June 9, 2025 • 27 mins
There's a wintery long weekend upon us and that means we’re all in desperate need of some new reading material. So whether you’re planning to cuddle up on the couch, hide from your family, or simply need something to get lost in while you enjoy the extra day of work, we've got you covered.
From thrillers to horror, classic novels, rom-coms and memoirs here are the books that made us laugh, cry and stay up all night.
Plus, read Laura Brodnik's article: The 'Vodka Vegetable Chocolate' theory will change the way you read books forever.
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Hosts: Laura Brodnik and Em Vernem
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
So much. You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast. Mamma
Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and borders that
this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey spillers, this is producer of This spill Minisha, just
jumping in because today is a public holiday here in Australia,
so we don't have our usual daily episode for you.
But don't worry, we would never leave you without something
to listen to. So we're bringing back an absolute classic
where Laura and m hit you with all their top
book recommendations of all time. Just perfect if you're looking
(00:43):
to curl up with a great read over the wintery
long weekend.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Enjoy. So you might have heard me mention this before.
It is my single biggest achievement in life, my system
of how I organize books and how I recommend books,
and it was born out of this idea of that
so many of my friends and colleagues over the years
would come to me and want book recommendations because I'm
such an avid reader and I get very passionate about
my books, and a lot of the time, to sort
(01:09):
of forget the tone of what someone wants, you have
to ask them what they're in the mood for and
I feel like the best way to do that is
to liken it to a food or beverage, because you know,
when you're like you're deciding to go out, You're like,
what do you feel like? Do you feel like this?
VI dinner? Do you feel like that? And that's how
you get to the heart of what someone wants. You
can't just give them a random book. And so I
set up this system, which is the vodka, vegetable chocolate.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
System, the most chaotic types of meals and drinks I know.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
And some people are like, but vodkas are drinking. It's
a food. I'm like, no, no, we don't.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Like, I'm not alcoholic. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
It's just a vibe. It's a feeling. You can drink
vodka as you read, but you don't have to. That's
not the rule. So it's the way I categorize my books.
So my friends and I now have a shorthand whether
they'll want a book, and I'll say and they'll be like, oh,
I need a vodka, but I also like, I'll take
a vegetable with me. And that's how I dole out
my books. So just sort the categories out vodka. These
are books that you potentially want to hit really hard
(02:02):
and fast in one night. A page turner, a thriller,
something exciting. You have to know what happens next, Yeah, exactly,
So potentially will keep you up all night because you
have to finish it. All of my biggest vodka books
I've started in the afternoon. I finished at like one am,
two am, so you sometimes do have a little bit
of a hangover the next day. And it's not the
(02:22):
kind of book you can read every day or every week,
and like you have to space your vodka books out,
But they are the books that will give your buzz.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Vegetable books. Now, some people think that vegetable books are
the books that we don't want to read, but that
is not true. Now, they're not the boring books because
we need vegetables exactly. The thing is, you need vegetables
in your diet, and when prepared correctly and when written correctly,
vegetables can be delicious. It's just that sometimes if you
want something sugary or like a hit of vodka, that
you're not in the mood for vegetables. But there's something
(02:52):
that you that are very satisfying, that good for you,
and you feel very good after consuming them, and that
is what a vegetable book will do for you. So
they can sometimes be like, you know, a classic book
or historical book or something. Everyone's books and these genres
are different. But for me, it's a book that I
might It's not one I'm like craving, but when I
(03:12):
consume it, it's satisfying and I feel good, and I
know that these books should make up a big part
of my diet. That's a vegetable book. But vegetable books
are also some of my favorite books. Yeah, me too,
So again, vegetabooks aren't bad, we have.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Vegetable books are also the best ones to preach about
when someone asks I need something new to read.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah, exactly. It's like you want to say to someone, oh, yeah,
I made like a butternut squash bake last night.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
I've made a salad.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
You're like, yeah, I made a salad, and I feel
good about that. That's the same as telling someone that
you read a vegetable book. So often they're the ones
that people have prominently displayed in their homes, or they're
vegetabooks are ones that people love to put on Instagram,
like just casually reading.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Casually read quiet all the rest in front of British furniture.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Just casually read War and Peace. That's a vegetable vegetable book.
And then we get to chocolate books, which is just
a little sweet treat. I've got to say a lot
of my diet of books is chocolate books.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah, I'm like eighty percent.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
If that's nothing wrong with that, because again, chocolate import
it doesn't mean they're frivolous, doesn't mean they're silly. It
just means that they can be a bit comforting, they
can be a bit light. They're easy to just pick
up and snack on, like you could just read a
few chapters here and there, and they just make you
feel good. They're like a delightful little treat that comes
into your life. So that is how we are setting
up the episode today. We're going to do one book
(04:27):
each for vodka, vegetable, chocolate, and yeah the best. The
only kind of diet we care about is a book diet,
and that's all we're here to talk about.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
So I'm going to go first. I'm starting with the Veggies.
This is a book that I have actually read twice,
So I know a vegetable book twice, that's impressive. I
think I read it twice because I didn't fully grasp
it the first time I read it, And there are
like a lot of storylines that I felt like I
skimmed over when I probably should have really concentrated on.
(04:58):
The issue I have is that I'm a really fast reader,
and that doesn't change depending on what type of book
I'm reading. And when you read a vegetable book really fast,
you don't actually sit with everything. I only said with
what you finish. And I had to go back in
this book and then take it much slower.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Do you find that sometimes when you're reading that your
eyes are darting ahead, like the bottom of the next
page because you know where that's where the cliffhanger is
going to be.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
And I get excited. Yeah, I'm kind of like when
you're watching a movie and you get like really like
angsy about it. Yeah, it's similar with books. And then
I'm like, wait, oh what your mind wanders and then
you're like, oh, I have to read this page again
because I have no idea what just happened.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
My trick for that because I only maybe it's different
if you're on an e reader or something, but I'm
old school only read physical books. Cover it. Yeah, I
hold it because it's always the cliffhanger is on the
second page on the right hand side. So I read
like this where I have my hand over the page
and I don't lift it up until I'm getting to
that bit. So weird.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Why do we do that? Like why do your eyes
just like have a mind of the I.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Also sometimes if I'm in a really exciting part of
a book, I stand up because I just I just
see it from the book to know that I'm present,
I'm in there with.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Don't do that like when you're in public, because that's
quite alarming. I just stand up on a plane. So
my vegetable book is Girl Woman Other and it's a novel.
It's a novel by Bernardine Evaristo. She won the Book
of Prize in twenty nineteen for it, and it is
extremely complex. Have you read it?
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (06:20):
I have.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
It's so confusing. So that's the main reason why I
had to read it twice because I would always recommend
it to people and they're like, what's it about? And
I had to be like, wait, you explained the witch
shot explaining it's literally that they're like, so, why are
you recommending this? But I am recommending it because I
read it twice and I love it. So it focuses
on the experiences of Black British women across different generations,
(06:42):
and it does like all the themes like identity, race, gender,
except in sexuality. There's twelve characters like I count to twelve.
That possibly is more, but each character has their own
unique storyline, which is where I think I got confused
the first time around. But the three main characters that
I think have the deepest storylines that are constantly hearing from.
(07:03):
We first hear from Ama, who's like a playwright. She's
a feminist, and she's kind of like one of those
really strong femine that's also trying to navigate the landscape
of feminism as it's changing and as we become like
more modern. She has a daughter named Jazz, who's a
university student who's also a bit confused in her life.
And then AMA's best friend's name is Dominique and she's
(07:25):
currently struggling in a domestic abuse of relationship. They all
are such interesting, well thought out characters, and the entire
novel like spans across more than a century in British history,
so you're seeing also history come within this novel, which
is really interesting. The hardest thing about this book is
that every Stow's style of writing is described as free
(07:49):
flowing and poetic, and that means there's no punctuation in
the entire book. I think there's one full stop in
the entire novel relief for me, I can breathe. But
I think that's why I read it so fast the
first time. There's no sentences, so.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
You didn't know where to stop. You just kept going.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
I probably had my first broke at that one full
stop halfway through, and I just kept going. But I
think a lot of people struggle with this book because
I can't get past that. And when I read it
for the second time, it just made everything so much better,
Like I fully immersed myself into her style of writing,
and it just felt like one big, massive thought that's
(08:29):
just spanning across these generations and these years, and it
was just such an experience of reading that I've never
had before, and it was just so beautiful. It's such
a brilliant book. I highly recommend it to everyone. I
would say if you're not an avid reader, this is
probably a really big one for you to start with.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Don't if you haven't read a book for ten years,
don't leap in with this one.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Don't leap in with this one. But if you love
reading and you love like just the description I gave you,
this needs to be on your list.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Oh I really love that. Okay, my vegetable book. I
only realized after I had finished making my notes of
this episode, and I had very painstakingly picked my book
for each category that I've picked novels that I all
read as like a young teenager, because this is the
first time this idea started for me in my head
of like these different books. So I've somehow picked my
very first vegetable word cod chocolate books by accident. So
(09:19):
my vegetable book is The Color Purple, which so good.
I had such a vivid memory of I think I
got it from the library and like the school holidays
when I was like fourteen. I was like, I read
it around.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
The same age. Yeah, my nana gave it to me
and I was like, Nana.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Famous book. And I remember just like through the school
holidays really trying to like I loved reading it. But
I also it was the first time I was really
struggling to get through a book and I had to
sort of sometimes remind myself to go and read it
and finish it. And it's the first time I remember
telling myself as like a teen, like, no, no, this
book is good for you. You need to read it, you
need to finish it. And so The Color Purple came
out in nineteen eighty two. It's a novel by an
(09:57):
American author called Alice Walker, and it was hugely successful
after it came out. It won the nineteen eighty three
Pulit Surprise for Fiction and also the National Book Award
for Fiction. That Alice Walker is actually the first black
woman to win for fiction in the Plitzurprise category. So
that is obviously so well deserved. And one reason I
wanted to read the book before I saw the movie
(10:17):
or anything like that is that The Color Purple has
kind of sprung up into this whole cornerstone of pop
culture and entertainment over the years. And when something like that, yeah, exactly,
and when something like that happens, I think it's really
important to read the source material so you can you
can understand what it's across. So it was adapt into
a film in nineteen eighty five, directed by Steven Spielberg,
and it had Whoopi goldbergs star as the lead. And
(10:40):
then it became a men Epra. Yes, Oprah was in
it too, as Sofia Danny Glover. Like all Star cast.
There was no Made for eleven Academy Awards. Didn't win any,
but it was no Made for eleven Academy Awards. That's
important to note. It then became a Broadway musical in
two thousand and five, and then just last year it
was adapted into So is the adaptation of the Broadway
(11:01):
musical into a movie, which if anyone hasn't seen that,
it is just incredible. I loved it so much. So
it's a story of Seely, who's a poor African American
girl living in rural Georgia in the early nineteen hundreds.
She is very close to her sister Netti. They're being abused,
they get separated, and then attracts Sealy's life over thirty years.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
It's such a sad story.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
It is so sad. I remember just like being in
my room on the summer holidays, my siblings are out
in the pool, my Mom's coming to my room and
she's like, why are you crying here?
Speaker 3 (11:30):
And other Yeah, right, especially the book because the book
is like way more traumatizing than the Marrie.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
I should say. The book has a bit of controversy
over the years in terms of like some of the
way it depicts domestic abuse and rape and sexual assault,
and some people think it it's not handled in the
right way, and some people think we're reveling in pain.
There's a huge long history there that I won't get
into it. It's quite graphic. It's very graphic. Yeah, just
a warning of reading it. This is not in any
way a light read. But I just think it's such
(11:56):
an incredible story. You just feel like you're in it
when you're reading it, and it's so important, and I
just think sometimes we have to read things that are
difficult and sit in those stories.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
It's important because it's depicting what actually would have happened.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Oh yeah, exactly one hundred and it really kind of
is a moment in time where women but especially African
American women in Georgia in that time, just have absolutely
no rights, and you see the pain and torture, and
sometimes those characters like the side characters in those kind
of novels where you just seen there's like you know,
they're the servants or they're like, you know, the supportive
(12:29):
like woman of color in the background kind of thing.
And so this is like taking that story and putting
it front and center. So it's a difficult read, but
it's so beautifully written, and it's my first memory of
kind of like making myself read a book outside of
school and being like, I'm so glad I read that,
like I needed to know that story.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Okay, moving onto vodka. I remember I got this really
mixed up because I thought it was about the speed
of how you read, and because I read really fast,
I would get my vodkas and chocolates mixed up quite often.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
But like I said, it's sometimes a chocolate book for me,
bite me, a vodka book for someone else, or a
vuable book, like it's a very personal decision.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
I'm all vodka here.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
So my vodka book I want to talk about is
Yellow Face of Kwan. I've read this book so many times.
It is so good. It's like a very fast paced
kind of like psychological drama, but it's also very funny
and very hectic and I think the pace of the
novel dictates the pace of how you read it, because
(13:27):
you're constantly wanting to turn to the next page. So
it's about this writer, a white writer, and it's important
that she's white. Yeah, named June Hayward, who's in publishing.
She's writing books, but she's not really making it like
she's struggling a little bit. She has a friend who's
very good at writing books, and her name is Athena,
and Athena is an Asian American author, and they both
(13:50):
kind of started out at the same time. They're both
the same age, except Athena just went skyrocketing, like writing
amazing stuff, and June is kind of hanging out in
the background. Athena suddenly dies. It's like the craziest dead
scene I've ever read.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Every time I'm eating it home, I think about choking
to death from that. It is that part of the base.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
This isn't a spoiler because it happens quite early. Yeah,
the entire the first few pages. So Athena suddenly dies
and June was with her, and then after she dies,
June finds a manuscript of a novel that Athena was
currently working on and June decides to develop a pseudonym
named Junipersong, which yes, does sound like an Asian name,
(14:33):
and publish Athena's novel under her alias. And then what
ensures is just like so many critics and people in
like think of Reddit threads and people who are book
fans trying to figure out who Juniper Song is and
then trying to make connections like how come this girl
June is suddenly like taking off with like all of
(14:55):
these shows and stuff like that, Like people are starting
to figure out who really wrote the manuscript, and it
just dives into this whole world of I want to
call it modern racism and modern microaggressions of what happens
when you have a white person who is a complete
ally suddenly gets support from people who aren't allies, and
(15:17):
like how that dictates how they see people of color.
It is just so incredibly done. It is really funny.
The lengths that some of the fans go to try
to expose her is insane, but it also just shows
how far you're willing to go just to be famous.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
I love this book so much. It's one of my
vodka books as well, because I read it all in
one night. I couldn't stop them, like I have to
know because the build up of like is she going
to get caught out? And who's going to catch her out?
And who are those anonymous messages coming from? And then
you start thinking, wait, is Athena even dead? Am I
going crazy? What's happening?
Speaker 3 (15:49):
It's so good. I went to actually watch iv Quan
speak and she came to Sydney to speak, and I
went to get my book signing. It's a whole drama.
I was last in line, and then they cut it
off right at me. It was so I had my
book and I was holding in front of the security
guard and I was like, please, sir, just me, It's
just me one morning. He's like, sorry, that's the hundred limit.
And my Mom's like, please got my book signed. It
(16:11):
was really sad. She speaks so well. She's actually a
fantasy writer and this was like her first like no
like chick lit novel, and the fact that it was
her first was just amazing because I'm not really into fantasy,
but she's a massive fantasy writer and so what she
said was really interesting because every time I recommend this
book to someone, they either hate it or love it.
And She said that she loves that people hate her
(16:32):
characters because that's exactly what she was going for.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Yeah, I think you're everyone.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
In this book is so unlikable, like every single person,
but they feel like real people. It's so brilliant. Okay,
what is your vodka?
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Okay, my vodka book? She just had vodka with us.
I know it's I actually do have some on my desk.
Someone sent it to me. So this is the first
book I stayed up all my reading. I'm really painting
myself as a cool teenager.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
We love especially you say your siblings are outside playing
in the sun and you're just crying over the color.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
That is mean a nutshell. So when I was fourteen
years old, I went into the school library very early
before my first class, and by past the nuns who
were restacking the books, and I got this very battered
old copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Oh, they were definitely trying to hide that one.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah, I can't believe it wasn't even in I went
to a convent school. I can't believe there was even
a copy around.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Some none was like, I'm going to change history and
these girls are going to read Jaculas my.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Sister a Gena'll shout out to you. I'm sure a
lot of people know the like Dracula obviously the character,
and this is the first definitive book his origin story,
you will. So it was written by Bram Stoker, who's
an Irish author, and published in eighteen ninety seven. I mean,
it's a Gothic horror novel and it is just so
(17:48):
it's almost for some people might be a vegetable book
because in some cases it could be hard to follow
because it's as.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
A very like archaic language.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Yeah, to an extent, not as much as you would think,
like I guess, like you know, there's a vampire here,
just transcends time employees. But it's a lot of it's
told through letters and diary entries, newspaper articles, maps, all
that sort of thing. So you know, you've got to
sort of put it together. But it sounds like a
lot of work. But most of it is just a narrative,
but it's told from different people's perspectives. But it is
(18:19):
just such an incredibly gripping story. So it starts off
with Johnathan Harko who's a solicitor and he travels to Transylvania,
to visit this nobleman called Count Dracula because you know
they're gonna sell them some property and.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
It's just anos Ferati.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Well, no, no, because nos Feratu is a rip off
of Dracula, as you know from our previous podcast about
that topic. And so Dracula is obviously a vampire and
then locks Jonathan in his castle. I'm obviously going over
a lot here, and he moves to this tiny seaside
town of Whitby where Jonathan's fiance Mina, who's staying to
see say that, and he starts killing people. And then
(18:57):
you've got Van helsing who is this? You know, who
knows who is trying to hunt him down? And it
is just this incredible, like visceral, intense story, full of violence,
full of death, full of sex. As a fourteen year old,
I had not known. My only instruction to vampires was
Buffy the Vampires Like, and I was.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Like, tell me, this was your sex education.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
It maybe it kind of was, I don't know, and
I just remember. So I got it out from the
library in the morning and then all day through all
of my classes, I read it under the desk because
I was just like, holy sh I said it all
trying to read books under the desk.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
And I was like, that's who straight porn for.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
I was just like, my heart was beating in my
chest so fast, because no, it's so violent and graphic.
I read it at home on the bus. I read
all afternoon. I read it into the night. I think
I finished it with a torch under my blanket that night.
This is a massive book. It is absolutely huge. Most
people say this takes them a month to read. I
finished it about two in the morning, and then I
(19:55):
was so both terrified and just enamored and freaked out
that I stayed up. That's the first time I stayed
up all night as a teenager because my eye was
just overcome by this book. And that is the idea
of what a vodka book is. There's even lines I
remember reading for the first time of like when one
of the characters, because Jacula is feeding on I don't
want to ruin exuse obviously, Wan, you want to go
(20:15):
read it when Dracula is like secretly feeding on this
one young woman all night and she's slowly turning into
a vampire, and like the moment she starts to turn,
where she starts describing like the blood pulsing through her veins,
and she's like, oh, I can hear the mice down
in the cellars below scurrying about because everything's getting better.
And then like the moment where like Jacula comes through
when she's just about to die and she screams and
(20:37):
ecstasies her vampire lover, and I was like, what is happening.
It's just so, it's such a good book.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
You've hooked me.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
I think you should read it. There's also an incredible
film adaptation. No it's called Bramstoke Is Dracula, because I
wanted people to know it's a direct movie based on
the book. So it's got when I'm in a writer
and Countu Reeves and Gary Oldman, and it's completely pulled
from the book. And the cast actually sat down and
read the entire novel in like a few days, not
(21:05):
one day like I did, but a few days so
they would have the exact flow and pattern of the store.
Sorry to film the movie, so read the book first
and then watch the movie.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Okay, okay. For my Chocolate book, I didn't write any
single note because I thought we could just both of
us go to town on this. Yeah, it is so basic.
So if you're gonna call me a basic bitch, I know, Okay,
I know this book is basic. But there's a reason
it's basic, and that's because so many women love it. Okay,
(21:34):
So that's not even a good insult, even though I'm
talking to myself about Okay, stop stop stalling.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
It is everything I know about love by Dolly Albert.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
That is not a basic book. That is a beautiful book.
And you know you're beautiful for recommending it.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
The reason I'm recommending it is because I'm reading it
right now, because I read it after every time I
go through a heartache.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
No, no, Boddy, So you.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Can guess why I'm reading it right now. I read
it so many times because it's been so many It
is a memoir. She started writing it when she was
twenty eight, which is my age now, and I think
it was published and really got everyone going when she
was around there, and then she completely took off as
an author after that. It's about love, it's about breakups,
(22:17):
it's about friendships, it's about living in share houses. It's
about annoying problematic men, regardless of their age. It's about
just kind of accepting yourself. It even goes into death
and things like that and your parents getting older, and
it's one of those books that makes you feel like
you're not isolated with every thought you've had. There's been
(22:39):
so many like moments, I think, especially as a young
woman in your twenties, where you have a thought or
you have an experience and you think this sucks, and like,
who do I talk to because surely no one's ever
gone through this before, And then you read Dolly Alton's
book and you're like, oh shit, I was completely wrong.
I've never had an original thought in my life. And
it's just so good because I think this book has
(23:00):
just formed so many friendships in a way that we've
all just started talking about these kind of issues that
we've all gone through as growing up in your twenties,
whether you're in a relationationship or single, or you had
friends or you don't have friends and you're making new
friends and your career, we're all just like becoming more
vulnerable and open with each other in a time where
we were kind of brought up to believe that we
(23:21):
always had to compete with each other. And I think
this book has done so much in just like making
women feel really good about having each other in our lives.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Yeah, I mean, obviously, I love this book so much.
It's one of my ultimate chocolate books. I love so
much that I've got a copy at home that I
reread all the time, and a copy at my desk
care at Mama Mia that I lend out to people.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Such a good book. I'm getting so emotional talking about it.
I think everyone men should read this book. Yeah, everyone
read this damn book.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
It's so good. Okay, I love that my chocolate book
is also about friendship. We're so cute.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
The greatest loves you'll know are your female friends.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
One hundred percent. So my book is actually called Circle
of Friends. I found it really hard to pick a
chocolate book, and then I found it really hard to
pick a book from this author because it's written by
May've Binchi, who I think is my favorite author of
all time.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
But I'm excited for this because I haven't read this.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Oh my god, I'm so excited for you to read it.
Because May've Binchi has so many books out there, and
each one of them is just a masterpiece. It's one
of those authors where you can just like any book
that she has written. You can pick up and just
know that you'll have an incredible time reading it. And
it was hard to pick, but I went with a
circle of friends. Again. I read this as a teenager.
My mum gave it to me because she loves May
Binchi as well. It's set in Dublin as well as
(24:33):
this like tiny town outside of Dublin Island called Knocklin
in Ireland in the nineteen fifties. And it starts off
with so the two main characters are Even Benny and
they live in a small town of Knocklann. Eve is
an orphan but her like rich family live in the
town and they just gave her up when her mother
passed away. She lives in a convent with nuns. Benny
(24:54):
Benny lives in a big house with her parents. Eva's
tiny and gets bullied for being an orphan. Benny gets
bullied for being very very tall, which I obviously related
to as a teenager, that everyone calls her big and
awful and all this sort of stuff. And they become
these two best friends as kids when they're ten years old,
and then the story jumps forward to when they've finished
(25:15):
school and they're going to university in Dublin. There's this
whole big story about how they get there, and then
the story is about them in Dublin as like growing
women and everything it happens, the new friends they make,
the big love stories that they have, these group of
people they make. There's this huge kind of scandal that
happens towards the end of the book, which I'm just like,
if any friendship group has had a scandal, it's this. Honestly,
(25:36):
I only threw the book across the room when it happened.
I was like, made Binchi, you did not go there.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
And it's just such a lovely, comforting book. And also
just the detail of May Binchi's writing is why it's
chocolate because she describes you know, those authors can just
like keep you enamored by describing the room and what
everyone's wearing, and like the dresses that they have made
for this first big college ball they go to and
the first time that one of them dances with the
hottest guy and starts dating him, and like the food,
(26:04):
the hot chips they get at the pub before they
jump on the train to go out to Brain you know,
all that sort of stuff. So yeah, the oldimate chocolate books.
So if you haven't read any of Mee Binchi's books,
Holy Hell, because also, like I said, they're scandalous, some
of them found like scandal light. But if you love
a book that's just about like normal people who go
through an intense situation, that's what a lot of her
books are about. So read Circle of Friends. That's your
(26:25):
holiday reading. Read Circle of Friends by've made Binchi. Then
read The Glass Lake, Holy Hell, that's a page turner,
and then read Evening Class. They're my top three for.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
He Okay, we've got a little list, so much time
to do, so thank you so much for listening to
the Spill today. We hope you really loved the This
Book special episode because we love reading so much and
we definitely want to recommend more books next year. And
if you want a more deep analysis of the vodka
chocolate vegetable theory, LB has done an extremely viral article
(26:58):
on it that explained everything for you, so you can
have it as like your little prep doc while you
go before you choose your books. We will link that
article in our show notes. We're also gonna keep being
in your ears till we get back on break which
I guess is not even a break if we're saying
that we have so much content coming out, don't we Yes.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
So this it might be our last day in the office,
but we have so much new content for you guys
coming out over the summer break, some of our best episodes.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
We've had so much fun with these episodes.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
We're going through celebrity scandals with celebrity breakups, but also
we're going through the best new TV shows of the summer.
So we'll have so many recommendations coming for you guys.
We're doing best new movies, we're doing books. Just so
much good stuff coming out. I know, I've got so
many little like funny things that I took during some
of our recordings, and I'm going to post when the
(27:47):
EP's come out, and I'm really excited about.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Oh, I'm excited. So we will be back here in
your podcast feed on Monday. See you they bye.
So much. You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast. Mamma
Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and borders that
this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey spillers, this is producer of This spill Minisha, just
jumping in because today is a public holiday here in Australia,
so we don't have our usual daily episode for you.
But don't worry, we would never leave you without something
to listen to. So we're bringing back an absolute classic
where Laura and m hit you with all their top
book recommendations of all time. Just perfect if you're looking
(00:43):
to curl up with a great read over the wintery
long weekend.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Enjoy. So you might have heard me mention this before.
It is my single biggest achievement in life, my system
of how I organize books and how I recommend books,
and it was born out of this idea of that
so many of my friends and colleagues over the years
would come to me and want book recommendations because I'm
such an avid reader and I get very passionate about
my books, and a lot of the time, to sort
(01:09):
of forget the tone of what someone wants, you have
to ask them what they're in the mood for and
I feel like the best way to do that is
to liken it to a food or beverage, because you know,
when you're like you're deciding to go out, You're like,
what do you feel like? Do you feel like this?
VI dinner? Do you feel like that? And that's how
you get to the heart of what someone wants. You
can't just give them a random book. And so I
set up this system, which is the vodka, vegetable chocolate.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
System, the most chaotic types of meals and drinks I know.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
And some people are like, but vodkas are drinking. It's
a food. I'm like, no, no, we don't.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Like, I'm not alcoholic. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
It's just a vibe. It's a feeling. You can drink
vodka as you read, but you don't have to. That's
not the rule. So it's the way I categorize my books.
So my friends and I now have a shorthand whether
they'll want a book, and I'll say and they'll be like, oh,
I need a vodka, but I also like, I'll take
a vegetable with me. And that's how I dole out
my books. So just sort the categories out vodka. These
are books that you potentially want to hit really hard
(02:02):
and fast in one night. A page turner, a thriller,
something exciting. You have to know what happens next, Yeah, exactly,
So potentially will keep you up all night because you
have to finish it. All of my biggest vodka books
I've started in the afternoon. I finished at like one am,
two am, so you sometimes do have a little bit
of a hangover the next day. And it's not the
(02:22):
kind of book you can read every day or every week,
and like you have to space your vodka books out,
But they are the books that will give your buzz.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Vegetable books. Now, some people think that vegetable books are
the books that we don't want to read, but that
is not true. Now, they're not the boring books because
we need vegetables exactly. The thing is, you need vegetables
in your diet, and when prepared correctly and when written correctly,
vegetables can be delicious. It's just that sometimes if you
want something sugary or like a hit of vodka, that
you're not in the mood for vegetables. But there's something
(02:52):
that you that are very satisfying, that good for you,
and you feel very good after consuming them, and that
is what a vegetable book will do for you. So
they can sometimes be like, you know, a classic book
or historical book or something. Everyone's books and these genres
are different. But for me, it's a book that I
might It's not one I'm like craving, but when I
(03:12):
consume it, it's satisfying and I feel good, and I
know that these books should make up a big part
of my diet. That's a vegetable book. But vegetable books
are also some of my favorite books. Yeah, me too,
So again, vegetabooks aren't bad, we have.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Vegetable books are also the best ones to preach about
when someone asks I need something new to read.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah, exactly. It's like you want to say to someone, oh, yeah,
I made like a butternut squash bake last night.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
I've made a salad.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
You're like, yeah, I made a salad, and I feel
good about that. That's the same as telling someone that
you read a vegetable book. So often they're the ones
that people have prominently displayed in their homes, or they're
vegetabooks are ones that people love to put on Instagram,
like just casually reading.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Casually read quiet all the rest in front of British furniture.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Just casually read War and Peace. That's a vegetable vegetable book.
And then we get to chocolate books, which is just
a little sweet treat. I've got to say a lot
of my diet of books is chocolate books.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah, I'm like eighty percent.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
If that's nothing wrong with that, because again, chocolate import
it doesn't mean they're frivolous, doesn't mean they're silly. It
just means that they can be a bit comforting, they
can be a bit light. They're easy to just pick
up and snack on, like you could just read a
few chapters here and there, and they just make you
feel good. They're like a delightful little treat that comes
into your life. So that is how we are setting
up the episode today. We're going to do one book
(04:27):
each for vodka, vegetable, chocolate, and yeah the best. The
only kind of diet we care about is a book diet,
and that's all we're here to talk about.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
So I'm going to go first. I'm starting with the Veggies.
This is a book that I have actually read twice,
So I know a vegetable book twice, that's impressive. I
think I read it twice because I didn't fully grasp
it the first time I read it, And there are
like a lot of storylines that I felt like I
skimmed over when I probably should have really concentrated on.
(04:58):
The issue I have is that I'm a really fast reader,
and that doesn't change depending on what type of book
I'm reading. And when you read a vegetable book really fast,
you don't actually sit with everything. I only said with
what you finish. And I had to go back in
this book and then take it much slower.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Do you find that sometimes when you're reading that your
eyes are darting ahead, like the bottom of the next
page because you know where that's where the cliffhanger is
going to be.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
And I get excited. Yeah, I'm kind of like when
you're watching a movie and you get like really like
angsy about it. Yeah, it's similar with books. And then
I'm like, wait, oh what your mind wanders and then
you're like, oh, I have to read this page again
because I have no idea what just happened.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
My trick for that because I only maybe it's different
if you're on an e reader or something, but I'm
old school only read physical books. Cover it. Yeah, I
hold it because it's always the cliffhanger is on the
second page on the right hand side. So I read
like this where I have my hand over the page
and I don't lift it up until I'm getting to
that bit. So weird.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Why do we do that? Like why do your eyes
just like have a mind of the I.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Also sometimes if I'm in a really exciting part of
a book, I stand up because I just I just
see it from the book to know that I'm present,
I'm in there with.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Don't do that like when you're in public, because that's
quite alarming. I just stand up on a plane. So
my vegetable book is Girl Woman Other and it's a novel.
It's a novel by Bernardine Evaristo. She won the Book
of Prize in twenty nineteen for it, and it is
extremely complex. Have you read it?
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (06:20):
I have.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
It's so confusing. So that's the main reason why I
had to read it twice because I would always recommend
it to people and they're like, what's it about? And
I had to be like, wait, you explained the witch
shot explaining it's literally that they're like, so, why are
you recommending this? But I am recommending it because I
read it twice and I love it. So it focuses
on the experiences of Black British women across different generations,
(06:42):
and it does like all the themes like identity, race, gender,
except in sexuality. There's twelve characters like I count to twelve.
That possibly is more, but each character has their own
unique storyline, which is where I think I got confused
the first time around. But the three main characters that
I think have the deepest storylines that are constantly hearing from.
(07:03):
We first hear from Ama, who's like a playwright. She's
a feminist, and she's kind of like one of those
really strong femine that's also trying to navigate the landscape
of feminism as it's changing and as we become like
more modern. She has a daughter named Jazz, who's a
university student who's also a bit confused in her life.
And then AMA's best friend's name is Dominique and she's
(07:25):
currently struggling in a domestic abuse of relationship. They all
are such interesting, well thought out characters, and the entire
novel like spans across more than a century in British history,
so you're seeing also history come within this novel, which
is really interesting. The hardest thing about this book is
that every Stow's style of writing is described as free
(07:49):
flowing and poetic, and that means there's no punctuation in
the entire book. I think there's one full stop in
the entire novel relief for me, I can breathe. But
I think that's why I read it so fast the
first time. There's no sentences, so.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
You didn't know where to stop. You just kept going.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
I probably had my first broke at that one full
stop halfway through, and I just kept going. But I
think a lot of people struggle with this book because
I can't get past that. And when I read it
for the second time, it just made everything so much better,
Like I fully immersed myself into her style of writing,
and it just felt like one big, massive thought that's
(08:29):
just spanning across these generations and these years, and it
was just such an experience of reading that I've never
had before, and it was just so beautiful. It's such
a brilliant book. I highly recommend it to everyone. I
would say if you're not an avid reader, this is
probably a really big one for you to start with.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Don't if you haven't read a book for ten years,
don't leap in with this one.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Don't leap in with this one. But if you love
reading and you love like just the description I gave you,
this needs to be on your list.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Oh I really love that. Okay, my vegetable book. I
only realized after I had finished making my notes of
this episode, and I had very painstakingly picked my book
for each category that I've picked novels that I all
read as like a young teenager, because this is the
first time this idea started for me in my head
of like these different books. So I've somehow picked my
very first vegetable word cod chocolate books by accident. So
(09:19):
my vegetable book is The Color Purple, which so good.
I had such a vivid memory of I think I
got it from the library and like the school holidays
when I was like fourteen. I was like, I read
it around.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
The same age. Yeah, my nana gave it to me
and I was like, Nana.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Famous book. And I remember just like through the school
holidays really trying to like I loved reading it. But
I also it was the first time I was really
struggling to get through a book and I had to
sort of sometimes remind myself to go and read it
and finish it. And it's the first time I remember
telling myself as like a teen, like, no, no, this
book is good for you. You need to read it, you
need to finish it. And so The Color Purple came
out in nineteen eighty two. It's a novel by an
(09:57):
American author called Alice Walker, and it was hugely successful
after it came out. It won the nineteen eighty three
Pulit Surprise for Fiction and also the National Book Award
for Fiction. That Alice Walker is actually the first black
woman to win for fiction in the Plitzurprise category. So
that is obviously so well deserved. And one reason I
wanted to read the book before I saw the movie
(10:17):
or anything like that is that The Color Purple has
kind of sprung up into this whole cornerstone of pop
culture and entertainment over the years. And when something like that, yeah, exactly,
and when something like that happens, I think it's really
important to read the source material so you can you
can understand what it's across. So it was adapt into
a film in nineteen eighty five, directed by Steven Spielberg,
and it had Whoopi goldbergs star as the lead. And
(10:40):
then it became a men Epra. Yes, Oprah was in
it too, as Sofia Danny Glover. Like all Star cast.
There was no Made for eleven Academy Awards. Didn't win any,
but it was no Made for eleven Academy Awards. That's
important to note. It then became a Broadway musical in
two thousand and five, and then just last year it
was adapted into So is the adaptation of the Broadway
(11:01):
musical into a movie, which if anyone hasn't seen that,
it is just incredible. I loved it so much. So
it's a story of Seely, who's a poor African American
girl living in rural Georgia in the early nineteen hundreds.
She is very close to her sister Netti. They're being abused,
they get separated, and then attracts Sealy's life over thirty years.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
It's such a sad story.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
It is so sad. I remember just like being in
my room on the summer holidays, my siblings are out
in the pool, my Mom's coming to my room and
she's like, why are you crying here?
Speaker 3 (11:30):
And other Yeah, right, especially the book because the book
is like way more traumatizing than the Marrie.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
I should say. The book has a bit of controversy
over the years in terms of like some of the
way it depicts domestic abuse and rape and sexual assault,
and some people think it it's not handled in the
right way, and some people think we're reveling in pain.
There's a huge long history there that I won't get
into it. It's quite graphic. It's very graphic. Yeah, just
a warning of reading it. This is not in any
way a light read. But I just think it's such
(11:56):
an incredible story. You just feel like you're in it
when you're reading it, and it's so important, and I
just think sometimes we have to read things that are
difficult and sit in those stories.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
It's important because it's depicting what actually would have happened.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Oh yeah, exactly one hundred and it really kind of
is a moment in time where women but especially African
American women in Georgia in that time, just have absolutely
no rights, and you see the pain and torture, and
sometimes those characters like the side characters in those kind
of novels where you just seen there's like you know,
they're the servants or they're like, you know, the supportive
(12:29):
like woman of color in the background kind of thing.
And so this is like taking that story and putting
it front and center. So it's a difficult read, but
it's so beautifully written, and it's my first memory of
kind of like making myself read a book outside of
school and being like, I'm so glad I read that,
like I needed to know that story.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Okay, moving onto vodka. I remember I got this really
mixed up because I thought it was about the speed
of how you read, and because I read really fast,
I would get my vodkas and chocolates mixed up quite often.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
But like I said, it's sometimes a chocolate book for me,
bite me, a vodka book for someone else, or a
vuable book, like it's a very personal decision.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
I'm all vodka here.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
So my vodka book I want to talk about is
Yellow Face of Kwan. I've read this book so many times.
It is so good. It's like a very fast paced
kind of like psychological drama, but it's also very funny
and very hectic and I think the pace of the
novel dictates the pace of how you read it, because
(13:27):
you're constantly wanting to turn to the next page. So
it's about this writer, a white writer, and it's important
that she's white. Yeah, named June Hayward, who's in publishing.
She's writing books, but she's not really making it like
she's struggling a little bit. She has a friend who's
very good at writing books, and her name is Athena,
and Athena is an Asian American author, and they both
(13:50):
kind of started out at the same time. They're both
the same age, except Athena just went skyrocketing, like writing
amazing stuff, and June is kind of hanging out in
the background. Athena suddenly dies. It's like the craziest dead
scene I've ever read.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Every time I'm eating it home, I think about choking
to death from that. It is that part of the base.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
This isn't a spoiler because it happens quite early. Yeah,
the entire the first few pages. So Athena suddenly dies
and June was with her, and then after she dies,
June finds a manuscript of a novel that Athena was
currently working on and June decides to develop a pseudonym
named Junipersong, which yes, does sound like an Asian name,
(14:33):
and publish Athena's novel under her alias. And then what
ensures is just like so many critics and people in
like think of Reddit threads and people who are book
fans trying to figure out who Juniper Song is and
then trying to make connections like how come this girl
June is suddenly like taking off with like all of
(14:55):
these shows and stuff like that, Like people are starting
to figure out who really wrote the manuscript, and it
just dives into this whole world of I want to
call it modern racism and modern microaggressions of what happens
when you have a white person who is a complete
ally suddenly gets support from people who aren't allies, and
(15:17):
like how that dictates how they see people of color.
It is just so incredibly done. It is really funny.
The lengths that some of the fans go to try
to expose her is insane, but it also just shows
how far you're willing to go just to be famous.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
I love this book so much. It's one of my
vodka books as well, because I read it all in
one night. I couldn't stop them, like I have to
know because the build up of like is she going
to get caught out? And who's going to catch her out?
And who are those anonymous messages coming from? And then
you start thinking, wait, is Athena even dead? Am I
going crazy? What's happening?
Speaker 3 (15:49):
It's so good. I went to actually watch iv Quan
speak and she came to Sydney to speak, and I
went to get my book signing. It's a whole drama.
I was last in line, and then they cut it
off right at me. It was so I had my
book and I was holding in front of the security
guard and I was like, please, sir, just me, It's
just me one morning. He's like, sorry, that's the hundred limit.
And my Mom's like, please got my book signed. It
(16:11):
was really sad. She speaks so well. She's actually a
fantasy writer and this was like her first like no
like chick lit novel, and the fact that it was
her first was just amazing because I'm not really into fantasy,
but she's a massive fantasy writer and so what she
said was really interesting because every time I recommend this
book to someone, they either hate it or love it.
And She said that she loves that people hate her
(16:32):
characters because that's exactly what she was going for.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Yeah, I think you're everyone.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
In this book is so unlikable, like every single person,
but they feel like real people. It's so brilliant. Okay,
what is your vodka?
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Okay, my vodka book? She just had vodka with us.
I know it's I actually do have some on my desk.
Someone sent it to me. So this is the first
book I stayed up all my reading. I'm really painting
myself as a cool teenager.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
We love especially you say your siblings are outside playing
in the sun and you're just crying over the color.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
That is mean a nutshell. So when I was fourteen
years old, I went into the school library very early
before my first class, and by past the nuns who
were restacking the books, and I got this very battered
old copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Oh, they were definitely trying to hide that one.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah, I can't believe it wasn't even in I went
to a convent school. I can't believe there was even
a copy around.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Some none was like, I'm going to change history and
these girls are going to read Jaculas my.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Sister a Gena'll shout out to you. I'm sure a
lot of people know the like Dracula obviously the character,
and this is the first definitive book his origin story,
you will. So it was written by Bram Stoker, who's
an Irish author, and published in eighteen ninety seven. I mean,
it's a Gothic horror novel and it is just so
(17:48):
it's almost for some people might be a vegetable book
because in some cases it could be hard to follow
because it's as.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
A very like archaic language.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Yeah, to an extent, not as much as you would think,
like I guess, like you know, there's a vampire here,
just transcends time employees. But it's a lot of it's
told through letters and diary entries, newspaper articles, maps, all
that sort of thing. So you know, you've got to
sort of put it together. But it sounds like a
lot of work. But most of it is just a narrative,
but it's told from different people's perspectives. But it is
(18:19):
just such an incredibly gripping story. So it starts off
with Johnathan Harko who's a solicitor and he travels to Transylvania,
to visit this nobleman called Count Dracula because you know
they're gonna sell them some property and.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
It's just anos Ferati.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Well, no, no, because nos Feratu is a rip off
of Dracula, as you know from our previous podcast about
that topic. And so Dracula is obviously a vampire and
then locks Jonathan in his castle. I'm obviously going over
a lot here, and he moves to this tiny seaside
town of Whitby where Jonathan's fiance Mina, who's staying to
see say that, and he starts killing people. And then
(18:57):
you've got Van helsing who is this? You know, who
knows who is trying to hunt him down? And it
is just this incredible, like visceral, intense story, full of violence,
full of death, full of sex. As a fourteen year old,
I had not known. My only instruction to vampires was
Buffy the Vampires Like, and I was.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Like, tell me, this was your sex education.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
It maybe it kind of was, I don't know, and
I just remember. So I got it out from the
library in the morning and then all day through all
of my classes, I read it under the desk because
I was just like, holy sh I said it all
trying to read books under the desk.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
And I was like, that's who straight porn for.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
I was just like, my heart was beating in my
chest so fast, because no, it's so violent and graphic.
I read it at home on the bus. I read
all afternoon. I read it into the night. I think
I finished it with a torch under my blanket that night.
This is a massive book. It is absolutely huge. Most
people say this takes them a month to read. I
finished it about two in the morning, and then I
(19:55):
was so both terrified and just enamored and freaked out
that I stayed up. That's the first time I stayed
up all night as a teenager because my eye was
just overcome by this book. And that is the idea
of what a vodka book is. There's even lines I
remember reading for the first time of like when one
of the characters, because Jacula is feeding on I don't
want to ruin exuse obviously, Wan, you want to go
(20:15):
read it when Dracula is like secretly feeding on this
one young woman all night and she's slowly turning into
a vampire, and like the moment she starts to turn,
where she starts describing like the blood pulsing through her veins,
and she's like, oh, I can hear the mice down
in the cellars below scurrying about because everything's getting better.
And then like the moment where like Jacula comes through
when she's just about to die and she screams and
(20:37):
ecstasies her vampire lover, and I was like, what is happening.
It's just so, it's such a good book.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
You've hooked me.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
I think you should read it. There's also an incredible
film adaptation. No it's called Bramstoke Is Dracula, because I
wanted people to know it's a direct movie based on
the book. So it's got when I'm in a writer
and Countu Reeves and Gary Oldman, and it's completely pulled
from the book. And the cast actually sat down and
read the entire novel in like a few days, not
(21:05):
one day like I did, but a few days so
they would have the exact flow and pattern of the store.
Sorry to film the movie, so read the book first
and then watch the movie.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Okay, okay. For my Chocolate book, I didn't write any
single note because I thought we could just both of
us go to town on this. Yeah, it is so basic.
So if you're gonna call me a basic bitch, I know, Okay,
I know this book is basic. But there's a reason
it's basic, and that's because so many women love it. Okay,
(21:34):
So that's not even a good insult, even though I'm
talking to myself about Okay, stop stop stalling.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
It is everything I know about love by Dolly Albert.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
That is not a basic book. That is a beautiful book.
And you know you're beautiful for recommending it.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
The reason I'm recommending it is because I'm reading it
right now, because I read it after every time I
go through a heartache.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
No, no, Boddy, So you.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Can guess why I'm reading it right now. I read
it so many times because it's been so many It
is a memoir. She started writing it when she was
twenty eight, which is my age now, and I think
it was published and really got everyone going when she
was around there, and then she completely took off as
an author after that. It's about love, it's about breakups,
(22:17):
it's about friendships, it's about living in share houses. It's
about annoying problematic men, regardless of their age. It's about
just kind of accepting yourself. It even goes into death
and things like that and your parents getting older, and
it's one of those books that makes you feel like
you're not isolated with every thought you've had. There's been
(22:39):
so many like moments, I think, especially as a young
woman in your twenties, where you have a thought or
you have an experience and you think this sucks, and like,
who do I talk to because surely no one's ever
gone through this before, And then you read Dolly Alton's
book and you're like, oh shit, I was completely wrong.
I've never had an original thought in my life. And
it's just so good because I think this book has
(23:00):
just formed so many friendships in a way that we've
all just started talking about these kind of issues that
we've all gone through as growing up in your twenties,
whether you're in a relationationship or single, or you had
friends or you don't have friends and you're making new
friends and your career, we're all just like becoming more
vulnerable and open with each other in a time where
we were kind of brought up to believe that we
(23:21):
always had to compete with each other. And I think
this book has done so much in just like making
women feel really good about having each other in our lives.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Yeah, I mean, obviously, I love this book so much.
It's one of my ultimate chocolate books. I love so
much that I've got a copy at home that I
reread all the time, and a copy at my desk
care at Mama Mia that I lend out to people.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Such a good book. I'm getting so emotional talking about it.
I think everyone men should read this book. Yeah, everyone
read this damn book.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
It's so good. Okay, I love that my chocolate book
is also about friendship. We're so cute.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
The greatest loves you'll know are your female friends.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
One hundred percent. So my book is actually called Circle
of Friends. I found it really hard to pick a
chocolate book, and then I found it really hard to
pick a book from this author because it's written by
May've Binchi, who I think is my favorite author of
all time.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
But I'm excited for this because I haven't read this.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Oh my god, I'm so excited for you to read it.
Because May've Binchi has so many books out there, and
each one of them is just a masterpiece. It's one
of those authors where you can just like any book
that she has written. You can pick up and just
know that you'll have an incredible time reading it. And
it was hard to pick, but I went with a
circle of friends. Again. I read this as a teenager.
My mum gave it to me because she loves May
Binchi as well. It's set in Dublin as well as
(24:33):
this like tiny town outside of Dublin Island called Knocklin
in Ireland in the nineteen fifties. And it starts off
with so the two main characters are Even Benny and
they live in a small town of Knocklann. Eve is
an orphan but her like rich family live in the
town and they just gave her up when her mother
passed away. She lives in a convent with nuns. Benny
(24:54):
Benny lives in a big house with her parents. Eva's
tiny and gets bullied for being an orphan. Benny gets
bullied for being very very tall, which I obviously related
to as a teenager, that everyone calls her big and
awful and all this sort of stuff. And they become
these two best friends as kids when they're ten years old,
and then the story jumps forward to when they've finished
(25:15):
school and they're going to university in Dublin. There's this
whole big story about how they get there, and then
the story is about them in Dublin as like growing
women and everything it happens, the new friends they make,
the big love stories that they have, these group of
people they make. There's this huge kind of scandal that
happens towards the end of the book, which I'm just like,
if any friendship group has had a scandal, it's this. Honestly,
(25:36):
I only threw the book across the room when it happened.
I was like, made Binchi, you did not go there.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
And it's just such a lovely, comforting book. And also
just the detail of May Binchi's writing is why it's
chocolate because she describes you know, those authors can just
like keep you enamored by describing the room and what
everyone's wearing, and like the dresses that they have made
for this first big college ball they go to and
the first time that one of them dances with the
hottest guy and starts dating him, and like the food,
(26:04):
the hot chips they get at the pub before they
jump on the train to go out to Brain you know,
all that sort of stuff. So yeah, the oldimate chocolate books.
So if you haven't read any of Mee Binchi's books,
Holy Hell, because also, like I said, they're scandalous, some
of them found like scandal light. But if you love
a book that's just about like normal people who go
through an intense situation, that's what a lot of her
books are about. So read Circle of Friends. That's your
(26:25):
holiday reading. Read Circle of Friends by've made Binchi. Then
read The Glass Lake, Holy Hell, that's a page turner,
and then read Evening Class. They're my top three for.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
He Okay, we've got a little list, so much time
to do, so thank you so much for listening to
the Spill today. We hope you really loved the This
Book special episode because we love reading so much and
we definitely want to recommend more books next year. And
if you want a more deep analysis of the vodka
chocolate vegetable theory, LB has done an extremely viral article
(26:58):
on it that explained everything for you, so you can
have it as like your little prep doc while you
go before you choose your books. We will link that
article in our show notes. We're also gonna keep being
in your ears till we get back on break which
I guess is not even a break if we're saying
that we have so much content coming out, don't we Yes.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
So this it might be our last day in the office,
but we have so much new content for you guys
coming out over the summer break, some of our best episodes.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
We've had so much fun with these episodes.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
We're going through celebrity scandals with celebrity breakups, but also
we're going through the best new TV shows of the summer.
So we'll have so many recommendations coming for you guys.
We're doing best new movies, we're doing books. Just so
much good stuff coming out. I know, I've got so
many little like funny things that I took during some
of our recordings, and I'm going to post when the
(27:47):
EP's come out, and I'm really excited about.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
Oh, I'm excited. So we will be back here in
your podcast feed on Monday. See you they bye.
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