Transcript
A (0:00)
Foreign. You're listening to Reading Glasses, the show about book culture and literary life designed to help you read better. I'm author and book devourer Mallory o'. Mearo.
B (0:14)
And I'm Bria Grant, filmmaker and e reader. In this episode, we're ticking off the first box on the 2026 reading glasses glasses challenge. Read a Queer Norm book. We're gonna get into what that is, so stay tuned. Plus, we give some advice on scheduling library holds and recommending queer hockey books, which, obviously, this is a popular subject, and Mallory has a lot of opinions.
A (0:35)
The only subject right now. But first, Bria, what are you reading?
B (0:38)
I am reading a book that you recommended, and I, I. I've been reading it for, like, six months, on and off. It's been kind of like my morning, like, nonfiction book that I pick up because do you know my New year's resolution was to not sleep next to my phone?
A (0:49)
Yeah.
B (0:50)
So because of that, I don't get up and look at my phone first thing, but I do wake up, usually before my alarm, so I'm like, what am I gonna do? And then I. So I've been reading this nonfiction book in the morning. I'm reading Sick Houses. Ha. Holmes and the Architecture of Dread by Layla Taylor. Yes. It is so good. It's so good that I recommended one of my writing partners. We're working on a horror movie, and I was like, you have to read this book. Like, it's very, like. It has a lot to do with, like, what we're writing, but it's. So she goes into. I mean, Mallory talked about on the show, so I won't get into it too much, but basically, it's a. It's a nonfiction book about haunted houses and architecture and the way we view fear and otherness and all sorts of things through architecture. I Like, the part that I. That really stood out for me is she talked about the Winchester Mystery House.
A (1:36)
Oh, yeah.
B (1:36)
And how we view that as like, a. Oh, it's a woman who was trying to communicate with the dead and blah, blah, blah, and then. But really, yeah. The real story behind that is that she was actually a woman just really interested in architecture. You may have told the same story on the show, so stuff like that. But then also going into, like, films and, like, you know, the, like, like, haunted houses in films and what makes them scary versus, like, ones and, like, what people do within the films to kind of play on our cultural understandings of fear. It's just a really fascinating book. And I'm. I, I love It. I feel like I'm learning so much by reading it. Anyways, Fantastic. I am really enjoying it. What are you reading?