0:04

Gaze reading where the greats drop by trendy authors. Tell us all the who, what, and why. Anyone can listen. Comes we're spoiler free Reading from politic stars to book club picks where the curious minds can get their picks. So you say you're not gay. Well that's okay. There's something for everyone. Gays rating.

Jason Blitman: 0:34

Hello and welcome to Gay's Reading and this new, exciting, fun series that I'm calling a very simple, what are you reading? And I am thrilled to be here with to My Ears, a celebrity Mateo Roach, who is the host of Bookends, the CBC's Literary podcast. And. Our the Gaze Reading listeners know their voice from the ads, from the Gaze Reading episodes. Mateo Roach, welcome to reading in this new series that I'm starting. I'm thrilled to have you.

Mattea Roach: 1:14

Ah, thank you so much for having me. I got jump scared by my own ad actually, when I was listening to one of these other, what are you reading episodes? Trying to catch the vibe of what it might be like to chat with you. And then, yeah, I got hit with my own voice when I was not expecting it. Very scary. Hopefully the other listeners are not as scared as I was to hear my voice.

Jason Blitman: 1:32

No, you have a great podcast voice, obviously. And I love it. For me, it's soothing when I hear it on my own episodes'cause it's a break from my own voice,

Mattea Roach: 1:43

That's very kind of you. Yeah, I think most podcasters, I would say, are not soothed so much by the sound of their own voice. And you're having to, listen to the same recording often of yourself multiple times and just relive Do I like how I asked that question? Did my voice crack in a weird way? So to hear that somebody else who's an expert podcaster finds me soothing. That's actually very nice.

Jason Blitman: 2:06

Very soothing. You're Canadian, which is like extra soothing both in how you talk, but also just like in your general spirit because we're going through a tough time down below.

Mattea Roach: 2:18

Aren't you just yeah, I have a little, a light regional accent that sometimes comes out to play too. Like I was just back in Nova Scotia visiting family. Couple weeks ago. Now, sometimes if I'm there for a little while, you start to hear some folksiness creep back in.

Jason Blitman: 2:33

What does Folksiness sound like to you?

Mattea Roach: 2:35

Oh, I don't wanna do an imitation'cause it's gonna be, but I think there are some accents when you get to Cape Rutton, which is where a lot of my family's from. And especially if you go to Newfoundland in the eastern region of Canada, that start to almost get Irish, yeah, it's on a continuum. So it's interesting, like I will notice accent creep if I'm hanging out with my mom's relatives that live in a sort of small fishing and tourist town. And then I'll come back to the city and think, huh, I'm talking different.

Jason Blitman: 3:02

interesting. Is it? Is it, and again, I don't want you to do an imitation, but is it specific words that you notice? Is it like a general across the board? I ask'cause my husband is from Staten Island and it is very, it is some specific words.

Mattea Roach: 3:16

an accent that I think comes out to play on specific words for sure. I would say the biggest telltale sign for me is the AR sound. So I would say often if I'm talking to a cousin who lives at home or something like that, it'll be a, if you're, the standard Boston accent sentence to say is I parked the car in Harvard Yard, but I just said it. Not in the Boston way, but in a way that also to some ears sounds crazy.

Jason Blitman: 3:39

right

Mattea Roach: 3:40

it's a bit of a nasally error. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 3:42

that. Okay. Okay. Thank you

Mattea Roach: 3:44

That's the telltale sign.

Jason Blitman: 3:46

Set a time and place for us. I appreciate that. Okay. You do. I feel like we're cousins because our podcast, I feel like are cut from the same cloth and yet are very different, which is I guess, what cousins really are.

Mattea Roach: 4:01

That's exactly what cousins are. Yeah. I,

Jason Blitman: 4:03

What has your reading journey been like? Let's find, what are you, what are we reading now?

Mattea Roach: 4:08

okay, so we're chatting, it's early August. I think we can say August 7th. End of the first week. So it's a slow period, relatively speaking for me, reading wise in that I haven't been producing interviews through the summer. Beautiful thing about public radio. We get to do some summer reruns, have a little summer hiatus, summer vacation, which means that I have some time to dive into maybe the back lists of some authors that I'm excited about that I might be talking to in the fall. Do in theory, a little bit of pleasure reading as well. So what have I been reading lately? I can look at the books that I'm using to prop up my computer and I can also look at my little iPhone note. Currently I'm reading Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley, which is being adapted into a film by a 24. It's gonna have Austin Butler Sea, Sharon Ronan, are you familiar with Deep Cuts? Is this a title that's crossed your desk?

Jason Blitman: 5:01

It has crossed my desk.

Mattea Roach: 5:02

Okay. How do you feel about it? Have you read it?

Jason Blitman: 5:04

Listen, this deep cuts is the perfect. Example of book comp tragedy Because I, I'm the kind of person who maybe give me a line or a vibe of what a book might be about, but I am not reading a blurb. I like to go in as blind as possible. When deep cuts is compared to tomorrow and tomorrow, or compared to Daisy Jones in the six or other books that sort of hold a certain kind of value in the canon, you have expectations. And so it is impossible to go in without those expectations. But I want to go in as clear as possible, and I would argue that deep cuts was the was that tragedy for me. It did not hold up to what I was promised, but I didn't dislike it.

Mattea Roach: 5:58

I think the vibe that I'm getting about deep cuts, so I am really interested. We're going to interview Holly Brickley, have her on the show. I'm really interested to talk to her. I think that it seems to be a book that really hits if you went to college at a specific time and if the references are your references. So talking to my coworkers, there's a couple folks around the office who were in college in that early aughts. Period where they were graduating into the era of indie sleaze and these were the bands that they were really excited about and the methods of sharing music. That was how they would share music and this is how they would talk about it. Whereas I miss this whole period. Like my dad, who is a big, was a big influence on my music taste was like too old for that. He was coming of age musically in the eighties. Listening to vinyl records and shout out Brave New Wave, CBC Radio, the program that really got him into a lot of alternative stuff that he enjoyed back in the day. And then I was like going to high school and university in the 2010s. So past the indie sleaze period, we were firmly in the era of streaming. So it was interesting for me to read this book that was about this period that was clearly like coming from a place of such passion and I respect the passion. But it's just not the specific stuff that I'm passionate about, but I always love talking to people about that passion and like getting to understand, okay, why is this important to you? We've actually had a couple of like music writers on bookends. During the first season, now that I think about it. Yeah. Yeah. Books about music or we even did one of the 33 and a third by Bloomsbury, like that series of books that are the deep dives into albums. We had Leah Caro on to talk about Hounds of Love by Kate Bush and the book that she wrote about that album. And I just love hearing people go deep on the records that really are important to them. And it's cool that I get to do that sometimes on a book show.

Jason Blitman: 7:47

Yeah. What would your deep dive be if you were to write a deep

Mattea Roach: 7:53

Oh I've thought about this. I don't know if anybody who's an editor at Bloomsbury Press listens to gay's reading. I would, if I got my act together. Love to do Blue Rev by Always is an album that I have a lot to say about. There's a. Really interesting story in terms of the production of that album. There was a flood where a lot of the original recordings got damaged. It took many years for them to put it together. COVID happened while they were putting it together. There's an amazing story around like a lot of the visuals, the album cover and some of the videos coming from Molly Rankin, the lead singer, like her family's kind of archival home movies and photos from her childhood. She's from Cape Breton. I have a lot to say about that. It's like that's, that's where my family's from. There's these parallels, like I could talk about Blue Rev all day long. So if I was going to go deep on a book and write a little tome, that would probably be my top pick.

Jason Blitman: 8:47

What. If not music, what would your deep dive subject be?

Mattea Roach: 8:53

Oh, deep dive subject for a book. That's a good question. I don't, I just don't consider myself an authority on anything. I'm not an authority on music either, but I, at least I

Jason Blitman: 9:05

but what is something that you love, so maybe something you love that, that you would become an authority on to write the book.

Mattea Roach: 9:11

I could see a world in which I became one of those, like small press Canadian politics. Authors like I have a buddy who recently I think adapted his, I believe it was his master's thesis that got adapted into a book that's about like Canadian pension investments. I wouldn't specifically do that. It's called Policing the Crisis. Tom Frazier showed out policing the Crisis by Tom Frazier, who I met in high school and like still know now in Toronto. Yeah, no good for him. It's a deep dive into pension investment funds. I would not do specifically that, but I could see myself getting interested in something similarly. Policy wonky.

Jason Blitman: 9:50

Sure. It would sit next to it on the shelf.

Mattea Roach: 9:52

Yeah. These are all things, it's like what? You're probably like, why did I book? I booked you to talk about novels and here you're talking about music and

Jason Blitman: 10:00

I love to, this is, we go down rabbit holes on the gays reading because you never know.

Mattea Roach: 10:07

No, you

Jason Blitman: 10:07

okay. What else are you reading?

Mattea Roach: 10:08

What else am I reading? Okay. What have I read lately? I mentioned reading backlist, right? So some of what I wanna do during the summer, now that I'm not having to like actively produce, we're producing typically two interviews a week for bookends, which means reading minimum two books a week. And you don't always have time to necessarily dive into an author's back catalog or really sit with stuff for as long as you might like to. So the slower period has been good for me to read some canonical stuff that I might have missed. One thing I read recently that I adored and I feel silly for not having read it sooner, but also I'm glad I read

Jason Blitman: 10:46

pen is ready.

Mattea Roach: 10:47

Dublin's James Joyce. Shout out James

Jason Blitman: 10:50

Oh,

Mattea Roach: 10:51

Yeah. I actually did a little writeup for the Toronto Star about this as part of the, this like summer reading recommendation thing that they did. Do you remember that? I think it was the Chicago. Sun, I wanna say the ai, the Sun Times, the AI generated summer reading list with the fake books. Yes. Yeah. One of the culture writers at the Star basically had this idea of, okay, we're gonna get actual people to do a real curated recommendations list. Folks that are working in the Canadian literature space, and I thought, okay, I don't wanna pick a book that's been on the show that feels like picking a favorite child. What am I reading that's different? And I happened to be like on vacation at the time, and I had this beat up library copy of Dublin Earth that I think, I don't know, it was probably like a 20-year-old book, had clearly been well loved and taken out many times. Those stories hold up. They're so funny. I think I didn't realize how funny James Joyce is. And it made me really wanna actually get into the novels, which I know is more of a project. But yeah, like it's kind of social comedy. It definitely helps if you know a little bit about what was going on in Ireland at the time. I think that enhances your understanding,

Jason Blitman: 12:02

That's good to know.

Mattea Roach: 12:03

but it's also like a window into that. If you don't know about Ireland, read the stories and then. Think, okay, what are these guys talking about when they're at the pub discussing these nationalist politicians?'cause this was still during the period where Ireland was not an independent state. It's pre-Easter rising, pre Irish civil war still under home rule. It's a really fascinating period. So it's a window in to that, in a way.

Jason Blitman: 12:29

It's it. I didn't read more than a chapter of it yet, but I started reading Moby Dick

Mattea Roach: 12:38

Ooh.

Jason Blitman: 12:39

similar reason I've, I was like, I feel like this is Canon. There are other books that have come out that talk about the queerness of Moby Dick. So I was curious to like. Cross-reference. But what surprised me was how much I was laughing in that first chapter. I was like, this is so dense. And it's not dissimilar from like funny Shakespeare where you're like, wait, I'm, I have to think about this in a new and different way. But it's commenting on something that is surprising and I'm finding it so funny all at the same time.

Mattea Roach: 13:09

That's really interesting. I have, I think this is, I don't know if I've been like putting my head in the sand or wet. I feel like this is maybe the first time that I'm really reckoning with the queer angle of Moby Dick. I have not read Moby Dick. I've heard a lot about Moby Dick because people love it. People are real stands for that book. I gotta say, I must read it at some point. Amy Schneider of Jeopardy fame is like a

Jason Blitman: 13:30

reading guest.

Mattea Roach: 13:31

huge Moby Dick person has talked to me at length about it before.

Jason Blitman: 13:36

Susan Rieger who wrote the novel, like mother has read Moby Dick three times. I was like, Susan, it is

Mattea Roach: 13:42

It's not a short book either, right? That's a commitment. You've gotta really wanna dive back in there.

Jason Blitman: 13:47

Yeah. So no, it's, it is definitely like a staple for some people. Like there, there is passion behind it and I

Mattea Roach: 13:55

you know what? I really should at some point, I don't know that this is gonna be my Moby Dick summer. I think that this was my intro to James Joyce summer, and that was good. We check that off. But it is a novel, but wailing, like it's, it's a seafaring novel. Cultural similarities. Again, like regional literature, I wanna stay tapped into that East coast vibe. So I do think I need to read it at some point.

Jason Blitman: 14:17

Yeah. I said we're cousins. You are the, you are James this summer, and I also have a James this summer. James, I did my first James Baldwin,

Mattea Roach: 14:25

Oh, okay. Which one?

Jason Blitman: 14:27

Giovanni's room.

Mattea Roach: 14:29

okay in. Thank goodness'cause that is the one that I have read. I also always need to read more Baldwin.

Jason Blitman: 14:35

Yeah.

Mattea Roach: 14:35

Giovanni's room for a course that I did in university and devoured it distressing novel at some points. But beautiful.

Jason Blitman: 14:44

Beautiful. Loved, loved it. Appreciated how short it was.

Mattea Roach: 15:24

He know James Baldwin had a real economy with words

Jason Blitman: 15:27

Yes. It wasn't, it was it. wasn't like, oh, I'm glad it's short, so I could finish it faster. I was like, oh, this is, it is like a decadent meal and you could only eat so much of it. Yeah.

Mattea Roach: 15:38

exactly. It's impressive what he's able to pack into a short package. And same with any of his essays that you read, any of his interview excerpts that you read. It's almost when poets write novels often, I find that every word has very specific meaning. Really needs to be there. James Baldwin almost is like that for me. There's no word that is superfluous.

Jason Blitman: 15:56

A hundred percent I, among my new favorite, not even new favorite things, but I've realized the more I've read that I love a poet's novel.

Mattea Roach: 16:06

Yeah. That was, so my first introduction to your podcast actually was when you were talking to Kava Akbar, but Martyr

Jason Blitman: 16:13

That was the first one that came to mind.

Mattea Roach: 16:16

exactly. Rolling back the clock a little bit, when Bookends launched last fall. There was a whole process to get the show launched. When you're doing a show for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, it's you produce like a radio pilot essentially as though you were doing a TV pitch. And so Kava was actually one of the guests that we had on for our pilot episode that we had to send up to management to say, Hey, this is gonna be the vibe of the show. Do you like it, please? I would like a job. so the stakes were really high for that interview, and he was such a gracious guest. I loved that book. It was so perfect. Exactly what I needed to read at the time. And yeah, completely a poet's novel, like word choice. So elegant. I really felt like it. I don't know. It's, it speaks to the time it's written in.

Jason Blitman: 17:05

100%. Yes. Yes. That wa when I think poet's novel, that is the

Mattea Roach: 17:09

Yeah, no I am eager to see whether he writes more novel. I don't know a, anything he writes I'm gonna be excited to read in the future for sure. Kava?

Jason Blitman: 17:18

Big fan. I love this. I love this. For us, we could talk all about him all day long. Were there other books that you wanted to shout out?'cause I'm very curious if not to, in general, I wanna hear more

Mattea Roach: 17:27

all right. I've, yeah I need a little, a list of things. So some of this is preparatory for things we've got brewing in the fall. There's a new Zaby Smith essay collection coming out in the fall. And again, I have not that great of a knowledge of the canon of anything really. I did not do a literature degree in university. I did a sexual diversity studies degree, which. I will defend to the deaf, like it was a real degree, it was rigorous. I did a couple of English courses within it, but I missed a lot of what you might get if you took an English degree where you're like doing, here's my contemporary British course, here's my

Jason Blitman: 18:06

a Bachelor's of Fine Arts in theater.

Mattea Roach: 18:08

in theater. See? Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 18:11

understand.

Mattea Roach: 18:12

Yeah. So you're adjacent but not quite there in

Jason Blitman: 18:15

No. My cannon is empty. I need to pack the cannonballs. We

Mattea Roach: 18:20

And the good news is the cannon's not going anywhere. The bad news is it's always expanding and, there's debates about what is canonical, what is not. Yeah, there's just a feast always if things you read. So anyhow had not read any Za Smith prior to, I don't know. Two months ago or something, whenever I first picked up white teeth in anticipation of, I may need to read this essay collection that's coming out in the fall. White teeth is so good. The hype is deserved. I have to say the hype is deserved.

Jason Blitman: 18:50

It's this is, I am such a late in life reader and I. When I first really started reading, the way I would joke about talking about books was as though I discovered reading, have you heard of this new thing called reading? It is so great. So hearing you say that about white teeth, it's, it is reminiscent of me just talking about books in general. It's oh yeah, this thing I've been hearing about for my whole life. It's really good.

Mattea Roach: 19:17

this is one of my very best friends last summer was so excited. I, we were hanging out at my house or something. He was so excited to play this group of people a song that he'd just heard for the first time that he thought was so good and it was, dog Days are Over by Florence and The Machine. And I was like. Sir, this is a very good song. They did cover it on Glee. However, like this is not,

Jason Blitman: 19:37

Been around a long

Mattea Roach: 19:39

Proud of you, happy for you. You do have good taste. This was on Glee. That's me coming in 25 years after the fact saying, Hey guys, have you heard about White Teeth? Also, frankly, me coming in saying, 110 years after the fact, y'all heard about

Jason Blitman: 19:55

Joyce is killing it.

Mattea Roach: 19:56

Yeah, but look we need to. I think sometimes shout out and honor and remember that stuff that came out a while ago is also good. I think sometimes there's this urge to always be reading the newest, busiest publication and I don't know I love talking back into the canon white teeth

Jason Blitman: 20:14

Classics has new books coming out every season all the time. So it's new

Mattea Roach: 20:19

Yeah. But new additions. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 20:21

and new editions of

Mattea Roach: 20:22

Have you had any big penguin classics discoveries lately? Anything exciting for you?

Jason Blitman: 20:28

Oh gosh. No. But I did have a fantastic conversation with the VP and editor of Penguin Classics, and so I learned a lot about that process and inspired me. It was after that conversation that inspired me to go purchase Moby Dick.

Mattea Roach: 20:46

Okay. Yeah. That's Wow. Impactful. They're good at their job,

Jason Blitman: 20:50

the discovery was I needed to get more into my classics. Yeah.

Mattea Roach: 20:55

Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 20:56

were about to say, you were talking about Zadie Smith.

Mattea Roach: 20:58

oh, Z Smith. Just I don't know if you're into the sort of like multi-generational family, epic White Teeth does that, it is a book that took me a while to get into. I will say I couldn't. Really see where it was going for maybe the first a hundred pages of 540 or whatever, But it ended in a way that was entirely satisfying. And I think, I don't know, I'm very much of the opinion that readers should want to challenge themselves. I know that sometimes you want to beach read and that's fair play. However, I did just describe when I went on vacation earlier in the spring, I brought James Joyce with me to the beach. In the car when I was like driving around in Morocco on my little spring vacation. So I have perhaps some busted ideas about what's relaxing, but I do think that there's value in really challenging yourself and, I don't know, like using your leisure time in a way that like elevates as opposed to just I don't know, pacifies, I can watch selling sunset. I don't wanna read the selling sunset of books in my spare time,

Jason Blitman: 22:01

I feel you. I, my favorite kind of book I refer to as accessibly literary.

Mattea Roach: 22:09

Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 22:11

So it is quote unquote easy to read, but it is meaningful

Mattea Roach: 22:16

Yeah,

Jason Blitman: 22:16

really get something out of it.

Mattea Roach: 22:18

for sure. Yeah, I think that there's certainly are some authors that maybe try to be dense for the sake of being dense or. Know that they're playing to a narrow audience, and maybe it's not for everybody, but there certainly are also many literary authors working that are frankly, easy to read. What, do you have an author in mind that exemplifies that accessible literary for you? I'm curious. I

Jason Blitman: 22:40

So the first person that always comes to mind is Dolly Alderton.

Mattea Roach: 22:47

Okay.

Jason Blitman: 22:48

Because I find ghosts to be so deceptively. Meaningful, and I don't wanna call it literary'cause I think some people would come for me, but there is a literary element within something that people would assume was fluff.

Mattea Roach: 23:05

Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 23:06

that it's oh, this was an easy book to read, but I took so much from it. I was moved, it was meaningful. And it's well written right at the sentence level. That's just like an example.

Mattea Roach: 23:19

Yeah, no, there's plenty of names that you can shut out. Like I would say for me, I would consider less so the most recent, Sally Rooney. But Sally Rooney to me is somebody that's incredibly easy to read. Very clean prose,

Jason Blitman: 23:33

Yeah.

Mattea Roach: 23:34

the books also do have something

Jason Blitman: 23:35

a great way to put it. Yeah.

Mattea Roach: 23:37

Yeah. Like Inter Metzo, which I read right when it came out last fall, definitely was the most challenging, of the novels in the sense that she's trying to do something more stylistic with one of the brothers in that book. Kind of having this more fragmented perspective, almost a bit joyent in the way that she's writing trying to. In a style that's reflective of the fact that it's a character who is drinking a lot, who's doing a lot of benzos, that was interesting and different from anything that she'd done before. But overall, like she's just easy to read, very clean sentences, can't complain about that. But then when you get into it, it's okay, we are talking about the housing crisis and gender dynamics in a relationship and so on. And there are people that don't enjoy Sally Ru think it's a bit too. Thinky white people go to college and talk about their

Jason Blitman: 24:30

because she doesn't use quotation marks. If she used quotation marks for her dialogue, people wouldn't think that. I don't

Mattea Roach: 24:35

Really I see it. It never even once occurred to me any, I've read all four of the novels. Never once did it occur to me that it was a problem, that there were no quotation marks did not

Jason Blitman: 24:46

I am not saying it's a problem. I'm

Mattea Roach: 24:47

No. I know people have really strong feelings in good. You'll read the Good Reads reviews. Sometimes I sometimes. And I shouldn't do this, but sometimes after I read a book, I do go to Good Reads or Story Graph, is actually the app that I use more frequently to see what are the people saying.

Jason Blitman: 25:04

yes, it's good to know.

Mattea Roach: 25:05

Sometimes I'm quite baffled by what I find. I'm like, oh that's how you judge your experience of a book. Interesting. All right.

Jason Blitman: 25:12

It's, there is something so funny about being an artist in general and how. An audience is what really puts the finishing touch on the art. There is my, I don't wanna say my favorite. One of my favorite children's books is called After the Fall by the author Dan Sanat, and it is this beautiful book about what happens after Humpty Dumpty falls

Mattea Roach: 25:40

Oh.

Jason Blitman: 25:41

It's this story of this egg who is obsessed with planes and flying, and the sky and the ending made me cry and is beautiful, but was completely misinterpreted by some readers. And the reviews are people going crazy about the ending in a negative way. And I'm like, oh, you literally didn't get it. So there's sometimes where I'm like, oh, you didn't get the art that you consumed and you wish, and there was unfortunately no way to engage with that, to say, wait a minute, you got it wrong.

Mattea Roach: 26:21

No. And I don't subscribe to the belief that there's a one single correct way to interpret any given book. I think that. People can take away a lot of different things from books. However, I do sometimes read things and think there may not be one right way, but perhaps there are wrong ways in the sense of, I just don't totally know, A plus B does not equal CI remember reading after reading, crying in H Mark by Michelle's Honor which is a grief memoir, Tough genre to write in. I've, I generally do enjoy reading them. I find them. Cathartic to read. I think that if you're somebody who's going through a grieving process, I found them to be like very helpful

Jason Blitman: 27:02

it. Got it. I thought you just meant like on a Tuesday,

Mattea Roach: 27:05

no. Like I went

Jason Blitman: 27:05

like, let me feel better about

Mattea Roach: 27:07

a period like two summers ago where I was reading like a couple of them in a row read crying and h smartt, which I had purchased like ages before, and it had just been sitting on the shelf and then it was the right time. Really liked it. And then. Went to Good Read's story graph and then saw these reviews that were just people complaining about she is so selfish. She talks about herself so much. And I was like, it's a memoir. And also I think like she's self-aware about some of her feelings, maybe not being, she's not the proudest of all of them.

Jason Blitman: 27:38

You can't have a memoir without me.

Mattea Roach: 27:40

yeah have you never had True, you really can't have a memoir without

Jason Blitman: 27:44

You need me,

Mattea Roach: 27:46

Yeah. Hello. It's me. Hi. It's me. You're all in danger. Crazy girl. Shit. Gonna go spring breakers.

Jason Blitman: 27:52

Well. You saying that thing about the it being the right time is So I think for me, I think is so important when it comes to reading in general. And for us, unfortunately, we're not always able to read a book at the right time.'cause for us the right time is. Within the right amount of time to interview an author. But I started, I picked up crying in H Mart, read a chapter and was like, oh no. This is not the right time for me because I don't have the emotional capacity to read this book right now.

Mattea Roach: 28:22

Yeah, to No, totally. My version of that is like I had to stop watching succession halfway through succession season four because my dad died while it was airing. And season four famously is entirely Logan Roy died. So I was like, you know what? Okay, let's let's not watch that right now. I got enough of that at home crying in H Mart. However, I was like, this is going to be helpful because it's well tonally big divide between that and succession.

Jason Blitman: 28:50

Sure. It's also not something everyone is talking about in the zeitgeist right now, and there can be a bit of removal

Mattea Roach: 28:55

That's the thing I was glad to be reading. Yeah. Crying in h smartt. I think it came out in 2021. It was a weird, like COVID release, the fact that it managed to blow up in that way despite, most of the events being virtual events was quite impressive. And I love Michelle's honor. Like I love Japanese breakfast, as a band. Had been a fan of theirs for a long time. Yeah, it was interesting to read it after the hype had died down, after all the, good and bad, good reads, reviews had fallen. Yeah, but back to what we're reading now, I don't know.

Jason Blitman: 29:29

that, you had said something earlier about reading about Zay Smith and you

Mattea Roach: 29:33

Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 29:34

People talk all the time about DN Fing books and how many pages do you give a book? You said you gave it a hundred pages, or once you hit about a hundred pages, that's when you were in it. And what I find so interesting about that is the ratio, you said a hundred of 540 pages. And for me, I think people don't always give enough grace to the port. The proportion of the book that you're getting through,

Mattea Roach: 30:00

Yeah, I think for me, I really try to, not DNF stuff, I will say I try to just be discerning with what I'm picking up in the first place so that I'm not gonna dnf.

Jason Blitman: 30:13

the same.

Mattea Roach: 30:14

And I think the more you read, the better you get at getting a read on your own taste. Whether or not you're gonna like something. Obviously sometimes for work. I will say I've been really lucky with the producers that I work with at CBC, the authors that we've had on the show. There really hasn't been anything that I've had on where I felt, oh, like I do not feel good recommending this author to somebody. Like even the books that I maybe would not have picked up of my own accord, I could usually picture somebody in my mind that I would feel comfortable recommending this book to you of, Hey, you know what? This isn't maybe my thing, but this person really loves speculative fiction. I I don't know why I picked that as a genre.'cause I'm okay with speculative too. Just as an example,

Jason Blitman: 30:58

I ty, I try to, I don't often say I don't like a book, or a book was bad. I will say it was not for me because I, it was for someone, obviously it got published or it will be for someone else, and I know someone who I could recommend it to, so it will be for that other person. But same as you. I tend to feel that way about everyone. I've had on the show and all the

Mattea Roach: 31:18

Yeah, no. Short of like structural problems. I think that there, there's a difference between the sort of literary journalism that we're doing, where we're doing interviews, we're doing conversations about books, and then the job of a critic, right? Like I think it is important'cause this is one thing that I do fear is maybe. Being lost somewhat in the culture of Good reads, reviews or in film like letterbox reviews, whatever, where any person can get on the soapbox and say what they think about a book that they've read, a movie they've watched album they've listened to, whatever. There are some people who seem to think that any criticism. Is essentially, you're just dogging on somebody or is hateful. And I don't think that's true, but I do see it as not my job to do the work of a critic in my role as like an interviewer of authors. I'm not trying to get somebody on my show and be like, Hey, I would like to confront you about some things I didn't care for in your novel.

Jason Blitman: 32:16

Correct. Ask me what I think about as my quote unquote job for in, in terms of in relation to the show. If I'm not a critic and I am and beyond interviewer what is my role here? And I will say, I feel like my job is to get you to fall in love with this author, because if you fall in love with them, then you can fall in love with their content or whatever. Because for me it's about the artist and not the art necessarily.

Mattea Roach: 32:41

Yeah. That's exactly it, right? Like I think sometimes. Th authors can have amazing ideas that don't always translate into a book that is equally as amazing as the thoughts behind them, if that makes sense. Or there might be some really like interesting background research that an author did to write a novel that you're not going to learn about just through reading the book. But if you interview the author, talk to'em about it, listen to that interview back, you might learn something. Additional or, find something out about what compelled them to dive into, say if it's a historical fiction, like a particular period. So yeah, there's definitely value, I think in reading things that are not totally your cup of tea. I will say one thing that I've really enjoyed about my job and about having a team around me that's quite diverse in terms of their reading taste is that I have been pushed to read things that I would ordinarily not even consider picking up and have been forced to challenge some notions about what my taste is as a reader.

Jason Blitman: 33:41

Is there something that comes to mind that you were pushed to read that you ended up falling in love with?

Mattea Roach: 33:49

Yeah. So I will say I am a famous romance novel hater, romance movie hater. Like I don't generally like it. Obviously so many books are driven by romance, right? But the genre of romance novel when you go to the store, and that's the section that is not a section you're gonna find me in. Just because I struggle with the kind of like happy ending pursuit of the happy ending. Pursuit of, what am I reading a book to feel good? I'm thinking of the arrested development quote where they're talking about the alternative school that maybe goes to, it's oh, what you're sending her to one of those new age feel goodies. That's sometimes how I feel when people are talking about needing to escape into a romance novel. It's just not. Something that I crave, and I think for a while I was ignorant to the like vast gradations in like quality within the romance genre, right? Because some of it is like pulpy, schlocky stuff. Some of it is done with a real sense of craft and the sentences are good and there's interesting, perhaps allusions to other things, and you can really respect that. You know what, if this person wanted to write a more literary novel, they could, but they want to write romance, and so that's what they're doing. So I really got into the pairing by Casey McQuiston. That was one of the early interviews that we did for bookends. And I was like actively annoyed at how much I was enjoying it while reading it. I was like, shit. Like I got a, I felt like I was becoming uncool somehow for enjoying it because I had

Jason Blitman: 35:21

so interesting'cause of the stigma that reading, quote unquote romance has.

Mattea Roach: 35:26

Yeah, and I think it is a little bit of a it's a, very like feminized genre, right? It's overwhelmingly a genre that is written by women, read by women. And so Casey McQuiston is actually like an interesting figure to talk to in the romance genre because they're writing queer romance and are coming at it from this sort of genderqueer or non-binary perspective. And they've written, gay guys, they've written lesbians, they've written this kind of bisexual romance with a character who's navigating gender with the pairing. And I think basically I was reading it and I was like, okay, you got me gal. Like fine, like I'll admit it. You. You did a good job. The book's good. Okay. And they were just such a great con, like I could have talked to'em all day long. I think we had a ton of stuff in common and just

Jason Blitman: 36:23

So

Mattea Roach: 36:23

Came to very different reading habits out of those things in common, which was so fascinating.

Jason Blitman: 36:28

I don't mean to be like a therapist about this because I have my own answer too. How did that make you feel? How did reading something that you like were digging your heels in and you didn't think you were gonna like it, you didn't even want to like it, but then you were like, okay, I liked it.

Mattea Roach: 36:43

The, these are very, the, I think I probably did actually bring this up just in passing in therapy at the time of just this is weird. It was a lot on the go. I I think it made me really check in about do I have an aversion to joy? Do I just really hate being happy?

Jason Blitman: 37:01

Oh, that's so interesting.

Mattea Roach: 37:03

'Cause even earlier in our conversation I mentioned I think, when you're doing your reading for leisure, it should be like work, which is a very Catholic attitude to have towards your leisure time. And I would say that I have like a. You can, I call it Catholic'cause that's my religious tradition that I was brought up in. Others might call it if they were brought up Protestant, the Protestant work ethic. I have this idea that we should be trying to improve ourselves to some extent through our leisure pursuits. And so I thought like romance is this sort of fluffy thing that you are turning to, to escape and it's not necessarily weighty. Two things that I learned through reading the pairing. One is that was a book that did have some heft to it in terms of, you have characters that are dealing with, like navigating gender identity, dealing with grief in that book. Like one of the characters was dealing with loss of a parent and how that affected their ability to be in a relationship. Like dealing with. Being a young person, trying to figure out your career and distinguish yourself as perhaps separate from a family that has a bit of a family business. Like one of the characters in that book that's like all of the other people in their family work in the film industry these are like real subjects that I'm, I am in the demographic that book was written for. So it, shouldn't be shocking to me that I did end up enjoying it, but I think I also developed an appreciation for, what. Maybe it is okay that some people, when they're having a hard time do just want to pull the escape hatch and go to another world and not think about their problems as opposed to me, where I'm like, let me think about my problems even more. Let me watch or read or listen to art that makes me think about my problems.

Jason Blitman: 38:42

There is something though to be said that even, the world of James Joyce is not exactly your world. So there is an escape element. Even still I feel like I'm constantly challenged to just reexamine. What I'm, what I think my own taste is. I had zero interest in any Emily St. John Mendel books. It was any book with, any sort of space. Something on the cover is not for me. I assumed I saw that on everybody's end of year list. What, three or four years ago, whenever it was Sea of Tranquility. And I was like all of these readers who I trust, this book is one of their top 10 favorite books. So let me just read it. And I read it in like November and sure enough, it was one of my favorite books of the year. And then I, read station 11 and fell in love and was like, okay, let me challenge I love a good

Mattea Roach: 39:35

Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 39:35

And maybe it's okay that it's a genre that doesn't

Mattea Roach: 39:39

It's so funny that you should say that because I also have beef with the concept of space in that I just am not that interested in it. But

Jason Blitman: 39:47

of, do you not believe that it exists?

Mattea Roach: 39:49

I, no, look don't try to get me like that. No, of course. I believe it exists. It's just I struggle to conceptualize it. And I feel like there's so much on the go on earth. That I can't even fathom being that worried about what's going on in space.

Jason Blitman: 40:04

real, I feel you.

Mattea Roach: 40:05

And I think just also if we were living in a time where space exploration was a more, I don't know, felt like a nobler pursuit. If it was the sixties and I was really rah, it's the Cold War. Are the Americans gonna get to the moon? Isn't the progress of man amazing? Like I can see that in that context. I might. Be really impressed at just like what humans are able to achieve currently. The vibes that I get from a lot of this, blue Origin Virgin let's send Katy Perry and Gayle King to space for some reason I don't particularly care for it. So it's funny to me that what's your beef with space? That's what I'm curious about now.

Jason Blitman: 40:43

I think it's less space and more like that just that shows science fiction. It shows some sort of fantastical component and I don't mind, I. A fantasy element in something that's a bit more grounded generally speaking.

Mattea Roach: 41:00

Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 41:01

So it surprised me that I was as engaged as I was.

Mattea Roach: 41:07

Yeah. And did you read Sea Tranquility and then go back and read Station 11?

Jason Blitman: 41:12

I did.

Mattea Roach: 41:13

Okay. Interesting. Yeah.'cause I, so I read Station 11 for Canda Res, which is the panel show that the CBC does. So before I was working for CBC books and hosting bookends. My part of my way into this job is that I was cast as a panelist on Canda Reeds, which is this debate show that they run every spring and it's this battle of the books where they'll get five. I'm doing air quotes for the listeners. Celebrity panelists. Who I I do not consider myself a celebrity. I think, no, I would prefer to not be one. People that are known to Canadians sometimes like athletes tv, homegrown TV stars occasionally like retired politicians. Like we had a, we had a book talker on my year, which was cool. Anyway. Five people, they each pick a book and then they defend it and say this is the book all of Canada should read this year. And then every day for a week, like each a book gets voted off and then there's like a winner and so on, so forth. So it's this huge driver of book sales in Canada. It's wild, like you look at the bestseller lists every year and the books that end up getting chosen for this program are often amongst the top selling titles. So it has real impact. And yeah, I'm, I'm now, I'm just boosting like other work that happens that my coworkers do. But I was a panelist on the show before I ever worked at CBC books, and the year that I was on Station 11 was one of the books in the competition. And so I had to read it in that context, which is a very strange context in which to read a book because I was reading it and really liked it. But it was not my selection. Yeah, no, it was not my selection as the book that all of Canada should read. I was defending Ducks by Kate Beaton and so I basically had to be like, my book can beat up your book. And in

Jason Blitman: 43:02

Technically Dux is

Mattea Roach: 43:03

it was physically

Jason Blitman: 43:04

Right?

Mattea Roach: 43:05

I made that exact same joke at the time. I was like, physically this is by far the largest book, so it's gonna win. And you know what? I did win. It was a sleigh station. 11 was in the final. It was a really, like you.

Jason Blitman: 43:16

Yes. Good contender.

Mattea Roach: 43:18

Yeah. Strong contender Michael Grey, the actor who's been in, what has he been in? Ah, my god.

Jason Blitman: 43:26

It's okay. We'll

Mattea Roach: 43:28

Rutherford Falls. That's the show that was in the US that he's been in that people might know. Rutherford Falls was Michael Grey's credit that I was trying to think of. Anyway just amazing, really thoughtful, had amazing stuff to say about Station 11. And I was like, I do not enjoy that. I have to claim that my book is more important.

Jason Blitman: 43:46

Yeah,

Mattea Roach: 43:47

crazy, but it gets the people reading. So I read station 11 first, then went to Sea of Tranquility, is what this is all to say. And I think that going in that order maybe makes the later Emily St. John Mandel make a bit more sense.

Jason Blitman: 43:59

Yeah.

Mattea Roach: 44:00

don't know if you felt that going backwards.

Jason Blitman: 44:02

So I had, my experience was also very different because I read Station 11 during a pandemic.

Mattea Roach: 44:09

Oh my God.

Jason Blitman: 44:11

So talk about a weird time to read that book. So yeah, that in and of itself was its own We're like, I'm taking up so much of your time. Are there other things that you wanna rattle off before we let you go?'cause I like need what is on your list? We, the people are gonna.

Mattea Roach: 44:28

my God. The people. What

Jason Blitman: 44:29

Eat it up.

Mattea Roach: 44:30

Oh, this is, yeah. See this is terrible.'cause I'm such like a meandering talker that I, you could just let me rattle things off for hours and I

Jason Blitman: 44:38

Me too. I just posted a video today about Kora four and I talking about chocolate,

Mattea Roach: 44:43

Oh my goodness.

Jason Blitman: 44:44

was like, how did they end up talking about chocolate?

Mattea Roach: 44:46

Yeah, all you wanna talk about a book that I probably would not have read were it not for my job, death of the author, NAIA Kor.

Jason Blitman: 44:54

Loved.

Mattea Roach: 44:55

I was really surprised by how much I liked it. I was like, you know what?

Jason Blitman: 44:59

me too.

Mattea Roach: 45:00

you. I believe my producer, Ryan B. Patrick, shout out was who brought that to my desk and yeah, what an amazing catalog of work she has.

Jason Blitman: 45:10

Yeah.

Mattea Roach: 45:11

And again, also somebody that just as like a thinker as somebody who exists in the culture has so much to say outside of her novels. Yeah. But yeah, no, and also definitely

Jason Blitman: 45:22

hear more.

Mattea Roach: 45:22

rambling talker. Yeah. Like I, I'm, I think that we also had a pretty meandering conversation that again, I'm not the editor of my show, so I didn't have to deal with making that fit in the 54 minutes of a radio broadcast. Yeah,

Jason Blitman: 45:35

and mine is not a radio

Mattea Roach: 45:36

that,

Jason Blitman: 45:37

go on as long as we want.

Mattea Roach: 45:39

that is the beauty of podcasting. I don't know. I love terrestrial radio. I have a real love of both forms, right? Like I'm young enough that I've come of age with podcasts. Like I remember when Serial came out and it was such a big deal. I remember when Welcome to Nightvale launched, like those were the things I was listening to in high school. I've always been a big. A podcast listener for news. Like it's a big part of my media diet, but I also have this like real love of just basic terrestrial radio. The idea that you're participating in a communal activity and you're listening at the same time as people. I'm not a fan of Colin shows per se, like I'll listen to, for instance, the live stream of the BBC's alternative music station, BBC six, and they'll have people texting in to say, what they're doing while they're listening sometimes. And that's just makes you feel less isolated. You're speaking about reading station 11 during COVID, like listening to the radio during COVID and being part of a sort of communal media consumption experience is something that I found very powerful. But yeah, the problem with radio, you gotta fit it in an hour.

Jason Blitman: 46:45

Right.

Mattea Roach: 46:45

So you might have a really amazing conversation with someone and it might just be too long and you don't get to put all of that on the radio, but. We might get to put that in the podcast. I don't know. So that's a fun bit of my job that I don't have to put my

Jason Blitman: 46:58

Don't have to worry

Mattea Roach: 46:59

Yeah, exactly. I don't know what's a good coda to leave this on in terms of what am I reading?

Jason Blitman: 47:05

you, you are the, you have the list in front of you,

Mattea Roach: 47:07

I have the list in front of me. My grand finale, I would say. The thing that I'm like next, most excited to pick up

Jason Blitman: 47:16

That's a great way to

Mattea Roach: 47:17

is something that's in a box in my house.'cause I moved recently and I gotta dig around to find it. But I have been reading a book that is not yet released letters to Milina, which is by Christina Steamer, and it's based on. Milina Senka, who I might be butchering the pronunciation of her name a little bit, who was a journalist translator and really like Freedom Fighter living in initially Austria Hungary and then Czechoslovakia in the early part of the 20th century. And she was a lover of Franz Kafka and she was also a translator of some of his work from German into Czech. And so this is a novel that's from her perspective and like details. Her love affair with him and their working relationship. And there's actual, like real excerpts from his letters to her, which exist in archives that are incorporated into the book. And so the premise is like her letters to him actually been lost. She died and I think it was Buchenwald concentration camp. During the Second World War as like a political prisoner. And so many of lots of documents relating to her work, have been lost. We don't have them. And so this is this return to her work and thinking about what her role was as this female journalist who was resisting Nazism at a time that her country was occupied. And was also having, a really roaring twenties hooking up with France Kafka apparently. Anyway, what I'm looking around for in my house is, now that I've read that book I would like to return to some Kafka stories, and I have this like Kafka reader. That I got for free when I was visiting a friend of mine who was doing his masters at Oxford last year, there was this like big campaign going on at the time around the centennial of Kafka's death. And there were just like free copies of this reader everywhere. And I took one'cause my friend that I was visiting was like, I don't want one. And I'm a student, I'm allowed to take it. So why don't you just grab it? You like this guy. So I'm ready to whip out the metamorphosis with some special. New material. I forget exactly what the new material is. That's in that Oxford edition, but I'm gonna find out once I yeah. Once I dig it out of whatever box it's in, in my house.

Jason Blitman: 49:36

For some simple casual summer poolside, reading

Mattea Roach: 49:39

Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 49:41

Kafka by the Kafka, by the shore.

Mattea Roach: 49:43

Kafka by the, literally Kafka by the shore. Yeah. Kafka on the porch. Kafka by the pool. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 49:50

That could be like a whole Instagram

Mattea Roach: 49:52

Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 49:53

you're reading Kafka.

Mattea Roach: 49:54

Where I'm read, I do love to drop a little. If I'm on vacation somewhere and I'm reading in a nice location, I do love to drop a little. I'm at the beach and here's my title. I actually did get so much sand in my copy of letters to me over the weekend because I did take it to the beach. Thankfully.

Jason Blitman: 50:14

World War II be treated.

Mattea Roach: 50:15

Yeah, no. Yeah, I, yeah, no I had to actually shake sand out of the book when I got back from the beach. It was not good. But you know what books are meant to be read, engaged with and loved? I am, I may be a collector. I've got a lot of stacks of things sitting around my house and in my office, but these are items that I'm using. I don't need everything to be completely pristine. I don't know,

Jason Blitman: 50:38

No, I agree.

Mattea Roach: 50:39

Spill coffee. I don't know.

Jason Blitman: 50:40

I don't dog ear, but I write in books. I do. I tab books, but I can't, I still can't dog

Mattea Roach: 50:47

I don't dog ear either. I only recently got into writing in books for a long time. I was not a writer in books. And then a good friend of mine, actually, they made this stamp for themself, like they have a huge library books. They made this stamp that was like, please write, comment on scribble in the margins of. This book, I'm butchering the wording. But they put this stamp in all of their books and when they lend books out to people, they are very clear. Oh, if you have thoughts and wanna write these in the margins, like you can write in my book, I don't mind. And that was really cool. It feels like having a conversation. And so sometimes now with books that I am reading for work, I will write in the margins

Jason Blitman: 51:31

it's typically

Mattea Roach: 51:32

to tell myself a little joke sometimes.

Jason Blitman: 51:35

a joke. I'll ask myself questions. I'll ask questions of the

Mattea Roach: 51:37

Yeah. Yeah. Or if if something has really upset me, I might write some question marks. Yeah.

Jason Blitman: 51:43

Mateo Roach, thank you so much for being here.

Mattea Roach: 51:46

thank you for having me. This has been so fun. And again, I feel like we could have been one of those Joe Rogan esque, like three and a half hour long podcasts. But

Jason Blitman: 51:55

we'll just have to do this again.

Mattea Roach: 51:56

We'll just have to, we'll just have to get on the live stream do some more shenanigans. But yeah. Thank you so much and great to be podcast cousins with you.

Jason Blitman: 52:04

I love the, I love our. Family tree. Everyone go check out Mateo Roach and their show bookends, the CBC's Literary podcast. It is wherever you get your podcast, but of course it's only 54 minutes because it's also on the radio,

Mattea Roach: 52:18

Sometimes extended cuts. Sometimes extended cuts.

Jason Blitman: 52:21

cuts. Go check out bookends, follow gaze reading on Instagram, wherever you get your podcast. Thank you Matea, for being here. Thank you everyone for being here. Have a great rest of your day.