Comics’ Books - S01, E04 - Transcript
GUEST: SINDHU VEE
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? Today my guest is an excellent comedian who I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside on Stand Up & Slam. She is an award winning stand up comedian, she’s host of the Comedy of the Week podcast on Radio 4 and you will have seen her on Live at the Apollo and Have I Got News for You. It is Sindhu Vee. Hello Sindu.
SINDHU VEE: Hello Lucy.
LD: Hello how are you?
SV: I am, I’m good man. I mean I’m reading a lot which is, you know, good for this podcast.
LD: That’s very helpful.
SV: That’s very helpful. But you know what, look it’s a bad situation with the whole corona thing and the lockdown.
LD: Are you finding it difficult?
SV: No because see I had the full monty corona from the 18th of March to the 2nd April. Like full full-
LD: Oh wow.
SV: So I, to say I was out of it is very true and there was like three days in the middle with the breathing, they were like should she go to the hospital, should she not so-
LD: Oh God.
SV: Yeah yeah. So I think for me the lockdown’s only been a few weeks of which all of which I’ve been recovering. So I’m one of those annoying people who’s like, “Hey guys what’s going on?” because I’ve just got back on my feet. Everyone else is-
LD: How are you finding the whole sort of being productive thing? Are you being productive or are you taking an actual break?
SV: I’m not being necessarily productive in comedy but I, I’m not, I’ve never really been committed to cooking big family meals. Because I’ve never had to or because my husband can manage or whatever. And now I cook every day and I cook out of, I cook from a place that’s very much, it’s a part of me that I set aside because it came as part of a bigger package. Basically I was raised to have an arranged marriage so to be a good cook was very much part of that package. And I saw my mother do it and I saw a lot of my cousins do it and I thought, this is all about women being in the kitchen so fuck this. And so I think I had a real, and I had a real barrier about it. And then I went on to lead a life where it would be difficult to fit in cooking anyway. But now I cook from a place of you know, of great freedom because I have been able to author my own life very differently than, you know, if I’d have had an arranged marriage.
LD: So you never entered into the arranged marriage?
SV: No, I had to meet boys and somehow, the first few I met when I was in India which would have been the time when I really had no idea because I’d never had a boyfriend. So I didn’t really know what I was looking for. If those had been a yes then I would be married. And I was 18, 19, 20. Then I got a scholarship, I came to England to study.
LD: Oh wow.
SV: And once you leave home your mind expands in all kinds of ways. And I started, then I got a boyfriend. Because that was my big thing of coming abroad was, “I need to have sex. Hello.”
[LAUGHTER]
[MUSIC]
LD: Then, then you got into comedy. So how did all that, I mean how did that happen?
SV: I was reading an email that I’d received from a woman I knew from my fashion business times and she was doing some charity, she was doing stand up for charity, literally the least fucking funny woman that I have met in my life this woman. And then I read her email and it was Funny Women UK and then I clicked on that and they had a workshop that evening in Leicester Square. And my husband was travelling, my parents were visiting, I had three small children. I fucking just stood up and left. I just went.
LD: Isn’t that amazing that you had that absolute longing, that you’re like ah I’ve got to get up and go or I might not do it
SV: And I did and then I went to this workshop and it was, I don’t know ten women, all of whom needed therapy, me included, just sitting in a circle. I was like, “Oh what’s going on here?” And then Karen Rosey and Lynn Parker who run it came to me after and said, “Oh you should join our awards,” and I was like, “No thank you, I don’t know what’s happening here bye”. But they were very persistent and then I decided one day, I was getting more and more angry actually with myself for not having anything to do, I hadn’t cottoned on that this was the thing I would do.
LD: So this is what’s really interesting to me. So you found this massive extrovert side of you and obviously you’ve always had that to a degree, but then you told me that you were, and had always been, a big reader.
SV: [Noise of agreement.]
LD: So how, is that at odds for you? Is it an escape, does it go hand in hand?
SV: No. Well I think, to me it’s not, they’re not mutually exclusive in the sense that I, when I was young and we lived in India there was one TV channel and the TV, at 6:30 there was a TV show on farming. As a child you were like, “What the fuck is this?” Also I come from a family of readers. My parents are big readers and I went to a convent. The nuns were on your case about reading, read read read read read. And they would say things like, “Well, you’re a very badly read child| and it was like a huge insult.
[LAUGHTER]
LD: What was the first thing you remember ever reading yourself or having read to you?
SV: No no no, we don’t, no-one in my family read to me, that’s a very western thing.
LD: Oh you just read to yourself? OK, so What was the first thing you read?
SV: Can I just tell you this and then I’ll tell you that. I don’t even read to my kids, I find it so boring. I’m like, “You can fucking read what’s the problem”. Anyway, so, but I know it’s a big thing or whatever, so when we had, when I had my last one, my last baby, she’s much younger than the others and my Mother was always here. ‘Cos I’d started comedy and I needed someone to be with the kids and I didn’t want to just have babysitters. ‘Cos sometimes the babysitters don’t come and I didn’t ever want to say to a gig, “Oh I can’t come ‘cos I have a kid.” I was like no sort your shit out, sort my shit out. So anyway so Mummy used to come and stay and one day Mummy came to me and she said, and one day I think the baby was very young, she was three or four, and she was like, “Ah I want you to read a story” and I was like, “Ah I can’t read you a story” and my mother said, [Mimicking her mother’s accent] “Why not I will read you a story no problem”. And so the next morning my mother said to me at breakfast she said, “It’s okay that I read stories to your kids but what a stupid stories you have given the child to read. And I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “She is reading the story of this one witch who is a failure. Who is this vinne vitch who is a failure witch?” It was Winnie the Witch who obviously is like, and my mother was like, “She’s a failure and her hat is also crooked, she can’t fly, she’s useless vitch”. I was like, “um okay it’s not like, it’s not literal, it’s for a kid”. So she said, “If tomorrow child wants to become a witch, what a bad example. She could be top class bitch”, witch not bitch, and I was like, “I don’t think that’s how…” So I was like, “Don’t read her stories” and she said, “No I must”. So she changed the stories as she was reading them and then the baby was like, “I’m very scared of Winnie, I don’t want…” ‘Cos my mum made her like a real witch. At least she was a top quality witch. I was like, “This is so complicated Mummy, just leave it. Just leave it.”
LD: So I’m guessing your first book wasn’t Winnie the Witch?
SV: No, my first book was the Ladybird illustrated, that I remember reading and rereading, Cinderella.
LD: It’s always good to start with pictures as well.
SV: I must have been very young because I remember I didn’t own the book it was owned by a friend of mine, my parents had these friends and they had a son, Monit Singh. Monit, and Monit always got what he wanted. And his mum would buy him just these sort of, in those days the Ladybird editions of the fairytales came out periodically and she would buy them for him and he didn’t, he drew in them. Which I found to be appalling.
[MUSIC]
LD: So you, Ladybird’s obviously a thing ‘cos when I asked you for books that meant a lot to you during your life you chose another ladybird which is the Ladybird Well Loved Tales Little Mermaid.
SV:I think it’s because in those days it was the most tragic thing I’d ever heard in my life. But actually what happened-
LD: Why was it tragic? Is it the old one?
SV: Well that’s the thing was, I read this one, the Ladybird one and I remember the images but then I mentioned it andI think my father got me the Hans Christian Anderson version. He’s like, “Oh here’s the original book.” and I read it and she had knives every time she was trying to walk. I was devastated, I’ve never recovered for God’s sake! Never recovered. I freaked out completely. Twenty-three years after I read that I went to Denmark and saw the little mermaid in the harbour with my husband, with my fiance who is now my husband, and I wept. And I said to her that I understand. And my husband was like, “Are you on drugs, why are you, what’s happening?” And then I cried and cried and told him about the story and he kind of like, he was like, “Yeah whatever there’s some story, wasn’t she a mermaid who wanted to be a girl.” I’m like, “Are you shitting me? She gave everything up and went against her family”. And I’ll tell you something, there’s something about going against your family. She had to make a success of it because she’d gone against her father and it was shameful. What was she reduced to when she came back and still she had to go back? I was happy that she just became part of the foam of the sea.
LD: We grew up with much softer versions that were quite Disneyfied and then we read these and we think, oh okay no these are terrifying tales of caution.
SV: Yeah but I’m older than you so I got the terrifying ones first.
[LAUGHTER]
SV: And then the Disney ones I was like, although Disney Beauty and the Beast I cried.
LD: Oh it’s amazing, it’s wonderful.
SV: I love it.
LD: That’s probably one of their slightly grittier ones. Oh I don’t know actually. But compared to The Little Mermaid.
SV: OhThe Little Mermaid’s a joke. I will not even watch that on Disney, like screw that.
[LAUGHTER[
LD: Well let’s talk then about much happier times, about Anne of Green Gables.
SV: Anne of Green Gables. You see my mother had gone abroad and I was, I was young, I was eleven or twelve and she’d gone abroad to study and someone over there must have given her a book and um, it was called Anne of Green Gables. And my mother came back and she gave it to me, she said, “Someone has given me this”, one of her friends or whatever. I used to get into a lot of trouble at that stage in the convent and with my parents for talking too much. I used to talk too much and I always had something to say, talked too much, talked too much and I was regularly shamed into not talking. In many, so you know it was kind of a Victorian way with the nuns especially. And Anne of Green Gables’ book, I opened it and first of all this Anne, she talks all the time. The page after page is just dialogue and it’s interesting and fun and at the end of the book you can see why, see why it matters. So up until then I had only read books of children who were my age who were either interesting to each other because they were fucking solving mysteries like that Famous Five, those idiots.
[LAUGHTER]
SV: And I call them those idiots because first of all they were only interesting to each other and they never really had to deal with grownups and I was like this is bullshit, I always had to deal with grownups my whole life.
LD: That was the joy of them. They avoided all the grownups.
SV: Yeah but I didn’t have any insight into how that’s possible because I lived a very very tightly controlled life. I couldn’t go off all day with tomatoes and boiled eggs and go and do, what is that! I just couldn’t understand you know where were, who were these kids who had all this access to great, to weird food, but also just food and they could be gone all day and no one ever talked about, there was no adult looking at them and being critical.
LD: That’s always been the most exciting thing when I was younger for me, any book where someone said or did something that wasn’t explained or talked about in the rest of life was just so satisfying and exciting for me. That I was being spoken to.
SV: Yeah I guess that’s the thing that it was. Like I I guess with Anne of Green Gables it was like, I felt like Anne except I didn’t know where Prince Edward Island was and I didn't have red hair and freckles but spiritually I was like Anne because she was a child who was talkative and had ideas. But Anne could do things I wouldn’t allow myself to but I would want to do them.
LD: What kind of things?
SV: Like hit someone on the head with a book or-
LD: Oh!
SV: Yeah because the boy is being an idiot in class you know. Or Anne, see Anne could talk that much and that much and that much and she got into trouble but she could do it. I couldn't because I already knew the rules in my, in my situation. Which was you couldn't talk so much. So it was fun. It was like Anne was the version of me that if I lived somewhere else and people didn't get spanked for doing the wrong thing.
[MUSIC]
LD: Sindhu when you sent me over your list of books I was very excited because you had some uber-English books. Some of which I had not read and the one that really got me and I thought I’m gonna read this was The Code of the Woosters.
SV: OK OK but did you laugh?
LD: Oh My God I laughed so much. It took me a little bit to get into but then I would say within a page or two I was laughing.
SV: Oh my God.
LD: It was very funny. Very silly. I was reading quite a hefty tome at the time and I stopped for a little Wooster break and I loved it. I can see why-
SV: It’s so good.
LD: It’s so different and so aggressively British.
SV: Yeah.
LD: So funny, all the little shorthands. I love how he says something, like he’ll say sarcastic tone and then after that he’ll just say ST. Rather than sarcastic tone. Very funny.
SV: It’s so good! And the dialogue and the characters are just phenomenal. And I mean PG Wodehouse was the author that was read and revered by my father’s generation. My father was born in 1933 and that generation of highly educated Indians who had access to those books and they were sort of, that was a generation that was working with the Brits as they left India.
LD: Yeah.
SV: So they had quite British affectations and I used to go to my parents’ friends houses and they would have pink gin at 11am and all this kind of thing. Like high, and it was all upper class stuff ‘cos that’s who the people who were in India from the British government were. All quite fancy and they were all toffs at that point right?
LD: Yeah. No, yeah.
SV: So my father and his three friends used to meet, they would like come over for dinner with their wives or whatever and they only spoke in PG Wodehouse. They never broke character. He was not a serious person, he was very funny but it was my mother who was a storyteller and very funny. But my father, he didn’t have much time for frivolity. So I picked up my first one and I never have looked back, I’ve read every single one.
LD: So why is The Code of the Woosters your favourite?
SV: Well for the following reason. I think Bertie and Jeeves are by far the most entertaining characters that PG Wodehouse has and the particular, the particular, uh the anarchy of the plot is very very Wodehousian in this book but also very neat.
LD: Yeah. And um, you are a judge are you not? On the prize?
SV: Oh yes I am! Which is of course why I said yes when I found out the prize. The prize is the Bollinger PG Wodehouse Comedy Fiction prize. This is my third year.
LD: Yes and you get a pig.
SV: Yes! And so the winner gets a pig named after them. Last year it was Nina Stibbes. The year before we didn’t give a prize and everyone went bananas. Because you know they were like, “How can you do this and this and that and the other” but you know, sometimes the judges, and because it has to be unanimous.
LD: But this is a prize for comic writing in a Wodehousian vein?
SV: Yeah our big thing is, and we don’t really talk a lot about it, but I think all of the judges are of the mind that it should be funny, like haha funny not like interesting. Which as we all know in stand up is also an issue in that way. And it is true that PG Wodehouse’s books are the sort of benchmark although it’s difficult.
LD: Yeah ‘cos those are really funny is a way that you don’t often get. I have consistently laughed out loud with my husband sort of going what, what now?
SV: Thank you. Yes exactly.
LD: So thank you Sindhu because you got me into those.
SV: There you go. I hope you read many many more.
LD: So the next books you’ve chosen I don’t know very much about so I’m interested to know more. You chose A House for Mr Biswas.
SV: House for Mr Biswas. Yes, so, my best friend from the time that I’ve been fifteen is an English major and she now lives in Mauritius. She’s half Indian, Half Mauritian. Ambika if you’re listening to this hi. I think she said something to me like, “You philistine read a proper book, here”. Or something like that, that kind of thing. It wasn’t necessarily like, “This is a great book”, she was like, “You idiot read this”. And because I read everything. And, oh yes, VS Naipaul has a very complicated relationship with people of his generation who are Indian because he sort of left and turned round and shat on Indian in a lot of ways. And you know, fair enough those were his opinions, but he didn’t really leave. I mean he wasn’t from India India, but he was of Indian race or origin or whatever and in the 40’s and 50’s and 60’s Indians were so, my parents’ generation they had got rid of the British, they were full of domestic pride, national pride.
LD: Of course.
SV: So any author or any word about India that was not completely positive was met with, I would say an irrational level of disdain and disgrace and you know ‘argh.’ So I had heard about VS Naipaul in the sense that some grown up would bring it up and my father and other grown ups would say, “hah! He’s a bloody communist” and then the conversation would stop. Like oh okay. Or “that man he’s a bloody bastard” then it would stop. So, and they were using, but they would use completely contradictory things. “He’s a communist” and then they’d say, “Oh he’s an American capitalist”. So, which?
[LAUGHS]
SV: But it was just, he was a, he was a character. He was a person that raised um, the temperature in the room basically. So when my friend was like ‘read this’ or she said she was reading it I thought “oh!” I must have been about seventeen and it was quite a rebellious time for me and the way I rebelled was by reading an author my father didn’t like the sound of! But I wouldn’t read it in front of him ‘cos I thought, “why bother?” So I remember it was very hot, it must have been the Summer. I distinctly remember sitting outside on the veranda reading this book, sweating. It was so hot but I read this book in August, that’s very clear in my mind because of the rains and the heat and I was so drawn into this book because I felt sad for Mr Biswas. His life was tragic, he tried. And you know I think a lot of it for me was he was, from the moment he was born, like he made a lot of poor decisions, but from the moment he was born he sort of was considered not okay.
LD: OK.
SV: Uh, he was born sort of under the wrong star in the wrong way. It, just tragedy after tragedy after tragedy. And he’s also dominated by a family which he wants to get away from and he feels rootless and alienated.
LD: OK.
SV: And I think as a teenager those are not unusual things to empathise with.
LD: Yeah.
SV: I think it was a sense of missing home. Even though I was home. I think it really spoke to me in terms of what it is, you know if you don’t know who you are, then there’s a certain sadness. but you don’t know that you don’t know who you are and Mr Biswas and the Trinidad Tobago people, some of the stuff in the Tamil household the way it works I’m a Tamil but I’m like an Indian Tamil so I think for me, yeah there was so much of sadness and loss in this book and it really spoke to me. I never went back and read it again, I was so moved and so upset that first of all I went and broke up with my friend for like a day because why did she suggest such a terrible book. And she was like, she told me “You take everything so seriously” and I was like “Well, we’re done.”
[LAUGHTER]
SV: But she was living in our house, we shared a room so I don’t know how much done we could have been. She lived with us for two years.
LD: That’s pretty tough.
SV: So I was like, “We’re done now go and sit outside my room”. She was like, “It’s my room too”. So I went and sat outside. I’m a bit of a pushover. But I’m just saying, the book really, yeah it was very very sad and I’ve never had the guts to read it again.
LD: But you also, see you also chose John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany.
SV: Ah I love that book so much.
LD: Isn’t that also sort of a little, heavy?
SV: Yeah it is but it’s got so much humour in it. Oh okay, so let me say A Prayer for Owen Meany, Owen Meany talks in all caps throughout the book!
LD: OK!
SV: That to me is one of those absurd crazy fucking things I never can forget in a book. He literally only talks in all caps. Like you’re laughing and I was laughing the whole time I was like, “What the fuck is going on”. It’s a fat book, like, “What the fuck is going on, is this what it’s like to have LSD? What’s happening?” I just loved it. It was so manic, manic. Of course the book is sad and I think for me the thing about the Owen Meany book which I’ve kind of buried and I don’t really like to think about is what it means to have a friend. And what some friends bring us and how we can’t repay them.
LD: That’s nice.
SV: It is by knowing the friends that I’ve had and interacting with them and rubbing up against them metaphorically. And being in their world and having an exchange of ideas and emotions that I have been able to become someone who has positive qualities. And of course my parents are also, they’re my family but just friends, because friends are special you know, they don’t owe you shit when they show up in your life.
LD: I think it, you know, yours is not the first list it’s popped up on so I think it’s obviously a very affecting book for many people.
SV: Oh it’s a good book. It is. It’s a great book. I gave it to my daughter who was like, “Argh I don’t really think it’s good”, I was like “Your brain is not switched on, switch it on and read the book”. So I think she’s going to read it.
LD: Good!
SV: Yeah I mean, by the way with my kids, if I like a book and they don’t read it I’m like “Your brain is not switched on it’s a great book read it.” So they hate me. I’ve started reading during the lockdown to my youngest at night and we’re reading Call of the Wild.
LD: God I remember that from school.
SV: Yeah it’s quite traumatic ‘cos I have the original version and the way they go for Buck in the beginning and club him, the baby’s like, “Oh my God this is so horrible” and I’m like, “shush shush shush shush, this is life” and also what’s the point of always watching YouTube. Hey guys! so today I’m going to tell you what i think about donuts. Hey guys! I said, “We’re becoming stupider by the minute watching that shit, listen to this”.
LD: So I was going to ask how you read books. So you say you read them on an iPad?
SV: No I read them on an iPad if I’m travelling and then if I have to finish the book but if I am home I have the book. But also one of the things is some of the books that I want, if I feel I have to read it and if it’s going to be too long or whatever then I get it. There’s some books that are by Indian authors that are easier to get on my iPad. So I either read the physical book or I use the iPad but I don’t have a Kindle.
LD: Well I’m very glad that you’re bringing the two together. I’ve long been perturbed by the rise of the sort of digital book but again right now when it’s harder to you know access the library or bookshop I have started reading more. Particularly you know while we’re doing this podcast when people recommend a book to me, I called my independent bookshop, they’ve now stopped serving people, they were doing delivery but they’ve stopped for a bit during this. So yeah the sort of iPad has taken over for a little bit. For books that I don’t already own.
SV: Yeah I, man I think you know, I’m a pragmatic person. Like I told you, my parents didn’t buy us books. We went into bookstores to browse. So to have a book was like wow. And you know we had libraries. I used to check out books, we had libraries so I always had a lot of books but they weren't mine.
LD: You didn’t own them.
SV: And when you got a book you treated it really well. Also in Hinduism the written word is God so if a book falls on the floor I pick it up and I touch my forehead to it and I sort of make an apology. Your feet can’t touch the written word.
LD: I did know that!
SV: Yes. So that’s why our school books we never keep them on the floor. So with my kids it’s a constant battle because that’s absent in the West, there’s just no there’s no the, the written word is not sacred even though there are sacred books. It’s only those particular books, here in Hinduism it’s, so the newspaper on the floor doesn't happen in my house, I’ll pick it up and put it on a table. So, we have that, it’s a very big thing so that’s also I think why as far as books are so, like the physical book is something you treat very well.
LD: I remember being absolutely amazed when I first heard that and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I couldn’t stop feeling guilty when I dropped my books on the floor or kicked them. ‘Cos you know I’d often fall asleep with a book on my bed and it’d be-
SV: That’s fine
LD: And it’d be on the floor in the morning. But it might have fallen, I might have kicked it on the floor in the night. And I would have felt-
SV: That’s fine if you didn’t know. In Hinduism, in Hindu, the Dharma, Dharma is what loosely translates into duty, but it’s actually ‘the way,’ the way you do things, intention is very important. So if your intention when you go to sleep and the book falls on the floor, your intention, but if you’re walking and there’s something and you step on it and you don’t stop and you could, that’s a different intention. So intentionality is a, it’s not a free pass but it’s something to keep in mind. 1
LD: You have made me feel better about that.
SV: Oh yeah.
LD: Thank you.
SV: But you know there’s no word for guilt in Hinduism. It doesn’t exist.
LD: Is that true? But before we finish, right now as we talked about it is quite hard to buy books.
SV: Yes
LD: Physical books particularly and so I think it is important at the moment I do know that some bookshops, independent ones, have stayed open and they are delivering books.
SV: Right.
LD: Faster than sort of Amazon can and things like that so you did have a local one that you wanted to recommend didn’t you?
SV: Yes. Primrose Hill Books on, it’s on Regents Park road in Primrose Hill, NW1 and they give great advice. They know everything there is to know about books. It’s one of those places you can walk in and say, “I’m in this mood or that mood”. I spent a lot of time there. We lived down the street when I had a new baby and it’s just nice to go into a bookstore and say oh words, adult things. And my in-laws who live in Denmark, they had books delivered to them because Primrose Hill Books has such a great selection and they’re just wonderful.
LD: Perfect. And to end, what are you reading at the moment?
SV: At the moment, oh I can’t tell you because I’m reading one of the…
LD: No of course you can’t. it’s a secret. Right, well.
SV: I’m reading the shortlisted books. Having said that, so the nonfiction I’m reading is a book called Atomic Habits.
LD: Oh yeah I’ve heard of that.
SV: Well it’s literally, I mean I’m trying to just, it’s like Atomic Habits, wake up early it’s good for you. And you’re fine okay but how to do it?
[LAUGHTER]
SV: So there’s Atomic Habits which is fine and then I am reading a book on, it’s called Value of Values and it’s written by a sort of a Swami in India who’s my father’s guru. He’s no longer here, he’s sort of gone through his, he’s passed away. And it’s a book I read many times in my life and I’ve gone back to. It’s called Value of Values, it’s about why do we have values, what purpose, what is a value, what does that mean, why?
LD: I am reading Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. Which is my first Donna Tartt book and it’s wonderful.
SV: Everyone says it’s great. I haven’t read a, by the way for this podcast, I never read books that are the big hoo hoo ha ha. I never do, I get put off.
LD: Well it’s quite old now in the sense that it’s not just come out.
SV: Yes I know I know.
LD: But I was recommended it and I thought, now seems like a good time to tackle something new! And I didn’t have any preconceptions, I couldn’t, I knew The Secret History had a lot of chat about it, I didn't know a lot about The Goldfinch but I immediately fell in love. Loving it.
SV: That’s cool. So should I immediately, so I have to start reading it.
LD: I highly recommend it.
SV: OK fine.
LD: It’s really nicely done I think .
SV: That’s what you’re reading?
LD: That’s what I’m reading. That and Going Dark which is, ah, The Secret Social Lives of Extremists. It’s about this amazing woman who works for an extremist think tank, anti-extremist think tank, and in her spare time she sort of inveigled her way into secret online forums and joined Nazis and stuff.
SV: Oh yes I have heard about this!
LD: Amazing amazing she’s incredible.
SV: Oh my God.
LD: So that is, yeah that’s what I’m reading. Two quite different books but really good.
SV: Oh she’s going into far right networks right?
LD: Yeah yeah, she’s going into-
SV: Oh my God.
LD: I think the next chapter is Jihad Brides.
SV: Oh my God.
LD: But I’m still on Nazis at the moment.
SV: Oh well, OK, really getting through the material there. Shit.
LD: Thank you very much!
SV: Thank you Lucy
LD: It has been a delight Sindhu.
SV: So fun.
LD: 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.