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50th episode spectacular
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This week, we're celebrating our 50th podcast episode! Join us for a retrospective into the inception of Novel Feelings, as we celebrate what we've achieved in four years, highlight some of our favourite memories, and revisit some of our best (and worst) books we've covered on the podcast. Plus, you're invited to join our new Facebook community - where we'll be posting announcements, chatting about what we're currently reading, and hosting future book club chat.
Find Novel Feelings via:
- Our NEW Facebook community: facebook.com/groups/novelfeelings
- Our website: novelfeelings.com
- Instagram: @novel_feelings
- Join our 2024 Reading Challenge on The Storygraph.
Has Novel Feelings entertained you, or taught you something? Show your support with a once-off donation by buying us a coffee: buymeacoffee.com/novel_feelings. All proceeds go towards making the show stronger and more sustainable for the future.
Our podcast was recorded on Wurundjeri Land, which is home to both of us in Naarm/Melbourne. Always was, always will be Aboriginal Land.
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Transcript
50th Episode Celebration
00:00:03
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Knuffle Feelings, where two psychologists take a deep dive into your favourite books. I'm Priscilla. And I'm Elise, and today we're celebrating our 50th episode excluding trailers and announcements. I wooed too quickly. I will insert some applause here. yeah Thank you, editing the lead. Yeah, 50 episodes. That's pretty cool. um This is going to be a quick celebration and retrospective of what we've achieved in four years and 50 episodes. Yeah. So flashback time, and and I guess, for those that have not been with us from the start, which is probably going to be most so listeners, to be honest. that If you have been with us from the start, we love you and you're amazing. Thank
Engaging with Listeners
00:00:49
Speaker
you.
00:00:49
Speaker
But before we go into a bit of a retrospective and celebration, we have one announcement to make, which is really exciting, which is that we are going to have an online community i starting up after this episode. So we have created a Facebook group.
00:01:05
Speaker
and We know Facebook is not the coolest platform, but we also know a lot of our audience probably don't have a Discord and Twitch accounts or want to join up on Patreon or buy me a coffee or all those other platforms. So hopefully most of you have an old Facebook account, even if it's just collecting dust.
00:01:22
Speaker
But we are basically wanting to bring a place together for some of our, uh, you know, engaged or less engaged followers and community members to have a bit of a group chat going, um, to talk about some of the books that we're covering on the podcast, books that you're reading in general, things that you want to talk about, recommend to others, uh, you know, Q and A's with us to places where we can post content aside from just our regular like Instagram.
00:01:49
Speaker
feeds. So yeah, learn to have a bit of a chat. Yeah. And it will be free to join. If you're listening to this episode, the group will be public and you can actually look us up. um we It will be called Novel Feelings Community. So if you put that in the search bar on Facebook. Yep. We'll link to it below as well. To facebook dot.com slash groups slash novel feelings. Hopefully you'll be able to find it with those. Yes. Let us know if you have any trouble getting there. Yeah. So please join us if you're keen.
00:02:19
Speaker
Okay, so let's have a little bit of a journey through the history of novel
Origins and Evolution
00:02:24
Speaker
feelings. We'll keep this brief flashback to 2020. The worst kind of flashback.
00:02:32
Speaker
So I need one. COVID lockdown. um I'm starting my PhD. I am roping in Priscilla to be creating a podcast. Yes, because I don't know enough about podcasts and part of my PhD is focused on podcast creation. And I'm like, Priscilla.
00:02:52
Speaker
We're talking about book yeah and mental health a lot. Do you want to maybe start a podcast with me? And you don't know what you're signing yourself up to, but you say yes, and I'm so grateful.
00:03:03
Speaker
Well, you know, we just I'm just here for the ride. And so and then we picked six diverse books that include mental health representations, including both popular and less well-known books and authors located in Australia internationally. We bought mics. We were making do with what we had before we got our good high-quality golden microphones, but yeah, we we got our equipment.
00:03:30
Speaker
i taught myself how to use Adobe Audition, which is way more complicated than it needed to be. yeah We create some graphics, we brainstorm names, ah mind readers was a great option, but sadly it was taken, ended up going with noble feelings, podcast podcast was born. So in that first time point. We had six review episodes. It was just the two of us. And a lot more has happened since then. So we've had three seasons of book reviews. We started doing interviews um back in I think 2021. We had our very first author interview and then they gradually built up over time. We started building relationships with publishers as well, which was really cool. Now we get sent books, which never happened. Very exciting still. Sometimes we get sent too many books. I mean, please don't stop.
00:04:23
Speaker
publish yes don't um Yeah, sometimes we bite off a little bit more, we can chew with our capacity to review them in a timely fashion. But we do our best for two people that work full time now. Yes, absolutely. And you know, we bite more than we can chew because we're overly excited about all these books and authors and opportunities.
00:04:45
Speaker
Yeah, at the end of Season 2, which was in October 2021, we had a bit of a break because we were very, very busy. We went on hiatus after the end of Season 2, but we were still writing content on Instagram, on our blog, ah which we were still doing. yeah it's still I think we both have our roots in writing, so writing our thoughts is still something that we both enjoy.
00:05:11
Speaker
Absolutely. And then 2023, we had our season three release, which switched up our format a bit, um tried to have more of a book club emphasis rather than just our opinions about books, started spreading out our reviews over the years to give people a bit of a chance to catch up. We stopped focusing so exclusively on books with mental health ah representation um and more, I suppose, more broadly psychological themes, so we're not Yeah, we wanted to make sure that we're not limiting ourselves too much that way. And then we got tired again in 2024, took a bit of a break, but we've still been doing things you know where we can. We've still been doing author interviews and written reviews, and we're looking forward to what 2025 brings as well. So that's a little bit of a history of novel feelings. Shall we talk about some trends that we've noticed about ourselves as readers?
Book Ratings and Reviews
00:06:11
Speaker
Let's do it. So I spent some time actually collating all of the ratings that we've done in our past episodes and putting together a bit of a spreadsheet because as you know, I'm a researcher, I'm a bit of a diver nerd. so Not that this is particularly complicated data analysis, but still. Key things to note, you rate more extreme than I do. Yes, I clearly, what's that Jane Austen quote? I don't love in half or something.
00:06:38
Speaker
I love it or I hate it apparently. So it's not that much more extreme than me that, you know, I've never ah given a book one star in our forecast and you have, and you also have more attendance to give five stars based on, you know, emotional connection. That's right. the books Whereas I'm like, this is really good, but here's this little criticism that brings it down by 0.5 or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. So I kind of rate more in the middle than you do on average. Very interesting.
00:07:07
Speaker
But our overall average rating is a 3.9 out of 5, so clearly we still seem to pick books that we like. Well, considering how much work we have to put in, you know, reading the book and talking about it, I think we subconsciously just steer away from books that are too far out of our comfort zones.
00:07:27
Speaker
Yeah, like we still enjoy having a critical discussion. But I think if we were picking books that we knew we weren't going to like, well, for a start, it wouldn't be very fun for us, but I also don't think it's very on brand for us to just be doing mean reviews, mean spirit reviews. One thing we've always tried to do is even when we are more critical of a book, we talk about why we're critical and it's not just about like attacking the author or, you know,
00:07:51
Speaker
their writing or something like that. Like we try to sort of go beyond just like a, this is a terrible book and if you like it, you're a terrible person sort of. yeah you Which have never been my favorite anyway, even if they might get a lot of clicks. Yeah, I know. I think we will continue to pick books that we think we will like. And if you want somewhere someone mean, this is not the podcast for you. Absolutely not.
00:08:15
Speaker
But we have some, I suppose awards to give out as well. Also some superlatives. So best book that we covered based on our ratings. So first of all, I will give a shout out to our runners up, which was I'm Glad My Mum Died and Tiger Daughter, um which we gave an average rating of 4.75 out of five to each of those. So clearly we loved those. Absolutely we did.
00:08:43
Speaker
But the best book that we've covered just based on our five-star ratings is A Monster Calls, which we covered in season two, episode eight. We both gave it a five-star. I think our guest um on that episode gave it five stars as well. matt so So triple five stars.
00:09:03
Speaker
I think we just couldn't fault it, if anything. yeah you know We've had both that emotional connection and thought the story was you know pretty much as good as it could be for what it was. So five five stars all around for that one. yes and What about the worst book that we've covered? Well, again, like we don't tend to cover a lot of books that we dislike. so I will give dishonorable mentions to two, which we rated quite low, which was Fight Club um and 13 Reasons Why. We gave those an average rating of 2.5 out of 5. To be fair, we picked both of those books because we knew we would have a critical discussion about them. So we weren't going in blind to them. Like we knew that there were going to be some
00:09:49
Speaker
fundamental issues, I suppose, with some of the topics that were covered in those books that we wanted to go into. So we we knew it was going to be a mixed review at best. But the one we rated worst was My Year of Rest and Relaxation, which was season three, episode five, I believe. um I rated it two out of five. You gave it a one.
00:10:13
Speaker
I would have stopped reading it if I didn't have to read it for the podcast. I don't i guess I have to just claim this and and say it's like worse based on my personal taste. like i just that's It just wasn't for me. yeah I know lots of people who love this book. and yeah you know wish um I don't know if we need to see that say this, but we will. If we don't like the same book as you, it doesn't mean we just like you as a person. There's just something about personal preference.
00:10:41
Speaker
yeah This is not a judgement on your personality. No. What is it? no But what if it is? We won't go into why we disliked it in this episode, but... Yeah, we didn't know we were going to dislike it before we read it. We picked it because we knew that there'd be some interesting representations about, I suppose, like prescription drug misuse was the biggest one that's really covered. We didn't know about some of the other stuff that would come up, but it's just not a book for us. I didn't know anything when I went in. it was I blame our other book club.
00:11:17
Speaker
It's like, oh, we're already waiting for that anyway. We might as well. And yeah not our favorite. So again, you might love it. We did not. And then we have a couple of awards, which are a little bit more subjective, I suppose. yeah what One of them is, one of them isn't really. Our favorite review? Yes. Well, I guess this is a favorite, not so much because of the book, but more because of our discussion, I guess. I really i particularly enjoyed our episode on 13 Reasons Why, simply because that is a book that has changed in terms of its meaning for me from when I first read it. And I think getting to unpack it with you was really interesting for me. So I really enjoyed that. Yeah, that was a great episode.
00:12:10
Speaker
I'll also, I think that was my favorite too. But I will also say, I think another one of my favorite episodes was also I'm Glad My Mum Died. I think we just had a really interesting conversation in that one. It was only the two of us and it was the first one we recorded after quite a long break because we didn't record anything for 2022, aside from a couple of author interviews. That was our first episode of season three in 2023 and I think it was just such a great one to jump back in on because it was a book that we both really liked and just so much to talk about. And I don't know what else to say. yeah It was a good discussion. It was a good discussion for sure. And our final award goes to our most popular written piece of content for our blog. For those who may not be aware, we do have um a blog up on novelfeelings.com where we do written reviews, but also the occasional just like
00:13:08
Speaker
say style pieces, I suppose. um But your review of Sally Hepworth's The Good Sister continues to be our most accessed piece of content. And I don't fully know why, but I suspect it appears quite high on Google when people search for reviews of that book. So you just keep getting a lot of clicks. I'm flattered, but I'm also scared. It's not.
00:13:33
Speaker
I don't think it was a mean review. Like I think it was, a ah I'd like to think about it as a thoughtful review because I did like the book, but there was a component of it that bothered me. Yeah. Yeah. And again, we don't really do mean spirited reviews. It was more like a sort of reflection on like a book can be really good in terms of it being engaging and interesting and keeps you hooked. But sometimes there are elements of.
00:14:01
Speaker
representation in particular that do bother us. And I think we can talk about that, yeah to saying like, this is a bad book. Or in the case of The Good Sister, it's like it does one representation really well and another, not there so much.
00:14:16
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. There's another Sally Hepworth book that I read recently, The Soulmate, which I would really love to talk about at some point too. So maybe that can be a follow up review. Yes, absolutely. I will give a shout out to our second most popular piece of content as well, which is my review of One of Us is Lying by Karen McManus, um which talks about the I don't know how much of a spoiler it is to say this, but um I'll keep it vague. I suppose the death of a main character and why the framing of that really bothers me. i If you haven't, it is a spoiler review though. Both of those are spoiler reviews, so do read with caution if you are interested in those. But yeah, two pieces of content which didn't make it to the podcast are actually our most popular pieces of written content for the block, which is interesting. so
00:15:07
Speaker
Yeah, if you are curious about what else we do other than audio episodes, go and check those out. We do have some favorite moments from our podcasting career to talk about. Absolutely.
Impact of Author Interviews
00:15:20
Speaker
The first exciting moment was finding out that way, Chim. The first author we ever had on the podcast was going to be an Australian survivor. but but And that is how we became survivor viewers.
00:15:36
Speaker
I'd never watched Survivor before host season, have you? Now, now. Well, I mean, I'd seen a couple of episodes here and there, but I hadn't been a proper watcher of it. And so finding out that someone we knew at least a little bit was going to be on the show, that really motivated us to watch it. And now we just record survivor watches whenever the season comes around. But also shout out to Wei for doing so good on that season. Yeah. I can't remember where she placed, and I won't spoil it for anyone who does catch up on episodes of Survivor, but
00:16:08
Speaker
She did really well, so well done, Way. Yes, absolutely. And then I did enjoy having my fangirl moment when we got to interview in Nina Kenwood for the first time. So for background, um when because we have some relationships with a couple of publishers, ah particularly Australian publishers, sometimes, or quite often, we do get interview requests directly from publishers. So we hadn't approached the publisher or approached Nina for this episode. But when that came through, I messaged you and you responded like in all caps. Like, oh my gosh, yes, we have to do it. Yes.
00:16:51
Speaker
We've been really lucky that we've been able to interview Nina twice on the podcast now as well. and So hopefully that means she had a positive enough time to want to come back to promote her new book. So check out both of those episodes if you haven't already. And then of course there was the first time that we shot our shot.
00:17:09
Speaker
but We did reach out to the publishers for to ask if Graeme Simzian would be interested to come on the podcast to talk about the legacy of the Rosie Project series. And thankfully he was keen to come on the podcast. That led to a great ongoing relationship with text publishing, um who are some of our biggest supporters. Thank you to text and the publicists there. You guys are legends.
00:17:33
Speaker
Yeah, I honestly still feel like the author interviews are that can be sort of like a pinch me moment sometimes. I'm like, oh, wow, do you want to talk to us? okay you know But also, I think that's part of the podcast that I enjoy. Maybe not the most, but one of the most rewarding parts of this is being able to talk to authors about their creative thinking and processes and things like that.
00:17:58
Speaker
Absolutely. I just wish we had more capacity sometimes to take on some more of those requests. Yes, it does. It does require quite a bit of work to plan for those author interviews, but they're great when we can do them. Yes, absolutely. And then of course there was that our first in-person recording at Melbourne Uni's fancy podcasting studio. That was a fun moment. I don't know why, well, we have done it once since then, but we were in a different recording setup and It ended up being terrible sound quality. So I think if we were to do it again, we'd have to find the old setup because that worked really well. It was like different equipment, in a different room. There was not properly soundproof. There was like a construction happening outside. There was so much background noise. And I did the best I could with editing for someone who's not a professional podcast editor. But the first time we did it in that pod situation was great. And we should probably do that again at some point.
00:18:54
Speaker
yes apart from Well, we will be prepared for next time for the fact that it was really hot in that pod. This little like insulated soundproof pod. And I think it was winter or a cold time when we were recording. So we kind of came in with all of our layers and then the recording session went on, we just got hotter and hotter and hotter. Yes, absolutely. But yes, yeah we've had had
Passion for Podcasting
00:19:17
Speaker
a good run. i don't I don't know what we expected when we first started, but I don't i didn't think we'd still be going this far down the track. But, you know, what keeps us going? Like, we really enjoy this. um It is hard work, as we've spoken about, ah particularly on our Instagram recently. Like, we don't get paid for this. It's just a labor of love. It's something we volunteer our time to do. But I really love
00:19:42
Speaker
you know, spending time with you and talking about ah the books that we enjoy, meeting authors, meeting other members of the book community and podcasting communities. It's just really fun to sort of see where this has gone and hopefully we'll continue to go live off to the public for a little bit longer as well. So really grateful to everybody who's been along the way and has supported the show in any capacity for for the last four years. Yes. Thank you so much. I think this isn't exactly directly direct to the podcast, but every time someone says to me in real life, oh, I have listened to your episode, or how's the podcast going? It's it's exciting.
00:20:21
Speaker
Yes, my husband's love language is telling everyone we know that I have a podcast. So thank you, Connor, for ongoing promotion. Yeah. So it's kind of fun, like, yeah, it's fun how this then opens up the conversations, talking to people about books as well.
00:20:39
Speaker
So if you are interested in having conversations with us or with other members of the Novel Feelings community, please do join that Facebook group that we mentioned at the start of the show. Search for Novel Feelings community on Facebook or look for the link that will be in the show notes. But in any case, I think that wraps us up for today.
00:20:57
Speaker
Yes, thank you so much for listening. If you like us, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. The best places to find us online at the moment are Instagram and YouTube, at novel underscore feelings, the Storygraph and Facebook, as we've mentioned before, search for novel feelings in the community. If we have entertained you or taught you something, please consider buying us a coffee to share your thanks, link in the show notes. All proceeds go towards making the show stronger and more sustainable.
00:21:25
Speaker
Thank you so much! Thanks, see ya! Bye! Our podcast was recorded on Wurundjeri land, which is home to both of us in Naam, Melbourne. We also acknowledge the role of storytelling in First Nations communities. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.