Julia and Victoria grapple with the grotesque narrative choices in Whale by Cheon Myeong-Kwan, translated by Chi-young Kim. Julia incorrectly uses the word “epigraph” when she means “epitaph” approximately 25 times.

Julia and Victoria try to decipher the rules of Eight Billion Genies, the newest comic book series from Charles Soule and Ryan Browne, because Julia likes rules. They also learn about how one random French guy playing fast and loose with a One Thousand and One Nights translation made up most of what the “Western” world “knows” about “genies.” Tale as old as time.

Julia is truly bamboozled, Victoria embraces that she is a vampire girlie, and they both dig into the context of Joseph Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla, edited with commentary by the absolute legend Carmen Maria Machado.

Exploring anarchism, feminism, and the Cold War, Julia and Victoria unpack the context of The Dispossessed by the brilliant and sassy Ursula K. Le Guin. Join for the sci-fi, stay for Barbenheimer, alien Jesus, and a confusion of Ursulas. Also Julia has minor microphone problems. (She sincerely apologizes).

Julia and Victoria wrestle with their frustrations with The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki and try to get to the bottom of important questions like, “What happened?” and “Who is this book for?”

Julia and Victoria apply a postcolonial perspective to Ayana Lloyd Banwo’s When We Were Birds, a novel about death, magical matriarchs, love, and VIBES.