Steve Thomas: Kirsten, thank you for joining me on the podcast today.
Kirsten Miller: Thank you. I’m very, very happy to be here.
Steve Thomas: Can you tell me a little bit about your experiences with libraries as a reader, and then how you interact with them maybe differently now as an author?
Kirsten Miller: Well, I love libraries. Every writer’s gonna tell you that. It’s funny, the stories that you hear when you talk to other writers, because like, everyone that I know, maybe there are a few out there that don’t, but everyone that I know has this incredibly personal story to tell about the library that they went to growing up, or the one that they went to in their college, and that was very much my case. My brother and sister and I, we were latchkey kids, very Gen X, right? Our parents both worked a lot and set us loose during the summers and the afternoons after school. That was one of the more wonderful things about growing up in a small town was we just got to wander and more often than not, where we wandered to was the library.
I was thinking about it in the course of writing this book, just how many of the interests, how many of the movies, how many of the books, how many of the computer games, how many of the, my whole, everything that I love can be traced back to the things that I encountered in that library somewhere between the ages of, say, eight and sixteen. And so I see it as absolutely formative to my upbringing, to the person that I became, and I’m incredibly grateful to the librarians in Sylva, North Carolina, for helping me, helping keeping me out of jail.
Steve Thomas: Some of them may still be working there. Who knows?
Kirsten Miller: It’s quite possible. There’s a good friend of my brother’s who now is a librarian at my hometown library. And yes, he’s a wonderful human being.
Steve Thomas: Wonderful to hear, of course. What was the spark of the story for Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books? What was the first little twitch that made you think, “Oh, this is a story idea!”
Kirsten Miller: Well, it wasn’t mine. It was my editor’s, believe it or not. So I had just written a book called The Change, and I was working on the follow up to it, something completely different than Lula Dean and my editor called me and she had just been in Texas. She’d been in Austin where book banning’s big in Texas these days, as it is in a lot of places, and I guess the people of Austin had these yard signs out that said, “Come and get it.” And what they were basically saying was we’ve got all banned books, if you want one, come and get them. She thought, “This is wonderful,” and she wrote to me and she said, “What do you think about a book about a Little Library filled with banned books?”
I usually don’t take recommendations, other people have ideas and it’s not that I’m like, “Nobody else has good ideas but me,” but it’s just sort of like, I’m usually working on my own stuff, but for some reason that just stuck, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I know that one of the reasons that she asked me was because I am a Southerner, and she’s also a Southerner. And it just, I don’t know, a couple of days later, I wrote her back and I was like, “I really want to write this book.”
And I just sat down and I was like, let’s do a test of concept. Four chapters, boom, they poured out because I had so much to say about libraries, about the South, about my heritage, about a lot of different things. You can sense the passion and it just kind of all burst out at once.
Steve Thomas: The book was inside you and you didn’t know it.
Kirsten Miller: It really was. I’m not joking. It was not an easy book to write. It’s a very funny book. It’s a very entertaining book. It does not lecture anyone, and that was very important to me, but there is a lot in there that’s difficult for some of us to read.
Steve Thomas: Yeah, you definitely get into some heavy topics in there, but before we get into those, can you talk about what the basic idea of the book is?
Kirsten Miller: Yeah, so it’s set in a small town in Georgia, Troy, Georgia, and the resident busybody is a woman named Lula Dean, and she has decided that her ticket to fame is, she’s discovered a dirty cake cookbook in the local library, which some kid has slid in as a joke, and she realizes that this is like her opportunity to get a lot of attention. So she goes on a crusade of sorts to take all of the, as she calls it, pornography and propaganda, out of the local libraries, the public library and the school libraries. Her arch enemy is a woman named Beverly Underwood, who’s the head of the school board, and her daughter sees what’s happening.
Oh, and Lula wants to prove to the town that she doesn’t actually hate books so she sets up her own Little Library in her front yard. That’s filled only with wholesome books, like “101 Cakes to Bake for Your Family” and like the “Southern Belles Guide to Etiquette” and her enemy’s daughter goes in the middle of the night, takes out all the wholesome books, and switches them with the books that she’s banned, puts the wholesome books’ covers on the banned books.
And one by one, people of the town come and borrow one of the books from the library and find that their lives are changed and in some really, in an unexpected way. It’s a lot of fun. You meet a lot of different people with a lot of different issues and it goes some dark places, but I think it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever written, so hopefully everybody else will too.
Steve Thomas: Yeah, no, it’s definitely entertaining. It’s entertaining from the beginning. It starts off with a bang and it just stays, whether you’re talking about Nazis and whatever else, there’s a humorous thing around it, so definitely told in a very entertaining way.
Kirsten Miller: Well, I mean, come on, that’s the South, right? This book is very much in the Southern storytelling tradition, and it is very funny, it’s irreverent. It’s got all of that local color that you expect from Southern literature. And it’s fun. And I think that’s something that Southerners do really well is tell a story and tuck a message in there.
Steve Thomas: Lula Dean is such a great Southern name.
Kirsten Miller: Yes. Yes. The minute I stumbled upon the name, I could see her, you know what I mean? I knew exactly what she looked like, I knew what kind of perfume she wore.
Steve Thomas: Yeah, anybody like you and I who live in the South, has met Lula Dean before.
Kirsten Miller: Oh, yes.
Steve Thomas: Better name, but you’ve met a Lula Dean before. And then there are other people, like Beverly, who maybe outwardly appear, and you might judge them as, “Oh, they’re just another one of those Southerners, too,” but she actually is much more open minded and can sometimes stumble and say the wrong thing, but she is trying to do the right thing there. And they have a history of each other. Can you talk a little bit about their rivalry from not just now, but growing up even?
Kirsten Miller: Yeah. Well, there, there’s a little bit of a twist there that I don’t want to give away, but yeah, they’ve always… well, I think Beverly’s didn’t start off hating Lula, but Lula, she’s very jealous of Beverly. Beverly is the one who has gone on to be a pillar of the town, and Lula has always been kind of considered a crank. So she sees Beverly as having stolen all of the attention that she rightfully deserved and, Beverly, I think, rightfully sees Lula, at first, she doesn’t early on, but as Lula takes on this new role in the town, Beverly really starts to see her as a truly dangerous threat to a lot of things.
I had a lot of motives going into this, and one was to show people outside of the South that the South contains multitudes, right? Everybody, I think people, especially outside of the United States, it’s even worse, but people have a picture of Southerners and it is… yeah, I mean, those people exist, but we also have gay Southerners and drag queen Southerners and liberal Southerners. We have everybody. I love Beverly Underwood, who’s this firecracker, little Southern lady, I know a million of those. Just as I know Lula Dean who’s the busybody and the one who’s trying to mind everybody else’s business, I know Beverly Underwoods too, and I want the Beverly Underwoods of the world to step forward and start fighting for what they know is right.
Steve Thomas: A lot of those fights, these political battles, it’s always, “Oh, well, that’s a super red state.” but then you look at the voting, it’s like, it was 55 to 45. That means there’s 45 percent of those people who don’t agree with that, and that’s a big chunk of people!
Kirsten Miller: I say that all the time, all the time. I grew up in Western North Carolina, which is currently very red. It was not very red when I was growing up. It was quite blue when I was growing up, but it’s very red now. There’s still tons and tons of people there who are basically the entire city of Asheville, for example, but you know, I don’t want people to… I hate hearing, one of the things that drives me insane is when I see on Threads or wherever I am, people saying, “Oh, they voted for that, they deserve it!” whatever it is. And it’s like, no, we cannot throw out millions of people because their states don’t do exactly what they or we would like them to.
Steve Thomas: And this is explored in the book some too, that a lot of times it’s somebody maybe like Lula Dean that wants the attention, and then other people move in and use people like that to advance their political agendas. So it’s like people who are genuinely, you know, anti-abortion or whatever, like just, they morally feel that, and then politicians come in and go, “Ooh, that can get me votes!” They don’t care about the issue at all. They’re just using people. And those people are generally not thinking through issues. Like they’re not thinking through the idea of banning books and what that all means. And the funny thing is that when I always think about that through, they’re actually right in that books are powerful and can change minds, but they’re thinking of it in the backwards way. Books are enlightening you. They’re not turning you to the dark side.
Kirsten Miller: No one on the face of the planet has ever been turned gay by a book. It’s just sort of you know, if anything, books about young gay people have probably saved thousands of lives. I think there are a lot of people out there who have a very wrong idea of the kind of power that books wield.
Steve Thomas: Yeah, and they’re kind of telling on themselves a little bit there too. Do you feel like you’re that weak minded? Are you afraid that you’re going to read something that’s going to turn you gay or something?
Kirsten Miller: It’s like, if your sexuality is that easily switched, then… I don’t know anybody who’s is, but you know, I don’t think books are your problem.
Steve Thomas: No. Being afraid of being exposed to new ideas. It’s just, that’s how we grow.
Kirsten Miller: No, exactly. 100%.
Steve Thomas: Well, can you share some insights into how you selected the books that you wanted to have as the banned books in Lula Dean’s collection?
Kirsten Miller: All of the banned books are books that have actually been banned. Books like Beloved, books like Gender Queer or All Boys Aren’t Blue, Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. So, I mean, I stuck with books that had been banned. There are a lot of other books that are mentioned for comic effect. Some books in there are actually in there because I thought they were wonderful books, like How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith. But it was a combination of books that had been banned, books that I loved, books that were funny. As I went along, there were points that I wanted to make, and there were books that fit those very, very nicely. And so it just came together.
Steve Thomas: Yeah, and then the titles of the books become the chapter titles as well. Early on there’s a press conference that Lula Dean has, and she’s talking about the smut, and she’s holding up the Diary of Anne Frank, and like, I realize that Anne does have some thoughts about things. But it’s like, she’s a teenage girl and we know what happens to her. How can you focus on that one part of the Diary of Anne Frank?
Kirsten Miller: Oh, it’s, it’s ridiculous. Or Maus, you know, there’s a body, it’s a dead body that’s naked and suddenly that becomes pornography. It’s just ridiculous. And all of these books are important. That was the other most important factor for choosing the books that I wanted to promote rather than poke fun at was the books that were important. The books that talked about important things like the Holocaust, like rape, like racism, all of these things that I think there’s a huge group of people would just would rather pretend don’t exist
Steve Thomas: I love that it’s all surprises to these people because they’re going for various reasons getting books out of the little free library, whether they really want to get them or not. But then they open them up and it’s like, oh, my gosh. Wow. And it does change so many people’s lives. Is there one that you could highlight without giving away too many spoilers of a way that it changes somebody’s life?
Kirsten Miller: Well, so there are a number of them, I mean, that are very funny. The one that I thought was a very important point that I wanted to make, but there’s two of the main characters are young men, and they’re brothers, one of whom has just come out to his family, the older brother, and the family is a very loving and warm family, but they’re very religious and they are not necessarily… this is not something they’re familiar with. They’re struggling with it. The older son is the high school valedictorian. He’s a very straight laced young gay man, his brother is the high school quarterback and he’s a jock, but he loves his brother so much, and he’s looking for a book to basically serve as cover while he’s sitting in the park waiting for a girl to run by. And he finds a book, takes it out. He thinks it’s Chicken Soup for the Soul, but it turns out to be like a bougie boy romance. And it’s a book that he knows that his brother has read and that his family thinks may have turned his brother gay. And he has just told God that he will do anything to help bring his family back together, and he takes the fact that he’s found this book in the library as a sign from God that he is supposed to read this book. He loves his brother so much, and he wants his family to come together so much that he sits and reads this book kind of half believing that by the end of it, he’s going to be gay too, but he does it because that’s how much he loves his brother.
I think that the twist there is that he obviously is not turned gay. He’s bored out of his mind. I’m really fond of that chapter because I think it’s a very unexpected twist on the reaction that somebody might have to finding a gay romance. But more than anything, it’s just to highlight the love between these two brothers and to focus on what was important, which was finding a way to bring their family back together. It’s one of my favorite chapters.
Steve Thomas: Yeah, and there’s a lot of those, I think, now that I’m thinking through it, of people trying to use love to protect other people, because there’s a Nazi person who is indoctrinating his son and the mother takes off. ” Nope, not doing that.” And it is very touching too, because as a little mama’s boy growing up, the rough, tough dad didn’t want anything to do with him, but then once he grows into puberty and gets big and strong, then suddenly he wants to bring him into his cause and all this stuff. And the mom’s like, ” that’s still my baby and you ain’t doing this to him.” But it’s sad because he tried, there’s a point when the son tries to like, give her like the evil stare or something and then just breaks down crying.
Kirsten Miller: There’s an author’s note at the end of the book where I talked about my experience growing up and also obviously, giving due to the libraries that I think are so important, you know, I grew up in the rural South. And, as I mentioned before, there were lots of different kinds of people. I grew up in a family that was very fortunate. My parents have lived among other people. They had seen other things. It was very important to them that they teach my sister and brother and I the truth about things. But I knew a lot of kids who did not have that privilege. I knew a lot of kids who grew up with fathers or mothers who were sort of pushing them down the wrong path, and the people that I respect most are the people who took the time to educate themselves. And it’s not something everybody can do. People are really, they’re quick to say, “Oh, well, you should do this!” And it’s really hard for a lot of people, but there are people who do it. And I know a lot of them and the way they did it was reading, they did it by finding the books that told them what really happened in the South and in other places in history, and that’s one of the reasons that I think it is so important that all these books remain on the shelves, that everybody is able to find them when they need them.
Steve Thomas: Yeah, that’s what we tell people at the library, these books are for the entire community. Nobody’s forcing you to read this book. If you don’t want to read Gender Queer, don’t read Gender Queer. I’ve never read Gender Queer. It’s not the kind of book that I read.
Kirsten Miller: I read it for this, but it doesn’t speak to an issue that I personally have. So it’s not one that I would have read on my own, but there’s a chapter in the book about the Field Guide to the Mushrooms of Georgia, which I think highlights this… it’s a woman comes into the library looking specifically for this book so that she can poison someone. So in her hands, it’s a dangerous book, but it’s also a book that saves lives. Without the Field Guide to the Mushrooms of Georgia, a lot of people are going to go out into the woods and pick stuff that ends up making them keel over.
You do not get to decide what other people need. You do not get to decide whether a book is bad or good. Anything can be misused, but there are a lot of people who need information that may not be of interest to you, or may not be of use to you, and you don’t get to decide that they can’t have it.
Steve Thomas: Mm hmm. I mean, books are tools, and just like you can build a house with a hammer, you can also bash somebody’s skull in with a hammer. That doesn’t make hammers bad things. And hiding it makes it worse, especially for the “children” that they always want to protect. It’s like making it forbidden is like putting a big sign, arrows pointing at it, say, “Look at this! They don’t want you to see this!” Like when you mentioned Judy Blume earlier, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, making such a huge deal out of that, especially these days.
Kirsten Miller: Well, I don’t know. It seems a bit disingenuous, considering the information that people can access online. I don’t know how people make sense of that. It’s like, oh, we have to get rid of Judy Blume, but…
Steve Thomas: Yeah, well, and this crosses over many different Venn diagrams of patriarchy in there too, because, oh, can’t talk about girl issues, can’t talk about periods, or can’t talk about this!
Kirsten Miller: The world would be a much better place if boys and girls knew more about each other.
Steve Thomas: I think it’s early enough in that I’m not spoiling anything, but there’s an older cantankerous lady, one of my favorite characters, Wilma, that comes across an image of female genitalia, and she’s like, “Oh, wow. I didn’t know that that’s where that was and what that was!” Like, she’s 80 something years old and she doesn’t know how her own body works because she was never able to look at a book that pictured that before.
Kirsten Miller: Exactly. I know for a fact, because I used to work on feminine products when I was in the advertising world, that is very common among all age groups. You would be shocked by how little people know about their bodies and definitely about other people’s bodies.
Steve Thomas: We talked about it a little bit before, but is it difficult for you to balance the humor with the serious themes? Is that a hard balance for you as a writer or does it come naturally?
Kirsten Miller: It’s just my personality, to be honest with you. I come from a really funny family and I think that’s how we, for better or worse, deal with serious issues is by making fun of them and being irreverent. It’s just how I grew up. My sister and brother are very much the same way, but it’s our coping mechanism. But I also think for this book, it was particularly important to take that tack because I do want people to read it. I don’t want to lecture people. People are getting enough of that right now. Nobody wants to be lectured anymore. I don’t want to make people feel like they’re being brow beaten or like they’re all awful human beings. I want to talk to them about serious issues in a way that’s fun and entertaining, but also gets the point across. That was why I thought it was incredibly important to have that right mix, you know, so it’s a whole lot of sugar mixed with some medicine to go down.
Steve Thomas: Right, and you don’t present the villains as, “Ha ha, we’re just evil villains!” They’re well rounded. They’re actual people. At the beginning, Lula Dean is basically sort of two dimensional right at the beginning, but you get to know her a little bit more, and she’s not making the best decisions or whatever, but at the end, it’s not like, “Oh, yeah, you’re a terrible person.” Like, people are not terrible at their core.
Kirsten Miller: Well, the Nazi’s terrible at his core.
Steve Thomas: Yes. Yeah, I was going to say that. I was trying to think through…
Kirsten Miller: He has no redeeming qualities. But we have so successfully vilified each other in this country that we have forgotten that we’re all human. And I do think there are really, really bad people out there, and I think that they’re a very tiny percentage of the population. A tiny percentage. There are people who are bad to the bone, no doubt. But like 95, 6, 7 percent of the people out there are just human.
And there are good people, there are scared people, there are opportunists, there are attention hounds, there are all these different kinds of people, and none of them are inherently bad. And if we want to make sure that books aren’t banned and make sure that rights are upheld and things of that sort, we need to look at all of these people as human and try to make sense of to them and speak to them instead of just pretending that they’re monsters and pushing them away. We can do that, but it’s not going to be successful.
Steve Thomas: Yeah, I mean, if you call half the country Nazis, then of course they’re going to act defensive.
Kirsten Miller: They are. One of the things that I slipped into the book, which has always been my personal pet peeve is, people should think about this a little bit. Like when you were growing up as a Southerner and you are watching all the movies and cartoons and whatnot, and the default accents for evil people are either German or Southern. Why? Like, the second that you have a character that isn’t fully fleshed out, but you want to make them evil, you make them talk like Foghorn Leghorn. And it’s like, why?
Steve Thomas: Evil or stupid. Yep.
Kirsten Miller: Evil and stupid. Yeah. That has an impact on people. It really does. Best way to make somebody evil and stupid is to call them evil and stupid.
Steve Thomas: And you do that and then there are certain people who we won’t name who used to be president who take advantage of those people and say, “Nobody’s speaking for you. These elite people are talking down to you.” And if those people are talking down to you, then they’re like, “Hey, he’s right!” And that’s how they get people like that.
Kirsten Miller: Treat everybody as human. Realize that not all messages are going to work on all people and appeal to the good in people. So this book has… I will give it away. This book has a happy ending. And I thought, I wanted it to have a happy ending. From the very beginning, I was like, this is going to be an optimistic book, because we have so little of that in this country right now.
I’m not saying I’m the person who’s going to be the light at the end of the tunnel, but we need lights at the end of the tunnel. It’s like that book, The Secret, right? Like, the secret to The Secret was, you just have to know what you want. Well, like, this is a vision of what we could have.
It’s a satire. It’s not investigative journalism or anything like that, but like, I think we need hope. I think we need optimism. I think we need a little ray of sunshine. I think we need to see that it is possible for people to come together and not all of us are bad guys. So that’s what I was trying to do.
Steve Thomas: We can manifest our hope. And what do we have to do, write it seven times or something? Was that what the Secret was?
Kirsten Miller: Listen to Oprah. Yes.
Steve Thomas: Yeah, the problem is when Oprah stopped her show, that was the whole problem. She needs to bring back her daily show.
Kirsten Miller: I think that might be it. Oprah and Jon Stewart, they need to come back.
Steve Thomas: Well, I’m going to wrap up with a couple of questions that I’m asking all of the authors this summer. The first one is, what was your first favorite book that you remember?
Kirsten Miller: Half Magic by Edward Eager. Oh my God, I love that book. It’s such a good book. I remember it’s four children who find a coin that’s half magic and obviously hilarity ensues, but the children are such nasty little monsters, and I remember as a kid thinking, “Oh my God, this guy gets us, like he gets us. So I loved it. Half magic, wonderful book!
Steve Thomas: It’s like reading Roald Dahl stuff of like, everybody’s terrible.
Kirsten Miller: It really, yeah, but that’s such a… oh my God. I mean, I’m whatever ancient at this point, but like, you know, back in the day to have someone kind of acknowledge that.
Steve Thomas: I’m so jealous of teens now that there actually is a YA section. It was like when we were growing up, the YA section was The Outsiders.
Kirsten Miller: Yeah, that was it. It’s a whole, oh wow. Yeah, there’s so many great writers in the YA world now.
Steve Thomas: And then the other question is we’re putting together a summer reading list for all the authors are coming on the podcast this summer. Do you have a book or two that you would like to add to our summer reading list?
Kirsten Miller: Yeah, I think How the Word is Passed is a great, great book. I loved every second of it. It achieves what I would love to achieve, which is speaking about, and what, like, Pete Buttigieg does so well, speaking about incredibly complex issues in a way that is accessible, entertaining, approachable, and without making people feel like they’re being lectured or browbeaten. I started reading it and just, it was one of those books that just sucked me right in, and I learned a lot, even though I’ve read a fair amount on the subjects that he covers, I feel like I still learned a great deal from him. It’s a wonderful book.
Steve Thomas: We’ll add it to the list. Thank you, Kirsten, for coming on the show. Again, the book is Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books, and it is absolutely hilarious. It is out now, so you can get it at your local public library or your local bookstore, wherever you get your books. And Kirsten, thank you again for coming on.
Kirsten Miller: Thank you. It was a joy and may all librarians prosper. You guys are doing the good work and I appreciate it.
Steve Thomas: Thank you so much. And authors like you help us out.
Kirsten Miller: Thanks.
***
Rebecca Vnuk: Hi, I’m Rebecca Vnuk from Library Reads.
Yaika Sabat: And I’m Yaika Sabat from NoveList.
Rebecca Vnuk: We are here today at the Circ Desk to talk about Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books.
Yaika Sabat: I’ll say I was so excited when this one came up, we’re both like raring to go! Oh, yes, let’s do this Lula Dean!
Rebecca Vnuk: Right. I was excited because it was on our June Library Reads Top 10 list. So that was like, Whoop! that’s an easy one then, I have all kinds of stuff. And also, I have to admit, it is the type of book that I personally like to read myself. I love funny characters that I can relate to. I love small town goofiness because even though I live in the Chicago area, I’m in a smaller suburb and we still have that. We have all the eclectic characters you could want right here. So I’m always drawn to that kind of stuff.
So the first thing that I did when I was looking at Library Reads to figure out, okay, what could I suggest from that? One of the things I think is super interesting about the Library Reads list is almost every fiction title that comes out that has something to do with libraries or bookstores or books in general, there’s a very, very large chance that it’s going to make our list.
Yaika Sabat: Very true.
Rebecca Vnuk: I’m not at all surprised that our library staff contributors, that is the kind of book that draws them in, myself included. So as I was looking for read-alikes for this one, I immediately happened upon The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks by Shauna Robinson. It appeared on the November 2022 Library Reads list, and this is from our friends at Sourcebooks Landmark, and the description we have was written by user Jamie Bink from Hartford County Public Library, and she says, “Maggie takes a temp position at a friend’s bookstore and gets more than she bargained for when she discovers the entire town seems to revolve around the legacy of author Edward Bell. Before she knows it, she’s selling books from a secret stash, planning author events, and finding love. This is a fun read for fans of Abby Waxman and Emily Henry.”
As soon as I read that description, I realized, oh, those are more keywords that I could easily use to search our archive, to search a catalog, etc. Anything with the word bookstore in it, bookshop, that all comes up. This is another one of those cases where I am definitely the type of person that will judge a book by its cover. I mean, I think we all do that to a degree, but there is a reason why the publishers spend so much time and money creating those covers to appeal to just the right reader. I looked at a lot of the read-alikes, and I think also, if you go into NoveList and you look at the read-alikes they all kind of match up like they would make a lovely display because they all have that kind of like I don’t want to say cartoony font but just sort of more like, there’s flair to it and lots of bright colors. This is definitely something that they’re trying to draw your eye to. If you are a reader, there’s always someone with a stack of books on the cover, and that is just something that naturally draws people into it. So I definitely think that The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks is a great instantly recognizable read-alike for that. But Yaika, what did you find using Novelist for this one?
Yaika Sabat: Yeah, so surprising no one, I did dive into Novelist. I think what’s interesting is, so this is also listed as a satirical novel. So we have it with satire and parodies, and a lot of the time when you’re looking at like a satire or a parody, you’re going to see things like dark humor, sardonic, thought-provoking, offbeat is another one you’ll see a lot. But if you look at this one, the mood is not sardonic or darkly humorous. It’s upbeat. It’s funny. So it’s got a bit of a different tone for a satire. It’s not the sort of like knife sharp situation here. It’s a little gentler.
And this does have the theme “books about books” apply to it, which is a theme you can search for a NoveList. Just so you know, I did the search because I was curious and there were 569 titles as of today that have that same theme. So there’s a variety for you to choose from, but you can always start there. But I did want to look at a couple and I actually looked to see what some of our advisors had chosen because we do have amazing advisors who work with books, who are library staff, who will match books, and one that I thought was interesting is actually Love and Hot Chicken by Mary Liza Hartong. Our advisor CJ Connor says, “These witty, upbeat, realistic fiction novels explore the lives of queer characters in small southern towns whose lives are changed by a beauty pageant in Hot Chicken or a little free library in Lula Dean’s.” Lula Dean’s is more satirical than Hot Chicken. But yeah, they both have sort of life in small towns. They’re very character driven. They’re witty and upbeat, and I liked the slight variation there because you are going to find a lot of books about books linked with it, but it is also a story of characters discovering something that changes them in these small towns, which I think as we know can always be kind of, they can be kind of insular. They can be sometimes a little hard to navigate depending on where you are.
But there was one more I really liked and this one is on theme. It’s Bookish People by Susan Coll. This is another satire parody. It’s character driven. It’s witty. It’s about the books, and an advisor of ours, Michael Shoemate, said, “In these witty books about books, satirical social commentary is blended with gentler humor. Banned books in a lending library begin changing a small town in Lula Dean, and a bookstore deals with a controversial poet’s event in Bookish People.” So they both have that angle to them where they are satire, but not necessarily dark humor. I love a good book about books. Call me stereotypical, but…
Rebecca Vnuk: Who doesn’t? Who doesn’t? And I really love that you have mentioned a few times here that just because a book is satirical, there’s different ways you can go with that, and I love that because having something that is lighthearted and satirical is very different than something that is snarky and satirical.
Yaika Sabat: Or sardonic and satirical.
Rebecca Vnuk: And you can like both of those, but they might not be a good match. So just to tell someone, “Oh, okay, I know that this book is satire.”, you’re going to want to explore a little further and that’s what I really appreciate about NoveList, for example, a good library worker is that to know that difference when someone might just come to the desk and be like, “Well, I really like satire” to try and draw that out and figure out, well, what kind of satire are we talking here? Because there is a big difference between gentle and witty and upbeat and sassy and witty and darker. And I love that we have so many resources that can make it a little easier to figure out just what kind of satire are we talking about here.
Yaika Sabat: That is one of my favorite features and something I used a lot, especially when I was starting in libraries, was someone would say a book and I would go to the page in NoveList and I’d say, “Okay, well, what did you really like about it? Did you like the small town theme?” I’d look at what was on the page. “Did you like that it was the satire?” And I could sort of just click in the little “search for more area and have a whole list based on that. I always wanted to sort of narrow down what it is about that book someone really likes. And with this one, it could be a variety of things. There’s so many different popular, life in small towns is very popular. Books about books is very popular.
Rebecca Vnuk: Absolutely.
Yaika Sabat: Witty writing. So there’s so many different things someone could love about Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books.
Rebecca Vnuk: Fantastic. All right. Well, we will check you out next time at The Circ Desk!
Circulating Ideas 