I decided to start having hope on Wednesdays, and by actual total coincidence, this podcast is specifically about books that give us hope. HOPE SYNERGY. This week we’re chatting about Whiskey Jenny’s incredibly food-related accomplishments, the books that make us feel hopeful, and Lauren Wilkinson’s Cold War spy thriller American Spy. (Short review: Not enough spying.) You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below, or download it directly to take with you on the go!
Here are the time signatures if you want to skip around.
0:59 – What we’re reading
3:41 – What we’re listening to
6:55 – trailer for The Goldfinch
10:31 – Hope in books
30:00 – American Spy, Lauren Wilkinson
45:09 – What we’re reading next time!
What we talked about:
Picnic at Hanging Rock, Joan Lindsey
The Old Drift, Namwali Serpell
Goldfinch trailer
Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
One Plus One, Jojo Moyes
Where’d You Go Bernadette, Maria Semple
Watership Down, Richard Adams
Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil, Melina Marchetta
the Lumatere Chronicles, Melina Marchetta
Signs Preceding the End of the World, Yuri Herrera
HHhH, Laurent Binet
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Bellows
The Color Purple, Alice Walker
The Great Brain, John Fitzgerald
The Season of Styx Malone, Kekla Magoon
The Rock and the River, Kekla Magoon
How It Went Down, Kekla Magoon
the guy who traded a paper clip for a house
Hadestown
Gemsigns, Stephanie Saulter
Everfair, Nisi Shawl
The Best of All Possible Worlds, Karen Lord
Check Please!, Ngozi Ukazu
An Old-Fashioned Girl, Louisa May Alcott
Isabel Dalhousie series, Alexander McCall Smith
The Woman Next Door, Yewande Omotoso
Love Walked In, Marisa de los Santos
Belong to Me, Marisa de los Santos
Jane of Lantern Hill, LM Montgomery
Anne of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
The Blue Castle, LM Montgomery
Thorn, Intisar Khanani
Sunbolt, Intisar Khanani
American Spy, Lauren Wilkinson
Magic for Liars, Sarah Gailey
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
[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 again to talk about books and literary happenings. On today’s podcast we’re going to talk about what we are reading and eating. We’re going to discuss a quick literary happening. We’re going to talk about books that make us feel hope. And then we are going to review American Spy, by Lauren Wilkinson. But to kick us off, Whiskey Jenny, what are you reading?
WHISKEY JENNY: I just finished Picnic at Hanging Rock. Have you ever read this?
GIN JENNY: No, I never have.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s an Australian classic, apparently, though I’d never heard of it. By Joan Lindsay. It came out in the, I want to say ‘60s. It was set in 1900. A girls’ boarding school goes on an excursion on Valentine’s Day to a natural formation, and some students go missing under mysterious circumstances at the formation.
GIN JENNY: Just like in Voldemort’s backstory.
WHISKEY JENNY: Is it?
GIN JENNY: Yeah, remember, he— [LAUGHTER] it was a stupid comment. I apologize.
WHISKEY JENNY: No, I mean, I don’t remember. But it could be quite similar. I don’t know, maybe J.K. Rowling was inspired by Joan Lindsay. But it’s really strange, and just sort of atmospheric and moody, and just about the feeling afterwards that everyone’s having about what’s going on. And is it magic, is it murder? What’s going on? So yeah, I really enjoyed it. And it makes me also want to explore Australian literature a bit more, because I don’t know the classics of Australian literature at all.
GIN JENNY: Sure, me neither.
WHISKEY JENNY: What are you reading right now?
GIN JENNY: I am reading a book called The Old Drift, by Namwali Serpell. And Whiskey Jenny, I hope you’re going to be proud of me. It’s an intergenerational family saga that I am reading by choice.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh my goodness! How exciting. Are you enjoying it?
GIN JENNY: I kind of am. It’s set in Zambia, and the reason I picked it up is it’s supposed to be the great Zambian novel. It’s new; it just came out, so that’s premature to say. But I really like the way she writes, and I love African literature, so those two things I was hoping would carry me through the intergenerational family saga bit. And it is, I think, although it’s very long. It’s a very, very long book so I have to keep plugging away at it.
But it’s cool because it’s about this one event in the 1900s that has a lasting impact on three different families, one black, one white, and one mixed race, which is pretty cool. And there’s also some fantastical elements, and I’ve been given to understand that in the third generation of the family sections, there’s going to be some science fictiony elements, and it’s set a little bit in the future. Which sounds really cool.
WHISKEY JENNY: Ooh, that does sound neat.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, so that’s what I’m reading. Branching out.
WHISKEY JENNY: What’s the idea of bougainvillea you’ve encountered so far?
GIN JENNY: Close to none. I think was—
WHISKEY JENNY: But not none? [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: This is what I’m trying to remember, because now I’m questioning myself. Was there actually bougainvillea, or do I just think it’s the type of book that would have bougainvillea? I don’t think I remember any, but I wouldn’t swear to that, so take that with a grain of salt.
WHISKEY JENNY: OK. Because spoiler alert, there was a mention in American Spy of bougainvillea, which I was not expecting.
GIN JENNY: No, it was unexpected for me as well. [LAUGHTER]
So today for something else-ing, we decided to make a dealer’s choice, because I didn’t do a poll on Patreon. And Whiskey Jenny, what did you choose?
WHISKEY JENNY: I picked what are we eating, because there’s something very specific that I wanted to talk about. So it was entirely selfish. And that thing is that I made pasta. Like I made the noodles.
GIN JENNY: What?
WHISKEY JENNY: I know! It was so exciting. Don’t have a pasta maker, so I just rolled them out—
GIN JENNY: What?
WHISKEY JENNY: —very thin by hand, and then cut them with a pizza cutter.
GIN JENNY: Wow.
WHISKEY JENNY: Just cut wide fettuccine noodles. And it was so good. I then combined them with a whole bunch of Swiss chard, some ricotta, some pasta water, some lemon juice and lemon zest, and garlic, and toasted pumpkin seeds, and Parmesan. And that was it. And it was so good!
GIN JENNY: Wow. I’m so impressed.
WHISKEY JENNY: It was just the tastiest thing ever. Thank you so much.
GIN JENNY: What led you?
WHISKEY JENNY: I had all the ingredients—because I had all the ingredients to make this pasta. I had a whole bunch of Swiss chard from my CSA, and I was like, OK, I need to use up the Swiss chard. What can I do with it? And I was like, OK, I’ll make this lemon ricotta pasta. I have everything else, but I don’t have pasta. But I was like, but I do have eggs and flour, and that’s all you need, apparently.
GIN JENNY: Well this is just astonishing news.
WHISKEY JENNY: I know! [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: Way to go.
WHISKEY JENNY: Thank you so much. I felt very proud of myself.
GIN JENNY: You should. I’m so impressed. I’m really blown away.
WHISKEY JENNY: It was so much easier than I was expecting.
GIN JENNY: Yeah? How long did it take?
WHISKEY JENNY: The cleanup was annoying.
GIN JENNY: Sure.
WHISKEY JENNY: So you just mix the eggs and the flour and then knead it for ten minutes, maybe. And then it rests for 30 minutes, and then that’s it. Oh, but then you roll it out and cook it. Or roll it out, cut it, and cook it. And it cooks super fast. So I don’t know, all told what is that? An hour.
GIN JENNY: Wow.
WHISKEY JENNY: And while it’s resting I was preparing my chart and whatnot.
GIN JENNY: Well, I’m just blown away.
WHISKEY JENNY: Thank you so much. What are you eating right now?
GIN JENNY: I have not been eating very inventively lately, because for some reason—either I’m fighting something off or I just have not been getting enough sleep, but I have been wrung out like a limp noodle lately.
WHISKEY JENNY: Aw.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, so I’m choosing a dessert. My special treats lately, I’ve been eating two dessert foods from Trader Joe’s, one of which is their miniature peanut butter cups, which are so good. And they’re real little, so if I eat a small handful it’s still not that much dessert. And the other one are these things called Hold the Cone. And they’re these teensy weensy little ice cream cones with hard chocolate tops over the top of the cone. So they’re a little longer than your longest finger.
WHISKEY JENNY: Is there a cone in there? I’m so confused. Why is it called Hold the Cone?
GIN JENNY: No, there’s a cone.
WHISKEY JENNY: There’s a cone in there. The cone has not been held.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: I guess the chocolate is holding the cone?
GIN JENNY: Maybe. Yes, that would make sense, yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: So the chocolate’s on top of the ice cream?
GIN JENNY: Right, it’s like a hard cover over the ice cream.
WHISKEY JENNY: And then there’s a cone.
GIN JENNY: And then there’s a cone. Yeah, and then inside both is a bunch of ice cream. And you can get chocolate ice cream or vanilla ice cream inside.
WHISKEY JENNY: Interesting. It sounds fascinating.
GIN JENNY: It’s very good. So those are my two special Trader Joe’s treats.
WHISKEY JENNY: They sound both very nice and chilly, as well. I guess peanut butter cups don’t have to be cold. But could be.
GIN JENNY: But you’re right. I put them in the refrigerator.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I knew it.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Because summer’s here, the stupidest season.
WHISKEY JENNY: The best season, the best season!
GIN JENNY: No.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Well, podcast over.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: We had a good run. Well, Whiskey Jenny, you had a literary happening you wanted to discuss. Do you want to tell the people what it is?
WHISKEY JENNY: I did! Which is exciting. I feel like we haven’t had a literary happening in a while.
GIN JENNY: It’s just because we haven’t, you know, bothered. But we totally could! We should do more literary happenings.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, they’ve been happening. They’ve definitely been happening. [LAUGHTER] We just haven’t mentioned them. But the trailer for The Goldfinch came out recently. And so we both watched it. What did you think of it?
GIN JENNY: My primary feeling was that Hobie’s shop and Hobie as played by Jeffrey Wright looked so perfect. I was so emotional about it.
WHISKEY JENNY: I 1000% agreed. There’s one moment in the trailer where he has a disappointed face. And I was like, no, oh god, oh no! Not the disappointed face! It’s cutting me to my quick! I think he’s going to play Hobie perfectly, and that’s really all I care about, so.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, we’ll no. There’s two things I care about, and the trailer reassured me about one of them.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. What’s the other one?
GIN JENNY: My main criticism about the trailer would be not enough Boris.
WHISKEY JENNY: Bor-eeeees!
GIN JENNY: Not nearly enough Boris. I’m torn, because in general I’m happy that the trailer makes it obvious that the relationship between Theo and Hobie is the central one. That’s great. But on the other hand, I didn’t get to see Boris say any lines. So real downside.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I agree. I don’t know if that is just marketing purposes, or if that bodes anything specific about the movie itself. But they did cast a not-unknown to play young Boris. It’s Finn Wolfhard. Who I don’t really know, but people know him, you know?
GIN JENNY: Oh, is that one of the Stranger Things kids? That’s my only hypothesis.
WHISKEY JENNY: [VACILLATES] [LAUGHTER] I think probably. He’s one of those wee young people that everyone likes now, so probably Stranger Things, yeah.
GIN JENNY: Yup, yup, yup. He’s the kid from Stranger Things. OK, great. I did not realize that. But I will say the one shot of kid Boris where you see him opening an umbrella, he looks so great. It’s such a great shot.
WHISKEY JENNY: Right? He looks spooky, and he—
GIN JENNY: And weird and crazy.
WHISKEY JENNY: —ask him a question, and he just doesn’t answer and opens an umbrella. Yeah, yeah. It’s a good vibe, so I’m not totally upset at that.
So older Theo is Ansel Elgort, and I am—that’s the casting that I was, oh, I don’t know about that.
GIN JENNY: I don’t know about that either.
WHISKEY JENNY: Just because I have weird feelings against him. I’ve never met him. I just don’t like him.
GIN JENNY: Never met him, but he’s your enemy.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, but I hate him forever. [LAUGHTER] No, I just—I don’t know. I don’t like him.
GIN JENNY: I don’t love him either. And I think he looks too—he has a more resolved presence than I think Theo should.
WHISKEY JENNY: Mm-hmm.
GIN JENNY: You know, he’s an actor, so maybe he’ll be able to tone that down, but it’s not casting that I would immediately have thought of.
WHISKEY JENNY: So Nicole Kidman is in it, and I’m guessing she’s playing the sort of Upper East Side mom role, and I’m pretty into that casting. That seems great. That’s excellent casting.
GIN JENNY: I would say that I didn’t necessarily need there to be a movie of The Goldfinch. I liked the book a lot. It didn’t necessarily strike me as something where I was like, oh, there should be a movie of this.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, me neither. It didn’t cry out for it. I agree.
GIN JENNY: But you know, that doesn’t mean it can’t be good.
WHISKEY JENNY: Sure. I am still excited to see it. I would say my two biggest takeaways were, Hobie is perfect. Long live Jeffrey Wright. And I think it does the mood really well. It just has this sort of nice tinkling piano, and then beautiful shots. And then maybe things get spooky, but maybe it’s just adolescence. [LAUGHTER] The vibe was resonating with me, and that doesn’t always happen with trailers or adaptations. So that I liked.
GIN JENNY: Yes, I agree with that. I guess I should have continued to say, while I didn’t necessarily see a need for a movie like this, having watched the trailer, it kind of made me interested to see what the movie was going to be like. So a successful trailer, I think.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. There you go did. It did its job.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: In sum, Jeffrey Wright. 2020.
GIN JENNY: Yeah I’ve been a big fan of Jeffrey Wright for many years, so I’m always in favor of him doing more stuff.
Do you want to talk about hopeful books?
WHISKEY JENNY: I do.
GIN JENNY: I thought of this topic because it’s something Robert said on our last podcast, which is that romance, much more than some other genres, really focuses on hope. Which I agree with. And it also just made me want to think about books that make us feel hopeful.
And one thing that I thought about, Whiskey Jenny, when we were preparing for a podcast, is I recently tried to read A People’s Future of the United States, which is an anthology of imagined future types of stories. And it made me feel so exhausted, helpless, and sad.
WHISKEY JENNY: Aw.
GIN JENNY: About a third of the way through, each story, I felt so intensely unhappy. And so I stopped reading it. And I was telling my sister about this, and she said she read it and loved it, and felt really energized and hopeful. And I thought it was an interesting encapsulation of the fact that different people derive hope from very different reading experiences, which is why I’m interested to hear what you have to say.
WHISKEY JENNY: That is so interesting. Because my big takeaway when I was writing these down is that they’re so specific. And that the biggest thing I would say in order to find good books that make you hopeful is to be really vocal to other people about what makes you hopeful, and be very specific when you’re telling them. Because people will recommend you stuff then.
But also your friends will remember it and just keep in mind, and steer you away from things, or steer you towards things, and be like, you know what? Whiskey Jenny really should not watch XYZ, which I got a couple of times in the recent past from friends. And I’ve been like, you know what? I really appreciate these friends looking out for me. They wouldn’t have known to do that if I hadn’t been like, you know what, I don’t want to watch dogs dying, or whatever the thing is.
GIN JENNY: Right.
WHISKEY JENNY: I think it’s exactly what you’re saying, is that it’s so specific to each person. And I really rely on other people telling me about things to find new things. So the only way to reconcile those two things is to just announce what you like and are looking for, and what you don’t like. And if someone asks you what you think of something, then be specific. Don’t just be like, oh, it wasn’t for me. It wasn’t for me because a dog died or something.
And then later on in the year, that will come back and help you. [LAUGHTER] They’ll be like, aha! I found a hopeful book where no dogs die. I will recommend it.
GIN JENNY: So important
WHISKEY JENNY: That was my big takeaway, is these are all going to be so specific to me and me alone. No one else is going to—but my other big thing was, so we have talked about books that we get comfort from, and comfort books. And for me those Venn diagrams are, I would say, pretty close together. [LAUGHTER] I kept having to be like, no, no, that’s just a comfort book. You don’t actually get hope from that one. That’s just a comfort one. Because I think often when I’m in the same emotional space—maybe not the Venn diagrams of the books, but the emotional space in which I either gravitate towards a hopeful one or a comfort one can be extremely similar.
And I would say, often what I had to keep striking off the list was a lot of romance things. Because I find them more comforting than hopeful.
GIN JENNY: Oh interesting.
WHISKEY JENNY: If that makes any sense.
GIN JENNY: Yes, that totally does. A lot of what I took off the list were books that I’ve read a million times. Like Sunshine is a huge comfort read for me, but not necessarily a hopeful book. But yes, I think there are different but overlapping categories.
WHISKEY JENNY: And I also think—well, let’s just get into the taxonomy right now.
GIN JENNY: Great, yeah. I was going to ask, because I have a very small taxonomy, and I was curious if you did, too.
WHISKEY JENNY: No, I have a little one, too.
GIN JENNY: Great.
WHISKEY JENNY: So I think that usually what I find hopeful is books where things go pretty badly, but I know 1000% for sure in my heart that things are going to be OK. And again, this goes back to, you have to ask your friends. How would you know that the first time you read it? You wouldn’t. You have to ask your friends or ask Google. This is very important. You have to know when you’re going through the bad stuff in the book that it’s going to be OK.
And I would put Lord of the Rings in this category. They go through some horrible shit, as we went through, but Sauron dies at the end, and mostly everyone is OK.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: There’s some books that, when I recommend them to people, I issue a lot of reassurance alongside the recommendation, that everything’s going to be OK. Because two of the ones on my list were One Plus One, by JoJo Moyes, and—well, Where’d You Go, Bernadette? is probably more of a comfort read. But that’s another one where, when I give it to people, I’m like, everything’s going to be OK.
WHISKEY JENNY: Do not worry.
GIN JENNY: Don’t worry. Yeah, it’s going to be all right.
WHISKEY JENNY: I think issuing warnings, either for yourself or for others, is very important. Because that’s what gets me through this category. Sometimes things go bad, and sometimes the world almost ends. And I have to know that—it’s helpful for me to go through the emotions of the world almost ending and people still being brave and noble and fighting, but knowing that they’re going to win is pretty important. If they lost, if they did all that and lost, I would throw the book across the room.
GIN JENNY: Sure.
WHISKEY JENNY: And I would put Harry Potter in this category, as well. I’d put Watership Down, another podcast favorite. We just read a book by Melina Marchetta, which is was my first one, but I think that author I would put in this category.
GIN JENNY: Oh, that’s a great point. I did not put her on this list at all, but I totally should have.
WHISKEY JENNY: I just read Signs Preceding the End of the World, which was a recommendation from you, which I found really great. Things are dark for that small child for a while, but it’s mostly OK.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. It’s mostly hopeful at the end, I think.
WHISKEY JENNY: Again, that’s also very subjective, about what you take as a hopeful ending.
GIN JENNY: Yes, it is.
WHISKEY JENNY: I would say, this is not literary, but I would also put action movies in general in this category.
GIN JENNY: Aw, that’s such a nice way of looking at them. And totally makes sense for why you like action movies so much.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. The world almost ends so much, but always at the end they save the day. [LAUGHTER]
Did you have a similar taxonomy category?
GIN JENNY: I did, yes. My version of this category was—I more categorized it as triumphing against the odds. That’s not an adequate description. A book about someone triumphing against the odds I will not necessarily find hopeful.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, totally.
GIN JENNY: But yeah, there are books like Lord of the Rings that I do find very hopeful, because they all work so hard and in the end, they win and they defeat evil. And so that’s a really great thing.
And I was also thinking of two World War II books, one being HHhH, by Laurent Binet, which is about a plot to assassinate one of the higher up officials in the Hitler administration. It’s dark, and the guys do succeed in doing the assassination, but they are then killed by the Nazis. But it’s still a book about persisting even when things seem really dark. And I also thought of in this category The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, what a great one. You genius.
GIN JENNY: Thank you. Thank you. Stop it. But especially because a lot of their rebellions and a lot of their fights against evil are very small. It’s not an assassinate Hitler kind of endeavor, but just working to protect each other and keep hope alive. I’m tearing up.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, boy.
GIN JENNY: Gosh, yeah, it’s just very lovely. And another one that is totally different is The Color Purple, by Alice Walker, which, as we’ve discussed, is ultimately strangely hopeful and life-affirming, even though it is so, so difficult. A lot of the subject matter is really hard and sad.
WHISKEY JENNY: Absolutely.
GIN JENNY: I also just finished a book this weekend. It’s a middle grade novel, which I rarely read. And I don’t know if you remember this, Whiskey Jenny, but when I was doing my project of rereading books that I owned but hadn’t read in a really long time, I reread a book from my childhood called The Great Brain that it turned out was horrible, and really cruel and upsetting and awful, and not at all funny and charming as I had remembered it.
So this book is a little reminiscent of it, in that it’s also about two regular kids who meet a very smart and savvy kid who gets them involved in a scheme. But it’s just much more kind, and not racist.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, great. What is it?
GIN JENNY: So it’s The Season of Styx Malone, by Kekla Magoon. And I love Kekla Magoon.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, your favorite.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. She wrote The Rock and the River, which was amazing. It’s about the Black Panther Party. She wrote How It Went Down, which was an incredibly beautiful and moving Black Lives Matter-ish book with multiple perspectives. And I mean, it was really good. I don’t understand why Kekla Magoon isn’t crazy famous, because her books are so good and so emotional.
But The Season of Styx Malone is about these two kids. Their father’s very protective and they have a very loving family. And they meet this kid, Styx Malone, who is in foster care and seems like trouble, but he’s very charming. And he tells them he has a scheme that they’re going to do. You remember that guy who traded a paperclip for a house?
WHISKEY JENNY: I do, yeah.
GIN JENNY: So he tells them that story. He’s like, we’re going to do something similar. We’re going to get a motorcycle. So it’s—yeah. So it’s a story of their high jinks. It’s also pretty emotional, because Styx Malone is a foster kid, and he’s dealing with uncertain housing situations. And I loved it. I thought it was really great, and it was ultimately a story about triumphing against terrible odds, and it was just great. It made me feel wonderful.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yay.
GIN JENNY: Yay.
WHISKEY JENNY: I have a different category. And I was never sure if I should put Hadestown in—yeah, no, I think it goes in this category. But I’ve really been enjoying the musical Hadestown, as well as it’s making me feel very hopeful. I was struggling to find a way to describe it without spoiling it, if people would like to keep how it treats the myth a surprise until they either watch it or listen to it. I’ve been listening to it so much for reasons of hope that I couldn’t not mention it. So Hadestown.
GIN JENNY: Aw. And is it in the same category?
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I would put it in that sort of triumphing against odds, or things are quite dark for a while. But, uh—
GIN JENNY: [LAUGHTER] What?
WHISKEY JENNY: Sorry. It’s just very difficult. I don’t know what people would consider a spoiler for that.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, sure.
WHISKEY JENNY: So I’m so sorry, it’s hard for me, because if people want it to be a surprise, I don’t want to spoil it. But I would put it in that first category.
GIN JENNY: All right, good to know.
WHISKEY JENNY: DM me on Goodreads or whatever [LAUGHTER] if you need more information and more caveats.
GIN JENNY: So another category I had, and this is my speculative fiction category, are stories about futures where we’re not all dead and miserable. Futures that aren’t dystopias I find really reassuring, and they seem kind of few and far between. A lot of it’s like, well, after all of Earth perished and most of humanity died generations ago, here we are now. So that’s really pretty rough. So I really, really appreciate science fiction books that don’t do that. And I would especially love recommendations from listeners if you have any, because this is a category that I would love to read more books in and I don’t have a ton.
But the first one I thought of, and I’m kind of a broken record on this point, because it does not get enough readers is Gemsigns, by Stephanie Saulter, which is a very, very cool book. It’s quite dark, so I don’t want to imply that it does not have dark elements, because it really does. The idea is that humanity created these genetically modified humans, essentially to serve as slaves, slave labor, because there was a plague. And a lot of humanity was wiped out in the plague, so they didn’t have enough workers, so they created these genetically modified humans. And now the human population has rebounded. Things are more stable. And so it’s about an international summit to make resolutions about the rights that genetically modified humans have.
And I just really liked that premise, and I liked that it’s talking about the political and sociological implications of having a similar but different species of people. It’s a lot about prejudice and overcoming prejudice, and trying to think about each other in a compassionate way. And it’s a series of three. And I just thought the worldbuilding was so interesting. And I just really liked them a lot.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I never read those. That does sound fascinating.
GIN JENNY: Oh my gosh, they’re really good. And then also, this is slightly different because it is in fact alternative history. But Everfair, by Nisi Shawl is about imagining a past that’s way less hideous than our actual past. So it’s not really in this category, but it does hit some of the same buttons for me.
And then The Best of All Possible Worlds, by Karen Lord, which we just read.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, yeah.
GIN JENNY: That was one element of it that I really, really liked. It posits a relatively hopeful and co-operative future, and I thought that was great.
WHISKEY JENNY: That was really nice. It’s so interesting that we have one category that’s pretty similar—I would say exactly the same, almost. And then have one that’s quite different, I think. [LAUGHTER] We, too, are a Venn diagram with some overlap and some not overlap.
Did you want to say anything else about that category? Because mine is going to be a pivot. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: No, let’s pivot.
WHISKEY JENNY: OK. Time to pivot. So I would say my other category—
GIN JENNY: Pivot! Sorry.
WHISKEY JENNY: Piv-ot! Piv-ot! [LAUGHTER]
So my other category is regular Earth people having regular problems and being very vocal in either narration style—whether it’s first person or third person or whatever—about how they are struggling and they just want to try and be a good person, and they’re trying to decide what a good person would do in this situation.
GIN JENNY: Oh, that’s actually an identical category to another one that I have.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, great! Perfect.
GIN JENNY: I called it people trying real hard.
WHISKEY JENNY: People trying real hard, but their problems must be very normal, banal, everyday problems. This is not a Lord of the Rings category. It’s just regular—
GIN JENNY: Yes, yes, yes. So it’s an overlapping but not identical category.
WHISKEY JENNY: For instance I would put the Check, Please! series in this. Which is so sweet. And that’s—sorry, that was a webcomic, and then it got published in print by Ngozi Ukazu. And it’s a comic in the style of vlog. The narrator is as if he is talking to you. And so you really hear him narrate his life, and how he feels about his life, and what he thinks he should do next, and what moral quandaries he finds himself in. And the moral quandaries are very deal-with-able, but he still needs to work, work through his feelings and talk about them. And everything is still fine.
But I just really enjoy watching other people work through that stuff. I would also put my old standby An Old-Fashioned Girl, by Louisa May Alcott, on here. Because that, Polly has just moved to the city. And I guess these two also have—I guess everything in this category for me also has a side romance, but that’s not the important part. There is a side romance, and probably there is reason that they all have that. But mostly she’s just trying to figure out how to be a good friend and be a good person and not lose herself. And it also has a pretty strong third person narrator.
And then the Isabel Dalhousie series by Alexander McCall Smith. Our main gal, she solves very regular—nobody dies. The mysteries she’s solving are like, someone get a letter that they didn’t mean to get. [LAUGHTER] Who should it go to? They’re very low key mysteries like that. And that narrator edits a journal of moral philosophy, so she is also very concerned always with questions of how we should treat other people and what the right thing to do is. And that also—yeah, that also has a very nice side romance, but it’s not the main thing.
But anyway, I guess this category for me is very specific. It has to be a small problem—or not a small problem, but a regular everyday problem and not a defeating evil problem.
GIN JENNY: Right.
WHISKEY JENNY: And I have to get a lot of insight into the main person’s solving of this problem. And there has to be a side romance. [LAUGHTER] So if you’ve got any of those let me know. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: That is such a specific and great category.
WHISKEY JENNY: So what is your similar category?
GIN JENNY: Well, mine is tricky, because I think it often overlaps with triumphing against the odds books. But yeah, it’s just people trying real hard. It’s just people trying their goddamn best. So it’s not just real life, although a lot of them are, as it happens, real life types of books.
So I thought of The Woman Next Door, by Yewande Omotoso.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, yeah.
GIN JENNY: Which is a book that, as you know, I really, really love. And it is about people striving to be better humans and find their place in the world in a kind way. But it’s also not saccharine. It’s quite—the characters are quite salty, and they’ve been through a lot, so it’s meaty, but nevertheless hopeful.
And also Marisa de los Santos is an author I really like. And her first two books, Love Walked In and Belong to Me—Whiskey Jenny, I cannot remember. Did you ever read either of these?
WHISKEY JENNY: I have read Love Walked In.
GIN JENNY: Oh, did you like it?
WHISKEY JENNY: I loved it, but I’ve only read that one.
GIN JENNY: Well, Belong to Me is similarly very emotional. I really get pretty choked up reading both of those books, and I can’t really put my finger—especially Belong to Me. But yeah, I loved that one.
Jane of Lantern Hill was another one I thought of, because it’s by L.M. Montgomery. So it’s another one by the author of Anne of Green Gables but is, I think, better than Anne of Green Gables.
WHISKEY JENNY: Whoa.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Whoa. Listen, you already fired shots at me over summer. Do you really want to come at me over Anne of Green Gables as well?
GIN JENNY: I actually kind of forgot, so no. [LAUGHTER] To avoid all out war, I will retract that statement and say it’s real good.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s great. Yeah. [LAUGHTER] And I’ve never actually read that one, I don’t think.
GIN JENNY: It’s very sweet. It’s about a girl who, for the longest time she thinks her father is dead, but it turns out actually her parents are just separated. And she has this really mean grandmother.
WHISKEY JENNY: Jesus. Good Lord.
GIN JENNY: I know. [LAUGHTER] And she has this really mean, domineering grandmother who hates her and is very unkind to her. And then one day they get a letter from the father being like, I never get to see her, I want her to come spend the summer with me on Prince Edward Island. Jane feels herself to be a very unexceptional girl, and she doesn’t have a lot of space to be herself because her grandmother is very quashing. So she goes to Prince Edward Island to spend the summer with her father and really blossoms and comes into herself and figures out what kind of person she wants to be. And it’s great.
WHISKEY JENNY: Did you read The Blue Castle?
GIN JENNY: Oh, I love—The Blue Castle might be my favorite L.M. Montgomery book.
WHISKEY JENNY: That also is a very blossoming away from an overbearing family tale.
GIN JENNY: Yes it does. That’s another great one. God, I love The Blue Castle.
WHISKEY JENNY: OK, great, great.
GIN JENNY: And then the last author that I thought of in this category was Intisar Khanani, who writes fantasy books. And she has been self-published heretofore, but she currently has a book deal. So she’s going to have—I think it’s for three books that are eventually going to be coming out. But you can read her books Thorn and Sunbolt. And both of those are—well, Thorn is a retelling of the fairy tale “The Goose Girl.”
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, what a great one.
GIN JENNY: And Sunbolt is a novella about a girl living in a repressive regime, and she has special powers. And in both cases, bad stuff happens. But all the main characters are really trying hard and doing their best, and just not being jerks. They’re just trying hard, not being jerks, and it’s really great.
WHISKEY JENNY: They’re trying hard to not be a jerk. Yeah.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. And I love that, and it means a lot to me.
WHISKEY JENNY: I totally agree. I think it’s very interesting that neither of us mentioned a lot of romance, even though I agree that it’s a very hopeful genre in general. But they’re more comforting to me than hopeful.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I don’t know. It’s very mysterious. I’m sure that if I took a look at all the romance novels there are that I would find some that I found more hopeful than comforting, but yeah, I would say those are more comfort reads for me.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. And obviously if they fall into the categories we already named.
GIN JENNY: Right. Oh, one thing I would say, I don’t have examples of this exactly, but one thing that across all categories I find very inspiring and energizing is when I read books about the power of stories. Because I often feel very helpless and sad about what’s going on in the world. And I feel like there’s so little I can do that will make a substantial difference. But I can tell stories. That part I can do. So I don’t know, I just always find that reassuring and hopeful in a way.
And Black Sails season 4 ends on that sort of note. So even though the season is astonishingly dark, it still feels pretty hopeful to me at the end.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well that’s good.
GIN JENNY: Well, do you want to talk American Spy?
WHISKEY JENNY: Let’s do it. Let’s get into it.
GIN JENNY: So for this podcast, we read American Spy, by Lauren Wilkinson, which is about a young black woman working in the FBI. And she keeps getting overlooked for important tasks, but then she’s asked to join this task force aimed at undermining the president of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, who is a real person from real life. It’s also a story about her relationship with her sister who died a few years ago. And yeah, that’s the book. Whiskey Jenny, what did you think?
WHISKEY JENNY: I would say overall I really enjoyed it. You know, I had some notes. As per uszh.
GIN JENNY: Sure.
WHISKEY JENNY: What did you think of it overall?
GIN JENNY: Not enough spying, was my main takeaway.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Yeah.
GIN JENNY: I think that it was kind of an expectations gap, because I expected it to be a more classic spy story with a lot of critique of empire mixed in. But really it’s more about the fracturing of black family by white American prejudice and white American agendas. And that’s very interesting, but it’s not necessarily the story I was expecting to read.
WHISKEY JENNY: It is also a spy novel, and it starts off with a rip-roaring action scene, but I felt did not finish the story that it set out to tell.
GIN JENNY: Yeah that’s kind of how I felt.
WHISKEY JENNY: Which is a real skip to the ending business, but. I know that it’s an intentionally unresolved ending, but I guess I disagree with that choice. I wanted there to be more of the story, of what there was there, I wanted there to be more of everything.
I thought all the family stuff was really fascinating, but I wanted it to go deeper. I thought all the spy stuff was cool, but I wanted more spy stuff. And I wanted it to keep going.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. I thought it was very good and very successful about exploring the ways that white supremacy functions in America, and also reproduces itself violently across the world. Like, you really see that in every character of color, how they’re thoroughly sabotaged and denied opportunities—not just denied opportunities that they could rise to, but that they specifically deserve.
One thing is that Marie clearly deserves to be promoted before she is promoted. She deserves to be given more interesting work, because she’s good at what she does. But what’s interesting is there’s another character, Mr. Ali, who worked for the FBI, specifically for COINTELPRO, which was famous for surveilling and harassing civil rights organizations. And you get this sense of this character as someone who turned against his own people, but allying himself with the forces of white supremacy gained him nothing. Because at this point in his career, he’s still shut out of promotion at the agency.
And it’s just a really clear illustration early on that the whole game is rigged. Marie cannot succeed within the system, and even if she appears to have succeeded, she will later discover that she has lost. And I thought that was a very vivid and well done portrayal of that phenomenon.
WHISKEY JENNY: Definitely. And I think there were some very well-timed revelations about people working against Marie. As she’s retelling the story of her spy past career that causes the rip-roaring beginning, there’s some revelations about people screwing her over at the same time that she’s finding out about people screwing over her sister in the past. And I thought that was really well done as well. I thought they’re both well-timed revelations, and the specific ways in which people were wronging both Helene and Marie, I thought, were surprises to me. So they were well-plotted, I thought, as well.
Yeah, but intertwining those two things and showing how much of a repetitive cycle it is, as well. I thought it was very well done.
GIN JENNY: As I was making notes for this podcast, I was like, well, this is a very rich text, but I didn’t still find it a satisfying story.
WHISKEY JENNY: I agree. And the problem, I think, is I didn’t just—you’re right, it’s an expectations gap. I didn’t just want it to be a rich text. I wanted it to be a spy story. And it’s really good at sometimes. There’s a lot of good spy action sometimes as well.
And half the time I didn’t even want to take notes. I just wanted to blaze through this really engaging story. And then other times I was stymied and was wanting more meat there, even though there’s a whole bunch of meat already. It’s a strange feeling, I guess.
[LAUGHTER]So I think if it wasn’t so good sometimes at the spy and action stuff, I wouldn’t want it to be perfect at both things. But that’s what I do want from it. [LAUGHTER] I’m sorry.
GIN JENNY: No, I hear you. I totally agree.
One thing that surprised me that I wasn’t expecting was the whole story about Marie’s relationship with her sister, Helene. Because as you know, I don’t like dead sister stories. So if I’d known that’s what this was, I might not have read it. But I did actually enjoy it. I thought Helene was a really interesting character, and what Marie had taken away from Helene’s life and death was also very interesting.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, and I like that I think Helene remains unknowable to both Marie and the reader. And that sort of unresolved feeling I thought was really well done, because she is gone, and she’s not coming back, and there are questions that she’ll never be able to answer. And that’s just how it is. And I thought that was really true to family feelings and grief and all of that, when it’s all tied up together.
But because she was so good at the family relationships as well, I was like, well, then I want more of that, as well. I want so much more about the mom and the dad, and what that childhood was like.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, definitely.
WHISKEY JENNY: What did you think of—so I did not know anything about Thomas Sankara before reading this book. But what did you think about it that portrayal and having a real person in this book?
GIN JENNY: Oh, I thought it was really weird that she used a real person. Not just that he was a character in the book, but that she has him impregnate the protagonist and the protagonist has two kids by him. [LAUGHTER]
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.
GIN JENNY: I don’t really have anything to add. That was just super, super weird.
WHISKEY JENNY: I thought it was—yeah. I mean I—ahem. Agreed. He’s a real person, but I think it’s—many people, like me, don’t know the CIA’s past with Thomas Sankara.
GIN JENNY: Sure.
WHISKEY JENNY: So I feel like showing that speaks to the whole white colonialism interfering business. And I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know what the resolution is. Maybe just don’t have him impregnate people? I don’t know. Or make up a country? I don’t know what the solution is. But I agree that it was sort of like, huh. All right. That’s a choice.
GIN JENNY: That’s a choice, right?
WHISKEY JENNY: And I also thought then, aside from the questions of using a real person, I think that she cheats a little bit in the beginning when Thomas is first the—and I’m going to call him Thomas because that’s what the narrator calls him most the time. Not because I regularly call world leaders by their first name. [LAUGHTER]
But so Thomas, at the beginning he’s just taken power. He is supposed to be this incredibly charismatic, lightning rod for a revolution figure. And I don’t know how you show-don’t-tell that kind of charisma in a book. It’s tough, I recognize. But I don’t think it was fully successful here. I just felt like I was being told that this person was very charismatic and I wasn’t witnessing his charisma in action. And then it was just like I didn’t understand her reactions to him.
GIN JENNY: I also did not, yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: But then at the end, when—I guess this is a spoiler—he knows that his best friend who is also in politics with him is going to betray him, and yet he still keeps leading to the best of his ability until he knows that eventually one day he’ll get arrested or assassinated, or something will go wrong. But there’s nothing he can do to stop it, but he knows about it. I thought that resigned, weary tragic figure was incredibly compelling and so much more compelling than the person I met at the beginning, who was just this sketch of a charismatic person.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. It almost feels like at times she felt like she didn’t need to develop him because he was a real person. And I think that was a mistake.
I agree with you that I liked that this book brought in the question of American proxy conflicts during the Cold War. Because it is genuinely almost unfathomable the amount of damage the US did during the Cold War to prevent black and brown leaders from taking power who might have been even remotely sympathetic to communism. So I don’t know, it was just a very dark portrayal of America that’s very true to history, I guess.
WHISKEY JENNY: And yes, so I like that that portrayal gets shown by actual real history. But then you do end up with this problem of you have to have a character who’s a real person, and that’s just tough. Yeah.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. It just didn’t stop feeling weird to me that she had kids—the fictional character had kids by a real person. It felt like in those old Disney movies where they would mix real life and animated characters.
WHISKEY JENNY: Sure, yeah.
GIN JENNY: It felt like that, that weird and jarring.
Tell me what you think of this. Because there was this weird thing where Marie, our protagonist, is talking about communism. And she says, “Reaganomics was an unpleasant little philosophy, and when you added the punitive character of our country to it, we emerged as a breeding ground for a really virulent strain of cruelty. But the alternative was worse.” and I wasn’t sure if we were supposed to think that this extremely false dichotomy between Reaganomics and communism was just the narrator’s voice at the time she was living. Or are we the reader supposed to be like, yep, communism is so, so bad.
WHISKEY JENNY: I thought it was supposed to be the narrator at the time that she was living.
GIN JENNY: Great. Great. Great. OK, great.
WHISKEY JENNY: I also made note of that passage, though, as well. I was like, huh.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Interesting.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, it’s a weird plug for capitalism.
WHISKEY JENNY: It was a strange plug for capitalism.
GIN JENNY: Which is not looking good these days.
WHISKEY JENNY: No, not looking good. And I think also—I mean, Marie is a really complex character who has a lot of different motivations and, as a black woman in the FBI, is at times being asked to uphold principles that she doesn’t maybe agree with. I sort of took it as her trying to work through all of those conflicts, maybe.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, OK. That makes sense.
WHISKEY JENNY: But I also was like—because it just so, but the alternative was worse. And I was like, well, I assume by alternative you mean communism, and is it? [LAUGHTER] I mean, I guess it is, but I don’t know. Let’s give it a chance, I guess. I really don’t know.
Can we talk about some of the spy stuff?
GIN JENNY: Yeah, let’s talk about some of the spy stuff.
WHISKEY JENNY: So I have a couple of things about the spy stuff. Because it is also a spy book.
GIN JENNY: Right.
WHISKEY JENNY: So part of the plan is that Marie is undercover as, I don’t know, like an attaché or someone who works for the UN. And she meets Thomas in that way and is supposed to get close to him and show them around. And they go on a tour of Harlem, and they have a conversation just one on one at a bar. But that’s basically the extent.
And then she’s supposed to get sent to Burkina Faso as a diplomatic person. And I guess their big plan was just for her to run into him again. But then there’s this moment where she runs into him and is like, no one seemed to think that he might be like, huh. Like, I just met you. This is weird, what are you—? And then they’re sort of like, OK, so he thinks this is a little creepy. And I was like, yeah he thinks this is a little creepy! All this screams spy! What is happening?
I just thought that that was so weird, that none of the spy characters were like, oh, I guess we should come up with a reason why you’re meeting him again, and traveling across the world to meet him. I thought that was so strange.
GIN JENNY: I also found that weird. I thought in retrospect, once we learned that she’s not part of an actual official CIA operation. It’s like a janky two-man operation that contracts with the CIA—
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, but she would have known.
GIN JENNY: That was the only explanation that I could think of.
WHISKEY JENNY: I can see that as an argument, but I think she would’ve known as a character. And I also think that they are all just assuming that Thomas is going to sleep with her. And she’s assuming that that’s what they want. They’re all just assuming that he’s just going to fall into her arms. And I was like, I—but—you can’t—
GIN JENNY: It’s leaving a lot to chance.
WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, I don’t think it’s a done deal!
The other thing that I was like, what is just—? And maybe this is also just supposed to be a symbol of the jankiness—which is my new band name. When she is in town, and she thinks she’s working for the CIA, but actually it’s just this subcontractor who’s trying to become a subcontractor for the CIA, but now is just doing stuff randomly, I guess.
GIN JENNY: Willy nilly.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: It’s just willy nilly, they’re doing stuff. Her contact is Daniel. And while they’re waiting for Thomas to run into her arms, I guess, she keeps having to run errands around the town for Daniel. That was sort of the hint to me that something is up. And I thought it was going to be that they were priming her to be the fall guy for all this spying happening in the country. It’s not that at all. And then there was no reason for Daniel to send her on all of those errands. I was like, what is up with these errands that this poor woman had to keep running in this town that she’s never been in before.
Maybe this is me as someone who does not like running errands, but I was just like, oh, god, the errands. [LAUGHTER] Please tell me there was a reason for those errands.
GIN JENNY: I also did not know. I thought that was going to be explained, and it wasn’t. So I just chalked it up to jankiness.
WHISKEY JENNY: OK, so it’s just symbol of jankiness. All right. That’s fine.
GIN JENNY: I actually have another question about Daniel.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, go for it.
GIN JENNY: So he is—
WHISKEY JENNY: Creepy as fuck? Yes.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. I mean, yeah.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: The answer is yes.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: But in addition to being very creepy, he’s Helene’s ex. My understanding of what was implied about Helene is that he was in a relationship with her and he was abusive, and that either he caused the car accident that killed her, or she did it herself to get away from him. Was that your understanding at all?
WHISKEY JENNY: Yes. Absolutely, yes.
GIN JENNY: OK. Just, I wasn’t sure if I was reading too much into it.
WHISKEY JENNY: No, I don’t think so. Canon, I think, is he was abusive. I don’t think that’s—it’s barely implied.
GIN JENNY: Yes, he was clearly abusive, yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: And then the car accident, I think, is sort of implied, that either she did it just because she was so depressed from being in an abusive relationship, or he caused it and killed her. Yeah, that was my takeaway as well.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, that was really sad also.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, that was real scary. So that guy is terrifying, but he’s not the one who sent the people after her at the beginning of the book that causes her to retell the past, that explains why the people are coming after her at the beginning of the book.
GIN JENNY: Right.
WHISKEY JENNY: Which is why I just don’t think the story is finished.
GIN JENNY: I think that it raises more questions than it answers. And maybe that’s what she intended. It’s just not necessarily something that I love in the book.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, no, I definitely recognize the intention behind it. I mean, who am I to critique anyone? I am but a little woman podcasting.
GIN JENNY: [LAUGHTER]
WHISKEY JENNY: But I think where you start and where you end have a lot of meaning in a book. And if the story that she’s telling is this woman’s past from the perspective of the damage that’s been done to her family and to countries, then I just wouldn’t have started with that scene of someone coming after her.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. I mean, I think that was intended to start with a bang, which it certainly did.
WHISKEY JENNY: It did.
GIN JENNY: It doesn’t set up the story that she’s telling. I think that’s a really, really great point.
WHISKEY JENNY: Maybe it’s not the ending I would change. Maybe it’s the beginning then.
GIN JENNY: I did love at the very end of the book—the frame of the book is her telling her sons the story of what happened. And the ending was very lovely. She says, “I hope that if you’re called to resist injustice you’ll have the courage to do so. I hope you’ll love fiercely and freely. In these ways, I hope you’ll be good Americans.” And I thought that was a very, very lovely ending.
WHISKEY JENNY: It was a great quote, I agree. It was really, really beautiful.
GIN JENNY: A very interesting book, even if not ultimately one that I really loved.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I would agree.
GIN JENNY: So what are we reading next time?
WHISKEY JENNY: Next time—we’re doing a thing, guys.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, we’re doing some swapsies. Tell us what we’re doing.
WHISKEY JENNY: So this book was on my summer preview list, and it was Gin Jenny’s pick. So this time I picked something from Gin Jenny’s summer preview list, which is Magic for Liars, by Sarah Gailey, which sounds like there’s magic in the world and our protagonist is a private investigator and maybe not super involved with the magic world. But her sister is a teacher at a magic boarding school, and then she has to go investigate a crime at the magic boarding school.
GIN JENNY: It’s very, very up my alley, and I’m super excited about it.
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m very excited, too. I love a PI.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I love a PI. And I love that we’re doing a thing.
WHISKEY JENNY: We’re doing a thing. Yeah, maybe we’ll do it again. Who knows?
GIN JENNY: Plus, Whiskey Jenny, if we did this in the future, we would really ensure that during our reports on our past previews, we would have something to—
WHISKEY JENNY: We would at least have one out of the four or five.
GIN JENNY: We would at least have one each, yeah.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Really gaming the stats here, yeah. [LAUGHTER]
All right, well this has been the Reading the End bookcast with the demographically similar Jennys. You can visit the blog at readingtheend.com. You can follow Gin Jenny on Twitter @readingtheend. We’re both on Goodreads as Whiskey Jenny and Gin Jenny. You can email us—please do, we love hearing from you—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, a quote from Stay with Me, by Ayobami Adebayo. “The past flipped itself open like a spooky family album, revealing one familiar picture after the other, highlighting the things standing in plain view which I’d never seen. Things I had refused to see.”
[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.