We’re recapping all kinds of stuff this week, and today: our top five podcast episodes from 2023! Looking at the year overall, these are the top five most listened to Smart Podcast, Trashy Books episodes of the year –...
We’re recapping all kinds of stuff this week, and today: our top five podcast episodes from 2023!
Looking at the year overall, these are the top five most listened to Smart Podcast, Trashy Books episodes of the year – and thank you to everyone who listened, recommended, shared, and posted about the show. Special thanks to all our Patreon community members, who helped shape this season and keep the show going each week!
Honorable Mention
Sarah: This episode from 2022 found a new audience when Julie Garwood passed away: 520. Telling Stories with Julie Garwood
Top Five
5. 576. BookTok, Hockey Romance, and People as Products with Kayleigh Donaldson (August 18)
Pop culture critic and former book blogger Kayleigh Donaldson joins me to talk about BookTok, hockey romance, and the Seattle Kraken. We’re locating this conversation in a larger discussion about fandom, fanfiction about real people, and the ways celebrity culture, fan culture, and romance intersect.
4. 558. The Myths of BookTok, with Chels Ebooks (April 14)
Chels, who is on TikTok as Chels_Ebooks, has been doing a series debunking the myths of BookTok, and let me tell you, when people say everything old is new again? Myths about the sales power of readers on social media are recycled with every new platform.
We’re going to debunk some myths about romance and TikTok, and cover what Chels really loves about TikTok, too.
And we have some very special discussions of classic romances and even more classic cover art.
3. 566. The Blessings of Comfort Reads with KJ Charles (June 9)
Recently KJ Charles tweeted about how absolutely devouring the Blessings series by Beverly Jenkins helped “save her sanity during the 2020 lockdown.”
So I asked if she’d talk to me about it – and to my surprise this is a popular topic at the moment! She recently did a panel about comfort reading, and I’m really excited to take a look at what makes a comfort read, well, comfy. Plus, we learn what a HFY ending is.
And brace yourself, we have a LOT of recs.
2. 575. Dragon Called: Part II of a Heaving Bosoms Crossover (August 11)
Time for another Heaving Bosoms Crossover!
The first part of this recap of Dragon Called is up this week at Heaving Bosoms, and here for your listening pleasure is part II. I do a quick recap at the start, so no worries.
This book, and episode, are both very NSFW though – heads up for that.
And, the number one, most popular episode of 2023?
1. 549. Spare by Prince Harry, with Melissa Blue (February 10)
Melissa Blue tweeted that she wanted to talk about Spare.
So did I! So, we did!
We talk about the book itself, but we also look at the book from our perspective as romance readers and writers, and also as a larger narrative about dismantling propaganda. As Melissa points out, narratives constructed around Meghan and Harry echo narratives we’ve seen about other people, especially women, in public life who are subjected to propaganda to undermine them.
I talk a lot about how dismissing romance ignores a lot of what romance says and does, and what it represents about people, about sexuality, and about relationships. I think the same is true about celebrity narratives: the public narrative, or the approved narrative, is also very distant from the messy, complicated reality, and this particular set of stories gives us a lot to think about and discuss.
What do you think of the top five? What episodes were your favorites this year? Let us know what you’d like to see next year!