bonus chapter: incredibly specific book recs

this episode we wanted to give back by sharing our book recommendations for all your specific tastes - the good, the bad and the incredibly niche and freaky. we put out a question box and scoured the internet high and low to find book recommendations that will suit even the most specific of moods.

tastes explored:

•  a book that feels like the first days of soft autumn sunlight kissing your face
• a book that feels like the period between grade 12 graduation and the beginning of the rest of your life
•  the best book you’ll never read again
• begging and pleading for more female led horror with cannabilism
• books like sky daddy. freaky but like... kinda deep and beautiful??
• a fictional story that will help with burn out – the self help books aren't self helping
• people learning to be lonely or being okay with not meeting expectations

 books mentioned:

• Body Friend by Katherine Brabon
• Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors
• Lead Us Not by Abbey Lay
• Love and Virtue by Diana Reid
• The Idiot by Elif Batuman
• What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt
• Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down
• The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
• They're Going to Love You by Meg Howry
• Woman Eating by Claire Khoda 
• A Certain Hunger by Chelsea Summers
• The Eyes are the Best Part by Monica Kim
• The Lamb by Lucy Rose
• Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang
• Monstrilio by Gerado Samona Cordova
• Open Throat by Henry Hoke
• Bunny by Mona Awad
• I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue
• Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here by Heather Rose
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
• Maame by Jessica George
• Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
• Sunset by Jessie Cave
• Notes on Heartbreak by Annie Lord

choose our next podcast read by going here and voting in the first week of each month!

make sure you subscribe to hear our groundbreaking thoughts as soon as they are unleashed. if you want to be on the same page as us, follow us at talklit.gethit on Instagram and TikTok.

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Transcript

Bridget 0:40

Hello and welcome to a Talk Lit Get Hit bonus chapter. The little book chats in between the big ones. We'll talk about reading, authors, and have discussions with people who, like us, can't shut up about books.

Laura 0:52

We might get sidetracked and talk about literally anything else, but this is a bonus chapter we wrote just for you. This episode we wanted to give back by sharing our book recommendations for all your specific tastes. The good, the bad, and the incredibly niche and freaky. We put out a question box and scoured the internet high and low to find book recommendations that will suit even the most specific of moods. Bridget, hello, hello.

Bridget 1:17

Hello, hello.

Laura 1:18

We've talked endlessly in the past about being big mood readers. Do you think that these hyper-specific niches come into this at all?

Bridget 1:25

Yeah, I think so. Being a mood reader is reading what you want to read when you want to read it. And being in a certain mood obviously is a big mood reader thing. So if you want to read a book about a freak, then I think you're in a freaky mood. So part and parcel.

Laura 1:41

You better hear first, folks. Freaky books for freaky people. I was thinking that this kind of approach to reading really backs up our general disdain for tropes as well. And the more I talk about it, the more I kind of struggle to lay out the difference between a trope and a vibe, or a trope and a theme. For example, I think I like a theme of privileged people behaving poorly. I don't think that's a trope because I can find that in a variety of different books in a variety of different ways.

Bridget 2:12

I think there's not just one way for that theme to be executed. With tropes, I think it's like that is what's gonna happen. There is one bed and the people need to fit inside it.

Laura 2:22

Yes. While we do have some pretty specific requests for this episode, I think there's so many different ways of looking at them. Yes. A trope, though, it either is or it isn't. Like we see it all the time with enemies to lovers. That's our big ticket item, our big personal beef. Yes. You either are someone's enemy or you aren't. But in the books we read, they are friends or they are strangers. Yeah. It's factually incorrect.

Bridget 2:45

It's not true. Or they're co-workers that may share a workspace. Yeah. So anyway, tropes out themes in extremely specific book recs, also in you heard it here first.

Laura 2:58

Lots of firsts revealed this episode. Yeah, breaking news. What was that sound that you did for breaking news? I thought we could kick it off with one that is a little bit personal because being Southern Hemisphere girlies, we always have a little bit of FOMO around the cozy autumn and winter reads and feel that there's often not a lot of representation when our time without the sun rolls around. Our time in little less sun. Yeah, great. Still many sun. Still can be 30 degrees. However, we did have someone looking for a book rec that feels like the first days of soft autumn sunlight kissing your face.

Bridget 3:40

I want to read a book with that as the whole book. That sounds delightful. We've tried our best to find books that capture that feeling.

Laura 3:48

Would you like to kick yourself? It could be a mistake, but my recommendation for this is Body Friend by Catherine Brabant. I think I've intrigued myself with this choice here, but my reasoning is that this is a very tactile, like sensory book that's set in Melbourne. So I think it feeling very familiar to me helps a lot. But she talks a lot about wind rustling through the trees, the first sort of crisp mornings, putting on her sweater. It is actually a book that is almost like entirely internal. It's a very meditative, intimate look at chronic pain and chronic illness. And the protagonist meets two different women in recovery from surgery she's had that kind of ask and expect different things from her. One is encouraging stillness and sort of like acceptance and grace of her body, and the other is asking for more. Push more, do more, try more every day. So it's really, really introspective. But I think the environment is quite a big player in that story, at least for me. So that's my rec. How about you?

Bridget 4:53

My rec is also one that I'm not quite sure about, but I decided to pick this one because I feel like autumn is like a little bit sad because summer's ending, but you're also a little bit hopeful for cooler weather, and it feels like a good time to be in the garden planting flowers, planting seeds. Autumn is the time for hope and growth in my mind. So I picked Blue Sisters by Coco Malores, and this is the book that interweaves the lives of three sisters who have come back to their childhood home in New York City a year after the death of their beloved fourth sister, and they're trying to stop the sale of their childhood home. Avery is the eldest and she's a recovering addict and lawyer who lives in London. Her marriage is on the rocks. Bonnie is a retired boxer and she's now working as a security guard. And Lucky is a wild child model living in Paris and just doing every drug under the sun. So they're kind of pushed together to confront their grief and they're just attempting to push through with their lives, and it was really nice and sad and hopeful at the same time.

Laura 6:01

I literally have Borrow Box open to borrow this once and for all. I can't go another day without Blue Sisters in my life.

Bridget 6:08

Well, I have a copy of it if you want to take it. I better not, because you'll never get it back.

Laura 6:14

But I appreciate that. Thank you.

Bridget 6:17

The next request was for a book that feels like the period between high school graduation and the beginning of the rest of your life. What is your recommendation for this?

Laura 6:26

My knee-jerk reaction in A Shock to No One was Lead Us Not by Abby Lay. You're probably sick of hearing me talk about this book if you've listened to the podcast. Lead Us Not is a novel, a debut novel by Australian author Abby Lay. It's sort of a coming-of-age story set in a suburban Catholic girl school in Australia, and it explores a really intense, kind of codependent, often blurry relationship between two friends. The book does take place during the school year, but there's also a lot of chatter about like everybody's hopes and dreams for the next year, what everyone will be doing. And aside from the relationship between the main characters, I think it does such a great job of capturing that kind of anxious but optimistic period of time. The other book that I would throw into this category is another that you're probably sick of hearing me talk about, and that's Love and Virtue by Diana Reed. Also another Australian author and another book set in Australia. Hopefully, without spoiling too much, um, Love and Virtue is a contemporary campus novel, which side note is like another of my favourite subgenres. I love a campus novel that kind of explores the complexities of consent, privilege, um, and the ethics of storytelling. And I think what makes me pick this book is that this is exactly what I thought my life was gonna look like. Like I would have cool friends, I would have dynamic relationships, like I'd be out in the clubs, I'd be living in college, I'd probably have a questionable relationship, although it was like always gonna be way more upbeat and way more rosy in my version of events. It's not quite so positive in this book. I think this book does a really great job of capturing the feeling I had in that period, which was just, yeah, that intense conviction that my life is about to begin.

Bridget 8:13

How about you? The book I picked for this was The Idiot by E. Fatumin, and this is one of my favorite books ever. I do have to say that not much happens in this book and it's very interior, but I think that captures the vibe of the holding pattern that you sometimes can feel like you're in between the end of school and the start of uni quite well. Like a bit melancholy, not knowing what's gonna happen, like who your people are going to be, like trying to fit in in a new place. This book is set in 1995, and the main character is studying at Harvard, and she's like really struggling to find a place. She becomes obsessed with another student in one of her classes. I think they're learning how to speak Russian. And she also goes on a trip to visit Hungary in the break. I've read this twice now, loved it so much. I think everybody should read it. Only if you want to, though.

Laura 9:01

Or good if not. Yeah.

Bridget 9:03

No worries if not.

Laura 9:06

Our next request was for the best book you'll never read again.

Bridget 9:11

I took this to mean the book or books that devastated you so much that were great, but you can't knowingly put yourself through that again.

Laura 9:20

Okay, I didn't interpret it that way, but I've coincidentally picked books that perfectly fit that bill. Oh, amazing. What's your first choice?

Bridget 9:28

My first choice was The God of Small Things by Arundati Roy. This is another one of my favourite books, and it tells a story of seven-year-old fraternal twins and their mother, uncle, and grand aunt in the 1960s amid the societal caste rules in India. It was beautiful, just a masterpiece, but absolutely devastating, and I never want to read it again. And I never want to think about what happens in it again.

Laura 9:57

I'm scared and excited because I packed that in my bag to bring overnight. Oh, it's so good. I've been meaning to read it for years. So I'm so happy to be devastated. Yes, yes, you will be devastated. Commiserations to myself in advance. Yeah.

Bridget 10:11

What's your first recommendation?

Laura 10:13

My first recommendation is probably not so devastating, but it's a book called What I Loved by Siri Hustford. This is a book that on paper sounded like it was going to be exactly for me, and it was, but at the same time, it still really took me by surprise. I think it had this really relentless and unexpected sense of menace running underneath the book at all times, and it just did not let up for me. So it is a book that is set in New York's Soho art scene during the 70s and 80s, and it follows a man named Leo Hertzberg, who's an art historian, and his really intense, codependent relationship with a painter named Bill Weschler and his wife and family in the 25 years that follow. And so, like that description of the book sounded fantastic to me, but I just didn't expect to be so stressed throughout it. Like I wanted obsession, I wanted intensity. But there were points in the book where I thought, is this about to get like supernatural? Is there gonna be some sort of weird shit that can't be explained happening? But no, it was like rooted in reality, but I just like I don't know, it generated like this intense paranoia in me, and I think it was a work of art, but I don't think I'd revisit it.

Bridget 11:27

Yeah. Sometimes those uneasy books are really good, and sometimes they just wreck you.

Laura 11:33

Yeah, and like maybe someone will go and read it now and think actually it's like very standard.

Bridget 11:38

What are you talking about?

Laura 11:39

I don't know. It was it really swept me up. I wasn't expecting it.

Bridget 11:43

My next recommendation is They're Going to Love You by Meg Howry. We've both talked about this on the podcast. I think I said I was using the photocopier and trying to see through my tears at work. Uh, not an audiobook to listen to in public, especially not as you near the end. But this was a lovely story. It's about ballet and art and estrangement and betrayal in a family. It's set during the AIDS crisis in New York City. Once again, never want to read it again. But it's lovely, and I loved it so much.

Laura 12:19

My next rec is a book called Bodies of Light by the Australian author Jennifer Down. I've had a lovely little Australian theme going on. What's going on? Let's all rejoice. That's my hyper-specific recommendation. Read more Australian fiction, please. So this is kind of what I see as like a remedy to a little life. I think I possibly even read it after reading A Little Life, looking for things in the same theme. And I think it generates all the same feelings. Like it's an absolutely harrowing, crushing book, but I just think it handles it probably a bit more responsibly and respectfully. And so this is a story about a woman named Maggie who's dealing with her trauma from a childhood spent in Australia's foster care system. And I know Jennifer Down did an incredible amount of research on this before writing the book. So the book follows her journey through abuse, through institutional failure, addiction, struggles with identity, and then ultimately is like kind of uplifting at the end. It's about survival and resilience and hope. And it was really beautiful. I cried so much, but I would really recommend it. For first-time readers only.

Bridget 13:31

The next request was one that we kind of struggled with a bit. A little bit out of our wheelhouse as readers, but it was begging and pleading for more female-led horror with cannibalism. I could think of one book that sort of ticked those boxes, and it was Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang. I read this a few years ago now, and this is a book that has stuck with me in the years since I have read it, and it's a body horror about a classical pianist who quits performing and starts to work at a sinister wellness bar. Her parents are in some kind of clinic, and this is a really disturbing book about wanting to fit in and meet the lofty beauty standards of society, and like how far will you go to reach perfection in your appearance? I'll be honest, I can't actually remember there being cannibalism, but when I looked at the content warnings for the book, one of them was cannibalism. So I'm taking Story Graph's word for this. Yeah. And that's all I could find. I I don't think I've read many other books with cannibalism. Have you read any?

Laura 14:38

I don't think that I have read any, but it does seem to be a genre that I'm pulled to though, because I had lots in my want to read and lots that are like I'm aware of. I just haven't read any of them. So I could rattle off a few of these. I kind of have a feeling like if you're already searching for more in this category, you're gonna be like, yeah, we've heard of the Bible, but like I'm gonna try my best. So my first rec is Woman Eating by Claire Coda. This is a story of a young mixed-race vampire who has been raised by her mother, who is a self-hating religious Asian vampire. Now, the protagonist is working in an art gallery with her own studio space and dealing with her incessant hunger as she's never fed from a human. So nice little double whammy there because we get a vampire story and a cannibal story. Another I've heard of is A Certain Hunger by Chelsea Summers, and this focuses on a sophisticated food critic who is also a serial killer and cannibal. The Eyes of the Best Part by Monica Kim features a Korean woman dealing with intense rage by devouring men. The Lamb by Lucy Rhode is a folklore-inspired horror that focuses on a young girl named Margot and her mother who are isolated from society and seducing in order to satisfy their cannibalistic ways. Continuing on with the kind of freaky theme, we had somebody requesting books like Sky Daddy. Freaky, but like kind of deep and beautiful. I haven't read Sky Daddy, but I think I get what they're saying. But maybe you can kick us off seeing as you're very familiar with the sexy plane book.

Bridget 16:05

So sexy, so plain. I kind of struggled with this one as well. I was trying to think of books that really match the freak level of Sky Daddy, and I could only really come up with two. The first one was Bunny by Mona Award. I feel like this one might be a little bit over-recommeded, but I think the female friendships that are explored in this book are underrated and not really spoken about when you think about the other freaky shit that's happening in the book. It didn't really hit me the first time that I read the book, but the second time I thought the friendship between the main character and her best friend was so beautiful and so um almost hidden in the story, and I loved it so much. The second one I came up with was I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue. This one is a little less freaky. Like she doesn't want to have sex with a plane, but she is still a little bit of a freak. The main character is unliked at work, she's on probation, and then she's accidentally given unauthorized access to her co-workers' emails. It's toxic, it's stressful, it's weird, but I found this book really touching and just like the main character's journey. I don't know, just through her weirdness and through her mental instability to be really, really beautiful. How about you? What did you come up with, you freaky bitch?

Laura 17:37

Look, maybe the real freaks were the freaks we met along the way because I really have this perception of myself as someone that does like freaky girl literature, but this was a moment of reckoning where I was like, no, you don't. I really do like books about girls at work in a cafe. Yeah. Quiet meditative moments set in nature. Like I don't. But I tried my best. So that's all we can ask. Yeah. My first recommendation is a book called Monstrilio by Gerardo Simona Cordova. And this is sort of like a literary horror/slash dark fantasy novel that explores grief, love, and what it means to be human. So it follows a mother whose son Santiago has died, and she cuts out and nurtures a piece of his lung until it becomes sentient and like a tiny little carnivorous creature that continues to grow and evolve. So the creature named Monstrilio is hidden in a Mexico City, estate where they live, and then grows into this human-like form, but still pretty freaky, and is struggling all the while with his monstrous instincts to attack and eat. Feed to consume. So obviously, that's a pretty weird concept on face value. Take it or leave it. But beneath that surface is a look, like I said, at what it means to be human and kind of like the toll of deep attachment and the way that different people process grief. The second book that I thought I would throw into the ring is Open Throat by Henry Hoke. This is a queer literary fiction novel narrated by a lonely mountain lion living underneath the Hollywood sign. I normally really, really hate personified animals, but I found myself pretty moved by this one. And this is kind of just a very short story around the creature's struggle for survival and identity as they sort of observe the humans that live nearby them, the humans that come hiking up the Hollywood sign, like sort of about like urban destruction and wildfires and displacement. And it's quite like dreamy and whimsical and a little bit strange but also strangely moving.

Bridget 19:52

The next request we had was for a fictional story that will help with burnout because the self-help books aren't self-helping. The book that I picked for this was called Mame by Jessica George. And this is a story about Maddie, who was a 25-year-old British Ghanaian woman who is trying to juggle her career, her expectations from her mother who has gone back to Ghana. She's trying to date, she's trying to make a life for herself and figure out who she is as a person, as well as being the primary caregiver for her father who has late-stage Parkinson's disease. So it's quite sad, it's very moving. Once again, read this a few years ago, and it has really stuck with me as one of my favorite books. So this might help you with your burnout. Maybe you'll find a bit of, I don't know, camaraderie with Maddie, and she eventually sort of finds the light, and I hope that you do too.

Laura 20:49

I also have given this my best crack. Unfortunately, many of the stories I read are quite grim or harrowing. A book that I would always turn to when looking for just some kind of comfort or reassurance is Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. There's a number of books in this universe, and I like them all. I think they all offer the same or similar things, but Olive Kitteridge is like really the original and the best. And so this consists of 13 interconnected short stories centered sort of on or around the life of the titular character, Olive Kitteridge, who's this really like kind of grumpy, miserable old school teacher who's retired living in a fictional town on the coast of Maine. What I like about this book and what I find so comforting about this book is that I just think Elizabeth Strout has such an unaffected style of writing that really cuts straight to like humanity. I don't know how to say that, but I think her work is very like personal and empathetic without being overwrought. And it shows these like really simple day-to-day moments that have impact on individuals. I think what resonates with me is the attention to the small things and the reminder to slow down and that little gestures can have big impacts. It's quite character-focused, but it is very introspective and quite meditative. So I think it's a good book when you want to slow down. Lots of people say it's very boring. So take that with a grain of salt. That's what I like about it. It's just the everyday, the joys and pitfalls of everyday life.

Bridget 22:21

The last request we have for today is a book about people learning to be lonely or being okay with not meeting expectations. The book that I picked for this is actually a memoir that reads like a novel. And I remember reading it without realizing that it was nonfiction, and it took me like until maybe three. Quarters of the way through the book where I was like, Oh, this is a real book. So I think that's that's a mark of a good memoir. This is Notes on Heartbreak by Annie Lord, and it tells a story of the end of a five-year relationship told from the breakup back to the start, so in reverse chronological order. It is really funny and sad, but I think it would be really comforting for people who are struggling with uh like a breakup or struggling with loss, struggling with being single or alone. It's really just a story about finding who you are without the person that you might have revolved your life around, or finding out who you are when you live for yourself, I guess. This is a book that I would love to reread sometime in the future. I think again it's one of my favourite books. So, really pulling out the big guns today. How about you? Which book would you recommend for this person?

Laura 23:36

I really struggled with this book, and I don't know that I have any strong recommendations, but one of the first ones that came to mind was Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason. This is a book I read quite a long time ago, so I unfortunately can't remember it too much, but it tells the story of a woman who's grappling with an undiagnosed mental illness that is like having huge impacts on her life and marriage. It sort of centers on themes of mental health and love and family, and as her life falls apart and she moves forward quite unapologetically, also explores her journey towards, I guess, healing and self-acceptance. Another that I don't quite remember, but I thought I could just throw into the ring, like maybe two halves, make a whole kind of thing, is a book called Sunset by Jessie Cave. I remember being really blown away by this book when I first read it, but I don't see many people talking about it. And so this is the story of a woman whose sister has died very unexpectedly. A sister that she had a really close and codependent relationship with. So it's kind of a story about intense sisterly love and then picking yourself back up after a loss, finding joy in the everyday and moving forward. I just remember crying a lot, but also laughing more than I thought I would when I read it. I also developed a sharp interest in having gold eyeliner after reading this book because it was just one of the quirks of the sister. And honestly, like I do struggle at times to buy into fictional sisterly relationships, like the intensity of the closeness and like the sisters are always meant to be so cool, but this one really did sound cool. I wanted that gold eyeliner.

Bridget 25:18

Did you ever get the magazine Sabrina's Secrets, like in the early 2000s?

Laura 25:22

I think I might have maybe had one copy.

Bridget 25:25

Every issue, you would get some cosmetic item. And I think the first one was like a purple nail pen. Jealous. And so you'd get this box, and over the course of like the whole magazine, you would fill up your cosmetics box with fun stuff, like hair spirals. Do you remember those? Oh, so cool. And like it would tell you like how to do a zigzag part. And it was Sabrina the Teenage Witch, but it was like makeup and it was sick. Anyway, and I remember I think there was like a gold eyeliner or maybe like a purple eyeliner. And I remember my sister and I saw it on ads on TV, and we were like, Mom, please let us get Sabrina's secrets. And so then we went to the news agent to get it, and we were really disappointed because we thought we would get the whole box of stuff, but it was like one every issue. That's so crushing. We got quite a few of them, and we actually got like a Salem plush toy. Oh, I remember the plush toy. Yes, yeah, that's where we got that from. I probably saw it at your house. Yeah. The gold eyeliner, that's a Sabrina secret kind of thing, and I love it.

Laura 26:25

That's so cool. I think I had a friend who got a bandana from the S Club 7 magazine. Amazing. I was so jealous.

Bridget 26:31

Yeah.

Laura 26:31

Anyway, I don't know how we got onto that, but sisters are cool.

Bridget 26:35

Um, and they help you heal and find yourself. Yeah, great. That's a great summary. Thank you so much.

Laura 26:43

Well, this has been a good exercise in trying to remember the books that I've read.

Bridget 26:47

It's also been a good audit of like, why did I read this book? I need to make better choices in the future. Yeah. So many books I wouldn't recommend. But it has been fun.

Laura 26:58

I'm looking forward to reading diversely and richly in anticipation of our next installment of extremely specific book recs or whatever this is gonna be called.

Bridget 27:08

We really need to catch up on our cannibal literature. Next month's episode will be covering Cersei by Madeline Miller. Have your say in what we read next by keeping an eye on the link in our show notes and on our socials. Make sure you subscribe to the show and if you want to be on the same page as us, follow us at talklit.get on Instagram and TikTok.

Laura 27:32

Sausage, all alone in the moonlight. If you touch sausage, you'll understand what happiness is. A new sausage has begun. Sausage sausage last time.