Second Time Around

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Recently, when talking about TV and streaming shows we were watching, several Reds and readers mentioned A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES. Now, I was in a bit of a drought. Except for the Korean crime drama BEYOND EVIL, I wasn’t feeling it for a lot of shows. I would turn something on and then wind up spending half my time looking at my phone instead. 

 

But I decided to give ADOW a try. Another try, I should say. I’d watched the first two episodes quite some time ago, and my takeaway at the time was 1) Wow, that supposedly accomplished professor and scholar has no self-preservation skills whatsoever and 2) errors. I can’t remember what errors I noticed, because on the second go-round, I absolutely fell in love. I’ve been streaming three episodes a night since then.

 

Which got me thinking about the phenomenon of “the second time around.”

 

Why did I loathe mushrooms as a child, only to find them delicious when I had them in Italy in my twenties? Why did I wrinkle my nose at olives right up through my forties, and now toss them into everything? 

Sometimes, only appreciating something at the second (or third, or fourth) try makes sense. I read THE SCARLET LETTER when I was around thirteen, and no surprise, I got nothing out of it. I re-read it, on a flight of all places, in my early thirties and found it to be a stunning work. I needed to grow and learn before I could understand what Hawthorne was doing.

But what about sleeveless shirts? I avoided them up to my fifties, because I didn't want anyone to see the wobbly bits on my arms. Now those shirts make up 90% of my summer wardrobe. And let me assure you, my arms haven't gotten LESS wobbly. Was it the temperature fluctuations of menopause? Is my give-a-damn busted? It's a mystery.

How about you, Reds? Any flavors, fandoms - heck, relationships - that you only appreciated the second time around?

 

HALLIE EPHRON: Well, my big one: I broke up with my sweet to-be husband before I succumbed to his blandishments. He turned out to be an acquired taste, and thank goodness was extremely persistent. Lucky me because it’s horrifying who I could have ended up with.

 

LUCY BURDETTE: Hallie, my story is similar to yours. When my sweet hub John called to ask me out on a date, I turned him down but suggested we play friendly doubles tennis instead. After about six months of that, I realized that I’d made an error in judgment: he was a keeper, cute, funny, and smart. This time, I did the asking out!

 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Oh, my Jonathan story is the exact opposite, but that’s another blog. Second time around, food edition: Scrambled eggs, tuna salad. As I kid I couldn't even think about those things. Now I adore them. Why? What happened?

 

TV edition: The Wire. We started The Wire, right when it came on. I thought–huh? I don’t even understand it. A few months later, I thought–maybe I’m watching it wrong. We tried it again and it’s the best thing I’ve EVER seen.  Why? Well, I can tell you I realized that I was put off by the slang–I didn't understand it. But then I realized the writing was SO excellent that it would explain the very words that were not in my vocabulary in the very next sentence..so when I stopped worrying about it, I adored it.

 

JENN McKINLAY: It took me five tries before I could get into reading the first Harry Potter book. 5!!! I don’t know why I couldn’t get past the first few chapters - they weren’t bad - it was me. I was the problem. 

 

I, too, did not love olives until my forties and now I love them on most everything. I also love spicy food, which I never liked before moving to AZ and then it took me years to acquire a taste for it. As for shows, the only one that comes to mind that took me a while is The Family Guy. Didn’t get it the first time I watched it but it grew on me and I think it’s hilarious. 

 

Off topic, Hub and I just started watching HACKS on Max - it is FANTASTIC!!! I love that Jean Smart is crushing it in her seventies, but also the juxtaposition of a Boomer and a Gen Z makes for some pretty funny dialogue.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Julia, you are seriously tempting me to watch ADOW again. But even as much as Rick loves Teresa Palmer (a lot!) I'm not sure I could talk him into Round Two…

 

Love the second-chance hubbies theme here! You can count us in on that. Rick and I dated on and off for about six years, then in one of the "off" periods, I met my first husband. (Rick was the one who introduced us!) Off I went to Scotland, marriage and child following. Fast forward fourteen years, divorced, Rick called to wish me "happy birthday." And that was, yikes, thirty years ago! But there are things I wish the picky eater hubby would give another chance, like mushrooms, olives, chickpeas, tofu, etc., etc., etc.!

 

JULIA: How about you, dear readers? What food/book/husband did you learn to appreciate the second time around? 

New Things on Old-fashioned TV

DEBORAH CROMBIE: My daughter and I were chatting the other day and it occurred to us that my granddaughter may not know the meaning of the phrase "change the channel." Their TV is all streaming--as is ours, actually, but we have a gadget that gives us broadcast TV in real time. 

 And how weird is it that I even have to explain that, when just a few years ago everyone had all the major channels and scheduled their time around broadcasts? (Wren also expects to be able to watch Frozen or Captain Underpants on any TV at any time, whether at her house or ours.)

Whenever we do a "What We're Watching" on Jungle Red, it tends to be all about the streaming shows we're bingeing on, so I thought it would be fun to talk about what's good on the good old Big 3.  And since I've been living in an entertainment vacuum for the last few months (that inconvenient deadline thing) I've had some catching up to do. (Of course I'm only catching up due to the magic of Hulu, so I suppose that's cheating a bit...)

I hadn't seen The Rookie, the new Nathan Fillion procedural set in LA. A couple of episodes in, it's likeable--I mean, it's Nathan Fillion! But a gentler, kinder, Nathan Fillion. I'll definitely keep watching, although I'm not sure the premise will hold up long term. It's about a middle-aged guy who has a mid-life crisis and decides to become a cop, but is bullied both because he's the new guy and because he's considered too old. So what happens if he makes the grade?)

I also dipped into New Amsterdam, another hospital drama, this one set in a fictionalized version of New York City's Bellevue Hospital. Confession--I was an ER junkie, so tend to be a little jaded. I'll give this one a few more episodes. (Or maybe I'll go back and start ER from the first season--ALL the seasons are on Hulu.)

Then, a big cheer at our house--The Orville is back! This is a weird one, Seth MacFarlane's valentine to the original Star Trek. It's not really a comedy, although it's sometimes very funny. And it's not really a drama, although it sometimes deals with very believable relationships and big issues. What do you know, a show that doesn't fit into a box!! (Neither did Star Trek.) Critics hate it, viewers LOVE it. We are obviously in camp 2.

(I've decided that you should NEVER EVER read reviews of shows you already like, because reviewers will tell you all the reasons why you shouldn't like them.)

There's more sci-fi--Star Trek Discovery is back! Critics like this better. Hmm. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know, and I don't really care. We love this one, too, although it is definitely on the darker side.

Oh, wait, that was cheating a little, wasn't it? Because Star Trek Discovery is CBS All Access, so not really broadcast. 

But having cheated a little, I'm going to cheat some more and go full-on streaming.  

My big thrill at the moment is the adaptation of my friend Deb Harkness's A Discovery of Witches. We're a few episodes in and loving it. I went into it with a little trepidation, I have to admit. It can be off-putting to see books you've loved brought to the screen, especially books with such complex world building. But the casting in this adaptation is terrific, the pacing is great, and in the first few episodes the Oxford scenes alone are enough to make an Anglophile like me swoon. 

Am I allowed one more cheat, since I set the rules here? Tomorrow is the release of the third installment of the second season of Agatha Raisin. I absolutely adore these (much more than the books, in this case,) and LOVE Ashley Jensen, who stars as Agatha. They are deliciously funny and smart--and they are set in the Cotswolds, which we all know is the murder capital of the world!

REDS and readers, what are you watching? Have you gone all streaming or do you still catch a few shows on the Big 3? 

And the really big question--do you read television critics reviews?

A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES--DEBORAH HARKNESS

DEBORAH CROMBIE: If you've been in a bookstore since February, looked at books online or read reviews, it will come as no surprise that Deborah Harkness's A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES is one of the publishing sensations of the year, if not the decade. It debuted at #2 on the New York Times list--a buzz indeed for a first novel. And now both A Discovery of Witches and its upcoming sequel have been optioned by Warner Brothers for films.

The surprise? Deborah Harkness is an academic, an historian who teaches European history and the history of science at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Her previous books were non-fiction and include John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature (Cambridge University Press, 1999) and The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution. She also writes a popular wine blog, Good Wine Under $2o.

I read A Discovery of Witches on the recommendation of my editor, and was . . . bewitched. The heroine, Diana Bishop, is a scholar, an American on an extended stay in Oxford studying ancient manuscripts on the history of science. She is also a witch, descended from one of the preeminent families of Salem witches, who has refused to use her powers. But her life takes an unexpected twist when she encounters an enchanted manuscript in the Bodleian Library, along with the interest of a very sexy vampire named Matthew Clairmont who also happens to be a geneticist.

PEOPLE MAGAZINE calls A Discovery of Witches ". . . a wonderfully imaginative grown-up fantasy with all the magic of Harry Potter or Twilight. . . An irresistible tale of wizardry, science and forbidden love, Discovery will leave you longing for the sequel. . . . A first novel that casts a singular spell.”

As indeed it does. Magic, science, Oxford, France, enchanted books, a gripping love story, and the highest stakes--the balance of the world as we know it. I barely put the book down from beginning to end, and when I finished it I picked it up and started over. Deborah Harkness--DEB from this point on--has created literary magic, a world the reader won't want to leave.

DEBS (DEBORAH CROMBIE): I had the oddest feeling of parallelism when I read A Discovery of Witches. (And the parallel names were a nice touch, too. For consistency's sake we're using the British version of my nickname and the American version of Deb's, although we both answer to either.)

It was as if you'd taken all the books and places and things that I most loved, and stirred them into something entirely new and unique. Oxford was my Mecca for a good twenty years of my formative imaginative life. I wanted to be an Inkling, drinking pints and having fascinating conversations in The Bird and Baby (officially The Eagle and Child) in Oxford with Tolkien, Lewis, and the poet Charles Williams. The souvenir I brought home from my very first trip to England, and to Oxford? A poster of the Radcliffe Camera (home to the additional reading rooms of the Bodleian Library.) It still hangs in my office.

Who did you read that sparked your imagination?

DEB (DEBORAH HARKNESS): I think I bought the same poster--but it's long gone now!

It's so hard to isolate a single source of inspiration for the book. The immediate spark was being in an airport bookstore, where I was struck by how our modern interest in vampires, ghosts, daemons, and witches seemed so similar to the interest my research subjects had in these subjects--way back in 1558. But there was certainly an element of pulling together ingredients from many areas of my life into a kind of stew: places like Oxford or upstate New York that I loved, activities I engage in like yoga or research, passions like wine, and the history and mythology that has made my imagination hum since I was a child.

And, as a teacher, I am fascinated with the way women struggle with their own power. I see it in my classroom all the time, but less so in popular culture (except in ugly caricatures).

Because I'm a professional non-fiction reader, my last extended forays into fiction were in the late 1980s. If I had to pick the two novels that probably influenced A Discovery of Witches the most they would be A. S. Byatt's Possession and Anne Rice's The Witching Hour. Both were published in 1990, just as began my dissertation research. I still remember staying up all night to read them.


DEBS: Ah, Possession. I should have known. That book is on my lifetime Top Ten list. . . Then there is tea . . . You discovered an interest in wine (which I also share) when you were living in northern California and teaching at Davis, but what prompted your passion for tea? Was it spending time teaching and studying in England?

DEB: My passion for tea has childhood roots. My mother is British, so there was always tea in the house and wonderful teapots. I love the ritual of afternoon tea, too (and morning tea, and evening tea...)

DEBS: And rowing! My latest book, out in February, is set in Henley-on-Thames and revolves around rowing. This was an entirely new thing for me--I'd never been near a scull until I started the research for this book, but I found it beautiful, brutal, and addictive. I loved the fact that your heroine, Diana, is a rower--are you?

DEB: I'm looking forward to reading the latest Gemma and Duncan adventure even more if there's rowing in it! I *was* a rower. My roommate at Mt. Holyoke College was a serious athlete and member of the crew team, and she introduced me to the Concept 2 rowing machine and the basic aspects of the stroke, but I never had the commitment or time to do the sport there. At Oxford, however, I became a member of the Keble College Boat Club and rowed and coached for several happy years while doing dissertation research at the Bodleian. I guess books and boats go together for me. I'm a terrible sculler, though. I like the big boats!

DEBS: You've constructed a very logical world in which the supernatural may have scientific, and particularly genetic, grounding. I'm a biologist by education and have for years been fascinated by Darwin and his theories. You've said that the first glimmer of the idea for A Discovery of Witches was wondering "If there were vampires,what did they do for a living?" What led you to the idea that genetics might be involved in the differentiation between the witches,vampires, daemons, and humans in your story?

DEB: As a historian of science, I study how people build up plausible accounts of the world and how it works. I know the kinds of questions scientists have asked about nature over the past several thousand years, and the various avenues they've taken to answer those questions. It was a logical process for me to start with a straightforward proposition (there ARE supernatural creatures living alongside humans) then proceed to questions about habitat (where they'd live and what they'd do), then dig deeper into questions of similarity and difference. The next step is to wonder if these differences result from nature or nurture? Plus, I should point out that I started writing the book in the fall of 2008, which is when historians of science began to gear up for the Darwin anniversary, so my mailbox was stuffed with conference invitations and other information about evolution. There's another spark of inspiration for the story.

DEBS: There are writers who set out to write best sellers, drawn by the idea of fame and fortune. But there's very little of either for most of us--not to mention the fact that writing is bloody hard work. Most writers put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, in their equivalent of JK Rowling's Edinburgh coffee house, because they have the germ of an idea for a story and they want to see if they can tell it. Was this true for you, and were you at all prepared for the success of A Discovery of Witches?

DEB: I was not prepared for it AT ALL--either for the writing process or the success that came after. Who could be--least of all a middle-aged college professor? I never dreamed I'd do such a thing. With respect to the writing, the last creative writing I did before A Discovery of Witches was in 10th-grade English. Though I've published two books of academic non-fiction, writing fiction turned out to be very different. It was at once more exhilarating and more exhausting. When the manuscript went out to publishers for consideration, I just hoped someone would agree to publish it. That way, I could justify continuing to write fiction while returning to my long-planned academic book on the culture of experiment in the early Royal Society! And contrary to popular opinion, the fact that there was a vampire in the book did NOT make it easier to find a publisher. There were editors who said "no more vampires," and that was that.

As for the success itself, thinking about it can be overwhelming and more than a little surreal. I prefer instead to focus on the happy reader who writes a note on Twitter to say "I loved your book, I'm planning a vacation to Oxford, and learning more about wine." That's a measure of success I can grasp. While there is a lot of advice out there to keep people writing through difficult times, there isn't a lot of guidance for those of us lucky enough to be published. Thankfully I had excellent support from my editor and her colleagues at Viking, who steered me through what can be a complicated and mysterious process. I've also been so grateful when established authors have reached out and offered me the wisdom of their experience and a shoulder to lean on--whether its been about how to pack for a book tour or how hard it is to write a second novel. (Answers: as much black knit clothing as you can fit into a suitcase and much harder than the first!)

DEBS: I have to agree on both the answers. I've never learned to pack properly, and, now working on book #15 (yikes!), I have to say they have never gotten easier. But I hope that won't deter you, as I can't wait for the next book!

Those Little Addictions

Deborah Crombie: Don't worry, I'm not talking about Twelve Step stuff
here, but about the little things that creep into our lives. The things we take for granted, then assume we can't do without.

Not that there aren't little addictions that we consciously deem necessary--I confess, mine is tea. I did go without tea once, when I was pregnant with my daughter. I swore I'd never do it again, and I
still stand by my resolution. Well, I probably could write without tea, but it wouldn't be nearly as much fun. . .

But I recently discovered that something I'd thought a necessity was surprisingly easy to give up--the daily newspaper. I grew up in a household where my parents read both the local paper, the Dallas Morning News, and the Wall Street Journal, so newspapers had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember. And I'd subscribed to the Dallas Morning News for, well, most of my adult life. It was such a part of my morning routine: flipping through the sections to find the ones I liked, perusing them over breakfast and then another cup or two of tea.

But the paper got smaller and smaller, the subscription price didn't go down, and I found I was getting most of my news online. So at the beginning of the summer, after a lot of agonizing over the decision, I went cold turkey. No "Just the Sunday edition." No paper, period.

And what I've found is that I don't miss it at all. Not the least little bit. In fact, it's been liberating. I can read a book while I eat my toast. Or listen to a book. Or make notes for my own book. Or--the best thing--stare out the kitchen window at the hummingbirds zipping around the feeder. Quiet time.

I am not advocating or applauding the slow decline of print newspapers, by the way. I am as distressed as anyone over the demise of many of the best book review sections, and perhaps if the DMNs hadn't become a shade of its former self, I'd have found the parting harder. But for me giving up the paper has been a welcome bit of simplification.

What about you, Jungle Reds? Are there any little things that steal your time that you might find you could do without?

ROSEMARY HARRIS: It's hardly original to say that the computer is stealing my time - but that doesn't make it any less true. One thing I've done to fight back is to turn off the sound notifying me that I have a new email. I felt like a complete dope for never having done it before. And I suppose I could live without watching the early rounds of a tennis tournament - do I really need to see Rafa Nadal humiliate some poor guy from Uzbekistan?

What I can't do without are my periodic walks around my garden. A few times a day I feel the need to "walk the back 40" as I refer to it. I prune, I plan, I think, I chill. Then I come back and sometimes check emails.

LUCY BURDETTE: (AKA Roberta) We get the NEW YORK TIMES delivered daily. There are plenty of days that I can't get through all of it, but I nibble on it across the day--a little at breakfast, a little at lunch, and then maybe a bit more while making a cup of coffee. And Sundays, forget about it. I would HATE to give up the real estate and style sections. Not that I'll ever own a place in New York, but I love reading about the hunt for the right apartment. And the food section on Wednesday, of course. No not giving those up Debs!

DEBS: Okay, I have to confess. I do miss the food section. My friend usually saves it for me, but I have about three weeks worth of those I haven't read (maybe partly because it's too hot to even think about cooking here.) And you are talking about The New York Times, which I think would a little harder to part with . . .

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yes, we do "the back forty" too--every night when we get home from work. Lovely, and now the dahlias are starting. But--my addictions have to do with food, too. And they're like--serial addictions. For awhile, a few years ago, I was craving toasted sesame bagels with strawberry jam. I mean--I loved them, wanted them, had them every day. I could have lived on only that.

Before that, it was-and you can tell it was when I was single--baked potatoes with sour cream and broccoli. Honestly, I would start thinking about it on the subway on the way home from work ,and I just could not wait to have that for dinner. I bet--I had it for a year.

And then, just like the strawberry jam bagels--there comes a moment when I think--ACCK! Never never never again.

And Debs, we've gotta talk. You can't give up the newspaper. Gosh, I really couldn't. If I don't read the papers in the morning, I feel like--I'm missing something. And Sundays? Ritual.

RHYS BOWEN: My kids have always told me that I'm addicted to tea at tea time. Have to have my cup on the dot of 4 p.m. On the beach in Hawaii I'd suddenly leap up and start looking for a tea shop while the kids teased me.

Facebook--I'm on the way to becoming addicted. Project Runway for a while. Now I've taken the twelve step and I'm over that. I wish I had a garden to walk around--I'm on a hill so steep that only the deer can walk without slipping.

I could watch tennis non-stop every day--even Raffa against a guy from Uzbekistan. And I'm thrilled to say I have two days of tennis next year at the Olympics. Yeah!

HALLIE EPHRON: Say it ain't so, Debs - you gave up the NEWSPAPER?! Sure, there are "little things that steal [my] time that [I] might find [I] could do without, but my morning paper isn't one of them. I get up and write; and after a few hours the paper is my reward. The real on paper paper -- reading it online is so not the same experience, don't ask me why.

What I wish I could do without: blow drying my hair.

And I so agree with Ro - the big time sink is the computer -- specifically the Internet. On a good day I disconnect from the network when I start to write.

DEBS: Hallie, there wasn't much left to read in the Dallas Morning News. Funny, I read more than one paper every day obsessively when I'm in the UK. But you are all right about the internet. I think I'm going to have to start going somewhere without wi-fi to write, and turn off my phone. Don't get me wrong, I love my phone, but with smart phones you NEVER get away from it.

Unless, of course, you can go somewhere like the Reading Room in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, which is not only my fantasy work space, but a little tease for the upcoming week.

Later this week we have Susan Conant chatting about her new Holly Winter book, Emily Arsenault on In Search of the Rose Notes, and on Friday, Deborah Harkness will be here to tell us some unexpected things about one of this year's publishing sensations, A Discovery of Witches.

So, JR readers, are there things you could give up that would make your lives a wee bit simpler? (And that would not include BOOKS.)