Book Club with Julia and Victoria

Apr 05 2024 14

Book Club with Julia and Victoria Podcast artwork

Welcome to Book Club With Julia and Victoria, the podcast for book friends! If you just finished a book and HAVE to talk about it with someone, if you’re a casual reader looking for book recs, or if you’re the type of deep thinker who has formative memories of their high school English teacher, you’re in the right place. We believe a good book can come from anywhere, so we read classics and recent releases, bestsellers and little-known gems. But ultimately, this podcast is for the books we just can’t shut up about.

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Bonus: Disability Humor & Creating in Community with Steven Verdile

Julia discusses disability, comedy, creativity, and treating people like people with Steven Verdile, the founder of the disability satire publication The Squeaky Wheel.

123 Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield — Monsters of the Deep Subconscious

Julia and Victoria learn what the word “flannel” means in British English and formulate their own theories about what happened to a stranded deep-sea researcher in the devastatingly beautiful novel Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield. Views expressed on Book Club with Julia and Victoria and bookclubwithjv.com are solely those of the hosts and not necessarily those of thei

122 How High We Go In the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu — Throw the Baby

Julia and Victoria conclude that How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu is a very good book–Julia is just sad.

121 Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan — Gossip and the Grotesque

Julia and Victoria grapple with the grotesque narrative choices in Whale by Cheon Myeong-Kwan, translated by Chi-young Kim. Julia incorrectly uses the word “epigraph” when she means “epitaph” approximately 25 times.

120 Eight Billion Genies by Charles Soule & Ryan Browne — What Would You Wish For?

Julia and Victoria try to decipher the rules of Eight Billion Genies, the newest comic book series from Charles Soule and Ryan Browne, because Julia likes rules. They also learn about how one random French guy playing fast and loose with a One Thousand and One Nights translation made up most of what the “Western” world “knows” about “genies.” Tale as old as time.

119 The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber & David Wengrow— People Have Always Been People

Julia and Victoria are surprised to find hope and belonging in a new story of humanity with The Dawn of Everything by “the Davids” (Graeber and Wengrow), the anthropological clapback to Sapiens by Harrari.

118 Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu — The One with the Lesbian Vampire

Julia is truly bamboozled, Victoria embraces that she is a vampire girlie, and they both dig into the context of Joseph Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla, edited with commentary by the absolute legend Carmen Maria Machado.

117 Beyond the Story by BTS & Kang Myeong-seok — A Memoir or an Official Wiki?

A Suga bias (Julia), a Jungkook bias (special guest RJ), a V bias (special guest Adam), and a person who knows almost nothing about K-pop (Victoria) have a spirited conversation about the style and silences of Beyond the Story: A 10-Year Record of BTS by Kang Myeong-seok and translated by Anton Hur, Clare Richards, and Slin Jung. There are… emotions.

Bonus: Creativity Under Capitalism with Nate Ragolia

Julia and Victoria get into the weeds of cultivating a creative life while also having to pay bills with Nate Ragolia—writer, podcaster, and publisher at Spaceboy Books. They also decide which zoo animals they would be.

116 The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin — ‘70s Sci-Fi in Context

Exploring anarchism, feminism, and the Cold War, Julia and Victoria unpack the context of The Dispossessed by the brilliant and sassy Ursula K. Le Guin. Join for the sci-fi, stay for Barbenheimer, alien Jesus, and a confusion of Ursulas. Also Julia has minor microphone problems. (She sincerely apologizes).