This week we’re here to talk about — not Donna Tartt’s wonderful The Goldfinch, which we became too sick to finish, but instead about the comfort books we read while we were ill! (We’re sorry. We promise to review The Goldfinch next time.) We review one longtime comfort book for Gin Jenny (hopefully it will become a comfort book for Whiskey Jenny also in the future), Rumer Godden’s wonderful Listen to the Nightingale (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository), and as a nod to the existence of Halloween, we talk a little bit about scary stories we have enjoyed. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go.
Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We will appreciate it very very much).
If you want to skip around, here are the contents of the podcast:
Starting at 1:07: We explain why we didn’t read The Goldfinch. It is for good reasons. We got terribly ill. Instead we read comfort books, a list of which I have included below because you should read all of these.
Gin Jenny’s Comfort Books
The Grand Sophy, by Georgette Heyer, is a particularly good example of a story in which the heroine puts everything into good order. Whiskey Jenny also wants you all to know about the Richard Armitage-read audiobooks of Georgette Heyer books that exist.
A Candle for St. Jude, by Rumer Godden
The Family Man, by Elinor Lipman (I’ve talked about it before here)
James Herriot’s books about being a vet in Yorkshire: the first one is All Creatures Great and Small, and this is on Whiskey Jenny’s list too
L. M. Montgomery’s books, pretty much all of them, but The Blue Castle is particularly underappreciated and great
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
Tam Lin, Pamela Dean
Dorothy Sayer’s Strong Poison and Have His Carcase and Gaudy Night
Whiskey Jenny’s Comfort Books
Ella Enchanted, Gail Carson Levine
The Rose and the Ring, William Makepeace Thackeray
Anne of Green Gables series, L. M. Montgomery
An Old-Fashioned Girl, Louisa May Alcott
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett; but particularly, the recording of it by Claire Bloom
The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
The Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Orczy
James Herriot books again!
Watership Down, Richard Adams
Roald Dahl
Josephine Tey
The Perilous Gard, Elizabeth Marie Pope
Share your comfort book lists with us, please!
Starting at 18:05: We review Listen to the Nightingale. If you listen closely you may detect that it meant a lot to me for Whiskey Jenny to enjoy this book AND SHE DID BECAUSE OF COURSE.
Starting at 30:54: We talk about scary books! Neither of us is an enormous connoisseur of scary books, so we will accept your recommendations for scary books. Whiskey Jenny may not read them but I, Gin Jenny, will! As long as no serial killers!
Starting at 38:18: Listener mail! Listener Chris inquired how much of the end I typically read, so I explain.
Starting at 41:07: New segment will be about books we’re not reading for the podcast but are excited about, either because we are eagerly anticipating reading them, or because we are reading/have read them. We will have this in the future, and I am accepting proposals for what to call this segment. Nicholson Baker’s excellent The Anthologist (my review here) is getting a sequel, Traveling Sprinkler, and I am curious about it.
43:32: Closing remarks and outro
Credits
Photo credit: andreybl / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND
Song is by Jeff MacDougall and comes from here.
The above links to books we’ve discussed are affiliate links. If you click on them and then buy a book from that website, I get a very small amount of money. This in no way influences my reviews.