The Library Coven

Greetings to all you magical beings out there! This fortnight, we’re discussing A Curse so Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer. We immensely enjoyed Kemmerer’s spin on the whole Beauty and the Beast tradition, and we found Harper to be one of the most relatable and badass protagonists! There’s so much about this novel that we found relevant to our pandemic times– especially re: disability, medical debt, . Also, J & K happen to be on different ships this time! Hope you enjoy and learn things and teach us things!

Content warning: terminal illness and parental death, rape and sexual assault (mins 20-22).

Call to action: This week we’re encouraging y’all to “crip” your timelines on social media. Similar to the term “queer,” which was once a slur, crip is being reclaimed by disabled and chronically ill folx. Give some of the accounts below a follow, learn from them, and support them (including with your $$ if possible). *links below to instagram pages unless otherwise specified*

• Crutches&Spice (@Imani_Barbarin on twitter)
• disability.connect
• invalid__art
• hot.crip
• uadisabilityculture
• accesscenteredmovement
• disability_visability
• itswalela
• decolonizingtherapy
• mia.mingus
• blackdisabilitycollective
• queerfutures_
• junipercameryn
• neuroqueerasian
• ablezine
• cwaitwaitwait
• Sami Schalk
• blackdisabledcreative
• emapathywarrior
• Sky Cubacub
• Johanna Hedva
• queernature
• access_guide_
• coffeespoonie (on twitter)

Also check out the work of Sins Invalid, a group based in Tongva territory (aka the Bay Area), and the Disability Visibility Podcast. Support local mutual aid efforts and the disabled ppl in your life!!

Our education doesn’t stop there, of course. Reach out to share other sources you find along the way!

• We make a few SJM and ACOTAR comparisons throughout the episode. One that note, we’ve been enjoying the reaction posts by bookstagrammer @_litmedown. So funny!!! love love love.
• Some CP resources from the CDC and

Hello, magical friends! We’ve got a bonus episode for you! We recently celebrated 2 years of the podcast! We are so excited to have been in communication with you for the last two years! The time has really flown by. We just wanted to take this time to thank you all who have been here since the beginning, and thank you to those who have just discovered us, to the people who chat with us on Instagram, and to everyone who tells someone about the podcast. We are excited to to bring you new conversations about books each fortnight, and we’ll keep doing it for as long as is sustainable

Content Warning: at 17:15 we are talking about JKR and the harm she has caused with the trans community. If you aren’t up to listening to that, feel free to stop the episode at that point, and no that we do not support her and will no longer be publicizing her or her work in any way, shape or form. We are also thinking of a new name for the podcast so that people will stop associating the podcast with her.

In this episode we answered some questions from Instagram, check out booknerdnative for romance recs and just an absolutely fun and happy page, and if you’re looking for more information about people who are problematic within the YA book community, check out bookish.you.should.know.

Transcript to come Spring 2021

As always, we’d love to be in discussion with you, magical folx. Post or tweet about the show using #criticallyreading. Let us know what you think of the episode, anything we missed, or anything else you want us to know by dropping a line in the comments or reaching out to us on twitter or Instagram (@thelibrarycoven), or via email ([email protected]). You can also check out the show notes on our website, thelibrarycoven.com.

We really appreciate ratings and reviews on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or any other platforms. Help us share the magic by spreading the word about the podcast!

Please support our labor by leaving us a one-time tip on Ko-fi or purchasing books from our Bookshop! Even better yet, become a monthly patron via Patreon and you can unlock a bunch of exclusive perks like mini-sodes, bonus episodes, and access to our community of reader-listeners on Discord.

The podcast theme song is “Unermerry Academy of Magics” by Augustin C from the album “Fantasy Music”, which you can download on FreeMusicArchive.com.

JK, it’s magic is recorded and produced on stolen indigenous land: Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and Ute (Kelly) and Chickasha, Kaskaskia, Kickapoo, Mascoutin, Miami, Mesquaki, Odawa, Ojibwe, Peankashaw, Peoria, Potawatomi, Sauk, and Wea (Jessie)

You can support Indigenous communities by donating to Mitakuye Foundation, Native Women’s Wilderness, or the Navajo Water Project. These suggested places came from @lilnativeboy

Hello, magical folx! This fortnight we’re discussing Crier’s War by Nina Varela! This book is fantasy adjacent, and leans a bit more toward science fiction, but we have lots of world building and robot things to talk about!

Call to action: This week we’re educating ourselves on how the various technologies we use impact BIPOC and disabled people. Here are two books that can help with our collective education:

• Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code by Ruha Benjamin
• Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble

This is just the start of our education. Please let us know any other sources you found helpful!

• We got started talking about the difference between science fiction, fantasy, and horror. This Masterclass article has a good overview of fantasy and science fiction, and you can see how something like horror could really fit under either.
• The Uncanny Valley
• Here’s more information on handfasting
• J recommends the tv show The Great
• K recommends the book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff
• That Instagram post from badformreview about using food words to describe skin color
• “No Drums Allowed: Afro Rhythm Mutations in North America” by He Zhao – suggested by K about the use of the term “strange music” in the book
• “Women and Hysteria in the History of Mental Health” – worth checking out how mental health has been treated in regards to women throughout history
• K couldn’t find an accessible description of the theory online, so she adapted this from the introduction to my dissertation“Assemblage” as a theory was originally articulated by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in Mille Plateaux (1980), published in English in 1987 with the title A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Assemblage is a rather clumsy translation of the original French term agencement, which “implies specific connections with other concepts. It is, in fact, the arrangements of these connections that gives the concepts their sense. [...] Agencement designates the priority of neither the state of affairs nor the statement but of their connection, which implies the production of a sense that exceeds them” (Phillips 108, emphasis in original).
  Dianne Currier clarifies that assemblages are “functional conglomerations of elements, but, importantly, the component elements are not taken to be unified, stable or self-identical entities or objects, that is, they are not grounded on a prior unity. In each assemblage, the particles, intensities, forces and flows of components meet with and link with the forces and flows of other components: the resultant distribution of these meetings constitutes the assemblage” (“Feminist Technological Futures” 325)
  The metaphor of a constellation helps illustrate what Currier discusses here. The meaning of constellations comes from their connection, which arise out of stories humans grafted onto the stars during specific historical moments. Constellations are human constructs with empirical effects that produce emotions in the people witnessing them, in much the same way as race is a story, a shifting social construct that produces material consequences. Constellations themselves are made of component assemblages, multiplicities of objects (e.g., celestial bodies) and intensities (e.g., gravity) acting upon objects of any size. Finally, the parts of a constellation are always (and already...

hello, everyone! We’re excited to bring you this episode about The Queen of Nothing by Holly Black, the final installment of the Folk of the Air series (after The Cruel Prince and The Wicked King– which we discuss in episode 8 and episode 16, respectively). In the novel, we finally get to find out what happens to Jude and Cardan, and we see everything that unfolds after Jude was banished to the mortal world. In the episode, J & K somehow both forget that Cardan turns into a giant snake. hope you enjoy (and add to) the conversation!

*Call to action*

• J and K have feelings about our podcast name and the common association with she-who-shall-not-be-named (ahem, the author of one of our favorite series, Harry Potter). JKR is a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist’) and that is unacceptable. Consult this helpful series of posts on the JKR/TERF issues.
• Let’s all commit to making a consistent practice of dismantling the transphobia we learn from cis-normative societies.
• Something to donate $ to: The Okra Project, a collective that provides home-cooked meals and resources to Black Trans/gender non-conforming (GNC) people experiencing food insecurity.

**This isn’t an exhaustive list! Please do research for your local area and share with us any resources you find in your journey. We will share those on Instagram and Twitter. We are often posting resources on social media as well, so check that out, too!

Transcript below (or access the pdf transcript)

ONWARD to the show notes!

• Grima and Madoc are redcaps. Redcaps, a type of goblin, come from Scottish/English folklore. They are associated with a region called the Borders, the site of numerous violent clashes between the Scottish and English. Learn more on the villains fandom wiki.
• video (3 min): “is the pandemic messing with how we perceive time?” the tl;dr is YES, bitch! I (K) learned that both anxiety and trauma are huge factors....so that’s...cool....
• A debrief of sexism in the Game of Thrones series finales from The Mary Sue.
• Jessie speaks about tokenization of POC in the form of Heather, especially considering how the character is written using (outdated) AAVE.
• Why existing as a non-Black person in proximity to Blackness (i.e., as the partner/parent/friend of a Black person) doesn’t make someone “not-racist,” much less anti-racist. Here’s an article for you on why.
• RENT = SCAM. Let’s just CANCEL RENT (more on why rent cancellation crucial, especially given the COVID-19 pandemic)
  • J recommends the Patriot Act episode on Rent Forgiveness
  • K mentions the episode about rent strikes on the podcast Rebel Steps
• At one point, J describes how she imagines Locke as a “Wall Street Frat Bro Faerie” (à la

Greetings, dear coven. We are excited to introduce our new series of bonus episodes following each new episode of Great British Bake Off! The program is also known as the Great British Baking Show on Netflix/in the USA ( because copyright law). J & K are both amateur bakers who enjoy making everything from bread and patisserie to cookies and cakes. Tune in for baking tips and to hear us tailor that compassionate critique you know and love toward this sweet* reality show. We hope it brings you joy! It certainly is a treat* to record these.

*PUNS INTENDED! #obvi (can you tell K wrote this? lol)

On your marks...get set...Bake!

As always, we’d love to be in discussion with you, magical folx. Post or tweet about the show using #criticallyreading. Let us know what you think of the episode, anything we missed, or anything else you want us to know by dropping a line in the comments or reaching out to us on twitter or Instagram (@thelibrarycoven), or via email ([email protected]). You can also check out the show notes on our website, thelibrarycoven.com.

We really appreciate ratings and reviews on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or any other platforms. Help us share the magic by spreading the word about the podcast!

Please support our labor by leaving us a one-time tip on Ko-fi or purchasing books from our Bookshop! Even better yet, become a monthly patron via Patreon and you can unlock a bunch of exclusive perks like mini-sodes, bonus episodes, and access to our community of reader-listeners on Discord.

The podcast theme song is “Unermerry Academy of Magics” by Augustin C from the album “Fantasy Music”, which you can download on FreeMusicArchive.com.

JK, it’s magic is recorded and produced on stolen indigenous land: Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and Ute (Kelly) and Chickasha, Kaskaskia, Kickapoo, Mascoutin, Miami, Mesquaki, Odawa, Ojibwe, Peankashaw, Peoria, Potawatomi, Sauk, and Wea (Jessie)

You can support Indigenous communities by donating to Mitakuye Foundation, Native Women’s Wilderness, or the Navajo Water Project. These suggested places came from @lilnativeboy