Comics’ Books - S01, E01 - Transcript
GUEST: LAURA LEXX
HOST: LUCY DANSER
LUCY DANSER: Just a quick note to say that if any of this sounds a bit technically dodgy, for example like it’s perhaps been recorded remotely during lockdown, well, it has been. On with the show.
[MUSIC]
LD: Hello and welcome to Comics’ Books. I’m Lucy Danser and for many years I’ve worked as a producer alongside a number of excellent comedians. I’m also a book obsessive who’s always asking friends and strangers alike what they’re reading. So I thought I’d bring my two passions together and find out, what do funny people read? I’ve known my guest today for many a year and I’ve been so lucky to watch her develop over the years into an absolutely incredible stand up comedian. Her work is naturally funny but also thought provoking and heartwarming and I’m extra excited to talk to her today about all things books because she’s just secured her first publishing deal. Welcome Laura and congratulations!
LAURA LEXX: Thank you so much. Thank you. [LAUGHS]
LD: How are you doing?
LL: I’m alright yeah. I’m sort of, well, it’s lockdown isn’t it so I’m having 50 mood swings a day.
LD: That’s fun.
LL: I’ve got time to dedicate to all of them. So!
LD: Well that’s nice. Are you matching them with biscuits? I give myself a biscuit for each sort of feeling I’m feeling.
LL: Yeah I’m just sort of, I’ve upgraded now to just big slabs of Cadbury’s chocolate
LD: Oh perfect perfect
LL: I’m keeping it in the fridge so that I do have to keep getting up and going to it whenever I want another line of it but/
LD: /Does it slow you down?
LL: Not really. No.
LD: No. Not really. No.
LL: I’m trying to only go to the supermarket once a fortnight. So this second week, so I’m going today. So we really have been thin on the ground on everything decent. So it sort of means that first week I’m really full of sugar and then the second week is a little bit healthier.
LD: But aren’t you just on a massive sugar comedown?
LL: Yeah that’s not good but I save the alcohol for the second week so!
LD: Oh you’re so clever, I’m still learning from you.
LL: I’ve been doing this bookclub thing while we’re in lockdown. I’ve been writing this novel, like a chapter a day and then reading it on YouTube and the audience vote on what they want to happen.
LD: Yes I’ve been looking.
LL: And I was so smashed for last night’s episode. I sort of turned up and they’re really lovely because we’ve been doing it for two and a half weeks now so everybody’s sort of, you know, really feels like they know each other. And I sort of went to start the video and say ‘I’m really sorry guys I’ve had a bit to drink’ and I caught the look of myself in the webcam and thought ‘they know!’
[LAUGHTER]
LL: I am dishevelled at best.
LD: So how long are you going to do this online story for?
LL: Well I suppose, as long as everybody’s in for the evenings, you know. Like, as far as comedy goes, I’m not working again until at least July I think. Like all the gigs have been moved so I can’t see what else I’ll be doing between now and then. So if there’s a market for somebody reading a half baked book then why wouldn’t it be me doing it because I’ve got nowhere else to be. I don’t know because I suppose what have we got, like another week of official lockdown and then they’ll reassess but I would have thought they’re extending it again. And then the pubs aren’t due to be open for a good couple of months so what’s anyone going to be doing in the evening? Hanging out with drunky me!
LD: I think it’s perfect. I think you’re bringing people back to the really old school of sitting and reading and talking [unclear 00:03:38].
LL: I like it cos I get really annoyed when people, like, do you listen to audiobooks?
LD: I do, yes.
LL: Yes, so do I. And I hate people that are chippy about it and say ‘well you haven’t read it have you, you’ve listened to it’. And I think ‘ah do one’. Because people get really snobby about books, that if book sales dip or audio books take over it’s like ‘oh it’s a sign of the times’ and you’re like ‘well actually listening to a story is way more culturally traditional than reading a story. Listening to a story goes right back to the beginning of what we are. Like, listening to an audiobook absolutely couldn’t be any more fundamentally traditional so you can get over yourself that I didn’t read it. I absorbed it in the way that we were meant to’.
LD: I also think that there’s different ways of consuming books. I’ve never understood why some people think one’s better than the other. You know I think, if everyone stopped reading and only listened to audiobooks then we’d lose an important skill but that’s not going to happen.
LL: No and you’re right. Some books really suit it like, there’s a couple of series that I’ve been listening to. Do you know the Peter Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch, The Rivers of London?
LD: Yes but I haven’t read them.
LL: Yeah so I got those, I’ve had most of those on audiobook ‘cos I absolutely love, the narrator is Kobna Holdbrook-Smith who had a cameo in Paddington 2 The Movie, he plays the police guard in that. But he’s got this amazing voice and because the book’s in first person, is that right, when you hear their thoughts?
LD: Yes.
LL: So the main character is narrating it?
LD: Yes.
LL: I don’t know the official terms but the main character is narrating it. So I really associate him with, you know he is Peter Grant. But then he’s written some spin off ones set in Germany and I read those ones because they weren’t narrated by and I was sort of like no I can’t have another narrator in this series, it’s got to be Kobna or I’m not doing it. So I read those ones and listened to the London versions.
LD: I feel like that. I get committed to a certain narrator and that’s who I, like when I was little I used to listen to Doctor Dolittle narrated by Alan Bennett. And I don’t think I could listen to anyone else tell me or read me Doctor Dolittle now.
LL: No I love a narrator that’s really, like me and Tom, my husband, we both discovered we had the same children’s tape of George’s Marvellous Medicine read by Richard Griffiths and so now we both do it. We go [in a silly voice] ‘with a curled up mouth like a dog’s bottom’ and every now and again one of us will go [in a silly voice] ‘cabbages give you brains’
[ LAUGHS]
LL: You’re like yeah that book is forever him now, it can’t be anything else.
[MUSIC]
LD: So, I’m excited because you sent me a list of books that have been important to you throughout your life and we have, I was surprised to see, very little crossover in what we read.
LL: Oooh.
LD: I was surprised because I feel like we have a lot in common and our childhoods were similar.
LL: I think you probably challenge yourself with your reading a bit more than I do probably.
LD: Well, I think you go in the fantasy historical fiction route quite a lot. So you started with the Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch.
LL: Yeah, I love those books so there’s a series of them, they’re called the gentleman bastard series. The Lies of Locke Lamora is the first one and then I think there’s four now. I just think they’re brilliant. They’re really intricate fantasy fiction so it’s set in the city of Camorr and they are a sort of thievery band of characters but it’s so sort of, it’s very gritty, it’s not, it’s very sort of down to earth fantasy fiction. So whilst it is fantasy they’re not constantly sort of pulling spells out of their arse and doing all these high falutin things with elves and all that. It’s a lot more this is the fantasy world, these are the rules, there’s this and there’s this but these people are struggling and it feels very human. And yeah I just, I love these books and I really remember when I was first dating my husband, going down to visit him in Brighton and he had this book on his shelf and just being like, ‘Oh, you’ve read that book have you?’ ‘Cos you know I think they’re quite popular books but I don’t know many people that have read them and sort of seeing it there, that was something that we really bonded over quite early on. It was like ‘oh you like, you’ve read these too have you?’ So yeah. I really really, and when the fourth one came out recently, sort of in the last couple of years I re-read them all in preparation and the twists that he puts into these books. Like there’s a huge plot twist at the end of one of the books that is just jaw-dropping. You just can’t quite believe what he’s done with the plot and you’re kind of like ‘noooo!’ Because it’s so, sort of you know, Game of Thrones level brutal as to what it does to them, and every time you’re reading it thinking, ‘he’s not going to mess their lives up this time’. They’re such nice characters and the whole book’s got that feel of like ‘oh this plucky band of heroes’ll pull through in the end’ and then he just devastates their lives and you go ‘Ah you do keep doing it don’t you! You haven’t snuck back in the book and crossed that bit out have you’.
LD: Ah so brutal.
LL: Yeah, the development’s great and just the plot’s very intricate because they’re sort of like, so they’re confidence tricksters, so you get that fun thing where the plot of the book is great but also the plots they’re coming up with within the book are great. And you know, you get the nice escapism of there’s high falutin lords and ladies being taken down by these orphaned, you know, conmen. So it’s sort of got all the traditional ‘yeahness’.
LD: Yeah!
LL: Set in this really exciting made up world. I think that’s what I really love about fantasy fiction is how much goes into the, like I’m one of those people who sometimes will just skip a paragraph of description if it looks really boring, I don’t care.
LD: Same.
[Laughs]
LL: And the, but in really good fantasy fiction you want to read that because you wanna find out what they’ve done to manipulate you know, to make it a fantasy world. So I think that’s one of the things I really love about fantasy fiction.
LD: It’s that huge world building, that’s what I’ve noticed recently when I’ve started dipping my toe in. I think I always thought fantasy was just elves and nonsense but it’s just this building this entire world that has very little to do with ours and everything is sort of from scratch and I think for me, that was the first time I realised, ‘oh it’s pure escapism whilst still telling real stories’.
LL: Yeah, I think that’s, it’s so creative and interesting. Like in the Lies of Locke Lamora even the building materials, there’s sort of a lot of focus on alchemical lights and, is it elderglass I think is one of the materials that one of the cities is made of. So even with that you think this person’s come up with a different building material to put into this world and then the rules of that and how that affects them needing to scale the outside of that building at some point. You know, the animals that they’ve created and then the sports that have come out of that animal existing and, yeah, I love it. And also, especially with historical fiction, I find that that is such a better way for me to learn the actual history.
LD: It brings it to life a bit more. It’s like doing a trip.
LL: Yeah and then it sticks in my brain. Like I really understand the Wars of the Roses now and that is purely from reading two different series about, well three actually, about the Wars of the Roses by three different authors. And sort of seeing it from a couple of different sides and these people being alive so I’m like, ‘Oh it works in my head now who Elizabeth Woodville was. She’s not just and he married her at this point. It’s like oh she was that woman’ and then I understand it all. So I’ve kind of gotten to see these big fiction novels for that now as well.
LD: I like how you mentioned it being an aspect when you first started dating Tom because I found exactly the same thing. I always thought for me, reading had to be something that my husband would enjoy.
LL: That totally makes sense because talking about books, you take something that was a completely solitary experience for you and then you share it afterwards. Like, you can’t read something together even if you’re sat simultaneously reading the book, you can’t share the experience of what’s going into your brain. So then being able to sort of discuss it with someone afterwards is really cool.
LD: Yeah, that’s exactly what we’ve been, because again we have fairly different taste in books, it’s starting to cross over a bit now, but we’ve decided to read the same book while we’re in isolation and it is really interesting ‘cos obviously you are having different experiences and you do sort of consume things at different paces and
LL: Yeah. I’m very very influenced by how and where I read a book too. Like I still get flashes of some books when I’m driving down a certain bit of motorway and I think, ‘Oh that’s where I listened to The Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ and like, parts of the M40 still make me think of that book. ‘Cos I’ve connected it to where I heard it. But when I’m reading it with other people that’s when I do tend to stick to books. So we briefly with my friends had an ill fated book club and it didn’t last very long. But I remember there was this one book, it was a Margaret Atwood one and I can’t remember what it was called, but it was set in Canada and there was something to do with a button factory. And I read this entire goddamn book, not really loving it, didn’t really hate it but it all just was a bit like ‘Oh I don’t really know but I’m sticking it out ‘cos I’m gonna turn up to book club’. And I turned up to book club and none of those bitches had read this book.
LD: Argh! That makes me furious.
LL: And then everybody’s getting on the wine and they’re all going, ‘well tell us the plot then’. So I start trying to explain and I’m going, ‘Well there’s this button factory right’. And then obviously we’re all just pissing ourselves laughing, and I’m sort of sitting there thinking ‘Well hang on a minute. I struggled through every minute of that book like these affairs and this going on and it was long. Of course it was long, it was Margaret Bloody Atwood, and days and days and days when I could have been listening to something with aliens and guns but I wasn’t! Reading this maudlin thing about a button factory.’ But I did kind of finish it and I mean I can’t remember anything about it now. Other than it was in a button factory but I guess that made me carry through it.
LD: Did you feel a sense of achievement that you’d read it?
LL: I don’t know. No I don’t feel an achievement because I think I’ve managed to not associate books with something I should be doing, you know?
LD: Yeah that’s great.
LL: So I think in order to feel an achievement for finishing it I think I’d have to believe that there was some kind of moral superiority to difficult books. If a book is difficult to read it doesn’t mean it’s better for you, it’s not a vegetable. Just ‘cos it’s gross, it isn’t making you better.
LD: That’s exactly, did you see the quote from Marian Keyes? She said exactly the same thing in an interview
LL: Oh did she?
LD: Yeah well they said to her, ‘Is there any book that you sort of, I think it was that you’re embarrassed you haven’t read it, or you regret not reading?’ and she was like ‘No of course not, reading is pleasurable, there’s nothing I should have read, there’s no classic I should have got to. If I’ve read it and I’ve liked it that’s great’.
LL: Yeah.
LD: I’m paraphrasing but it was very good. I also think it’s great that everyone reads differently ‘cos if everyone just read the same thing you’d all just be thinking the same thing and discussing the same story and surely that’s not why there’s an absolutely cacophony of books, fiction and non-fiction, out there.
LL: No exactly and it’s a total dismissal of popularity. It’s that constant thing that happens when, if something’s popular because it’s appealed to so many people is a negative all of a sudden. And you think, ‘This is tedious because no you are wrong’. The popularity of something is a marker that sure, it’s not difficult to access, but do you know how hard it is to make something that is so comforting to access that that many people want it? You know, Fifty Shades of Grey, while it might not be the most intellectual thing you’ve ever read, the fact that so many people accessed it and enjoyed it makes it a work of art because not everything does that, at all.
LD: That’s really really true and really important. And tell me about Outlander?
LL: Ah Outlander yeah. So, this series that Diane Gabaldon, my Mum has had these on her bedside table for as long as I can remember, since I was a child. My Mum must have read these when they came out practically and ever since I was a young adult she has said ‘Oh you should read these, you should read Dragonfly and Amber, you should read Outlander, you should read these’, blah blah blah. And you know when it’s something that your Mum thinks is good! So you automatically go ‘Oh I know you like it Mum but I’m not going to, I’m brilliant and you’re just the stupid woman that’s raised me!’ [LAUGHTER] So I'd never got round to them and then I guess the, is it Amazon I think, made the series of it and I said to Mum, ‘Oh those books you love have been made’ and she started watching the series and I thought, oh I might start watching the series too. And I was sort of co-watching it with Game of Thrones and then there was a day when I was sort of going to bed and I’m thinking, ‘God, I’m really anxious today, why am I anxious? I've had a really nice day at home’. And then I realised I’d watched four people get raped that day across various television shows that I was watching and I thought, you know what that might be why I’m anxious.
LD: Might be yeah!
LL: That my relaxation today has just been watching several rapes. [LAUGHTER] So I stopped watching Game of Thrones and I stopped watching Outlander but then I was like, ‘Oh no I was really into that Outlander story’, I just didn’t wanna watch the violence. So I started listening to the audiobooks instead and I just think they are some of the most effortless fiction I’ve ever listened to. They are so flowing and domestic but interesting and so rich in historical research and information but laid so lightly across a narrative. The characters are fantastic and complicated and difficult and sexy. And it’s a real romp but with so much more into it and I mean I must be on book five or six now. And the story’s just developed beyond anywhere I thought it would have gone and there’s sort of a few magical elements to it here and there but you just really, it’s so romantic in the original meaning of the word romantic, you know. It’s so elaborate and a vast world and so exciting, this sort of romance happening across centuries, and so scary. And in book form I can handle the violence, I’m much more sort of all right with listening to the tension and enjoying that where when I was watching it on a screen it was too much.
LD: And did you tell your mum that you’re into it now?
LL: Yes! [LAUGHTER] Mum I’m really sorry it’s yet another thing in the pile that you were absolutely right about along with why wasn’t I always stacking the sauce pans inside each other to save space in the cupboard because now I’m married to a man who physically can’t do it I understand why you were so mad.
LD: We have that same situation here!
LL: Oh God, why can’t, we have these Joseph Joseph nesting bowls that are deliberately designed to go inside each other because when you live in a shoebox in the city and I honestly I love my husband with every inch of my body but if I ever leave him it will be because of those frigging nesting bowls.
[MUSIC]
LD: I want to say that out of your whole list of books, The Goldfinch seemed like something that might potentially be up my alley and I began to read it.
LL: Yeah?
LD: And it’s so far up my alley I can’t tell you. It is so good, uh, I have consumed/
LL: /Where are you up to? Have you finished it?
LD: No, no it’s very big Laura! I tried to finish in time but I couldn’t. Um, I am at, I’m in Vegas.
LL: Oh okay, right, yeah. So The Goldfinch was one of those books where every now and again I would catch myself and think, ‘What the, why are you still listening to this? It’s been going on for so long and nothing’s happened. For ages!’ But it’s so compelling. I don’t know if there’s ever been a book that I’ve envisioned quite as clearly and physically as this book. She’s a witch I think, Donna Tartt. She’s so, like, you’re in it and you’re compelled to carry on with it. See the thing that fascinates me about The Goldfinch is that they’re currently making a film of it. Or it’s out.
LD: I heard.
LL: And I just can’t quite get my head round what sort of a film that’s going to be.
LD: I have mixed feelings on the whole film adaptation situation with books because, I mean, generally I think they can be quite good but yeah, when a book is like The Goldfinch where the joy of it is in the reading. It’s in those little details and the fact that yeah I‘ve been reading it for days now and very little has happened but I can’t stop.
LL: Yeah but you’re having a great time aren’t you?
LD: There’s also this underlying sense that she’s always hinting, because you know there’s a prologue where you know something big has happened again, so you know that’s coming and I think that’s enough combined with the just incredible characterisation and detail and you just wonder what’s going to happen to Theo I think. I’m so worried about him in Vegas.
LL: Yeah you are, you’re worried about him and just the big scale jump there. When they go from the city to Vegas and suddenly the entire world changes around you and you’re just, it’s such a magnificent sweeping change I think to suddenly be in Vegas and so beautifully described. That book just, it’s haunted me since I finished it because there’s just, I don’t know, just that feeling. It really gave me an emotion the whole time, I sort of wanted him to be okay but was just so angry with him constantly for making terrible decisions at every single turn. You just, but then she’s done it so cleverly that you completely understand why he’s making terrible decisions ‘cos you’re like yeah, absolutely, I see.
LD: I’d probably do the same in his situation.
LL: Yeah, you’ve not had a good time babe. You’ve had a terrible life! But yeah I don’t know with the film. I agree with you, one of my favourite books that I remember reading that I’ve never revisited because I think I read it at a point in my life, but The Time Traveller’s Wife.
LD: Yes. I didn’t watch the film.
LL: No I haven’t either because I know that my visual memory is quite flaky. I find it really hard to hold images in my head, I very much think in words and spellings. And I really, I really kind of have blurry images in my mind of what I remember imagining when I read that book and I’m scared that if I see the film those images will sort of overlay the book images that I’ve got and I don’t want that to happen. So I think I probably won’t watch The Goldfinch for a similar reason that when I think about The Goldfinch I have these very sort of snippity imaginings of different sort of worlds and I don’t want the film’s vision of that to just neatly slot over the top because remembering the film is easier than remembering my imagination.
LD: You said that when you read a book has a real, I know we talked about driving on the motorway, but also if you read a book during a hard time in your life do you find it hard to revisit that book?
LL: I think that when I’m in a book I’m probably not in my own life anymore so no I think I’d be alright. Music yes. I would find it hard to listen to a song that was around at a hard part in my life but a book I think I’d be alright with you know. I don’t tend to revisit books that much unless they’re in a series and I re-read them when the new one comes out or something like that.
LD: OK.
LL: I’ve just been rereading ones, a couple of Wilbur Smith ones that I really loved as a child, but I sometimes find that they’re disappointing. Like the other day I re-read Terese Raquin because I really remember loving that as a teenager, it was one of the first like classic type ones that I just adored and I thought like, ‘oh I’m gonna go back and read that’ and I didn’t like it as much and I was kind of reading it thinking ‘What did I love at the time?’ But I suppose I must just have read more stuff now that does the same thing but better so this didn’t have that hit anymore. And when I re-read that I was sort of vaguely thinking in my head ‘Oh I might go back and reread Wuthering Heights’. ‘Cos again that was another one that was one of the first classics that I just loved but now I’m sort of like, ‘No I don’t think I will. I think I’ll just leave it with that vague memory of loving it’ because I don’t want to have that same thing again that I had with Terese Raquin.
LD: That’s interesting because you chose Terese Raquin as one of your top books.
LL: Well I did yeah, I did choose it because, but for the first reading of it not for the revisiting. Because yes, when I first read it it was probably one of the first things I’d ever read where I hated everyone but was sort of still cheering for them. It was one of the first things I’d read with nasty anti heroes being the only people you could love so you sort of had to. It was probably one of my first reading experiences of having to learn that not all of my characters were going to be the heroes but I was still going to have to love them and you could still make them interesting and the writing could still be compelling.
[MUSIC]
LD: I am very sad that we can’t talk about books all day. Are we allowed to say anything about your publishing thing?
LL: Yeah, so the deal should be announced now which is very exciting so I’ve signed with Two Roads at Hachette.
LD: Amazing.
LL: Which is very exciting.
LD: So exciting.
LL: They’ve offered me a two book deal so I will be writing first of all a book based on my viral tweets about fantasising about being married to very sensible Jurgen Klopp so I’m quite excited about that. I’m really enjoying sort of developing this sort of fantasist character. You know, this woman who’s terribly upset by everything in the world and her coping mechanism is to imagine this very sensible husband giving her all the advice that she knows is true but doesn’t always listen to herself. And they are such a fantastic publisher that they’ve also said that they will happily have any novel of my choice from me afterwards so I think I’m going to be developing a novel based on a TV script that I’ve been working on for a few years, working title of Pivot, about a woman’s netball team.
LD: Excellent. I suppose I just wanted to ask, I know you said you buy a lot of your things on audiobook, do you ever frequent bookstores?
LL: Oh yeah I love bookstores. Especially just before you go on holiday.
LD: So we’re trying to, particularly at the moment while book sales are very down, is to just big up the independent bookstores. So if there’s any independent bookstore that you have frequented, it’s okay to also use Amazon and Waterstones and everything.
LL: You know what I can’t think of one in Brighton which is terrible of me because I expect there are but the one that I suppose have the most interaction with is Big Green Bookshops on twitter.
LD: Oh lovely. yeah they’re so nice.
LL: And I find that their use of social media to sort of, and how honest they are, I quite like that like some days when at lunchtime they’re like ‘I just want to have sold 15 books by today’ and you go ‘Oh ok’. There’s none of this ‘Here’s my turnover’, it’s just ‘15 books please’. So that’s the independent bookstore that I think I interact with the most.
LD: That’s a perfect choice. I’d completely forgotten about them actually. Yeah they’re really good on twitter and at the moment I believe they’re doing two things which is Buy a Stranger a Book, where you literally/
LL: Yep/
LD: Well you buy a stranger a book. Well you donate it and they send the stranger a book and you can also buy a book club subscription to them, so.
LL: Yeah also I think, didn’t Mark Watson give away like 30 copies of his book to first come first served people that wanted them through Big Green Books? He sort of bought lots of people a copy?
LD: Yes he did. A few people did actually I think but yeah I think I saw Mark Watson doing it online. That’s lovely.
LL: Yeah. I mean I should know an independent bookshop in Brighton. I really should.
LD: That’s okay. You go out and find one after this lockdown is over.
LL: Yeah I will.
LD: Right, well thank you so much. This has been lovely and I’m quite sad it’s coming to an end.
LL: Well, I’ll be back. I’ll read three more books and then we can chat about those!
LD: Great. Maybe even post lockdown and we’ll do it in person.
LL: Maybe we should do a summary, when you’ve finished the goldfinch we should do a little postscript to this where we discuss the entire Goldfinch.
LD: Of course we should. That’s what everyone’s waiting for. Our discussion of The Goldfinch. I’m in, I’m down, I’m ready.
LL: Sold.
LD: Thank you. Have a lovely day Laura and we will speak anon. Thank you for listening to today’s episode of Comics’ Books. I hope you enjoyed it. In the show notes you’ll be able to find full listings of all the books we mentioned as well as links to our featured independent bookshop. Have a great week reading, laughing and then reading some more.