Happy holidays, podworld! The Jennys are here to suggest gifts for you to buy for your loved ones — not just those who love books but those who love books slightly less than infinity! Wow such variety, we are podcast geniuses.
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.
1:04 – What we’re reading
2:40 – Jennys’ Holiday Gift Guide
3:30 – Gifts for listeners’ loved ones
What We’re Reading
World War Z, Max Brooks
Wives of the Leopard: Gender, Politics, and Culture in the Kingdom of Dahomey, Edna Bay
Whiskey Jenny’s Gift Ideas
A subscription to The Second Shelf
Prints from The Great British Baking Show (by Tom Hovey)
Gmorning, Gnight: Little Pep Talks for Me & You, by Lin-Manuel Miranda
the cast recordings of Hadestown and Six: The Musical
Gin Jenny’s Gift Ideas
postcards by Paul Lewin and the Public Domain Review
Castle Hangnail, by Ursula Vernon
a mulled wine kit!
book embossers from The Print Mint
Book Gifts for Listeners
Ellen’s 11-year-old:
Escape to Witch Mountain, Alexander Key
Dactyl Hill Squad, Daniel Jose Older
Larklight, Philip Reeve
Book of Enchantments, Patricia C. Wrede
Ellen’s older kid:
Archer’s Goon or The Dark Lord of Derkholm, Diana Wynne Jones
The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy, Mackenzi Lee
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (novel), Shannon Hale and Dean Hale
Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple (with the spoiler that Whiskey Jenny recommends)
Ellen’s mom:
A Curious Beginning, Deanna Raybourn
Vanessa and Her Sister, Priya Parmar
The Sirens Sang of Murder, Sarah Caudwell
Magpie Murders, Anthony Horowitz
Chelsea:
Amberlough, Lara Elena Donnelly
Lonely Werewolf Girl, Martin Millar
The Ensemble, Aja Gabel
I’ll Give You the Sun, Jandy Nelson
Good and Mad, Rebecca Traister
Renay’s mom:
The Convenient Marriage, Georgette Heyer
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Helen Simonson
Overturned, Lamar Giles
Six Wakes, Mur Lafferty
Renay’s partner:
The Liminal People, Ayize Jama-Everett
The Rook, Daniel O’Malley
(The Hot Ones on YouTube)
Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey
Endurance, Alfred Lansing
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
Renay’s friend:
Fingersmith, Sarah Waters
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt
White Tears, Hari Kunzru
Confessions of the Fox, Jordy Rosenberg
Jane Doe, Victoria Helen Stone
I Can’t Date Jesus, Michael Arceneaux
Glynis’s husband:
Karen Memory, Elizabeth Bear
Patsy Walker, AKA Hellcat
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (comics)
The Vela, Yoon-Ha Lee, Rivers Solomon, S. L. Huang, and Becky Chambers
Endurance, Alfred Lansing
Mars Evacuees, Sophia MacDougall
Glynis:
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, Holly Black
Pyromantic, Lish McBride
Zero Sun Game, S. L. Huang
Borderline, Mishell Baker
Maureen’s mom:
Love Walked In, Marisa de los Santos
The Beautiful Ones, Silvia Moreno-Garcia
A Curious Beginning, Deanna Raybourn
All Creatures Great and Small, James Herriot
The Camelot Caper, Elizabeth Peters
David’s wife:
The Spellman Files, Lisa Lutz
The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, Hannah Tinti
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler
Fangirl, Rainbow Rowell
Free-floating recs from Whiskey Jenny:
The Mothers, Brit Bennett
The Color Purple, Alice Walker
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: [WITH SLEIGH BELLS] 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 to a special holiday edition of 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 with one of our favorite episodes of every year, our holiday gift guide episode!
WHISKEY JENNY: Hooray!
GIN JENNY: We are going to give some general suggestions of gifts to buy your loved ones this holiday season, and then we have some targeted book gift suggestions for listeners who submitted to our holiday gift guide submission form. So we’re really excited to do that. But before we get into all that, Whiskey Jenny, what are you reading?
WHISKEY JENNY: I just started World War Z, by Max Brooks.
GIN JENNY: [GASP] Fun!
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s one of the ones—yeah—that was on our lovely starter pack that Renay made for us. Very, very much just started, so we shall see.
GIN JENNY: Cool.
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m enjoying the format, which is sort of historical documents.
GIN JENNY: Yes. I love that.
WHISKEY JENNY: So that’s cool, but I feel like I haven’t gotten to “and here’s the story” part, so I’m sort of waiting for what the story is going to be. So far it’s just like, cool, there’s zombies.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: There’s not exactly one overarching story. It’s more testimonies from individual people about different elements of the zombie war.
WHISKEY JENNY: Do people come back?
GIN JENNY: Maybe. I’m not sure. Not necessarily. It’s almost more like a novel in stories, which I don’t typically like, but I enjoyed this one a lot.
WHISKEY JENNY: Interesting. Well, great.
GIN JENNY: Just so you know what to expect. Like you, I suspect, I’m trying to finish some of—or at least make some progress on—some of my reading resolutions that I didn’t do this year.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t know what you’re talking about. I always finish mine. In June. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, I’m doing the same thing, yes.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yeah, so I did not do my African history reading goal this year. So I just started Wives of the Leopard, by Edna Bay, which is a history of women in the Dahomey Kingdom, which is now Benin. And it’s really good so far. It’s really interesting. And I’m not even to—this is all pre-1700s that I’m in, which typically in histories of African countries are the parts that we have the least historical records of, written historical records. So a lot of it’s from oral history and archaeological findings. So it can be a little more general. And already, even with that, it’s already super, super interesting.
WHISKEY JENNY: Wow. Cool.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. Well, do you want to get into our holiday gift guide for all listeners?
WHISKEY JENNY: I do, I do.
GIN JENNY: I’m super excited for my choices.
WHISKEY JENNY: Me, too. At first I was like, I don’t have anything. And then I had a bunch, and I had to cut it down.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Well, do you want to go first?
WHISKEY JENNY: Sure. So my first recommendation is The Second Shelf, the quarterly, which I just discovered.
GIN JENNY: Ooh.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. So a bookstore was opened in London called The Second Shelf. And it is to solely promote rare and first editions and collectible books and such by women authors.
GIN JENNY: Neat.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. So that’s cool. I think the name comes from a Meg Wolitzer essay that I did not read, but apparently was interesting. And the bookstore in general is sort of trying to correct the fact that a lot of old first edition copies by female authors are traditionally undervalued in the book collecting world, which is not a world I know a lot about.
GIN JENNY: Gosh, me neither.
WHISKEY JENNY: So I’m excited for that. And then they’re putting out a quarterly, which I have asked for myself for Christmas.
GIN JENNY: Ooh.
WHISKEY JENNY: Also because I feel like getting subscriptions to things is really fun because you get the gift all throughout the year.
GIN JENNY: Yes.
WHISKEY JENNY: Their literary quarterly is sort of half catalog and half literary quarterly. So I think that’s an interesting format that I’m excited to read about. It’ll be authors writing about books you can buy in the bookstore.
GIN JENNY: Cool. Oh, that’s really neat.
WHISKEY JENNY: From what I understand. And the copy that I flipped through—I found a copy—looks very interestingly designed, too.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, awesome. I love it. OK, since you started with a bookish one, I will start with one of my bookish ones, too. One of my resolutions for this past year, which I did really well at until about October, was to send five lovely notes each month. So I’m always on the lookout for beautiful stationery. And one of my favorite book covers for 2019 features art by Paul Lewin. And I liked the cover so much I went to his website, and he sells a set of postcards, different ones of his paintings. And they’re beautiful. I feel like everyone has a stationery lover on their gift list.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Maybe it’s you. But who’s to say?
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: And then the other postcard source that I was going to recommend is the Public Domain Review which is this really great online review that looks through old books and finds really beautiful art in them. And it’s really cool, and you can get postcard packs for that, as well. And yeah, I recommend it very much.
WHISKEY JENNY: Those both sound really interesting. My next one, this is for all of the fans of The Great British Baking Show.
GIN JENNY: Nice.
WHISKEY JENNY: You can buy prints of the beautiful illustrations of everyone’s baked goods.
GIN JENNY: What!
WHISKEY JENNY: Which I just discovered. I know, I know! Isn’t that so cool?
GIN JENNY: Yes!
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s been the same Illustrator throughout the whole show, and you can buy prints.
GIN JENNY: How cool.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I found that out was like, what? This is great.
GIN JENNY: Oh, that’s wonderful. OK, so my next one—this is probably my silliest one—is Giant Microbes, which is this company that sells soft, plush versions of microbes. So there’s plush versions of all kinds of nasty things. Like my aunt had cancer, so I got her a stuffed cancer cell that turned inside out into a healthy cell.
WHISKEY JENNY: Aw, that’s lovely.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. So you can get all kinds of different germs in stuffed format. And they’re all modeled on what the actual germ or creature looks like. Or you can also get types of cells, like a red blood cell or a platelet. They’re super cute. I really, really like them a lot.
WHISKEY JENNY: How cute. For all the science lovers.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: So my next one is a calendar poster that I found.
GIN JENNY: Ooh.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s by someone who does a lot of fan art. So it is a poster with all 12 months on it, and each month is a classic book cover, but it’s punned with the name of the month. So for example, it’s February 451 instead of Fahrenheit 451. So and they’re all very fun puns. The only downside I find to it is that it’s a poster and not a calendar that you flip. Because I love flipping a calendar and getting to the next one. It’s such a fun surprise. But you could always hack it, and just literally hack into it and cut it up. [LAUGHTER] And then, you know, just have one up at a time.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, for sure. I am next recommending Castle Hangnail, by Ursula Vernon. Last year I was buying Mars Evacuees, by Sophia MacDougall, for everyone in sight. And this year it is the exact same with Ursula Vernon’s Castle Hangnail, and for the same reasons. It’s a really sweet middle grade book about a little girl who’s trying to be the official wicked witch at Castle Hangnail. And all the minions are trying to help her and they form a wonderful bond, but then a real, proper wicked witch shows up to claim the castle.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh no.
GIN JENNY: Oh no! It’s so sweet. And it has really delightful illustrations, too, so these illustrations of all the little minions. It’s just unbelievably charming. I want everyone to read it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Aw. It sounds adorable.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: OK, well my book that I’m recommending is Good Morning, Good Night, by Lin-Manuel Miranda, which is a collection of his inspirational tweets that he does at morning and at night. It’s got cute little illustrations, and I feel like it would be good for someone A, who loves Hamilton and Lin-Manuel Miranda, but also maybe someone that you don’t know that well. It’s a good sort of general, like, here’s a nice thing present, I think.
GIN JENNY: I have a good gift for someone you don’t know that well, too, so I’ll do that one next.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, great. OK.
GIN JENNY: So my next one is a mulled wine kit that you make yourself. And I love this idea, because I love kits of things. So you can typically go to a spice store and buy mulled wine spices, but alternately, you can look up a recipe online and get the spices yourself. So all you do is just wrap up a dose of the spices in cheesecloth, tie it off with string, and attach it to a bottle of red wine. And then you give that to someone, and all they have to do is add apple cider and heat the whole thing up. And it’s very easy to do. It’s warm, and comforting, and seasonal. I love mulled wine. I’m so excited it’s mulled wine season.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s mulled wine season. Hooray!
GIN JENNY: Hooray! And it’s a good hostess gift, too, if you’re going to parties.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, yeah, what a good idea. So my last one is musicals. They’re both musicals. It’s two musicals.
GIN JENNY: Wonderful.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s two cast recordings that I just discovered and that I am really into. One of them is the cast recording of Six, the Musical, which is the six wives of Henry VIII as if they’re in a girl pop band. So those are all really fun jams singing about English history, and definitely in the vein of Spice Girls. And then also, there is a cast recording of Hadestown, which is a sort of folk Americana musical about the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.
GIN JENNY: I did not realize that Hadestown was folk Americana. That makes me 10,000 percent more interested in it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. So isn’t that cool?
GIN JENNY: Yes.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s sort of a Great Depression era-inspired post-apocalyptic setting, according to the Wikipedia page. So yeah, that was in London. It’s coming to Broadway soon, so I’m very excited about that. But yeah, those are both sort of literary stories, and depending on what kind of music people like, perhaps you could buy them the album.
GIN JENNY: Sounds great.
WHISKEY JENNY: So it’s actually—Hadestown, the music and lyrics are by Anaïs Mitchell, who, if you are a Whiskey Jenny-stan, you will know from her album of Child ballads, which are old English folk songs. Her and Jefferson Hamer so it’s all just beautiful duets between them, and it’s very acoustic and lovely. So check that out, as well.
GIN JENNY: Man, good for her.
WHISKEY JENNY: I know, right? She’s killing it. Yeah. OK, what’s your last one?
GIN JENNY: OK, my last one is the nerdiest one on my list, but I stand by it. Picture this.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, it’s such a journey. I’m ready.
GIN JENNY: All your books that you own are embossed on the title page with your very name.
WHISKEY JENNY: Whoa.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, so Etsy has a lot of custom book embossers available. It’s a real rabbit hole, but the store that I picked out selling book embossers is The Print Mint, which is based in Utah. They have really cute, simple designs for embossers. And I just really love the idea—I mean, I love book plates, obviously, but I love this, too. It would be really hard for me to choose between book plates and embossers. But yeah, it’s way to personalize your books that does maybe feel as intrusive as a book plate, and it would just make me feel really fancy.
WHISKEY JENNY: Same.
GIN JENNY: And it’s a good thing for the extremely nerdy book lover in your life. [LAUGHTER] All right. So do you want to get to our listener submissions?
WHISKEY JENNY: I do.
GIN JENNY: I’m so excited.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yay. So our first one is from Ellen, and we have several people that we’re recommending for Ellen. So first up is, she says, “My 11-year-old is making the transition to ze/zir pronouns. Ze says gender roles are stupid, and we all need to use the letter Z more.” Cosign. “Ze loves an adventure with a dragon. Space is also good. Ze has read so many dragon adventures that space is probably safer in terms of finding books ze hasn’t read yet. Ze also loves Ursula Vernon,” which Gin Jenny just mentioned. “As do we all, because we’re rational people,” says Ellen. So what do you have for Ellen’s 11-year-old.
GIN JENNY: OK, so Ellen, A of all, your kid sounds great. And Ursula Vernon does indeed rock. Has ze ever read Escape to Witch Mountain, by Alexander Key? It’s not exactly a space book, but it’s a fun middle grade slash young adult book about these two kids with special powers who don’t exactly remember where they came from, but it’s possible they came from another planet. And they’re kind of on the run from people who want to use them. There’s two books in the series. I loved them when I was younger, I read them infinity times, so maybe your kid would, too But they don’t have space.
And then my second—also non-space, I’m so sorry, but nearly dragons—recommendation, has ze read Dactyl Hill Squad, by Daniel Jose Older? Because that book sounds really good. It’s about dinosaurs in the Civil War era. And I think these kids are kind of foundlings, and they settle in an independent community of black and brown folks who are keeping each other safe in the turbulent times. And there are dinosaurs, which are very much like dragons.
WHISKEY JENNY: They’re so close, yeah. They’re basically dragons.
GIN JENNY: That’s what I got.
WHISKEY JENNY: OK. Those both sound really interesting. I’ve never read either one. My first one is Larklight, by Phillip Reeve, which is set in space, and it also is very steampunky, in that it’s space, but set in the 1800s, I think, so it feels like maybe there could also be dragons. [LAUGHTER] There are not. It’s just space. But yeah, I just wanted a lovely story that we read recently, but I think it would be very good for that age.
And then my other one is, I think last year we recommended the Dealing with Dragons series by Patricia Wrede, which I stand by that recommendation.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Oh god, so same.
WHISKEY JENNY: But I thought a slightly more obscure book by Patricia Wrede that also has some dragons is The Book of Enchantments, which is a collection of short stories by Patricia Wrede all involving different kinds of magic or different magical creatures. And I remember really loving this book when I was younger. And I also feel like short fiction for younger readers just isn’t really a thing, so I appreciated that it was a new kind of format.
GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah, I super agree with that one. I really loved that book, too, when I was a kid. OK, awesome. So the next one from Ellen. “My older daughter is applying to colleges and is feeling really stressed out and run down. She needs a super fun, funny read. I promise to combine it with some of her favorite tea and chocolate and several dozen pats on the head, and maybe a weighted blanket. She’s ace and aro and does not like romance in her stories at all.” Oh my gosh, I am so sorry that she’s applying for colleges. That is the hardest time.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yes. Good luck.
GIN JENNY: I wish her the best of luck. I think this is the perfect time for some Diana Wynne Jones, even though they’re for probably slightly younger readers than she is, but I have really found that Diana Wynne Jones’s books age well. So the two that I picked out are Archer’s Goon and Dark Lord of Derkholm. Archer’s Goon is really strange and hard to describe, but you’ll just have to take my word for it that it’s very fun. And Dark Lord of Derkholm is kind of a send up of high fantasy novels and their tropes.
And then also, I’m reading The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy, by Mackenzi Lee, which is about an ace girl in the Victorian, I want to say, age? The 1800s. And she’s going on all these adventures, trying to become a doctor, but also hanging out with pirates. Maybe there’s dragons. Who knows? So yeah, those are my choices.
WHISKEY JENNY: Gosh, I remember reading the first book in that series. So I’m really excited to hear that second one [INAUDIBLE]
GIN JENNY: I like this one better.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, great. I can’t wait. I had a couple of issues with that first one, but that character was really interesting.
GIN JENNY: I feel like the first one had some tonal strangeness, and this one, to me, just had a more consistent tone and feel throughout.
WHISKEY JENNY: OK, so I think for the older daughter—and again, good luck applying for colleges—
GIN JENNY: Oh my gosh.
WHISKEY JENNY: —is The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, by—
GIN JENNY: Nice!
WHISKEY JENNY: —Shannon Hale and Dean Hale, which I think also skews a bit younger than a teen, but I read it this year as an adult and loved it.
GIN JENNY: And I think times of stress are a good time to age down your reading.
WHISKEY JENNY: Agreed, yeah. And it’s just so lovely and comforting and sweet and cute and funny. So I think that and a cup of tea is just what the doctor ordered.
And then I would also say with, a couple of caveats, Where’d You Go, Bernadette. And I would say only if your daughter is fine with emotional spoilers, in which case I would recommend this with the spoiler that the mother is fine and the mother did not mean to leave her daughter. But I think if you know that, it is sort of a fun epistolary style funny book.
GIN JENNY: Agreed. Great choices.
WHISKEY JENNY: So last up from Ellen, she says, “I’d also love your recommendations for my mom. She’s 72 and slowly starting to retire and travel more. She loves the British royal family and mysteries. She’s an avid reader.” So my first one for her is A Curious Beginning, by Deanna Raybourn, which is—
GIN JENNY: You know, I almost picked that, and I was like, nah, Whiskey Jenny’s got this.
WHISKEY JENNY: I got it. I got it, yeah. Well, thank you. It’s both a mystery and the British royal family is involved. And I just found it very, very charming and sort of comforting in the way that that sort of period of book can be.
And then my second one is Vanessa and Her Sister, by Priya Parmar. And I think the Britishness and the avid reader part of the recommendation is what is making me lean towards this. We read this for the podcast. And it’s also sort of a journal, epistolary style novel about Vanessa Bell and her sister, who is Virginia Woolf. And Gin Jenny, I think you didn’t think there was a lot of there there. But I found it enjoyable and a good look inside that period and intellectual group, and a fairly quick read, too.
GIN JENNY: OK, I’m picking out—I’m constantly recommending Sarah Caudwell’s mystery series, because I feel like I never hear of it anywhere. But it’s this very funny series. It’s only four mysteries and then she died, unfortunately, before writing any more. But they’re about these English lawyers who solve mysteries, and they’re very snarky and British and delightful.
And then my second recommendation was Magpie Murders, by Anthony Horowitz, which is about an editor of mystery novels who get the latest book from one of her authors. So you have the mystery that the author is writing, but the editor also begins to suspect that there’s a real life mystery involved in the manuscript.
WHISKEY JENNY: Is that Anthony Horowitz of Foyle’s War and New Blood?
GIN JENNY: Yes, Foyle’s War. Yes, yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, man. What a great content producer that person is. [LAUGHTER] Well, great. I had no idea, and I can’t wait to read that myself.
GIN JENNY: Yay! OK, our next one is from Chelsea. “These books are for me.” That is totally fine, Chelsea. “And I have to say, after the year 2018 has been, my brain is ready to do just about anything but reading. So I’m looking for a book that will spark my brain, give me happy sighs, and all the lines to highlight. Recent faves include In Other Lands, by Sarah Rees Brennan, A Duke by Default by Alyssa Cole, and Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward, by Gemma Hartley. Thank you so much for your help, Jennys, and thank you for being such intelligent, hilarious, kind, and generous ladies in this garbage year. I always look forward to listening.” That is so sweet that I almost didn’t read it, Chelsea, because I was too embarrassed.
WHISKEY JENNY: Aw, thanks, Chelsea. I did too, I was like, oh, she’s reading it!
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: I don’t know, should I edit it out?
WHISKEY JENNY: No, you should leave it! She did say it.
GIN JENNY: I know.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: And it was very nice of her to do so.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, it was super sweet. OK, so Chelsea, I’m going to recommend Amberlough, by Lara Elena Donnelly, which is a queer cabaret alternative history spy adventure. And then I’d also secondly recommend Lonely Werewolf Girl, by Martin Millar. He writes these very odd sci-fi fantasy books in London, set in London. And Lonely Werewolf Girl is very funny and charming, and, as is characteristic of Martin Millar’s writing, it’s very frank about the subject of anxiety and mental illness in general. So it is a fun read; there’s some dark subject matter, but treated relatively lightly. However a character in this book does do self-harm if that’s a trigger for anyone listening. Yeah, so those are my choices.
WHISKEY JENNY: Great. So mine are The Ensemble, by Aja Gabel, which I think we’ve talked about recently. And it’s about a string quartet and their relationship throughout the years. And I did have a moment of doubt, sort of in the middle, towards the end, that I wasn’t going to like it. But then I did. It really pulled through for me, and I should have remained hopeful. And I think we both thought it was very beautifully written and a lot of good emotional relationships between people.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. It felt kind of fanfic-ish.
WHISKEY JENNY: And in a similar vein of just good emotion writing is I’ll Give You the Sun, by Jandy Nelson.
GIN JENNY: Aw, yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Which we read a while ago for a podcast, but we haven’t brought up in a while, so I just wanted to—
GIN JENNY: Refresh everyone’s memory. Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. And I will say, I am also in the middle of reading Good and Mad, by Rebecca Traister, and that seems sort of along similar lines of Fed Up, so I would check that out if you’re feeling up for it.
GIN JENNY: Perfect.
WHISKEY JENNY: So next up, from Renay. She would like a book for Julia, her mom. “76 years old, likes gambling—sigh—cooking, and racist memes about the pyramids being built by aliens. Has watched the entirety of Stargate SG-1 Scandal, and The Great British Bake-Off, gets confused by complicated SFF—” Me too. [LAUGHTER] “Liked Imperial Radch?”
GIN JENNY: Yeah. It’s the Nicefox Gambit series.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, Nicefox. OK, great. “But had approximately—” Gosh. 9 billion—nope, that would be—yeah, 9 billion—
GIN JENNY: I think you can just say 9 billion.
WHISKEY JENNY: “Nine billion and some other numbers questions [LAUGHTER] about it. And [INAUDIBLE] to guess who answered them.” My guess is Renay, because Renay has also answered some questions for me.
So my recommendations are The Convenient Marriage, by Georgette Heyer, which I am currently relistening to on audiobook, read by Richard Armitage, because I love it a lot. And there’s some gameplay and gambling in it, so that might be enjoyable.
And then I would also say Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, because I think it’s just a sweet British romance. It’s sort of a second romance for people in their middle age, and it gives me the same sort of feelings as The Great British Bake-Off.
GIN JENNY: OK, so for my picks, I don’t know she ever reads YA, but one book that I really liked was Overturned, by Lamar Giles, which is about a teenage gambler and poker genius who’s trying to find out who framed her dad for murder. It’s fast paced, and it’s really fun, but just if your mom ever likes YA, which I don’t know if she does.
And then, if she likes science fiction but not complicated science fiction, I thought Mur Lafferty’s Six Wakes might be a good choice. I really enjoyed it. It’s a good mystery, but I don’t think it’s too hard to follow. So that would be my second recommendation.
WHISKEY JENNY: I like that we both picked up on the gambling. We’re like, oh, gambling, let’s do something with gambling!
GIN JENNY: I know. [LAUGHTER] The next one is for Renay’s partner, 36 years old, who “likes napping, junk baking, and multiplayer games like World of Warcraft, MapleStory, or League of Legends; plans to make viewing all 10 main-ish Star Wars films a family tradition; likes gardening and grows Carolina Reapers—1,569,300 on the Scoville—scale for fun; will not let me get him a new set of Wheel of Time books because his current set is falling to bits because, quote, ‘it shows his history of buying and reading them,’ end quote.” I disagree, but fine. This one’s kind of hard for me, because I don’t read a lot of Wheel of Time type epic fantasy, so I’m doing my best.
I wanted to suggest The Liminal People by Ayize Jama-Everett, which the elevator pitch for it is its African X-Men. It’s dark and pretty good. I had some quibbles with the end, but overall I thought it was really interesting world building. And then also The Rook, by Daniel O’Malley, which as I’m thinking about it is not un-X-Men-y. It’s about this woman who wakes up, she has no memory of her past life, but she has letters from herself that it’s like, you’re in danger, people are trying to kill you. And she has some magical powers, and she works for an agency where lots of people have lots of different magical powers, and they try to control supernatural happenings in England. And she’s thrown into the job with no memory and just her letters from herself to guide her.
WHISKEY JENNY: Ooh, interesting. So first up I would recommend to Zachariah, if he has not already seen the Hot Ones YouTube show, that he check that out. Because it is all about people eating increasingly spicy hot wings. Celebrities getting interviewed while they eat increasingly spicy hot wings, and it tells you what the hot sauces are on the Scoville scale. So that’s my hot sauce recommendation.
So I also had a really hard time with this, because I am 9 billion percent sure that any sci-fi book that I have heard of, that Renay has heard of, plus everything that it inspired. But I will say, I did ask my friend from work who I know likes Star Wars and multiplayer games specifically psycho OK I know somebody likes both of those things, and what she would recommend. And she said the Leviathan Wakes series—or the Expanse series, which starts with Leviathan Wakes. But I did look it up and I know that Renay has already reviewed this book, so it’s not new information to her. But perhaps it will reawaken it, not sure.
But then I was trying to think of sort of epic books that aren’t sci-fi that we’ve read. And I would say Endurance.
GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah! That one’s so good.
WHISKEY JENNY: Which is the Shackleton story, by Alfred Lansing. And then I would also say The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt, is a pretty epic, a bunch of stuff happens book.
GIN JENNY: Nice.
WHISKEY JENNY: So the last person that Renay wanted books for is Keena. “Black man who is competent enough to wear a picture of himself printed onto a t-shirt with no shame. Improv master. Into reality shows like most people are into Marvel movies. Loves Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder.” Gosh, I had a bunch of books for this. I’m so sorry. Because it sounds like Keena is really into sort of bonkers plot and a lot of drama, and I had a lot of recommendations for that. So I will try to run through them very quickly.
First of all, Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters, which we’ve read before, but it’s very plotty. I recently read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which is non-fiction but reads like a fiction book, I found.
GIN JENNY: It does, it does. It was all over the place. It’s pretty solidly about white Savannah, though, I would say as a caveat. White Tears, by Hari Kunzru, again, really bonkers. There’s a ghost who kills people. I guess that’s a spoiler, but there’s a ghost who kills people, which is pretty bananas. And then Confessions of the Fox, which we read this year, I found to be very—almost too much so for me, as I discovered. I was like, what is happening? [LAUGHTER] But it is very—like, a lot, a lot, a lot happens.
GIN JENNY: So my first one is also along the bonkers plot theme, and that’s Jane Doe, by Victoria Helen Stone, which reminds me of Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder, in the sense that it has this crazy plot and a pretty ruthless heroine. And my second idea was this book of comedic essays I just read called I Can’t Date Jesus, by Michael Arceneaux, which is about a black, queer, southern Catholic man and his coming of age, and coming to terms himself and his family and his faith and all these other things. I thought was really funny and very heartfelt.
WHISKEY JENNY: Great.
GIN JENNY: OK, so next up is Glynis. Glynis says, “I asked for recs last year for my husband and they were hits—” Yay! “—so I’m back again. He likes science fiction, people trying their best, problem solving, and stories where people are generally good and kind.”
WHISKEY JENNY: Me too, Glynis’s husband. [LAUGHTER] We should swap recs. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: “Recently we’ve been listening to the Murderbot books and he loves them, and he liked The Martian and The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. I feel like some Earth-based sci-fi could be fun.”
OK Glynis, my first thought was if he would be into some American history based steampunk, because Whiskey Jenny and I both, I think, really liked Karen Memory, by Elizabeth Bear, which is kind of like an episode of Firefly in some ways. And I like it because all the characters are great, and they all work hard and pull together to defeat the bad guys.
And then, you don’t say what his position on comics is, but I really love some of the all ages Marvel lines right now, so maybe that would be something to try. I’m super enjoying Patsy Walker a.k.a. Hellcat and The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. And essentially everyone in them is very good and kind, and they’re just a delight to read.
WHISKEY JENNY: Gosh, yes. I loved Patsy Walker, and have previously recommended the YA book of Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, and I’m so looking forward to reading that comic.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, it’s great. My final recommendation is a little riskier in terms of people being nice. But Serial Box has a new series coming out in, I think, January called The Vela. And it’s written by Becky Chambers, along with Yoon Ha Lee, who I love—Yoon Ha Lee wrote the Nicefox Gambit books—Rivers Solomon, who wrote a pretty dark sci-fi book called An Unkindness of Ghosts, and S.L. Huang, who wrote Zero Sum Game, which I also really enjoyed I would say Rivers Solomon’s works skews darker, so I don’t know how much this will be tonally similar to A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. But it might be a fun thing to get him, because you can get him a subscription, and then each chapter will come to his inbox as it comes out, which is kind of fun.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yes! Subscriptions, they’re so fun. My first one for Glynis’s husband is—and this is my first repeat of the recommendations section, but not the last one—is again, Endurance. If he likes problem solving, there are a lot of problems that have to get solved. But if you listen to our podcast, you know that they all do get solved, and everyone’s fine in the end.
And then my second one is—and I hesitated to recommend this because I thought Gin Jenny might recommend it—but I found Mars Evacuees to be full of sweet muffins of people.
GIN JENNY: So true.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s a middle great, but your husband sounds like he would not be a snob about that. I’m sorry, that’s by Sophia MacDougall.
Glynis also asked—which is totally fine, we encourage this—”If you’d like to recommend something for me that’s like a midpoint between Murderbot and Sunshine by Robin McKinley, that would be great.” So my two for this are The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, by Holly Black.
GIN JENNY: Oh, great choice.
WHISKEY JENNY: Which is another vampire story, but I would say not quite as intense feelings-wise as Sunshine. And then my other one is Pyromantic, by Lish McBride, which is the second in the series, but I would honestly recommend just starting with Pyromantic. It’s a group of different people with supernatural abilities, and they’re trying to solve a mystery of why certain creatures with supernatural abilities are kind of going a little nuts right now at the moment. And they have to solve that mystery and all work together. And our main girl has fire as an ability, and she’s working for this corporation or organization that she doesn’t totally trust, but might be OK, actually. The organization was super evil in the first book. And I just didn’t love the first book as much, and I don’t really think you need it as a baseline. So I would say just go ahead and start with Pyromantic. If you can do that and get past the icky feeling that that might give you, then I would say just look up what happens in the first one, or email us and I’ll be happy to write you a little summary for it. And then read Pyromaniac.
GIN JENNY: Awesome, and that is a princely offer. Glynis, I wish I could find a book that’s a midpoint between Murderbot and Sunshine, because that sounds perfect. I don’t know that either of my recommendations can come to that level, but these are two books I really liked. I’m going to recommend Zero Sum Game by S.L. Huang, which I just talked about a second ago. But it’s about a low-level criminal who’s a math genius, and she gets caught up in a big corporate conspiracy. It’s wonderful. I loved all the characters. I was super excited to keep reading and find out what was going to happen next. There was grudging respect, there’s mind control, it’s just really, really fun. And the sequel’s coming out next year, so there’s something to look forward to.
And the other recommendation was Borderline by Mishell Baker, which is an urban fantasy book about a woman with Borderline Personality Disorder who joins this organization to work with the fairy world. It’s not that much like Murderbot or Sunshine, but it gives me the same sense of interior satisfaction, so I think that’s a good choice, hopefully.
OK, our next request is for Maureen. She says, “My mom! She’s 68, crafty, likes to knit and sew especially. Fairly conservative when it comes to reading tastes. She enjoys the Queen’s Thief series and Lord of the Rings, but isn’t a fantasy fan per se, and she wouldn’t like anything very violent or sexual. She also doesn’t have a lot of time for reading, so something she could pick up and set down might be good.”
I am very, very fond of Marisa de los Santos, who writes women’s fiction, and her book Love Walked In is, to me, quite easy to pick up and put down, because it’s kind of episodic. And it’s just this very dear, very emotional book about a woman finding love, not necessarily in the ways you might expect. And I just think it describes feelings in a really lovely way and is one of my favorite comfort books.
And then my other recommendation is The Beautiful Ones, by Sylvia Moreno Garcia, which is like a slightly darker Georgette Heyer novel if there had been a very small degree of magic in Georgette Heyer’s Regency novels.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, that sounds great.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: So mine, I will mention again A Curious Beginning, by Deanna Raybourn, which I mentioned before, which is a mystery, Regency era, with a very independent lady main character, and they have to solve a mystery. I would also recommend the James Herriot books if she hasn’t read them already.
GIN JENNY: Oh, yes.
WHISKEY JENNY: Because they are also very episodic and just really sweet and lovely. And if you’re not familiar, they’re about a vet in Yorkshire in England, kind of around the—
GIN JENNY: 1940s.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. And they’re just very sweet and very episodic, because it’s sort of each case that he has, and each client, he goes through their stories.
And then also Elizabeth Peters, I think, would be a great author for Maureen’s mom. And if she’s already read the Amelia Peabody series, then perhaps she has not already read A Camelot Caper, which was once put on my bedside by Gin Jenny, and I really loved.
GIN JENNY: And the first—just in case you want to get it, the first James Herriot book is All Creatures Great and Small.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yes.
GIN JENNY: But it doesn’t really matter. You don’t need to read them in an order. It makes no difference really.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. They’re extremely episodic. OK, so lastly we heard from David, who says, “My wife Jackie can be tricky to select for. She reads four or five books per year but likes to have a good book on the nightstand and occasionally get sucked in. She most recently completed Manhattan Beach, by Jennifer Egan, although she did not like it as much as Welcome to the Goon Squad.” Me neither. “Her primary critique was that it did not have enough compelling characters, whereas she felt the fleshed out side characters were the best part about Goon Squad. Books that did not work out in the past year include The Power, by Naomi Alderman, and Less, by Andrew Sean Greer. That said, she likes well-developed characters with interesting plots. Female characters and authors are preferred. Her favorite author is David Sedaris and her favorite person is probably Amy Sedaris.” A lot of love for the Sedaris family, I love it.
GIN JENNY: I love it, too.
WHISKEY JENNY: “Where’d You Go, Bernadette, by Maria Semple, is another favorite.” So for Jackie, I would say first up, the Spellman Files series, by Lisa Lutz, which I had mentioned before. But I think the sense of humor of these books sounds like it might appeal to Jackie. The daughter, Izzy, is sort of the main character, but her whole family is involved. And they sort of do private investigations, but that’s not the main point of it. The main point of it is the slightly messed up family relationships that they have. And I think the first one is just called the Spellman Files, which is also the name of the series.
And then the next one I would say is The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, by Hannah Tinti, which I really enjoyed and is told in a really interesting structure. It’s a single father and his daughter, and He’s sort of had a criminal past and is recounting the twelve times that he’s been shot. But he’s really trying to do right by his daughter now and put his at times violent past behind him. And it alternates between him retelling his past and the daughter in the present day, and it’s very much a coming of age story for her. And I think if she enjoyed the kind of crazy structure of Goon Squad then she might enjoy the interesting structure of this book.
GIN JENNY: Nice. My first recommendation is We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler, which is a book about—
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, great idea. Sorry.
GIN JENNY: Thank you. I don’t want to spoil it. It’s about—let’s say it’s about an unusual family. I love the characters, but I think also the plot is really compelling. And then I was—maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but I really love Fangirl, by Rainbow Rowell. And although it’s classified as YA, to me it reads older than YA and I think is a good comp to Where’d You Go, Bernadette. And I think the characters are really, really great and well-drawn.
WHISKEY JENNY: Can I have two bonus recommendations to throw in?
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Is that allowed?
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: So my method when we do these is, I read what people told us, and see what first occurs to me, do a little research, what have I read, look at my bookshelf, ask around, et cetera, et cetera. And then I kind of try and go in the opposite direction, too, to see if I’ve missed anything, and just go through my bookshelf and see, are there any things that I have read recently that I just really loved and would love to be able to recommend to someone, and then see if they fit into any of the people. And there were two that I couldn’t fit in that I just really wanted to mention.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Oh, so these are bonus generic recs.
WHISKEY JENNY: They’re just bonus generic recs, yeah.
GIN JENNY: I love it. Go, go.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Well so, we read The Mothers, by Brit Bennett last year, and I think we mentioned it in our year-end round up, too. And I still am just really impressed and blown away by that debut and really loved it. It’s got some fairly heavy topics in it, but I found it just really beautifully written. And gosh, I just loved it. Yeah, so The Mothers by Brit Bennett.
And then this year, Gin Jenny Forcened me to read The Color Purple, and I was extremely hesitant about it, but I did love it. And if you have someone in your life that has read it yet and has been worried about how horrifying the subject matter seems, then I would say maybe give it a try, because I ended up finding it very optimistic and beautiful.
GIN JENNY: Yay! That makes me so happy.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.
GIN JENNY: Well, wonderful. Well, this has been an excellent gift guide episode.
WHISKEY JENNY: I agree.
GIN JENNY: I always love doing these.
WHISKEY JENNY: Me, too. I love doing them. I mean, I hope it is a successful one for people that are hearing from us.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, and thank you, listeners, for sending in your requests. We love thinking about them and trying to choose books for you.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yes, totally, as always. This has been the Reading the End bookcast with the demographically similar Jennys, special holiday edition. 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. 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. And until next time, happy holidays.
GIN JENNY: Happy holidays!
[GLASSES CLINK]THEME SONG: [WITH SLEIGH BELLS] 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.