Podcast, Uncategorized

Episode 12 – Beautiful Heartbreak

jenna-christina-364584unsplash-logoJenna Christina

In Episode 12, we tackle Chapters 28-30 of A Discovery of Witches–from ecstasy to agony. You can expect to hear our take on romance and sex scenes, historical tourism, ghosts and foreshadowing, and more as we take on La Pierre, Satu, naked Matthew, and more. We can’t wait to hear your feedback!

Download the episode here!

As we approach the end of Book 1, we’d love to hear your ideas for wrap-up commentary. We’re also interested in expanding our listenership and improving our content. If you have thoughts, please reach out to @chamomilenclove on Twitter or chamomileandclovecast@gmail.com.

Take care,

Cait & Jen

 

Uncategorized

Resources for Your Inner Literary Critic

aga-putra-125108
Aga Putra

As you might have noticed, we like to season our approach to A Discovery of Witches (and really, all fiction) with a healthy dose of literary criticism and story structure. Why, you ask? Because it allows us to engage deeply and meaningfully with a good novel and gives us the tools we need to unpack its strengths, its weaknesses, its themes, and its thesis. If you’re interested to learn more about stories and literary criticism, here are some great resources to peruse:

The Basics of Fiction by Jenny Crusie

Anchor Scenes for Story Structure by Lucy Marsden

On Stories by C.S. Lewis

Helping Writers Become Authors: The Story Structure Database

Beemgee: Story Structure

The Narratologist: Literary Theory

The Purdue Online Writing Lab has some great primers on the basics of different schools of literary criticism and how to start a close reading of a text:

Purdue OWL: Literary Theory and Schools of Criticism

Purdue OWL: Close Reading a Text and Avoiding Pitfalls

Purdue OWL: Introduction to Feminist Critique

Purdue OWL: Introduction to Critical Race Theory

You can find a very dense exposition of the “Death of the Author” canon of literary interpretation by its creator, Roland Barthes, here, or you can digest a friendlier summary written by Andrew Gallix of the Guardian.

Here are some other posts you might enjoy:

Why Read Fiction?

Fiction Matters from the Fandomentals

Out of the Subtext: C.S. Pacat on Why Diversity Matters in SF/F

Defining Urban fantasy and Paranormal Romance: Crossing Boundaries of Genre, Media, Self, and Other in New Supernatural Worlds

To Hell and Back: Power, Violence, and Sexuality in Urban Fantasy

Urban fantasy fiction: there’s more to it than sex with were-leopards

Why Can’t Romance Novels Get Any Love

We’ll add to this list as we find more goodies for you to read! Let us know what kinds of perspectives you’re interested in and we’ll add them to the list, too.

Until our next episode,

Cait and Jen

Podcast, Uncategorized

Episode 11 – About That

laura-college-190105Laura College

In Episode 11, Cait and Jen cover Chapters 24-26 of A Discovery of Witches while talking about retroactive continuity, vampire self-care, chivalric orders, Scooby Doo, and your feedback!

Download the episode here.

We’re dedicated to making the podcast better and we’d love to hear from you! If you have feedback about how to improve our content and presentation, you can find us at @chamomilenclove on Twitter or at chamomileandclovecast@gmail.com. We can’t wait to hear from you.

Best,

Cait and Jen