00: Received opinion, the reviews, what other booktubers have said, even what you guys have said.
39:57
SPEAKER_00: I want to keep it out of my mind and just fall into the book and see how it goes for me.
40:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I really like that.
40:05
SPEAKER_02: I guess you have to have a bit of that, you know,
40:09
SPEAKER_02: I like that you're willing to cut things off, too.
40:11
SPEAKER_02: It kind of shows that, hey, I'm doing this for me.
40:15
SPEAKER_02: If it's not working for me, I don't care if someone else says, no, you should love this book, or even if you don't love it, you should finish it because it's important in some way or another, aesthetically, culturally, who knows what.
40:28
SPEAKER_02: but you're doing it because it's working or not working for you and in which case you are ready to move on to the next and I think that's hopefully, you know, a nice healthy place to be with these things.
40:41
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
40:42
SPEAKER_00: I went through a phase maybe five years ago where I was trying a bunch of new genres and a bunch of new writers and many things that were kind of outside my comfort zone and a lot of those ended up
40:53
SPEAKER_00: on the floor, unfinished.
40:55
SPEAKER_00: But nowadays, I kind of know what I like and don't bail as much, but I still... It's a controversial topic.
41:04
SPEAKER_00: It might be an interesting episode to do on your podcast, far be it for me to suggest, but it's just such a... Oh, no.
41:09
SPEAKER_00: People have very firm opinions, yea or nay, about bailing.
41:14
SPEAKER_00: I used to call myself the Queen of Bailing and I got so darn good at it, I promoted myself.
41:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm now the Empress of Bailing.
41:24
SPEAKER_00: Nice.
41:24
SPEAKER_02: Got a promotion.
41:24
SPEAKER_01: Nice.
41:25
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
41:26
SPEAKER_02: All right.
41:27
SPEAKER_02: Well, should we, should we touch on our books and, and maybe that'll allow us to discuss various other ways they pop up, but I'm just anxious to maybe get some other ideas, places to look for some books as well.
41:40
SPEAKER_02: And Sean, if you're okay with it, we'll, we'll go ahead and start with one of your three.
41:48
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, and as a preface to introducing my first one, I want to mention a book that is a great way to find some of these writers.
41:57
SPEAKER_00: It's called The Book of Forgotten Authors, and the author is Christopher Fowler.
42:02
SPEAKER_00: It came out in the UK in 2017, and I read that and I got a TBR list as long as my arm of writers and books I'd never heard of.
42:11
SPEAKER_00: It's a wonderful introduction to writers off the beaten track or that people don't read anymore.
42:20
SPEAKER_00: So that's where I found out about the American novelist Cynthia Proper-Satin.
42:29
SPEAKER_00: So I'm just going to stop here and ask if either one of you have ever heard of her.
42:33
SPEAKER_00: I don't think so.
42:34
SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, I certainly hadn't.
42:36
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's her debut novel.
42:39
SPEAKER_00: It's called The Sea Change of Angela Lewis.
42:42
SPEAKER_00: And that's my first pick.
42:44
SPEAKER_00: Cynthia Proper Setton died, I think, in 1981 or 1982.
42:48
SPEAKER_00: And she was only 54.
42:50
SPEAKER_00: But before, obviously, before her death, she put out five or six novels.
42:55
SPEAKER_00: And they've been compared to Jane Austen and George Eliot and
43:01
SPEAKER_00: Very, very canonical writers like that.
43:04
SPEAKER_00: I think they're now mostly back in print through some kind of an Amazon print on demand thing.
43:10
SPEAKER_00: That's how I got a hold of this.
43:12
SPEAKER_00: And the sea change of Angela Lewis spoke to me very personally, because it made me think of my mom, but especially my one of my grandmothers who born in 1896 in Saskatchewan.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: Her dream as a adolescent was to become a doctor.
43:30
SPEAKER_00: And she didn't do that.
43:31
SPEAKER_00: Her best friend did that, became Saskatchewan.
43:34
SPEAKER_00: My great aunt Alice became Saskatchewan's first woman doctor in the early 20th century or something, 1920 or 1925 or something.
43:43
SPEAKER_00: And my grandma married Dr. Alice's younger brother, my grandfather.
43:49
SPEAKER_00: And I've always, this book made me think of her because the protagonist, well, I guess she's not the protagonist, but the grandma in this book reminded me of her.
44:01
SPEAKER_00: The novel opens in 1939 and there's kind of a family picnic a few months after the grandpa has shuffled off this mortal coil and the grandma is quiet you can barely even notice her in the scene she's so quiet and unobtrusive and has a loud boisterous family was full of all the family dynamics and conflicts that make for good fictional reading and then a week or two later
44:30
SPEAKER_00: Grandma disappears.
44:33
SPEAKER_00: She leaves a note on the kitchen table for her bachelor son who she lives with that doesn't really say very much, just intensifies the mystery.
44:42
SPEAKER_00: And the family never see her again.
44:43
SPEAKER_00: And then the rest of the novel is about the lives of those, especially the female members of that family over the generations.
44:53
SPEAKER_00: Angela Lewis is her granddaughter.
44:57
SPEAKER_00: and all of the ways in which gender and social change and feminism interweave with their lives.
45:05
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, there's this mystery.
45:07
SPEAKER_00: Whatever did happen to grandma?
45:09
SPEAKER_00: And some of those mysteries get solved near the end of the novel.
45:12
SPEAKER_00: And I'm certainly not going to talk about them here.
45:15
SPEAKER_00: But I just found it a wonderful novel about women's lives, in particular in America in the 20th century, a really rich read.
45:27
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that sounds great.
45:28
SPEAKER_02: It really does.
45:29
SPEAKER_02: I know.
45:31
SPEAKER_01: You're one for one so far.
45:32
SPEAKER_01: I'll just say that much.
45:33
SPEAKER_01: It didn't look too long either.
45:35
SPEAKER_00: No, it's 200.
45:36
SPEAKER_00: Let's see here.
45:37
SPEAKER_00: No, not 250 pages.
45:37
SPEAKER_00: I do have a short quote I'd like to read.
45:45
SPEAKER_00: Angela, the granddaughter, the titular Angela, the sea change of Angela Lewis, she goes through in midlife a transformation where she becomes, she gets into art basically, and the night before some momentous event
46:04
SPEAKER_00: that's part of that transformation.
46:06
SPEAKER_00: She goes, I think she's in New York City.
46:08
SPEAKER_00: I didn't say the setting.
46:09
SPEAKER_00: The setting of the original family is Long Island, a farm on Long Island.
46:13
SPEAKER_00: Apparently there were farms on Long Island at one point, at least in 1939.
46:18
SPEAKER_00: But I think she's in New York City.
46:19
SPEAKER_00: It's the night before maybe, I can't remember now, an art opening or something.
46:25
SPEAKER_00: And she's in her hotel looking at herself in the mirror.
46:31
SPEAKER_00: So much mirror, so much sight of herself from which she couldn't flee in that fine bathroom, brought her to a dead stop before her reflection.
46:41
SPEAKER_00: She stared in deadly earnest.
46:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm not fooling, she said out loud.
46:49
SPEAKER_00: She wore a deep orange cotton dress but it looked pink in the surgical light.
46:55
SPEAKER_00: And there was something about
46:57
SPEAKER_00: That exclamation, I'm not fooling that just still resonates through my body as I think about this novel about a woman's journey to self creation with this mysterious grandma story lurking in the background in all the family members lives.
47:15
SPEAKER_00: So a really fascinating novel.
47:20
SPEAKER_01: Wow, that sounds really, really good.
47:23
SPEAKER_02: Listeners, we will, as usual, have show notes so you can, and I'm going to list all of these books that we're talking about so that you can go and find them because they might not all, you might have to go searching for them, you know, in deeper places on the internet in order to find them.
47:41
SPEAKER_02: So I'm going to do my best to make it easy for you to find what we're talking about.
47:47
SPEAKER_02: I'm writing them down myself to, okay, how am I going to,
47:50
SPEAKER_02: find this book.
47:51
SPEAKER_02: Am I going to beat Paul to the only copy that's available?
47:56
SPEAKER_02: Too bad, I already have it in my basket.
47:59
SPEAKER_02: Yoink!
48:00
SPEAKER_02: No, not anymore.
48:03
SPEAKER_02: All right.
48:03
SPEAKER_02: Well, Paul, what's your first one?
48:06
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
48:07
SPEAKER_01: So for my first one, I'm going to talk about the books of Nick Janz, and that's J-A-N-S, and in particular, his book called The Last Light Breaking.
48:16
SPEAKER_01: So he's an Alaskan writer and a photographer who for years now has focused on, you know, the Alaskan wildlife, landscapes, some of the various native cultures who live in that part of the world.
48:27
SPEAKER_01: And although he is a white man, he himself lives in northwest Arctic Alaska and spends a lot of time in and around the Arctic.
48:34
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to hopefully say this right, in a Piak village of Ambler.
48:39
SPEAKER_01: And so this is one of those books, I just want to preface it by saying, this is not written by an indigenous person.
48:45
SPEAKER_01: And I would encourage people to obviously go out and explore books written by the people who actually live there.
48:52
SPEAKER_01: So this is somewhat of an outsider's perspective, but I still think it's really wonderful.
48:55
SPEAKER_01: So I just wanted to throw that preface in there at the beginning.
48:57
SPEAKER_01: But like many of the lesser known books that crossed my path, this one was a personal recommendation.
49:03
SPEAKER_01: And in this case, it came from a family member who, you know, I've kind of bonded with her over the years over our mutual love of nature writing.
49:10
SPEAKER_01: And we often talk about, you know, Wallace Stegner and Edward Abbey and John Muir and authors like that.
49:16
SPEAKER_01: And one day she brought me two books by Nick Janz, who she said is one of her favorite authors.
49:21
SPEAKER_01: So in The Last Light Breaking, he explores Alaska's Brooks Range and in particular, the Inupiat people who live there.
49:29
SPEAKER_01: and so this book is obviously non-fiction it's made up of 23 different essays and each one just offers a different snapshot of that region it was written back in 1993 and so i can only imagine you know how much things have changed since then but even at that time the people who live there
49:47
SPEAKER_01: You know, they were undergoing massive changes in their culture, their economy, their climate.
49:53
SPEAKER_01: You know, he talks about the intrusions into their lives of things like computers and satellite dishes and other modern conveniences that were at that time already really transforming their culture.
50:05
SPEAKER_01: And so I will say that I like some of these essays more than others.
50:09
SPEAKER_01: There's some where he
50:10
SPEAKER_01: Episode 73 Hidden Gems
50:30
SPEAKER_01: weaving and casting nets and you know just some of the other details of the archaeology of the area and things like that and so I wanted to just read an excerpt here from the it's near the very end of the whole book but I just think it gives a good example of the the type of writing that he does and it says at the edge of sleep images blur together stop signs and wolves rusting oil drums and silver light the roar of snowmobiles old women casting their nets in the dusk
51:00
SPEAKER_01: But there is an emptiness beneath.
51:02
SPEAKER_01: Though it comes from the land, I can best explain in human terms.
51:06
SPEAKER_01: Years ago, I loved a woman.
51:08
SPEAKER_01: I watched her for days, all the while holding my breath, waiting for a sign, a gesture of any sort that showed she noticed me.
51:15
SPEAKER_01: The sign never came, though I kept watching long after she was gone.
51:19
SPEAKER_01: And so I often find myself alone, far back in the country, waiting as a hopeful lover might, kneeling on the tundra of the redstone one September evening, facing north into the wind as darkness fell, or riding down the Amaliac Valley on a dazzling April morning, laughing like a fool, overwhelmed by the pure, cold radiance before me.
51:40
SPEAKER_01: I once sat below the curve of an arete playing my harmonica, imagining that the mountains bowed and whispered back.
51:47
SPEAKER_01: Even now the sudden appearance of a grizzly becomes a talisman.
51:50
SPEAKER_01: I tell myself that a burst of winter light is a secret nod meant only for me.
51:55
SPEAKER_01: Of course I know better.
51:57
SPEAKER_01: The land offers itself equally to all things, caribou and wolf, flower and man.
52:02
SPEAKER_01: The emptiness comes from knowing that I'm no more important to what I love than any tree or stone.
52:08
SPEAKER_01: That's as it should be, but love is seldom rational.
52:12
SPEAKER_01: So that's just a snippet.
52:13
SPEAKER_01: I mean, not all of it is as poetic and beautiful as that is, but this guy is a really good writer.
52:21
SPEAKER_01: And like I said, with my penchant towards nature writing, this ticked a lot of boxes for me.
52:27
SPEAKER_01: And as far as I know, he's not very well known.
52:29
SPEAKER_01: It's put out by a little publisher called Alaska Northwest Books.
52:35
SPEAKER_01: So if, like I said, if my family member hadn't put it on my radar, I don't think I ever would have heard of it, but I just wanted to
52:43
SPEAKER_01: Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems
52:51
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
52:52
SPEAKER_00: And this is a, I'm glad to have an opportunity to say how influential Paul has been on my reading and getting me to read more nature writing.
52:59
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, this sounds really good.
53:01
SPEAKER_00: Me too.
53:01
SPEAKER_00: Me too, for sure.
53:02
SPEAKER_00: Wasn't that your, like your second episode, I think, of the podcast?
53:05
SPEAKER_00: I can remember where I was in Tokyo, walking around, listening to that episode with you guys reading nature writing to me in my ear.
53:11
SPEAKER_00: It was wonderful.
53:13
SPEAKER_00: Very transformational.
53:15
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
53:16
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
53:17
SPEAKER_00: That means a lot.
53:18
SPEAKER_02: All right, well, my first one, I'm going to be very curious.
53:22
SPEAKER_02: Paul, you in particular may have already read this one.
53:25
SPEAKER_02: I don't know, because the way that I found out about it was on those great, really long lists for the Best Translated Book Award.
53:34
SPEAKER_02: You know, may she rest in peace.
53:40
SPEAKER_02: The Best Translated Book Award
53:42
SPEAKER_02: was a great way for me to start opening up my horizons and find books that I bet had print runs of a thousand or less from small publishers focusing on works in translation.
53:53
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I don't know how many this one had, but I've never seen anyone else who's read it that I remember.
54:02
SPEAKER_02: It is called A Life on Paper and it's short stories by Georges-Olivier Chatreau-Renard.
54:09
SPEAKER_02: Anything there?
54:10
SPEAKER_02: No.
54:11
SPEAKER_01: No, it doesn't ring a bell.
54:13
SPEAKER_02: So Chateau Reno is a French author.
54:17
SPEAKER_02: He's still alive.
54:18
SPEAKER_02: He's in his 70s, I believe.
54:20
SPEAKER_02: And he's been writing for decades.
54:23
SPEAKER_02: He's he's won the Prix Goncourt.
54:26
SPEAKER_02: But this is the only thing we have from him in English is translated wonderfully by one of my favorite translators that I usually find new authors, new books I've never heard of through just following what he's translating.
54:40
SPEAKER_02: This is Edward Govan.
54:43
SPEAKER_02: In fact, one of the other books that I pulled out as a potential was also translated by Edward.
54:50
SPEAKER_02: It is called The Conductor and Other Tales by Jean Ferry.
54:54
SPEAKER_02: But I'll put that one aside and focus on A Life in Paper.
55:00
SPEAKER_02: I loved this book of short stories.
55:02
SPEAKER_02: It's fairly short in and of itself, 256 pages, and I just hoped it would burst open the doors.
55:08
SPEAKER_02: to, you know, all of these translations of Chateauneuf's works.
55:14
SPEAKER_02: I don't think that any have been translated since.
55:17
SPEAKER_02: And so this, I think, remains a hidden gem for us in English, if not in, you know, in French and probably other languages out there.
55:26
SPEAKER_02: Hopefully there will be some opportunity someday.
55:29
SPEAKER_02: I do not read French, but this is an author who I love the writing.
55:37
SPEAKER_02: And that's the reason that it really kind of pulled out for me is it's beautiful writing.
55:45
SPEAKER_02: It seems mundane.
55:46
SPEAKER_02: It seems day to day.
55:48
SPEAKER_02: And yet it's so weird.
55:49
SPEAKER_02: So Paul and Sean, we talked about him.
55:53
SPEAKER_02: Think Stephen Milhauser.
55:56
SPEAKER_02: You know, and there is a story.
55:58
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I wrote a fairly lengthy post on this, but
56:02
SPEAKER_02: One of the stories that I think really stands out to me, and I still remember all of the ones that I posted on, is called Icarus Saved from the Skies.
56:15
SPEAKER_02: But here's how it
56:19
SPEAKER_02: It begins.
56:20
SPEAKER_02: The ironies of fate are infinite.
56:23
SPEAKER_02: Around the time I turned twenty, despite having decided to steer clear of both doctors and women, I met Maude, then a surgical intern, and at her pressing request became her lover.
56:35
SPEAKER_02: Don't go thinking I've ever borne the slightest ill will towards the medical body, much less a woman's body.
56:40
SPEAKER_02: My prejudice extends only to the physician or female likely to see me naked, discover my misfortune, and make it even crueler to bear.
56:49
SPEAKER_02: And you'll be like, what's he talking about?
56:52
SPEAKER_02: But then you're like, oh, this is Icarus.
56:53
SPEAKER_02: I think I might know.
56:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
56:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
56:55
SPEAKER_02: He's got, um, uh, budding wings on his, uh, on his back.
57:01
SPEAKER_02: And so it talks about their relationship and him trying to figure out who he is.
57:07
SPEAKER_02: Who was I?
57:08
SPEAKER_02: Really?
57:09
SPEAKER_02: Did I even know?
57:10
SPEAKER_02: A cripple?
57:10
SPEAKER_02: A monster?
57:11
SPEAKER_02: A future carnival freak?
57:13
SPEAKER_02: An angel in the making?
57:15
SPEAKER_02: And after they get married, the wings start to shrink.
57:22
SPEAKER_02: He's ecstatic.
57:23
SPEAKER_02: He's super excited about this.
57:24
SPEAKER_02: He's like, finally, finally, finally.
57:27
SPEAKER_02: but his now new wife Maude becomes depressed.
57:34
SPEAKER_02: It wasn't long before I accused her of being more fascinated by my deformity than in love with me.
57:41
SPEAKER_02: To this she snapped back that I had the wingspan of a waterfowl and was a birdbrain to boot.
57:47
SPEAKER_02: She'd scored a point there and beating a hasty retreat I went to sulk in my office.
57:54
SPEAKER_02: It's just again there's so much of this like bizarre stuff but treated in such a relatable mundane way.
58:04
SPEAKER_02: Here's another another story called Unlivable that I just read the first little part
58:09
SPEAKER_02: Accommodations obsess me.
58:10
SPEAKER_02: I have what you might call a housing neurosis.
58:12
SPEAKER_02: Most of my childhood was spent in cramped quarters.
58:28
SPEAKER_02: my mother sublet the cellar to me and my father end parentheses leaving me with a tendency toward claustrophobia no less crippling than the legacy of agoraphobia bequeathed me on visits to my grandparents father's side a pair of fanatical balloonists i'd rather not discuss my other grandparents house my asthma specialists say it's best not to think about it you read these
58:53
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, where is this going?
58:55
SPEAKER_02: What is going to happen here?
58:56
SPEAKER_02: But he's often exploring Things that are again relatable and in my day-to-day life.
59:02
SPEAKER_02: I just I just love them.
59:04
SPEAKER_02: I wrote here at the end It's been over a month since I finished this book and I still haven't found its substitute I need another book that offers a bit of short reading guaranteed to please daily because the way I read this was one story a day, you know at night or something like that and they're short enough that
59:22
SPEAKER_02: You know, it went quite quickly.
59:25
SPEAKER_02: And then they were done.
59:25
SPEAKER_02: And that's all we've had from Chateau Reno ever since.
59:30
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, a wonderful collection that I think has remained a hidden gem, unfortunately.
59:38
SPEAKER_02: I could go on and on about his stories, but maybe better for people to just go and if that sounds good, find it yourself.
59:45
SPEAKER_02: I did look.
59:45
SPEAKER_02: You can still buy it online new, so it's not like it'll be hard to find if people are interested.
59:52
SPEAKER_01: Did you mention the publisher on that one?
59:53
SPEAKER_02: Small Beer Press.
59:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't think I did, but I meant to do Small Beer Press in 2010.
59:58
SPEAKER_02: Put this one out.
1:00:01
SPEAKER_00: Well, the hook for me was Grandma and Grandpa Balloonist.
1:00:08
SPEAKER_02: There are so many ways to catch all of us, you know, based on our what weird little detail is going to make me go, I want to look closer.
1:00:15
SPEAKER_02: He throws a lot of them in there.
1:00:18
SPEAKER_02: All right, well, Sean, do you want to go on with your next one?
1:00:21
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
1:00:22
SPEAKER_00: So there's a story with this one.
1:00:23
SPEAKER_00: So I bought this novel at a used bookstore in Tokyo.
1:00:28
SPEAKER_00: and again because I had never heard of the title or the author and here it is it's called The One Who Did Not Ask by Elta Fatima.
1:00:38
SPEAKER_00: It took me quite a few years to get around to reading it and eventually I did and I absolutely loved it.
1:00:44
SPEAKER_00: Elta Fatima was a preeminent apparently preeminent Pakistani Urdu novelist and this novel was
1:00:55
SPEAKER_00: originally published in Urdu in 1964 and the translation by Raksana Ahmad was 1993.
1:01:03
SPEAKER_00: It's out of print so you will have to hunt for this one.
1:01:09
SPEAKER_00: This is a story about Gaiti and Gaiti is coming of age just before World War I and living in an absolutely incredibly insular Urdu culture in pre-partition India.
1:01:25
SPEAKER_00: And she's a twin.
1:01:26
SPEAKER_00: She has a twin sister and she's got parents and the most convoluted, complicated, extended family that you could ever try to deal with while reading a novel.
1:01:40
SPEAKER_00: And she has a friendship with a Chinese laborer who lives in the community and he's a shoemaker and an errand boy and all kinds of odd jobs.
1:01:51
SPEAKER_00: And you never, one of the things that
1:01:55
SPEAKER_00: you're curious about as a reader is what is the nature of this relationship these vibrations between privileged gai-ti and this Chinese guy
1:02:07
SPEAKER_00: and that plays out over the course of the novel and the fascinating part about it is that otherwise the culture is so insular so how does this fascinating Chinese character show up in this really kind of almost cloistered family situation and then they go through a world war
1:02:30
SPEAKER_00: I think I said World War I, and I was confused about it when I was reading.
1:02:34
SPEAKER_00: I think eventually, because the partition happened soon after, I realized, no, it's World War II.
1:02:40
SPEAKER_00: And it was a very difficult read because there were so many Urdu terms in it that were not translated.
1:02:47
SPEAKER_00: And I like a puzzle, and I like Google reading, but there were a lot of words that I couldn't find.
1:02:55
SPEAKER_00: And I kept reading and I kept getting confused because every family member in the story had a nickname and was referred to by their first name sometimes, their nickname other times, and some other honorific.
1:03:09
SPEAKER_00: And I had to just let go of trying to track the extended family and let that part of the narrative wash over me.
1:03:16
SPEAKER_00: I think I remember who this aunt is.
1:03:18
SPEAKER_00: I don't remember if it was on the dad's side or the mother's side and it doesn't matter.
1:03:22
SPEAKER_00: And just focus on the key characters.
1:03:25
SPEAKER_00: But my reading of this novel was imperfect.
1:03:28
SPEAKER_00: And that was a really valuable reading experience for me, both because it was too many characters for me.
1:03:34
SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of words that were confusing for me, and I cannot wait to read it again because it was just a magnificent novel.
1:03:45
SPEAKER_00: Here is a short quote just around the term, just around
1:03:51
SPEAKER_00: in I think the days leading up to the violent partition of India.
1:03:56
SPEAKER_00: So Gaiti is our protagonist.
1:04:02
SPEAKER_00: Gaiti noticed the three tiny reddish brown leaves ready to unfold, rising from the top end of the pink stem emerging from the stone of a mango planted at the base of the sandalwood tree.
1:04:15
SPEAKER_00: Her hands moved involuntarily and she pulled out the stone which lay on top of the earth.
1:04:22
SPEAKER_00: All three tiny leaves and the pink stem snapped and fell on the grass.
1:04:26
SPEAKER_00: She stripped the outer mud-encrusted casing and drew out the bidgley, the soft core of the stone, the quickening hidden in its heart.
1:04:37
SPEAKER_00: And that passage goes on, and I, for the life of me, couldn't find out anywhere online what does bidgley mean.
1:04:44
SPEAKER_00: The one Urdu translation I found was lightning, but it has a really important meaning to the
1:04:52
SPEAKER_00: to this passage that I couldn't grasp, but that made me all the more fascinated by the passage.
1:04:58
SPEAKER_00: And that is emblematic of my experience with the novel.
1:05:02
SPEAKER_00: It defeated me.
1:05:03
SPEAKER_00: It inspired me.
1:05:05
SPEAKER_00: I can't wait to try it again.
1:05:07
SPEAKER_00: And boy, when I do, I'm going to make a list of every character's name, their nickname, their family name, so that I can get the wider perspective on it.
1:05:16
SPEAKER_00: But this was an amazing read.
1:05:19
SPEAKER_00: I made a standalone video review of the novel when I finished it.
1:05:24
SPEAKER_00: And in between recording the video and editing the video, I found out that Altaf Farahma had died.
1:05:34
SPEAKER_00: So I, you know, mentioned that as a supplemental thing for the video.
1:05:40
SPEAKER_00: And I heard from her grandchildren who watched my review and commented on it and said how delighted they were that people were still reading.
1:05:50
SPEAKER_00: Grandma's Work, Altaf Fatima.
1:05:55
SPEAKER_00: Incredible experience.
1:05:56
SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
1:05:57
SPEAKER_01: I love what you said about it being an imperfect read.
1:06:00
SPEAKER_01: And you became okay with that, but it also called you back because I've had that same experience.
1:06:04
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's one of the most valuable parts of reading is you also use the term letting parts of it wash over you.
1:06:11
SPEAKER_01: And I have, I think I've even said that with certain difficult books, if you dig in and try to
1:06:18
SPEAKER_01: do certain things, sometimes it'll ruin the experience.
1:06:21
SPEAKER_01: And there are those times where you just have to accept this time around, I'm going to read it in this way.
1:06:26
SPEAKER_01: And then in the future, maybe I will go back and approach it a different way.
1:06:29
SPEAKER_01: So I love that.
1:06:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, no, this was an incredible experience.
1:06:33
SPEAKER_02: Love it.
1:06:35
SPEAKER_02: Thanks for sharing all like, like Paul, all the other parts of that experience as well are lovely.
1:06:41
SPEAKER_01: All right, Paul, you're up again.
1:06:43
SPEAKER_01: All right, the pressure's on.
1:06:45
SPEAKER_01: Let's see if I can do it again.
1:06:47
SPEAKER_01: My book, the second one, is called Severina, and it's by Rodrigo Rey Rosa, translated by Chris Andrews and published by Yale University Press.
1:06:57
SPEAKER_01: So this is one I don't know.
1:06:59
SPEAKER_01: I think it fits the bill.
1:07:01
SPEAKER_01: Rey Rosa is a Guatemalan author.
1:07:03
SPEAKER_01: who I believe is well known in much of the world and well regarded in many parts of the world as well but at least my view of it I get the impression he's relatively unknown by many people and it looks like a lot of his books haven't even been translated into English
1:07:19
SPEAKER_01: But he does come with some very high praise.
1:07:21
SPEAKER_01: For example, our friend Roberto Bolaño called him, quote, the most rigorous writer of my generation, the most transparent, the most luminous of all.
1:07:30
SPEAKER_01: So very high praise.
1:07:33
SPEAKER_01: But this is a book, again, that was recommended to me by someone.
1:07:37
SPEAKER_01: It was hand-sold to me by a local bookseller a few years ago.
1:07:41
SPEAKER_01: And this was a guy who I often would just hang out and talk to him about translated fiction.
1:07:45
SPEAKER_01: They had this little tiny translated fiction
1:07:47
SPEAKER_01: Episode 73 Hidden Gems
1:08:07
SPEAKER_01: and this guy he's relatively content maybe a little bit bored with his life before he becomes infatuated and then increasingly obsessed with this woman who begins to come into his store on a regular basis to steal books and so i will read a little section about that it says eventually one monday afternoon she turned up
1:08:28
SPEAKER_01: The reading had already begun.
1:08:29
SPEAKER_01: She stood by the curtains that separated the main part of the store from the little space where the readings were held.
1:08:35
SPEAKER_01: This time she was wearing a rather loose-fitting dress made from a single piece of blue cotton, which came down to her knees.
1:08:41
SPEAKER_01: Perfectly rounded knees they were, shaped with evident care.
1:08:44
SPEAKER_01: A broad, silver-plated belt and black leather sandals.
1:08:48
SPEAKER_01: She was carrying a sequined handbag.
1:08:50
SPEAKER_01: She stayed until the end.
1:08:52
SPEAKER_01: She went to drink at the bar, exchanged glances and greetings, and before leaving, slipped two little books from the Japanese literature section into her bag.
1:09:00
SPEAKER_01: The speed of it was impressive.
1:09:02
SPEAKER_01: Then she walked out through the door in no hurry at all.
1:09:04
SPEAKER_01: The alarm didn't go off.
1:09:06
SPEAKER_01: I wondered how she'd done it.
1:09:08
SPEAKER_01: I let her go.
1:09:09
SPEAKER_01: Again, I was sure she'd be back.
1:09:11
SPEAKER_01: A moment later I went over to the Japanese shelf.
1:09:14
SPEAKER_01: I noted down the missing titles in a ledger along with the date and the time.
1:09:18
SPEAKER_01: Then I went to the cubicle that enclosed the cash register and sat there, trying to imagine where she would go with the books.
1:09:25
SPEAKER_01: Episode 73 Hidden Gems
1:09:47
SPEAKER_01: Episode 73 Hidden Gems
1:10:10
SPEAKER_01: sprinkled in but because it's such a short book I don't want to give very much away but like I said the narrator becomes increasingly obsessed with this thief and he begins to take some pretty reckless steps that begin to kind of ratchet up both the pace of the book and also the mystery and in some ways I feel like towards the end it almost takes on some noir elements which are pretty fun and kind of unexpected so yeah it's just you know it's a little tiny book but
1:10:35
SPEAKER_01: Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems Episode 73 Hidden Gems
1:11:00
SPEAKER_02: But I don't think I ever read Severina because here's my comment that I left on my own post as I was responding to someone.
1:11:07
SPEAKER_02: Hey, Yale just released another title, Severina, translated by Chris Andrews.
1:11:12
SPEAKER_02: I hope to read it sooner rather than later.
1:11:14
SPEAKER_02: I don't think I have yet.
1:11:17
SPEAKER_02: So I appreciate the reminder.
1:11:20
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
1:11:21
SPEAKER_01: So I didn't quite make it, you know, I was hoping to just stump you completely, but I would say that's a gem.
1:11:27
SPEAKER_02: that got lost by me.
1:11:30
SPEAKER_02: You know, it fell out of my pocket because I had not... When you said the name, I thought, that sounds familiar, but I would never have... You know, but for being able to look at my reading history on my blog, I would not have known one way or the other.
1:11:44
SPEAKER_02: Episode 73 Hidden Gems
1:12:08
SPEAKER_00: Well, I had never heard of it.
1:12:10
SPEAKER_00: So you get brownie points from me.
1:12:13
SPEAKER_00: And just a question, Paul, did you steal the book?
1:12:18
SPEAKER_01: I did not.
1:12:19
SPEAKER_01: I did not.
1:12:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:12:21
SPEAKER_01: But it's so funny, just such a weird little quirky, like,
1:12:25
SPEAKER_01: Swimmer in the Secret Sea by William Cotswinkle
1:12:53
SPEAKER_00: Anything?
1:12:54
SPEAKER_00: I believe I've heard the author's name because it's memorable, but no, that would be it.
1:12:59
SPEAKER_02: So for whatever reason, this is one of those books that I would say is close to your wandering around a bookstore and finding a hidden gem that you weren't quite sure about.
1:13:11
SPEAKER_02: But going back, I remember it.
1:13:13
SPEAKER_02: There's a wonderful bookstore in Montclair, New Jersey, close to where we used to live, that I would visit quite often because they had a lot of these kinds of books here.
1:13:23
SPEAKER_02: But I think I had heard of this one.
1:13:27
SPEAKER_02: It's a 1975 book, but it was republished by David R. Godin Press in 2010.
1:13:35
SPEAKER_02: I think I'd kind of heard that it was out, but I couldn't even know where I'd find it if not online.
1:13:40
SPEAKER_02: And there it was in this bookstore.
1:13:42
SPEAKER_02: And so I pulled it off.
1:13:43
SPEAKER_02: It's a little book, again, 85 pages.
1:13:46
SPEAKER_02: I think all my books are short today.
1:13:51
SPEAKER_02: And it was
1:13:53
SPEAKER_02: it's a hard book to read it is not a it's not a happy book by any means at the same time and we've never quite we always come up against this wall Paul like when we're talking about Scholastic Mooka Sanga
1:14:08
SPEAKER_02: There's a beauty to it that is like that human yearning to comfort and mourn with somebody who's struggling.
1:14:15
SPEAKER_02: And I guess that's trying to figure out the best ways to put it.
1:14:21
SPEAKER_02: What I'm going to tell you happens like on page three.
1:14:24
SPEAKER_02: It's not necessarily a spoiler, but just to let people know the general gist of it and maybe a little bit of a trigger warning.
1:14:33
SPEAKER_02: It's a book about grief and mourning.
1:14:36
SPEAKER_02: of a Child.
1:14:39
SPEAKER_02: And so what we have here is a couple.
1:14:42
SPEAKER_02: They're a young couple.
1:14:44
SPEAKER_02: And when we start, it's Lasky and Diane are their names.
1:14:47
SPEAKER_02: They are expecting their first child.
1:14:52
SPEAKER_02: And it's time.
1:14:53
SPEAKER_02: The water broke.
1:14:54
SPEAKER_02: And so they rush off to, you know, to get everything taken care of.
1:14:59
SPEAKER_02: But it doesn't go well.
1:15:02
SPEAKER_02: The child is born and dies.
1:15:05
SPEAKER_02: you know shortly thereafter it's a very simple story in in many ways um but the reason that it's so human
1:15:22
SPEAKER_02: is the grief that they go through after this.
1:15:25
SPEAKER_02: The plans that they had made, grieving for someone that they don't even know yet, but they do, you know, in some ways as well.
1:15:35
SPEAKER_02: And it's, again, it's a very short book.
1:15:37
SPEAKER_02: It was a National Book Critics Circle Award nominee back in, you know, the mid-70s.
1:15:43
SPEAKER_02: So again, at some point it had a wider readership.
1:15:47
SPEAKER_02: But there's some mix in with some hope, and there's a lot of the landscape and just the loneliness.
1:15:56
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's a rich little novella that I would absolutely recommend, even though it is really sad.
1:16:05
SPEAKER_02: and heartbreaking from page one.
1:16:10
SPEAKER_02: But again, I found it to be not an agony book that's just meant to exploit agony, but one that's really meant to try to heal and connect and acknowledge that part of humanity in a really beautiful way.
1:16:31
SPEAKER_02: The Swimmer in the Secret Sea by William Cotswinkle.
1:16:35
SPEAKER_02: I don't even know what else or if anything else William Cotswinkle wrote.
1:16:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm just actually looking and apparently lots of children's novel including Walter the Farting Dog.
1:16:50
SPEAKER_01: Really?
1:16:52
SPEAKER_01: See, I'm so highbrow that when I have heard of it.
1:16:56
SPEAKER_00: But oh, I love books about grief.
1:17:00
SPEAKER_01: actually so that really sounds like a Sean book yeah I was gonna say the same thing like like you said Trevor we've talked about that with Scholastique Mukasanga and other authors of of the importance of acknowledging that because it is a key part of human existence and while some people may choose to only look at the positive I think there's a lot of power and
1:17:22
SPEAKER_01: Episode 73 Hidden Gems
1:17:47
SPEAKER_01: You know, it may take three years or five years or seven years, but all of a sudden you see it there and it's like that thrill of the chase.
1:17:54
SPEAKER_02: All right.
1:17:54
SPEAKER_02: Well, Sean, what's your, I guess, last one?
1:17:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so this one is a 2023 publication, so it's very much in print.
1:18:05
SPEAKER_00: You may have heard of it, but not enough people have heard of it.
1:18:09
SPEAKER_00: So I want to sing its praises.
1:18:11
SPEAKER_00: I see that a book blogger named Carolyn Lodge
1:18:16
SPEAKER_00: has written passionately about it.
1:18:20
SPEAKER_00: And so there's tweets from her, from her book blog, Bookward.
1:18:24
SPEAKER_00: But otherwise, I think most of the other tweets about it are from the publisher or from me.
1:18:30
SPEAKER_00: So I'm happy to introduce you guys to it if you didn't know about it.
1:18:35
SPEAKER_00: It is a novella called With or Without Angels by Douglas Bruton.
1:18:41
SPEAKER_00: And it was published by Fairlight Books in 2023.
1:18:47
SPEAKER_00: There is a highfalutin literary term that I'm going to introduce.
1:18:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you guys know it, and I don't want to be pedantic, but the term is ekphrasis, which is a rhetorical device or a rhetorical perspective in writing where you're writing about a work of art.
1:19:04
SPEAKER_00: So just descriptive writing about art.
1:19:07
SPEAKER_00: But ekphrasis actually, I think, has a wider meaning.
1:19:10
SPEAKER_00: It could be a song about a novel.
1:19:13
SPEAKER_00: or a painting about a song so any crossing of the various media and representation is known as Ephesus.
1:19:27
SPEAKER_00: This is an incredibly ekphrastic novel that was written by Douglas Bruton who is a Scottish novelist
1:19:37
SPEAKER_00: It's the second novel to be published by Fairlight Press.
1:19:41
SPEAKER_00: It's the only thing by him I've read.
1:19:44
SPEAKER_00: And it is based on a true story of the Scottish artist Alan Smith, who died in 2019.
1:19:51
SPEAKER_00: And Alan Smith was obsessed from a very young age by a old, old painting, Renaissance, I think it's a Renaissance 1791 painting by
1:20:08
SPEAKER_00: John Domenico Tiapolo called The New World in English, Il Mondo Nuovo, and it's in the book.
1:20:17
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to say too much about the painting here.
1:20:20
SPEAKER_00: You'll certainly learn a lot about it when you read this book.
1:20:24
SPEAKER_00: But the artist Alan Smith was obsessed with it.
1:20:30
SPEAKER_00: And later in his life, because of medical treatments, he was no longer able to paint.
1:20:37
SPEAKER_00: And so at the end of his life, he got into photography and started working with a digital artist to manipulate the photos he was taking and created a series of photos in homage to this 1791 painting by Teopolo.
1:20:58
SPEAKER_00: And that is the premise of the book, which is a fictional rendering, a fictional version of that story.
1:21:04
SPEAKER_00: And it's absolutely incredible if you're interested in art
1:21:08
SPEAKER_00: and in fact it's so wispy and richly vague if I can put it that way that it invites people that are a little bit intimidated by art to enter into the conversation and realize that your own subjective opinion is all that matters armed combined with curiosity to make your own meanings from art because that is what's happening here.
1:21:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to read a passage that's about and I will
1:21:39
SPEAKER_00: Describe this picture.
1:21:40
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll describe a little bit from the first picture in this, the first photo in the series.
1:21:48
SPEAKER_00: I will describe it because obviously you can't see it, but it's a, it's a picture that the artist took of himself and his wife in a mirror at the Tate Gallery.
1:21:57
SPEAKER_00: And then he, his imagination became inflamed because there was something about the positioning
1:22:03
SPEAKER_00: of his wife and him in this photo that reminded him of this 1791 painting and how they were standing and that began the journey that he collaborated on with this other digital artist and so here is the photo that I'm going to read a short passage about and it's set in an ancient um in an ancient what would you call that a courtyard or whatever pillars and stuff and there is a
1:22:30
SPEAKER_00: White Sheep Floating Above and that represents the angels of the title.
1:22:38
SPEAKER_00: The only other thing you need to note for this excerpt to make sense is the Italian, he was kind of a stock character in I think music and literature, Puncanello is mentioned here and the digital artist that he collaborates with is Livy.
1:22:57
SPEAKER_00: The He is the Aging Painter.
1:23:03
SPEAKER_00: It is not a complete thought, he admits that, and so not a complete picture.
1:23:09
SPEAKER_00: It has space in it, which, he thinks, all good thoughts do.
1:23:13
SPEAKER_00: And it is out of place, and out of time also.
1:23:17
SPEAKER_00: He is both the closed-walled square and in the wide-open space of the turbine hall of Tate Modern.
1:23:27
SPEAKER_00: From the photograph of him and his wife, Livy has set them neatly into the new space.
1:23:33
SPEAKER_00: He is wearing a dark coat, buttoned chin-to-knee, and a scarf, and he stands back on his heels.
1:23:39
SPEAKER_00: His wife stands beside him, holding onto his arm.
1:23:42
SPEAKER_00: She wears a long fur coat, bear or beaver or squirrel, and she looks out of the picture.
1:23:49
SPEAKER_00: By now we've recognized them.
1:23:52
SPEAKER_00: And a masked punkinello is there.
1:23:54
SPEAKER_00: Livy has put him half-hidden behind one of the pillars, his arms folded as if he is waiting for something more, waiting for a crowd to spill into the picture.
1:24:04
SPEAKER_00: And Livy is there too, pushed to one side and far back.
1:24:08
SPEAKER_00: She is quiet and she is looking too.
1:24:12
SPEAKER_00: And falling down from a blue and thin clouded sky is a white sheet
1:24:17
SPEAKER_00: Only in the light it is also blue, like a piece of the sky, like something Eve Klein might have done, like something hopeful.
1:24:26
SPEAKER_00: Hush!
1:24:28
SPEAKER_00: Not exactly an angel, he says in a whisper, so small it has no sound at all.
1:24:34
SPEAKER_00: Just the thought of an angel.
1:24:39
SPEAKER_00: With or Without Angels by Douglas Bruton.
1:24:42
SPEAKER_00: A really unique reading experience, and if you're into art at all, I think you're going to love it.
1:24:48
SPEAKER_02: I am very into art.
1:24:49
SPEAKER_02: I went to the library yesterday and asked my wife, who's a librarian, to enter library loan of various books about art just because I love them.
1:24:58
SPEAKER_02: So added that one.
1:24:59
SPEAKER_02: No, for sure.
1:25:01
SPEAKER_01: That one sounds wonderful.
1:25:02
SPEAKER_01: I've talked several times about the book The Sight of Death by T.J.
1:25:06
SPEAKER_01: Clarke that I read a few years ago that was at the top of my list and that was all about
1:25:12
SPEAKER_01: It was nonfiction, but it was, he would go every day and he was obsessed with these paintings and he would just sit there and stare at them in the different shades of sunlight throughout the afternoon and focus in on a little square inch of the painting.
1:25:23
SPEAKER_01: So that kind of stuff is catnip for me.
1:25:25
SPEAKER_01: That sounds really good.
1:25:26
SPEAKER_01: Wonderful.
1:25:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:25:28
SPEAKER_01: All right, Paul.
1:25:29
SPEAKER_01: Good stuff.
1:25:29
SPEAKER_01: What you got?
1:25:31
SPEAKER_01: All right.
1:25:31
SPEAKER_01: This one, I think, I'm going to bet that Trevor might have heard about it, but it's one of those that probably fits the criteria of having faded more than never being known.
1:25:42
SPEAKER_01: and it's relatively recent.
1:25:43
SPEAKER_01: It came out in 2011, but it's a collection of short stories called Volt by Alan Heathcock.
1:25:49
SPEAKER_01: Does that ring a bell to you, Trevor?
1:25:51
SPEAKER_02: It does to me.
1:25:56
SPEAKER_02: Because of this book, I haven't talked to him in years, but we kind of became online friends.
1:26:02
SPEAKER_02: Really?
1:26:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I loved it.
1:26:04
SPEAKER_02: It was it was actually one that I considered until I saw that you were reading, you know, picking a book by A.H.
1:26:10
SPEAKER_02: And I thought, well, just avoid that entirely.
1:26:13
SPEAKER_01: Oh, good.
1:26:14
SPEAKER_01: I guess I'm in good company.
1:26:14
SPEAKER_01: That's really cool.
1:26:15
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, as far as I remember, this is a book that was probably recommended to me by someone.
1:26:19
SPEAKER_01: We've talked a lot about that old book forum Palimpsest that we used to spend time on.
1:26:23
SPEAKER_01: And for all I know, it could have been you, Trevor.
1:26:25
SPEAKER_01: But however I heard about it, I'm really glad that it came across my path.
1:26:30
SPEAKER_01: But
1:26:31
SPEAKER_01: It's stuck with me for years, but I don't really hear it mentioned ever, if at all.
1:26:37
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know if other people have heard of it, but the subject matter of these stories is often, you know, very dark.
1:26:42
SPEAKER_01: And it does remind me a lot of like maybe Daniel Woodrow or Dan Sean, both of whom actually blurb it.
1:26:48
SPEAKER_01: So that might be kind of why that was in my mind, but I do think that there's a lot there.
1:26:53
SPEAKER_01: And it did receive, like I said, a lot of attention when it first came out, it was named the best book of the year by several bigger publications and
1:27:00
SPEAKER_01: Episode 73 Hidden Gems
1:27:25
SPEAKER_01: Episode 73 Hidden Gems
1:27:46
SPEAKER_01: And so this story follows him as he drifts across the landscape and, you know, just kind of survives.
1:27:51
SPEAKER_01: But eventually he kind of settles into this strange new life where he basically ends up doing feats of strength for money, almost like a carnival type of experience.
1:28:00
SPEAKER_01: And it's just very odd and bizarre.
1:28:02
SPEAKER_01: But going back to the book you mentioned, Trevor, it does deal a lot with people just dealing with grief and finding their own way through things.
1:28:11
SPEAKER_01: And then there's another story where a teenage boy is just woken up abruptly in the middle of the night by his father who has clearly gotten into some kind of an altercation or an accident.
1:28:20
SPEAKER_01: He's bleeding and has stitches and the kid really has no idea what's going on and his dad asks him to follow him as he leads him out into the country.
1:28:29
SPEAKER_01: And so I just wanted to read a passage that kind of starts at that point where he's just kind of stumbling along following his dad.
1:28:35
SPEAKER_01: And it says, After they had walked several miles, the low hills rose into steep striated limestone, and the ground became slanting flats of rocks.
1:28:45
SPEAKER_01: His father stepped off to where, in past years, flowed a trickle of waterfall, but now was a dry basin stained a powdery white.
1:28:52
SPEAKER_01: Vernon followed his father across the basin, on around and outcropping, guarding a dry stream bed.
1:28:58
SPEAKER_01: In the rock's shade, something large was wrapped in his parents' bedspread, a blue and red bear paw quilt.
1:29:05
SPEAKER_01: For a moment, Vernon thought his father had shot a deer out of season.
1:29:09
SPEAKER_01: Then he noticed an uncovered shoe, a patent leather oxford, its wax lace untied.
1:29:15
SPEAKER_01: His father knelt and waved away flies with his good hand, then, gently, set his hand atop the quilt.
1:29:22
SPEAKER_01: I killed this man, he said.
1:29:23
SPEAKER_01: I wish I hadn't, but I did.
1:29:26
SPEAKER_01: Vernon struggled to know what to say.
1:29:28
SPEAKER_01: He stared at the shoe and kept expecting it to twitch.
1:29:31
SPEAKER_01: He became mindful that he'd been made part of a big secret.
1:29:34
SPEAKER_01: An ugly secret.
1:29:36
SPEAKER_01: Who is he?
1:29:37
SPEAKER_01: Don't really know, his father said.
1:29:38
SPEAKER_01: Name's Norrie Augusto.
1:29:40
SPEAKER_01: Learned that from his wallet.
1:29:41
SPEAKER_01: What'd you kill him for?
1:29:43
SPEAKER_01: His father pulled the quilt to cover the shoe.
1:29:46
SPEAKER_01: We best get him hid, he said.
1:29:47
SPEAKER_01: Took all night to drag him this far.
1:29:49
SPEAKER_01: Couldn't get him over the rocks myself.
1:29:51
SPEAKER_01: He ain't that big a man.
1:29:52
SPEAKER_01: You ought to be able to heft him alright.
1:29:55
SPEAKER_01: And so that's my hook for, you know, like I said, dark, but they're so fascinating, so beautifully written.
1:30:03
SPEAKER_01: Again, they do tick a lot of my boxes for nature writing and things like that mixed into these.
1:30:08
SPEAKER_01: compelling stories and you know they're very gritty and dark like I said but there's a lot of heart and even some humor in the stories as well I was looking at the New York Times review from when the book came out which was glowingly positive and it said frankly there's little to fault in any of the eight stories that make up this collection undoubtedly there is much grit and violence in this world but there's also an abundance of tenderness and compassion
1:30:33
SPEAKER_01: Heathcock displays a generosity of spirit that only those writers who love their characters can summon, and Volt is galvanizing proof of his talent.
1:30:50
SPEAKER_01: so um it sounds like Trevor you may know this but i was originally planning to close this part out by saying sadly this is the only thing that he's published but i realized that's not true i looked on his website and saw that he actually did publish a novel called 40 late in 2022 which is described as quote an american myth of the future a vision of civil war spectacle and disaster of biblical proportions
1:31:13
SPEAKER_01: So I'm anxious to check that out.
1:31:15
SPEAKER_01: But in the meantime, I would encourage everyone to pick up Volt and see what they think of that one.
1:31:20
SPEAKER_01: Did you know about his other novel?
1:31:22
SPEAKER_02: I had seen that that was coming out, but I have not seen it anywhere or picked it up.
1:31:28
SPEAKER_02: And so I agree with you.
1:31:29
SPEAKER_02: This is a book that hit, you know, like a flash and then has become hidden, you know, again.
1:31:37
SPEAKER_01: yeah i i just cannot believe that a book that is this well written and it's not like it came out and nobody heard about it i mean it did have some good visibility it's just amazing how some of these books can just somehow fade into relative obscurity even though to me this could have been one of those authors that i would follow closely so yeah i just wanted to mention that one um but nice that sounds great i'd never heard of the author so at least i'm three for three with sean there you are
1:32:06
SPEAKER_02: Episode 73 Hidden Gems
1:32:22
SPEAKER_02: We're picking from hidden gems across who knows how many years and publishers and and yeah we probably would have ended up with one of the same ones.
1:32:31
SPEAKER_02: We've learned our lesson.
1:32:33
SPEAKER_02: Well that just shows that you and I have been been together for a long time.
1:32:37
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
1:32:38
SPEAKER_01: Mind meld.
1:32:41
SPEAKER_02: Alright, well my last one, the reason that I picked it up is kind of a fun little story in and of itself.
1:32:47
SPEAKER_02: Back in 2007, The Guardian did a post, or you know, an article on how did we miss these?
1:32:54
SPEAKER_02: And it's, they asked a bunch of authors some of their favorite hidden gems.
1:33:00
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if they used that word, but you know, they asked them that.
1:33:03
SPEAKER_02: Some of them are kind of interesting like MJ Highland actually picks it's some that i'm like, whoa, that's not a hidden gem She picks Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find which i'm like that's Super well known but maybe not, you know to many again.
1:33:17
SPEAKER_02: That's where you're like in my own little echo chamber.
1:33:20
SPEAKER_02: Um, uh several pick books by Elizabeth Taylor, uh, maybe showing where things were more in 2007 with her than they are today, hopefully um, but Colum Toobin Toobin
1:33:34
SPEAKER_02: Picked a book called The New Perspective published in 1980 by a woman named Kay Arnold Price When she was 84 years old And I Read I remember seeing this article and thinking oh that sounds interesting, but the book is not really available So I didn't go any farther in that quest but one of our friends did you remember Will Rycroft and
1:33:59
SPEAKER_02: Episode 73 Hidden Gems
1:34:19
SPEAKER_02: build up, you know, the book a little bit.
1:34:21
SPEAKER_02: It's a genuine hidden gem and no one really had it.
1:34:24
SPEAKER_02: Colm Tobin talks about in his article that, or in his little blurb, that he only knew two people who had read it and they were both writers.
1:34:32
SPEAKER_02: And I've never heard word nor whisper of it since, you know, I read it and sent it on to someone else.
1:34:40
SPEAKER_02: And I'm not even sure if that person ever read it.
1:34:43
SPEAKER_02: It wasn't Paul, listeners.
1:34:46
SPEAKER_02: I would have read it.
1:34:47
SPEAKER_02: This is not a guilt trip Paul.
1:34:48
SPEAKER_02: So where's your thoughts on it?
1:34:49
SPEAKER_02: No It's a short book again and Let's see 85 pages.
1:34:57
SPEAKER_02: I guess I'm just in you know, so I think it might be that shorter books tend to be Ones that come and go faster.
1:35:03
SPEAKER_02: Maybe I don't know.
1:35:04
SPEAKER_02: It's probably not proper, but it is maybe the way that it is And it's about a couple Finding themselves, you know, not quite where I am in life.
1:35:13
SPEAKER_02: I've got a son who's eight years old and
1:35:15
SPEAKER_02: But Paul, one of your sons has just moved out.
1:35:19
SPEAKER_02: You got another one not probably too far away from that.
1:35:23
SPEAKER_02: This is a couple who their last son has gotten married and left the house.
1:35:30
SPEAKER_02: and it's Patty and Cormac and they're quiet.
1:35:34
SPEAKER_02: They don't really want to get out in society and they have always done things together, you know, and Patty feels secure that she and Cormac have weathered the storms of life.
1:35:46
SPEAKER_02: And now, here we go.
1:35:50
SPEAKER_02: Whatever things might come their way in the future, they will be well prepared for it.
1:35:57
SPEAKER_02: It may be to an extent they're right, but they start this new life together, almost.
1:36:03
SPEAKER_02: And there's just one thing that, you know, again, not to spoil too much, but that really shakes Patty.
1:36:11
SPEAKER_02: It's when her husband becomes an absolute stranger before her eyes because he goes out and purchases a violin.
1:36:23
SPEAKER_02: He used to play the violin when he was younger, before they were married, and when she's like, what?
1:36:30
SPEAKER_02: Why haven't you been playing the violin later?
1:36:31
SPEAKER_02: He's like, oh, I just had other priorities over the last, you know, few decades.
1:36:37
SPEAKER_02: And she says, didn't you miss it?
1:36:41
SPEAKER_02: And he says, terribly.
1:36:45
SPEAKER_02: And this is where it really kind of starts to shake her a little bit, that for years,
1:36:52
SPEAKER_02: When has Cormac ever admitted to missing anything?
1:36:59
SPEAKER_02: To being disappointed, depressed, frustrated?
1:37:03
SPEAKER_02: Never.
1:37:04
SPEAKER_02: And yet a silent renunciation for 30 years
1:37:08
SPEAKER_02: Nearly all those years, he was with me.
1:37:11
SPEAKER_02: This is what shakes me.
1:37:13
SPEAKER_02: I don't know him.
1:37:14
SPEAKER_02: I don't know my husband.
1:37:16
SPEAKER_02: That's early, early, early in the story of a short novella.
1:37:20
SPEAKER_02: But man, what a fine book about the unknowability, but the desire to and when it can really shake us in our own perception of who we are and what our relationship is if something like this pops up.
1:37:33
SPEAKER_02: It's a fine book.
1:37:34
SPEAKER_02: I think we've talked about books that some of these publishers that we'll talk about here in a few months with Jackie Wine about, you know, publishers uncovering hidden gems really could use
1:37:46
SPEAKER_02: that.
1:37:47
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, NYRB Classics.
1:37:49
SPEAKER_02: This is K. Arnold Price's The New Perspective.
1:37:53
SPEAKER_02: Hint, hint.
1:37:55
SPEAKER_02: I don't think it's ever been republished since 1980.
1:37:57
SPEAKER_02: And unfortunately, it is not one that is cheap online that I can find.
1:38:03
SPEAKER_00: No, I just found the cheapest copy I could see was 122 British pounds.
1:38:08
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
1:38:09
SPEAKER_02: Thanks.
1:38:09
SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Will, for sending that on to me years ago.
1:38:14
SPEAKER_01: Maybe whoever you sent it to is listening and they can like circle it back to one of us.
1:38:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, unfortunately, the person I sent it to is no longer with us.
1:38:25
SPEAKER_02: So I don't know where it ended up.
1:38:26
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if it fits in.
1:38:29
SPEAKER_02: You know, I don't know.
1:38:30
SPEAKER_02: Who knows?
1:38:31
SPEAKER_02: I can't I can't say, but but that is definitely a worthwhile book.
1:38:37
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, again, hope I'm sure he's listening.
1:38:42
SPEAKER_02: But now Colm Tobin knows that four people have read the book.
1:38:47
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
1:38:48
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure.
1:38:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:38:50
SPEAKER_00: It sounds absolutely amazing.
1:38:52
SPEAKER_00: I really need to get my hands on it.
1:38:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a really good one.
1:38:55
SPEAKER_02: I do hope, I might start writing, you know, publishers just to see if there's any ability or interest in this one.
1:39:03
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if there is or isn't, but it definitely deserves an audience.
1:39:07
SPEAKER_02: Again, I mean, even just the story of who wrote it.
1:39:09
SPEAKER_02: K. Arnold Price, 84 years old when she wrote this.
1:39:13
SPEAKER_02: That's
1:39:14
SPEAKER_02: Episode 73 Hidden Gems
1:39:27
SPEAKER_01: And listeners, Sean is actually breaking open his piggy bank in the background right now.
1:39:31
SPEAKER_01: I think he's looking for 122 British pounds.
1:39:34
SPEAKER_00: He caught me with my hand in the back of my sofa looking for coins.
1:39:37
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
1:39:40
SPEAKER_02: Well, that would definitely get it republished.
1:39:42
SPEAKER_02: As soon as you purchase it, Sean, for 122 British pounds, you will learn that it's being published in a couple of months.
1:39:50
SPEAKER_02: Right.
1:39:52
SPEAKER_02: And you could pick it up for 15.
1:39:56
SPEAKER_02: all right well thanks so much for joining today both of you um what a fun topic Sean and again just the delight of reminiscing of lost gems that I for me personally if I hadn't written them down and kind of written about them they'd be lost to me again my brain just doesn't have that kind of power so I'm glad to have revisited these and to start thinking of other lost gems and also I want to reread each of these
1:40:25
SPEAKER_02: that I just brought up.
1:40:26
SPEAKER_02: They're short, so I think these are worthy of a reread for me.
1:40:29
SPEAKER_02: And again, for many listeners, I assume for all of these books, ones that we should check out.
1:40:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
1:40:38
SPEAKER_01: And like you said at the beginning, anybody out there who wants to share some of their hidden gems that they feel like are undiscovered, we would love to hear from you.
1:40:45
SPEAKER_01: And maybe we can share a few of those in future episodes.
1:40:48
SPEAKER_01: And I know Sean's channel is a wealth of that, both in the comments section and the videos themselves.
1:40:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, all kinds of great stuff out there.
1:40:57
SPEAKER_00: That's just... Well, I got a great reading list of six new books I'd never heard of, so I'll use that, and I had a blast doing this, guys.
1:41:04
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
1:41:05
SPEAKER_02: Well, thanks for prompting it.
1:41:08
SPEAKER_02: Again, I think Paul and I both would have been like, oh, we probably don't have anything to talk about if it weren't for you saying, let's do it and us having to dig.
1:41:16
SPEAKER_02: That's what hidden gems are about, right?
1:41:17
SPEAKER_02: They get to dig for them, even the ones you once possessed.
1:41:23
SPEAKER_02: So, all right, well, listeners, we will be back here in a couple of weeks and excited for that.
1:41:30
SPEAKER_02: Let us know hidden gems that you have found or that you have been pleased to discover through someone else.
1:41:38
SPEAKER_02: We can keep this conversation going for sure.
1:41:40
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
1:41:41
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, everybody.
1:41:42
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Sean.
1:41:42
SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much.
1:41:47
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening to this episode of The Mookse and the Gripes Podcast.
1:41:51
SPEAKER_01: You can follow The Mookse and the Gripes and get show notes and book and film reviews at mookseandgripes.com.
1:41:57
SPEAKER_01: On Twitter, you can find Trevor at mookse and Paul at bibliopaul.
1:42:01
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1:42:05
SPEAKER_01: If you'd like to donate to the show, anything and everything, even a dollar a month, helps and is deeply appreciated.
1:42:11
SPEAKER_01: You can become a patron at patreon.com slash mookse.
1:42:16
SPEAKER_01: Until next time,