Big F*cking Books: It's Not Fairy Smut

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Transcript of the episode recording:

Hey, big f*cking dreamers. So pumped to be here with you today to talk about this is a new podcast segment and it is called big f*cking books. I'm really excited today. This is something that I've wanted to do for a little while, which is talk about books on the podcast. Some of you may know, some of you may not know if you're new here, if you're new to my world.

So I am a pretty voracious avid reader. I always have been for my entire life and I have two degrees in English literature and writing. So I've got a bachelor's in English literature. I technically have a minor in Spanish literature because I went to Spain for a year in college. I lived in Madrid, but I definitely didn't really study Spanish literature. I kind of didn't really go to class and just like f*cked off and partied and I actually wrote for, I wrote for this company and it was called Party Earth. And my dad always talks about it a lot that I had. put a Facebook post up and I was like, how can I be expected to study when I get paid to party? Anyway, 20 years later, it's no surprise that I'm sober.

But back to my education. So I've got a bachelor's in English literature, a minor in Spanish literature, and I have a master's in creative writing. And I'm currently working on my first novel, which is a pretty loose adaptation of my life growing up and some events that happened to me and then took someone into adulthood. It's a pretty racy, saucy story.

Anyway, I'm a huge reader. I'm a huge lover of books. And I did want to talk about today something I'm so passionate about, which is Sarah J. Maas and really like Sarah J. Maas, who is the author of Akatar, A Court of Thorn and Roses. She's the author of the Crescent City series. She's also the author of Throne of Glass. I think she's written something like 16 books. I've read every single one of them. When her last book, Crescent City, came out, I called the bookstore the day of, and I was like, can you please hold it for me? I want to make sure that they're still there when I arrive. And they were like, literally no one's asked for this book. You're fine. You're OK. And I was like, please, I just don't want you to run out.

 

So I'm a huge fan of hers and I didn't wanna discuss today because she's pretty popular in the zeitgeist. So in this segment, big f*cking books, we will be discussing and I'm not really quite sure how often the segment will be, maybe once every other month or whenever I read something that I want to review or talk about or even just give a summary of the books that I'm reading, how they're influencing me. Or the books that I'm just reading for fun. It doesn't necessarily need to be how they're influencing me, which is something that we're going to get into a bit later in the episode, which is reading, reading for fun, why it's good for you, the expectations that we put upon ourselves as readers, also just kind of like the morality behind reading and like the snobbery that can come with it, which is something that is kind of the crux of today's episode.

So today we're going to be diving into a bit of an analysis of Sarah J. Maas. Why I think that she's not very smart and why I think that that is actually like a pretty sexist commentary of her work, which I do think is a really amazing body of work. And then I'm going to be doing a bit of a cultural analysis on it. So if you're into that, stay tuned. If you're not into that, I'll see you next episode. It's going to be a great one. And I will speak to you in a minute.

 

All right, so Sarah J. Maas is pop culture icon in terms of literature. And I kind of want to take a few steps back and just talk about millennials and reading in general, because I feel like what has happened to millennial reading is that a lot of people read Harry Potter in their childhood, got pretty excited about it, and maybe loved fantasy, and then stopped reading and probably didn't read again until the Akatar series, A Court of Thorns and Roses. Just absolutely burst on the scene. And this is why, like one of the reasons that I love Sarah J. Maas. So if you're not familiar with her, as I said, she's written three series. She's really kind of blew up with her series, A Court of Throne and Roses or Akatars, it's known on Book Talk or kind of in the cultural zeitgeist. And she is really widely known. And now there's almost like a cultural criticism of her being called like fairy smut. And people are like, my god, this is like fairy erotica. Like, I just read fairy smut. And I actually believe that her body of work is so much more than that. And just to give a sense of her numbers, she has sold, I think she sold over 40 million books. And last year, mid last year in July of 20, or this year in July of 2024, she had already sold five million books of her three series. So Throne of Glass, Crescent City, A Court of Thorn and Roses. And she had more sales of her books than the top 10 most popular releases combined. So she is pushing some massive numbers here.

And also, basically, what I'm trying to say is that oftentimes she has been not necessarily criticized, but I would say like pretty degraded in her body of work and almost downplayed as fairy smut. When actually I think that she's done a fantastic job. And if you do like a bit of cultural analysis or if you do a bit of literary analysis on her work, she is absolutely fantastic at world building. So she in her three series and she's also created a multiverse, which means two of her series in their world.

So you've got Crescent City and then you have Akatar. Those worlds collide in the first Crescent City series. to do that and to hold out on that and to actually plan that, the amount of meticulous planning that that takes. And then also in her first series, A Court of Throne of Glass, I think that series is seven books or eight books. She is weaving some extremely complex narratives. And then the narratives overlap. So she's bringing in things from the first book into the eighth book. And the amount of patience and planning that that takes is not necessarily just fairy smut.

And what I want to say is I feel like she makes reading accessible. So people that kind of thought that reading was that they would have a hard time reading or that reading wasn't necessarily for them. I find her writing extremely just extremely easy to read, very digestible.

 

I was reading, I'm reading another fantasy novel right now. It's called The Book of Love and it's by Kelly Link. Kelly Link is definitely more of a literary writer. She wrote a book of short stories called Get in Trouble, a collection of short stories. I actually, I submitted a short story to a competition that she was judging. It was a competition in Texas and one of her short stories greatly influenced one of my stories that I wrote. And I didn't get into the get into the publication, but I did get a personalized note from her saying that I got like an honorable mention. So that is my claim to fame with Kelly Link. But anyway, Kelly Link, her writing, it's more complex. It's harder to understand. You really have to be paying attention. And not that you don't have to be paying attention to Sarah J Maas, but it's easier to understand.

And when people talk about, you know, what an easy read is. Basically what that means is that the author is almost handing everything over to the reader. So the author isn't necessarily making the reader interpret a lot. They're just giving a character's full thoughts. There's not a lot of up to interpretation. They're almost spoon feeding the reader and that's with typically highly description. So when something is a harder read, basically the person has to work a little bit more. It's not necessarily given to them. Maybe there's not as much insight or the insight is a bit flawed in some way, like you're working with an unreliable narrator. But Sarah J. Maas, tends to give like very easy reads, which means that people can understand it, they can digest it, they're not necessarily questioning it, they're really taking what she writes at face value. And that can sometimes, in literature, like she's definitely not known as literary fiction, she's known as commercial literature, but that, people can sometimes get really snobby with that.

 

And think that somehow because it's more commercial fiction or because it's a quote unquote easier read that that doesn't mean it's not as good. But what Sarah J. Maas works with, especially in a lot of her plot lines, so if we think about A Court of Thorn and Roses, we think about the sixth book with Nesta, what she's describing there is really a character who is PTSD, who's suffering from PTSD, alcoholism, she's had a very traumatic encounter in a war.

 

Like these are really complex issues that Sarah J. Maas is tackling. And it's interesting because in the acknowledgments, and I always love to read the acknowledgments of books, like for a few reasons, it's kind of like the literary gossip, I feel, of like who's who, also who's the editor, who's the publisher, who's well connected. If my book is in that genre, I have a list of potential editors and agents that I'm going to approach when my first draft is ready. But anyway, in Sarah J. Maas's book, the one with that's from Nessa's point of view in the unknown Acknowledgement Sarah J. Maas and I thought it was pretty funny because she actually says like well I've never encountered you know We're gone through it what Nessa has gone through or what these characters have gone through like I did really want to write about it and I just thought that she's kind of politely saying like I'm not an alcohol of an act of alcoholic and I haven't gone through PTSD.

 

Well, I'm here to tell you, I have been diagnosed with PTSD and complex PTSD. I have overcome it. I am a recovering alcoholic. And I thought that her depiction of Nesta was very true. And the ability for someone to then digest that, for someone to then get in the mind of someone that is experiencing that, I thought it was amazing. And Sarah J. Maas tends to have very strong female characters that are dominant in some ways in Throne of Glass. She's got a really strong anti-hero character, Selena Sardothian or Aelyn, I can't say her f*cking last name. It's like Aelyn Galathanias or something. It's the same name, but if you know, you know, if you've read the books and she tends to have extremely strong female characters.

And this then brings me to another point, which is oftentimes. Books written by women that are about women get put into a separate category. They get put into quote unquote women's literature or this is kind of put into the category of fairy smut or whatever and literature written by women about women tends to be degraded versus if there is a book that is by a man about a man and that's just how literature has been. There are separate prizes like prizes for women's fiction or there's even like a separate section called like women's literature women fiction even though the majority of readers are actually women But it's almost that women's literature. It's not almost women's literature exists in a separate category even though it can be have extremely complex characters with really built out emotional lives and so when when it's kind of known as fairy smut in the zeitgeist what it's doing is like it's Infantilizing the book and it's infantilizing a skill and it's saying that because someone has sex in a book, which is a very natural human function. And because for sex is quite graphic, her book is then being degraded. And I want us to actually look at this. Like, what is that saying in the culture of a woman who has sold over 40 million books has to be pegged down and looked at like her books are quote unquote, fairy smut.

And I think that we should look at why is that? Why are we looking at that with... George Martin, who wrote Lord of the Rings. Are we saying that about him? Are we just saying like, like he has quite explicit sex scenes in his books as well, but a lot of them do, a lot of them are frankly like rape and gore, but we don't view him as kind of like smutty infantilized books or like, know, fantasy that's not necessarily literary.

So it's more of a commentary on why we do this to women and how looking at who has sold some of the most books in the last few years and what that means and what we're doing when we perpetuate this message of, it's very smut or, this is very porn. And it's also another comment of, why are we looking at labeling sex and why is sex so taboo? When it's something that is such a natural function, why do we find the need to almost downgrade or degrade something that does cover sex? And if we look at all of this, basically what I'm trying to say is understanding what are the norms that we're perpetuating, why are we doing that, like questioning things behind it, and also saying, okay, is this relevant?

 

And something that I do love about Sarah J. Maas is that she got people reading again and people that haven't necessarily read in a really long time are loving books, reading them, absolutely devouring them. So looking at what a positive contribution that she is doing for the world.

Now, I did also want to cover some other books that I've read here, so this isn't necessarily just a cultural discussion about Sarah J. Maas, but I did wanna call out some other books that I've read in the past month that I thought are interesting. So one of them is Bunny by Mona Awad, and this is a really f*cking weird book. This is like Mean Girls mixed with horror. If you like kind of the horror genre, definitely read this, it's kind of like the secret history meets Mean Girls meets like a psychological thriller. And this is a book about if you've also done any writing programs, it's a book about a student going through an MFA program in creative writing and she kind of joins this like click of Mean Girls and they're called the bunnies. Really trippy.

 

I really enjoyed the writing was absolutely fantastic. It's not necessarily my problem. It's not really my favorite genre of reading, but I thought it was good nonetheless. Then another book that I read is Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. Such a beautiful book. It's about a family and they a family and they are in covid and. The mother talks about a time where she dated a famous movie star and takes place in two timelines. It's a really sweet lovely book. It's also got some really strong writing in it. I had just finished, Sarah, just finished Throne of Glass series. So I just read, I think it was seven or eight Sarah J. Maas back to back books, which as I said, they're more commercial fiction. They're not necessarily literary fiction. I would say Anne Patchett, she's definitely a literary fiction writer. She was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for her book, The Dutch House. She's held in very high regard in literary circles. So the difference in writing, it was just a little bit more elevated. And like I said, if we look at what is kind of an easy read versus where do you have to think in Patchett's prose, there's a lot there, but there's kind of more of analysis that the reader has to do. You have to do a little bit more work in literary fiction, whereas if you're reading more commercial fiction like Sarah J. Maas, it's a bit easier to digest.

And this is kind of also like my last point which I'll make is sometimes people ask me, like how do I read more? Or I really wanna read more, it's a really big goal of mine, but I don't really know where to start. And I'll get this conversation sometimes with my one-on-one, it's come up quite a few times with my one-on-one clients. And what I say to that is like go where you're interested. And in literature sometimes there's like, there can be a lot of snobbery where people think that they have to be really like reading books that kind of teach them something or they always have to be learning or they can only read award-winning books. But I would say like, f*ck that. Read books that you're interested in. If you want to read fantasy, if you want to read romance, if you want to read thriller, one of my clients in Life and Work Transformation, she said that she would only, she used to only read books that she, that would teach her something and she used to only read non-fiction books. And then she realized coming through the program that she needed to have more fun in her life. So she started reading detective novels. And then she started, and she just realized that she absolutely loved detective novels. It's something she used to read as a kid.

So go where you want to go and don't judge yourself. What you don't judge yourself for the books that you read, just go where it naturally gravitates. And there was, there was kind of, when I really got on my Sarah J Maas kick, it was right after my master's in creative writing.

 

And I studied at UTS, University of Technology in Sydney. It had one of Australia's top creative writing programs. And I would say it's definitely not for commercial fiction writers. Like it is more of a literary fiction writing. And some of the professors, like self-proclaimed, are just literary snobs, which you do get a lot in writing programs. That's why they're there. And so initially, when I started really going down this fantasy route, there was a lot of self-judgment of like, my God, should be reading, you know, I should be reading a war books from the Booker or I should from the Booker Prize or I should be reading the nominees for all the Pulitzer, which I typically tend to read every year. But it was like I was spending so much time in fantasy and also fantasy for me is like a real escape.

And at that time and even now, like building my business, you know, the stress that comes with that, sometimes like fear and instability that comes with being self-employed, I just needed something to absolutely escape into. And that was fine. And I really, I really love reading fantasy books. And so if you're struggling with reading and if you're thinking, what type of books should I read? You know, what do I need to always be learning? I would say, no, you don't always be learning. Go where your interest is, whether that's fantasy, whether that's thriller, maybe it's horror, maybe it's detective novels, maybe it's romance. Go wherever you're curious. And just because you don't like one book, that doesn't mean that you won't like all books. And I know that seems very basic, but some people are like, okay, that book didn't work. I, you know, am put off by that. I will say in fiction, there is something for everyone. So just like try to find your genre.

Also, people like librarians are really good places to talk to people that work at bookstores. Sometimes it can be really intimidating. But if you also say to them, like, you know, I'm a new reader. I don't really read a lot. Here's what I read as a child. I'm not really sure. People at bookstores are willing to help. And they're like, I've got a lot of my different homies that work at the bookstores in Sydney. I know where to go for literary fiction. I know where to go for fantasy. I go to different bookstores to get different recommendations. And I've made friends with the people in bookstores because bookstores are my favorite places in the world. That and libraries. So, ask for help. Ask for them. Also, like send me a DM as well. I'm a wealth of knowledge around books. If you're like, this is what I'm interested. I'll put you in the right direction or I can talk to some people and ask about it.

So with reading, go where you most feel inspired. Go where you most feel, where you most gravitate toward. Don't judge yourself for it and don't think like, this isn't literary or I should be learning here. It's fine. f*ck that. Just read what you want. So with that being said, please let me know, send me a DM. I've been getting a lot of DMs on LinkedIn and some of my friends have been texting me and seeing on Instagram, DMs on Instagram. I absolutely love that. Let me know if you like the segment, Big f*cking Books. If you know someone who loves the Akatars series, please share this with them. I would love if you could do that. Or if you know someone who loves Sarah J Maas, who'd get a lot out of it, please share this with them. I would absolutely love that.

And I do have a few things. I've got two one-on-one spots currently available. These spots go very quickly. A lot of times I don't have one-on-one spots open in my coaching practice. So I'm going to be announcing that over the next few podcasts until they're filled. If you feel like you are a high performing, you know, man or women or woman, and you struggle with boundaries, you struggle with, you're struggling with burnout, you feel like you're exhausted all the time, you put everyone else first, you've got people pleasing tendencies, and you really want to step into 2025 confident. You want to step into 2025 looking after yourself, vibrant, fresh, energetic, feeling like this is your year where you're going to make some changes. You're going to stop f*cking putting everyone else first. I made a commitment last episode that I wasn't going to cost as much, but I just, I don't think that's, I just, it's not me. Here I am.

So if that is you send me a DM, let's call or there's a link on my website. There's also a link in the show notes to book a call with me. Do not hesitate. you, my clients get results that are phenomenal. So do not hesitate booking with me. These spots go fast. I love doing this. I feel like it was my calling. So that's, you know, that's that. And also on Friday, December 6th, I am whole at 10 a.m. That's Australia time. So it was going to be Thursday, December 5th. Victoria Maurer and I are doing a 2024 reflection and 2025 intention-setting ceremony. It is going to be, we're going to have breath work in it. We're going to have some sharing. It's going to be really big community building. So that is going to be free for anyone who has done the Life and Work Transformation or has worked with me in my one-on-one container. And it's going to be something like $25 or like 50 bucks for people that haven't worked with either me or Victoria. DM me if you are interested in that. The link will be up for that soon.

 

And I hope that you enjoy the week, big f*cking dreamers, and that you live your big f*cking dreams, and that you go read some big f*cking books.

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