Book Club with Julia and Victoria

Julia and Victoria (and project manager Rebecca) recorded the Q&A session from their first ever LIVE online Book Club members event. Some audio quality may be compromised, but the enthusiasm for reaching the two year mark of making Book Club is not! Follow us on Instagram and StoryGraph ! Learn more about Book Club membership.

Julia and Victoria plumb new psychological (and physiological) depths on the subject of embodiment with The Wisdom of Your Body by Dr. Hillary McBride.  Become a Member ! Follow Us on Instagram or Storygraph ! Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links that give us a commission if you decide to make a purchase at no additional cost to you. Learn more. Mentioned in the Episode: Mothers,...

Julia and Victoria, and special guest Chelsea Kuchik, return to the spicy world of contemporary romance fiction with Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert. They find their favorite tropes and consider what Bridgerton did for the acceptance of romance novels. Become a Member ! Follow Us on Instagram or Storygraph ! Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links that give us a commission if yo...

Julia and Victoria get super excited about sentence structure and contemplate the chaotic nature of grief with The Year of Magical Thinking by the queen of nonfiction, Joan Didion. Become a Member ! Follow Us on Instagram or Storygraph ! Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links that give us a commission if you decide to make a purchase at no additional cost to you. Learn more. Mentioned i...

Julia and Victoria are joined by Hayley and yet another Victoria (No, this is not confusing at all.) from Gold Plated Girls to chat about creativity and pop culture, choosing your team and fighting imposter syndrome, and--unbelievably--baseball. Become a Member ! Follow Us on Instagram or Storygraph ! Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links that give us a commission if you decide to make...

Julia and Victoria make another foray into the gothic genre with Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and spend a fair amount of time talking about mushrooms. Quick note: In this episode we misspoke when discussing War of the Worlds . It was in fact written by H.G. Wells and not H.P. Lovecraft! Become a Member ! Follow Us on Instagram or Storygraph ! Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate l...

Julia and Victoria have an impromptu therapy session discussing And Then We Grew Up by Rachel Friedman about the complicated relationship creative adults have with the art forms they pursued in their youth. Become a Member ! Follow Us on Instagram ! or Join the Storygraph Challenge ! Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links that give us a commission if you decide to make a purchase at no...

No philosopher ever needs to ponder the nature of humor or ask the question, “What makes something funny?” ever again because Julia and Victoria have definitely solved it with this episode’s discussion of Ayoade on Top by Richard Ayoade. Become a Member ! Follow Us on Instagram ! or Join the Storygraph Challenge ! Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links that give us a commission if you d...

Julia and Victoria, along with Julia’s mom, chat about their comfort books and the novel Leave It To Psmith by P. G. Wodehouse. Become a Member ! Follow Us on Instagram and Storygraph ! Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links that give us a commission if you decide to make a purchase at no additional cost to you. Learn more. Mentioned in the Episode: A Bounty of Blandings by P. G. Wodeho...

Julia and Victoria read their favorite (and only) social anthropology book, Watching the English by Kate Fox, which helped Julia tap into her innate anthropological powers. Become a Member ! Follow Us on Instagram ! or Join the Storygraph Challenge ! Mentioned in the Episode: Topping and Company Booksellers , Ely Anthropologist Robin Fox Star Trek Recommendations: Quiet by Susan Cain Ugly Deliciou...

Julia and Victoria try to solve the Who, the How, and the Why of Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu and may or may not reach a verdict. Victoria invents a new grammatical tense. Become a Member ! Follow Us on Instagram ! or Join the Storygraph Challenge ! Mentioned in this Episode: - Birdman (film) - Master of None on Netflix - Bob’s Burgers on Fox - Westworld on HBO - Legion on Hulu - Sorry For You...

Julia and Victoria enter a dream state to talk about Beloved by Toni Morrison and its place within both the horror genre and American history. Become a Member ! Follow Us on Instagram ! or Join the Storygraph Challenge ! Mentioned in the Episode: - American Horror Story , TV Series - National Women’s History Museum - St Anthony - The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison - Sula by Toni Morrison - Song of So...

Julia reads her essay “What Your Autistic Body Feels Is Real: How I Found Out I Was Gaslighting Myself For Years and What I’m Doing Now.” Become a Member ! Follow Us on Instagram ! or Join the Storygraph Challenge ! Mentioned in the Episode: The Cozy Robot Show Neurotribes , by Steve Silberman (and Book Club episode ) The Reason I Jump , by Naoki Higashida (and Book Club episode ) Fall Down 7 Time...

Julia and Victoria, who had somehow never read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery, are joined by ANGR Podcast host Sofia Syntaxx, who has collected upwards of ten editions of the book from all over the world, including the most recent translation into their indigenous language Anishinaabemowin. They talk about translation across languages and cultures, childhood dreams, and being haunte...

Julia and Victoria contemplate mortality (and whether they could be buried under paper trees to become books in their next lives) with the help of the darkly comic memoir Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Katelyn Doughty about a young woman trying to become a mortician and revolutionize the way Americans handle death. Become a Member ! Follow Us on Instagram ! or Join the Storygraph Challenge ! Mentioned...

Julia and Victoria revisit the hugely influential essay “The Case For Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates and examine the ways reparations have played out in the US and beyond. Become a Member ! Follow Us on Instagram ! or Join the Storygraph Challenge ! Mentioned in the Episode: Austin Channing Brown’s newsletter We Were Eight Years In Power, essay collection by Ta-Nahesi Coates Listen to our eposid...

Julia and Victoria try to figure out why their 2011 Harper Teen copy of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte looks suspiciously like Twilight and why that’s interesting for the genre of Gothic literature. Become a Member ! Follow Us on Instagram ! or Join the Storygraph Challenge ! Mentioned in the Episode: Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer Jane Eyre (2011), directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga Fallen , novel by La...

When Julia and Victoria found out there was a book out there in the world which combined feminism, writing, and data (aka their three favorite things) called Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez, they absolutely had to read it for Book Club. Victoria talks very fast about women’s unpaid labor, and Julia realizes she can ask the world to design things that actually fit her tiny hands. Fair Warn...

Julia and Victoria are joined by their friend Andy Park to discuss Pachinko by Min Jin Lee and his family’s experiences as Korean American immigrants. Julia makes several K-Pop references. Become a Member ! Follow Us on Instagram ! or Join the Storygraph Challenge ! Mentioned in the Episode: Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee Interview with Min Jin Lee on Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books...

Julia and Victoria contemplate how they will remember the pandemic. Become a Member ! Follow Us on Instagram ! or Join the Storygraph Challenge ! Mentioned in the Episode: Twilight by Stephenie Meyer “Why Are There Almost No Memorials to the Flu of 1918” from NYT Book Club Episode 066 We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates “McDonald’s Workers Will Strike for $15 an Hour in Fifteen Cities...

Julia and Victoria take a look at the children’s classic The Giver by Lois Lowry with fresh eyes as an extended critique of whiteness and dominant culture. Become a Member ! Follow Us on Instagram ! or Join the Storygraph Challenge ! Mentioned in the Episode: Other books by Lois Lowry: Gathering Blue Messenger Son Number the Stars The Willoughbys Return Nancy Drew series The Boxcar Children series...

Julia and Victoria outline the parallel narratives of We Were Eight Years In Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates: 1. The journey of Coates as a writer and thinker on the rise during Obama’s presidency, and 2. His essays unraveling the true tragedy of America’s history buried underneath the country’s larger-than-life myths. Become a Member ! Follow Us on Instagram ! or Join the Storygrap...

Where does our food come from? (And why is there so much corn in everything?) Julia and Victoria, with special guest and Book Club’s project manager Rebecca Gesme, discuss Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma in which he endeavors to answer these very important and complicated questions. Become a Member ! Follow Us on Instagram ! or Join the Storygraph Challenge ! Mentioned in the Episode: Mich...

Julia and Victoria take a little interlude from reading to discuss the Instagram book community known as #bookstagram: the positive side of democratizing book reviews, the struggles of bowing to the almighty algorithm, and the weird trends that don’t make any sense. Become a Member ! Follow Us on Instagram ! or Join the Storygraph Challenge ! Mentioned in this episode: @bookclubwithjv  #books...

Julia and Victoria endeavor to answer some fundamental questions about Untamed by Glennan Doyle, such as “What is this book exactly?” and “What’s it about?” and “Who is actually it for?” Unclear whether they succeed. Become a Member ! Follow Us on Instagram ! or Join the Storygraph Challenge ! Mentioned in the Episode: Brené Brown Episode 054: “Braving the Wilderness” Glennon Doyle’s Blog, Momasta...