Exploring Themes and Pleasure in Reading Experience

If you’ve been in a bookstore lately, you’ve undoubtedly seen it: A Court of Thorns and Roses, better known as ACOTAR, ruling over the paperback bestsellers with all its sequel pals. These books are behemoths. They’re massive. They’ve sold millions upon millions of copies. They’re about faeries. And they’re very, very hot.

Culture writer (and lifelong fantasy reader) Kathryn VanArendonk joins me to talk all things ACOTAR, from “is the writing bad” and “is that actually an interesting question” to “is Feyre secretly a horrible painter” and “wtf is happening with book four.”

The podcast conversation is neatly divided, so you can listen to the first half without spoilers or without any previous knowledge of the books, and the second half (behind the paywall) is more of an ACOTAR book club, where we work through specific questions about plotting, characterization, and Feyre’s aforementioned painting skills.

And if you want even more ACOTAR content, head over to the Culture Study newsletter for everything I’ve been thinking about that didn’t make its way into this episode.

Show Notes:

• [If you want a WHOLE BUNCH MORE from ACOTAR-tok, I’ll be posting on my Instagram stories starting Wednesday morning — and then will save as a highlight]

• Read Kathryn’s piece about Sarah J. Maas for Vulture, “The Mortal Queen of Faerie Smut”

Done with ACOTAR and need another fantasy fix?

• Anne recommends Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

• Kathryn recommends Freya Marske’s queer Victorian fantasy series that starts with A Marvellous Light [AHP NOTE: I'm half-way through this and love it]

• Melody recommends The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi and The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy

• Read Kathryn’s tremendous back catalog of writing and the interview I did with her on Culture Study about transitioning from academia to her job as a full-time critic

We’re currently looking for your questions for future episodes about:

• What’s the deal with JEANS right now (alternate title = Jeans: Help)

• Sephora Teens and teen skincare/makeup culture

• How we talk about the royals today

• Beyond Ballerina Farm [and is there such a thing as too much tradwife discourse? How do we critique but also not celebritize?]

• WHAT CELEBRITY IMAGE SHOULD WE UNPACK NEXT?

• Online shopping culture, including but not limited to people’s reliance on reviews and/or compulsion to leave reviews

• The romance novel boom

• Anything you need advice on!

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (and here’s the subscriber-only priority form)

For today’s discussion: I don’t even need to give you a prompt, I know you have thoughts