Hello, everybody, my name is Camille,
and welcome to the first episode of Curiositea,
a podcast that I just
kinda decided to start on a whim!
I am /in medias res/ packing,
so my equipment is packed up, and
my room is covered in boxes,
so even if my equipment were not
already packed up, I would
not have the space to film right now, and I've just been kind of
in a slump of not making content, and I
wanted to find a way to be able to make content but also
be able to compromise with my current situation with packing
and moving. I still don't know when
I'll be able to move--I'm waiting for my boyfriend to get a job,
but I would really like to move as soon as possible--
so I'm kind of in a weird state of all of
my things are half-packed, half-not,
and I don't really know what's going on with my life right now! So
I'm starting a podcast to give me
an outlet that is
easier for me to create consistent content with,
and I hope you enjoy it! I'm still
figuring out all of the new things that are
involved in making a podcast,
so I decided to make my first episode of CuriosiTEA
something familiar, if you are
already familiar with my YouTube channel, and that is
an episode of Recent Reads & Tea, the series
where I drink tea and rant and ramble about
the books that I've been reading lately, but I'm
not doing a good job of being on-brand
for my first episode of the podcast because
I'm actually drinking hot chocolate right now, so I
hope you can forgive me for that. My peppermint hot chocolate is already
halfway gone because I took an Instagram picture with it
before I started recording this episode,
so it probably won't last very long, but we'll see how this goes!
This episode of Recent Reads & Tea will cover the books
that I have read in spring of
2018! Now,
through spring of 2018, I was doing my
student teaching, so a few of the books that I read were because of
that. I had to read the books to be able to teach them,
but I also did get to fit in a few books for pleasure,
most of which were audiobooks.
As always, let's start with what I'm currently reading! I'm
currently reading /Feet of Clay/ by Terry Pratchett.
This is the third book in one
of the meta-series within the
Discworld series. I think it's something like the
Watchmen series; I'm not sure. I'm borrowing
these books from my friend
Nicholas, and he is giving them to me in the order that I
have to read them, so I haven't had to concern myself to much with that,
but I know that this is the third book
in one of the series within the Discworld series.
I'm really enjoying it. I was a little bit iffy about the
first book, which is called /Guards! Guards!/. His writing style
is something to get used to, and I'm gonna quote
my friend Nicholas on this because I think he described it
in a very wonderful way: "Terry Pratchett's
writing are bricks
made of trash that result
in a beautiful castle." And that is exactly
How I would describe Terry Pratchett's writing.
The micro-writing is not necessarily the best.
It's not the most pleasant nor the most exciting--there are
some really good lines in there--but when you
zoom out and take a look at the macro-writing,
it's beautiful. Beautiful!
So I definitely understand why Terry Pratchett had
such a huge following when he was alive, and
I'm a bit sad that I was not reading his books when he was
alive. I remember the year that he died because my lab partner
in my computer programming class was a big fan,
and she was really upset the day that she learned that he died, and I
couldn't empathize with her [at that time], but now I can.
Also, in case you haven't noticed already, one thing
that I'm very excited for about the podcast format
is that the podcast format lends itself better
to longer content, and so
I can ramble a bit more,
and I don't have to worry about spending two (2) hours
editing myself down.
Because I feel like, if you're going to listen to a podcast,
you're probably listening to it while you're doing something
else, so you're more likely to
play a podcast that's half-an-hour long
compared to a sit-down video
that's half-an-hour long, so that is one thing that I'm very
excited about! I can rant and ramble about my
books more than I used to! Aright! So onto the books
that I finished. Spoiler alert: lots of
four (4)-star ratings in my last set of
reading, the first one being /How to Survive a
Summer/ by Nick White. I did listen to this via
audiobook, and it is narrated
by Micheal Crouch, who also narrated
/Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda/. I love
his narrating voice, but I don't think he was
the best choice for this one, and I had
the same issue with /Simon vs the Homo Sapiens/.
Michael Crouch is not very good
at Southern accents, and he speaks
normally most of the time, and then all of
a sudden he'll say "y'all," and it just sounds so
out of place, but it's in the dialogue, so he has to say it
because /Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda/
takes place in Georgia, and /How to Survive a Summer/
takes place in Mississippi, but that
has nothing to do with the actual writing itself. /How to Survive
a Summer/ is about a queer boy growing up
in a not-queer-friendly
Mississippi community, which I
felt. Oh my goodness. The characters were
all too familiar for me as
another queer who grew up in Mississippi.
I never experienced the severity of oppression that
the protagonist experiences in this book--
I was never sent to any sort of therapy
camps. This book definitely hits
a lot of hard topics
with religion and how that
mixes with family and queerness and
how they don't mix most of the time.
Even though I never experienced any of
these experiences first hand, the
attitudes and characters were all
too familiar from
the culture that I grew up in.
I also really appreciated that the main character--
I cannot remember his name; I read
this so long ago. I read this back in
March. I do not remember the main character's name, and
I apologize for that, but it was fantastic to see
a gay character who is not a
caricature. He is so
much more realistic to the
other queer people that I've met and to me
by just being himself who also
happens to be gay or queer or whatever you are.
He is not the caricature that is
often portrayed in fiction, so I did really appreciated that
about this book. Also I didn't mention this before, but all of
GoodReads written reviews will be linked
in the description box or shownotes, depending on what
platform you're listening to this on, so
if you would like to read my reviews, then
go ahead and check out those links down below.
And if you or someone that you know could better experience this
podcast through either
subtitles or a written transcript,
then if you're listening to this on YouTube, then you can turn on closed
on YouTube playback, or
you can click the
description box or shownotes for a fully written
transcript. I want to make this as accessible
as possible, so if you have any more suggestions on
how I can do that, please let me know!
The next book that I read was by a
fellow BookTuber! She goes by
Kim Here, and she also has
another channel called The Princess Agenda, I will leave
both of those linked down below. Kim Here
is primarily a
BookTube and exploring-the-life-
-of-a-freelance-entertainer type channel--really
cool!--and she also does podcasts sometimes.
And The Princess Agenda is dedicated to her love
of Disney characters! She loves
her Disney princesses, and she was
Disney princess for parties for a
very long time, and so she's very good at acting out
the princess--I'm pretty sure she worked at Disney [World] for a while too--
so I'll leave both of those channels linked down below,
so be sure to check those out! Oh! And she's also a writer,
in case you couldn't tell, and I read
her book--or, collection of novellas--
/ Demonic Illusions/ by
K.D. Reed is how you can find her on Amazon. I'll
also leave that linked down below, and this is a collection
of, I believe, three (3) novellas that make up
this entire series following a
normal boy and his demon girlfriend!
this was another four (4) out of five (5) star read, and I read
this while on a road trip with my family
to Texas for a family friend's wedding!
I did most of the reading in the car and in the hotel,
and it's a very good holiday,
vacation, not-too-serious, witty
read! It was fun and quick and
I absolutely flew through it while I was travelling with my family.
It was especially a nice break because
all of the other books that I had brought to read on
that trip were very dense, so this was a great break
from those books when I needed it. I looove
what I read, but it was just too short! I
needed more
to really flesh out the characters and the intriguing world.
Kim has a beautiful vision
for this world that she sets up,
but I think that this series could have benefitted from about
a hundred (100) more pages
just to take more time to flesh it out.
We get little hints about the politics of the underworld,
and I would have loved to have seen more of that! Despite
the main character dating a demon, one of the biggest
aspects of their
relationship is that she has the ability to read minds,
and I thought that Kim
wove that aspect into the writing
sooo well, and the narration fits
the main character's voice so perfectly!
The writing is really en pointe!
Next I read /Leah on the Offbeat/, and I did listen to this
via audiobook, and I gave this three (3)
to three and a half (3.5) of five (5) stars.
It did not meet my expectations.
As I said, I am a queer person, and
I am bisexual, and so I was really excited
to read /Leah on the Offbeat/ because
the main character is bisexual, but I
did not feel like the representation was
good... her bisexuality
felt like a plot point instead of an
identifying character trait,
and I really struggled with that. from the very
beginning--just within the first few
chapters--you know who
she's going to end up with, so as I read,
I couldn't help but feel that Becky Albertalli
wanted to write a
lesbian love story, BUT she
decided to throw in a boy and make
her bisexual just to add more tension and
drama, and it just did not work.
It's so obvious from the very beginning that Leah
does not like
the boy love interest and that
the boy love interest only exists
to make a boy-girl love triangle to
"prove" that Leah is bisexual. Okay,
some may consider what I just said a spoiler,
but it's so obvious from the very
beginning that Leah has noooo
interest in Garrett, I think his name is, at all
that I, honestly, don't even consider that a spoiler.
It is so inevitable that she's going
to end up with the girl, so like I said, it just felt
like Albertalli wanted to write
a lesbian love story, but she was grasping
for very thin straws to
stretch out that story as long as possible,
and bisexuality was one of those straws.
As a bisexual person myself,
who shies away from reading bisexual
representation because I'm afraid of them
being so inaccurate, as this one was,
that was extremely disappointing for me.
Now I have a few books to talk about that I read to
teach, and the first one is /Romeo and Juliet/ by
Shakespeare, which I gave three (3) out of five (5) stars.
I do agree that Shakespeare's writing
is beautiful. However, I don't think he's
romantic. He's derivative and unoriginal,
and I'm just not a fan of Shakespeare.
You know that tweet format that's going around right now
where it's like "unpopular opinion:
_______ edition" ? Well, literally today,
I saw one that was "unpopular opinion: bookish edition."
and I responded with "Marlowe
> Shakespeare."
So, Marlowe is better than Shakespeare. I think that;
the people of Elizabethan England, who lived
when their plays were being produced thought that.
It is only our modern time
who thinks that Shakespeare is better. I could make an
entire episode about this, but basically, Marlowe
was more highly considered during the time that they were
writing and being published and produced, but
Marlowe died sooner, so he simply had
that disadvantage of not having as
long of a time to create and produce
such a volume of work as Shakespeare did,
but he was considered much better as a writer
and actor during the actual time.
/Romeo and Juliet/ I especially have an issue with
just because it is so romanticized
in our current culture
when Shakespeare meant it as a satire. I
often tell people that I don't like Shakespeare
just because it's a very simple way
of getting my feelings across.
What I really mean by saying "I don't like Shakespeare"
is that I do not like the current cultural
perception of Shakespeare. Pretty much everything that Shakespeare
wrote is satire. At least all of his
romances and comedies are satires, and
it just frustrates me to no end how
our modern culture has turned
those satires into legitimate
examples of romance and love.
Shakespeare would be rolling in his grave.
Maybe that's why he doesn't have a head! Fun fact: Shakespeare
does not have a head in his grave. He's just so upset
by modern perceptions of himself
that he just ripped his head off because he
couldn't even conceive it, so he just threw his head away.
That's what happened. True story. I think that Shakespeare is
pretty good when read properly--he's hilarious
and witty and sarcastic when read
properly--but even though I was teaching
/Romeo and Juliet/, and I tried
to reinforce how stupid
the characters are, but even then,
near the end of my student teaching,
I had them write multiple responses about
whether they think Romeo and Juliet are in love or not,
and ninety-five percent (95%) of them
still believed that Romeo and Juliet were in love,
and it was very frustrating. Onto a good book
that I read and taught!
/Fahrenheit 451/ by Ray Bradbury. Oh my
goodness. Beautiful work of literature! I gave it
four (4) out of five (5) stars-- four point five (4.5) out of five (5) stars.
I think his writing is beautiful,
and the messages that he gets across
with his writing are beautiful. I think that reading it
so slowly did detract
from my experience with it a little bit. I'm definitely
going to be reading more Ray Bradbury in the future.
It's so interesting
how he manages to make the world and
culture and society feel developed
without ever actually
giving us an omniscient perspective of the
government or the society. We only get the
perspective of the main character. We have no idea
how this government runs or how this
society runs other than through the lens
of this specific character's eyes, and it just
fascinates me how a writer
can make a world feel so developed
by only giving us a tiny little dusty corner
of it. Fascinating! If you
are a writer and you need help with world-building, read
Ray Bradbury. Fantastic! So after
my little disappointing read with
/Leah on the Offbeat/--and I'm pretty sure I've said both
Lee-ah and Lay-ah in this podcast.
I don't remember which one it's supposed to be, so I'm
just jumping back and forth! But anyway--after
my disappointing experience with that book,
I decided that I needed another one
that might redeem... I dunno. I don't know
what it was redeeming, but it was redeeming something, and it did!
And that is /Of Fire and Stars/ by Audrey
Coulthurst. This entire world
is so bisexual, and I
loved it! I did give this four point five (4.5).
Emotionally, I wanted to give this
five (5) out of five (5) stars. But
objectively, It does have
a few wishy-washy aspects to it. This book is
set in a fantasy world where no one
questions people liking either gender.
It's not an issue,
and it's completely normal for people to have crushes on both
sides. I have read another book that
tried to do this: /Aletheia/
by Megan Tennant, and it did not work as well. The
issue was, in Megan Tennant's book /Aletheia/--
I can never remember how to pronounce it.
Ah-lee-thee-ah, I believe. In /Aletheia/, it's the same.
There's not much question about people
liking the same or different genders.
It's not quite as common as it is in /Of Fire
and Stars/, but it's not judged.
And that was really out of place because
in this specific society--
this was a dystopian society where the ruler
was trying to basically breed
perfect humans. And if you're trying to breed perfect humans,
I can imagine that you would have laws
against homosexuality
because otherwise you'd have people that you think might be perfect
who aren't breeding. I'm not saying that it
was wrong for homosexuality to be
accepted in this society, it just needed to be
addressed because it simply didn't fit with the story
and society. However, in /Of Fire and Stars/,
of course, the author does have a little bit of leeway because this
is a magical fantasy society, and it's not
dystopian, so she really doesn't have any
need to have specific rules
against anything like this, but it just felt so
natural. I'm not sure what the sexuality or
the sexual preferences are of the author
but it was pretty obvious that it was written
with a straight audience in mind
just based on things that the main character said.
I could tell that the author was
trying to include a sexuality
discovery narrative kind of
intertwined and buried within the story,
but those parts did feel out of
place because everyone else did not care at all.
Everyone else was like "Oh yeah, I have a crush on this guy and this girl
and these guys and these girls,
and the main character seemed to be the only one
who had any sort of self-discovery aspect,
and I feel like that's because it was written for a straight
audience and, I suspect, by
a straight author. If not,
then it's probably just because she had a straight audience in mind.
There was a little bit--what's the word?
Not dysgraphia---that's what I have when I
can't tell the difference between numbers. It's the word that means
"when what you experience does not line up
with what you expect," and I cannot think of the word [[It was cognitive dissonance XD]]
Now I don't even remember why I was trying to think of that word,
so I'm just gonna start over! It felt odd
it felt odd to have that self-sexuality-
exploration journey inserted in there
when it wasn't even
a thing. Like,
sexuality wasn't a thing. People just liked
people. The political intrigue is
wonderful! I have never enjoyed that
buzzword of "political intrigue." That is not
a buzzword that has every gotten me interested
in a book before. And if you had told me
"This book has so much political intrigue!" that would not
have interested me. But! I was
so intrigued by the politics! And now,
after reading this book, political intrigue
is now a buzzword that I will be looking for! Also, I
would like to note that a lot
of the other reviews that I read
specifically stated that they felt like the writing was dull.
But I never felt that
as I was listening to it, and I'm wondering if that might just be
that the story works so well
as a read-aloud because it is kind of a fairy tale!
I mean, it is fairy tale, it takes place in a fantasy world,
and it reads really well like a fairy tale, so I
definitely recommend the audiobook, is you can get
access to it versus the physical print
book. I did not read the physical print books, so I don't know,
maybe it's fantastic. Maybe those people just have
completely different tastes than I do, but I thought that it worked
very well as a read aloud story.
Alright everyone, that's all I have to talk about about
the books that I read in spring of 2018.
Thank you for joining me for my very
first podcast episode of CuriosiTEA.
I'm hoping to get this up on as many platforms as
possible. Also, since pride month is coming up,
and since I read /Leah on
the Offbeat/, which I did not feel like was good
bisexual representation, and then I read /Of Fire
and Stars/, which I did feel like was good
bisexual representation, I'm thinking about making
a podcast episode next month discussing
bisexual representation in books. I have not
read many bi rep books, so I would love
it if you could give me some more recommendations in
the comments, or you can tweet me, or
message me on Instagram.
All of my social media handles
will be in the description box or shownotes, so be sure to check that
out if you would like to get into contact with me about anything.
Thank you so much for joining me in my very first podcast
episode. This episode
is kind of just to help me figure things out,
like how to post these podcasts; how to edit
these podcasts. So there will be
a formal introduction to the podcast
probably next week. I will have a whole episode
dedicated to what this podcast
what this podcast is and what my plans are for it. I just wanted to do
a casual talking video first
Just in case I come into some hangups
figuring things out along the way. So,
look forward to an official introduction of
the podcast next week. Probably
Sunday. My ideal
posting schedule is going to be every Sunday,
but especially these first few weeks as I'm figuring things out,
that might be a little rocky, so just be
patient, but we're figuring things out,
we're learning new things, we're living our best lives.
Thank you for joining me! I hope you all have a
super-wonderful day, and don't forget that
progress is more important than perfection <3
