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Bodice Tipplers

We're Courtney and we're Sara and we're Bodice Tipplers, the podcast where we read the romance novels we used to steal off our grandmothers' nightstands (and then we drink about it.) Join us each episode as we examine the good, the bad, and the throbbing of vintage romances.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Published: Sept. 4, 2024, 11:33 a.m.
Duration: 49 minutes 2 seconds

Aye lads and lassies and wee bairns (wait, this is no place for wee bairns!) This is our hundredth episode, to our vast surprise, so we\'re gonna make enemies and talk about Outlander! He\'s Jamie, the only feminist in eighteenth century Scotland! She\'s Claire, a time traveling nurse with a boring husband! Buckle up, sassenachs, because if you know this book you know you\'re about to trip over a giant content warning.

The book, the TV show, and absolutely this podcast have a great big neon "sexual assault" warning on them. There is no ignoring the rape in Outlander - it\'s an omnipresent (and equal opportunity!) threat, it\'s not something you could just skip a few pages and miss, they probably don\'t even have a word for it in the way that fish don\'t have a word for water. Forget it, Jake, it\'s Outlander. It\'s traumatic and has real emotional and physical consequences and if it\'s something you prefer to avoid you definitely should not read, watch, or listen here. There\'s also some... I don\'t know how to put this, some spousal discipline? It doesn\'t really read as abusive, but he does hit her with a belt, which half of us were kinda into and half of us were absolutely not into, so your mileage may vary. And of course there\'s quite a bit of beating and murdering and witch burning and torturing, just for variety.

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Lightning by Dean Koontz

Published: July 6, 2024, 8:31 p.m.
Duration: 1 hour 4 minutes 58 seconds

He\'s Stephan, a time travelling good Nazi! She\'s Laura, a woman he will not leave alone! It\'s Dean Koontz\'s Lightning, the first of our summer road trip books! To explain the amazing graphic my husband ran up for this - I am almost certain this is Koontz\'s own Terminator fanfic, predicting Badass T2 Sarah Connor years before that movie came out.

If you didn\'t see this amazing profile of Dean Koontz in the Washington Post last year please enjoy this gift link! Why yes, it is weird! He really does wear his hair like that! Is it his hair? I dunno, I mean, I\'m sure he owns it, yes. Every day! All the time! His wife just walks into a room and there it is! People\'s lives, man!

So if you\'re new to the Koontz, prepare for some damn content warnings - this one\'s got wack-ass ableism, Fated Child Sex Abuse, the strangest fat shaming I\'ve ever seen, kids burning alive, oh yeah Nazis (at least they\'re the bad guys, never thought I\'d live to have to say that!), I probably forgot some. I will say that when we call this guy a "good Nazi" what we mean is a traitor to the Nazi cause, not the other thing. We wouldn\'t be reading one with the other thing.

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Bear by Marian Engel

Published: June 23, 2024, 4:54 p.m.
Duration: 46 minutes 39 seconds

He\'s a bear. Like an actual bear. She\'s having a midlife crisis. This seems like a pretty extreme response. This is Bear by Marian Engel, which won the Governor General\'s Award in 1976 and is evidently the most controversial Canadian novel of all time. Sounds like a skills issue to me.

You know that joke about how you can build a bridge with your bare hands and they don\'t call you a bridge builder, and you can saw down a tree and cut it into boards and make these cabinets but they don\'t call you a carpenter, but if you fuck one bear... anyway this book is about Lou the bearfucker.

This is, of course, our addition to the discourse on "man or bear?" - if you\'ve been living under a rock, there was a whole thing that started on TikTok but ended up in print media of all places about asking women if they\'d rather be alone in the woods with a strange man or a strange bear. And then a whole bunch of men on Reddit very handily made it clear why women will pick the damn bear. The entry I found most interesting was this one I mentioned in the episode from a woman who does extreme wilderness bikepacking - worth a read if you haven\'t seen it.

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A Crime of the Heart by Cheryl Reavis

Published: May 15, 2024, 10:40 p.m.
Duration: 35 minutes 47 seconds

His job is Amish! She\'s an accountant with an ulcer and a bad case of second chance romance! Will they fall back in love? Can she get over that weird beard thing? Find out in Cheryl Reavis\' A Crime of the Heart, another of our "five heart romances"! If you\'re new to this, we\'re doing episodes on the list of books that Romantic Times reviewer Melinda Helfer awarded five hearts to (there are sixteen, out of ten thousand!)

This one is very sweet but their problems are real and grounded - if "I had your baby and I gave it away" adoption stories or religious communities shunning family members are an issue for you, they\'re discussed here in a way that\'s pretty realistic and therefore troubling to some people. Spoiler - they do not go find the adopted child.

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Annie's Song by Catherine Anderson

Published: April 22, 2024, 1:59 p.m.
Duration: 40 minutes 14 seconds

He\'s Alex, an Oregon gentleman farmer with a very bad brother! She\'s Annie, a Deaf woman who\'s treated like garbage by literally everyone! Welcome to Annie\'s Song by Catherine Anderson!

There are some pretty strong content warnings for this one - it won\'t surprise you that it\'s full of ableism, both Original Recipe and Extra Paternalistic, of course. There\'s also a pretty harrowing sexual assault that starts the book off - it\'s not graphic on the page but it\'s very traumatic for the character.

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Danger Zone by Doreen Owens Malek

Published: Feb. 28, 2024, 11:57 p.m.
Duration: 47 minutes 11 seconds

This is our first intentional entry in a little project we\'re doing - friend of the podcast Steve Ammidown posted this fascinating spread with a list of all the books Melinda Helfer, a Romantic Times editor, awarded five hearts in a review. Sixteen books out of ten thousand! Well, it turns out we\'d already done two of them - Lightning that Lingers and The Windflower, both by Sharon and Todd Curtis (sometimes writing as Laura London.) Go check out those episodes, they\'re fantastic books! So every now and then going forward we\'re going to do one of these five heart books.

This is a mercenary book, but it\'s surprisingly gentle - there\'s that hostage situation, but nobody is seriously hurt and it doesn\'t feel incredibly perilous. There\'s later a bit of a threatening situation but it is also pretty low key. The author makes up some fake South American rebels but goes to real Northern Ireland in 1987, bold move! This is a delightful romantic suspense book for its time period.

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Send No Flowers by Sandra Brown

Published: Jan. 26, 2024, 11:25 p.m.
Duration: 1 hour 12 minutes 58 seconds

He\'s Pierce, a hot guy with a secret (and it\'s not that he\'s part of the military industrial complex, he\'s proud of that part!) She\'s Alicia, a widowed mother of two who works in a romance novel boutique! Welcome to Send No Flowers by Sandra Brown - if you\'d like to listen to our previous book by her way back in Episode 36, which believe you me is equally head shaking, try our episode on Fanta-C!

This book is an absolute roller coaster, and I don\'t just mean the bobsleds at Disneyland that these two are trying to dry hump on. He literally kidnaps her kids in the woods! Her best friend stole her fianc\\xe9! She very sensibly takes a huge promotion and never feels like a bad mom about it, which is so unexpected in a book like this that I spent the rest of the book waiting for the other shoe to drop! (The other shoe is that Pierce is extremely cagey because he may or may not have a disease. Whatever.) The content warning that I forgot to mention is that her kids are realistically awful to her and any parent is going to be wincing hard at it. Too close to home, Sandra.

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Ben's Bakery and the Hannukah Miracle by Penelope Peters

Published: Dec. 21, 2023, 4:28 p.m.
Duration: 36 minutes 32 seconds

He\'s Ben, a cinnamon roll who bakes cinnamon rolls! He\'s Adam, a hockey coach and a pain in the ass! It\'s our annual modern gay Hannukah book - chag sameach, y\'all! This year we read Ben\'s Bakery and the Hannukah Miracle by Penelope Peters.

This one does have some serious religious gatekeeping - we mention it because it is really upsetting because this dude is not the catch he thinks he is to be such a damn asshole telling other people how to do their own damn religion right. Argh! (We liked Ben so much that we had absolutely zero time for this Adam guy.) Also, advanced moppet warning!

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Mistletoe and Holly by Janet Dailey

Published: Dec. 5, 2023, 1:06 a.m.
Duration: 25 minutes 16 seconds

He\'s Tagg, a Christmas-obsessed single dad! She\'s Leslie, a woman immobilized by a broken leg who cannot escape the holiday despite driving several states away and telling everybody she would prefer not to! He would probably be okay except that he\'s always "smirking" or "mocking" or whatevering his dialogue at her! For some reason his hair is very virile!

Warning: this book has intense levels of moppet. "My daddy will teach you to believe in Santa Claus!" which in another book would be hawwwt but in this one... There\'s also some pretty pushy sexual manipulation, when she says she wants to stop and he tries to pressure her and then freezes her out when that doesn\'t work. Ugh.

Also, I only just now realized that his name is Tagg as in "gift tag". I\'mma go back up on this nice quiet private mountain with my cute dog and sexy furry green boots and have a drink. Happy holidays, y\'all.

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Till the End of Time by Suzanne Elizabeth

Published: Nov. 15, 2023, 9:57 p.m.
Duration: 50 minutes 55 seconds

Navigation: map, compass, GPS, consider a PLB for real backcountry or backpacking trips - best practice is a paper map and compass as a backup, don\'t just rely on your phone!
Light - a flashlight or headlamp can weigh next to nothing and you\'ll be extremely glad if you need it! Again, don\'t rely on your phone for this. Throw one in your suitcase too, I use mine a lot when I travel.
Sun protection - hat, sunglasses, sunscreen, long sleeves, whatever you need. Best practice for looking hot your whole life.
First aid - a simple kit including foot care and insect repellent can go in a sandwich bag at the bottom of your pack. It doesn\'t have to be elaborate, snakebite kits are nonsense, but you want to be able to stop bleeding, protect a blister, splint a limb, tame an allergic reaction, take a bee stinger out, that sort of thing. Leave the suture kit for people who know how to use one - if you do, you shouldn\'t be getting your first aid tips from a podcast about romance novels. (Pro tip, you\'re gonna want most of this this at Disney too!)
Knife, and anything you might need to fix the rest of your gear. (So, if you have a tent, make sure you can temporarily fix a broken pole.) Roll of duct tape around a Sharpie is a good idea.
A way to make fire - assume everything will be wet. No, you probably cannot do this with a bow drill in an emergency unless you\'ve done it before.
Shelter - can just be a space blanket, I have one in all my backpacks and my car\'s glovebox.
Extra food - beyond what you\'re scheduled to need, you never know when you\'ll get stuck or encounter somebody in trouble.
Extra water - same idea. A water filter, if you know there will be water sources, will work.
Extra clothes - you can get wet, or the weather can change.

How many of these does our erstwhile Air Force captain take with him a hundred and fifty years into the past? Well, he has some sweatpants, some snacks, and a flashlight.

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Greygallows by Barbara Michaels

Published: Oct. 31, 2023, 9:20 p.m.
Duration: 44 minutes 51 seconds

Happy Halloween! He\'s Clare, a baron with a very expensive contractor\'s bill and a suspicious number of black armbands in his wardrobe. She\'s Lucy, a sheltered seventeen year old girl with a big inheritance and absolutely no friends anywhere. What a great combination! It\'s Greygallows by Barbara Michaels, who is also Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Mertz and probably a ton of other names - you may remember that we did an episode on her Devil May Care last year for Halloween, and that book has a guest appearance from the actual Christian devil! Old Scratch! The Father of Lies! The Prince of Darkness! This one, sadly, does not - but it\'s a delightful read and a great book for spooky season.

Fair warning, it includes some extremely realistic and therefore disturbing depictions of spousal abuse, most notably the scariest gaslighting I\'ve seen in a book in a long time but also financial, emotional, and physical abuse with some attempted murder thrown in. It\'s not gratuitous at all - it\'s very well done and the heroine\'s legal helplessness under 19th century British law is definitely a major point of the book, but it is definitely going to hit too close to home for some people.

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The Vampire Armand by Anne Rice

Published: Oct. 26, 2023, 5:24 p.m.
Duration: 2 hours 56 minutes 21 seconds

Welcome to our fourth (!) annual AnneRiceoween extravaganza featuring The Vampire Armand! We skipped\\xa0Memnoch the Devil because we just did not want to read it, but don\'t worry, this book makes us find out what happened in it anyway! As usual, this episode features Friend of the Podcast Dr. Claire Mischker, weird audio (we had to change our remote recording platform so we all sound like we\'re living in separate wells) and an absurdly long runtime!

This book has some heavier content warnings than you\'d even expect from a vampire book - it has a\\xa0lot of sexual abuse both of children and adults, some child sex trafficking, monastic immurement, murder, bad dads both heavenly and temporal, way too much of Beethoven\'s Appassionata Sonata, and of course all the traditional vampire stuff like nonconsensual blood drinking and wallowing in angst. Oh, and it wouldn\'t be an Anne Rice book if it didn\'t have a long passage about becoming a vampire and shitting your pants.

The book I tried to remember and couldn\'t quite is Goddess of Filth by V. Castro - read it to decolonize your ideas about possession!

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Magic's Pawn by Mercedes Lackey

Published: Sept. 22, 2023, 1:26 a.m.
Duration: 1 hour 26 minutes 25 seconds

He\'s Vanyel, the whiniest teenager ever chosen for a top government position by a horse! He\'s Tylendel, doomed twin and bad decision maker! Forget it, Jake, it\'s Valdemar! This is the first in Mercedes Lackey\'s Last Herald Mage trilogy, Magic\'s Pawn - it is not a romance novel, there is no happy ending, there are only tears. The tears are, in fact, the point. It\'s the first book a young Sara ever read about love between two impossibly beautiful young men, plus it has omg horsies - so yes, I imprinted on it like a duckling.

There are some pretty intense topics in this book - it\'s got really heavy suicidal ideation and suicide, it\'s got a bitchy horse-what-ain\'t-no-horse who\\xa0also dies by suicide, it\'s got some bad family business and some pretty intense homophobia, it\'s got some Mystic Native tropes, and if you read the other books in the trilogy you\'re going to run into some truly traumatic sexual assault and incest. Whee!

As promised, here\'s a write-up of Lackey\'s wild ride at Dragon Con in 1997! It really does involve a man who calls himself Pony White claiming he got attacked by ninjas. You gotta read the whole thing to get the whole story.

From the same source, if you\'re dying to know what "filk" is, here\'s a pretty good explainer with examples.

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The Windflower by Laura London

Published: Aug. 22, 2023, 2:41 a.m.
Duration: 1 hour 15 minutes 56 seconds

She's Merry, a na\\xefve teenager who mostly sits around waiting for something to happen. He's Devon, the evil pirate who kidnaps her mostly by accident. It's the War of 1812!

Laura London is actually Tom and Sharon Curtis; we previously did a Loveswept by them that was a lot of fun, Lightning That Lingers. Check it out!

We've been sleeping on this book for forever - it actually got recommended to Sara by a coworker years ago, when we first started, and we should have read it then because it's a blast. The best part, of course, is everybody who isn't Devon - there's a band of Merry Men, most notably Dread Pirate Rand and Disaster Bi Cat, but don't forget Ship Pet Raven who is a person and Best Pirate Dennis who is a pig. It does have a genuinely shocking amount of threatened and past rape for such a fun and fluffy book, most of which are pretty abstract but there's some tragic backstory to some characters, some of it you'll expect and some of it you won't. And of course there's dirty deeds, some of which are quite expensive - although you'd expect more pirating? Honestly though if I'd have known this book had a queer androgynous silver haired bitchy pirate I'd have been on it thirty years ago.

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