Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Meets World, where we usually rewatch Boy
Speaker 1: Meets World episodes and talk about what it was like
Speaker 1: making the show, But today we're trying something new. We
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time on here. We're visiting the past,
Speaker 1: the nineties, our television show and our memories of making it,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of this podcast is about us
Speaker 1: as hosts and you as listeners, figuring out who we
Speaker 1: were back then, But what about who we are now?
Speaker 1: What stories are we engaging with and how are they
Speaker 1: helping us meet the world. So today we launch Pod
Speaker 1: Meets World book Club Edition. We're going to pick a book,
Speaker 1: read it, come together and talk about it. No scripts,
Speaker 1: no lessons from Feenie, just the real I wrote, oh okay, please,
Speaker 1: I didn't read the book. I watched the movie. No scripts,
Speaker 1: some scripts, I guess maybe, no lessons from Feenie. Just
Speaker 1: a real conversation about storytelling, literature, and whatever weird tangents
Speaker 1: we end up on. Welcome to Podmeet's World. I'm Writer Strong,
Speaker 1: I'm Danielle Fischel, and I'm will Fredell. Wow different order.
Speaker 1: Love it was going to follow me love it all?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: So how is this going to work? Well? We are
Speaker 1: not completely sure, but here's what I'm thinking. Since I
Speaker 1: picked the book today, I will introduce it and give
Speaker 1: a brief synopsis of its plot, and then explain why
Speaker 1: I picked it. And then uh, let's run this book
Speaker 1: club like we are going back to the classroom. We'll
Speaker 1: start with roll call, which is our initial overall thoughts
Speaker 1: of the book. Then we'll move into put it on
Speaker 1: the Board, which is where we can talk about the
Speaker 1: themes or the big ideas that we found while we
Speaker 1: were reading it. Then show your work, which is where
Speaker 1: we'll talk about the writing itself on a sentence by
Speaker 1: sentence level, characters, those kinds of things. Then we'll have
Speaker 1: a pop quiz, we'll get to play a game or
Speaker 1: ask a fun question about the book. And then finally
Speaker 1: report card. We'll give our big takeaways and we will
Speaker 1: give a rating that is based on awarding the book
Speaker 1: either Feenie's or Turners. So I'll explain, okay, wow. For
Speaker 1: our first book club pick, we are diving into Blob,
Speaker 1: a love story by Maggie Sue. And before I get
Speaker 1: into it, I think I should clarify a few things
Speaker 1: about book selection, because you know, this is a little
Speaker 1: different I realized than other book clubs that are out there,
Speaker 1: like Oprah's or I think Reese Witherspoon has one where
Speaker 1: they people listen to those and people trust what they
Speaker 1: trust what they say. Well, you know, the difference is,
Speaker 1: I think they select a book that they've already read
Speaker 1: or that they are sort of giving editorial approval to
Speaker 1: before they have the discussion. So it's usually like, if
Speaker 1: that book has been selected, it's because they already knew
Speaker 1: it was going to be good. Where's you know, and
Speaker 1: we could probably move into that if we want to
Speaker 1: down the line where each of us could pick a
Speaker 1: favorite book or something that's you know, impacted us in
Speaker 1: some way. But in this case, I really felt like
Speaker 1: exploring something, you know, trying something that maybe will push
Speaker 1: us out of our comfort zone because I guess fundamentally,
Speaker 1: I am a literary omnivore. I tend to read about
Speaker 1: six books at a time, and I'll read anything that
Speaker 1: somebody recommends to me, but especially if it sounds different
Speaker 1: than something that I've read before. You know, I like
Speaker 1: to just try things out, which doesn't mean that I
Speaker 1: don't have strong opinions. If that anybody's listening to this
Speaker 1: podcast knows. I'm definitely interested in, you know, deciding whether
Speaker 1: I like or don't like something and sharing those opinions
Speaker 1: and debating them, changing them. And I think that my
Speaker 1: goal is that by having those conversations, we make literature better,
Speaker 1: we make culture better, right, and that we're not landing
Speaker 1: on whether the book is ultimately good or bad, or
Speaker 1: that we have the right or the wrong opinion. I
Speaker 1: just like keeping the conversation going. But I'm going to
Speaker 1: probably come down pretty passionately. Okay, So I.
Speaker 3: Don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Well, here's the thing, because I you know, I think
Speaker 1: when we're assessing Boy Meets World, it's one thing, right,
Speaker 1: We're talking about a show that we're part of the creation.
Speaker 1: I think people give us permission to have our opinions.
Speaker 1: But we're talking about someone else's work, it might feel
Speaker 1: a little different. So I just wanted to, you know,
Speaker 1: clarify we're just exploring. Okay. So I picked this book
Speaker 1: Blob because I think it it just was an excellent
Speaker 1: hook for a novel. It's something that the second I
Speaker 1: heard what it was about, I wanted to read it
Speaker 1: and I wanted to see where it went. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of books are written and published and bought
Speaker 1: because you know they fall in line with existing genres,
Speaker 1: things that you've already read and you want to read
Speaker 1: more like that, right, So that's where you get romance
Speaker 1: and fantasy and mystery, and so that's the way. A
Speaker 1: lot of books that are out there fall into those categories,
Speaker 1: and I like a lot of them. But then I
Speaker 1: like to read books that just mashup genres or try
Speaker 1: to break from precedent. Blob a Love Story is just that,
Speaker 1: a contemporary romance, maybe coming of age, with a level
Speaker 1: of realism when it comes to the setting and the characters,
Speaker 1: and yet we get a magical, mysterious, maybe alien blob
Speaker 1: PLoP down in the middle, and that becomes the main
Speaker 1: engine of its plot. Blob a Love Story is written
Speaker 1: by Maggie Sue. She's a writer whose work has appeared
Speaker 1: in New England Review, Four Wave Review, tri Quarterly Review,
Speaker 1: and many more. She received her PhD in fiction from
Speaker 1: the University of Cincinnati and has an MFA from Indiana University.
Speaker 1: This is her debut novel. It was published in January
Speaker 1: of this year, twenty twenty five, and it quickly got
Speaker 1: a lot of attention for its unique premise. The synopsis
Speaker 1: V Lou has always felt like an outsider in her
Speaker 1: Midwestern college town, caught between her Taiwanese father's heritage and
Speaker 1: her white mother's world. After dropping out of college and
Speaker 1: still recovering from a recent breakup, she's stuck between her
Speaker 1: job working at the front desk of a hotel, where
Speaker 1: she greets guests and dodges the relentless cheer of her coworker, Rachel.
Speaker 1: The story begins when V, in a rare moment of extraversion,
Speaker 1: decides to join Rachel for a night out. They attend
Speaker 1: a drag show, where, stepping into an alley behind the bar,
Speaker 1: V stumbles upon a peculiar, squishy creature with tiny black
Speaker 1: eyes on a whim. Equal parts drunk and lonely, she
Speaker 1: takes the blob home. But this mysterious blob isn't just
Speaker 1: a stray pet. It begins to grow, take shape, and
Speaker 1: even follow V's commands. Seeing an opportunity, she decides to
Speaker 1: mold it into the perfect companion. Fueled by sugary cereals
Speaker 1: and a steady diet of pop culture, the blob transforms
Speaker 1: into a strikingly attractive white man seemingly designed to love
Speaker 1: her without question. All right, let's get into roll call
Speaker 1: our initial overall thoughts. Guys, who wants to start? What
Speaker 1: was your initial reaction to this book?
Speaker 3: You want to go first? Well, or you want me
Speaker 3: to go first?
Speaker 1: You go first?
Speaker 4: Okay, So like you, I love a book that has
Speaker 4: a real realistic setting but something about it is just
Speaker 4: fantastical or totally mysterious. I also love a book where,
Speaker 4: because of that, you would imagine it's the type of
Speaker 4: feeling where you put it down because you have to
Speaker 4: go to sleep or because you have to go do
Speaker 4: something else, and then you just you keep thinking about,
Speaker 4: like what is going to happen next.
Speaker 3: It kind of has you on the edge of.
Speaker 4: Your seat, like I can't because anything could happen, and
Speaker 4: I can't really envision where it's going. And I was
Speaker 4: thinking I was going to feel that way about this book.
Speaker 4: What I will say, although I overall thoughts, I thought.
Speaker 3: There were very interesting elements.
Speaker 4: There were very funny elements, although in a very dry,
Speaker 4: kind of understated way. It's it's not beating you over
Speaker 4: the head with its humor, but the humor is there, uh.
Speaker 4: And I loved some of the characters. There's like several
Speaker 4: things I really liked about it. I will say about
Speaker 4: halfway through the book, I put it down because I
Speaker 4: had to go pick up the kids from school, and
Speaker 4: I didn't get to it later that night and like
Speaker 4: a couple days past, and I thought, I'm not sure
Speaker 4: if I didn't have to finish this for book club,
Speaker 4: I would even care whether or not I finished the book.
Speaker 4: I'm okay not necessarily knowing what ends up happening with
Speaker 4: the Blob env So in that sense, it didn't necessarily
Speaker 4: hook me the way I wanted it to.
Speaker 3: I also.
Speaker 4: Am a very like I envision things when you know
Speaker 4: when when a writer writes something and they give it
Speaker 4: in detail, and like, definitely the blob is a man.
Speaker 4: Is something Maggie Sue wants you to envision. She gives
Speaker 4: you reference points, you know, famous Hollywood men, and she's
Speaker 4: describing this like hot dude, and like, all right, I'll
Speaker 4: picture a hot dude. I had a hard time picturing
Speaker 4: anything other than the water shape man from the movie Elemental.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting because I haven't seen it, but I.
Speaker 4: Could so easily picture the gelatinous blob. I could in
Speaker 4: no way get my imagination to go to a place
Speaker 4: where that gelatinous blob actually.
Speaker 3: Became human skin, man and human shape.
Speaker 4: I thought of him still as kind of a gelatinous man, right,
Speaker 4: and so that always kept I kept bumping up against that, like, wait,
Speaker 4: he's he's passable at all as a as a as
Speaker 4: a man. So that those are I would say, those
Speaker 4: are kind of my overall thoughts.
Speaker 1: Yeah good. I also was wondering, like, if I was
Speaker 1: going to make a movie of this, what would it
Speaker 1: actually look like? And it was hard. It was hard
Speaker 1: to pin down, which maybe a strength and you know
Speaker 1: I'm not a weakness, but I'm not sure. Will How
Speaker 1: did it compare with your expectations? I had none.
Speaker 2: I truly had no expectations going in. You know the
Speaker 2: kind of books I left to read. So if you're
Speaker 2: gonna have some sort of a magical element, I'm one
Speaker 2: of those people where I need an explanation of some
Speaker 2: sort of magical element, the idea of like it can
Speaker 2: be anything.
Speaker 1: Just use your imagination. I don't want to use my imagination.
Speaker 2: I want you to use yours and tell me more
Speaker 2: about what's going on.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 2: My favorite fantasy novels are novels where the worlds are
Speaker 2: so built out that the intricacy is I mean again,
Speaker 2: the first series of books that I ever found are
Speaker 2: called the Belgariad series, And after he wrote these fourteen books,
Speaker 2: he wrote something called the Riven Codex, which was a
Speaker 2: breakdown of the entire world down to the weights and
Speaker 2: measures of every country that's involved in this world.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: So that's the kind of intricacy I like when you're
Speaker 2: doing anything fantastical.
Speaker 1: It was an easy read, very quick.
Speaker 2: Again, I felt exactly like Danielle, where if I didn't,
Speaker 2: I'm a completist, so will the second I read one word,
Speaker 2: I have to finish it. But I wasn't excited to
Speaker 2: finish it. It wasn't like I can't wait to see
Speaker 2: what happens next. I had a little trouble connecting with
Speaker 2: the lead character just because it's you know, it's an
Speaker 2: Asian woman who's dealing with depression and alcoholism, so seeing
Speaker 2: anything from her point of view is obviously something that's
Speaker 2: a very difficult thing for me to do. But I
Speaker 2: thought at times she described it well. But I also
Speaker 2: agree with Danielle where a lot of the descriptions and
Speaker 2: again I'm very used to fourteen hundred page books where
Speaker 2: there will be five pages on the rug you're standing on,
Speaker 2: So it gets to be a lot.
Speaker 1: But you know exactly what the rug look.
Speaker 2: Likes when you turn the page, if you had had
Speaker 2: a chapter about or not even a chapter even lines
Speaker 2: of every time the blob does do a shift, what
Speaker 2: does it sound like?
Speaker 1: What is you know? What does the skin feel like?
Speaker 1: What is it look like?
Speaker 2: What does the transformation taking place feel like it? I
Speaker 2: thought she could have gone into more depth with that.
Speaker 2: I loved the pop culture references. I loved how she
Speaker 2: used the pop culture references. There's a lot of pop
Speaker 2: culture references. I'm guessing most readers, including the two of you,
Speaker 2: probably did not pick up. There are direct lines in
Speaker 2: here from Seinfeld, direct lines in here from friends.
Speaker 1: She named her best friends named is Rachel. I'm telling you, with.
Speaker 2: All her pop culture stuff, that is a take off
Speaker 2: of Rachel from Friends. And her building manager is Jerry,
Speaker 2: and I'm guessing that's Jerry Seinfeld. I mean, she loves
Speaker 2: the pop culture stuff so much, so I like that stuff.
Speaker 2: I also love an occasional good cringey moment. And there
Speaker 2: were a couple in here that were so cringing that
Speaker 2: you want to drop the book, which again I dig that.
Speaker 1: I kind of like that.
Speaker 2: So yeah, with no expectations going in, I finished and
Speaker 2: I was like, Okay, I read it.
Speaker 1: You're right.
Speaker 4: Well, there are definitely references I did not pick up on.
Speaker 4: But so much of the the book could very easily
Speaker 4: fall into a category that would be like op culture commentary.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So much of it is commenting on who we are
Speaker 4: because of the media or because of the things we consume.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like what is our output because of what we input?
Speaker 1: Ye?
Speaker 2: A lot of it is also I think a lot
Speaker 2: of it has to do with Maggie Sue, the author,
Speaker 2: trying to She makes so many references to America and Americana.
Speaker 2: It's almost like she grew up in her life as
Speaker 2: a Taiwanese American in the Midwest having to prove she
Speaker 2: was an American. So in this book, it's like I
Speaker 2: wrote down the names that she used for the characters Rachel, Walter, Luke, Alex, Mary, Bob, Stephanie, Doug, Matt,
Speaker 2: Paul Tony. These are all like the easiest American names.
Speaker 2: She's constantly talking about eating I got my chicken sandwich
Speaker 2: at McDonald.
Speaker 1: She's like, I'm an American. I'm an American. It's almost
Speaker 1: seemed like the restaurants, it's.
Speaker 2: Had to constantly prove to herself because she was a
Speaker 2: Taiwanese American that she was as American as everybody else.
Speaker 2: And I don't know if that was deliberate or that's
Speaker 2: led into her writing because she's I want everyone I'm
Speaker 2: an American.
Speaker 1: No, I think that's that's very much what this book is, right,
Speaker 1: Let's put it on the board because I think I think, yeah, like,
Speaker 1: let's get into the big themes or the ideas that
Speaker 1: we can really pull out from from this book. And
Speaker 1: I let's start with exactly what you're saying. It seems
Speaker 1: like a lot of this book is about identity, right
Speaker 1: like how we beforem who we are and in these
Speaker 1: case that it has to do with race, gender, and job.
Speaker 1: So do you guys, could you isolate? Could you say
Speaker 1: one theme that you think that this book is definitely about.
Speaker 4: It would be hard, but I think if I were
Speaker 4: to pick one thing, I would think I would say
Speaker 4: it is about these realization that she is capable.
Speaker 1: Of self determination.
Speaker 4: Well, yes, in deciding who she is without needing external
Speaker 4: validation or external like a sounding board. She's like, who
Speaker 4: do you think I am? And then that's maybe that
Speaker 4: will to help me define myself. She can define herself
Speaker 4: without input from an external source. If I had those,
Speaker 4: if I had to say one sentence, it would be that.
Speaker 1: I felt the same way. It's like almost like she
Speaker 1: finds a blob, and then we get these chapters describing her,
Speaker 1: like basically memoir chapters, going back into her history and
Speaker 1: time and time again, it seems like, oh, she's the blob, right,
Speaker 1: she has let herself be amorphous and let herself be
Speaker 1: determined by her classmates, her crushes, whatever. And so by
Speaker 1: the process of making taking this blob and making it
Speaker 1: into her perfect boyfriend, she's actually discovering that she has
Speaker 1: been allowed herself to be molded by her job, by
Speaker 1: her family, family friends.
Speaker 4: And also that her perfect boyfriend she thinks is a
Speaker 4: white man, the same people she's been getting a lot
Speaker 4: of feedback from her entire life, right, right.
Speaker 1: So where do you think that lands?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 1: When she doesn't end up with Bob.
Speaker 2: But that's the thing, is I think that that's the
Speaker 2: the the also a theme of the it's it's an idealism.
Speaker 2: It's the idea that perfection is unattainable, even if you're
Speaker 2: the one creating it. Yes, So it's like, oh, I've
Speaker 2: got the perfect idea if I just get this is
Speaker 2: this is.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, what the American dream is becoming.
Speaker 2: And when you you mix that with the mass amounts
Speaker 2: of anxiety and depression that are going on in our
Speaker 2: culture right now, the idea of if I just get this,
Speaker 2: I'll then be happy, right, And then when you attain
Speaker 2: that and you're still not happy, you're like, well, then
Speaker 2: what the hell do I do? So I think in
Speaker 2: her mind, she's building the perfect man, and then when
Speaker 2: he eventually up and leaves her for her perfect white
Speaker 2: toothed best friend, it's like, oh, I can't even build
Speaker 2: my ideal person right.
Speaker 1: Because she figured out he's person right exactly.
Speaker 2: I just wish she didn't. I wish the author didn't
Speaker 2: spell that out. And there is a specific line there
Speaker 2: where she's like, and that's when I realized I had
Speaker 2: become the blob. And it's like, Okay, you didn't need
Speaker 2: to write like let us figure that out.
Speaker 4: You don't.
Speaker 2: You don't need to put that in there. It's like,
Speaker 2: I got where you were going with that. I didn't
Speaker 2: need it thrown thrown at me.
Speaker 1: Well, but I think I think the bigger, the bigger
Speaker 1: thought that I like jotted down. I think we tend
Speaker 1: to think as a culture and as individuals, we tend
Speaker 1: to think of our identity as as something that is
Speaker 1: self contained, that it's ours, right, Like I am this
Speaker 1: type of person, I come from this type of family,
Speaker 1: and if I'm going to change my identity, I have
Speaker 1: to change me. I have to work on myself, right.
Speaker 1: But it seems to me, actually, so much of the
Speaker 1: notion of identity gets broken down. So it's more about
Speaker 1: how other people perceive you, so that when you change
Speaker 1: your identity, it changes everyone around you. So when she's
Speaker 1: pretending to be Elliott's boy girlfriend for a night right,
Speaker 1: that destabilizes her and everybody around It's like, whatever choices
Speaker 1: you make about yourself, they don't just determine who you are,
Speaker 1: they also determine who everybody else is. Right, everybody else
Speaker 1: has to potentially change their pronouns based on your gender.
Speaker 1: Everybody else is affected, and so it's like this sort
Speaker 1: of interconnectedness of identity. Ultimately, more where the book lands,
Speaker 1: which I thought was pretty cool and kind of revolutionary. Like,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of these sort of coming of
Speaker 1: age stories that I would put this in, you know,
Speaker 1: they tend to land where somebody's like and then I
Speaker 1: changed who I am and I became my true self.
Speaker 1: This book kind of ends with her just saying I'm
Speaker 1: going to keep trying. I'm gonna photography might be my thing,
Speaker 1: but yeah, but she's gonna She's going to look at
Speaker 1: the people around her and engage with them in a
Speaker 1: new way.
Speaker 2: The king that's also interesting, and they have a couple
Speaker 2: a couple of the characters literally do this is everybody
Speaker 2: at one point or another is playing a role, right,
Speaker 2: So it's like her parents are playing the role of
Speaker 2: looking like the perfect American family, her friend is playing
Speaker 2: the role of being the good friend, but is also
Speaker 2: actually an actor. Elliott is playing the role of being straight.
Speaker 2: The blob is trying to play a role of then
Speaker 2: what is his role?
Speaker 1: And it's a human being?
Speaker 2: And he literally becomes an actor at the end because
Speaker 2: he's absorbed so much. He's me in a way in
Speaker 2: that he just sat there absorbing so much TV that
Speaker 2: now he's got to go be TV.
Speaker 1: So there's you know there, but everybody was playing a role.
Speaker 2: And I think at the end she realized she was like,
Speaker 2: I'm just not going to play anymore, and I'm just
Speaker 2: going to kind of try to figure out what the
Speaker 2: hell my next steps are.
Speaker 4: Right well, to combine the things you two said, it's
Speaker 4: really she comes to terms with realizing like, oh, I
Speaker 4: have played a role in society. I've played a role
Speaker 4: in my family and the way they react to me,
Speaker 4: the way she often describes the way her mom tenses
Speaker 4: up when she says or does something, and she knows
Speaker 4: like they're so used to me being reactionary or they
Speaker 4: are so used to me being this way that it
Speaker 4: affects the way they talk about me, It affects where
Speaker 4: we go, it affects and like, instead of just putting
Speaker 4: that on them, she goes, I also am contributing to this.
Speaker 3: We're all feeding off of each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's part of what I love. When she
Speaker 1: brings the blob home for Bob as a man home
Speaker 1: is when she finally starts noticing things about her family
Speaker 1: but she's never noticed did my mom always cook this? Well?
Speaker 1: Not always. It's like she's finally able to see her
Speaker 1: relationships or see other people because she's brought through Bob's
Speaker 1: eyes and it helps her be like, oh, I've also
Speaker 1: I've also been an asshole. Like that's what's so funny
Speaker 1: that the book begins from a kind of defensive place
Speaker 1: of like, I'm just a wallflower. Everybody else has so
Speaker 1: strong opinions and I just sort of am passive. Like
Speaker 1: that's the way she kind of introduces herself. And then
Speaker 1: throughout the course of the book, you're like, she's a drunk,
Speaker 1: she's kind of a she's mean to people, she's terrible,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's like it's like the slow realization
Speaker 1: that she is actually affecting everybody around her house and
Speaker 1: that she's kind of made her own bed, like she's
Speaker 1: put herself in this position. I thought that was really effective,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Did you also notice that her journey as a character
Speaker 2: mimicked Bob growing meaning, meaning when Bob was just eyes,
Speaker 2: she started to see everything around. When Bob began a hand,
Speaker 2: she started to get out and actually physically touch people.
Speaker 2: She had her doing that. When Bob grew legs, she
Speaker 2: was going out more. So it was like everything that
Speaker 2: happened with Bob was almost mirrored in kind of her
Speaker 2: journey as a person, which I thought was again and
Speaker 2: then that's again her first reaction when he grew legs
Speaker 2: was like, Okay, do I chain him up? How do
Speaker 2: I keep him here to? I mean, it's just yeah,
Speaker 2: it's really kind of amazing. And again, that's one of
Speaker 2: the first tropes you talked about her parents them selling
Speaker 2: the house right out from under her.
Speaker 1: That's a storyline in Friends.
Speaker 2: That's what That's what Monica's parents do, is they sell
Speaker 2: her house out from So there's a couple things that
Speaker 2: happen here that are straight from pop culture.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, let's let's move into the next section, which
Speaker 1: I'm calling show your work and get into the writing itself,
Speaker 1: her voice as a character and as a narrator. What
Speaker 1: did you guys think of it? How would you describe it?
Speaker 4: I would say it is dead pan comedy. Yes, it's
Speaker 4: ry y, Yes, it's ry. It's self deprecating. It's also yeah,
Speaker 4: she's right hard on herself, hard on herself constantly. Yeah, yeah, incriminating, deprecating, uh,
Speaker 4: and also casual. There's nothing there's nothing pretentious or formal.
Speaker 1: Read it is very easy.
Speaker 2: This this to me, and you know, we always do this.
Speaker 2: We do this all the episodes of Boying th World.
Speaker 1: Here's what I would have done.
Speaker 2: And it's like, it's like, oh yeah, when I write
Speaker 2: my novel, but this to me seem like what would
Speaker 2: have been cool?
Speaker 1: I would love to have seen this. And again, it's
Speaker 1: just the way my mind works.
Speaker 2: If say I was fourteen and it was a while
Speaker 2: and she finds the blob and the first half of
Speaker 2: the book she's raising the blob. In the second half
Speaker 2: of the book, it joins her in high school. Like,
Speaker 2: that's kind of where the tone of this was for me,
Speaker 2: which then thrown in kind of it threw me then
Speaker 2: because then you turn the page and she'd be talking
Speaker 2: about masturbating and it was like, oh, oh that came Okay.
Speaker 1: That's right. It's not a young not like it's you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, it's right. Well, I do think
Speaker 1: that the book, you know, it makes this transition I
Speaker 1: would say, what fifty or sixty pages in where we
Speaker 1: get our first sort of flashback sequence. Yeah, and it does.
Speaker 1: The book ends up spending a lot of time in
Speaker 1: her youth. And I found those transitions a little hard.
Speaker 1: I was every time I was like, wait, why are
Speaker 1: we getting this this flashback of this scene. I could
Speaker 1: have almost done without them entirely. I because when we
Speaker 1: were in the present tense, when we were with with V,
Speaker 1: are we going with V or V? Which was I
Speaker 1: thought it was V? I thought it was very like
Speaker 1: I thought V I. I thought it was short for
Speaker 1: violet or something I was. I would say, you.
Speaker 3: Say, we're saying the but you said that.
Speaker 2: That's what you say Potatoe else in the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I found those flashbacks. I think that they they
Speaker 1: helped develop some of the conflicts that you know, we've
Speaker 1: already talked about, you know, cultural conflicts and racial and
Speaker 1: gender identity and all that, but they were not nearly
Speaker 1: as entertaining and and I'm not sure that they contributed
Speaker 1: much to the current story. And you know, my experience
Speaker 1: going back to Danielle's first overall impression was where you
Speaker 1: had to put you put the book down and you
Speaker 1: were like, do I want to go back? I definitely
Speaker 1: went on a similar journey. And I think this is
Speaker 1: why is because I think that middle section of the book,
Speaker 1: once we get the plot of Bob Blob, anytime that
Speaker 1: we take a pause, go back to being eleven years old,
Speaker 1: I'm like, where's this that doesn't I don't know if
Speaker 1: I need that. But then when the book picked back
Speaker 1: up again with the current plot of Bob getting out,
Speaker 1: Bob leaving her, her being Elliott's date, and that so
Speaker 1: much energy, and then then I really tore through the
Speaker 1: rest of the book because that picked it back up.
Speaker 3: You're exactly right. I felt exactly the same way.
Speaker 4: There was like a midway point before we got into
Speaker 4: all of that where I was like, I don't know
Speaker 4: that I would normally finish this, But once I got
Speaker 4: back into it, I was like.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm so glad I did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I literally I I yelled at one point
Speaker 2: where with the whole party scene where where she was
Speaker 2: everyone looks over and everyone's watching or kiss. The guy
Speaker 2: was like, oh, you want to drop the book at
Speaker 2: that point. So, I mean there were moments in it
Speaker 2: that were absolutely chef's kiss.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's you know, that's an accomplishment,
Speaker 1: you know, like that that we we we did lose
Speaker 1: she lost us a little bit, you know, it slowed
Speaker 1: down a little bit, but the fact that it picks
Speaker 1: back up, and I do think that, you know, and
Speaker 1: the book is short we're not talking too long. So
Speaker 1: even when we're talking about like it's slowing down, we're
Speaker 1: really only talking about twenty Yeah. So I but I
Speaker 1: do think that the writing, you know, an editorial like slicing,
Speaker 1: it could have been shorter, It could have been a
Speaker 1: little just just a little bit. All right, let's pop quiz.
Speaker 1: This is the section where we're gonna ask a question
Speaker 1: or play get a buzzer or there's We're not gonna
Speaker 1: play a game with this one. This is a question
Speaker 1: that Jensen carp Our, lovely producer, came up with podcast.
Speaker 2: Oh god, I bet you I know what the question
Speaker 2: is going to be. Really yeah, it's gonna be something
Speaker 2: like if you had a blob of your.
Speaker 1: Own, your own blob? There you go? Which body part
Speaker 1: from a Boy Meets World character? Are you picking? First?
Speaker 3: Wait? Am I supposed to want to have sex with
Speaker 3: this blob?
Speaker 1: It's your ultimate or your ultimate partner?
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, is like Mary f kill my god.
Speaker 1: This is tough. Let's see you do you give do
Speaker 1: you give it? Phoene's brain do you give it? Writer
Speaker 1: Strong's hair? Do you give it? I don't want to
Speaker 1: bang Daniel.
Speaker 2: Okay, not to sound creepy, but Daniel Fisher lips is
Speaker 2: not a bad place to start.
Speaker 1: But I don't want to start with the lips.
Speaker 3: I might go Ben Savage washboard apps.
Speaker 2: Okay, I might go Amy Matthew's Compassion.
Speaker 3: Oh well, it's true.
Speaker 1: I mean if you start there, right, did you love
Speaker 1: a mommy?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so creepy.
Speaker 1: That is so creepy. No, I would go the girl
Speaker 1: like Tushy danced with No right, right right? I don't
Speaker 1: know what about you writer? You have one? I don't actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think, Uh, there was with such with
Speaker 1: such good hair in general, and boy, it's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to avoid that.
Speaker 2: We also don't have We only have like two real girls,
Speaker 2: our own idea to pick from.
Speaker 1: So it's like I want Danielle Like, that's not gonna
Speaker 1: as a word, right, you can't do that. I watched that,
Speaker 1: which I hadn't even thought about was Phoene's brain, right,
Speaker 1: Like brain's a good one. It's like, really if you can, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know how I would get the blob to
Speaker 1: form that way? I can question? Can I switch up
Speaker 1: the question? Please? If each of us could pick.
Speaker 2: One body part for another person, like writer, if you
Speaker 2: had to build the perfect partner for Danielle, what's the
Speaker 2: first body part from a Boy Meets World cast member
Speaker 2: you would put on Danielle's partner.
Speaker 1: Just Matt Lawrence. When we talked about him coming to
Speaker 1: the set, she was like, Wow, we had some good
Speaker 1: looking guys on the show, but now we have.
Speaker 3: You guys were good looking.
Speaker 1: Your liver lab Matt Lawrence became blobs. Matt Lawrence took over.
Speaker 3: That's pretty funny.
Speaker 4: I just would like to point out that YouTube picked
Speaker 4: compassion and Brains and I picked.
Speaker 1: So you're more like the we take it nice, very sweet,
Speaker 1: all right, report card? Okay, any of the sort of
Speaker 1: or any other coming of age or maybe Redemption story books?
Speaker 1: Is there another book that you would compare this to.
Speaker 4: You know, for me, I have a very hard time
Speaker 4: relating to this modern a modern coming of age?
Speaker 1: Me too, I found it. That's for me. That was
Speaker 1: the problem, the pop cultural references that I was like,
Speaker 1: I am so old. This is your pop culture.
Speaker 2: No, your pop culture alliterate because the references that she's
Speaker 2: using are references from when we were She did a
Speaker 2: ton of ninety stuff. I mean, it was friends and
Speaker 2: Seinfeld I will.
Speaker 3: Say it didn't make me feel old. I didn't feel
Speaker 3: old reading it.
Speaker 4: What I felt was coming of age for millennials or
Speaker 4: gen X.
Speaker 3: There's a lot more.
Speaker 4: Commitment to work ethic rat Race like six, like classic
Speaker 4: success in the sense of like I had to go
Speaker 4: to college. My school is very important to my family.
Speaker 4: I don't want to let them down. I finished school.
Speaker 4: I have to get a job. And then finding yourself going,
Speaker 4: oh my gosh, I'm exhausted and how did I get here?
Speaker 4: And I don't know that this is the life I
Speaker 4: would have chosen for myself. But look at what I've built.
Speaker 4: It seems like a lot of modern coming of age
Speaker 4: is like I don't want to get out of bed today.
Speaker 3: I'm just going to show up late.
Speaker 1: To my job on a Tuesday. Yeah, I get I.
Speaker 3: Get drunk every night.
Speaker 4: I'm like, and I was just like, I can't I do.
Speaker 4: I don't hide. This is giving me edge, aed like
Speaker 4: I've never heard of anybody be worse.
Speaker 3: At their job.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is I know that this is what gen
Speaker 4: Z experiences and I just have you know, like Will
Speaker 4: saying he's not Asian, and so he does he doesn't
Speaker 4: pretend to be able to know what it feels like.
Speaker 3: Similarly, I don't.
Speaker 4: I cannot relate to that feeling, and so I I
Speaker 4: just know it's not for me.
Speaker 3: It doesn't mean it's bad. It's just I'm not the demo.
Speaker 4: I'm not the I'm not the person who's supposed to
Speaker 4: go got it relate?
Speaker 3: You're speaking my language, right.
Speaker 2: So if she's was gonna do flashbacks flashing back to
Speaker 2: right before the breakup, yeah, even more than we did,
Speaker 2: because we we see.
Speaker 1: What she's like.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're coming up on this, this in mid
Speaker 2: depression where she cannot get over this break even though
Speaker 2: it's this breakup, even though it happened I think she
Speaker 2: said eight months ago, it's been very rough on her.
Speaker 2: If we saw a couple of flashbacks from before that
Speaker 2: where she was actually very good at her job, she
Speaker 2: was attentive, she was not maybe not climbing the ladder,
Speaker 2: but was cleaning up her apartment, was doing you know,
Speaker 2: and it's the breakup that made her like this, I
Speaker 2: think I would have had more compassion for the character
Speaker 2: than I do, where it's just kind of like, oh,
Speaker 2: you are the blob, which I get was kind of
Speaker 2: what it was supposed to be, but it's like you
Speaker 2: don't care about your job. You're rude to your friends
Speaker 2: a lot of the times, if you even have any,
Speaker 2: You're very selfish at times, you're a raging alcoholic.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like, did all of that.
Speaker 2: Happen because of the breakup, because then that's one character,
Speaker 2: and I would think about the character a certain way,
Speaker 2: or was she like that?
Speaker 1: And just it's been exacerbated by the break I think
Speaker 1: she was like that. I think. So that's the takeaway.
Speaker 1: And so I think you guys are both kind of
Speaker 1: saying the same thing differently, which is that this is
Speaker 1: really a specifically an eel on we this sort of
Speaker 1: like we have all the opportunities, right, Like we have
Speaker 1: all the avenues open to us. I could be a
Speaker 1: doctor like my brother, I could be, you know, married
Speaker 1: at this age like my parents were. I could be
Speaker 1: everybody else seems to have like content with their paths,
Speaker 1: and yet she just shuts down and has never been able.
Speaker 1: And I think that is specifically something you know, like
Speaker 1: at this age for me, like I was just so
Speaker 1: driven in too many directions right. If anything, it was
Speaker 1: like I didn't take enough time to just relax and enjoy,
Speaker 1: and I think that that speaks to something that the
Speaker 1: younger general, the younger generation for whom I think this
Speaker 1: book is written. You know, I think this book is
Speaker 1: clearly aimed at people thirty five and under or maybe
Speaker 1: forty and under, and we're just on the other side
Speaker 1: of that. I think part of the problem generationally is
Speaker 1: that they do have so much comfort. They can just
Speaker 1: sit at home and get everything on their screen. They
Speaker 1: can't have entirely developed social life without leaving their computer.
Speaker 1: You know that that is that's new. That's not something
Speaker 1: we We had to get out of the house. We
Speaker 1: had to have jobs just to have a life. That's
Speaker 1: not true anymore. And so why work? Why why go
Speaker 1: to college? Why do you any you know, just so
Speaker 1: you can get more money, you know, like to sit
Speaker 1: at home and flip through Instagram anyway.
Speaker 4: And think that's a very right problem anyone else's life
Speaker 4: as being so good, Like it's not like she looked
Speaker 4: at her brother. Her brother was also super stressed and
Speaker 4: always and her parents didn't seem like they were thrilled
Speaker 4: with their lives either, So she kind of was looking around,
Speaker 4: like all these paths lead to me.
Speaker 1: The only the only one. I think it was truly
Speaker 1: happy in the entire book. Was her boss walters like,
Speaker 1: I'm pathetic in her eyes exactly because it assaults her
Speaker 1: when she points that out. Yeah, so I think that
Speaker 1: that's what we're meant to feel, that everybody's kind of
Speaker 1: a sucker if they pick a path, right, Like, no
Speaker 1: matter what path you choose, you're kind of either you're
Speaker 1: falling for somebody else's narrative that's not going to make
Speaker 1: you happy. So it's Ethan Hawk again in reality bites.
Speaker 2: It's the kind of you pick a path, you're a sellout,
Speaker 2: or where it's not even sellout, because.
Speaker 1: I think I think this book is smarter than that.
Speaker 1: I think it's describing the problem. And also, you know
Speaker 1: it's not it's certainly not celebrating v like it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's not saying that she's doing the right things by
Speaker 1: succumbing to this perfect man her exactly.
Speaker 2: So I mean, yeah, that's the whole point is that
Speaker 2: she is this is you know, well it's not supposed
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 1: Well, what what do you think about the end? Then?
Speaker 1: What does the ending give you? Is there hope? Is
Speaker 1: this a is this ultimately a hope filled novel about
Speaker 1: she does find a path or does it? What do
Speaker 1: you guys think of?
Speaker 3: Where do you think it landed and ended very hopefully.
Speaker 4: I thought it landed in a place that I really
Speaker 4: did think there was enough of a realization, enough of
Speaker 4: a self awareness that came to her throughout the course
Speaker 4: of this experience, and men all the experiences that this
Speaker 4: experience brought into her life that did actually make her
Speaker 4: decide that she needed to be an active participant in
Speaker 4: her life and that decisions needed to be made, and
Speaker 4: that she couldn't just keep like letting life passer by.
Speaker 4: So whether or not she's going to get it all right,
Speaker 4: there's no real right. I didn't feel like she's now
Speaker 4: going to have a great life, but I felt hopeful
Speaker 4: that there was going to be a change, a positive change,
Speaker 4: that she was at least going to start in acting,
Speaker 4: And so I felt very hopeful at the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me too, will I felt kind of the same
Speaker 2: way I felt her life was.
Speaker 1: It's weird. I had a strange combination.
Speaker 2: I felt her life was definitely on the upswing, and
Speaker 2: there is certainly hope, and I don't need to check
Speaker 2: back on.
Speaker 1: Her to make sure her life is doing okay. It's
Speaker 1: interesting because I think story wise, plot wise, there's this
Speaker 1: potential boyfriend, the new guy that she hands up with,
Speaker 1: and there's the photography and going back to school. But
Speaker 1: it didn't feel like either one of those things is
Speaker 1: the definite solution. It just felt like those were sort
Speaker 1: of the engines too for her to realize, I get
Speaker 1: to pick my own path and I no longer need
Speaker 1: to succumb to somebody else's pressure of who I should be,
Speaker 1: nor just sit around and think it's gonna happen. I'm
Speaker 1: going to have to just do it, and whatever I do,
Speaker 1: I should be happy with, you know, just you know,
Speaker 1: kind of a weird paradoxical zen you know, maybe nonsensical,
Speaker 1: but it's true, right, Like by just making a decision,
Speaker 1: she's going to feel better, and then that decision is
Speaker 1: going to give her meaning and a sense of purpose.
Speaker 4: It reminds me of a friend of mine who once said,
Speaker 4: all right, I've decided I am going to join online
Speaker 4: dating and I.
Speaker 3: Was like, wow, really you're going to do it?
Speaker 4: And he was like yeah, but only because I realized
Speaker 4: girls don't just knock into your apartment door and we're
Speaker 4: to go out with you, right, you have you've realized
Speaker 4: that if a relationship is something you want, you cannot
Speaker 4: sit on your couch every single day and wait for that.
Speaker 1: But you can't tell somebody that they got to kind
Speaker 1: of discover it themselves, right, Yeah, we all have to
Speaker 1: live through it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I love how she was standing right next
Speaker 2: to Rachel behind this counter because essentially you have two
Speaker 2: people in exactly the same place in their life, literally
Speaker 2: exactly in the same place in your life. You have
Speaker 2: one who can fake it when she needs to and
Speaker 2: one who can't. And sometimes you need to fake happiness
Speaker 2: until you can actually find happiness.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's the people that don't know how to fake
Speaker 2: it ever, who are like five, You know, when you
Speaker 2: had Rachel, who was you could tell was also depressed
Speaker 2: and upset, and her life is exactly where Vice is,
Speaker 2: but could just fake it.
Speaker 1: And where Rachel ends up is way sadder than where
Speaker 1: v ends up, right, because Rachel and the blobber they're
Speaker 1: they're so they're making their dreams come true, but it
Speaker 1: feels way worse.
Speaker 2: It's fake and vapid, and it is two big toothy
Speaker 2: smiles out in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Okay, let's let's rate this book by giving
Speaker 1: it Phoeni's or Turners, now a turner one through five,
Speaker 1: one through five of each. Uh. Turner, as we all remember,
Speaker 1: is the hip, cool teacher who makes reading fun. Okay,
Speaker 1: makes it makes it a fun easy read.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: And you maybe are absorbing a lot, but that's not
Speaker 1: the point. The point is to enjoy the process. Until taught,
Speaker 1: Phoenie was a stodgy, old fashioned card to understand classic
Speaker 1: ultimately good for you. He taught you the life lesson,
Speaker 1: gave you the value. So the amount of Phoenies one
Speaker 1: through five is how much is this book good for you?
Speaker 1: How much did it teach you? Did you take away?
Speaker 1: As the actual I'm going to carry this forward in
Speaker 1: my life.
Speaker 3: Being the most educational one being okay, right.
Speaker 1: Who wants to go first? I'll go first?
Speaker 2: Should we do Turners and then Phoenie' or should Phoene? However, well,
Speaker 2: then starting with Turner. If you're talking about hip easy
Speaker 2: to read, then it'll score high on the Turner scale
Speaker 2: for me. You know, I would say, between are we
Speaker 2: allowed points? Can I do like a three point five?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Like at you pa?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: If I would give this a three point five Turners
Speaker 2: and that you know, again it is a fast read.
Speaker 1: The pros is good.
Speaker 2: You know, it's well written, So yeah, I would as
Speaker 2: as it's got great pop culture references. There's you know,
Speaker 2: they're throwing in She's being texted and you've got which
Speaker 2: again is going to be a whole new part of literature,
Speaker 2: or how texting comes into play and when you.
Speaker 1: Text and why you text.
Speaker 2: There's a whole culture behind that, so you know, in
Speaker 2: that sense, I think it will score higher on the
Speaker 2: Turner scale for me, and I'm going to give it
Speaker 2: three point five.
Speaker 1: Holding your helmet, Turners.
Speaker 2: Okay, my Feenie's of what I learned again exactly like
Speaker 2: what Danielle was saying, I think I just missed my
Speaker 2: window for a lot of what this book means because
Speaker 2: I'm from a different generation, so it while it might
Speaker 2: resonate with somebody thirty who dealt with just lying on
Speaker 2: their couch and drinking on a Tuesday night and not
Speaker 2: really having any motivation and not cleaning up after themselves
Speaker 2: and being a dick to their boss and not being
Speaker 2: good at their job, in that sense, I didn't learn
Speaker 2: much other than I'm glad I'm not part of that generation,
Speaker 2: if that, if that's what that generation is like.
Speaker 1: And again that's a huge generalization, of.
Speaker 2: Course, but for the most part, I would say I
Speaker 2: didn't learn a whole lot, so I would say.
Speaker 1: Two point five Phoenies.
Speaker 2: So two point five Pheenies and three point five turners
Speaker 2: I would.
Speaker 1: Say for for this book. No, no, I take that back.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna say three Phoenies and three point five turners
Speaker 2: is what I would say for this book. I did
Speaker 2: I raise it. I think I was being a little harsh. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll do three point five turners and three Phoenies.
Speaker 4: For the turners. I think I would give this a
Speaker 4: three out of five turners.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 4: Right right around three is it feels good for me? Definitely,
Speaker 4: a lot of cool references like Will said, lots of
Speaker 4: things I liked, I love I love some dead pan humor.
Speaker 4: And as far as the Phoenies go, I think for
Speaker 4: a younger generation, I'll say for someone under thirty, I
Speaker 4: think this struggle and this realization about the active role
Speaker 4: you have to play in your own life and the
Speaker 4: active role the people you have in your life, how
Speaker 4: they affect you and how you affect them.
Speaker 3: If you if you are just.
Speaker 4: Now starting to your brain's starting to turn on and
Speaker 4: recognize those things and see that.
Speaker 3: I could see this book being very helpful and very enlightening.
Speaker 4: So I think if you are under thirty, I could
Speaker 4: see how this could be a three or a four
Speaker 4: out of five Feenies for you. For me, I would
Speaker 4: say it was about a one and a half Phoenies,
Speaker 4: so mind on the scale, low on the Phoenie scale
Speaker 4: for me, but I could see how for I'm, like
Speaker 4: I said, I am not trying to pretend that I'm
Speaker 4: who this book is written for. I still enjoyed it.
Speaker 4: I still it was, like you said, so easy. It's
Speaker 4: not like I look back on it and I think, oh,
Speaker 4: I wish I didn't read that. I'm happy that I
Speaker 4: read it. Isn't isn't going to change my life. But
Speaker 4: I do think for a younger generation it could be.
Speaker 4: It could be very helpful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm right with you, Danielle. I'm I'm same exact
Speaker 1: thinking I give it higher marks on the Turner scale.
Speaker 1: I'm actually going to give this like a four point
Speaker 1: five because I really I just like, I think we're
Speaker 1: kind of taking for granted just the idea, just the concept,
Speaker 1: if you think about if you think about this, this
Speaker 1: book in the tradition of stories about romance, like, especially
Speaker 1: for younger generation, romance with a monster, like the Twilight
Speaker 1: books or or Shape of Water as a movie, did
Speaker 1: you I'm trying to. I mean, even going back to
Speaker 1: like Beauty and the Beast, there is a tradition of like,
Speaker 1: uh oh, there was a movie called Warm Bodies about
Speaker 1: falling in love with the zombie. I think this book
Speaker 1: is really a clever like to do the blob or
Speaker 1: a blob as like the monster that you fall in
Speaker 1: love with. That's super cool, and I think she does
Speaker 1: a really good job of taking that metaphor or surreal
Speaker 1: element and pulling a lot out of it. Actually, so
Speaker 1: it's super fun. I think it's an easy, easy read
Speaker 1: for anybody, and like, this would be a good gift
Speaker 1: book because I feel like you hand this to somebody
Speaker 1: and they're going to be like what, and that just
Speaker 1: that question of like what, and then it's not a
Speaker 1: slog like you get through it so fast. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: nailed it. So to me, it's it's short enough and
Speaker 1: fun enough to read, especially for younger people. It's really
Speaker 1: an accomplishment to pull that off, so four point five turners.
Speaker 1: Poene's exactly like you, Danielle, if I'm thinking about for
Speaker 1: me too at most, But if I think about the
Speaker 1: way that young people think about the world, I mean
Speaker 1: even just looking at my son Indy and how he
Speaker 1: communicates with his friends, I think this book could really
Speaker 1: get under their skin in a way that Phoene could
Speaker 1: and teach them a lot. So I'm going to give
Speaker 1: it three phoenies ultimately, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Can I I want I have one other question.
Speaker 4: I have one other question that because I and I
Speaker 4: wonder if Will thought of it at all, or if
Speaker 4: it's just because I'm a.
Speaker 3: Parent, did it bump any of you or did at
Speaker 3: any point.
Speaker 4: You wonder why she didn't think of the Blob more
Speaker 4: as a child than as a as a partner.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what I Yeah, I forgot that the title
Speaker 1: was actually Blob a love story, So at a certain
Speaker 1: point I started thinking right early on, I started thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: this is going to be about raise, and she makes
Speaker 1: references to this is how my mom must have felt
Speaker 1: when she's taking care of the Blob, and I thought
Speaker 1: that that that was going to and I think maybe
Speaker 1: even Maggie Sue as a writer started it and didn't know,
Speaker 1: Like I think it kind of evolved the same way
Speaker 1: that Bob evolved. When I first heard about this book,
Speaker 1: I thought it was going to be more surreal and
Speaker 1: more Actually my brain went darker, I guess because I
Speaker 1: thought of like the Blob as a monster, as a
Speaker 1: horror thing or an alien. Like some of my favorite
Speaker 1: authors in this wheelhouse of like surreal touches is this
Speaker 1: woman Amy Bender, and then this other woman Carmen Maria Machada,
Speaker 1: and they both write short stories, which I think is
Speaker 1: important to note, like they do similar things, but they
Speaker 1: keep it very short. And like Amy Bender has this
Speaker 1: incredible short story about I think it's called the Potato People,
Speaker 1: and it's about her or this woman carving people out
Speaker 1: of potatoes and then they start to come to life
Speaker 1: and then she has to take care of them and
Speaker 1: they keep multiplying. You know. This book had to like
Speaker 1: stay in the real world, have actual consequences. It was
Speaker 1: pop culturally connected, so it's very different tones. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought that I thought it was going to go
Speaker 1: the motherhood route. I was convinced that was going to
Speaker 1: be the point of this This also is a kind
Speaker 1: of a generational thing, right, Yes, I think for our
Speaker 1: generation finding purpose in life. For a lot of people,
Speaker 1: for better or worse, became well, I'll have kids and
Speaker 1: that'll fix all my problems. Yeah, which I don't think
Speaker 1: that even occurs to people under thirty five these days.
Speaker 1: I think their first thought is if I just found
Speaker 1: the perfect partner that would fix all my problems. Both
Speaker 1: are you know, probably bad ideas, and this book explored
Speaker 1: the one that I think concerns their generation. One. I
Speaker 1: do too, but I don't think VI knows either.
Speaker 2: And I think that's what Maggie Sue did that's very
Speaker 2: interesting is at the end, because of the Blob, because
Speaker 2: of Bob, she has a better relationship with both her
Speaker 2: parents and a potential mate. Yeah, so it worked on
Speaker 2: both levels where she did see him at times like wow,
Speaker 2: maybe my mom felt like this and.
Speaker 1: Their relationship got better. Well, well my ex boyfriend what
Speaker 1: Alan was an Alex r ex boyfriend was Luke? What
Speaker 1: Luke thought about that?
Speaker 2: And maybe she used some of that and so she's
Speaker 2: maybe starting to date a new guy. So it kind
Speaker 2: of taught her a little bit about both. But yeah,
Speaker 2: she didn't seem particularly maternal.
Speaker 3: Do we have a book that we're going to pick next.
Speaker 3: Will do you want to pick the next one?
Speaker 1: I would love to if we can.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's do it. Do you have one?
Speaker 1: I do?
Speaker 2: I was going to pick one, but now I'm going
Speaker 2: to switch it up. Song okay, okay, cool.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, I'm going to get it right now. This
Speaker 3: is exciting.
Speaker 2: So I was going to start with the first book
Speaker 2: that ever got me into fantasy, which is a much
Speaker 2: younger book called The Pawn of Prophecy.
Speaker 1: We will do that eventually. It's wonderful and amazing.
Speaker 2: But what I want to keep with more of the
Speaker 2: I want to get writer.
Speaker 1: I can kind of figure out how to get there.
Speaker 2: I think if with Danielle and fantasy, if I go
Speaker 2: something that smacks a little bit of Harry Potter m hmm,
Speaker 2: without it being Harry Potter, that if I hit on
Speaker 2: some of those tropes, I think I might be able
Speaker 2: to hook Danielle into the world of fantasy. So we
Speaker 2: were going with an absolutely phenomenal author. Her name is
Speaker 2: Nao Minovic, and she just came out with a trilogy
Speaker 2: that's called A Deadly Education. It's less than one of
Speaker 2: the School Elements books.
Speaker 1: Great and have you already read this book. I have
Speaker 1: read this book. I have wrote this book. Yes, and
Speaker 1: I will be reading it in different mode, dude, slightly
Speaker 1: different mode.
Speaker 2: No, well, it's this is a Deadly Education is the first.
Speaker 2: It's less than one of the school emans. So this
Speaker 2: is an absolutely wonderful, dark kind of take it is.
Speaker 2: I mean, should we read the No, I'm not even
Speaker 2: to let you guys figure everything out.
Speaker 1: Let everybody go check it out.
Speaker 3: Deadly Education.
Speaker 2: She's an absolutely wonderful and incredible writer. It's a great,
Speaker 2: a great fantasy series.
Speaker 1: It really is.
Speaker 2: So this is and it's relatively new, this is this
Speaker 2: is I think the first one came out in like
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you're gonna like this one.
Speaker 2: I think anybody who likes the idea of a magical
Speaker 2: school or a school where there's murder and death coupled
Speaker 2: with magic, this is absolutely going to be your jam.
Speaker 1: You're going to do it all right.
Speaker 3: Awesome, So you have about one month to read it.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Pod meets
Speaker 1: World Book Club Edition. As always, you can follow us
Speaker 1: on Instagram pod meets World Show. You can send us
Speaker 1: your emails pod Meets World Show at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: And we've got merch, But what does the merch mean?
Speaker 1: If you really dissect it? Podmeetsworldshow dot com. Danielle send
Speaker 1: us out.
Speaker 3: We love you all, pod dismissed.
Speaker 4: Pod Meets World is an iHeart podcast produced and hosted
Speaker 4: by Danielle Fischel Wilfridell and writer Strong Executive producers Jensen
Speaker 4: Karp and Amy Sugarman, Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo,
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