Lo, I have triumphed against the odds and am bringing you this episode on Wednesday, albeit a scootch later than I intended. This time, we’re talking about culling books (if, why, when, and how) and kicking off the 2018 Forcening with Alice Walker’s classic and one of my all-time favorite books, The Color Purple.
You can listen to the podcast using the embedded player below, or download the file directly to take with you on the go!
Here are the time signatures if you want to skip around.
1:00 – What we’re reading
2:18 – What we’re learning
6:05 – LOTR Reread: The Two Towers, Book 3, Chapters 6-11
15:53 – Culling books!
27:37 – The Third Annual Forcening commences with Alice Walker’s The Color Purple
48:24 – What we’re reading for next time
Get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. If you like what we do, support us on Patreon. Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much).
Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour
Transcripts by: Sharon of Library Hungry
Transcript is available under the jump!
THEME SONG: You don’t judge a book by its cover. Page one’s not a much better view. And shortly you’re gonna discover the middle won’t mollify you. So whether whiskey’s your go-to or you’re like my gin-drinking friend, no matter what you are imbibing, you’ll be better off in the end reading the end.
GIN JENNY: Welcome back to the Reading the End bookcast with the demographically similar Jennys. I’m Gin Jenny.
WHISKEY JENNY: And I’m Whiskey Jenny.
GIN JENNY: And we are here to talk to you about books and literary happenings. This week, we’re going to read the first five chapters of the second book of The Two Towers—stay with me. We’re going to talk about how and when and why we get rid of books that we own. And we are going to kick off the third annual Forcening with Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.
But before we get into all that, Whiskey Jenny, what are you reading?
WHISKEY JENNY: I am reading The Ensemble, by Aja Gabel, which was one of my—summer? One of my books that I was excited about in a previous—
GIN JENNY: Seasonal.
WHISKEY JENNY: —season. [LAUGHTER] And I’m really enjoying it so far. This is the one that’s about a string quartet. And they’re trying to make it in the world of professional classical music, which is a world I don’t know anything about.
GIN JENNY: God, me neither.
WHISKEY JENNY: You know I like an ensemble story. So it’s four friends. It’s going great so far. We’ll see how it goes.
GIN JENNY: Cool. I also checked that out from the library. So I have it available to read, too.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, great. What are you reading right now?
GIN JENNY: I am reading the fourth and final Murderbot novella by Martha Wells.
WHISKEY JENNY: Ooh. How’s it going?
GIN JENNY: It’s good. This one’s called Exit Strategy. I’m only like, I don’t know, 10 pages in, but Murderbot’s in trouble, so.
WHISKEY JENNY: No! Murderbot!
GIN JENNY: I know. Per uzhe. Poor Murderbot. Can’t get a break. In case anyone hasn’t heard me yell about these books before, it’s a series about a security robot who gets free will. And it basically wants to be left alone so it can watch its TV programs, but it keeps running across humans that it cares about and wants to protect, so it gets enmeshed in all these corporate shenanigans and all kinds of things.
WHISKEY JENNY: I’ve only read the first one, but gosh, it was so lovely.
GIN JENNY: Wasn’t it? Yeah. They’re all great.
So for this podcast, our lovely Patreon patrons voted on what were something else-ing and selected what we’re learning, which I love it when the patrons vote for this, even though I’m not learning that much right now. Because it’s a hard time, and I’m mostly just doing very self-indulgent behaviors all the time.
WHISKEY JENNY: Making brownies and stuff. Yeah.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. I’ll do some civic action, and then I’ll be like, OK, now I just have to eat 12 omelets in a row. [LAUGHTER] So what are you learning, Whiskey Jenny?
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I’m cheating on this one, because as you said, I’m not learning a whole lot right now.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: But I am starting to learn about the very famous K-pop boy band BTS, because I feel like it’s part of the culture I need to catch up on.
GIN JENNY: Yeah
WHISKEY JENNY: You know me, I’ve always got my finger at the pulse of youth culture.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: This is amazing. I know nothing about K-pop. What’s your plan of attack?
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, OK, so I said this is cheating because I’m starting. And one of the things I’m going to do is, I’m putting the call out, basically. If anyone can explain them to me or has a handy explainer that they could direct me to, that would be great. My first entry was—what were they on? They were one of the late nights, so I watched an interview with them and some performances by them. There’s like a bajillion of them. There’s like 14 members of this band.
GIN JENNY: What?
WHISKEY JENNY: That’s not true. But I think there’s like eight? Or seven?
GIN JENNY: Oh my God!
WHISKEY JENNY: There’s a lot, yeah. So there’s—
GIN JENNY: There should be five members of a boy band.
WHISKEY JENNY: I thought we all agreed that was what boy bands were. Yeah, but no, apparently BTS, they just do their own thing.
GIN JENNY: Well, you know, it’s another culture, so.
WHISKEY JENNY: They’re all amazing dancers from what I could tell of the performances. I watched a couple fan videos of their live shows, and those look really exciting and vibrant. They seem like they’re really good live performers and put on a great show, as is often the case with groups like these, I suppose.
GIN JENNY: Is their music fun to listen to?
WHISKEY JENNY: It is. It is very fun. They’re jams. With the ones that I listened to, I was like, yeah, I can get into this, absolutely. But that’s as far as I’ve gotten, so a long ways more to go. I still haven’t figured out—I keep asking people this, but I’m not sure who’s supposed to be the heartthrob of the group. I was trying to tell based on—because they introduced themselves individually on the late night interview, and everyone seemed to get really big cheers. So I couldn’t tell if they had a most popular or anything. So more to come on BTS, but.
GIN JENNY: Among other things, I have to say, having seven members in a group makes it hard to choose just one as the heartthrob.
WHISKEY JENNY: Exactly. Yeah, I don’t think you have to fall into quite the same roles, maybe, as you do with fewer members. You’re right.
GIN JENNY: Those roles are very helpful to me
WHISKEY JENNY: [LAUGHTER] We’ll see. So anyway, more to come. If anyone can help me out, let me know. [LAUGHTER] And yeah, BTS. What are you learning about?
GIN JENNY: Well, man, that’s a hard act to follow.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Is it?
GIN JENNY: Yes! But I’m learning a little bit about the history of American schoolteachers and evolving discourse around them, which is kind of neat.
WHISKEY JENNY: So pretty different, yeah.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: I learn about important things too sometimes.
GIN JENNY: I know you do! You don’t have to tell me.
WHISKEY JENNY: What are you learning about schoolteachers?
GIN JENNY: Yeah, so I’m reading The Teacher Wars, by Dana Goldstein, which is a book I bought at a conference a few years ago and haven’t read yet. But all this talk of getting rid of books reminded me that I have a lot of books that I own and haven’t read yet.
It’s written by a journalist, not a historian, so kind of a caveat on that, but it’s well written. It’s going along pretty good. One of the things that the author says is that often ideas to improve teacher quality that we come up with now have been proposed and enacted numerous times unsuccessfully over the last few centuries. And we never seem to learn any lessons from that, so that’s cool.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, no. Oh dear.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Does the book propose any alternatives?
GIN JENNY: I don’t know yet. I’m only two chapters in. So we’ll find out. Hopefully yeah. Hopefully they’ll have a solution to public education.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: It’s all on this one book.
GIN JENNY: Well, do you want to get into The Two Towers?
WHISKEY JENNY: I do, yeah.
GIN JENNY: Let’s do it. So we read chapters one through five of book four of Lord of the Rings. And it’s the first part of Sam and Frodo in Mordor.
WHISKEY JENNY: Are they in Mordor? Have they gone to Mordor?
GIN JENNY: So here’s the thing. I don’t fully understand the boundaries of Mordor. Everyone refers to this as, it’s Frodo and Sam in Mordor. But I guess they’re in, like, the Mordor suburbs.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. OK, yeah, I’ll buy that.
GIN JENNY: A lot of people do not care for this section of the book. I think it’s very maligned. So I was just wondering how you feel about it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, did not care for it. I’m one of those people.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Hot take—I love it!
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I am fascinated by that. I hope you can swing me around, because—
GIN JENNY: I’m not sure I can.
WHISKEY JENNY: —we’re not there yet. They still have to slog through Mordor. So hopefully I can find some things to love about it. I think it’s actually pretty short compared to the other groups of five chapters that we read. But it feels real long to me.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Man. And this from the woman who loves Tom Bombadil. I just don’t understand.
WHISKEY JENNY: I know! This is maybe my Tom Bombadil for you. [LAUGHTER] This is my your Tom Bombadil. [LAUGHTER] So why do you love it?
GIN JENNY: Obviously it’s not flashy and golden, like the brave battle adventures of Aragorn and stuff. I know it’s a lot of Frodo and Sam wandering around in the mud, and I get why people compare it to the camping chapters in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. But I don’t always like epic fantasy battles, and to me this is a nice counterpoint to all the other stuff that’s happening. Like, it’s these three exhausted people trying to do a very small task that’s also the only thing that matters. And it’s creepy and atmospheric, and I think it makes a really interesting contrast—because we’ve seen a lot of green and glorious parts of Middle Earth. You can really see the devastation that Sauron has wreaked. Atmospheric, I think, is the main thing that I enjoy about it. And also I love Gollum, so.
WHISKEY JENNY: Really? All right.
GIN JENNY: Wait, do you hate Gollum?
WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, I don’t hate him. On paper I should find him really interesting, because he raises all these cool questions about mercy and redemption and morality.
GIN JENNY: Sure.
WHISKEY JENNY: Which is great. But I just found him really annoying to read about, and to read dialogue about.
GIN JENNY: This is how I feel about the house elves in Harry Potter, which I know is a heartless thing to say.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, wow, see? OK, fascinating. I can get on board with some house elves.
GIN JENNY: I don’t know, man.
WHISKEY JENNY: Dobby is so great.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: So you feel about Gollum how I feel about house elves.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I think so.
WHISKEY JENNY: That makes sense. [LAUGHTER] Well, first of all, I want to say, you said it was a small task. I don’t think they’re doing a small task. It’s really hard, what they’re doing.
GIN JENNY: It’s hard, but it’s small in scale.
WHISKEY JENNY: Is it? What you mean scale? They have to go a long way.
GIN JENNY: You’re right. That’s fair.
WHISKEY JENNY: The saving grace for me about these chapters is seeing the bravery of most the people involved.
GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: In, as you said, not a battle scene, just, like, you just have to keep going. Which is sort of a different kind of bravery.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, well maybe that’s more what I meant, that what they’re doing is not the classically exciting type of bravery.
WHISKEY JENNY: Sure isn’t.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yeah, no, it’s not. I mean, they’re just walking. That’s what they’re doing. They’re walking really far, in bad circumstance.
WHISKEY JENNY: Into more and more horrible areas, yeah.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: No, I get it. Yeah, I’m just really surprised that you like these, because nothing happens. Nothing happens!
GIN JENNY: Well, I think partly I was warned that they were going to be really boring, so my expectations were very low.
WHISKEY JENNY: There was some particularly—well I don’t know about particularly egregious. The whole book has been pretty egregious. But I want to call out in particular in these chapters, the racial coding.
GIN JENNY: Mm-hm. Mm-hm. Mm-hm.
WHISKEY JENNY: They see some dark skinned men walking to fight towards Mordor and they’re like, boo! These men are evil, clearly, because they have dark skin!
GIN JENNY: I wrote that down, too.
WHISKEY JENNY: And then they run into Faramir’s group and get left alone with some of them for reasons. And there’s a scene where they take off their masks and they’re like, oh, great, we see now they’re white. They’re good men because they’re white.
GIN JENNY: It’s just awful. I agree with you, this felt more egregious than previously.
WHISKEY JENNY: OK, I wasn’t sure if I had been—I don’t know. OK.
GIN JENNY: No, I think you’re right. Because they explicitly say they’re evil because they’re black. These ones are good because they’re white.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Oof. It’s not good. And Sam is the only one who’s like, maybe they’re also not evil?
GIN JENNY: Yeah, Sam does say like, maybe they have families. Maybe they’re making these choices for blah blah blah reasons. Nevertheless, the all the good people are white.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.
GIN JENNY: So, not to talk too much about the movie. But in the movie, Gollum attacks Sam and Frodo. He’s been following them all along, they seem to be asleep, and he jumps on them. Sam and Frodo do not come off great in the book. Gollum is following them, but in the book they attack him, tie him up, and make him go with them. And it’s supposed to be some huge piece of mercy that they attacked him and tied him up and didn’t kill him. And they’re always like, oh, you should be grateful that we didn’t kill you, this and that.
Come on, guys! You can say, hey, we can’t let you go because we think you’ll tell Sauron. But if that’s what you’re going to do, you should recognize that you’re being a bad person.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I don’t know about being a bad person, but you’re making a very specific choice, absolutely.
GIN JENNY: You’re harming someone else.
WHISKEY JENNY: You’re saying that the ends justify the means.
GIN JENNY: Right, exactly. That’s a better way of saying it. Yeah, and they seem so self-righteous about it. And they’re like, well, Gollum is the bad one and we are good. Um, not really, though.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.
GIN JENNY: And Sam is a huge jerk to Gollum.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, he’s not great at Gollum. It’s my least favorite part about him. I will say, in this reread Frodo seems like kind of a jerk to Sam and to Gollum.
GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah. Frodo thinks he’s the boss of everyone and he can just do whatever he wants.
WHISKEY JENNY: Shut up, Frodo.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: But yeah, no, Sam is definitely not very kind towards Gollum.
GIN JENNY: And he’s always like, oh, Gollum is bad because he doesn’t like me. But everything he says to Gollum is either insulting him or threatening him. So it wouldn’t hurt you to speak to him nicely.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Maybe there’s a reason he doesn’t like you.
GIN JENNY: But yeah. They’re walking through the Mordor suburbs. And there’s this super great scene where they’re in the marshes, and there’s dead people in the water, it sounds like backlit.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it did sound really spooky.
GIN JENNY: And Gollum says that the men went down into the water to light little candles, which is such a creepy way to talk about it. And that’s the kind of mood thing that I really appreciate in this section.
WHISKEY JENNY: And I love how he phrases it that same way. He says, “very carefully, or hobbits go down to join the dead ones and light little candles.”
GIN JENNY: Eee.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I had such a good image, too. You could totally picture these spooky, floating ghostlike figures in the water.
GIN JENNY: And they get to the gates of Mordor, and Gollum freaks out and doesn’t want them to go. And he says, look, I’ll take you a different way into Mordor that’s more secret. And then you’ll have less of a risk of someone on finding you. Good job, Gollum.
WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, Sam did overhear hear him wanting to take them that way maybe for—
GIN JENNY: Nefarious reasons.
WHISKEY JENNY: —nefarious reasons, yeah.
GIN JENNY: You know, Gollum, still less nefarious than Sauron. So.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.
GIN JENNY: And then they run into Faramir, which is so exciting.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I really like Faramir.
GIN JENNY: God, I love Faramir. So, for listeners who haven’t read Lord of the Rings—which, I’m not sure why you’re listening to this section in that case, because we’re just telling you everything that happens. But Faramir is Boromir’s baby brother from Gondor. And he’s so nice to them. Although Frodo kind of indiscreetly tells them—Frodo and Sam, actually, are very indiscreet with him and just tell him all their business.
WHISKEY JENNY: Sam on accident.
GIN JENNY: But Frodo on purpose. And, you know, you don’t know, Frodo.
WHISKEY JENNY: He makes a split second decision and luckily it turned out OK. But who knows.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. But there’s this really sweet, lovely moment where Faramir asks—because Faramir finds out that Frodo was traveling with Boromir. And he says, were you a friend of Boromir? And Frodo says, yes, I was his friend, for my part. That’s really sweet, because he’s showing that he understands what was going on with Boromir, and that Frodo did still care about him and stuff. I don’t know, it really got me. Got me right here.
WHISKEY JENNY: It is sweet, yeah. And Boromir has already known that his brother died, because he had maybe a vision of the funeral boat of Boromir.
GIN JENNY: And he also—gosh, he’s so sweet, and he obviously has a general sense of what’s going on. And he and Frodo are talking about Frodo’s quest. And he’s like, look, I know you have something with you that belongs to the enemy. And not if I found it lying on the highway would I take it. Faramir!
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s so great. And then when he figures out what it is, because Sam let it slip.
GIN JENNY: Sam blabs.
WHISKEY JENNY: They pull their swords. They freak out and think he’s going to take it. And he’s like, first of all, I gave you my word that I wouldn’t, no matter what it was. And even if I did now find out that it could help me, I still wouldn’t take it, because I gave you my word. But I definitely don’t want it. Like I said, I still don’t want it. He tries so hard not to make the same choice that Boromir made. And it’s so great!
GIN JENNY: And it’s another good fake out by Tolkien, because Faramir’s like, well here you are, and here I am with my entire army. And then he goes into that speech. So it’s pretty good.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s really great. And in the movie he makes the same choice as Boromir! And I was like, are you kidding me? Why would you do that?
GIN JENNY: I don’t know. I was really mad about it.
WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t understand why you would do that and make that horrible choice.
GIN JENNY: Well, and plus because the actor they got for Faramir is terrific and I think does a great job. And I think there’s maybe something to the idea that Faramir, although brave, is kind of a gentler soul than Boromir, and that that gives him—that makes him more vulnerable in some ways, but it makes him stronger in other ways. And I think that’s interesting.
WHISKEY JENNY: Absolutely. And I think Faramir kind of touches on that. He talks about how Boromir is so much a soldier, and he has less of those valued attributes of a soldier. Like, he himself doesn’t think he’s less worthy. He thinks all things should be valued. But he still loves his brother. And yeah, he’s just a really interesting character from Gondor.
GIN JENNY: I completely agree with you. I think the movie made a huge mistake with that, and I don’t think got value add in exchange for it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Right.
GIN JENNY: Anyway, so Faramir does this wonderful thing. And he’s like, I’ll help you however I can help you as well.
WHISKEY JENNY: Even though if his horrible king found out about it, he’d be real pissed. He’s doing this against bad orders.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Way to go, Faramir. We love you.
GIN JENNY: Love you, Faramir! And that’s where we leave them. So.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, I just want to say. Everyone keeps calling Sam dumb, and he’s not dumb.
GIN JENNY: He’s not dumb! It’s very unfair.
WHISKEY JENNY: He’s not dumb, and Faramir’s like, you’re dumb. Sit down. And Frodo’s like, yeah, you are. You probably should be quiet. And he’s not! He’s really not.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Also, even if he was, it would be polite of Frodo, in front of this stranger, to be like, you know what’s great about Sam? I’ll tell you, it’s this and this and this.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Stick up for him. You’re his friend—allegedly.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yeah. I think it’s pretty clear he’s his employer.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, that is definitely coming through loud and clear on this read.
GIN JENNY: And it’s not because Frodo was under the influence of the ring, because he was like this before.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, some very English class issues coming through, shall we say.
GIN JENNY: Yes. Especially because I know what’s coming, and Sam is about to be incredibly loyal and brave, so.
WHISKEY JENNY: I hope everyone appreciates it!
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: So for next time, we’re going to finish up book four. We’re going to be reading chapters 6 through 10. And then after that, we’re going to get on to Return of the King! I can’t believe its time has come so quickly.
WHISKEY JENNY: I know. I’m pretty excited.
GIN JENNY: I’m so excited. So for this podcast, we got a amazing question from listener Erica that we’re going to talk about. She writes, “I plan to do a book purge and downsize the personal library. I’ve had to slash chosen to do this before, mostly because of moving house, and I’m curious for your thoughts on when and how to get rid of books. Question the premise if you must, but my shelf no longer reflects books I’ve loved and need to keep as I become less possessive about lending—” that is very different from me— “and as I use the library more and more.”
OK, I want to start with the premise. Why do we have to get rid of books? [LAUGHTER] No, I’m asking! Because I have an opinion, but I’d like to know yours.
WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, I guess if we had unlimited space we wouldn’t have to.
GIN JENNY: Right. Space. You’ve got to make room for new love.
WHISKEY JENNY: But we don’t—I don’t have unlimited space.
GIN JENNY: I mean, I have a lot of space, but it’s far from unlimited.
WHISKEY JENNY: And that’s the only reason. If I had unlimited space, I wouldn’t. That’s not true, I might still get rid of them.
GIN JENNY: Oh, because I was going to say, I’m fascinated if that’s true. If I had unlimited space, I would still get rid of my books. Also I would be magic, so I would do a lot of stuff different.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, yeah. Yeah.
GIN JENNY: I would still get rid of books, I think.
WHISKEY JENNY: I think I would get rid of some. Not as many.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Because tastes change.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, tastes change. And you feel like you don’t need to hang onto them any longer.
GIN JENNY: Right.
WHISKEY JENNY: You would just know that. It would be the ones where it’s easy to make that decision that you would get rid of.
GIN JENNY: Well and plus, I mean, so tastes change. You’re just interested in different things as a reader. And also, like we talked about, love fades.
WHISKEY JENNY: Or you realize things that you did love are problematic.
GIN JENNY: And like, too problematic to enjoy now.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.
GIN JENNY: Because there’s definitely a lot of problematic—like Harry Potter—problematic things that I love.
JENNYS: Lord of the Rings.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: But yeah, your tolerance changes.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, sometimes it’s overwhelming.
GIN JENNY: And it’s I think it’s because we change as people and develop different kinds of critical awareness. And even if the book’s authors change, the books can’t change. So all that can happen is we can grow past it.
WHISKEY JENNY: That’s beautiful.
GIN JENNY: Is it? It’s very sad, I think. [LAUGHTER] Actually that’s not even true. I think we can also grow into them. Because I feel like as I’ve gotten older, I’ve appreciated new stuff in a lot of books.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Yeah.
GIN JENNY: OK, all right. So that was a needlessly pessimistic way of say it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I mean, we can grow past old books, but that’s not a horrible thing also, because that means you’re growing as a human. And then you grow into other books.
GIN JENNY: OK, so when do you think is the correct time to do a book culling?
WHISKEY JENNY: I need an outside force to pressure me to do it.
GIN JENNY: Like, what would be an outside force, for example?
WHISKEY JENNY: When you run out of room.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Is that the only time you ever get rid of books?
WHISKEY JENNY: Basically.
GIN JENNY: Interesting.
WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, I’m sort of at capacity right now.
GIN JENNY: Sure.
WHISKEY JENNY: So it sort of happens in small cases every time I want to get a new one.
GIN JENNY: Well, definitely when I’ve moved, I’ve gotten rid of books.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, if you have to pack them up.
GIN JENNY: It’s very motivating. If I get a new bookshelf, weirdly, I’m often inclined to do a culling. I think it’s just because there’s a book-related change happening, so I’m like, well, I might as well take this moment.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.
GIN JENNY: All right, well, how do you do it? How do you make these tough decisions?
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I think we need to separate—I think we—twist! I have categories.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: OK, tell me the categories.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, first you have to cull the books that you have read, and you also have to cull the books you haven’t read.
GIN JENNY: That is true.
WHISKEY JENNY: So for the books that you have read, I want to talk about lending, because I feel like that was a really interesting thing that got brought up. Because if I think I might want to lend a book someday to someone, I don’t know, I really love lending a book. And that’s one of the reasons that I might keep it. If I’m like, I still support this book and I want to spread the word about it, I’ll keep it.
GIN JENNY: Fascinating. I never do that. I do sometimes acquire spare copies of books so that I can give them away to people.
WHISKEY JENNY: See, that seems really similar. And you just hold onto them without a person in mind until that person comes along.
GIN JENNY: Yes, and it has worked really well. I actually am just about to mail out two books to my friend Lauren that she expressed interest in, and I happen to have a spare copies, so everything is roses.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, great. There you go. Yeah.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: The other reason I might keep something or decide not to keep something is if I think I will or will not reread it.
GIN JENNY: Yes, that’s the big one for me, too.
WHISKEY JENNY: Which is a lot rarer for me than you, but someday plays a role.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: So, since you don’t reread very much, how do you make that designation?
WHISKEY JENNY: If I want to someday, recognizing that life is finite and I might not get to it. But if I have the urge to, or think like, yeah, I might someday. If I can’t remember why I kept a book in looking back, if I’m like, well, I don’t want to reread it and I don’t want to lend it, maybe there was another specific reason at the time—so if I can’t remember why I kept it, then it goes into the get-rid-of pile.
GIN JENNY: Interesting. Interesting. I should also say before we get more into this, I love getting rid of things. So although getting rid of books is a little harder for me than getting rid of stuff like clothes, I still get a rush of happy brain chemicals when I do it. So I want to say, if I make this sound easy, it’s because it’s pretty easy for me. And I know that’s not the case for everyone.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, no, it is not easy for me.
GIN JENNY: There is nothing like the feeling of, I just read a book that I owned, I don’t want to keep it, and I get rid of it. It feels so good.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, no, that doesn’t feel good. Because I’m like, well why did I reread it? [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: To find out. To find out if you were going to keep it. And then if you were not going to keep it, then you have that space for a book that you do like and do want to keep, and it’s like, yay. The future is bright and golden.
WHISKEY JENNY: That’s true. And, as you said, tastes change. So if you’re looking back at something and you’re like, wow, turns out I don’t like that book after all in rethinking about it, then toss it.
GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah, that’s another thing. Sometimes I’ll have a book, and I liked it. And I’m like, I liked it, but with a caveat, but I think I would want to reread it, so I keep it. And then later as I look back, the problems that I had with it just loom larger and larger. And I don’t know what causes that to happen, but it’s definitely a thing.
WHISKEY JENNY: On the plus side, I will say, when you get rid of them, I don’t know what you do with them. But one thing you can do with them is post them on PaperbackSwap—
GIN JENNY: Yes!
WHISKEY JENNY: And then in exchange for them, get books that you do want to keep.
GIN JENNY: Yes, I do that.
WHISKEY JENNY: That’s exciting.
GIN JENNY: Oh, it’s so exciting. I love listing them on PaperbackSwap, or donating them to a local library book sale situation. Because then I feel like I’m paying into the ecosystem that I’m also taking many books out of.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and I found a non-snooty used bookstore that will often buy books. So and then you get credit at the store, and that’s really exciting, too. That was a call out to The Strand, in case you couldn’t tell. Because they’re real snooty about buying books.
GIN JENNY: They’re such jerks.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: They’re so mean about it. I don’t know why. You’re a used bookstore. You have a counter for selling books. Why are you mean about it?
GIN JENNY: I don’t know, but they are. One time I was selling books there—I know I’ve told you this, but I haven’t told the listeners, and I think they should be mad. I went and sold books there, and the guy made two stacks, one that they wanted to buy and one that they didn’t want to buy. And then he used his pen to push the rejects towards me, as if he could not even bear to touch them.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, they’re so weird about it.
GIN JENNY: Like, I’m not being paranoid. He was making a face that said, I am disgusted by this pile of books.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Come on, dude.
GIN JENNY: And Whiskey Jenny can confirm, that’s the face that they make.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, they always do it. Yeah, they do. I’ve stopped—I don’t go there anymore.
GIN JENNY: It’s horrible.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: It’s not like you’re asking a restaurant to do this for you. Like, you have a counter offering this service.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. Presumably it benefits them or they wouldn’t be doing it. Frickin’ The Strand.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, anyway, so yeah, so thinking about out where the books might go and what you can get out of them, I found, is a helpful technique.
GIN JENNY: Another thing I sometimes do is donate them to Books 2 Prisoners, if they’re paperbacks. And then I’m also happy because I like thinking about them reaching readers for whom they are a better fit.
WHISKEY JENNY: My last helpful tip for either category is to ask a friend to help you.
GIN JENNY: We’ve done this before.
WHISKEY JENNY: Gin Jenny—I did. I asked Gin Jenny to help me. I sent her a spreadsheet. I think this was just for the To Be Read books, but I think it applies to both. Ask a friend, and the friend will help you be honest.
GIN JENNY: That’s true.
WHISKEY JENNY: If they come over in person, you can do it in person and hang out together. It makes it a fun activity.
GIN JENNY: I would love to do that. Any friend I have, I would be—or, you know, near strangers. I would be so excited to come over [LAUGHTER] and help get rid of stuff. Not just books, stuff. I love getting rid of stuff.
OK, so fiction, I find this exceptionally easy. If I’ve had a book for a while and I’m just not excited about it, and I’ve owned it for more than two years and I haven’t read it yet, it’s pretty easy for me to say, you know what? I’m not that into this. I bought it for $2 at a book sale, but I’m no longer that interested. And if I let it back out into the world, like I said, it has a good chance of finding a reader who really will love it. Not me, a monster keeping it for myself, a dog in the manger.
WHISKEY JENNY: A monster? My God. Those are some harsh words.
GIN JENNY: Strong words. [LAUGHTER] It’s not how I really think about people who have books they haven’t read, by the way.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, good.
GIN JENNY: It’s just a useful way to frame it in my head, because then I never feel guilty. I’m just like, I’m helping this book and other readers. And then nonfiction—yeah, nonfiction can be hard, because with nonfiction, unless I’ve completely lost interest in that topic, which is pretty rare, it’s harder for me to get rid of nonfiction. But I try to be like, OK, I’m still interested in this topic, but it’s not my priority. So that’s a good reason to let it go.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s hard. I find that to be read category harder than the read category.
GIN JENNY: Does it ever help you to check and see if your local library has some of the books? Because that sometimes has helped me. It’s like a little insurance policy in case I change my mind.
WHISKEY JENNY: No.
GIN JENNY: OK. [LAUGHTER] So how do you make those decisions?
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, this is where I have to phone a friend especially.
GIN JENNY: Oh, this is the one.
WHISKEY JENNY: This is the phone a friend category.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: You have to be honest with yourself. I’m not going to read Tess of the D’Ubervilles. D’Urbervilles. Whatever. I don’t want to.
GIN JENNY: God, me neither.
WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t want to. But I just feel guilty about not, and making that choice. And you have to become OK with making the choice not to read it first. So that’s why, it’s a lot of emotional work for me.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: That’s a really good insight, that you have to be honest with yourself. Because I do buy books sometimes aspirationally. And I’m like, I want to be the type of person who likes, what’s his name? Thomas Hardy?
WHISKEY JENNY: Thomas Hardy. I don’t even! [LAUGHTER] I hated every single Thomas Hardy I read. I don’t want to read this book! [LAUGHTER] I have gotten rid of that one.
GIN JENNY: Which is hard. It’s hard to let go of a vision of yourself that you wanted to achieve.
WHISKEY JENNY: It is difficult. But sometimes it’s harder to lie to a friend than to yourself. [LAUGHTER] About if you’re going to read Tess of the D’Urbervilles or not.
GIN JENNY: Especially if your friend is me, a person who thinks nobody should ever read Tess of the D’Urbervilles. [LAUGHTER] The strategy I’m always recommending is, if you want to get rid of books, just pick a number of books that you want to get rid of. Say you want to get rid of 20 books. And then pull all the books you might maybe want to get rid of, and line them up in order of how much you like them. Because I think it’s hard to look at all your books and say, OK, this one specifically should go. But I found it really easy to look at two books and say, I’m more interested in this one than this one. So if you do that a bunch of times, then you can just pick the bottom ones and toss ‘em. Or, like Whiskey Jenny did, just make a list of all your maybes and send them to me. Let me know how many of them need to go, and I’ll choose for you.
WHISKEY JENNY: I think I gave you some notes, too, about, like, I don’t actually want to read this, you’re right. [LAUGHTER] I’m thinking about tossing this one.
GIN JENNY: If someone is like, I’m thinking about tossing this, I mostly say, yes, toss it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yup. do it.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: I have a very hard time with nonfiction that I have read, deciding to get rid of it, unless I really didn’t like it. Because I really like the feeling—I really like this image I have in my head of being the kind of person who’s like, a question arises and I’m like, hang on. I’ll consult my many nonfiction books, because I read something about it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, yeah.
GIN JENNY: Even though there’s just so little opportunity—it’s very unlikely that someone’s going to be like, oh, Gin Jenny, I have a really important question about Mary, Queen of Scots and her relationship with Elizabeth I. Also, if they did have that question, they would probably look it up on Wikipedia, and so would I. But I just cannot get out of that mindset of like, oh, I need to consult this later. And I don’t really have a solution to that currently.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. So you look at it like a resource.
GIN JENNY: Right, exactly. With fiction, if I don’t want to reread it, pfft. Easy. It goes. But with non-fiction—so, that’s a challenge.
WHISKEY JENNY: Does it help you to think about if they’re in libraries?
GIN JENNY: Yes. But, you know, libraries also cull their books. Rightly, so.
WHISKEY JENNY: So you’re saying they might have it now and get rid of it someday?
GIN JENNY: Well, yes.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well then why did you propose that to me?
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Like, it’s an insurance policy, but I don’t actually think one typically will want to get the books that one has gotten rid of. So it’s more of a mental thing. Which you’ve now ruined by asking too many questions. So. [LAUGHTER] I would have gotten away with it if not for you meddling kids.
But my one real, real, real downfall—I know that I said at the start of this that this is pretty easy for me, but my one real downfall is any kind of box set, or matching editions. If there is attractive matching editions so a book, I am 10,000 percent more likely to acquire them in the first place and then keep them forever.
WHISKEY JENNY: What if they’re illustrated?
GIN JENNY: Oh, God, yes! And if they’re illustrated, yeah! [LAUGHTER] I have this fancy annotated Frankenstein. And I don’t even like Frankenstein this much, but it has so many pictures. There’s interesting annotations. It compares the different texts of Frankenstein that exist. It’s going to be hard to get rid of. I think eventually I’m going to do it, but it’s a tough one to do.
WHISKEY JENNY: That does sound interesting, though.
GIN JENNY: It is really interesting. It is. I mean, it has a lot of interesting content, but I’m not ultimately that into Frankenstein. Anything that makes a book more physically beautiful really ups the chances of it sticking around.
WHISKEY JENNY: Interesting. Yeah.
GIN JENNY: Well, Erica, I hope that answered your question, or helped.
WHISKEY JENNY: Good luck, Erica. Our hearts are with you.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: They are. And seriously, Erica, if you want to send me a list of books you’re considering getting rid of, I would love to help you choose.
WHISKEY JENNY: Take her up on it. She’s very helpful.
GIN JENNY: Thank you. Thank you, I appreciate that. All right, do you want to launch into the third annual Forcening?
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, let’s do it.
GIN JENNY: OK, so for this Forcening, we read The Color Purple, by Alice Walker. I Forcened Whiskey Jenny. And this is a classic of American literature, I would say one of the great American novels. I just love this book with such an intensity, and rereading it I was just like, this book is so wonderful and so good, so I really hope you liked it. What, uh, did you think of it?
WHISKEY JENNY: I did, I liked it.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Oh, thank God!
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, no, I loved it.
GIN JENNY: Oh, good. Oh, I’m so relieved.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.
GIN JENNY: It’s really been haunting me. Like, I wouldn’t have been mad at you or anything. I would just have been like, aw.
WHISKEY JENNY: I know, yeah. The Forcening is really dangerous. I had a really hard time picking, as well, because I was like, well if she doesn’t like it I’ll be too heartbroken for that one.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yeah, I would have been really heartbroken. Oh, I’m so glad you liked it. Oh, what a relief. OK.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I would’ve told you earlier to put you out of your misery, but I only recently finished it.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: No, that’s OK. I like the buildup.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, no, I did. I loved it. And I was all ready to be like, you know, it was a good book, but I’d never want to read it again. It was too depressing, it was too dark, it was too hard to read. But you were right. Ultimately it’s not those things. It’s really hopeful and optimistic and I loved it.
GIN JENNY: Oh, I’m so glad. I’m especially glad that you found it hopeful and optimistic, because I can imagine loving it and still feeling it was too dark. And it is very dark. But oh, good, I’m really glad that I didn’t steer you wrong.
WHISKEY JENNY: I was ready to be like—
GIN JENNY: Gin Jenny’s a liar?
WHISKEY JENNY: Why did you make me do this? [LAUGHTER] I was not looking forward to reading it. It took me a while to pick it up. And I feel like in that way it’s an incredibly successful Forcening, because I might not have picked it up.
GIN JENNY: Yay!
WHISKEY JENNY: So great job.
GIN JENNY: Thank you. Well, I guess I should say what it’s about. It’s about a woman named Celie who comes from an abusive home life. And she marries a guy who is also abusive, and the guy makes her sister, who lives with them, leave. And she and her sister are separated and she never hears from her. And she’s just living with this guy and his awful children. And, you know, things look pretty bleak.
But then she meets the singer, Shug Avery, and, you know, good and bad things happen. It’s hard to describe. It’s hard to summarize.
WHISKEY JENNY: It is, yeah. I think it’s important to know it is epistolary, if you haven’t read it before.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. It’s also a pretty quick read.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it is.
GIN JENNY: Because it’s in letters, so it zips by very quickly.
WHISKEY JENNY: And I think it’s about this character growing and living her life.
GIN JENNY: Growing into herself and discovering who she is and what she wants.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.
GIN JENNY: So this is one of my—certainly one of my top three favorite books, and I depending on the mood I’m in, I’ve said this is my most favorite book in the world. But my really favorite thing about it is that, although it contains a lot of suffering and many people treating each other with cruelty, I think it’s mainly about people’s capacity to change and grow.
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m nodding enthusiastically.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yeah, good. I don’t want to say redemption, because I don’t think Alice Walker gives her characters quite that much of a break. But I think that she makes space for people to change themselves. And we see other characters recognizing that, which I think is really lovely.
Like Celie’s husband is an awful person, and awful to her. And late in the book, she sees him changing himself. And she doesn’t say, like, I forgive you for hurting me. But she’s not scared of him, and she spends time with him because she wants to, and they develop a friendship.
The capacity for people to recognize when they’ve made mistakes and use that to change their behavior and change who they are is something that I don’t see super often in real life. So it has always meant a lot to me to see it in this book.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, and the capacity to recognize that in others, too. I don’t know, I think I would call it—maybe not redemption, but at least on the path towards redemption. But I think that it’s hard to throw that word around, because it gets overused. And the way that it’s written about, it’s not earned, and it’s not handled right. But I think it’s so impressive in this book that she gives them the space to get on that path, but doesn’t belittle any of the awful things that they did. It’s such an impressive fine line to walk narratively, and also as a human.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, it really is. And then the other side of that is that I don’t think that Alice Walker demands forgiveness from her characters. There’s this scene—oh, and it’s so good. It’s one of my favorite scenes in the book. I’m probably going to say everything’s my favorite, but I really love this book.
So Celie’s daughter-in-law, Sophia, very late in the book, she’s talking to Eleanor Jane, who is a white woman that she helped to raise. And they’re talking about Eleanor Jane’s son. And Sophia, over the course of Eleanor Jane’s life, has been treated with remarkable, astonishing cruelty and contempt by Eleanor Jane’s family. But this is many years ago that this happened, and Eleanor Jane is like, oh, here’s my baby. Don’t you love my baby? And Sophia’s like, no, I don’t. I don’t love your baby. I don’t care about your baby. He’s going to grow up, he’s going to treat me badly and treat my children badly, and I don’t have the space for him in my life. So Eleanor Jane is all miffed.
I think it’s a great scene that Sophia does not owe anything to this family. She doesn’t owe them forgiveness for what they’ve done to her. And she doesn’t even owe this kid who was nice to her anything in regards to her and her baby. And I appreciate Alice Walker making the space for both of those things, that you don’t have to forgive people, but you also can.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I thought it was so impressive. You know that that scene, handled by a white author, would have gone totally different. And Eleanor Jane would have been the main character of this book, and she’d be all white savior-y. Yeah, it would have been awful. But yeah, it’s so beautiful.
Sophia, she’s—all the characters, many characters are amazing in this book, and Sophia is among the most amazing, I would say. She was just so fascinating to read about. And yeah, she doesn’t owe Eleanor Jane anything. And Eleanor Jane sort of seems like she thinks that Sophia should be grateful that Eleanor Jane was nice, and then later realizes that she needs to ask why Sophia was in that house in the first place. And it’s not because she wanted to be there. It’s because she was forced to be there. So check yourself, Eleanor Jane.
But then I also really appreciated that later on, it sort of in passing mentioned that Eleanor Jane is now helping out with Sophia’s child. And again, Sophia is not forced to offer her forgiveness, and she’s also not forced to be like, yeah, Eleanor Jane is redeeming herself. That’s a choice that Eleanor Jane could make in the future.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, this book really does not try and make a tidy bow around anyone’s morality, and I really, really appreciate that. Things don’t cancel each other out.
WHISKEY JENNY: And Sophia also is like, and you know what? I don’t care. It’s helpful to have her now, but I’m not the one looking for redemption, she is. So if she stops it, that’s no skin off my back. And it was just like—[LAUGHTER] yeah, I really appreciated it.
GIN JENNY: Like you said, I love so many characters in this book. I feel like Sofia gets all the best lines.
WHISKEY JENNY: Totally.
GIN JENNY: There’s one time—oh, God, I think about this daily. Sophia is telling a story about Eleanor Jane’s family one time and how they find ways to be offended about everything and ruin her life in every possible way, even though they are ruining her life, they’re still like, why are you doing this? Why are you behaving this way? And she says, “white folks are a miracle of affliction.”
WHISKEY JENNY: A miracle of affliction.
GIN JENNY: Every day I think about it. I think she means they’re miraculous in how many ways they—we—can find to ruin other people’s lives. But I also like to think of it as miraculous in the ways we find to feel afflicted.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, that’s what I took it as
GIN JENNY: Even when we’re the ones causing and benefiting by the racial order.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, but to be like, oh poor me. Yeah.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. I truly do, I think about that almost every day.
WHISKEY JENNY: It is an amazing line. I feel like all the nice things I want to say about this book are the ways it could have gone wrong but it didn’t do. The task that it set for herself is so difficult. It could have gone so horribly wrong in so many different ways. And yet it didn’t, and it’s just such a testament to its author that it did not.
GIN JENNY: Yes. It’s so ambitious. It takes in the scope of so many years, and it takes on so many historical events. And ah, it’s incredible.
WHISKEY JENNY: Did your copy begin with a salty foreword from Alice Walker? [LAUGHTER] I want to say that I love the foreword, so I don’t want salty to come off as negative.
GIN JENNY: No, but now I’m jealous and I want one with a salty foreword!
WHISKEY JENNY: Basically it was like, it’s about religion, you fools! It begins with the words “Dear God.” [LAUGHTER] And it was amazing.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: That’s so good.
WHISKEY JENNY: I really liked it, and she had a particularly good sentence about what she thought the book was about. And normally I, you know—
GIN JENNY: Death of the author, et cetera.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, you know, it’s your thing and it needs to stand on its own, but I really liked this phrase that she said. “The book’s intent is to explore the difficult path of someone who starts out in life already a spiritual captive but who, through her own courage and the help of others, breaks free into the realization that she, like nature itself, is a radiant expression of the heretofore perceived as quite distant divine.”
GIN JENNY: Aw.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, isn’t that just really beautiful?
GIN JENNY: Yeah, and it ties into so many of my like notes about Celie’s character development. So yeah, she killed it. If that was her goal, she did it perfectly.
WHISKEY JENNY: And yeah, I’d recommend checking out the foreword.
GIN JENNY: I’m actually on the hunt for a—Whiskey Jenny.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, boy. Yeah, lay it on me.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: I just feel the time is right for a fancy reissue of The Color Purple in hardback with supplementary material. They can choose. This foreword, some other stuff, I don’t know.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. This foreword’s great. I highly recommend it.
GIN JENNY: But I don’t have a copy that’s hardback with a dust jacket, and I’m sad about that. And they just did The Chosen recently, and that was great for me. So I just think The Color Purple should get similar treatment.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. As I mentioned, I was ready to be like, it was good but this is not the time to read it, because I’m depressed about everything in the world. But actually it was the time to read it, because it is ultimately quite beautiful and hopeful. So yeah, I agree. Now’s the time to reissue it. Who should we write?
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: I’ll find out who her publisher is and be like, hey. Hey. Hey. I’ll just write them every month and be like, in these troubled times, sincerely yours.
OK, can we talk about Shug Avery?
WHISKEY JENNY: We definitely can.
GIN JENNY: Shug Avery is one of the greatest characters in all of literature. I love her so much. From the first second she shows up, she’s so much herself. Oh, she’s great. She’s so great.
WHISKEY JENNY: Can I just say, not having read this book, based on what I’d heard about it, I was not expecting this book to be gay.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. Super gay.
WHISKEY JENNY: And it definitely is. I feel like it does not come out often in summaries of it, and I feel like that is weird.
GIN JENNY: I’m surprised I didn’t tell you, because I feel like I talk about that often.
WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t think you did, because I was like oh, OK.
GIN JENNY: I’m so sorry.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: But you and the world doesn’t talk about it very much, either. I don’t mean you specifically, but like—
GIN JENNY: No, I agree. It’s strange to me.
WHISKEY JENNY: As you said, it’s a classic of American literature. I definitely heard of The Color Purple before, but I did not know that it had this beautiful relationship in it, so. Just weird. Anyway, sorry. Yeah, she is awesome.
GIN JENNY: She’s awesome. She’s a singer, she’s a nightclub singer. And she has had a long term, on and off affair with Celie’s husband, so she comes to stay at their house. And she really is the first person after Celie’s sister Nettie to see Celie. Like, everyone else kind of treats Celie like background, like she’s wallpaper.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I think Sophia, too, sort of at the same time.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, you’re right.
WHISKEY JENNY: You know, I don’t want to discount that. But yeah, Shug definitely comes from a different place.
GIN JENNY: But I think that’s when you see Celie start to think of herself as someone worthy of being seen and appreciated and liked, and then she starts thinking about the life she wants, and what kind of person she wants to be, and what she wants to do. And so for that reason, it’s just—oh, it’s such a lovely romance, even though, you know, there’s ups and downs.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.
GIN JENNY: But Shug really loves her in a very open-hearted way that Celie has very little experience with, and that was—I get pretty emotional about it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it is really beautiful. There’s a beautiful scene early on in their relationship, when Shug is getting over her illness and sings for the first time since, down at a juke joint. And she dedicates a song to Celie that she wrote and names after her, because she said Celie scratched it out of her head when Celie was taking care of her. And Celie is really moved by this, and I was really moved by it.
Talking about all the difficult tasks that this book set for itself, one of the tasks it set for itself is the main character’s horrible husband’s mistress comes to live with them, and then a relationship builds between the wife and the mistress. It’s something that you are rooting for, while never, ever thinking that Celie was downtrodden for allowing this to happen or for opening her home to this woman. That’s a really impressive thing to do.
GIN JENNY: Reading it now—and also always, but especially now—Shug Avery is this type of character—and the type of person exists—where regardless of their circumstance, they’re just entirely themselves. And Shug Avery is that kind of character. And she lives her life how she wants to, and it works. Like, you know she’s been through some stuff for sure. But she gets the life she wants, and it really means a lot for me to see that, and see her not be punished in the book for living this kind of life and being this kind of person. I felt really strongly about that.
It reminded me of, you know in Confessions of the Fox, when he says that the spider web people are living in the year We Escaped? That’s what Shug Avery seems to be doing. She seems to be living in the year We Escaped. And it’s just a hell of a thing to see for a queer black lady singer in 1930s America, and I feel like Alice Walker pulled that off so well. And it was just really meaningful to me.
WHISKEY JENNY: And in general I think, in a book where so many terrible things happen and so many terrible things have already happened to our characters, it never feels cruel. It never feels unkind to its characters. It never feels it’s reveling in their misery, in a way that a lot of books that contain such dark things can. And I really appreciate that, as well. I just feel like all the couple of things about the book where I was like, oh no, come on, that’s too much, it then turned around and did something with it that I was like, oh, all right.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: You got me.
WHISKEY JENNY: You got me, yeah. Like I really thought the relationship with Sophia at the beginning was going to go somewhere different, because as we mentioned, Celie tells Sophia’s husband to beat her. But then they talk about it and she realizes her mistake, and they develop a relationship. And I really didn’t expect it to go that way.
So I guess this is a spoiler, but I was also really mad towards the end when you think that her sister Nettie has died for real, not because her horrible husband Albert hid all the letters.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, we’ll come back to that.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, definitely. But I was like, no, book, that’s too much. Come on, I really wanted them to—come on, come on. But then sort of came to an acceptance of it as going on a tiny grief journey. It’s impressive that as a reader you sort of go on this same journey of grief, and then anger, and then acceptance. Like, OK, well I guess not everything has to work out great.
GIN JENNY: It’s World War II.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s World War II, these things happen, and Celie is dealing with it, and if she can be eventually content then I can, too. And then Nettie totally comes back at the end it was so beautiful!
GIN JENNY: I had forgotten that they had that fake out. And when I got to it when I was reading it, I almost—I was so close to texting you and being like, you’re going to get to a place where it seems like Nettie is dead after all, but she’s not, so don’t worry.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, my note at the time was, “oh, come on!” [LAUGHTER] I was really worried.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, well, so another amazingly beautiful and heartbreaking thing about this book is that Celie’s little sister Nettie, Celie always really, really protects her.
WHISKEY JENNY: Ugh. Sorry.
GIN JENNY: No, it’s really—the beginning of this book is really rough. The book starts out with Celie being raped and impregnated twice by her father. And she’s constantly trying to think of ways to protect Nettie from having that same experience. And she just does everything to make sure that Nettie has a future. I’m getting goose bumps even talking about it, because it’s really lovely.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it’s amazing.
GIN JENNY: They’re separated, and Nettie promises to write and then Celie never gets any letters from her. And it turns out her husband has been keeping all of Nettie’s letters for decades.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Yeah, that’s what’s up.
GIN JENNY: It is awful. It’s awful.
WHISKEY JENNY: What a rotten, rotten soul to do that. And then that’s the same character later on you’re like, you know, she finds space for.
GIN JENNY: She calls him her people.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.
GIN JENNY: That’s kind of when Celie is able to assert her independence from him and really go and chase after the life she wants with Shug. Which is, it’s a hard couple of chapters to read, because she’s so angry. And we haven’t really seen her experience her anger in the past. It’s so powerful for her—and me, a very emotional person reading this book in 2018. But to talk about that, and to name his sin to him was just a lot.
WHISKEY JENNY: It is a lot. It is the first time that she’s angry. She’s talked before to Shug about, she has all these reasons to be angry, but she’s not. She’s just numb. So yeah, it’s incredibly powerful to read that anger.
GIN JENNY: And Nettie’s letters are a whole kind of other section of the book that’s a totally different thing, which is also really interesting. So Celie’s two children were given up for adoption, and it turns out they ended up living with this missionary family. And Nettie goes to stay with them. She goes to them after she has to leave Celie, and they end up as missionaries in Africa.
They’re saying with an African tribe called the Olinka. It’s not totally clear where in Africa they are. I know they start out in Liberia and then travel from Liberia, but I’m not sure exactly where they travel to. But it talks about the Olinka village being torn down to make room for rubber plants and the infrastructure that’s required for rubber plants, and then that the government requires them to pay rent on their own land.
Reading that now, I was like, oh yeah, that absolutely did happen. And at the time when I first read this book, I didn’t know really much about how corporations expanded to Africa and displaced indigenous people. And it was interesting to know with a little more context just how ambitious the scope of this book is, I guess.
WHISKEY JENNY: Totally covers religion and colonialism and trauma. How did you do all that in this short little book?
GIN JENNY: It’s a short little book! And it’s even shorter than it looks, because a lot of the letters, they won’t even cover a whole page sometimes.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s the spacing issue. [LAUGHTER] But no, when Nettie was talking about, they visit London, and they see all the beautiful things that England has stolen from other countries, it was just such a subtle callout that I was like, oh damn!
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yup! And then, I don’t know if this is jumping ahead too much, but their reunion at the end is so good. Like, when something’s been built up for the course of an entire book, it can be hard to meet that bar. But oh my God, it’s so good.
WHISKEY JENNY: And they’ve each built a family for themselves, despite everything.
GIN JENNY: I cry every time I read this scene. I first read this book probably when I was 17, 16 or 17. So I reread it, eh, once a year since then. So I’ve read it a lot. And this scene always just kills me. It’s so good.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s amazing. They just fall into each other’s arms and hold each other for a while.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. Celie says they knock each other down, which like, oh man. I’m tearing up.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. It’s amazing.
GIN JENNY: [TEARY] It’s so good.
WHISKEY JENNY: They get to join their lives now.
GIN JENNY: Even though it’s so cruelly unfair that they weren’t able to have these lives together all along, still they’ve each gone on these separate journeys and now they’re able to—ooh. Here we go. Here come the waterworks.
WHISKEY JENNY: And yet it successfully—it’s not saccharine at all.
GIN JENNY: No, not at all. Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: And that’s another way it could have gone wrong and it didn’t. I have a couple of other ways in which it could have gone wrong and didn’t.
GIN JENNY: Oh, good. Well, tell me those.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I think it could have—Celie definitely goes on a journey. But I think it could have denied her agency at the beginning. Because she definitely, she’s still a human being at the beginning, and she does have agency, and she is making choices to protect Nettie. And I think the book recognizes that that’s its own form of resistance, basically, and doesn’t dictate the ways in which you have to resist.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, and there’s so many different women in this book, all choosing different ways of living their life under this oppression. And so yeah, there’s like different models of how to—not even models, but there’s different examples of how to live your life. And yeah, like you said, she doesn’t valorize one above the others.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, and I really appreciated that. And I also really appreciated that it does not belittle Celie’s intelligence.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, there are some characters later on in the book that are like, don’t you want to talk differently? Don’t you want to talk like everyone else? Don’t you want to honor Shug when she takes you out?
GIN JENNY: Yeah, sound less country, and this and that.
WHISKEY JENNY: And you’re reading these letters in a very—
GIN JENNY: Yeah, it’s in dialect.
WHISKEY JENNY: And Celie is like, Shug isn’t embarrassed by me. I’m not embarrassed by me. No, I’m fine with the way that I am, while also not being like, no one needs education ever! It’s a pretty pro-education book, but it’s also like Celie—
GIN JENNY: She’s good where she’s at.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I’m just so impressed.
GIN JENNY: Yay! [LAUGHTER] I’m so happy. This book means a lot to me, and I’m so glad you liked it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, no, I really did. Great Forcening pick.
GIN JENNY: Yay. So what’s your Forcening pick for me?
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, all right. [LAUGHTER] I just feel like I have a harder time with the Forcening than with the Hatening, because you’ve read everything basically. There’s nothing I have to offer you.
GIN JENNY: That’s so false. That’s ridiculous. But continue.
WHISKEY JENNY: And then also you picked The Color Purple, which is pretty beautiful and amazing and a classic of American literature. So I was like, I have to pick something that’s also a classic of American literature, because I can’t pick another frivolous choice like I did last time. But that’s what I’m doing. I’m picking another frivolous choice.
GIN JENNY: OK, because I was going to say, I feel like you definitely can pick a frivolous choice. This was a pretty heavy one.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I thought maybe it would be good to have a balance. Yeah, you know, I guess I’m the frivolous one. I don’t know. But we’re reading Boat Squad John.
GIN JENNY: Oh my God! Oh my God. Boat Squad John. That sounds great.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. When I was like looking through my list, that was the one that I got really excited about. I was like, oh, I could reread Boat Squad John!
GIN JENNY: Can you tell the listeners its actual title and author?
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s called Ready to Roll by Suzanne Brockmann. And I hope you like it.
GIN JENNY: I have every expectation that I will love it.
WHISKEY JENNY: So yeah, so we’re reading Boat Squad John.
This has been the Reading the End bookcast with the demographically similar Jennys. You can visit the blog at readingtheend.com. You can follow us on Twitter @readingtheend. We’re both on Goodreads as Whiskey Jenny and Gin Jenny. And you can email us, please do, at readingtheend@gmail.com. We love hearing from listeners. If you like what we do, you can become a podcast patron at Patreon.com/readingtheend. And if you’re listening to us on iTunes, please leave us a review.
Until next time a quote from The Ensemble, by Aja Gabel. “It seemed to Jana to be more classic than that. A person falls for the dream of a place, for life that could be lived there, for something they were not but might be. It was about the shimmering itself, that almost-visible stuff that hovered just above the hot pavement of your life. Potential, aspiration, accomplishment.”
[GLASSES CLINK]THEME SONG: You don’t judge a book by its cover. Page one’s not a much better view. And shortly you’re gonna discover the middle won’t mollify you. So whether whiskey’s your go-to or you’re like my gin-drinking friend, no matter what you are imbibing, you’ll be better off in the end reading the end.
[BEEP]GIN JENNY: The greater Mordor area. The greater, larger—it doesn’t matter. [LAUGHTER] I’m sorry. I was like, I want to make more jokes! But it’s not necessary. The joke has been made.
WHISKEY JENNY: It was a good joke.
[LAUGHTER] [BEEP]GIN JENNY: I said scene twice. I’m going to edit that.
It’s different.
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m sorry. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: I’m my best podcasting self today.
WHISKEY JENNY: You are.
[BEEP]WHISKEY JENNY: OK, the thing is small, but that place is in the heart of fucking Mordor. [LAUGHTER] One does not simply walk into Mordor!
[LAUGHTER] [BEEP] —singing in a jukebox. Nope. She’s singing in a—[LAUGHTER] She’s become miniature and she’s stuck inside a jukebox. [LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: I just pictured those little guys in Shining Time Station.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it takes a real turn, but kudos to Alice Walker.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: OK, I’m sorry. Go ahead.
WHISKEY JENNY: No, that’s on me. [BEEP]