- Hey guys, welcome to the first episode
of The Banging Book Club with me and these guys!
- What an entrance!
- I love it.
If you didn't know already, we started book club.
I'm Hannah, this is Lena, this is Lucy
and we are the co-founders of The Banging Book.
- There is nothing funny about co-founding
the movement Hannah, we're trying to change the world
can you at least take it seriously?
Nobody else is going to.
- The Banging Book Club, where we read books about sex.
- Sex.
- Is somebody having sex in that room?
- Probably.
- I can hear, there is actual live sex happening next door.
We started this book club
because we already talk about sex
and we thought we'd like try and focus ourselves
on a more intellectual pursuit.
- Focus our energy.
- If you go to the Google Doc, we'll Google Doc
all the books that we will be reading
so click wherever Hannah's gonna click
and you can click it and see the books we're gonna study.
Study, oh we're so serious again.
- So in January we read, Asking For It by Louise O'Neill.
Tah-dah.
(continues emulating musical sounds)
Basically, the way it works is this video is going to be
a non-spoiler review summary,
and then we have just finished recording
a full podcast, where we talk about everything
that is in this book and it is full of spoilers.
So if you haven't read the book yet,
you're in the right place.
If you have read the book and you want to join
in on the discussion, there'll be a link
in the description where you can listen to the podcast
and then use, hashtag Banging Book Club on Twitter
to talk about it and meet other people
that have read it and have opinions.
- I'm gonna cough.
- Solidarity cough.
- Trigger warning, rape and mental health issues.
Thoughts ladies?
- The book is about a girl called Emma
who lives in a small town in Ireland,
which we still can't work out how to pronounce,
- Ba-li-too
- Ba-lean-na-too
- And she goes to a party and at some point
in the party gets raped and it tells a story
of what happens in that year and the year after.
- Yea, that's basically it.
- That was a really good summary,
- That was as un-spoilery as I could get.
and everyone's reactions, what's really important
is how she's perceiving everyone's reactions
and everyone, which includes the town,
her intimate family members, and the public,
like the newspapers, how everyone interprets this event.
- And what I really like about it is that the situation
which obviously loose lips sinks ships,
I'm not gonna say what it is, but it's extreme enough
for it to be shocking but believable enough
to think this could definitely happen.
And it's probably happened.
I don't know if she used any real life reports.
- I don't know.
- But I, yea, - [Lucy] It's well researched.
- What's unique and clever about it is this on that line,
is when that line is uncomfortable but believable.
- It's very realistic.
- It's a no heroin zone.
- It's cynical.
- It's just heavy.
- Yea.
- It's heavy.
I want to read the back quote cause this isn't a spoiler
it's on the back of the book,
"They're good boys really, this all just got out of hand."
Which says it all to me.
- Yea, definitely.
- And what I like about it though it is heavy in content
and themes but really easy to read,
like I read it in four hours.
- It's young adult fiction.
- And the font, the font is big.
- Oh it's big font, it's great,
you feel like, it looks like a big book cause it's hardback,
but oh my god
- Did you guys have a whole chat
about this in our group chat?
- Yea, I was like why the, is the font so big.
- Because it makes you feel like a better reader.
I'm all for big font.
- I didn't enjoy it very much and partially
because it's not meant to be enjoyed, it's like reading some
- I said I wouldn't be friends with you if you enjoyed it.
- Yea.
- I was like, think you'd be a bit of a psychopath
if you enjoyed it.
- Oh I got pleasure from reading this book.
- I feel like it's a bit Tess of the d'Urberville-esque.
- I've not read that, but I know what happens in it.
- I haven't read it, but I know what happens in it.
- It's just like the story of a woman's demise,
- and her downfall.
- It is very harrowing, and that is what this book was.
- What we would say is prepare to be tricked.
- Oh yes.
- Prepare, like it's less about who's a good person
and a bad person, it's more about starts thinking
am I a bad reader?
You go into it like I'm a good person
about to read a book about rape, how good of me.
- Yes, oh my god yes.
It doesn't make you question your opinions,
but it makes you question how susceptible you are
to believing certain things about certain people
and drawing certain conclusions.
When, like I would say we all think
that we're quite progressive people
when it comes to matters like this
but then you're reading it going, oh no.
- And it's also like what you believe
about innocent until proven guilty
cause it's a really easy thing to say,
but not a really easy thing to execute
cause it can only apply to one person
in a situation not two.
So it's not, I've always that innocent until proven guilty
was something I believed in and now I'm like what?
- But when it's one person, thats
- Yea the victim and the accused effectively.
Another key theme that might appeal
to our audience is that it kind of covers social media
and social media's reaction to such an event.
- All of these social media campaigns
about rape and fighting against rape
those themes play out in here and they definitely
that was one of the things that we found
kind of changed our perception of the way we behave online.
- And it doesn't give those movements
an automatic pat on the back either,
it kind of makes you think about how we really
execute discussions online.
- Would recommend
- (moans uncomfortably)
- But it's not fun.
- Reviews with Lucy. - [Hannah] This is what
will happen to you, this is what you will become
once you have read this book.
- You guys haven't given your opinion about this
- Well now I feel like I can't say that I liked it.
I mean I didn't get pleasure from reading it,
it was horrible, but it is a good book.
- I still think it added to the discussion,
I thought it was going to be a little bit simpler
than it was and actually I think it's,
like I really hate it when people go,
"this is an important book, it's so important you know,
I read this article on Vice and it was really important,"
this is genuinely important.
Like absolute boy who cried wolf,
actually an important book.
- Read it and get all of your teenage friends to read it.
- And then talk about it, I actually think that's why
we were saying you should ready this and talk about it.
You shouldn't do one or the other.
You shouldn't talk about it without reading it
cause that'd be weird and you shouldn't read it
without talking about it.
- Because there are certain conclusions
that you could draw from this that without a support network
and without healthy discussion around it
could be problematic.
- We've healthy discussion on our podcast in the link below.
- Thanks Lean for the beautiful segue.
- People always say that about my segues.
- I just felt like it was bit
of a cautionary tale fable kind of attitude.
- So she was asking for it?
- No!
- I felt like these really terrifying adverts that they do
where it's like if he'd crossed at this
or if he'd driven at 40 miles an hour
that person wouldn't have died.
- Thank you guys for watching, if you have read
Asking For It there will be a link in the description
where you can listen to our podcast.
Use the hashtag Banging Book Club to discuss
with people on Twitter and go subscribe
to Lena, subscribe to Lucy because future episodes
of this will be on their channels.
Next month, what are we reading ladies?
- The Vagina Monologues, on my channel.
- And it's a play, so it's super easy to read
and it's really funny.
- If you want to know what we're going to be reading
in the future there is a Google Doc
with all of the books that we're reading
throughout all of 2016, and December's book,
you decide what we read, so have a think about that.
Thanks for watching, please give the video a thumbs up
if you enjoyed it and subscribe, bye!