You're listening to all the backlist, a weekly show about books that are not new.

I'm your host, Vanessa Vez, here for episode 496.5, and it is so good to be back talking to y'all

about books. It's been a while, I want to say,

well over a month, other than potentially hearing my voice in the feeds telling you all that

we were taking a break for the holidays. I want to say it's, yeah, been six, seven weeks maybe

since I've been in the backlist rotation. I could be making that up. Don't fact check me. It's just, it's been a while. That's all I know. So what have I been up to since the last time, well, taking the opportunity to go do some backlist reading, not specifically for this show, but because I like to take the end of the year to catch up on books that I've been meaning to read either that year or from years past because as you all know a lot of my reading is driven by the show and

that's the you know the main show I should say all the books and that means I have to read new

books and not just new books but new books that come out more or less on a specific week so

end of the year when I've kind of wrapped up all my podcasting for the year is when I go back and

go okay what books did I miss what stuff have I been meaning to read for a long time? And that is how I picked one of the books that I'm going to talk to you all about today. I plucked it from deep in the recess

of my DVR. It's a work of gothic science fiction that asks some bitty, some pretty big questions

of unethical nature that, yeah, I can't believe I hadn't read yet and then my other pick is a music

history book that is very much tied to the music I've been listening to on repeat in the last

few weeks so I'm going to tell you more about both of those but first let's hear from our sponsor

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