Comics’ Books - S02, E06 - Transcript

GUEST: ELF LYONS

HOST: LUCY DANSER

LUCY DANSER: Hello and welcome to season two of Comics Books, the podcast where your host Lucy Danser, that’s me, talks to my favourite comedians and comic writers about the books they love. 

[MUSIC] 

LD: My guest today is a comedian I’ve been lucky enough to see develop into an interesting and incredible performer over the years. A stand-up comedian, clown practitioner and teacher plus much more, there seems to be no end to her creativity. It is the one and the only Elf Lyons. Hello! 

ELF LYONS: We got there. We can hear each other. 

LD: Yay.

[LAUGHTER]

EL: This feels so good to be talking to you after all this time. 

LD: So crazy. You mean the time that we haven’t spoken for a while or the literal time it just took the connect over Zoom? 

EL: The literal time it took to connect. 

LD: Well, you know what? We’re here now and it is quite hard in the middle of a pandemic to make a podcast, so I feel like you know in a way we’re nailing it. 

EL: We’re smashing it. We’re being very productive ladies. 

LD: So productive. 

[LAUGHTER] 

LD: We are here to talk about books really but let’s start off in a more cas manner. I can’t believe I said cas. Casual. 

EL: I like it. 

LD: I just want to use words properly. But yes, how are you? 

EL: I’m really good. I am weirdly, I’m a bit like caffeinated because I’ve just got back from working at a school and I’d forgotten to pretty much eat properly throughout the day because it went from lesson to lesson, and then doing lunchtime duty, and then dealing with a student that’s claimed this against this and against this. So you run around doing all this stuff, then you realise you’ve lost your key card. And then by the time I’ve finished school I was thinking, ‘why am I so hungry?’ And then, I naively forgot that we don’t make normal coffees anymore in society. Because my idea of a normal coffee is one shot and then if you want a strong coffee you add two shots but we don't do that. So when I said, “Can I have a strong coffee” that’s three, I think maybe four shots of coffee that was put in my, because I didn’t realise they’re naturally double shots now. So I got on the train back to Kent absolutely humming up with that and a panini in my hand, listening to my audiobook going, “Bloody hell, whoa”. 

[LAUGHTER] 

EL: So I’ve come back now and I’m really excited to chat about books but also sort of I’m just, I wish I could, I’m so glad I don’t teach at this energy because I think it would be terrifying for the students! 

LD: Let’s talk about what we are here to talk about. Books! 

EL: Yeah, no I, well I am quite proud of this. I was never into Audible but at the beginning of lockdown I got really bad insomnia, having awful panic attacks. So I downloaded Audible and if anyone decides to go, “Oh but it’s part of the Amazon thing, how do you feel?” I’m not in the mood. Loads of my mates have made money from being able to be booked to be the narrators of books! 

LD: Ah. 

EL: So they’re employing loads of artists. Voice work is integral at the moment for the creative economy so if that means buying an audiobook helps fund a new work, so be it. But I have amassed, I’ve listened to over 500 hours of audiobooks. 

LD: Whoa. What have you been listening to?

EL: I would just listen to absolutely everything and anything. I tried to tick off some absolute essentials. As in, I listened to The Sea The Sea by Iris Murdoch. I listened to Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. Touching the Void was one that I was recommended because of how visceral it is and that gripped me. I loved that, that was, and also it’s sort of about balancing the really big tomes and the quite short books. 

LD: Yeah. 

[LUCY’S DOG BARKING] 

LD: She was furious at that. But uh yes, say that again probably. 

EL: She loves Audible. 

LD: She just loves it. 

EL: Actually, she’s gone for a casting to read the new version of Lassie

LD: I’d listen to that. 

EL: I would actually buy that. And if it was at Amazon level prices to hear a dog just narrate. “This is Lassie by Penguin read by Buster. Ruff, ruff, ruff, ruff.”

[LAUGHTER]

EL: But um, I’m really dyslexic and I couldn’t read, I couldn't read until I was ten. So when I finally learned to read, and I mean I can read now, like I read about two, three, well used to about four books a week pre-covid. Now with Audible and PGCE and not having any other hours in the day it’s like two to three. But I think that is an old fashioned, quite didactic idea of what education is. ‘Cos that you know they’ve heard from either a parent when they were younger or they’ve heard that from a teacher or they heard that misguided bit of information from someone they admired. And then they’ve never really questioned it. ‘Cos anyone who actually says that as well I wonder ‘Have you ever heard an audiobook?’ and ‘Have you listened to one, not when you’re on the brink of falling asleep?’

LD: Are there some books that you prefer on audio and you prefer to read yourself? 

EL: Really, I think it really depends. Because you don’t know do you? Because I haven’t read a book and then gone, “I’m going to listen to this on Audible”. And I haven’t listened to a book on Audible and then gone, “I’m now going to read this”. I’ve used them as reference points. 

LD: Yeah. 

EL: But I really, horror is something I really enjoy so I do enjoy listening to it. 

LD: OK. 

EL: I enjoy being, it also depends who the narrator is I think to be honest. Because it’s not just about what story you’re listening to, it’s how you’re being told that story. 

LD: Yeah. 

EL: I think if you have a really good storyteller it doesn’t really matter. Like for example Helen Duff, who you know, who’s a beautiful comedian, and we did a show about Leonora Carrington together last year called...

LD: Oh yeah who we’ll talk about a bit.

EL: We’ll talk about later. I really missed her over lockdown because she’s one of my closest friends and I really, I love her. And she does loads of audiobooks. And she reads this series of books called Red Sister, like the Book of the Ancestor by Mark Lawrence and my God they are not my books. They are not. But she does all the voices, she does all the accents. 

LD: Wow. 

EL: And I bought it purely because I was homesick for my friend and going to bed at night and listening to her do all these voices felt really…

LD: That’s so sweet. 

EL: I told this to her and she said, “You’re so fucking creepy”.  

[LAUGHTER] 

EL: But you know, for me there are certain people who, oh my goodness Jenny Agutter. Have you heard Jenny Agutter read I Capture the Castle? 

LD: No. 

EL: OK now that is one of the best, the best narrations of a story. She makes I Capture the Castle, because that is how I read that book. 

LD: Yes and I Capture the Castle is on your list as one of your top reads.

EL: One of my top reads. It’s one of the most beautiful stories about development. About that weird movement from childhood to adulthood. 

LD: Mmm. 

EL: And also what love and loyalty means and a really interesting, all the characters are fully formed. As in every character you could write an essay on analysing them. There’s no character you just feel is a bit part, they all hold their own. 

LD: Mmm. 

EL: And Dodie Smith is I think famous for, she rewrote every single sentence until it was perfect. 

LD: Wow. 

EL: And I do believe it is. It’s one of those books that I can’t wait to give to either a niece or a nephew or my own child if I were to have one. And it really, I listened to it at the beginning of lockdown when I was just walking around a lot trying to cope with everything. And the journey that those sisters go on in that book is very relatable even though it’s the most archaic scenario that they’re in. Like these two women who are basically living in poverty in a castle with their crazy arthouse step-mother Topaz and their father who is clearly struggling with some form of Post Traumatic Stress after getting out of prison. There’s like a really fit gardener, they’ve got a really smart little brother who you don’t see until right near the end. And you’re like, ‘Oh actually there’s a really interesting choice on why you don’t hear much about it‘ which is another layer as to why Dodie Smith’s book is so good. 

LD: When did you first listen to it or read it?

EL: I must have been about nine/ten cos I couldn’t read. 

LD: Oh OK. 

EL: I could listen to audiobooks, ‘cos if I listened to them I sort of knew what was going on. And then at the beginning of lockdown when I got Audible I really wanted a book that I could trust. So there were two books that I got. I Capture the Castle, I found the Jenny Agutter reading and was so thrilled ‘cos it also felt very nostalgic and it felt really safe which is what I wanted. And then Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones, or Diane Win Jones. I never quite know how to say it and it’s read by Tom Baker. 

LD: Oh Dr Who?

EL: Aha. And it is so wicked. Everyone bangs on about Harry Potter. The Christomancy series by Diana Wynne Jones is phenomenal. 

LD: Have you read the whole series?

EL: I’ve read the whole series. I do not know why they have not been made into a TV series or a film series. I don’t know if it would be possible. I’d happily buy the rights because they are wicked. I mean Charmed Life as a standalone book is wicked. And it’s quite dark. It’s so good

LD: Do you find re-reading kids books now is helpful for your work? 

EL: Yeah because you’re trying to find, you know one way of getting the students involved for example is you can read a book out loud and you can get them to act out the action that’s happening. 

LD: Yeah. 

EL: Especially if you’ve got students that don’t speak English as a first language or have delayed development. Slowly introduces them to the world of theatre, slowly introduces them to the power of what story is. They can then copy each other, so they’re not left on their own. Copying is incredibly important in education anyway. So I enjoy reading books going what, ‘cos where I am, and this is quite common, books like The Little Princess are on the syllabus. 

LD: Really? Wow. 

EL: And you think how many eleven year old boys do you know or how many eleven year old girls now would really connect with the little princess? 

LD: Have there been any upgrades with sort of additions? 

EL: I don’t know. It really depends on the different, I think, schools and their attitudes to books. You sort of think when you’re eleven or twelve you want something a little bit ‘oogh’ you know. 

LD: Well, also the world is different now. I mean I don’t think there’s anything wrong with reading classics, I think we should read classics but I also think that, personally as a reader, I haven’t read that many classics ‘cos they’re not the things that connect with me. What connects with me is seeing what other people are making of the world around us. 

EL: And there’s also nothing like, as you said it’s your choice. Over lockdown I went, “I want to read the classics”. Like the other day I went “I’d like to read The Hound of the Baskervilles, ‘cos I’ve not read any Sherlock Holmes”. I don’t particularly have an interest but I should give it a go. 

LD: Yeah. 

EL: I should read Jeeves and Wooster cos everyone bangs on about how great they are. But allowing us to have that choice. But if someone had told me “You read this book”. And actually like, my primary school, we weren’t allowed to read American Literature and I had such problems reading and the only books I liked were the R L Stine Goosebump books. 

LD: Ah! You know what, almost everyone is bringing up Goosebumps or Point Horror. 

EL: Oh they’re so good. Have you watched him on Masterclass?

LD: Not yet no. It’s on my list. 

EL: It’s so funny, he talks like this. [Accent] “I write a book, I come up with a title, like Say Cheese and Die. That's a, that’s a great title. I’ll write that down”. Well, he’s gone Australian now. 

[LAUGHTER]

EL: “Yeah I’ll write that down. People say…” I don’t know, he’s like a real...

LD: He was like Brooklyn,

EL: He is Brooklyn! 

LD: Then he went Boston way, then he just popped to Sydney. I guess, I don’t know Australian accents that well.

EL: I can’t remember what the point was. Oh yeah the point was RL Stine, he’s wicked. 

LD: I guess that the grown up version of him is Stephen King?

EL: And it’s interesting ‘cos 1) he’s like one of my heroes but 2) you were talking about you know when people talk about RL Stine or the Point books going oh well they’re not really books. He gets described as the french fries of American Literature which is meant as an offensive, as a diss. But in some ways I think he rides it in his stride. 
LD: Stephen King this is? 

EL: Yeah Stephen King. As a compliment. Because people do sort of look down on his writing and the fact he’s popular but also the fact he writes about, in a form that people often look down upon, which is horror. I think he’s a badass. You’ve just been reading, have you been reading Misery or have I totally made that up?  

LD: No, no I have. So I don’t really read, with the exception of when I was younger, Point Horror and stuff, I don’t read horror. I don’t read, I read thrillers and psychological thrillers, almost all I realised the other day when I was discussing it with my Dad, almost everything I read is female based, very much sort of family or friendship group based psychological thrillers. And Stephen King I have never really fancied and then a lot of people, a lot of friends really like him and I felt you couldn’t really have an opinion if you hadn’t read anything. And Stuart Goldsmith chose, as one of his significant books he chose all of Stephen King’s books. And I didn’t even read it for that but then for you I thought I couldn’t put it off anymore. I will go with it. And Misery, you chose Misery, but it was also the one that I thought, I did see the film years ago, years and years and years ago. And so I thought, mmm really good film, so I thought yeah I’ve got a basis of understanding here. I’m halfway through. 

EL: What do you think? 

LD: I’m enjoying it. 

EL: This is really exciting for me. 

LD: It’s weird. It feels like being a Stephen King virgin is really abnormal. 

EL: It’s special. 

LD: Special. 

EL: It is. 

LD: So I’m not finding it as compelling as sort of, the normal sort of thriller I would read. But maybe that’s just because Misery’s been around for such a long time and I know the set up. 

EL: You know. Yeah. 

LD: I don’t remember the ending so that’s fine. I mean I really did watch the film years ago so I really don’t remember the ending. 

EL: What I really love about it is that I don’t read it so much as a horror. It’s terrifying and I knew what was going on and because of that I genuinely remember, ‘cos I read it I think in a couple of nights, and after I finished it I was frightened to go to the bathroom. And I knew my flat and I knew Annie Wilkes wasn’t there but I was really scared because there was something about it that’s, it’s also, it’s an exploration of what it means to be a writer. 

LD: That’s the bit I loved the most. 

EL: So Paul Sheldon comes to life through his, especially when he discusses with Annie, I’m not sure if you’ve had any conversations yet about the art of writing. 

LD: Yeah so we’ve had the beginning one with the Deus ex Machina and her being like, ‘I don’t care’. 

EL: Yeah. So he’s, I think it’s really beautiful and powerful for that reason. Because I think that, along with On Writing, his book about writing, this is a book about what it means to be a writer and the responsibility you have, the respect to your readers and how not to fuck them over with some crappy endings. Which is funny because it’s actually what Stephen King tends to get criticised for because he doesn’t plan his books and I think as he’s gotten older it’s become more and more evident that he doesn’t. Because they always start so strong and they take, always in that final 100 pages, a really obscene turn. I would actually recommend Rose Madder by him. 

LD: Not heard of that one. 

EL: I would recommend it. It’s one of his lesser known ones ‘cos I think people always focus on how his characters, when we focus on Stephen King and we focus on the women he writes, people always mention Gerald’s Game which is the one that was turned into a film. 

LD: Yep. 

EL: That’s the one people focus on. But Rose Madder’s very dark and I think it shows that he really does love women, he respects women and he really understands, he really respects the female reader. 

[MUSIC]

LD: Flowers for Algernon. [Trying to pronounce the word correctly] Is it Algernon or Algernon? 

EL: I said Algernon, but probably Algernon. This is the thing, someone said ‘Never take the mick out of the way someone says a word because if they say it wrong it means they learned it from reading a book’. 

LD; Yeah, yeah! I heard that the other day for the first time, I thought it was lovely. 

EL: Beautiful innit? 

LD: I have never read this book but I’ve heard lots about it but this is the first time I’ve actually bothered looking up what it’s about and I thought it sounded really interesting. 

EL: It’s, I’m going to sound like a broken record but alongside I Capture the Castle and Misery by Stephen King I would say it’s a masterpiece. It is. I remember reading it in, this is going to sound very wanky, I was in Normandy with a beautiful boyfriend called Arthur. And I will name him because I owe him a lot to him in regards to introducing me to beautiful books. It was just two of us and I found this book down the back of a book cupboard. A book cupboard!  A bookshelf that his Dad and Mum had. And I had no idea what the book was about and it said that it had won the Hugo Award. It was written in 1958 and I read it in a day. It’s very, very easy to read, it just flows through you. I would actually say this book you have to read. You can’t listen to it, you have to read it because it’s diary entries. 

LD: OK. 

EL: And it’s about a young bloke called Charlie who is defined in the book as ‘retarded’. Now we’d obviously say ‘has delayed development, learning difficulties’ but in the time that was what he was called. And he’s referred to as such throughout. And he’s very happy. Like happy and joyful and desperate to be clever. Desperate to be clever. That’s all he wants. And he’s got all these friends at the bakery and he’s got the same job and he’s looked after and he goes to this special school for learning. And, his life, and this is how he views it. And you read it and you see it from a different light. Because you as an adult can analyse. And the spelling’s all over the shop and the words don’t quite make sense and the grammar is all over the place. But he had this operation. This is, I’m not going to give it away but he has an operation and this operation obviously doesn’t exist. But Flowers for Algernon, Algernon is the name of a mouse. That is in a maze. And Algernon has the same operation that Charlie has and they sort of, Algernon and Charlie sort of, there’s a link symbolically about what they both represent in society. And the operation causes Charlie’s intelligence to increase and every chapter his words, his development, his diary entries. Things start to move forward and, with that becomes, you read the development of someone’s mind and what it means to be intelligent. There’s yeah, for me that’s never been a book quite like it because there are only a handful of books I think in your life you suddenly remember, or that you gift to people. 

LD: Yes. 

EL: There are very few books you go, ‘I’d buy this’. And actually it made me a really good friend at a wedding. I went to a wedding recently. Recently! About two years ago! There was a bloke there and I think we were both pissed off that there wasn’t a free bar. He was doing his PhD at Lancaster and we were chatting away. And he was like, “Oh yeah I’m really interested in science fiction, I’m actually developing about how morality is explored in science fiction”. I was like, “Oh you’ve probably not heard of it, I mean, or maybe you have, I don’t know, but have you read Flowers for Algernon?” And he literally lost his shit. He went, “Oh my God, Flowers for…” and his girlfriend went “You’ve made him so happy”. He went “That’s what my whole PhD thesis is on. It’s the absolute epitome of morality with our viewpoints of education, and the education system and what morality is and omg I can’t believe, no-one’s read it and…” and we just ended up going “Yeah. And there’s no free bar!” We just chatted about the book. 

LD: Morality, free bar, kind of the same thing. 

EL: Yes. Oh my God. People who do not have free bars at weddings or do not even offer a couple of free drinks at the beginning or put a bottle of wine on the table. 

LD: How dare they. 

EL: Yeah how dare you. 

LD: Why are you even getting married?

EL: How dare you Big John. Changed your name slightly because if you do hear this podcast I want you to know I’m referencing you. 

LD: You’ve absolutely sold that to me. Do you know I’ve heard, it’s one of those books that has gone down in popular culture, you hear it all the time and you see it referenced in things but until just now I had no idea what it was even about. It’s just become sort of background noise I think. And your final book I had never heard about. At all. And it sounds...weird. 

EL: Leonora Carrington The Hearing Trumpet

LD: Yes. 

EL: So Leonora Carrington  is one of the loves of my life. And The Hearing Trumpet has an array of some of my favourite sentences of all time. So one of the sentences in it is ‘People under seventy and over seven are very unreliable if they are not cats”. And it just has these beautiful sentences in it like, “You may not believe in magic but something very strange is happening at this very moment. Your head has dissolved into thin air and I can see the rhododendrons through your stomach. It’s not that you are dead or anything dramatic like that, it is simply that you are fading away and I can’t even remember your name”. It’s, oh and this one, I’ll read this one, ‘cos I was getting a few quotes up that I thought conveyed the beauty of it. “Houses are really bodies. We connect ourselves with walls, roofs and objects just as we hang onto our livers, skeletons, flesh and blood stream. I am no beauty, no mirror is necessary to assure me of this absolute fact, nonetheless I have a death grip on this haggard frame as if it were the limpid body of Venus herself”. 

LD: Oh! That’s lovely. 

EL: So Leonora Carrington was a surrealist artist. She was very young when she ran away from her family from Lancaster. Lancaster? Or Lancashire? They ran a cotton mill, they were quite wealthy but they wanted her to be a debutante. She didn’t want to be a debutante, she wanted to be an artist, so she ran away to France. She used to like cut off her hair and make these weird mustard omelettes with her hair in it. You know she used to cover her feet in mustard and wear it to a partyShe was just a proper, you know, a proper little, the first manic pixie dream girl. [unclear] as the surrealists called them in that time. And she was really into animals, alchemy, myths and symbolism and she saw herself as sort of like this wild horse slash what’s it called, hyena. Those were sort of personalities. And she had these really beautiful friends. When she moved to Mexico she had a beautiful friend called Remedios Varo who was another amazing symbolic artist and they used to write love letters to each other. And Varo used to write letters to people all around the world pretending to be fictional characters. So she’d just pick and address and go ‘Dear John, I saw that you’d been kidnapped’. And they were very very good friends. And The Hearing Trumpet was written years later in her life and it’s about ageing and the female body and I think it was one of the first books that is known that really does follow the centre character who is an old woman. It gives the presentation of, old women don’t just wanna lay down and die. And basically her friend gives her a hearing trumpet so she can hear. And so she uses it and she realises that her Grandchildren are gonna send her off to an old person’s home ‘cos they think she is useless. And she’s like “Oh OK”, so she gets sent to this old person's home which is, not really, it’s like a sort of mythical, it’s all women, there’s like a Goddess, it’s like lots of magical wolves at some point. Her friend tries to save her I think through a submarine at some point. That’s a true story actually. Her nanny helped rescue her in a submarine from the institution that she was sent to, the psychiatric home that she was sent to during the war. 

LD: Oh! 

EL: So really interesting sort of story and it was based, it’s all about the spirit of sisterhood. So these women are joining together. Is there a murder? Is something going to go on? tHere’s psyche and female identity and this idea that these women are deemed worthless and they get sent off to this absolutely mad capped, it makes me, the descriptions of the building remind me, you know the amazing cathedral in Barcelona. I can't remember the architect. Gaudi? 

LD: Gaudi. 

EL: It sort of makes you imagine that Gaudi designed this place where these characters are living. And the quotes in it, the idea about the way we love, the female form and what does femininity mean? And what is identity? It’s quite powerful. And especially so many books that we read are ‘Sally’s 32 and lives in a small studio flat in London. Her boyfriend Paul has left her and suddenly one day she starts blogging and her life takes a change. This is the story for every girl that’s ever lived in London and has had financial support. And then that book is like the voice of a generation, this girl is writing like Nora Ephron, this book is for all women everywhere’. And you’re thinking, ‘No it’s not. This is just alienating’. I think The Hearing Trumpet because it’s so surrealist and so out there but also so specific about what happens in so many ways to so many women in that they become invisible and they become grotesque to the outside eye. They’re just ostracized and they only have each other to rely on. I find that incredibly relatable because that’s something that we will inevitably have to accept. At one point we will not be these young, lively creatures. We will have these bodies like she says, these beautiful houses, this architecture that we must respect and love as our own. It’s just a barrel of laughs and if you have a highlighter when you read it, you’ll end up highlighting any...it’s the type of book that one day someone from etsy will read and go “Oh my God I can totally put these on coasters’. Honestly, like, there’s gonna be so many tea towels with a quote going, ‘Don’t eat animals, they’re so difficult to chew anyway.’ Which is one of the quotes in the book. 

LD: But I’m terrible because the minute you said that I thought, “You know what. This is a vegetarian household. Maybe I will get that tea towel”. Immediately. Immediately I’m sold and it doesn’t even exist yet. See! 

EL: Maybe I’ll start a business on etsy. 

LD: You might as well. You’ll get suckers like me who are like, ‘I haven’t even read the book but that line really speaks to me’. 

EL: It’s like one of the lines. ‘Darling stop being philosophical. It doesn’t suit you, it makes your nose red’. 

LD: Again, sold. 

[MUSIC] 

LD: Before we stop talking today we wanted to give a bit of love to independent bookshops. 

EL: Yes. 

LD: And you chose?

EL: The Sevenoaks bookshop. 

LD: Is that where you’re living at the moment? 

EL: No, not where I’m living but it was the independent bookshop on my road when I was little and it was where I used to get all my books. And it’s where I bought my audio cassette for Charmed Life and it was still open during lockdown and I went back there and bought a book about birds and it felt really odd to see that it was still going, still going strong. I mean I haven’t been there in so long, I mean apart from a few months ago, and the customer service seemed great. It’s always so upsetting when you have such positive memories and someone says, “Oh My God have you been back there? It’s awful”. And it really makes you upset. But I loved it when I went back and it’s just, yeah it’s a place that holds a lot for me and  you know, try not to order from, I mean Waterstones, Foyles and things are fine but try to avoid ever ordering a book off Amazon if you can. Because Audible and audiobooks are slightly different, they’re a different beast for creative reasons, but there are far more ethical ways of buying books to support authors. 

LD: Also we’ve had a lot of London centric suggestions on the show so having one out in Kent, if listeners are out there, I would say now with Christmas coming up specifically independent bookshops have just one through a second lockdown where they’ve really had to push to sort of sell, sell, sell in a different way. And when I spoke to the woman that works at ours she was saying that even though people are buying now, it’s not a bad time for bookshops because people are buying for Christmas, but there was a real fear that there might be an issue in distribution, in getting the books in time for Christmas and everyone would go in a different direction. So if they do have the book that you’re looking to gift someone in your local bookstore, I think now is a fantastic time to support that rather than going in an online direction. 

EL: Totally. Just gotta give love. Buy properly. Support the authors. Buy from a good shop. Because if you, every time you order it in, you’re really helping. And if you like an author, encourage your friends to buy their books because then their publisher will go, “Well your numbers are going up, maybe we’ll give you some money to write another book”. Because writing books is not a financially stable business. 

LD: Ooh, no no. No it is not! We have to stop. I mean I feel like we could probably continue because we’re both, just nerding out a little bit. But it’s been delightful. Thank you so much for talking about books with me. 

EL: Babe, thank you so much for um, thank you. 

LD: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Comics’ Books, Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Comics’ Books. Hopefully you’ve had a chuckle, learned something new and, most importantly, added some new reads to your list. You can find full listings of all the books we talked about today in the show notes. If you enjoyed the podcast it’d help us out massively if you could leave us a review on your listening platform. Finally, you can follow us on twitter, facebook and instagram at ComicsBooksPod. 

[MUSIC]