TBNT S06E12 | Book Chaser: Babel by R. F. Kuang & I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai

“We're here to make magic with words”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel: An Arcane History

Step into the world of dark academia with us in this book chaser episode. We talk about Babel by R.F. Kuang and I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai; both set in institutions of learning and all the dark stuff that happens behind the scenes.

Murder, colonism, dark secrets, word nerdery: all the good stuff can be found in these books and of course, we did our best to not spoil anything for you.

Cheers!

Episode Transcript

(00:16):
Hello, friends and book lovers,Welcome again to another episode of Two Booknetstocking
with myself Hanny Ahmed and my lovelylovely co host Diana Young. And I
know it has been an age along time, but we are finally back
with a book chaser. Ya don'tyou love book chasers? Dina? I
actually really like this. I thinkit's such a great idea to have two

(00:40):
books and think about how they compareeach other. And it's always fun,
you know, because can you findthe differences and you find the similarities.
Maybe it's just me being nerdy,but that's that's the whole podcast, right.
We do have nerd in two Booknetstockingand we fulfilled that every week or
every time we actually make a podcast. All right. So the two books

(01:03):
that we are going to be discussingtoday is one of the hottest books this
year, which is our f Quang'sBabel, which has won so many awards,
and Rebecca McKays, I have somequestions for you, and honestly,
right, if you're looking at itfrom the surface, two books could not
be more different. Babel is setin alternate Oxford in the nineteenth century.

(01:26):
It is a fantasy. It hasmagic, it has Meham, and it's
pretty much a linear storyline. It'sa sprawling novel encompassing huge themes of identity,
colonialism, justification for war, amongstother things. And your main point
of view is Robin Swift, apen Chinese boy. I compare that with
I Have Some Questions for You,which is set in a boarding school in

(01:49):
America. It's set in present daytwenty nineteen, I believe, and it's
about this woman who goes back toher school this time. Yeah, she's
basically dipping back into the history,you know, like things that happened while
she was at school where a classmateof hers got murdered. So it's a
who done it? Right, Dianasort of off sort of who done it?

(02:13):
Yes? And no magic in thisbook and magic magic. It's not
that kind of warning school. Sothe only thing that it seemed to have
in common at the surface is thatit is both side in a learning institution.
There is murder in both books,and we both read it. And
this is why book chases are fine, right, Because when we were discussing

(02:34):
this, we thought there are actuallya lot of interesting things that both books
brought up that we wanted to talkabout, and I guess at a very
fundamental level is the question on whatis an education right? How are friends
made in these sort of places,the professors that influence you. What do
we carry with us into the futureafter we leave these institutions. How what's

(02:57):
your experienced schooling, Dina, becausewe are going into dog academia, which
we will talk about later in theshow. Okay, so I picked up
I had some questions for you first, and I thought, honey, you
gotta read this. It's set inthe boarding school, because you know,
both of us went to boarding school. You went to boarding school a lot
longer than I did. I onlywent for about six months, and then

(03:19):
I moved to Australia. I left, I got my board boarding school in
Blazier and I went to Australia.But I do identify a lot with Robin's
experience in Babel. I think becauseI went to high school in a foreign
country and you always feel a littlebit like, you know, like outside
looking in right, that kind ofthing. So you know, you see

(03:40):
a lot of people who feel likeyou. See how they look so confident,
like they belong and they have thiskind of entitlement they know that they
belong and you're always feeling like,you know, I wish I had that,
And I think both a protagonist inthese two books had that in common.
They're both outsiders. They they wishthey could fit in, but they

(04:01):
know they don't, you know,for different reasons. How do you you
can probably speak to what it's likebeing in boarding school and that kind of
you know, the whole environment ofit. You know, it's no secret
that I went to boarding school forfive years. I think for the entire
time I was there, I feltvery odd. I did feel very much
like an outsider. But I alsomade some really good friends and not very

(04:26):
many because again I was quite odd. And then I also went to study
in England, so there was somany incidences and so many things that I
could really relate to in Babel becauseof the fact that, you know,
it is a story set in Oxford. It's an alternate Oxford, but it
has all those kind of like undercurrentsof racism. It's got all their colonial

(04:48):
residues that you get because you know, we were colonized by the British.
Is that one thing to kind ofdesperately belong to this I could make play
right where nerds are celebrated, butknowing deep down inside that you will always
be seen as the brown person froma place that we used to colonize.

(05:10):
So there is all these things thatyou know that come back up when you're
reading books like this. Okay,before we get really into it, I
think it's our responsibility to at leasttell you a little bit about what the
books are about. So Babel orthe necessity of violence and arcane history of
the Oxford Translates revolution. That's thewhole Titleia by R. F. Quam

(05:34):
is a whopper of a book.We join the story in eighteen twenty eight.
By the time Professor Richard Lovell foundhis way through Canton's narrow alleys to
the faded address in his diary,the boy was the only one in the

(05:58):
house left alive. The air wasrank, the floor slippery. A jug
of water sat full, untouched bythe bed. At first, the boy
had been too scared of wretching todrink. Now it was too weak to
lift the jerk. He was stillconscious, though he'd sunk into a drowsy,
half dreamy haze. Soon he knewhe'd fall into a deep sleep and

(06:23):
failed to wake up. That waswhat had happened to his grandparents a week
ago, then his aunt's a dayafter, and then miss Better the englishwoman
a day after that. His motherhad perished that morning. He lay beside
her body, watching as the bloomsand purples deepened across her skin. The
last inch she'd said to him washis name, two syllables, mouthed without

(06:46):
breath. Her face had then goneslack and uneven. A tongue lolled out
of her mouth. The boy triedto close her filmy eyes, but her
lids kept sliding back open. Noone answered when Professor Lovell knocked. No
one exclaimed in surprise when he kickedthrough the front door, locked with his
plague. Thieves were stripping the housesin the neighborhood bare, and though there

(07:10):
was little of value in their home, the boy and his mother had wanted
a few hours of peace before thesickness took them too. The boy heard
all the commotion from upstairs, buthe couldn't bring himself to care. By
then, he only wanted to die. Professor Lovell made his way up the
stairs, crossed the room, andstood over the boy for a long moment.

(07:32):
He did not notice or chose notto notice the dead woman on the
bed. The boy lay still inhis shadow, wandering if this tall,
pale figure and black had come toreap his soul. How do you fear,
Professor Lovell asked. The boy's breathingwas too labor to answer. Professor

(07:53):
Lovell knelt beside the bed. Hedrew a slim silver bar out of his
front pocket and placed it over theboy's bare chest. The boy flinched.
The metal stuve like ice treacle,Professor Lovell said, first in French,
then in English, treacle. Thebar glowed a pale white. There came

(08:16):
an eerie sound from nowhere, aringing, a singing. The boy whined
and curled onto his side, histongue prodding confusedly around his mouth. There
with it, murmured Professor Lovell,swallowing what you taste? Seconds trickled by
the boy's breathing steadied. He openedhis eyes. He saw, Professor Lovell

(08:37):
more clearly now could make out theslate, gray eyes, and curved nose
hu war Be. They called ita hawk speak nose that could only belong
on a forest's face. Rob youfeel, now, asked Professor Lovell.
The boy took another deep breath,then he said, in surprising the good

(08:58):
English, that means it worked.Robin Swift is offered by cholera in Canton
and he is brought to London bya mysterious Professor Lovell. There he trains

(09:22):
for years in Latin, ancient Greek, and also keeps up his Chinese,
all in the preparation for the daywhere he will enroll in Oxford University's prestigious
Royal Institute of Translation, also knownas BABEL, which I thought was such
a smart name for an institute oftranslators. So BABEL is the world center
for translation and magic. So themagic in this world has to do with

(09:46):
silver working and the art of manifestingwhat is lost in translation between two languages.
It sounds kind of complicated, butit's so clever and I don't know
how Ko who writes this is actuallyvery very clear. I mean, we
completely understand what it's all about.So what this has done is that he
has made Britain unparalleled in power.Right, It's knowledge serves the empire and

(10:11):
also it's quest for colonization. Sofor Robin, who came from poverty,
is an utopia. You can justsit there and get lost in knowledge,
that's the thing. As he goeson studying, he realizes that serving Babel
also means serving the Empire, andthe Empire is responsible for everything that has

(10:33):
happened to him, like his mother'sdeath, everything that has been going on
right, and he finds himself caughtbetween Babel and the Shadowy Hermits Society,
which is an organization dedicated to kindof like balancing the power in the world,
so pretty much people that are tryingto stop the expansion of colonialism.

(10:56):
So everything comes to a hate whenBritain pursues an unjust war China over silver
and opium, and Robin must decidewhether he wants to be a loyal servant
or the empire or a master oftrue change. So the central question of
Babel is can powerful institutions be changedfrom within or this revolution always require violence?
Sorry, that was very long,Dinah Joten, so in I have

(11:22):
some questions for you. You're suckedit to the protagonist Bodie's life. Okay.
So Bodie is a forty something womanand she is a podcaster and a
film professor. And because she's afilm professor, she is invited back to
her alma mater, her high school, boarding school, to come back and

(11:46):
teach a mini course, I guessa mini semester. She actually has over
the years been sort of a littlebit obsessed with the murder of a classmate,
Talia, which happened right at theend of their senior year almost twenty
years ago. So the school's athletictrainer, who was a black man,

(12:07):
was sentenced to sixty years in prisonfor Talia's murder. But Bodie knew things
about Talia, and she's never beenable to shake this conviction that she has
that you know, it was awrongful conviction, right. She thinks that
you know, somebody else did it. Being back at her school, Granby,

(12:28):
it makes her relive her student life. It stirs up all these you
know, the emotional roller coaster ofbeing you know, a teen again.
Right, So she finally has toconfront her suspicions about what actually happens.
The night of Talia's murder, Ifirst watched the video in twenty sixteen.

(12:58):
I was in bed on my laptopwith headphones, worried Jerome would wake up
and I'd have to explain down thehall my children slept. I could have
gone and checked on them, felttheir warm cheeks and hot breath. I
could have smelled my daughter's hair,and maybe the scent of damp lavender and
a toddler's scalp would have been enoughto send me to sleep. But a

(13:20):
friend I hadn't seen in twenty yearshad just sent me the link, and
so I clicked. Lerner and Lowe'scamelot. I was both stage manager and
tech director. One fixed camera tooclose to the orchestra, too far from
the Unlike Adolescent Singers nineteen ninety five, vhas quality, some member of the

(13:41):
A V Club behind the lens,and my god, we knew we weren't
great, but we weren't even asgood as we thought we were. Whoever
uploaded it two decades later, whoeveradded the notes below with the exact time
markers for when Thalia Keith shows up, had also hosted the list of cast

(14:01):
and crew. Beth Docherty as apetite Gwenevere Secina John glowing as Morgan le
Fay with a crown of gold spikesatop her corn rows. Mike Styles beautiful
and embarrassed as King Arthur. Myname is misspelled, but it's there,
too. The curtain call is thelast shot where you clearly see Thalia,

(14:24):
her dark curls distinguishing her from thewashed out mass. Then most everyone stays
on stage to sing Happy Birthday tomissus Ross, our director to pull her
up from the front row where shesat every night, jotting notes, she's
so young, something I hadn't registered. Then a few kids exit return in

(14:45):
confusion. Orchestra remembers hop on stageto sing Missus Ross's husband springs from the
audience with flowers. The crew comeson in black shirts and black jeans.
I don't appear. I assume Istayed up in the box. It would
have been like me to sit itout, including the regrouping and singing.
The birthday business lasts fifty two seconds, during which you never see Thalia clearly.

(15:11):
In the comments, someone had zoomedin on a bit of green dress
at one side of the frame.Posted side by side photos of that smerror
of color and the dress Thalia wore, first covered in gauze as Nimuway the
Enchantress the Lady of the Lake,and then ungauzed with a simple head dress
as Lady Anne, but there wereseveral green dresses. My friend Carlotta's was

(15:35):
one. There's a chance that bythen Thaliam was gone. And I do
actually want to say here that manypeople might pick up I have some questions
for you as a who done it? But it probably is more accurately described

(15:58):
as a literal renovel. And that'spretty important, I think, because if
you read the blurb and you expectit to be, you know, just
a straight up crime novel, you'llbe a little bit frustrated, I think
at the tone of the storytelling andthe way that the protagonist takes her time
at getting to the investigation right andfiguring out what really happened. And I

(16:22):
think that's because the story is moreinterested in talking about our obsession with true
crime and the way we like tospeculate and demonize people online, instead of
being it's not really a straight murdermystery kind of book. That's a really
good point, because a lot ofthe book I felt was just I guess

(16:44):
collective memory, right, It's like, what do people remember about this one
instant and how you sort of likeglaze over an inconvenient truths right about certain
things in order for you yourself toprocess the trauma. I mean, losing
a classmate to er is a veryformative thing to happen to somebody when they're
in school, I would say,here, right, I mean, nothing

(17:06):
like that ever happened when I wasat school, but we always heard about
this girl who apparently committed suicide.My school used to have a swimming pool,
and she basically drowned in the pool, so she didn't go to formal
dinner and then she drowned in thepool and nobody knew, you know,
what she pushed was it suicide?But then after that they covered the pool,

(17:27):
so we never had a pool bythe time I got there. And
can you imagine this thing happened probablytwenty five years before I joined the school,
and we were still kind of hearingabout it. So can you imagine
if you were actually there when thisincident happened, right, Dina, And
how strange she would be to comeback twenty years later and still hear the

(17:48):
same story and you yourself actually kindof know how it's like to live through
it, you know. So Idon't know that I thought it was kind
of interesting, you know. Ithink I think that's true of a lot
of schools, Like the whole ideaof like this a school legend. Right,
you don't know where when it originatedor who was the one who started
the rumor or something like that,but there's always something that they passed down

(18:08):
from student to student from year toyear somehow, like you hear these rumors
about, oh, you know,something happened to somebody, or it's so
much hearsay that by the time youactually it actually gets to you, it's
probably changed one hundred and eighty degreesand what it used to be. But
still there's always something about schools andthe whole idea about I don't know the
setting of it, or it's justsomething behind the scenes. Maybe that points

(18:33):
to why we have all this darkacademia kind of theme nowadays. Right,
this month's challenge is actually to reada book set in a school or a
dark academia book. And dark academiaas a genre is something that I think
a lot of people attribute that todonattachs a secret history because it hearkens towards

(18:57):
this pursuit of knowledge, but sosecret societies, a shadowy world behind the
school that you're in. Usually itis a set somewhere Western as well.
It's gone esthetic because apparently now thereare all this Instagram accounts where people post
dark Academia esthetics, like you weara lot of tweet and probably where dark

(19:18):
I makeup. I don't know,you know's there's a lot of witchiness that
attributes you when you say something likedark academia. Right. So yeah,
so this is a really great challengeI think this month because it is really
quite fun and I think a lotof people are kind of looking forward to
picking up a Dark Academia book.But anyway, I digress. Shall we

(19:41):
go back into this book Chaser ofours? So I don't know, babe,
I am not entirely sure how we'regoing to start talking about it,
but I suppose when we're talking abouteducation, right, and what you get
from schools. It's interesting to note, as you were saying, that both
Robin and Bodie are outsiders, andthe thing about Robbin, for instance,
is really finding kindred spirits. Hefound his friends in university, and I

(20:07):
think before he got there he wasvery lonely. It was quite wonderful reading
just him being in Oxford and himYeah. Right, there's something about the
way that are of Kuang structured thatwhole story. So you know, you
have this like kind of idealic,kind of kind of situation where when they're

(20:29):
at school and you know, they'relearning so much and they're getting so much
into the material, and they're they'rejust feeling so connected to each other.
That's one of the things that thatyou know, being at school can give
you, that that sense of findingyour tribe right, finding the right the
people who can can be your closestfriends, and your closest like basically your

(20:52):
family, you know, and havingpeople who are like minded and you're going
through the same things together. Youhave the same kind of concern earned you
know, everyone so worried about examsand then you're worried about what happens,
what's going to happen after exams andstuff like that. The experience that kind
of shapes you. I think itreally shapes you. And one of the
things I really loved about Babel isis that whole sense that the academic kind

(21:17):
of sense that she puts into it. You're really drawn back into the world
of being in a university. It'svery nostalgic, right the way she writes
is it is, yeah, becauseyou know, like you are kind of
becoming young adults. You are havinga sense of purpose, but you also
kind of sheltered in Babel, youknow, especially because you know, being

(21:37):
in the Institute of Translators is quitea big prestige. You get stipends,
you don't have to worry about payingbills, you don't have to worry about
um, you know, student loans, which a lot of people today has
to worry about. Right, soyou are literally there to pursue reading and
knowledge, and honestly, for abook net like me and Diana, nothing

(22:00):
can somewhat ideally, you know,it brings me back to those hours I
spend the library, I have tosay, though, I mean I did
had too much fun in university,so I didn't read as much as I
probably should. But then again againwe're talking about education, right What is
an education? Is it just academicor is it everything else that you experience
in that environment. Yeah, yeah, I think I think it's especially true

(22:23):
about high school because you know,when you're in high school, you don't
get to choose what subjects you learnbasically, or you did choose some of
them, but most of the time, especially if you if you're to school
in Malaysia, you're either outstream orscience stream, and you just go with
the flow. You do what yourteachers tell you to do, right,
You don't actually get to choose whatyou're really doing. And you know,

(22:45):
I think afterwards after school, everyonejust just forgets everything that they've learned at
school. But they don't forget theexperience of being at school, the experience
of finding friends or trying to fitin the things that you do to feel
accepted, to feel a part ofthe social frad but to find your place

(23:07):
in society, right, And that'ssomething that you have to learn at school,
especially in high school. And that'swhy I think sometimes we're reading a
lot of these books, it feelsso real that those years are so important
that they stick in your mind foryears and years after. Like Bodie can't
even forget what life was like whenyou know, twenty years ago when she

(23:30):
was in school. When she reachesto school, she's like, Oh,
that was the corner where we wentoff and did this thing, and that
was the place where you know,we first met this teacher and then he
asked me to do this that kindof thing. Right, You remember everything
about school like that because it's it'sit's just such a period of emotional upheaval

(23:52):
for you. I guess it's sucha significant time in your life. For
Bodie's point of view, she wasalso an outside and she was also very
lonely when she got there. Youknow, she had parents who were very
neglectful, and she went because shewas semi adopted by a Mormon family,
not really adopted, but I guessthey saw her as a Christian responsibility.
And Granby is one of those schoolsthat has a long history, so obviously

(24:15):
the people who go there are mainly, you know, sons and daughters of
old boys and old girls, youknow, like it was that kind of
prestige, and she is a scholarshipstudent. One thing that really that I
thought was very very astute about Ihave questions for you is the fact that
going somewhere like that means that youcan also reinvent yourself. The first time

(24:38):
I sat around in a bunch ofgirls and they asked me what my background,
I could lie. I could absolutelycreate stories. I could say my
parents were spies. You know.I could do all that and nobody will
be none the wiser. So thereis this idea that that's what Bodie did.
You know, like when she wasthere, eventually she reinvented herself.
She became this goth chick, shewore she had the whole esthetic going on

(25:02):
because you know, she found herarmor. You know, she had miserable
years in those school, right,I mean on the flip side of Robin,
who had his healthy on days inhis school, like you had body
who actually had got pretty miserable time, you know, like she fancied boys
who didn't fancy her bag. Herroommate was very beautiful, but then died
being murdered. So in a way, right, I mean, the school

(25:25):
equipped her to be an adult,I suppose, so leaving the school meant
that she knew how to survive,and then she probably lived her best life
after it, as supposed to Robin, who I would say lived his best
life in the university, right,yeah, yeah, And I think I
think one of the things that wasespecially interesting about about it is that you

(25:47):
have a whole group of people whocome together in a school, but everybody
kind of like has a safe differentkind of experience about that time, even
even down to how they experienced thenight of the murder. Right that that
is such a weird thing, thatthat so many people can go through the
same thing, but they each havea different perspective on it. Yeah.

(26:11):
Yeah, it's it's so weird actuallyreading m mackay's book, because I am
currently writing a show that is setin a university. Somebody dies and everybody
has a different recollection of what happenedon the night that this person dies.
Oh, you're doing a Russia marand reading it was kind of like spooky,

(26:32):
you know, because there were somany themes are very similar. It's
toxic, friends is lying, youknow, like nobody ever tells you the
truth. It's actually like even theteachers. Can you really trust your teachers?
You know? And I think that'sthe other aspect that both novels have
a little bit in common, isthat why are your teachers actually teaching you

(26:52):
on levels side? You know,like on the teachers of this Babel Institute
of Translators. You know, they'renot only teaching your students how to do
magic and translate, but it's alsoto be loyal servants, you know,
it's actually to serve a greater good. And that's grooming, right, I
mean in a way, so we'retalking about grooming the future generation of people

(27:15):
who are going to further the intentionsof the British Empire. And you also
at any Mackay's book, there's alsoelements of grooming, you know, because
there are teachers that are not justteaching your students how to be you know,
adults and history, they might beteaching them other things you know,
and that you know, so,I mean, we won't go too much

(27:37):
into it, but because of thefact that the person that was accused of
Talia's murder was an older teacher,you know, you can you can pretty
much figure out that, you know, it's a school of people hitting puberty,
hitting adolescence, sexually curious, anda school like a boarding school is
a hot bit of things like that, you know, inappropriate behavior between teachers

(28:00):
and student. I will say,so, I don't know. I thought,
WHOA, that is quite an interestingkind of like correlation between the two
books. What are you actually learningthere? It is a great question,
it is. It is a reallygreat question, and I think I think
one aspect that I thought was especiallyinteresting was that so many people could go
through the same experience but then theysee it so completely differently. Like if

(28:23):
you were to ask somebody, youknow, a classmate, if you see
them if you don't see them fortwenty years, and then you talk about
what was it like for you?And then let you know, I thought
you were I thought you were areally cool person, and you were thinking
what I didn't think that you thoughtof that of me at the time,
you know, and that kind ofthing. So it's always interesting to think

(28:44):
that I saw a certain way,could it be that I remembered it differently
because of the way that I hadmisconstrued certain things? So it's it's a
center question here really. In Rebeccaabout Kai's book, she basically has her
protagonists go into it and she's verycertain right from the beginning that she knows

(29:07):
who really to blame for everything,right, And it's it's especially interesting that
she then ties this kind of preconceivedbelief to the Me too movement. Right,
Soay takes this true crime story andthen she draws in the Me too
movement, which was you know,like it was peak twenty nineteen, right,

(29:27):
that's when the Me Too movement wasat its very peak. And it's
basically talking about how people can jumpto conclusions about you know, take a
crime, take an event, takea person you know, and and say
everybody says, you know, theydid this, and and people will take
sides. People will either jump toone side or the other, even though

(29:51):
they don't have any insight into it, right, They'll just make up their
minds and just say, okay,that'll be based on which side I'm on.
I'm just gonna say, you know, like I believe this person,
and therefore everything that the other persondid I can I can twist it to
make it sound bad, you know. And I think it's a really interesting

(30:11):
way of putting it, because it'show we were deciding things. We're judging
people just based on perspective. It'sand it's not even like there's no evidence
to show either way, you know. To relate it back to Babel,
Robin kind of encounters that as well. So on one level, he is

(30:32):
seeing things from the point of viewof the privileged, right because, and
he is told time and time again, you are privileged. You are privileged.
You know, like how many peoplewould die to be in the institute
or translators. You are here toshape the world. The world will grind
to a halt without us. Youknow that self importance, you know,
instilled in him. And he alsoknows how much he has to lose,

(30:55):
right if he goes against you know, the norm basically, but then when
he meets somebody who is in thehermits society, suddenly his world just completely
gets turned upside down because he's nowlooking at it from a point of view
of the repressed, of the unprivileged, of the poor people, of the
people that have suffered because of theadvancement in technology, the advancement in silver

(31:19):
working. Right, it means thatpeople are losing jobs. And I thought
it was so smart of it becauseit links back to how now AI is
getting so smart and people are complainingthat they're going to lose their jobs because
now AI can do things faster andeventually better, you know, like writing,
writing is under threat at the momentbecause of chet to bet drawing,

(31:42):
you know, and stuff. Sothere's so many levels and layers of Babel
as well. But it also,as Diana was saying, you know,
it's also whose perspective are you lookingat the world. And it's really surprising
on how much you rather live alife dead face an inconvenient truth, isn't
it. That's that's that's a reallyyeah, that's a really important thing.

(32:07):
I think. Yeah, because yeah, that that is the struggle that Robin
has, and that's also a strugglethat Bodie has. Right, she could
say, like, you know,like you know, it's already somebody's already
been convicted for it. He's alreadyserved twenty years in jail for the murder,
Like you know, like why digup all these old stuff? Yeah?
Yeah, yeah. It made melike even in the situation, like

(32:29):
the family of the of the murderedperson, just like just let it be,
just just don't whatever wrong was done, somebody was put away and we're
just happy to just keep it thatway. But at the end of the
day, you have to ask yourself, you know, what is right and
wrong? Right, So Robin hasto decide is it better for him to

(32:50):
just be grateful for the things thathe's been given personally or does does he
have a responsibility to speak up eventhough it's going against the privileges he was
given. Right, And so bodyhas to decide that too. She has
to decide that, you know,if she has information that could change the

(33:12):
decision that was made, that changedthe conviction that was made, that she
wants to being all caught up inthis and be accused of either of being
somebody who's like just stirring up trouble, who's just you know, who's just
there to to just my some people'slife. Yeah, yeah, to go
viral or something for some reason.So there's always that kind of question,

(33:35):
right, should you stir up troublewhen things have already you know, quiet
down, and to answer yeah?I think I think when we were talking
about like how do you affect change? You know, like you were saying
that McKay's book is about the meattoo movements, so obviously change is starting
to happen, and it's kind ofinteresting. I remember it um as I

(33:59):
was reading because I read Babel firstbefore I have questions for you, and
what I was reading it. Iwas thinking that, you know Babel because
it was set in the nineteenth centuryclearly for I mean, institutes of learning
are incredibly conservative in their own kindof They have their traditions, they're very
proud of it, and they alsoknow that if you go against the status

(34:20):
school, you're going to ruffle alot of feathers, a lot of very
powerful feathers. Right. You havepeople saying that change can only come.
I mean, the book itself saysit is actually a manifesto for violence.
Right? Can change? Can realchange only come from violence? Or do
you slowly affect change by being partsof the establishment and slowly change things internally?

(34:42):
And then when you're looking at Granbyas a school, right, and
how the students are different the studentsthat she was teaching, and how in
more inclusive they were, you cansay that change does happen. It just
happens really really slowly, you know, And it's whether or not you have
the patience and whether your hope thatmaybe your grandchildren will have a better time

(35:05):
at it, or do you dosomething now? And I thought that was
really kind of interesting chasing these twobooks together. You know why it is
set in a learning institution? Again, I think it's because of that,
because learning institutions are very much hotbits of rebellion can come from it.
But they're also really really conservative,you know, in their own kind of
way, because they they are littlecommunities, a little microcosm of societies.

(35:30):
Right. I don't know, yeah, yeah, I know. I think
I think it's it's true that we'rekind of like fascinated with the whole situation
in schools now, But possibly itgoes back to Harry Potter, I guess
because you know, like we do, like like talking about schools and and
you're like this the whole experience ofbeing in school and having that camaraderie,

(35:52):
but at the same time, youknow, like being shaped by the policy.
Like it's something that we were alot more aware of nowadays. I
think because you know, we're allquestioning what education is nowadays, because we
really know that as a society thateducational policy is often set with the political

(36:13):
agenda in mind, right, Soit's not really something it's not really something
that just comes out of nowhere,Like you know, anything that is chosen,
there's a reason behind it. Youknow, let's just make things different,
let's just talk about history in amore inclusive way. But no,
somebody has an opinion about it andthey decide that right. And so we're

(36:35):
often told that education makes the worlda better place. But when you read
a book like Babel, the scholarsare actually the people who who are the
ones who discover the power of silver, and instead of using this power to
help the world, they're greedy.The power hoard is which is human in
nature, So instead of using thispower to help the world, they you

(37:00):
know, they just help themselves andyou know, eventually to speak, the
world worse off. So, youknow, there's always these factions in schooling.
There's always this personal agendas. It'sschools don't necessarily make things better.
Well again, like what is aneducation? Right, and I mean you

(37:20):
bringing that up. So so it'sjust interesting to note that, you know,
like in Babel, clearly in internetdoesn't exist, so you get news
really really slowly. You can bevery blinked because you don't have things at
your fingertips. Right, So theyhear of this war in China and they

(37:42):
just have to accept that whatever theyhear is the truth. And then of
course when they actually physically go there, they realize that, oh, you
know, as you were saying,perspective is different, you know, like
the Chinese have a completely different pointof view of the opium thing, the
British have a completely different view ofit. Right. But in questions for
you, you can't you don't havethat because the internet, you know,

(38:04):
constantly body her life is completely encroached, constantly by the Internet, constantly by
Twitter. And these are the challengesthat people today have. Is because you
want to shelter your kids, youwant to give them these kind of education,
as you're saying with particular, Butthen people can read all kinds of
things out there. You can't.You can't lie so easily anymore. But

(38:28):
at the same time, you alsoneed to filter outwards out there, you
know, because how many of thestuff that you read out there also lies,
you know, So I don't knowthe challenges. It's very interesting to
see how different challenges are with theyou know, the availability of social media
as opposed to absolutely have nothing,you know, you just have newspapers and
maybe a telegraph something that comes fromPapa, you know, Easiah. Yeah,

(38:52):
that's that's really true as well.We're using the internet more and more
as a form of education. Isthat I actually a positive thing? I
mean, like you could argue eitherway, right, Yeah, it is.
I just I always find it reallyfascinating, right because you and I
are the generation that also still experienceanalog. We know how it's like to

(39:15):
open books generally to look for information, while today it's really at the click
of a button. But we alsohave time to digest information, while today
people don't have enough time to digestinformation. So it's just really interesting to
think about a generation that completely wasborn in the digital age, which is

(39:36):
you know, the generation that arebecoming adults now, right, and how
I don't know. It seemed likea great time to be alive. But
at the same time, do youlose out certain things because there's no other
way that you've never never tried toexperience something a different way, or get
information or education a different way.I don't know. It's always this question,

(39:58):
right that we when we talk,but when we read books like this
that comes up. There's an especiallyfor you because you have children, you
know, so their education is verydifferent from the kind of education you went
through because of the fact that yourchildren exists in the in the internet age,
right, Yeah, that's so true, It really is true. I
think. I think the way that, like you were saying, the way

(40:19):
that we got information, like wehad to have these encyclopedias, and that
was basically that our reference books,right, because you know, if you
live in a small town in Malaysia, you don't have a great library to
go to. You basically have torely on what little bits of information you
have. And then we you know, like encyclopedias was so so important for
us that but they just don't existanymore, they're obsolete now because information is

(40:44):
so widespread, you get the oppositeproblem. It's just too much. You
don't know which ones to choose,wrong. I think that's that's that's a
good contrast between these two books aswell. I think yeah, because it's
a different education experience for both ofthem. For Babel, the world building

(41:14):
itself is incredible. So for thoseof you who love fantasy, oh,
this is a book you want toget stuck into. But if for those
of you who are not used toreading fantasy, it can feel very dense
because you have footnotes, and herfootnotes are also academic footnotes, Like she
really absolutely created an entire education system. I'm sorry, Quam, you are

(41:37):
an insane woman, but insanely brilliant, you know, But I mean the
fantis. She's also a translator herself, And when I was reading it,
I was like, going, ohmy god. If there's actually a magic
system that will completely appeal to abook nerd, it would be this magic
system because it is how good youare with words. And I was like,

(41:59):
whoa, it's just stake as inthis world. Just to give people
a little bit of a rundown.If you haven't actually read Babel and you
haven't actually heard anything much about it. So the magic system in this book
basically, it's if you have twowords from different languages and they match together,
but there's slight differences in the meaningsin their different languages, and that

(42:23):
is sort of translated into power.So language had this residual power when they're
translated. And it sounds nothing,but but you just have to read the
book and to understand, you know, how she manages to make this magic
out of it. It really ismind blowing. I tell you, what
would you call this silver punk?What punk? Because it's not steampunk,

(42:46):
but it's very much kind of likeit is steam kind of like it's in
steampunk basically, because steampunk just meansit's a world in which, you know,
it's steampowered world. Right, inthis case, instead of having steam
engine steam be the revolution, it'ssilver, silver and self punk. Yeah,

(43:06):
it becomes yeah, it's it's theit's the magic that that drive society.
So they find these match pairs ofwords from you know, either like
Chinese and English or Latin and Greekor whatever, and they use these words
um and they engrave them onto silverbars. And these silver bars have magical
properties that you can then then useto like, you know, they use

(43:30):
it to power locomotives, they useit to to like make make cure cure
people, cure people's to make tomake really incredibly top to towers, that
kind of thing. Yeah, andand and again this is another correlation to
the world that we live in now. It's the the dependence on this sort
of like technology. Yeah. Yeah, so can you imagine, like if

(43:52):
our if technology dies tomorrow, howmany things were grind to a halt.
So it's the same thing, youknow, like because they have become so
reliant on silver magic, hardly anythingworks if that doesn't work. Thought,
Wow, the parallels on what theperils of us living in this world that
we're living in and what she hascreated in this nineteenth century alternate Britain's incredible

(44:17):
because there's so many things, there'sso much cautionary tales going on in this
book. But yeah, so Iwould say it is a worthwhile book to
get stuck into, and even whenyou feel that there's just too much information,
if you push through it. Whatshe really does very well as well
is that she doesn't sacrifice character inorder to just build a world, so

(44:40):
you will actually experience a lot ofthings via you know, like Rammy and
Victor and Letty and you know,these are the friends of Robin. And
actually it's the human is the humanaspect of the book that really shines through
as well, you know, notjust the incredible magic system, so you
can't actually read it as like ahistorical novel basically. Yeah, so yeah,

(45:02):
it really brings you back into thatworld. Just everyone. Britain was
at the height of its colonial power, and I would really like to imagine
that this was a very good explanationfor why the British Empire just just really
basically lost its power so suddenly,you know, just not long after this

(45:23):
Industrial Revolution happens. So this isas good an explanation as any I think.
They end up having to rely onthe very colonies that they exploit and
and for for Kuang's language, becausethe more your language becomes very similar,
the less magic you have. Sothe more foreign the language is, the

(45:44):
more powerful the loss in translation is. So I was thinking, you know,
I can you can do a Bahasaan English bah Man, you can
do our guys. So especially becausebecause because Malay is not really a very
well known language around the world,and also that in a light based like

(46:06):
yes, it would be so wellthat there will be so many new nuances
that you could be translated into magicalpower. Right, yeah, my god.
Anyway, yes, I'm sorry,we just went into nerd fast.
How about um? Okay, Sothat is why I think you should pick
up Babel. I mean for fantasylovers. Um. You know, it

(46:27):
won the Nebula, it won theBritish Book Award. I think it won
the Locust I think, right yeah, and it's really sweeping all your speculative
fiction awards and even literary awards,and rightfully so, I think I think
it deserves a lot of what isgetting because it's ambitious, it makes you
really think, and it's also veryentertaining to read. Okay, how about

(46:52):
a Makai's book? Now, whyshould somebody read this book? There is
a very interesting way that she tellsthis story, which is basically you end
up questioning her. She is alittle bit of an unreliable narrator. I
think in a way she doesn't shedoesn't deliberately fool you. But I think

(47:15):
it's just that we fool ourselves allthe time, you know, And that's
basically the conceit in the story thatwe think that we know what we're doing
and we think that we're doing theright thing, but oftentimes we don't even
realize when we're doing something wrong.There is that that whole sense that we
don't actually know the answers. We'reworking things through ourselves, and maybe the

(47:38):
cautionary tale there is that we maybeshould pull back on, you know,
getting into like piling on people onthe internet, the kind of thing,
right if you see, like oneperson says, you know, this other
person did this to me and they'reterrible, and then suddenly that person is
just canceled. So, yeah,don't be a troll basically, Yeah,

(48:02):
I mean, like you give peoplethe benefit of doubt. On the other
hand, we can be trying tobe heroes too much, so we always
try a champion who we see asthe underdog, and that also can be
a bad thing, right, becauseyou may not know the truth of the
situation, you know. Like McKaytries to draw this parallel between our obsession

(48:28):
with true crime and with the btoo movement. Yeah, we did a
TBNT episode a while back on StaySexy and Not Get Murdered and Don't Get
Murdered, right, And this isa book written by the co host of
the podcast of the same name,And this is a memoir of sorts in
which they get into how they startedthe podcast, you know, which explores
the violent crimes that men perpetuate onwomen, and it also talks about how

(48:52):
the co host and the co author'sown experiences of sexual assault led them to
their obsession with true crime. Sothis whole thing where women are really getting
upset with true crime, and it'slike women just kind of like got carried
away with it, so they seecrime everywhere. Now there's actual statistic,
there's an actual statistic out there thatwomen are seeing more and more crime just

(49:16):
because they are they believed so muchthat everything that they see is negative.
It's just that you're being primed bythese podcasts, by these stories, you
know, just this whole obsession withthe with the with the movement that you
see crime everywhere you look. Now. So both books are cautionary tales,
and they are they are so youknow, I hadn't realized before we read

(49:43):
Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murdered howclosely the rise of the popularity of true
crime media, like the books,the TV shows, the podcast. It's
really closely tied to the me toomovement, and you could definitely say that,
you know that women they got theybecame more emboldened to speak out,
which was a good thing because youknow, we need to speak out more,

(50:04):
but it also got to the stagewhere women were ready to just be
angry. They were so angry,they were so worked up that they didn't
really stop to question what was thewhat what were the facts of the cases?
What were the truth behind everything.Our main character Body, she has
a partner who actually goes through that, you know, he gets he gets

(50:25):
questioned for something that he did andhe's like, I see completely differently.
Um, but you're just never they'rejust never given the benefits of doubt,
right, you know, this bookdeals very directly with these kind of phenomenons,
and you do see things like theonline commentaries, you know, the
obsessive followers, the people who likeobsessively talk about Talia's murder, and it's

(50:52):
it's a very unmistakable callback to thatreally popular podcast serial have you have?
Have you listened to Cyril Honey?I got caught up with them for a
while. Yeah, it's so engrossing, I tell you, when you start
listening to Cyril, it's it's it'sa true crime story, right. So
it's based on the story about umabout this this teen girl who gets burden

(51:15):
in high school and her ex boyfriendactually who happens to be a Muslim guy.
He gets put away in jail forabout twenty years, so aDNA said,
because they did this podcast that questioneda lot of things, like like
the police procedures that that you know, they went into checking up on that

(51:36):
and there were a lot of evidencethat didn't get actually put into the case.
So he actually because of this podcastand they because they questioned the procedures
that happened, he actually got releasedfrom jail. M this person actually that
rings a bell now, yeah,aDNA and said his name was so in

(51:57):
Makai's story, she points out thatin both the true crime and the me
two ways, there's this attempt tolook back into the past and usually with
biased, quite critical eyes, youknow. In this story, Bodhi's like
increasingly convinced that she knows who thereal killer is and she thinks it was
one of their teachers, right,and she believes that he was grouping and

(52:21):
sexually abusing Talia, but then herex gets canceled on social media. Like
I said, in this situation,because you know who this person is,
because you could put you know,a face to the name, you understand
that there's nuance. It's almost likea modern witch hunt kind of thing where
we kind of like everybody just thinks, okay, you know, if someone

(52:43):
says something bad about this person,he immediately needs to be canceled. He's
immediately a witch you know. Ithink she's trying to put more nuance into
that situation. Yeah, yeah,I mean, like in in a way
right as you were saying, withthe Rights or true crime podcast, true
crime things on TV, everybody seethemselves an amateur sleuth, right everybody?

(53:04):
So I don't you know detectives outthere? Yeah, I'm sure they have
people constantly questioning them all kinds ofstuff. I mean, like a lot
of TV shows are on that kindof things as well, because I write
some of them. You know,where people think that they can become,
they can solve, they can bea Poiro or Miss Marple because now they
feel that they have the tools available, and you know, you have like

(53:25):
all these shows about people harnessing powersof people all over the world to actually
investigate something for them. So yeah, it is. It is certainly a
mind field of a world we livein. But then, you know,
living in nineteenth century is not necessarilya better thing where where you are completely
kept in the dark and you haveto resort into you know, very guy

(53:49):
fox type of methods, you know. So honestly, both books have lots
of merit to it, especially ifyou enjoy they're on You're a dark academia.
You might not think that I havestance for you is dark academia,
but apparently it falls somewhere in between. Um, do we want to tell
people a little bit about other books, other academia books they might want to

(54:09):
pick up. This is something thatafter he stayed far away from because you
know, it's just like school.You haven't been about secret history, No,
I haven't, because you know,I don't want to be last school
anymore. I mean, it madeit pretty sexy, you know, because
you know, and and most ofthe time, those those original dut Academia
books are classic students. You know. Of course, if you're in a

(54:30):
magic world, they're obviously magic students, right, because again there's a certain
arcane, kind of like pursuit ofthe arcane going on here, right,
So that's Donna that Secret History.If you want to read, you know,
possibly the book that launched the genre. There's m. L. Rio.
He's got a book called If WeWere Villains. So it's about a

(54:51):
guy who was released from being inprison for ten years by the detective who
convicted him, who wants the truthand he he is in one of the
seven college students that were deeply intothe works of Shakespeare and they got very
darkly obsessed over it. If youwant something, yeah, if you want
something not so white, Marina Erquesour Share of Night. If you have

(55:17):
not read her short stories Dangerous ofSmoking in Bed, it's a really cool
collection of short stories. Her novelis Argentinian and it blends cosmic horror with
dark academia with a dash of StephenKing. So it's about Juan, who
is a man on a run froma car that has been using him since
childhood because he is a medium,and he discovers to his horror that his

(55:37):
son is also a medium. Sohe's trying to shield his son, Gasper,
from the Order. And the Orderis a collective of people that uses
the power of a medium to connectitself to a cosmic god. So it's
very large Craftian. Yeah, it'sknown as the Darkness and halfway Through.

(55:58):
So first you have your on theRun halfway through Egos into doubt academia territory
where you go into his childhood andfind out how the order came to be.
So it's a cut lots of occultWow. I don't know if you
fancy something that's not necessarily set inschool but very the academish. The Cloisters
by Katie Hayes is actually not setin a university, but actually set in

(56:20):
a New York City museum because TheCloisters, as you know, is connected
to the Mets and it concerns itselfwith a small, eccentric group of academics.
So Anne has a summer position atthe mat and came to the intention
of Patrick Rowland, the curator ofthe Gothic museum at Cloisters, and he
is obsessed with history and tarot cards. So it's a Gothic setting with a

(56:42):
fork of paranoia. That is whatthe blurb says. I have not read
this book, but I think allof these books sound very, very intriguing
if you're into that kind of genre. Right, Just thinking about school and
Occult just reminds me of like playingLuigi board in boarding school. So oh
yeah, coin, yes, don'tof us put us up, put you

(57:06):
off reading either of these books.Um, even though we've kind of like
made it sound like it's so seriousand there's so many heavy they are actually
quite interesting books on their own withoutyou know, you don't have to think
too much about them. They're interestingreads either way. Yeah, very very
worthy, very very worthy. Um. Yes, and we hope you enjoy

(57:28):
this month's challenge. Um so yeah, I think are we're gonna end this
show, Diana, you have anylast words? Um? Nope, nope,
nope, We've we've exhausted everything thatwe needed to say tonight, everybody.
Um yeah, so follow us onall our socials. We are at
tool booknet Stocking on Facebook. Weare tb Anti Potter Twitter, and we

(57:50):
are TBNTI Books on Instagram. Wedo not have a thread yet. Um
and I really I really don't knowwhether we need to have another social media
because we barely do any tick talkingor clearly we're not doing any twittering.
So so so thank you to ourstill remaining patrons, and do email us

(58:10):
at booknets talking at gmail dot comif you have any name and book recommendation
you want us to talk about sometopics. I know that our shows have
been quite sporeadic of late. It'sbeen a busy time for both me and
Dina, but we will ever sooften come back into your ear holes,
so stay with us. You know, I always think that our shows up

(58:31):
very very enlightening. Don't you thinkso, Dina? If I do say
so myself. Okay, So weleave you with this quote from the Secret
History that says there are such thingsas ghosts. People everywhere have always known
that, and we believe in themevery bit as much as homeward It,

(58:51):
only now we call them by differentnames, memory the unconscious. There you
go, another favorite topic of mine, hauntings. All right, everyone,
I hope you have a really goodJuly. You know what the mid year
is here, Dinah, happy readingeveryone, Bye,