Bookwild - 2026 Bookish Plans and Goals with Halley Sutton

Episode Date: January 3, 2026

This week, Halley and I catch up on what we've been reading and watching, and then dive into bookish plans and goals for 2026! Check Out Author Social Media PackagesCheck out the Bookwild Community on PatreonCheck Out My Stories Are My Religion SubstackGet Bookwild MerchFollow @imbookwild on InstagramOther Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrianMacKenzie Green @missusa2mba 

So, first of all, happy new year to everybody since it's January 2nd, as this is coming out. Hallie and I are going to ring in the new year here. We are actually back in time. We are in 2025 and you were in 26, and I hope it's good. I hope, like, just like at midnight, like, lots of things happen that are just really positive overall. That's what I'll say. is how hard you were going to go with that. I was like, what's she going to say? I won't. You know, if you know, you know. And if you don't, you don't. And I have not said anything incriminating,

but I hope 2026 is magical. Magical. Yes. Yes. Also, side note, all of the, like, the things that are like, the threads that will be like, if it happens on Christmas, I will go to church all of 20206. I just love that all of us know what we're talking about. And also, aren't talking about it right we'll just know it yeah exactly we know yeah um but yeah besides that i do hope 2026 is great and we were going to talk about some of our reading and writing goals for 2026 and uh per use i'm sure we'll talk about anything we've read or watched as well definitely and i wanted to also happy new year kate um i wanted to also see what are your new year plans And do you have any New Year's or New Year's Eve traditions that you like to partake in?

I do not. You were like, in fact, no. Yeah, this is like I don't have the best answer for this. We typically stay home. And it kind of depends. Sometimes there are those fun New Year's like, I'm trying to think it hasn't, it didn't happen last year. I don't think. But like sometimes like podcasters we like or like people we actually like will kind of

to do like a they'll go live on youtube um and that's always fun but i don't know if anyone i follow is doing that yeah so we will probably i will have an edible that's for sure uh but that might be why i don't make it to midnight every year's fair enough yeah i mean we'll probably i feel like we eat pizza often maybe that counts as a tradition i like that i don't know i don't know it's it's like is momentous, and I like, and I do like, like, you know, being like, okay, 2025. Wow. Yeah. 26. Like, what do I want for 2026? So, like, I like that part, but it's never been, like, super important to be awake at the exact moment that it changes, basically. I agree. I agree. New Year's Eve is, like, my least favorite holiday because at, like, 1201, I'm done. You know what I mean?

Like, like, wrap it up. I want to be in bed. I'm over this. Like, yeah. um but i do have a couple of traditions and i do have plans that i'm excited about this year so my family and i have a tradition where at towards the end of the year it doesn't have to be like the dick new year's eve like but just towards the end of the year we go together through all of the things that happened that year so like everybody kind of like breaks down like their year and talks about like oh in january i went here and it's kind of a nice way to relive your memories and to kind of like really like think about the year as a whole and what happened. And so I'll do that with my parents over the phone at some point, which would be fun.

I have a friend coming in from New York, who is one of my best friends, my best friend from grad school. And she actually, her name is Olivia Bac-Krapritsker. She started a very cool feminist horror press called Creature. She's no longer with Creature, but she was one of the co-founders of it. And they are a small press that published by women and folks identifying as women. very cool, very cool stuff. So look them up. One of their, I think their most famous title,

I'm sure you've seen it everywhere, Kate, goddess of filth. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that title really took up. And that's one of their books. Nice. And so she's coming into town. We are going out to dinner at this place near my house.

As I'm saying this, I'm like, should I be disclosing where exactly I live? But like, whatever. your podcast listeners are good people we don't know where your house is so it's still relative yeah it's like an old school steakhouse called dear johns in culver city in l.A and like frank sinatra was one of the founding backers of it and so you like go inside and it feels like you're very in the 60s so we're going to get dressed up and we're having what we call mob wives

new year's eve where like the whole aesthetic is going to be like very mob wivesy and we're going to go Oh, that is so fun. That'll be fun, yeah. And then what I usually like to do is I usually like to watch Goodfellas in bed on January 1st, but I don't think I'll be doing it with that this year. But that's usually my beautiful. I love that. Yeah, those work.

We didn't really do anything growing up either. I don't know if Tyler Samuel really did either. I don't think so because we've never made a big deal out of it with his family. But yeah, I mean, staying in. That's how I celebrate all kinds of things. But your version sounds very fun, too. There's nothing cool enough nearby, but that sounds fun too. Well, and what I like about it is that it's like, it's close enough to my house

that I can be like, okay. Oh, yeah. You know, like I don't have to like deal with getting a taxi or, you know. Yeah. Being like, oh, it's going to be another 45 minutes before I can get home. I can be like, uh-huh. See you later. Just go.

you just get yourself home i love that so goddess of filth have you read it before i forget i have not actually read it okay i know of it i know um the premise i believe it's these young girls uh do a seance and call forth like an ancient i believe it's like astec goddess okay it's like a destructive goddess that empowers them too i think that's if i'm remembering correctly yeah oh it looks like it's a kind of it's a novella 156 pages for anyone who wants a quick read okay cool i had it pulled up so i was like i need to circle back on it but that's cool yeah i love that press too yeah yeah it's super cool needs to read more of their stuff did you since the last time we talked did you see hamlet i did not i could not make my weasy self go cry

I it was just not the it was also not the time to go see it when I was sick already I agree I didn't see it I did want to see it I still want to see it I know I do too I've heard about it is that it's fabulous and it's a tear joker and so I keep just having to be like is today the day and it's like today is not today I know it's just like yeah it's that's just a lot and I'm sure it'll be easier when it's available at home. I do prefer seeing stuff in theaters, but life hack for anyone who does have any kind of noise cancelling headphones, you do get

closer to the movie experience if you use noise cancelling headphones. So I've kind of decided that's probably what Hamlet is going to be for me at some point. So yeah, I didn't see that one either. I feel like there's a trend. So I watched three movies while I was home with my

parents and they will all two and a half hours plus long films for and they all I think kind of like earned it but I'm sort of like guys it needs to earn it like does the housemaid need to be two and a half hours or could it be a tight 90 minutes that like gets you and gets out that like the pacing is part of why we're here I would imagine right I don't know but I know I don't get it either because it's I'm fine like you're saying there are plenty of two and a half hour movies where I'm like that was amazing and worth it or especially that two the two hours like i understand that but there are some some that just need to be 85 90 minutes and that's okay and that's not a dig and i feel like

some of it is like being like prestige laden and trying to be like you know like we've been i think we're more out of it now but for a long time we're in the golden era of tv and part of that was about like you know elongating storytelling and da-da-da and so i think sometimes movies picked up on that and i'm like but some of them should be short tight and punchy you know like that's what we want yeah i i'm always going to think of strange darling because it's like 95 i think it's like 95 minutes and that was exactly how long it needed to be 100 percent totally agree longer there might be the same way challengers could have been six hours though but yeah we would have allowed challengers to be longer um speaking of gosh o'connor as i always um um

I did see Wake Up Dead Man. Have you seen it? Yes. I loved it. I loved it too. I thought it was so good. Yes. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, it's my favorite of the trilogy. It felt really like, it was very funny. Like, there were a lot of very funny pieces to it. I thought they didn't, I thought they did a good thing. Like, it reminded me kind of of the movie Heretic, the, that I know we talked about. I did not feel. like they there were a lot of questions raised about faith and like what it is to be like a good man or like a good pastor or like a good practiser of faith but like I didn't feel like they were

taking to do punches at like you know Josh O'Connor is the heart of that movie and he has somebody who like sincerely believes and like I thought it was beautiful I agree because it's like obviously it's no secrets anyone who's been listening I have been on a quest to find the loving Christians of America and they do exist Yeah. So I do. I love that like his character, not only sexy, also really did get into ministry because he wanted to connect with people and help people. You've probably seen it all over the internet, but like the scene where like they're about to figure something out and then the woman he's talking to is like, can you pray for me? Yeah. I was in tears.

I was like, oh, this is. is it this is what it's supposed to be about yeah like any any they do a very like smart choice with the blocking he like closes the door like it's this like private moment and it's it's beautiful it's beautifully rendered her acting was stunning I saw someone talking about like this is that this is like an argument for the like no small parts that we talk about where like her her performance really brings it to life too just as much as his I think that moment made the movie you know like I think it's like it doesn't necessarily advance the plot as much but it's like I mean it does a little bit actually but like yeah it's really about like this is what the movie is this is like the heart

of the movie the soul of the movie yeah I think that scene and then the scene oh my god the way they use lighting is like a whole thing that I could probably talk about for an hour itself but that scene where um Blanc Benoit Blanc is sharing like his perspective of like very controlling religion, which is something people use religion for. Totally. It's like shadowy and dark. And then Josh O'Connor's character says what it means to him. And the lighting becomes angelic and golden and beautiful.

And so like even on a technical level, this movie is fantastic. Oh, absolutely. It's so good. So good. And the way that they change the perspective about women and how it was a woman judging her, for the most i was like oh they nailed it oh all of that was great the and like the framing device like that they use for it that like you eventually come to see like what it did it like all of it it just was like really masterfully done i loved it i need more our boy josh o'connor you know i know

i love it he's everywhere and he deserves it he's a lot of movies this year i know i'm dying to see the mastermind i haven't seen it yet but i didn't either need to watch it yeah um And then I also watched one battle after another. Have you seen that one? Oh, yes, I have. Okay. So how did you feel about it? I think, I'll just say, like, my first line, it makes you uncomfortable. And to me, I feel like it should. And that's how it functions. I understand how some people think it fetishizes black women. But like, I think that was the point in my opinion. Like, so I've seen that discussion. For me, I'm like, you were. supposed to feel uncomfortable. Like that was not, that was not the winner of the movie. Totally. Totally. I, yeah, I, so I love Paul Thomas Anderson. I mean, boogie nights is like one of my all-time favorite films. And like, I just, my friend who's coming to visit today, like a couple weeks ago, I texted her. I was like, have you seen boogie nights?

And she was like, yeah, but not for a while. And I was like, well, we're probably going to have to watch it while you're here. Just like, beware. If you ever come stay with me, there will be like film assignment. Assigned watching. Last year, she was with me. when the fires broke out in L.A. And so there was like nowhere for us to go. And she was like, I don't know. I put on Gladiator because she hadn't seen it. And she was like, I don't know that I want to watch it.

And I was like, I'm so sorry, we will be watching Gladiator. So I really liked it. I didn't, it wasn't. It's not like a 10 for me. No, me either. And it didn't, it won't become like my favorite movie. There was a lot I liked about. about it.

Leonardo DiCaprio was in fine form as his sort of like, he does, he plays like disheveled and panicking and sort of like his good range, I think. And then Sean Penn was terrifying. My favorite was probably Benito del Toro, who was just like, calm presence the whole time he was there was just like, we're going to be okay. You know, it was great. I really appreciated a couple things about it. one part of it was filmed where I grew up so some of the shots in like the redwoods it was like

big news for a couple of years ago where it was like and so when they're in the high school that was a local high school um when he's like the back den cross place not all of it actually like some of the shots that were there I was like that's definitely not but um there were different parts of it that were filmed up there when he's running through the grocery store to get to the pay phone and he can't remember like what time it is the code is that was my grandmother's grocery store so running throughout and i was like that's murphy's like i used to go pick up so cool um so that was really cool and then i really appreciated um it felt like they did a thing that i thought worked for me i could see it maybe not working for other people but like uh they didn't slow down to like give us

the whole mythology of what happened like it clearly was like a version of america that's very similar to ours, but like slightly, maybe more in the future. And they didn't like slow down to tell us all of that. You kind of learned it. You know, like there's this outcropping of nuns who are like vegetarians and they're also like smoking weed and like teaching how to use a paca. You know, like there's all these kind of like different parts of this world that's become like fractured and militia, you know, there's all these little militias, but they're not like you're kind of just in it. You're not like slowing down to be like, oh, this. is what happened to American. It's now divided into all these different sections. You're just like

with them. I thought that was. Yeah. Yeah, I liked that a lot, that part of the storytelling. Yeah, so there are a couple of things. This is going to, lately, I've been seeing all these takes of why it was so insensitive in so many ways. So that's why some of this may sound like a defense for me. Obviously, you know, like I'm white. I have not lived the experience of what his biracial daughter would or the activist, the black activist that he was working with. So I understand that I could be wrong is what I'm trying to say. There were a couple of things that stuck out to me. One, the dad is not a hero.

Like, we're very aware of the fact that he's just trying to forget everything that happened and not do much. So even though, like, Leo is the big face on the wall of faces trailer, poster, whatever, he's helpless yeah so i i kind of liked that because where what i also thought was impressive what you just said about benicio del toro obviously jump ahead a couple minutes we're kind of getting into spoilers um was with the benicio del toro character so when he has to basically hide with him now because the president is sending oh you know sending the national guard i believe literally to occupy a city that was wild the day that i know i the day that i saw that movie i came out got in my car got on threads because i can't help myself and it was the day that he our real administration in

america sent ice and the national guard to literally descend on that apartment complex in chicago and they were zip tying three-year-old children when it was like freezing overnight so i literally saw this movie where something similar happens is essentially if you if you're listening to this point you've seen the movie um so the president sends uh whatever to this area and so leo's character i can't remember anyone's names at this point yeah you can tell he has zero clue what to do and like he is freaking out like you're saying he's panicking he's flustered there's all of that and benicio's character like you're also saying so freaking calm right when they're walking through the halls so good same thing he's still freaking out benicio's like essentially is like

as another tuesday for me in america was the vibe i was getting there and so then even when like even the children in the halls are not freaking out they're like you know this is just what it's like and we have this place we'll go and be safe and like when they all got like under the hatch and then he had to leave i'm like i felt like there were some very clear juxtapositions between how a white man is freaking out about this thing happening while we're seeing that like non-native americans i'm putting that in heavy quotation marks yeah there's like yeah we kind of have to do this and i thought that was pretty powerful i thought so too and i'm i'm with you and it's like that really stuck out to me both as like absurdist comedy and i think you're right making a point there because also along with that

leo is kind of freaking out and being like you guys don't know this but i was part of this militia gang and like I used to be somebody and he's like his whole narrative is that that's what's happening and he's missing that there's this huge operation happening around him that like Benicio del Toro was just kind of single-handedly running and it's like you go do this you go do that and he's just cool as a cucumber the whole time and he never stops and goes like wait what are you doing what is this about like he's so in his own stuff and like his daughter which like you know is a is a good concern to have about where your daughter is at this moment um but he's like very wrapped up in his own business and totally missing that like this whole other

thing is happening around him and in fact everybody else around him like has a better handle on what's happening than he does and he's just so much like i can't remember the password where's my phone charger like yeah i thought the exact same thing like i was like there's a very there's a very marked difference here in these experiences and then i Sean Penn's character is evil like my toes curl anytime I start talking about it he is despicable he's disgusting and unfortunately he exists in this world is the unfortunate part like yeah there are a lot of people like that but I thought I have not been a fetishized black woman he is absolutely fetishizing black women I thought it was

was a really, really good, like, display of sometimes it's kind of like how all the people that are so homophobic and then you find out they are gay. Yeah. I feel like it tackled the, this concept of like he's pretending like he hates black women so much and like, ew, gross, they're terrible. Part of the Christmas Club. So attracted. Sorry, what? Oh, it's part of like the Christmas Adventures Club, which is or wants to.

to be which is basically like the clan and yeah like fetishizing these black women yeah yes and like actually he's attracted to them and instead of like he caught he could have been better off if he had like maybe just been like examined that and decided i don't have to pretend like i hate them too um so there's that but then even we're in spoiler territory uh so so all of that to me i was like i'm having a gross reaction. I'm not thinking this guy is a good guy, but this shows how intense the like hate, but can just

be like the flip side. But then when like a big part of the tension in the second half, third act is about this group that he's a part of and they can't fucking know that he has

a black daughter because, and it was reminding me, I am not going to use the word, but being someone who loved that race as a white man. Oh, did I disappear right when I'm making this point? Okay, so for anyone watching on YouTube, it looks lower quality because internet and probably because I'm having 40 mile per hour wins out there. So something probably went wrong in Whitesown. So weather and Wi-Fi are not vibing in Indiana here today. So a lot of the tension of the third act is about how you are even looked at as really bad, almost below black people in these

white supremacist minds. I want to be very clear. Everyone should not be above or below, but in a white supremacist's mind, you are almost worse than this race that they hate so much because you love that person or are attracted to them. So that was like the big takeaway from it for me too is like almost his biggest sin was that he didn't hate them enough right right which is crazy because there was a lot of hateful um yeah i agree and it makes me think of i listened to a podcast episode a couple months ago of the show decoder ring um and it was about the use of the word cuck and how that like has like transformed over the centuries um but they got into this kind of theory and i know there's a real name for it and i don't remember what it is but like

Basically, like, to your point that you're talking about earlier, the people who are often very homophobic are also, like, might have be gay or like experimenting or questioning in their own life and like that it comes out, you know, like that we see these like really conservative Republican senators who then get caught in a bathroom with a man or whatever. And they were talking about basically like the erotics of the other and like the way that like, like if you look at the demographic of people who are swingers, it's like all Republicans because it's about kind of subverting. whatever you uphold as, like, the, the norm of what life should be or the golden standard. And that those two goals in tension, like, feed each other that you, like, feel like you have to perform this more. But then the shadow side of that is that, like, that's actually the thing that you want is the flip side of it. So, like, you're like, a nuclear family only looks like this.

Then often they wind up. And then they're talking about, like, the liberal version of that is that, like, liberal women are more predisposed to be into BDSM, like power play, which is like opposite of what you're standing for as like a feminist or like wanting to like, you know, that there are these ways that like our shadow sides kind of like interplay with the things that we like uphold as like our face. I don't know. It's very interesting. And I think that's a huge part of like. Yeah. And that felt very real in the movie. And again, I'm with you as a white woman. I don't think I'm qualified to speak on whether or not that was like a harmful trope or how that was done. But like it did

feel very real to me that he could be somebody who fetishize black women so extremely while at the same time being like very racist and like very like active in those racist beliefs and like actions like I think we see that play out all the time I do think so yeah yeah yeah and there I think it's important to note there are also very healthy ways to engage with your shadow self and then there are also very negative ways to engage with it and also like I don't care who you have sex with as long as you're trying to enact that like restrict other people's ability to do what you want to do. Yeah.

Yeah. Did you ever watch billions? It doesn't feel like a show that would have like really appealed to you. Obviously no shade. All of a sudden I was like, do that sound mean? I know. I was like, okay. It's kind of one of those things we're like now.

I don't know if I would have gravitated to it. But like a decade ago, I was like, there are so many shows I never got to watch. So that was really more about me than Hallie. But for the listeners, there's a similar setup where Paul Giamatti's character, he loves going and seeing a dominatrix. And then like that dominatrix character has a moment where she talks about like, yes, most of my clients are these extremely powerful sea level men. And it's like, but in this area, they get to be like, oh, I don't have to be that here.

100%. Yeah. But that can also be done in a healthy way. And like actually billions to their credit explores it in the way that like it's pretty healthy. Totally. Totally. And like, you know, I think you see that go together a lot. And my friends and I talk about this.

Well, I have friends and I who talk about it. It comes up semi regularly. You've heard of like financial dominatrixes. Yes. Yeah, they have clients and they're like, your little worm, pay me $1,500. And I'm like, how hard is it to get into that gig? Because that sounds great. I don't understand what men get out of it.

I think it must be that like reversal power play for like very powerful men. Yeah. Indulge something to get to feel like small or ordered or something. I'm like, my Venmo is here for it. Like, let's go. I know that one and feet picks. I was just talking to one of. my friends about that because so frequently i'm like kate you could figure it out you figure out systems

all the time you could figure it out and make life from your feet here the footpick market is oversaturated yeah that might see i never like get far enough to like learn that so that's that see that's why you know i'm just letting the people who are already there be there but i'm with you um if anybody listening who just happened to find us once if i find angel dominatrix i mean hit hallie up first because she brought it up first but i will too or if somebody has ever done it i teach us you know yeah that too i mean i'm happy to yell at men and tell them to give me money that's what's gonna say i mean insult them ask for money like i'm already doing that in these mean streets i'm just not going to be able prophetize it exactly well yeah i mean what i don't think

anyone can say is that one battle after another is not fodder for conversation it's kind of like book club fiction where you're like you will have stuff to talk about though yes that's accurate and obviously clearly please do correct me if i said anything um insensitive i would love to hear if i did honestly ditto and or if there's other takes i always interested in them too yeah yeah we're open to it all speaking to what we're open to or speaking about what we're open to since we're in the future with the listeners and it's 2026 we're going to talk about some of our 26 goals yeah i keep getting darker i don't know obviously financial dominatrixing number one it's like update your internet first right right um um uh yeah are you a

person who does resolutions definitely not resolutions um but i will just think about the things that i want to do more we kind of approach like you are succeeding in life in general you tell my oCD is bad because i'm qualifying everything i talk about um in general if each year we're doing more of what we want to do and less of what we don't want to do then it like you are making six or incremental moves forward even if it doesn't always feel like it. So it's kind of more that. Like I've been thinking about like, what would I do less of?

What do I want to do more of? But I don't do resolutions necessarily. Do you? Same. Same. I think in my 20s, I was often very kind of resolutions based. And kind of in part of that,

part of that American optimization culture that's like, you can always be better, you know? Right. And it's that I think for me, could be very toxic and also like tied into like diet culture and all these different things I know like the amount of ads is just like I'm obviously I've talked about I am using something to help with weight loss but like we don't need ads we don't need them just like beating us over the heads and I I also uh this is a hard conversation like I think any I want anyone to be empowered

to make whatever decision is best for their body also it's also hard as a person in a bigger body to be safe like I think there are ways that like this proliferation of weight loss drugs are like increasing fat phobia again like we didn't make we had made some um because now it's now some people are so skinny and it's like quote unquote more of a choice than ever to be fat which is the way people have always looked at it through history as though you know you know it's a choice but now it is like there is something you could take that would change that you know um It doesn't even always work for everyone.

But yeah, it is. Yeah, it's enforcing that idea, though. Totally. Exactly. I'm talking more about the idea than the reality because, like, you're right. It doesn't work for everybody. And we don't have a lot of research on what happens when you stop taking it. Yeah.

Research so far as pointing towards you regain the weight in most cases, you know, because that's what our bodies are designed to do. Yeah. Wherever they're going with this. Now I'm like, let's talk about this. We can talk about it all. but yeah the and I'm not blaming her for this but it has been a bummer to see Serena Williams as the one of the spokespeople for this only from the point of view of like again what she wants to decide to do with her body is her body her choice she is

the greatest female athlete who has ever lived possibly the greatest athlete who's ever lived like she is one of the all-time greats and it is a bummer to me to be like even her body needs to be smaller you know like and again there could be a million reasons she's taking it there could be different i do think it is like i think she mentioned like but i know it that celebrities in general promoting it is what i think is like a difficult conversation or a difficult thing to be doing or putting somebody who's like power is in being strong into an arena that is also like not that it's not about strength but it's like also about being smaller do you know what i mean like and again i'm not trying to aim that at her so

much as like the advertising of it just makes me a little that's the honor i love like you know more big strong women right yeah yeah it's not a fun time to be getting i was even thinking about that like all of it all the capitalism is in full force trying to make you feel bad about yourself in December and, like, sell you all the solutions in January. Absolutely. And it just, I just feel like, well, I guess you can. Normally you can say you don't want to keep getting an ad, because I, I, which it doesn't mean you never see anything, but I was about to be like, people need to at least

be able to do that because, you know, it triggers eating disorders and all of that. Yeah. And so all of which is to say to return it to resolutions, I don't do resolutions, because for me it does feel of that sort of piece of like optimize yourself constantly like every day or whatever that book is but like um but at like like like you I like to try to think of things that I want to invite more of into my life and like spend more doing and I think that's kind of more what we're that's what we're talking about yeah definitely my thing too is like not that if you're a resolution person it means you only choose things once a year but I'm like

I don't want it to feel like something you think about once a year I want to be thinking about this like all the every day almost totally yeah and I for me it tends to be more about stuff that I want versus that I don't want to you know what I mean like stop smoking I mean I don't smoke but you know what I mean like I try to do more of like I want to spend more time doing XYZ which naturally means that other things have to like take a backseat right mm-hmm yeah do you have one that you really want for 2026? Well, so I'm kind of doing it like backwards, which is that in 2026, I am basically on tap to be trying to write two big projects, which I can't fully talk about on air. But the way that I'm thinking about that is like, okay, then I need to be pretty disciplined in order to get through that. And I also need to be rejuvenating myself as an artist to make it through. I need this year to be, it's going to be really productive. So it also needs to be like very creatively inspiring and fruitful. So for me, one of the things that I'm trying to commit to is if you've read the artist's way by Julia Cameron,

one of the main things that comes out of it that everybody talks about is morning pages. And like I do try to like to do those. but she also talks about that she thinks every artist should go on an artist date with themselves once a week and that could be going to a museum or going to see a movie or doing something and so I'm trying to commit to wanting to have an artist date every week with myself so that I can keep those feelings of inspiration high in order to get some aggressive goals so for me that might even just look like watching a movie every week that I actually watch if you know what I mean like sometimes I'll have stuff on and I'm doing other things

and I'm not sort of but like carving out two hours to just be like yes I'm thinking of this I'm absorbing it I'm trying to see what does for me creatively like even be as small as that but like that's yeah one of my goals I love that it's always good to remind yourself to just do stuff you want to like once a week probably a good goal in general but then like you're saying it also is like going to inspire you or like make you think about things differently or whatever yeah Bruce just like got up and left like he did not like what I said he's like I am done listening to you I love that though and you have all of the coolest dates as we've discussed like wasn't your like trip to the morgue oh yeah I know one of those of where were you going

And last time we were recording, you were doing something, a bus tour? Yes. So I put together, so back in COVID, I, for my friends and I, when we were trying to figure out what to do in April when you were like in a little pod, I put together a true prime bus tour through L.A. And we like started on the west side and made it all the way over to the east side. So there was, I think three or four of us in our car because we had all quarantined together. It was my roommates and my friends who lived by herself across the street. so she only ever came to see us. And then we had a car of other friends who stayed in their car

and socially safe distance away. So we would get to wherever we were going. We would park. I would call them. I would read off my little factoid about like what was happening at that stop. And then we'd like take pictures and then go to the next stop. Oh, that's so cool. It was really fun.

So, and it was like, I just remember, I mean, there was no traffic in LA because it was COVID. Oh, yeah. And earlyish COVID. was nobody on the road. So like we got all the way across the city, which like you could not do now. So I had told some writer friends about it, Stephanie Roble, Amy Meyerson, and Amanda Pellegrino. And so they were like, well, we want to do that. And I was like, okay, okay. So I put together just a west side version of it. And we got to 10 stops throughout the thing. So we did that

a couple weeks ago. It was really, really fun. And so I just drove us all around in my little car. places stop. We'd go out, take pictures, come back in, drive around a little bit. We like there wasn't, we stopped it. I took them to this one of the cool things about L.A. You're, Kate's like, I didn't actually ask for a TED talk, but no, I did. One of the cool things about L.A. is, you know, it's a company town. Like historically, a lot of people who live here have worked in the industry. Not always like, you know, L.A. that's the stereotype about L.A. and it's actually just like a huge city, but like it is one of the engines. And so something that has happened, there are what they call storybook houses throughout L.A. that have been designed by production set designers from like in

the 1930s and 50s. So there is this house in Beverly Hills called the witch house. And it looks like a witch's house. Like you, seeing it, you would not be like, I wonder what Hallie means. You would be like that's a witch lives there. And so people come out and take pictures of it all the time. There's also like a Hobbit house over in Culver City. Like there's all the different things. So we stopped at the witch's house and I like pulled up the Wikipedia entry and was reading it. And there were some other women who were there taking pictures of the witch's house. And they came over because they were like, well, we want to know the history of the house. What are you guys doing? And my friends were like, she's taking us on a true crime bus tour around L.A.

And they were like, do you do this on the weekends? And I was like, no. But I do this for my friends. I do this for my friends. And I will at some point figure out how to like share my little. I have like a now I've like collected all the addresses of all these places. Oh yeah, you could make like a Google map trail or whatever. And just be like you can if you want to give me your email address so I can spam you when my book comes out, you can download this for free. This is kind of a good idea. You could also like post on your substack.

Yeah. Well, my poor long defunct subsstack. I need to get back on that. This is like one, I can tell how much you enjoy it. This is like how we both get like hyperfixated on like topics and stuff. like that um but two it was reminding me of when i went to new york for before thriller fest back in january um we went to see liz and gregg because their book published um but then like my sister-in-law was like i don't know where we should go like like i don't even know and i was like well i'll figure

it out so it was like i was like looking at all of these like cool bookstores that were we were like close to uh like we were actually upper west side um but also we're kind of near brooklyn so basically in a very contained like we could get there with subways i like researched all the bookstores i wanted to go to for different reasons that i put them on a map and then i was like okay what would actually make sense for two days and i just like built us a whole uh like books what do they call those like a itinerary or crawl like a bar crawl love that um and she was like this is so cool and i remember uh because i went with a friend um and i remember she was like she was like i just feel so bad that i didn't even help with any of this

and like you just like figured it out and i was like girl like this is like jam i had fun i got to just research totally totally maybe we one day will combine our bookish true crime interests and maybe we will do tours a la the hurricane bond that would be very fun that would be very cool so there's a 2026 goal here we go and if you ever make it out to l.a i would gladly take you on my trip from bus tour that's kind of one of my goals i kind i need to get out there because there i just know enough people now too i think actually in l.a the only thing is maybe some of them are not actually all right but they just say L.A well L.A. area you know it's a wide and sprawling yeah i have to make it happen we i don't need to get into the details but we need to have an editor

and then that can you know let us do stuff so yeah that's a whole other thing but i do want to come there i do want i want to experience your tour i would love to take you i've now like we find it and honed it you know like that's so fun yeah well so speaking of travel goals i guess i know i know I do know that I just want to get to L.A. It doesn't have to be for an actual book conference. That one's just like there are enough people. And I've never been. And I watch so much read all these TV and I read so many books the same place there and I've never actually been.

So actually even this is me in real time realizing one of our other co-hosts is from L.A. Like, damn. So you have lots of lots of. Yeah, McKinsey's in L.A. as well. oh travel but i also i think i want to go to the montreal mystery festival i think it's in may um and also like gear will be there this is the one that he went to earlier this year in may um so he's i think he's kind of like a not maybe not like a sponsor but he's like like i don't know what the word is he's going to be there though

That's cool. Is he can, like, moderate any sessions or? He did the first time. So I'm assuming he will again. And then I think it's one of the things where, like, he's been like reaching out to authors and being like, you should come here. So he must be some part of the organizing board now. Some version of that. DM, Gareth, any of you are like, I must know. I want to go. Yeah, I want to go. I think it'd be cool to go to Montreal. And then, like, we were just, Garrett and Steph and I were, those words blur together. if I don't say them like that, we're all talking about, like, maybe we could make it work

and we would all go. Because basically, Steph and I have met, because we live about six hours apart from each other. And neither of us have met Gare still. So it would be cool to meet him there. So that's like the other travel goal. Yeah, absolutely. Later in the year, Bosher Khan is in Calgary. And I'm like, am I just going to go to Canada? Canada and California this year? Yeah. So I don't know. Those are. are the two i'm thinking of very cool i love that you go to you do you go to like because there's some la ones right there are some la ones um so there's left coast crime um which i think i haven't been i went i've been to it twice the first the last time i went i think i don't think i've been to it

since was um 20 20 they it was like if if the pandemic was declared a problem on march 13 this was like March 12th you know what I mean like you were he had started the conference we were all in a um like conference ballroom for the first day and they basically were going through with us they were like you know we're just kind of waiting to see if the fire marshal tells us we have to disperse or not and then like at the end of the talk they were like so they did just tell us we have to disperse so everybody has to go home so I was like okay so I just drove back to L.A um it's like a two and a half I'll drive. But so that was the last time I went to that one.

And then there's also the California Crime Writers Conference, which happens I think every other year. And I think alternates between, I've been to it twice in L.A., but I can't remember if it alternates between Northern and Southern California, but that's a fun one too. And then I've been to Boucher Khan a couple of different times. I usually tend to wait until it's a year where I have, like, for those big ones, like Thriller Fest or I've actually never been the Thriller Fest but like BoucherCon if it's a year where I have a book out I'm more likely to go because then you're kind of meeting people yeah there's like the

they're not cheap but they're great I love I love sitting in on a conference session where they're telling you about you know here's how to craft things more compellingly like oh it is I would love to be a student of writing craft forever and I intend so I love it that was what yeah Thriller Fest was very fun and I got to meet a lot of people, but now I understand why people are like, it's so expensive. Yeah. Because it's like $7.50 for like a baseline ticket as a just an attendant or whatever. And I was looking at the Montreal one.

It's like $70. I was like, oh, this is why. Like that is significantly more. So like I enjoyed it, but I don't know. It's like if I could go other places, if I could basically go to two different ones, like I think I'd rather. not just it's you know the whatever the conference fee is that's expensive and even if you're an writer who's on a panel and invited to speak there they don't you know you're still paying the same amount um yeah and then it's also i have to fly to new york yes a hotel room in new york i mean

it's like easily five hundred dollar trip you know yeah i'm not going to do that every year even though it's really fun i know yeah so we'll see we'll see if we go anywhere we'll of us. Well, I'll go somewhere, I guess. Also, have you seen Jeanette McCurdy's half his age? The book she was coming out. The cover looks amazing. I don't even know. Is it fiction? Yes. Okay. It's her debut fiction.

She just announced tour dates and one is in Chicago, so I'm going to go see her. You should anyway. Lane would, I'm sure, go with you. Oh, no, shit. I didn't even think of that. Yeah. my non-travel one of my non-travel goals though is so a couple months ago I posted about doing like a band book club like we read a band book one month or each month and obviously the thing that gets the most difficult with book clubs especially if they grow is not everyone that's going to be able to do like the same time so I was like

I don't necessarily need this to be like a talking book club for anyone who's listening there's the backlist book club and the patreon link so if you want to do a book club we have a very fun group of readers so there's that but i wanted to also have something where it's like that's not the only way to engage with a book and story graph has a feature where you can set up i can't remember if their terminology is buddy read or set up a book club around a book so it's like you can pick what you're going to read and it kind of like makes a forum for you essentially and it goes by like chapter so it's like i could read all the way through and be putting all my reactions of like what the fuck just happened and then they can move through it as they move through it and like they might comment when they get through that chapter basically

I like that yeah I really like that feature and I was like that's how I should do it so actually earlier this morning I was going through and trying to pick I think all I'm going to post like a calendar so like these are the 12 books that we'll be reading in 2026 but also it's like really low-key and so if it's one you want to read and want to see our thoughts like you can go here so that's one of my other 26 projects i love that what are some of the books that are on your list yes so i'm trying to really um get a good range of like lived experiences i guess is the word that's coming to mine where did it go i was just working on this okay here we go um so all boys aren't blue is one that I see on a lot of band lists it's by george m johnson

and like the short line is in a series of personal essays prominent journalists and the LGBTQIA plus activist george m johnson explores his childhood adolescence and college years in new jersey and virginia so it's you can imagine what he was up against and you can imagine why some people are like we shouldn't have to read this book not just we shouldn't have to they're like get rid of it um there's one called dear martin uh by nick stone and so uh boomtown was the book that gar and i read i mean a lot of people read and we actually interviewed her too but i knew some of her why that that was her first adult fiction and i knew some of her y a has been banned and she has one that's called dear martin and it's a kid writing like a

a modern black boy writing letters to MLK, like as if he could write them to MLK. What does it say here? I'm trying to think of because I think he's in prison. Yeah. So he, Justice McAllister is top of his class and set for the Ivy League, but none of that matters to the police officer who just put him in handcuffs. And despite his rough neighborhood,

he can't escape the scorn of his former. peers. So yeah, I think he is writing to Martin while being under arrest. I can only imagine how thought provoking it is, especially after talking to her and kind of hearing about it a little bit. And then that premise itself, I think is pretty fascinating. There is one called gender queer um by maya kobabe i think that's how i pronounce it so this is in 2014 maya who uses a m air proton protons pronouns uh at least it was the word pronoun i messed up not their right um thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comment mya kobabe who uses a m air pronouns started writing air autobiography as a way to explain

himself to air family love it love it so uh definitely like i think everyone's lived experience is everyone's lived experience and i'm very intrigued to hear about anyone who just like feels a little bit different than everybody else so really but yeah then there is monday isn't coming by tiffany d jackson i heard her talk about that one when i saw her recently and that one's been banned too but it's it's a like a black teenage girl in high school her best friend just disappears and nobody like no adult she talks to thinks anything should happen and like even like who the girl was living with like no one cares that she's missing yeah so that one i know it's a very sad look at the way systems fail us uh not us fail others um but like that one i have that one on there even then like

i haven't read beloved by tony morrison yet i think i haven't read the bluest eye but i have not read Beloved yet. Beloved is I don't know one of like the great books of America like I mean because it's it's doing so much I mean Morrison is just like an unbelievable writer right like unbelievable wisdom writer all of it so much about um I mean it's in a way it reminds me of this is like a strange thing to parallel it to but like sin where it kind of takes this like fantastical conceit to like reckon with the history of like subjugation and slavery in America and like it is just an unbelievable book I am excited for you to read that way yeah yeah I really the bluest eyes amazing in it the way that it talks about the kind of like body dysmorphia

but also in the sense of if you're a black girl seeing like the white ideal and the blonde hair and the blue eyes like it's a racist level of body dysmorphia because you're You're like wanting to look like the people who are safe and seem more loved and seem accepted. But it's like also like what she's writing. It also connects a lot with any like potty dysmorphy you've ever had. Totally. That one's fascinating too. But yeah, I do want to read Beloved.

Kindred is what I was just telling Tyler about Kindred lately or recently. And I was like it is the best use of time travel to make some points about how. how poorly black people were treated for a very long time and even ties into what we were talking about with one battle after another whereas i recall she has like that ancestor who's kind of like very racist but it's also like obsessed with black women like loves black women but like in a in a very problematic way and in a way that subjugates them and like continue but like it's i don't know it it has definite connections to that for sure yes rufus is not a good deal Dude. But yeah, the dual tension for anyone who hasn't read it, because I don't think this, you find out within the first 10, 15% is like a woman from the 19, from 1976 when America was gearing up to celebrate 200 years, which is important. Then she goes all the way back in time to 1776. No, not 1776. It's not 100 years. She goes back into antebellum, into the antebellum south, like right before the

of a war but she ends up on the plantation of who are technically her ancestors yeah and that does mean the master because for anyone who did not know that the masters were raping their slaves they were so her lineage goes all the way back to an enslaved woman and that woman's master essentially so like you think back to future or back to the future is intense when it's like oh i can't change my parent's story or i might not exist this is like oh i can't save someone who's being treated this way or i won't exist anymore like and also i cannot get caught yes time because i can't always in my life and then she's also as i recall married to a white man in the 19 which is like also very interesting like it's spectacular book i love that book so i just

started positive obsession, which is Susanna some Suna Morris, Susan someone's autobiography of Octavia Butler. And I just listened to the chapter

because like she wrote journals like extensively for like 20 years of her life. Love it. And so she even was writing about how she was going to have her be with a black man. But she could not

realistically put a black man in the South and keep him alive. Like, she literally's like, there's no, I can't find any way where he would get to stay alive. Like, if he, he couldn't pick up on how he was supposed to interact with people because he didn't know when he was in the past. And then the second he does, like, they would just shoot him for not knowing. And I was like, that is so fascinating that a lot of that choice was because she was like, I couldn't. I was like, oh, which like adds to the themes of the book actually. Totally. Totally. like there's a darkness behind that choice but then i also think that choice is so strong because

it like the guy she's married to in the 1970s is not quote unquote a bad man although he's a white man so he understands the world a certain way and then he brings back into the pat like there's it's like does all this really interestingly nuanced things to their relationship to and like yes yeah it is a work of art and i octavia butler is now one of my faves of all time i love parable of the sower and parable of the talents and kindred and now i'm falling in love with her in her biography she is so sweet so yeah those are some of the books that will be on that and i'll post about it at some point so everybody can go find some there is one the firekeeper's daughter by that one i was like that one is banned because i just read this author's um angeline boo

I hope, but I read Sisters in the Wind that she just wrote, and it is so good. I don't know either. So sisters in the wind, I need to look at the synopsis to make sure I don't give anything away because there are like quite a few different rules, but basically our main character, she's been, she's five years in the foster system, has harder to be cautious. But she basically learned something about her lineage at the, like, a diner she's working at, and then starts to feel like someone is following her. And that is mainly what you need to know. Then it devolves into like what was happening to her in foster care.

But like it starts you at the point where she is suddenly in danger and you don't get all the information up front. That's why I was like looking at the synopsis because like it's one of those where you really do start off in the middle in that like it's not until halfway through the book you get the backstory. So I didn't want to ruin it. It is a really, really emotional and wonderful story. Like it is a thriller, but it's also like a really great kind of a family saga. It's not because it's not multiple. It's found family. That's kind of what it is. Apparently her other book, Firekeeper's daughter, has been banned in schools because it's. talks about how Native American girls and women have been treated. So, that one will be on there too. I love that. Okay. I love that. Yeah. Excellent. So you, so your writing goals is that you have a lot to write. I have a lot to write. And then you want to balance it with some fun so that you can keep doing it. Exactly. So I need to keep on to a pretty strict writing schedule this year to try to just keep making progress on both of these projects yeah um for me that also means of course a lot of reading so i always like set a good

read's goal um i'm still using evil empire goodread sorry uh um you just have to but i you know i i try not to be i like i'm not going to meet my goal this year and like oh it's all right oh no um but like yeah i i have been trying to also do a thing Like, I used to have such a big writer crush on Ray Bradbury, and I still do a little bit. And like his, like, prescription for, like, making yourself a writer was every day you should read one poem, one short story and one article about something in the world that you're interested in. And he's like, after a year, you will have stuffed yourself full of good writing, good language, and, like, interesting facts about the world. And so I've been trying to do a little bit more of, like, I love short stories. but I struggle with short story collections because I feel like I need like a little space in

between each of them. Yeah. I'll go through periods where I'll try to be like read one short story a night because that feels a little more manageable than like, like I don't want to read like a hundred pages of a short story collection because it's like too. I know. I don't know. You get like too attached to a story and then you have to put it down.

And then like immediately starting is hard. Yeah. And so I'm also going to be trying to do a little bit more of that like in my prescription for stuffing myself full of things that inspire me. Now you're making me want to do that. I need to do that. It definitely needs to do that. And I'm like, I'm probably not going to do that every night, a short story, a poem, and an article. But like, if I'm just a little more intentional and try to do a little bit more of that more consistently, yeah, that's really great. You know, like, that's still going to be a great amount of things that could inspire me or create different, different thoughts or

different ideas or stories. yeah well I will be doing that in some way before and tweaking it or whatever now I feel like I definitely I just feel like I could and I agree reading one short story a day because it's like sometimes I've even like gotten short story collections via audiobook and so then you're like okay go to the next one because you're like driving and I'm like I don't know so yeah just doing one there's like a hangover you know like with the short story i find like i want them to be i love them but i can't binge them the way that i could read a hundred pages of a novel and not be like oh you know um yeah have you read kelly lynx get in trouble collection of short stories no

okay we sound good it is i her brain is singularly the brain that like If I could pick to write like anyone, I would probably pick to write like her. And I cannot understand how she makes these stories work. Like, I cannot understand why they work. And yet they do. It was shortlisted for the Pulitzer. The year it came out. It is, like, if I'm ever going to recommend any collection of short stories, it would be

get in trouble by Kelly Link. It is, like, please go read at least some of them. The first one is called The Demon Lover. and it's about this, I think the protagonist is a man who had been involved in a franchise of films that is basically like, I'm just going to tell you about it, but like, sorry, so it's going to spoil part of it, but like, basically like Twilight, like he and his co-star had been like in this series of teen heartthrob movies and they had dated at a certain point and now they've broken up. And like while they dated, they had had this very strange experience with this young woman that was kind of like fantastical. And. now his ex-girlfriend who used to be like his ex-star basically like Karen or Kristen Stewart is now doing ghost adventure tours on TV and so like he's kind of like burned out of his life and he like goes down to Florida to visit her and goes on like a ghost hunting adventure and like it kicks up all this weird stuff from their past and it's like I can't even understand how she makes

it it feels like a way my brain cannot function how she like pulls these things together and makes them work yeah sometimes it's i mean this is not exactly the same but sometimes with um really really well done world building so really talking about like fantasy sometimes sci-fi is the same way sometimes i'm like like that kind of imagination well you would think objectively we can say they're creating things that don't even exist in the real world and sometimes i'm like how did you see so many of these things totally i'm with you you and that's that's what her brain is like like there are yeah so it highly recommend 499 on kindle if you're looking for a good uh short story collection is going to be a part of my ray bradbury

routine now that's awesome well mine i'm trying to think so you know how i'm going to get on a box again. I am so tired of the people who get angry at people who post about how many books they read. End of sentence. It doesn't matter to me if you complain about people who read five and you're like making fun of them or if you're making fun of people who read 100 or telling them they're lying. I'm so over all of that. And I'm not against having reading goals and like I think they're useful but like for example i read twice as many books this year as i did last year all because of audiobooks yeah so there's also like that whole element where i'm like i don't even know what to set my goal for because i like became a new reader this year basically um but like i obviously like

i do i i want to do more like continuing ed content i like filling in the parts of my like history knowledge for the most part but also like social which so society and culture are definitely part of history so but i am intrigued by all of that so i do i definitely will be reading at least one non-fiction a month basically is where i'm headed with that because i do just love getting more information and then finding ways to like share it in different ways so that would be i don't know my reading goal is but i know like some of the things you know i i totally get that and i i'm with you i i don't like when people make fun of other people's reading goals either it's like it all comes down to insecurity right like yes somebody read 250 books a year that sounds great i would i that's not my

pace no i think that's great for them uh who cares like i care the thing the thing i care about is are people reading you know what i mean i don't care what or how often or what or if it's audiobook it's all reading just take it in you know um also there's no they're not winning prize money like they're not taking anything from you even if they exaggerate how many books they read it doesn't even matter it doesn't matter it's i hate it every single time of year at this time of year now that i've been on book instagram more for like four years every time i'm like what are your weird weird those problem like this is so stupid do you think it all like here's a weird hypothesis you think it comes back to the years of did you ever have this like they would have like

reading and pizza competitions where it's like read a certain like I think it might be that that like there's a tall child yes inside of us who's like they're not getting more pizza that I'm getting you know what I think you're right you're right pizza is what got us here Oh, that's amazing. I like that take. Thank you. Yeah, that's a good one. One of my little, maybe this would kind of be considered a resolution, but I technically kind of started doing it already.

I am going to ask for audiobooks more often when people reach out to me because it's just the truth. Like, I am just going to point out, I don't know if I could fit this book in. However, if you can send me the audiobook, might be able to fit that in. so that i and i and i have to say no more i'm trying not to qualify myself again but like when that's the other thing i'm going through is when you get bigger and are getting more pitches which is great but also it's great and but i have to feel okay saying no because you're i can't i had a spree earlier this year where i was like putting out two episodes on tuesdays

multiple times i don't need a lot yeah yeah no so those are the other little little things things I need to work into it. I totally hear you. I'm sort of being more genres, too. That's the other thing. I don't think I'm going to read every thriller that comes out this year. Yeah, totally. I mean, you never can, but you know what I mean.

Never can, but we always like to think so. Yeah, I get it. I hear you. It's hard. This last year, I read less than I, like, I actually think this will be the smallest number of books I've read on goodread since I started tracking like you know I read per year partially because I started taking on more freelance work and like I worked on 35 manuscripts this year I didn't have as many wow yeah

it was arguably too much um I didn't have as much like time to and also didn't want to read as much you're saying I'm sure your brain like after reading that way totally and I'm having to try to decouple myself from being like oh I didn't read as many books on good reads as I wanted to Yeah, but I read a lot to chart it all. You got a couple re-reads. Yeah, yeah. I did. I did.

There were like many books that I was reading more than once. And so, yeah, so that's the thing. But you talked about reading a nonfiction book a month. I don't know that I'm going to put this out there as a goal because I want to try to commit to what I say I will do and I don't know that I can fit this in. But an idea I've had in my mind that I've wanted to do. is I want to do like my year of feminine rage reading and it may or may not be related to the schmilection and who's leading our country right now. But like I have a couple different

books that are like biographies of like bad bitches from like ancient Rome and like different stuff. And I like read and be like what lessons could one learn from these women who are not afraid to like shake things up, you know? I mean. I try to do a loose version of that where I like If I'm looking for a book and not sure what to read, lean into my feminine range back, backlist. It helps. It helps to like see how other people dealt with oppressive circumstances. I'm not oppressed oppressed, but I am a little bit. And in general, this administration is oppressive. Like, that's just how it is. 100%. We are not the most oppressed group in America. Like, there is plenty of work to be done. And we are currently backsliding on women's

Right. It's pretty hard across the board. I'm not interested in that. Yes, I am not. Are you, are most of them fiction or are they most nonfiction? I have both. You have both. So I have to recommend I Medusa, which is right up here by Iona Gray. Oh, oh, it's so good. I'm all about that. So yes, Medusa, Medea while we're at it, you know, let's kill some kids. That is a separate sound bite to like it really sometimes it helps that's what and that's where i was going to fiction and nonfiction you can come away from it like oh i am not the only person to have gone through this ryan hall they actually had a really good rant uh one of his posts i think it would i can't remember it was after another like devastating thing in the news and he was like uh like you think you're

the first person to live through politically trying times you think you're the first person to lose your rights in real time like not even on this not even happening right now right like that's the whole myth of american exceptionalism but like yes this is happening in other countries and has been happening in other countries all the time and we're like but it couldn't happen here as if it starts to have segregation and stripping people of rights and yeah yeah and then so and i know sometimes some people are like and there's time in place if someone needed support and to hold space for how much that's freaking them out especially if you're like uh not white and ice is occupying your town like you hold space for that person absolutely in the context of what he was saying that's the part that

sometimes helps me remember like no there there are other people who've gone through this and so when I had a couple moments in 2025 for all of a sudden I was starting to freak out a little bit and like was kind of feeling like the what do I talk about or like like the ground was getting ripped out from under me and I was like do I even know how to discern who is a good person anymore and like what is happening that happens and then books books are what helped because you can experience all these experiences whether they're fiction or nonfiction or you resonate with something and you're like no there have always been the people too who are like I'm not doing this just because everybody else is so I always get kind of, like, fortified by those stories. I totally agree. And I do think, like, culture and what's happening are intertwined, right? And, like, we have the last couple of years a shift in culture towards more conservative things. Like, there's less sex in movies.

There's less sex in books. There's, like, you know, the rise of the trad wife and all these different things, all of which I understand and I have participated in to various degrees. I watch those goddamn Mormon TikTok wives. Like, I am part of the problem. You know, like, I'm platforming them. But like... You're cautionary as hell.

Right. They are. Right. So little pleasure in this life. Let me watch that. At the same time, I'm also like, I am aware on some level that like, we're seeing that on TV mainstreamed in a way that is very different than like what we would have seen 10 years ago.

And I think that like one of the ways for me that I want to push back on. on some of that is like keeping what I'm ingesting more extreme, you know, than what we're seeing like, you know, like more feminine rage, more stuff. And there's plenty of that out there and like more your point, like a lot of books from diverse points of view, like trying to remind myself that just because we're seeing certain things happening in the culture doesn't mean that that has to be what I take in. And it doesn't have, it doesn't have to mean it's going to be like this forever is like the other nice thing. Like I just finished one called We Refuse a Forceful History of Black Resistance by Kelly Carter Jackson.

And she, I'm trying to find my review because what is cool is the book is basically five chapters about different ways that you can refuse in a system like that. And it's revolution, protection, force, flight, and joy. joy. So she talks about how all of those can be acts of resistance against like a culture that feels, you know, oppressive. And I loved this book. And it was kind of reminding me when I read Parable of The Sword at the beginning of the year, I was like, wow, she really called that out, like all of it. There's for anyone who hasn't, there's literally a president running on Make America Great again. The climate's getting worse. a lot of crazy stuff that she predicted in 1976 when she was writing it. So I was like, wow,

she knew what was going on. And it kind of went after I read that, I was like, but of course, those who have had to be the most hypervigilant in our culture are the ones who were even then were like, here are the patterns. Here's what I'm seeing. And of course, she kind of ends up being right. Right. One hundred percent. Refuse made me feel the same way where it was like hearing how resourceful. That's the other thing. Like I feel like I can also learn about how to exist in this sadly from black nonfiction and history books because like they have had to figure out how to navigate much worse stuff basically. Absolutely. Absolutely. And like to your point when you were talking about like the surprise that I think people have felt about like things

that are going like I think you're right. I think more marginalized communities aren't. are not surprised because they're like it's been like this for us who enjoy a level of neighbor dog got mad neighbor dog was like angry about inequality yeah um that like you know it like it should not be a shock to no progressive white people that this is happening because it's like yeah the right he's been on the board you know like it is where but i you know so i think you're i think that's like such a good observation and like even to your point like parable of the sower like was she anticipating something to come or is she just reading that like this is america you know and was america in 1970s and still is we are always hearkening back this idea of a better time

we had that has now alluded us and it's like that better time for whom was that a better time you know like for whom a very small very small percentage yeah it was not everybody and like also they didn't have toilet paper do we really want to make america great exactly like okay let's get rid of your antibiotics like there's a lot of stuff well i guess they're they are doing that fuck they are actually they're on that they're you're like oh right right right right that is part of the hellscape yeah no well you you can find hope And the people who have taught back previously.

Oh, God. But also, I hope in 2026, everything's magical, you know, like we're talking about these. They're in 226 now. They're in 2020. Who knows? Maybe a lot of good stuff has happened in the next four or five days. Yeah. You never know.

You never know. Do you have any? I don't know if I have any other. I don't know those were my big ones you know and I like to keep them I don't ever want my goals or aspirations to be things that I like wind up hitting myself over the head about for like not having achieved you know so always for me I like dance between wanting to be intentional and thoughtful and also like not being so rigid about a goal that you like somehow feel like you failed yourself when it's like okay we read you know 50 books instead of 80

yeah that bad like that's not bad you know so um most so yeah those are at all what do you say i said most people aren't reading at all so isn't it about like i don't know to your point like enjoyment and bringing more things into your life that you'd like you're not that's i think the core that we're speaking to here yep in with a good shit out with the bullshit