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Heartbreaking Horror With C in AZ
39 Plays1 month ago
Recent Reads:
- Maria - Lessons in Chemistry by Garmus Bonnie
- C - The Witch King by Martha Wells
Book Recommendations:
- New - The Emperor and the Endless Palace by Justinian Huang
- Backlist - The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
- Local - Daniel, Deconstructed by James Ramos
Book End: Heartbreaking Horror
- Beholder by Ryan LaSala
- The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling
- Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle
Sign up for a Peoria Public Library Skills Unlocked course here - https://signup.com/client/invitation2/secure/151957540077/false#/invitation
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:19
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to the Checkout Stack, where we talk books with a new librarian every episode. I'm your host, Maria Skogin, and the world's biggest library superfan. And I'm so excited to introduce to our guest today, Cee, from Peoria Public Library in Arizona. Cee, thank you so much for being
Career Journey in Librarianship
00:00:37
Speaker
here today. Can you introduce yourself to our guests and tell us a little about you and your library?
00:00:42
Speaker
Yeah, hi. Thank you so much for having me. My name is Si. I work at the Peoria Public Library, specifically the main branch. I have been with this library, I want to say it, since 2012 is when I started, and I've worked my way up, although If we really want to get to the nitty-gritty, I was a teen volunteer in my last two years of high school, so I've been here even longer than that. So wow really, I've just i been here forever, and I started as a library page, then became library assistant, and then I got my master's, and then I became the teen librarian, specifically responsible for teen fiction, teen graphic novels, and now I've inherited adult nonfiction and adult graphic novels. so
00:01:27
Speaker
I've done a lot. I've been here for a long time. What do teenage volunteers do at your library? So it's kind of evolved over the years mostly. I started as a summer teen volunteer, which means I was responsible for a lot of the summer reading program stuff, like handing out prizes, making sure, checking off the people that hit their marks, like the registration 250, 500, 750 points.
00:01:54
Speaker
And that's what I mostly did, and that's what a lot of our teen volunteers do now. That's where we get our majority. Nowadays, we have them do a little bit more. We have our year-round volunteers, and they help out with some programs, which is always an amazing help. We love our volunteers at the Peoria Man Library. We genuinely couldn't exist without them. And yeah, that's what that's mainly what they do, help out with programs. And in the summer, it's programming assistance, and then the summer reading program, which is always a huge thing for us here. so We're glad for the help. Cool. Did you know when you were a teenage volunteer that this is what you wanted to do professionally? I did not actually. i When I was a teen volunteer back in high school, i I kind of didn't know what I wanted to do. And I actually went to college for two years to be in veterinary science.
00:02:46
Speaker
And then it wasn't for me, so I came back because I went to U of A, which is and it's funny because I got my master's from U of A, but I came back from U of A, came back up to Phoenix, and then I went to ASU, got my but a bachelor's degree in English because but if i Well, even going further back, I was always helping out in my grade school library too, so I probably should have known earlier. This is what I wanted to do. like They full-on had me checking out books for my my fellow students in eighth grade, seventh grade, so I probably should have known that I was going to end up in the library somehow. but
00:03:26
Speaker
I don't know. I just, I wanted to try something. Yeah. Sometimes it's hard to see those things about yourself. Like you look back and you're like, Oh yes, all these steps led me to
Personal Reading Experiences
00:03:35
Speaker
where I am today. But at the time you just had no idea. Yeah, I had no idea. I was always like the top reader in my, cause we always had those contests in grade school who was the top reader. And that was always me. I was also a top reader in elementary school. I actually, one time,
00:03:53
Speaker
I had a teacher I had read for like eight hours straight on a Saturday and we were supposed to record our reading minutes and I had recorded it and my teacher didn't believe me and then he asked me he was like how many hours is this many minutes and I didn't know off the top of my head so he like called my parents and they were like no really she did that Yeah, do you think I would lie about this? Yeah. Those weird little reader kids. Yeah, that's what I remember doing that in my room too, just just posting up reading anything I could find, some of the old science fiction that my dad would give me. I was really into manga, so I had my own manga collection too. Just anything I could find, I was just always reading. And even right now I have three TBR piles, which is excessive, I will admit.
00:04:44
Speaker
I have one at work, which is right over here. I have one with fiction. I have a manga and graphic novel reading TBR pile at home and a fiction TBR. So its I still read probably too much. I like that you have separate piles for the different genres. That's fun. Yes, because it would be as tall as me if I didn't separate them a little bit.
Book Reviews: 'Lessons in Chemistry' and 'Witch King'
00:05:11
Speaker
All right, well, let's jump into our recent reads. I can kick us off. I recently read Lessons in Chemistry by Garmis Bonney. And I'm assuming, C, of course, you've heard of this book because everyone has heard of this book. Yes, I can i can see the cover so clearly.
00:05:29
Speaker
Yeah, so i this won the Goodreads Choice Award of the year a few years ago. I can't remember when. And I had heard it multiple times pitched to me. And i just it didn't sound interesting to me. So the plot line that I've heard from people is it's about a chemist who becomes a like celebrity chef on TV and feminism. And I was like, OK, like that's interesting.
00:05:58
Speaker
button After reading it, I don't think that really captures the book. So here's my personal pitch for Lessons in Chemistry. Lessons in Chemistry is a soap opera. There are orphans. There are true loves. There's tragic deaths. There's people returning from past the grave. There's like villains who are so evil that the only point of having them in the story is to make you hate them.
00:06:24
Speaker
And all of that is taking place on a backdrop where you're in the 1960s with a chemist who's facing sexism. But like the real driving plot for us is that it is a soap opera in writing, and that's what makes it so fun.
00:06:38
Speaker
so should a led they shouldve led with that in the Thank you. but Yeah, so it was a super delightful read. And the other thing I really liked about it, i'm a big I'm a pet owner. I have three dogs and two cats. And there is a delightful pet relationship in this book as well between the main character and her dog. So that was really fun too. But yeah, if you have heard of Lessons in Chemistry and not thought it sounded that interesting, that's my pitch to you. And that was, again, Lessons in Chemistry by Garmis Bonney.
00:07:10
Speaker
have to check that out. Have you read it yet? I have not but now I want to because yeah the the blurb didn't I think they didn't sell it right I think you they should get your blurb on the back of it because that'll really get people are reading it I feel like. Yeah I was thinking I was imagining like is it Hidden Figures was the book about the women who do math yeah for yes that's what I was imagining when people told me about Lessons in Chemistry and it is nothing like that. Okay yeah because it sounds a bit I don't want to say dry, but a bit more intellectual than what that what you were... Not not that anti-intellectual books are... You know what I mean. You know what I mean. Yes. Yes. This is much more about the emotions and the drama. like The science is very, very light. It's like it's not the plot driving is like understanding the science. The plot driving is the massive amounts of drama. Which I love. Yes. I live for drama.
00:08:07
Speaker
All right, what was your recent read? My recent read was Witch King by Martha Wells. Now I had never read, I know Martha Wells has that other series Murderbot, but I, it's one of those series that, do you ever have a book series that you know, I'll get to it eventually. I'll read it when the time is right, but you just, you'll feel it in your bones once it's time to read it. I feel like that's where I was at with that Murderbot series. I know I'm gonna like it, but I haven't read it yet.
00:08:34
Speaker
but I saw Witch King and admittedly I was taken in by the cover. It's a beautiful cover. So I said, okay, I'll try this one. And then when I started reading it, I it was i loved it so much. So it's about, it's it's set in two different time periods, right? um It's about this a demon named Kai who It's sometimes hard to intro people into this story because the two timelines are different, but essentially it starts in medias res. Kai is has been murdered, trapped in a watery prison grave, and he wakes up because as he is a demon, his body is in the underworld.
00:09:22
Speaker
he so he he takes human bodies essentially and he uses them to operate in the mortal world they have killed his mortal body he awakens in a watery grave which prevents demons from using their magic and it's essentially half of it is him finding out who killed him why did they kill him he gets another body very soon after the beginning and then the second time period is him before leading up to how he becomes the the titular Witch King, and it's set in this world where this clan has a sort of a deal with the demons, where when one of their, I should say the clan is a human clan, and when one of their people is dying or dead, a demon can come and inhabit their body, and they become a part of the clan. So that's originally how he came to exist in the mortal world, and the second timeline is him
00:10:15
Speaker
just operating in that mortal world making a found getting a found family it's got a big emphasis on found family and the things that one sacrifices for love and the people that you love because mortality doesn't mean much to Kai but the mortal people that he interacts with mean a great deal to him so that is that's at the heart of it I don't want to give too much away because I want to let people read it for themselves but But I really enjoyed it. Kai is a wonderful, wonderful character. There's a little bit of, every once in a while, Martha Wells will throw in a bit of humor that feels very, I don't know, it feels very human. It's not so much like a quip, but just a very human bit of of hilarity. And I really enjoyed that because it made the book, it made the characters feel really real to me.
Recommended Reads: 'The Emperor in the Endless Palace' & 'The Song of Achilles'
00:11:10
Speaker
And I don't know, I just really liked it. It was very, it's a very high fantasy kind of, and it definitely does the sink or swim kind of thing that a lot of fantasy does, where they just start telling you names and places, and you're gonna figure it out as the story progresses, but they don't explain anything to you at the beginning, so. So write it down. Take notes. So write it down. it It does have a nice, like, gallery of characters at the beginning, so you can see name what they are, name what they are, and they'll give you break it up for the timelines, too. Oh, cool.
00:11:40
Speaker
So I highly recommend it. I really enjoyed it. I loved Witch King. It's so good. And there's a sequel coming out next year, which I was very glad for because it kind of left a lot of questions unanswered. So yes, there's a sequel coming. So you get to continue it. I can't quite tell from your description how dark is it because you're saying demons and that sounds dark, but you're also saying like found family and funny. It it strikes a the demons aren't necessarily evil they just refer to them as demons and there's more angelic figures in the story as well and arguably those are the bad guys so
00:12:20
Speaker
They're demons kind of a name only. I will say that there there is a lot of There's dark there's darkness. There's there's murder. There's enslavement. There's body horror after a certain uh sequence of events kai gets a new body in the past timeline and this body is uh what they call in the in the book an expositor which is a person that they They have magical ability, but their magical abilities are powered by pain and death.
00:12:52
Speaker
Oh boy. So those victims yes, it is dark. And these expositors, they create wells of power by committing mass atrocities and killing a lot of people. So Kai does not opt into that. He uses his own pain to use his magic in this new body. So I, I just love the character. And so, yeah, so it does have, I'd say dark moments and very intense moments. And, but it does have.
00:13:22
Speaker
lightheartedness and humor and the cast of characters that surrounds Kai he has a witch best friend and she's she's so cool and the witches in this series their powers are more like visceral and intuitive and they use more nature stuff so their their magics don't take any of the the pain and the sacrifice that the the Expositor's magic does so I just really liked it, and and and it's a very good book as far as representation of like queer identities, because Kai will often be in bodies that are not traditionally, quote-unquote, male, but he goes through, he consistently has he-him pronouns. His friend, his witch friend is married to a woman. It's just, it's a very good book. It's just so good.
00:14:17
Speaker
Wonderful. And that was The Witch King by Martha Wells. Next up, we are going to go into our recommendation segment of the show. So first, we're going to talk about a new book. This is something fresh off of the publishing list. What do you have for us today, Si? So I have a book called The Emperor in the Endless Palace by Justinian Huang. It's another, I think I've got a little bit of a theme here. This is another book that has multiple timelines in it.
00:14:46
Speaker
it actually has three one is modern day another is in 4 BCE China and another one is 1740 China and it is essentially it's it's marketed as a romance but I wouldn't I've seen a lot of people be disappointed in the book because they expected a romance so I would like to say if you go into this expecting a romance You're going to be, you're not going to like what you find, but it is more of a story of reincarnation. These two individuals meeting across multiple timelines and it's, it's a doomed love every time because there's always, there's a love triangle that it gets involved in each one of these three timelines. And the third person in the triangle is always out to betray them or undermine their relationship somehow.
00:15:44
Speaker
And I believe that one the timeline that is set in 4 BCE China was actually based off of a real emperor and his I don't know. I think he was an advisor who worked his way up through the court Yeah, they became this really really big power couple and I forget their names, but this emperor essentially I believe he almost brought down the dynasty because of his love for this this other man in in the the court sphere almost. So I believe the author Justinian Huang started with those two and kind of built this cycle of reincarnation and betrayal and
00:16:29
Speaker
and doomed love. And it's more about the similarities and differences between each of these timelines and how they keep being drawn to each other in each of these different timelines and how each time they are doomed.
00:16:48
Speaker
to to fail and it's it's not a happy book. It's definitely not, I know that a lot of romances market themselves as needing that happy ever after to be a quote unquote romance, but they do not get a happy ever after in any of these timelines unfortunately. That is like the one thing people know about romances is that they're supposed to have a happy ending. So it's funny that they chose to market it that way when it doesn't have that.
00:17:13
Speaker
Yeah, because I sometimes like to read reviews after I've read a book once I've gotten my own opinion said, I'll go out and see what other people are saying. And so many people were disappointed at the lack of romance in it. And it's a beautiful book. It's very, I believe the author has a background in screenwriting. So it's a very lush visual book. He does an amazing job at describing the different settings because the modern day one it's very party based they're very much in high society with all these parties and and drugs and drinking and such and and he really paints a picture of this like debaucherous world and then you really get a sight into these more ancient times because even with the verbiage and the way he describes like certain buildings or
00:18:06
Speaker
or the way you look at someone and like the qualities that he's admiring in the other romantic partner. It even varies from the timelines to the timelines. They use more floral language in the the like the 4 BCE timeline. And I don't know, it's just a very lush book, but it's definitely not a romance. It's very, it's very beautiful, very heartbreaking. It's got a lot of wonderful Chinese folklore that I had never heard of before. a certain like medicinal concepts, certain gods and spirits and creatures that I had never, which I was always excited to learn about. But it's, yeah, it's just a beautiful book of reincarnation and being drawn to people who might not be great for you or you might not be great for them, who knows? Yeah, I recommend that book a lot.
Spotlight on Local Author James Ramos
00:18:58
Speaker
That was The Emperor and the Endless Palace by Justinian Huang.
00:19:03
Speaker
Next up, we're going to go into a backlist title. So the purpose of this recommendation is to hopefully find something that you might actually be able to check out from your library, or if you have to put on a hold, it won't take months and months and months. So see what is our backlist put pick today.
00:19:21
Speaker
So I have brought a backlist pick that I know is very popular in I'd say like the book talk the TikTok conversations but anytime I have recommended it to or asked my co-workers or a patron that I've assisted about this book no one has ever read it so I don't know if just all the the internet people are reading it but no one who is not as terminally online as I am. I've not read it but I want to talk about this Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. This is probably the book that I have bought the most times and spent the most money on. it I believe I have four versions of it. One of them was over a hundred dollars with like gilded pages, illustrations. It's beautiful. This is the book I bought the most because I have a reading copy
00:20:09
Speaker
semi-show copy, a show copy, and a don't crack the spine of this copy ever.
Exploring Heartbreaking Horror in Literature
00:20:15
Speaker
Is that the gilded pages? Yes, four levels of this book, but I checked, we've got it on our shelf and it's essentially the story of Achilles and Patroclus. It's the Trojan War from the Iliad and Miller was wanting to talk more about the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus which was a very big factor in the Trojan War. Patroclus was kind of a minor character in this story but he had such big impact and there's so much dialogue around Achilles and Patroclus' relationship that she wanted to dive into it a bit more and get a bit more personal with it because
00:21:02
Speaker
There's a lot of Greco-Roman scholars do agree with the idea that Achilles and Patroclus were romantically involved. It's never explicitly talked about by Homer in The Iliad, but there's evidence specifically, like, I believe there's ah textual evidence of Achilles talk about Patroclus' quote, frequent kisses. And Achilles did after Patroclus, I mean, this is a little bit spoilers, but Patroclus dies. And Achilles keeps Patroclus' body in his tent. He refused to let him be burned. And then he requested that their ashes were mixed together after he died.
00:21:41
Speaker
So there's there's evidence there that they were a bit more involved, and this is just a sort of a more character-focused display of their relationship and how the Trojan War proceeded from their perspectives.
00:21:59
Speaker
I don't think you can give spoilers to stories that have been around since before anyone listening to this was born. Yeah, I know. I was wondering, I'm usually a bit more open with spoilers about this one because, yeah, it's been quite a long time. The story's out there. Yeah, the story's out there. If you haven't heard about it, I mean, it's more about the journey than the destination for this one. It is. Specifically, because it's absolutely heartbreaking. It's so beautiful.
00:22:25
Speaker
in the way it describes their evolving relationship and so heartfelt. I'm always a sucker for stories about people who were great friends as children as children and and then as they grow up and become adults their relationships deepen and they've got that bond. Patroclus was always with Achilles. They were always together And it's just a beautiful, it's a beautiful story and you see Achilles' humanity, how he's torn between wanting to fight and his destiny and his want to remain with Patroclus and just avoid the world. Because is it's handed down in a prophecy that Achilles is destined to be killed by Hector, who's on the other side of the Trojan War and he says, oh, then I just won't go out and fight Hector.
00:23:17
Speaker
And it seems kind of cut and dry, but then events transpire and he throws himself into fighting Hector. So it's just, i say yeah, you can't fight fate. That's one thing that, that really gets hammered into your head in this book is you can't fight fate, at least not when the great gods are involved.
00:23:36
Speaker
Yep. Yep. I will give a big plus one to this recommendation. I, um, when I got married, instead of having a bachelorette party, I had what I called a book threat party, which is basically where I made everyone in my family gift me a book. That sounds amazing. And my, my sister's boyfriend gave me the song of Achilles and it wasn't something I was planning on reading until he gifted it to me and I loved it. So yep. I will plus one that recommendation.
00:24:06
Speaker
So good. Okay, so just to recap, that was the Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. Next, we are going into our local author recommendation. So the point of this is to highlight authors in the communities that our librarian is in. So C, is your author from the state, from the city? They are, well, technically, they're a local author. So they were originally born, I believe, in Minnesota.
00:24:35
Speaker
Yes, Minnesota, but they are now happily living in Arizona, and they identify themselves as as an Arizona in their bio, so I'm considering them a local author. Yes, totally. And their names is, their name is James Ramos, and the book is Daniel Deconstructed. It is a teen book. I'm a teen librarian, so I have of course had to bring in a couple of teen books. This one, it's such a cute book. It's a story about an autistic queer teen who he's very used to masking in a non-autistic a world that's not meant for autistic people. And he has a friend named Mona who's very cool, very very sociable. I'd say he relies on her to sort of
00:25:22
Speaker
be a bit of a buffer in the world. He he he looks to her for how to act because um I'd say I connected with this book a lot too. I'm on the spectrum. So I saw a lot of myself in this main character and how sometimes the non-autistic world or the allistic world is the is the word for that.
00:25:40
Speaker
is not built for us and sometimes how it's difficult to understand the ins and outs. So I connected with this character a lot. and It's about the book is about him. He's in high school. He loves larping live action role playing. He's a photographer. He's a film buff. And a new kid comes into school named Gabe. And he is Gabe is is so pretty and so handsome and he loves Gabe but he assumes that Gabe will never be interested him surely he would be more interested in his friend Mona who is way more
00:26:15
Speaker
with it and and cool and sociable but then as the book progresses Gabe does end out liking the main character's name is Daniel. He ends out liking the main character a lot more so it's the sort of love triangle but a love triangle of the main character's own making because he assumed that he assumes that Gabe would not be interested in him but Gabe really likes him for who he is and I thought this book it's so cute. It's a beautiful like autistic queer representation kind of turns that love triangle on its head. And I know I was as I do I was reading the reviews for it after I read it and some people said that the book to them seemed a little preachy. As far as like
00:27:03
Speaker
social issues went and issues of racism the main character is non-white but I saw it coming from an autistic standpoint as a person who is used to having to explain themselves a lot and having to be very clear so it was more to me than the main character even the author because sometimes you can I believe the author is also autistic James Ramos I saw it as more over explaining in order to not be misinterpreted or to make sure that their points and their perspectives were understood as an autistic person. so That is such a good lens to look at that through. so Some people complained
00:27:49
Speaker
because it seemed like it was being preachy. But from your perspective, it was the author being how they are in real life, which is trying to be very clear because they're used to being misunderstood. Yes, misunderstood. And that's how I find that autistic people communicate. It's it's more straightforward. Sometimes the ins and outs like the unspoken rules of communication sometimes don't make much sense.
00:28:16
Speaker
to us and so I just saw it as a person being very clear and and just articulating in a way that they would speak or think and so I really I just thought this book was it's very cute it's very nerdy a lot of film stuff a lot of live-action role playing because the main character Daniel and Gabe they meet in there in their live-action role playing cyberpunk futuristic it's just a lovely little book Awesome. And that was Daniel Deconstructed by James Ramos, who was a Minnesotan like myself and now resides in Arizona. Next up, we're going to go into our bookend. So this is where she has picked a topic and is going to share three books on that topic. What is our topic? So our topic is Heartbreaking Horror. these are
00:29:12
Speaker
horror books that have I'd say either a tragic romance or very emotional back like backstories or it's just it's not there to just scare you it's also to make you feel so much is what I'd say.
00:29:32
Speaker
Okay, so horror books that are also some kind of love plot line or emotional. Okay, yeah fun. What is the first book in our bookend? So the first one is going to be Beholder by Ryan Lasala. This one, as soon as I finished it, I ran out and bought a copy because I could not exist without having this in my own personal collection. It's a story about a young man named I believe it's pronounced Aethan. It's Aethanassios. It's his full name, but he goes by Aethan. And he is an orphan raised by his Yaya. They are, I believe, of Greek origin. And he was orphaned because his parents died in a fire when he was very young. And they were a family of art handlers. That comes up a lot in the book. there This book revolves around the arts and sculptures and paintings. But they were a family of art handlers.
00:30:28
Speaker
And another fun little fact, Aethin has the ability to, when he looks into a mirror, he can see the recent past in that mirror. Anything that happened around that mirror or in the same room, he can sort of see into that past. And his Yahya tells him that it's a curse and that he is it's not good for him to use this ability, so he tries to avoid mirrors whenever he can.
00:30:57
Speaker
and that's sort of the the basic framework of the book that he's not to use his powers and i believe it takes place in new york city if i remember correctly but and the I'll give kind of a bit of the start of the book because that's critical to it. He sneaks into this high art party and it's this like penthouse soiree for New York City's elite and then he goes to the bathroom and then while he's in the bathroom washing his hands a boy comes into the bathroom and says don't open the door and then he locks the door on him.
00:31:34
Speaker
and then outside he starts hearing screaming people trying to get frantically into the door and then when he finally comes out of the bathroom after the ruckus has calmed down he finds the entire party everyone in the party has died and they are organized into this grotesque sculpture so this one's definitely it's I could see it so clearly but yeah when he comes out everyone is dead they are organized into this grotesque sculpture and then he is the only one who's been left alive he doesn't know where that boy went he doesn't know why he warned him to not come out but he is now the prime suspect for why all these people have died in this party so he's kind of on the run
00:32:20
Speaker
and after this and he has he's trying to figure out what happened who is this boy what's going on and it's a lot of i'd say that this one was actually technically a teen book but i would say some of the horror scenes were a bit i could see them in an adult fiction book and and i'd count this one as the heartbreaking horror because a little bit of spoilers he does eventually find that boy again and I can't go too much into it, but I will say that this book did not end the way that I hoped, but I believe it ended in a way
00:32:56
Speaker
that was good for the story and the ending fit sometimes i think it's good for us to not get what we want in books because i don't know if i agree with that i'd probably agree with it but it's hard here it's hard when i ended the book i was distraught because i didn't get the ending that i wanted but then i i i sat on it i let it percolate and i thought but this is a good ending. And that's why I thought I could see this book so clearly as a film because it was an ending that I could see in, I'm a big horror buff too. I watch a lot of horror movies and it was an ending that I could see in a very good horror movie as well. Okay. Like cinematic. Yes. It's very cinematic. I'd say it's definitely not, wouldn't call it a romance. There's not the happily ever after ending, but it is,
00:33:51
Speaker
It's beautiful, it's a supernatural mystery, evil art in New York City, body horror. It was very good. Art, murder, and mirrors. Yep, don't look into the mirrors. Don't look in the mirrors. Okay, that was Beholder by Ryan Lassella. What is the second book in our bookend?
00:34:15
Speaker
So the second book is The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling, and it features one of my biggest fears, cave diving. Oh, yeah, that's a good one. So it's about a woman named Jire who takes on or kind of cons her way into this mining job. It's more sci fi. She cons her way into this solo mining job because she needs money to find her mom who abandoned her for a better life off planet. And she takes this job. She thinks it's going to be really quick.
00:34:45
Speaker
just mapping mineral deposits and and she'll be in and out to get her you know paycheck. Once she gets in there though, she finds out that it's a lot more intense that she had originally expected. She has one handler on the surface who is continually not giving her the full truth. And another thing about this book is in order to do the cave diving, essentially Jair has to be locked into a suit And by locked in, she is locked in. Her full body processes are routed through this suit. She no longer has to eat, use the restroom, anything like that. It is all handled by the suit. Her bowels are hooked up to it. So she is truly encased in this suit, which is a part of the horror part. And her handler above ground
00:35:36
Speaker
sometimes does dubious things like when she starts to panic or she says no i'm turning back i don't like this her handler occasionally will i'd say put some like anesthesia in her to make her calm down oh my god so she is it's a very claustrophobic book very claustrophobic i you can catch me in cave diving i'm honest when i say it's one of my biggest fears But I put it under heartbreaking horror because Jire and her handler, whose name is M, they do develop a sort of a relationship over the the length of this book. It's very introspective. They both sort of confront traumas with each other, and they get to know each other very well. And and yes, M does a couple of
00:36:29
Speaker
not so cool things with driving as far as her being locked in the body but but they do get very close and we get a good look into both of these women psyches and yeah it's cave diving it's hallucinations it's mysterious creatures underground it's oh and i forgot to mention that em had also sent down at had been interacting with at least 30 other cave divers and they had all passed so while Jair is proceeding through this cave diving she's also encountering the bodies of the past expeditioners oh my gosh so yes so it's very very horror very i i swear i
00:37:14
Speaker
read this one the last third of it. I read it all in one night, way past my bedtime. I just couldn't stop because at that point, the book starts to accelerate so much that you literally can't put it down. it It's so good. It's so claustrophobic and intense, but very good. Nothing better than a book that keeps you up past your bedtime. yes right Well, that sounds like really Terrifying like I can feel it in my body I'm like crunching up because I'm imagining being in a cave in a suit and running out of things and Caitlin Starling does an amazing job of making you feel like you are Locked in there with gyre you are locked into that suit and you're squeezing yourself to these little passageways. It's It's so tense
00:38:02
Speaker
Yeah. ah Okay. That was The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling. What is the last book on our bookend? So the last one is Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle. It is a story about, I believe she's in her early 20s. It's a girl named Rose. And she lives in this town that is very evangelical, very very deeply religious I don't think they ever put an official name on it but it's just very evangelical and a big part of the town is this conversion camp and they have ads for it running in the town and everything like that and
00:38:41
Speaker
Rose, her name's Rose, she starts to notice that the commercials for the for the conversion camp, everyone in the commercials for it is from the town. and she But when she talks to people about it,
00:38:58
Speaker
she realized no one seems to remember their time in much detail in the conversion camp and then as she's sort of starting to develop this Rose is also starting to become more aware of her feelings for one of her friends her female friends I should say and then once she starts noticing this she starts seeing this strange woman far off in the distance just staring at her she's got these these this pallid face this lank hair big eyes and this woman is just staring at her and that every time rose has thoughts about her friend the woman gets closer and closer and closer no yes and so she's trying to repress repress yes that's what it is it's and so she's trying to
00:39:49
Speaker
shin She's getting hints in her own brain that she might not 100% remember what her past life has been. and Not past life, but her recent past. She might not remember everything in detail. So she starts to investigate this conversion camp a little bit more and and starts to unravel the mystery. And it's very much religious trauma and homophobia and body horror.
00:40:19
Speaker
very much body horror. There's a big part of it. If you ever see the cover, there's a woman screaming and bugs are coming out of her mouth. That happens in the book. So if you've got yeah five anything like that, it's it's it's a lot of that in there. Yeah, when she starts to think about her friend too, she along with the woman showing up, she also uh, throws up bugs, which is gross. And there's another mysterious woman that starts showing up and Rose feels a connection to her, but she doesn't remember why she has a connection to her. It's, I saw this book described as, I don't know if you're familiar, but there's a movie, a queer classic called, but I'm a cheerleader. It's, I've seen this book described as that movie, but horror. So
00:41:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's it's a really good book. it's It's a shorter book, so it's a quicker read. And it was another one that I could, it was very cinematic in the way that it was described. I could see so many of the beats, the story beats in like a horror a traditional horror film, but it's got that heart of Rose rediscovering herself and rediscovering who and what she loves and trying to fight for trying to fight for it.
00:41:35
Speaker
so Yeah. That's a really good setting for a horror novel, like a conversion therapy camp. I've never heard of a book like that before, but it makes sense when you hear it like, oh yeah, that that could set you up for a lot of freaky yeah stories. Yeah. And it's very, the I described the horror in this book as creeping too, because it starts out very normal. she's just Rose just lives in her house with her mom and dad and they They're very traditional American nuclear family kind of thing, but then everything starts to unravel and sort of like the seams of this perfect town and this perfect this perfect house and this perfect family starts to unravel and it's just, it creeps up on you and it's so good. Awesome. I think the other interesting thing about this book is the author, Chuck Tingle, is kind of famously anonymous, right? Yes.
00:42:30
Speaker
Yep. So yeah, that's a pseudonym, but we don't really know who the author is. So that's kind of an interesting piece about the story, too. Yeah, and and known for for certainly not this genre of books Chuck Tangle is known for. And I believe this is one of their first forays into this kind of horror. And I'd say it's its highly recommended. It's amazing that they didn't write more of it before.
Library Programs and Conclusion
00:42:59
Speaker
Yeah. i I love people. That was Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle. And that actually wraps up all of our book recommendations for today. So see, I wanted to leave a little timed if there was anything you wanted to plug for your library in Peoria. Um, we've got so much going on. I'm actually recently, uh, did a grant for life skills classes. It's called skills unlock.
00:43:27
Speaker
so it's essentially a series of classes that's going to be running through May of next year and each month with a different theme on just for people in their late teens maybe early 20s who maybe don't know for example like financial help, taxes, basic self-defense, self-confidence, it's just what uh the what we would traditionally call quote adulting classes but i think the teams would laugh me out of the building if i said adulting in a program title we call that skills unlocked i refuse to be that millennial that used adulting in a program title okay okay um but so we've got that going on and that's amazing we also we have so many programs we have
00:44:15
Speaker
are online it's it's gale adult at gale excel adult high school where people in arizona who maybe have not gotten their who are over 21 and have not gotten their high school degree they can it's all online it's all free you can just click the link on our website and you can get a high school diploma so that's another thing we're really pushing because it's such an amazing resource and i believe we've already had about seven people thus far get their high school diplomas So I think it's just an awesome resource. And I believe anyone in Arizona can use it. And if your library, if you're in another state and your library doesn't have it, maybe ask them about partnering with Gail, because I know we we use a lot of Gail's databases. So it was it was a no brainer and people love it and they need it. And I think it's an excellent resource.
00:45:08
Speaker
Those are both amazing programs. that's Those are really cool that your library has them. For people young people who are interested in the life skills courses, where can they find where what classes are coming and what dates they happen?
00:45:23
Speaker
It is all just on our website under you can find it under both the teen and adult programming headings. And we've got I've got a nice sign up link that gives you all the dates and everything that we're going to be doing on each of those dates. And we've still got plenty of room in all of them. I think I have a 25 person cap for each class and there's two a month.
00:45:45
Speaker
So we have plenty of room and you can see what we've got going on. We're partnering with a lot of people around the city. we Our class just this last month was our representatives from the HR department here in the city of Peoria came in to talk about job readiness and interview skills and how to present yourself and and all of the feedback I got on that class was that people really enjoyed it and they were going to take a lot of those skills home. so We try and bring in people from the community whenever we can because we like building those relationships with with our local business owners or people who provide support to the community. We like to to emphasize partnerships with them. So but yeah, it's all on our website. We've got everything that and more. i We have Dungeons and Dragons. We have video games. We have
00:46:36
Speaker
So many story times we have crafting, we have we have almost everything you could ever want here at the library, not to brag or anything. but Oh, do it, brag! That is amazing. Well, we will link, we will have links to all those things in the show notes if you're interested in checking out the calendar or any of the programs that C mentioned today.
00:46:57
Speaker
Okay. Um, this has been a wonderful episode. If you enjoyed listening, please give us a five star review and maybe share the show with a friend to help us grow our numbers. Uh, if you are a librarian and you're interested in being on the show, please reach out to me at the checkout stack at gmail dot.com. Alrighty everybody. Thank you for joining us today. Now go forth and use your public library.