You are listening to Books, Ballads, and B-roll the podcast with your hosts Bee and Alastair.

In this episode of Books, Ballads, and B-Roll the Podcast we discuss media related to themes of remembering, recovering from, and dealing with the past.

In this fairly short yet incredibly touching book, a Black teenager named Jeremiah (or Miah) is shot by police in a case of mistaken identity. This happens in the first chapter, and the following chapters alternate between perspectives of different characters who were impacted. For example, his mother, a famous author, and his father, who left her for another woman, comb through memories of their son and the family they used to have. His friend Carlton, who struggles to come to terms with the death of the one person he felt understood him, ends up becoming friends with Ellie, Miah’s girlfriend whose house he had just left before he was killed. They form a deep bond due to their connection to Miah as well as a mutual feeling of being judged and misinterpreted. Ellie feels that her white parents never accepted her relationship with Miah or the depth of her sorrow. They continuously urge her to recover and move on, and don’t approve of her spending time with Miah’s friends and family, claiming this is a hindrance to her mental health. Carlton is just coming to terms with being gay and fears rejection of his father and certain friends, especially now that Miah is gone. Ultimately, a lot of the people whom Miah left behind form unexpected relationships with each other due to their shared grief and a desire to hold onto his memory. 

What we found the most interesting is that some of the chapters are from the perspective of Miah’s ghost. In the afterlife, he spends his time with his dead grandmother, who encourages him to let go of the living world. But Miah was taken too soon, and he is not ready to let go, at least not until he knows his loved ones are going to be okay. 

This book is by Jacqueline Woodson, author of Brown Girl Dreaming. This book is less well known, and it’s actually, we just realized, a sequel to the book If You Come Softly, which is about Ellie and Miah’s relationship, which starts when they meet at a private school in Manhattan, and the scrutiny they face from friends and family. We really wish we had read this book first since it would have given us a lot of context, but we had no idea Behind You was a sequel!

The Secret of Kells is a movie by the same animation studio as a movie we included in an earlier episode, Song of the Sea. It is a fictional tale but based on real events, as it involves the story...

You are listening to Books, Ballads, and B-roll the podcast with your hosts Bee and Alastair.

In this episode of Books, Ballads, and B-Roll the podcast we discuss the role of transportation in different media.

The Red Convertible is a short story from Love Medicine, by Louis Erdrich. It’s narrated by a boy named Lyman and it revolves around his relationship with his older brother, Henry. The two are very close and bond over their shared red convertible, but when Henry returns from the Vietnam War, he is traumatized and closed off, something Lyman really struggles to understand.

• Bee suggests that the changing setting at the beginning of the story creates a freeing and adventurous feeling, which contrasts with the limited and claustrophobic setting after Henry returns from war. This movement from a setting that is a literal blur to a setting that is extremely limited is one way in which transportation, particularly the red convertible, is central to the story.
• Bee and Alastair discuss how the red convertible may represent the brothers’ relationship with one another or perhaps Henry himself. 
• Bee and Alastair examine the symbolism of the red convertible’s fate.

Howl’s Moving Castle is, like in our previous episode, a movie by Studio Ghibli. Are we going to apologize for our perhaps over-heavy focus on Miyasaki films? No, no we are not. We will shamelessly defend Studio Ghibli’s status as one of the best animation studios out there. Although, actually, this movie is based on a book of the same name by renowned fantasy author Diana Wynne Jones—which we strongly recommend as well. The movie changes some aspects or focuses on different things from the book, but I think this is what allows it to be equally as good even though it’s not an original story. The book is almost always better than the movie in my opinion, but this may be an exception.

But anyway, the protagonist of Howl’s Moving Castle is Sophie, the eldest of three sisters and heiress to a hat shop. She feels resigned to a life of quiet drudgery and loneliness there, but then the feared Witch of the Waste comes to her shop in disguise. Sophie unknowingly stands up to the witch when the latter disapproves of her shop, and the witch casts a spell that turns her into an old lady. Sophie must leave home in search of a cure for the spell.

She somewhat accidentally finds herself taking shelter in the castle of a notorious wizard named Howl, who supposedly eats young women’s hearts. (There are a lot of supposedly scary witches and wizards in this movie. Most of them turn out less scary than they originally seem though!)....

You are listening to Books, Ballads, and B-roll the podcast with your hosts Bee and Alastair.

In this spooky scary special episode of Books, Ballads, and B-Roll the Podcast, we discuss connections between halloween-themed media. 

This book is one that we were both quite excited to read. It takes place on another planet and is centered around Gideon, a skilled swordsman, and her sworn enemy--and later her lover--Harrowhark. Harrowhark is a necromancer, an expert at summoning the dead to do her bidding. Gideon’s initial hatred towards Harrowhark is fueled by the mistreatment she endured from Harrow’s parents and her harsh life of indentured servitude. Harrowhark’s hatred seems to stem from immense pressure she feels as a necromancer, and the fact that she blames Gideon for her parents’ suicides. In the solar system of Gideon the Ninth, there are nine planets, which each have a powerful House of necromancy. All of these Houses answer to the all-powerful Emperor. Now, much to Gideon’s dismay, she and Harrowhark end up being forced together when the Emperor summons a necromancer of each House, along with a swordsman, in order to compete for role of Lyctor, extremely powerful and immortal necromancers. Much later, as they struggle to figure out why people are being mysteriously murdered on the Emperor’s planet, they discover that the creation of a Lyctor is a very sinister process, which requires the spirit of the swordsman and necromancer to become intertwined.

Our thoughts on the book:

• The blurb is really bad and does NOT do it justice
• The writing style is really interesting—not at all like modern pulp fiction
• There’s modern humor and dialects, but also an ancient vibe
• It includes a substantial amount of graphic depictions of injuries and pain—very appropriate to halloween
• Necromancers animating bone constructs causes them to break out in “blood sweat”
• Duels between cavaliers result in painful injuries
• Mysterious murders and other deaths occur in hideous ways
• We love Gideon
• She’s a bit dramatic which is relatable
• We enjoy the development of Gideon’s and Harrow’s relationship
• Originally they both appear to be very tough and a bit ruthless, but you watch them start to let their guards down around each other and their relationship feels very delicate at