Episode 230 – The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
The Worst Bestsellers
Worst Bestsellers
4.5 • 609 Ratings
🗓️ 6 November 2023
⏱️ 118 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A cautionary tale: too many people complained about this book online so we were dumped into an arena and forced to publicly defend it to the death. Mackenzi Lee, author of many Best Bestselling books including The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue and The Winter Soldier: Cold Front, has returned to the podcast to get to talk about a book we all actually enjoyed: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins. The Capitol has mandated that all citizens listen to this episode, so please comply with their decree.
Content warning: Hunger Games.
Readers advisory: Here.
Footnotes: “Hunger Games prequel: untangling the controversy over The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes” by Kayleigh Dray
Coming up next: The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the worst bestsellers, where we read about the hungriest game so you don't have to. |
| 0:15.6 | I'm Kate. And I'm Renata. And for this episode, we read The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins. |
| 0:23.7 | Joining us to discuss this Hunger Games prequel is Mackenzie Lee, author, bookseller, and unexpected stand of this book. |
| 0:32.0 | Yay. |
| 0:32.4 | Hi, Mackenzie. |
| 0:33.4 | Welcome, welcome back to the podcast. |
| 0:35.9 | I am so happy to be here with you. |
| 0:39.4 | Did you like this more or less than the horny Aaron Burr erotica? |
| 0:43.8 | So this is now my third, third appearance on the podcast. |
| 0:51.1 | The first two were unhinged. |
| 0:54.6 | Like, in no world did any of us expect them to be readable, let alone like something we |
| 1:01.1 | would actually enjoy. |
| 1:02.0 | The first one I did was the historical Aaron Burr erotica, which I had totally blocked |
| 1:06.3 | from my mind until my mom asked. |
| 1:09.5 | I was talking to my mom about doing this podcast and she's like, |
| 1:11.6 | what else did you read for them? And I was like, oh, oh, I read like I totally forgotten it. |
| 1:17.4 | And then we read Jay Manuel's book from America's Next Top Model, which is like my party trick |
| 1:23.4 | is being able to tell people about that book and the fact that it's a real book that exists. |
| 1:29.0 | They were both so insane and unhinged. |
| 1:32.2 | And then going in, when you asked me to come do this one, I was like, okay, so this is going to be more of the typical worth bestseller's fair where it is. |
| 1:39.1 | Those two we read kind of sillily and ironically. |
| 1:42.7 | And I was like, this is more the like, it's going to actually be |
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