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Minisode: Book Roundup with Chelsea + Catherine · Dear Chelsea

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, High and Mighty Tour, guys, is continuing. San Francisco,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: November 7th, and November 13th is Salt Lake. November 20th
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: is Austin, then Houston, and then Irving. November 20th, November 21st,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: and November 22nd, I will be touring Texas. December 5th
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: is Denver. December 6th, I am shooting my special in Vancouver, Canada.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: I have two shows that night. There are tickets available
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: for the second show. Then I'm going to Palm Beach, Florida,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: December 16th by popular demand. Then Hollywood, Florida, December 17th.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: And then two shows in Tampa, Florida on December 18th.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: So I will see you guys on the road. Come
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: and see the High and Mighty Tour. I'll give you
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: some LSD.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Hi, Catherine.
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: Hi, Chelsea.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, I just want to tell our audience, whoever's listening,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: I have been reading so much lately.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: I've read 30. There were three days where I read
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: three books in three days. Whoa.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: I read The Hayden Panettiere because she was booked on
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: our podcast. Yes.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: For today, actually. Well, today, right?
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: So I read that on my plane ride. I read
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Whistler by Ann Patchett in two days.
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: How was that?
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: It's great. It's a really quick, fast read. It looked
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: really good.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: The reason I read Whistler is because I was reading
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: The Island of Sea Women, which was a you recommendation
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: that you just reminded me of. Because I was like,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: have you read The Island of Sea Women? And you're like,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: I'm the one who told you about that book. That
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: book is in the top 10 of all books.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: It's awesome.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: For anyone listening who's a reader, that is a must read.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: It has all of the elements of my– it's an
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: A +. A plus in terms of A, it's historical.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: You are learning something.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: It's beautiful.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: A lot of the books I've been reading lately are
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: about two women kind of growing up and growing apart.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Like Kin, Calamity Club, well, more than two women, Calamity Club,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: but Kin was two women. Island of Sea Women is
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: about two women, more than two women, but the central
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: characters are two women.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: But I like that.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: I like two kids growing up and taking them through the...
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: So the Island of Sea Women... Sorry, I'm being very discursive.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: But the Island of Sea... Or ADHD.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: The Island of Sea Women is.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: I also like when it's like an epic like that,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: where it goes through your whole life and you take
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: them from, you know, it starts at a very young
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: age and takes them into like the ends of their lives.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: It's about real women who are these divers on Jeju
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: Island in Korea. And they like all times of year
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: in the middle of winter will dive down to get...
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: Free dive.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, free dive.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: Thank you. Free dive to get... you know, mussels and
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: cockles and whatever else, all the seafood.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Abalone and squid and octopus. And they basically train their
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: bodies to withstand the cold and freezing temperatures and to
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: be able to hold breath underwater. And so there was like,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: so it's a historical truth.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: And then there's the Japanese occupation, the American occupation. It
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: takes you through a bunch of wars and It takes
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: you through a massacre that happened on the island. And
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: it takes you through generations of families that live there
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: and the culture. And it's just really rich.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: And I just loved it. So anyway, I was reading
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: that and I didn't want it to end. And I
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: was on my way to Spain again. So I picked
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: up Whistler because I was like, all right, let me
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: get through this. Let me read this as a break
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: because I told my sisters to read it and we're all–
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: you know, on different speeds of reading.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: And I'm on a super speed right now. I'm like,
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: I can't stop reading. And so, okay, so I finished that.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Then I started, I picked up Lily King's book, Writers
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: and Lovers.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: That's an A plus too. Completely different than The Island
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: of Sea Women.
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: What's this one about?
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: So these are all, I would assume, I haven't looked
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: into the meanings of these books or looked up what
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: the cliff notes are or whatever. My own takeaway is
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: that there's a lot of autobiographical stuff in all of
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: her books.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of common themes. There's always somebody who's
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: an alcoholic.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Writers and Lovers is about a struggling artist writer trying
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: to make it She's a waitress in Boston and she's struggling.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: She's broke. She's poor.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Her mother died, but it's acerbic. It's so witty. The
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: writing is like someone, it's like the definition of someone
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: who's taken a writing class. in the way that she
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: describes the feelings of moments, in a way that kind
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: of lit up my brain. Because I don't love descriptive
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: writing in the sense of like East of Eden and
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: John Steinbeck stuff.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: I don't want to hear about leaves on trees for
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: too long.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: I want to get to the dialogue and the action.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: I like that. I want to hear about drama and da-da-da.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: But what she does is she has this way of
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: describing every feeling that you wouldn't normally put into words.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: You know, like the feeling of.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: walking into your childhood home and the smell that goes
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: along with the linoleum and with the smell of the
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: carpet and the way your mother's eyeshadow looks. And she
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: just really takes you into a scene and a moment
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: and kind of, it's very gritty and like lifelike. And
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: so then I'm reading Father of the Rain. I finished
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: that book, Writers and Lovers. She's written like six or
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: seven books, but Lily King had been three different friends
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: that I read books with.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: Had mentioned her name.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: So now I'm reading Father of the Rain, which I
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: like even more than Writers and Lovers. And that's a
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: book she wrote, I think, two years ago. So I
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: had no idea who this woman was. I don't know
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: where I was not knowing about her. And then I
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: read Hayden Panettiere's book, which is really sad.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: And then I talked to a couple of people that
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: have worked with her.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: And what's really upsetting is that she was found With
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: the guy that beat the shit out of her.
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah. She had been back with him like in the
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: last weeks of her life. Right.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: And it's just devastating. So there's foul play there probably.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: I mean.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: Dude, I watched an interview with him. I mean like
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: a minute long. Somebody with some news channel was interviewing
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: him and he looks like a real piece of shit.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: He spent time in jail for beating her up. He
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: beat her up multiple times. She had a restraining order
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: against him. Then she went, she was in and out
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: of rehab. Everyone thinks like it was her ex, like.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: The baby daddy. No, the baby daddy's a good guy.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: He like took that kid because- She had only good
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: things to say about him. Well, but he also took.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: That kid because he knew that she was in no
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: shape to be a parent. And she signed away her
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: rights to her daughter too, which would turn anybody into
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: a drug addict and haunt you for the rest of
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: your life. But she started working when she was eight
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: months old. Her mother sounded like a pretty big stage mom.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: And it's just horrible. And her brother also died.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: So her parents have two dead children. So I can't
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: even imagine the hell that they live in. And she
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: just seemed, you know, when they pitched her to be
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: on the show the first round of press she was
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: doing for this book, I was like, she just seems
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: unstable when I saw her in interviews. And I was like, that's, no,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: not great. And then she, remember, it came around again.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: And they're like, would you want to? And we're like, well,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: what would we talk to her about? She's already done
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: the whole round. And like, well, maybe we'll talk to
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: her about the reception that the book got and what
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: she has to say about that. And unfortunately, we're not
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: going to get a chance to do that. But the
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: story is just another warning sign. It's like, you don't
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: want to blame everything on parents, but I mean, it's like,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: it just is not a good idea to have your
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: child on sets at a young age.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: It's just not.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: And like, there are parents who've done it successfully, but
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: it's just, it's a recipe for disaster.
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And she even talks about how, you know, as
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: a kid learning to like cry on cue and you're
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: like imagining all the worst things that could happen to
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: your little puppy or whatever.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: In order to cry on cue.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: At five years old. And that like fucks up a
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: kid's brain development.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she was memorizing lines before she could read them.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Her mom was feeding her lines.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: And like her mother was an actress also who was
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: like living vicariously through her daughter.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: And I just, that's always A plus A equals nothing.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: A squared.
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know. It's a really heartbreaking read.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: So that was a bummer, but I'm glad I read it.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: I'm glad that I read it. I wanted to like,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: you know, give it the respect it deserves.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. Oh, I'm also starting War and Peace.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: Oh. Oh.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: I am because I wanted to, I started to, I
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: tried to read the Odyssey because I was going to
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: see it before or read it before I saw it.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: And Ben Bruno, my trainer- He was like, oh, you
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: should read it first so you know what's going on.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: I'll never accept advice from him. He's so useless. Maybe
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: not literary advice. Because honestly, I opened that. I don't
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: know what that– is that prose? I don't know what
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: language that is. It's an epic poem. Okay.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: So I can't read poems that go on for 300
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: pages or eight.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's huge, isn't it? I don't remember.
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: I remember reading it in high school.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: The Odyssey is a big book. It's a book, like
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: a novella.
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: It's like a novella-sized– yeah.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Anyway, I was like, I put that away. But I
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: wanted to read a classic. And then my friend– And
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Juliana Margulies, who wants to come back on and do
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: a book club, she was like, I want to read
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: War and Peace.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I'll do it with you. I've never read
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: War and Peace, and I need a classic.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Great. Perfect.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: So I'm going to read that.
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: My classic that I'm diving into next is The Count
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: of Monte Cristo. I'm like, I need like a good
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: fat 1100 page like fun read.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: Ooh, okay.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: And that's all over– I mean, obviously I read it
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: in high school.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: That's a mystery, right?
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: It's more like a tale of revenge because he's been
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: like in jail for an amount of time and then
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: he goes and gets revenge on all the people that
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: put him in jail.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: And it's– I think it was one of those that
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: was released in the 1800s as a serial in newspapers.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: So it's like cliffhanger-y and like keeps moving. It's like
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: a long one, but it keeps moving the whole time.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: So I'm reading the unabridged version.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: A couple of really good ones I have read recently.
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: This is actually good for anybody who's like going through
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: a tough time. Have you read Wintering by Catherine May?
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: No, but I've heard about that book.
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll bring you my copy. I just read that.
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: I really loved it. I just kept seeing like anyone
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: I know who was like going through a tough time
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: or like had a parent pass away or whatever, like
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: it was in their Goodreads or they were reading it.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: And it's kind of like half memoir, half self-helpy, but
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: really about taking rest and relaxation and the power of
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: kind of powering down when you have these experiences in
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: life and you need to take a winter time. It
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: was really beautiful. It's a very short, you know, 200
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: page read. I just read the Poisonwood Bible for the
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: first time. Have you read that?
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: No.
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: Oh, it's great.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: Is it?
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: It is great. So you mentioned the red tent earlier today.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: And for some reason, I think maybe they came out
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: around the same time. I always conflated that and Poisonwood
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: Bible in my mind. And so I was like, I'll
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: get both and I'll read them. I loved the Poisonwood Bible.
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: It's about a family of missionaries in Africa and like
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: things kind of go awry and like the dad's kind
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: of a shitbag. And it's a very interesting perspective.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: It's four sisters. Oh, I love that.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Written from all of their perspectives and occasionally the mom.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: One of them has a disability. And so that's a
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: really interesting exploration of her disability and like living in Africa.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: You would absolutely love it. A nonfiction one that I
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: just read that I really liked also about the Donner Party.
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: Is called The Indifferent Stars Above. And it's like a
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: historical accounting of the Donner Party. It goes through– it's
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: pretty bleak. And we think that the Donner Party is like, oh,
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: they got stuck and they couldn't leave. But it truly
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: was one of those things that everything that could go
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: wrong kept going wrong. Yeah. If they would have just
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: taken a right instead of a left, they would have been.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: Who's writing this? Because didn't they all die in the
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Donner Party? They did not all die.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: So some of them lived.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: To tell the tale. They ate each other, right?
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: That's the big thing about the Donner Party.
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: Yes. And they all like– the ones that lived like
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: kind of went on to live normal lives.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: Have you ever read the book Mawson's Will?
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: No.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: That's a great exploration book. It's kind of like a Shackleton. Oh, okay.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: But it's about going into Antarctica and what happened and
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: it's amazing.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: That's a great book.
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: Okay. Nonfiction, I'm guessing.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: It's historical fiction again.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: Cool.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: All right. I will definitely pick that up. And then
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: for anyone who loved Hamnet, I read Year of Wonders,
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: which is fiction. It's Geraldine Brooks. I guess you'd call
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: it historical fiction.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: But Hamnet, wasn't that Hamnet written by Maggie O'Farrell?
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: Yes. This is just for someone who, if anyone liked Hamnet.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay.
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah. This book by Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders, is
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: also set in the plague time. And it's about a
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: woman who like figures out how to treat people. And
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: it's really beautifully written. I really like, I like a
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: depressing book, Chelsea.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: It sounds like it. I'm not interested in that. I
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: am trying to keep things light and happy over here.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, yeah.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: I've been reading some depressing books.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: Here's one that I think people will like. And the
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: cover is giving self-published. But it's called Near Death in
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: the ICU. It's by Lauren Beleg. And she is or was,
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: she might be retired now, but a doctor in Chicago.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: And she has all these stories about people who either
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: are went into surgery or almost died during treatment and
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: like their near death experiences. And she's like, most doctors
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: are not open to this, but she talks about all
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: these different people's experiences from like seeing loved ones, seeing
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: grandchildren who were yet to be born that they then
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: wound up meeting later on in their lives, but hadn't
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: told anyone about these experiences. Like it is really fascinating.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: What's it called?
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: Near death in the ICU.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: I'd be interested in that.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: I'll lend you my, my copy. I like, it was
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: one that I found like, truly like flea market vibes
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: where I was like, Oh, that looks interesting.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: So, um, but yeah, lots of good ones. Okay. Thank you.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: That was our book roundup. Book roundup.
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: If you want advice from Chelsea, write into dear Chelsea
• 13:43
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