Somehow it is October, and though many months of the year have passed, we are ever more convinced that linear time is a collective hallucination. We hope that you are experiencing Autumn, and we welcome in the settingsiest time of year by chatting about our thoughts on book settings. (I am opposed to them, and Whiskey Jenny is in favor.) In this podcast, we welcome the marvelous Ashley Wells, whom we do love but whom I invited to the podcast to punish her for forcing me to read this goddamn Irish book. She made us a game!!! We haven’t had a game in so long!
Here are the time signatures if you want to skip around.
2:34 – What we’re reading
6:29 – What we’re listening to
11:17 – Settings in books
23:22 – That They May Face the Rising Sun / By the Lake, John McGahern
40:13 – Fictional settings game
48:53 – What we’re reading next time
What we talked about:
Nick Offerman on the PosCast
There, There, Tommy Orange
Not Now I’m Reading podcast
“And Never Been Kissed,” thehoyden and twentysomething, locked to archive
Tell Me How You Really Feel, Aminah Mae Safi
Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyin Muir
Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood
The Mighty Thor, Vol. 1
My Dad Wrote a Porno
Effectively Wild
The Flop House
The Angry Chicken
Books in the Freezer
Ride or Die
Fever Breaks, Josh Ritter
Josh Groban and his funniest ever song
Graceland
Hawaii 5-0
The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
Sleep No More
Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel
I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith
The Speckledy Hen, Alison Uttley
The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
Deep Secret, Diana Wynne Jones
Wylding Hall, Elizabeth Hand
The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters
The Little Friend, Donna Tartt
Kelly Link
That They May Face the Rising Sun, John McGahern
Give Me Some Truth, Eric Gansworth
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.WHISKEY JENNY: Hello, and welcome back to the Reading the End Bookcast with the demographically similar Jennys. I’m Whiskey Jenny.
GIN JENNY: And I’m Gin Jenny.
WHISKEY JENNY: And with us today we have a very special guest, Friend of the Podcast Ashley. Welcome back!
ASHLEY: Hi! Thanks for having me back.
GIN JENNY: Thanks for coming back. We’re so excited to have you.
WHISKEY JENNY: Huzzah! Before we get into all of our programming, we have one podcast-adjacent note that we’re going to all squeal over. We’re going to talk about what we’re reading. We’re going to talk about what we’re listening to. We’re going to talk about settings in books and whether or not we like or dislike them. [LAUGHTER] We will conclude the 2019 Hatening with part two, which is my Hatening pick for Gin Jenny, By the Lake, or That They May Face the Rising Sun, which is clearly the better title, by John McGahern. And then Ashley made us a game! We haven’t done a game in forever.
ASHLEY: I sure did.
GIN JENNY: We really haven’t, and I’m really, really—I have no idea what it’s going to be, and I’m very excited to find out.
ASHLEY: Oh, man.
WHISKEY JENNY: But first, who wants to announce this really exciting news?
GIN JENNY: So our podcast composer Jessie, who is a genius, has written audio stings for other podcasts than our own. And one of these includes the PosCast with Joe Posnanski and Michael Schur. Jessie wrote them a song for one of their segments, which is entitled “One Last Meaningless Thing.” And recently they had Ron Swanson himself, Nick Offerman, as a guest on that podcast. And he sang from memory the “One Last Meaningless Thing” theme song.
WHISKEY JENNY: From memory! He just knows it.
ASHLEY: Because he loves it, because it’s great.
GIN JENNY: No shots, but I could have done a better job singing it than he did. [LAUGHTER] Insofar as—that’s no shots to Duke Silver. I just mean insofar as I know all the words and the tune better than he had it down. No offense, Nick Offerman. I think you’re great.
WHISKEY JENNY: I feel like that is shots to Duke Silver and Nick Offerman. You can’t just say no shots and then say stuff like that. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: OK, yes, it was a little bit shots. But still, we’re super excited for Jessie.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yay! It’s so exciting.
GIN JENNY: Jessie is so talented.
ASHLEY: Yes, she’s amazing.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, what is everyone reading?
ASHLEY: I have been reading the Hatening book. What did I read before? I read There, There, by Tommy Orange, immediately prior to that.
GIN JENNY: Oh, you loved that one.
ASHLEY: Did not love it at all. [LAUGHTER] Which I don’t feel that bad about. I mean, I wanted to love it, so I felt bad for myself. I didn’t feel bad for Tommy Orange because he won a million awards for it and everybody loves it, and it has a solid four rating Goodreads. But it just was really not the book for me, unfortunately.
WHISKEY JENNY: What do you have lined up after That They May Face the Rising Sun?
ASHLEY: I am so glad you asked. I am going to be a guest on Not Now I’m Reading, Friend of the Podcasts’ Kay and Chelsea’s podcast. And I promised them I would read the seminal work of hockey RPF And Never Been Kissed.
GIN JENNY: Oh, nice. Yes, they’ve talked about that.
ASHLEY: They have an entire episode about it, and I feel like I just need to read the thing and listen to the episode. So that is on the docket next.
WHISKEY JENNY: How thrilling.
GIN JENNY: Great.
ASHLEY: Yeah. What about you guys?
GIN JENNY: So I just, just, just finished reading a YA novel called Tell Me How You Really Feel, by Aminah Mae Safi.
ASHLEY: Great title.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. It is a romance novel that clearly was heavily inspired by the show The Gilmore Girls. So it’s not exactly Paris/Rory fic, but kinda.
WHISKEY JENNY: Ooh.
GIN JENNY: And it was really great. I enjoyed it so much. I thought it was really sweet. I thought it had some emotional heft to it. I enjoyed all the Gilmore Girls-y things about it, but it wasn’t so Gilmore Girlsy that it didn’t feel like its own thing. So I liked it a lot.
I just finished that, and then I just started reading Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsin Muir, which I bought as a special treat for myself, because I’ve heard really good things about it, but it also has black-tipped pages, and that’s really cool.
WHISKEY JENNY AND ASHLEY: Oooh.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, exactly. So it’s about a soldier called Gideon. She is an indentured servant at one of nine necromancy houses. And the lady of her house, who is her archnemesis, will set her free of her indenture if she’ll do one last job, where they basically have to go together to a creepy palace, and they have to maybe fight? I’m not really sure what they do there. But they’re in some kind of competition against the heads of the other eight necromancy houses. I think they also want to bang. I’m not 100% on that.
WHISKEY JENNY: The boss lady and Gideon?
GIN JENNY: Mm-hmm.
WHISKEY JENNY: Cool.
ASHLEY: Well, that sounds great.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. So tl;dr, lesbian necromancers in space.
WHISKEY JENNY and ASHLEY: In space?
ASHLEY: I missed that part.
WHISKEY JENNY: In space?
GIN JENNY: Yeah, they’re also in space.
WHISKEY JENNY: There’s so much going on!
ASHLEY: Whoa.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard it’s super weird.
ASHLEY: That sounds great.
GIN JENNY: Whiskey Jenny, what are you reading?
WHISKEY JENNY: I am reading Alias Grace, by Margaret Atwood.
ASHLEY: Which you are so excited about.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, can you tell from my voice? I was like, yeah, I’ll try to put a nice spin on it. [LAUGHTER] I’m reading it for work book club, which meets tomorrow. So gotta finish that pretty quick. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: I started reading Alias Grace one time, and it was so long and boring, so.
WHISKEY JENNY: I will say I’m getting engaged, I think?
GIN JENNY: OK. How far in are you?
ASHLEY: Congratulations.
WHISKEY JENNY: Uh, half?
GIN JENNY: [LAUGHTER] OK. That’s brutal. That’s brutal.
WHISKEY JENNY: No, that’s me being too harsh. I am engaged. It’s not my kind of book. It’s an unreliable narrator I’m pretty sure. [LAUGHTER] All the men are terrible, obviously. It is not something that I would have picked for myself. But I think we’re going to have a good discussion.
Well, so I just recently finished the volume one of The Mighty Thor, in which Thor is a lady, Dr. Jane, uh, something.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Jane—Foster. Foster!
WHISKEY JENNY: All I could think was Goodall.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: That sounds incredible.
WHISKEY JENNY: Dr. Jane Foster. So that was actually more fascisty than I wanted at the time.
GIN JENNY: That was my impression of it as well.
ASHLEY: Goodness.
WHISKEY JENNY: All right. Well, what we’re something else-ing this time is what we’re listening to. And Ashley, I think you were the most excited to talk about this topic. So do you want to kick us off?
ASHLEY: The only music I’m ever listening to is Best of Bootie Mashups. You guys know that, [LAUGHTER] because you know me.
But podcasts I listen to all day at work. So most importantly in my life right now, I am listening to My Dad Wrote a Porno. I will not talk too much about it in detail, because Whiskey Jenny is waiting on her technology—
WHISKEY JENNY: That’s correct.
ASHLEY: —to get sorted out to listen to it. [LAUGHTER] I really need her to get caught up so we can talk about it. I am also listening to Effectively Wild, Jessie’s husband’s baseball podcast, which I really like. I listen to The Flop House, which I just started listening to. It’s great. It’s a movies podcasts. I listen to a Hearthstone podcast, which is a video game. It is the only video game I play. The podcast is called The Angry Chicken. I listen to Books in the Freezer, which is a horror books podcast. And Ride or Die, which is about Supernatural.
GIN JENNY: No, shush, that’s mine. You can’t take that one. That one’s mine.
ASHLEY: Sorry! OK, you talk about it.
GIN JENNY: So lately I have been listening to the Ride or Die podcast, which is a supernatural recap podcast that Ashley put me onto, actually. Thank you, Ashley.
ASHLEY: My pleasure.
GIN JENNY: And I’m enjoying it a lot. I have been watching Supernatural. As a finisher, I am not planning to finish all of Supernatural. That is too much content and I don’t want to.
ASHLEY: There is so much of it.
GIN JENNY: But I’ve decided to watch up to the latest point that any of my friends tells me it’s still kind of OK, which is season 8. [LAUGHTER] So I’ve been watching it lately, but I’m on a break from watching it. I’m watching Leverage now, as I have said a lot. Leverage!
But I am listening to Ride or Die podcast, and it’s so much fun. Because they’re so mad about the stupid things about Supernatural, and I appreciate that. Because the stupid things about Supernatural are, indeed, deeply stupid. And especially they’re mad at Sam and Dean’s terrible father, which is a correct thing to be mad about. Their father is terrible. Absolute trash.
WHISKEY JENNY: So handsome, though.
GIN JENNY: Absolutely don’t agree. And I get him mixed up with Javier Bardem.
WHISKEY JENNY: That’s fair.
ASHLEY: Pru and Waldorph are divided on that. [LAUGHTER] His head is too big. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: I mean, as a large-headed person, I feel like I cannot criticize that, but—
ASHLEY: You can!
GIN JENNY: I don’t like him in general. I just don’t. He does nothing for me.
ASHLEY: Me neither.
GIN JENNY: Whiskey Jenny, what are you listening to?
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, as Ashley alluded to, I lost my phone. I am currently rocking a sweet burner.
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: It’s so retro!
WHISKEY JENNY: So I’m kind of enjoying that life for a moment.
ASHLEY: But can you listen to My Dad Wrote a Porno on it?
WHISKEY JENNY: Exactly. That does mean that my podcast listening has stopped very suddenly. And when Ashley reminded me that it was Porno day, that was the thing that got me to call the police station and ask them if they had my phone.
But I am going to see my beloved Josh Ritter on Saturday, so I’ve been listening to his new album, which is exciting.
GIN JENNY: Josh Groban, you said?
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: See, Gin Jenny knows how much I dislike Josh Groban. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: Which I think is so funny, because to me Josh Groban is the most inoffensive person on the planet. But Whiskey Jenny really, really doesn’t like him.
WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t! And I don’t know why, but I feel like he did something to deserve it. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: Anyway, I’m so sorry. Yes, you’re going to see Josh Ritter. I know you love Josh Ritter.
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m going to see the good Josh. So I’ve been listening to his new album, Fever Breaks, which is produced by Jason Isbell, who I also really like, so that’s very exciting. And then I’m cheating a little bit. I’ve been listening to a TV show a lot while I knit. Again, I know that I’m cheating, but I really don’t watch it very much. I’m mostly listening to it as I’m knitting.
GIN JENNY: I’ll allow it.
WHISKEY JENNY: I bring it here because I need someone to tell me what show I should be watching instead, because it’s Graceland, which was a USA Network show. And usually the USA Network does right by me, and this one is not doing right by me.
It is a show of undercover agents from multiple agencies all living in the same house. And obviously what I want from this show is the chore wheel in the house, and pasta night, and playing football on the beach with the roommates and whatnot. They’ll give me like five minutes of that per episode, and the rest is them accidentally becoming heroin addicts and stuff. [LAUGHTER] And it’s like, come on, USA Network! What do you think I want here?
ASHLEY: Read the room.
GIN JENNY: Can I put in a plug for just rewatching Hawaii 5-0, the one set in Hawaii?
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, the Hawaii one! Yeah, I could restart that. I could restart Hawaii 5-0. That might make me a lot happier.
GIN JENNY: And it’s set in Hawaii, of all places.
WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, who knew? [LAUGHTER] So because I picked up pretty setting-heavy book to torment poor Gin Jenny with for the Hatening part two, and to apparently torment Ashley with, for our topic this time, just discuss settings in general.
ASHLEY: Yea or nay? [LAUGHTER]
WHISKEY JENNY: What do we think?
GIN JENNY: I don’t like them. I hate places.
WHISKEY JENNY: Should we just take a quick poll around the table? Gin Jenny is con. Ashley?
ASHLEY: So you’re catching me at a vulnerable time in my reading, because I obviously just read this book. And as I mentioned before, immediately prior I read another very setting-heavy book, There, There, which is set in present-day Oakland. And I didn’t like that either. So at the present moment I have to say I’m firmly anti-settings.
But I don’t feel like either of these settings were handled in a way that enhanced the book. So maybe if I was reading a different book with a different setting that was handled in a different way, I might feel differently.
GIN JENNY: I want to put a pin in that and come back to it. But Whiskey Jenny, real quick, are you pro or con?
WHISKEY JENNY: Pro. I’m very pro.
ASHLEY: Can y’all talk more about why you’re pro and con settings?
WHISKEY JENNY: Nope, that’s it. [LAUGHTER] That’s the topic, we’re moving on.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: So I’m delighted to say why I don’t like settings.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: You have an opening statement? Come on.
GIN JENNY: I don’t like places. I have a hard time picturing things in my mind. So when someone paints me a word picture, it’s often wasted on me. But beyond that, I think that setting is by far the least important thing about a book. It will never on its own sell me.
I think the closest that a book has ever come to selling me on its setting was The Night Circus. And I think that the reason that worked is that the author used to work for the production Sleep No More, which is a performance that I have seen. So I had something to kind of pin in my mind to it.
But overall, out of pretty much every element that a standard book possesses, setting is the least important by a large gap. When I find them useful or good, it’s because they are revealing something else about some other element of the book that I actually do care about. But like, I don’t want to know what the mountains look like, and the clean, cool air or whatever. No.
ASHLEY: What about the vetch?
GIN JENNY: [LAUGHTER] You know I don’t know what a vetch is! Yeah, so it enhances the book for me very little. And therefore, places are stupid and bad and I don’t care about them. Whiskey Jenny?
WHISKEY JENNY: Boy. I do like places. I would probably agree that I would put it fairly down on the list. Like if I had to get rid of things in a novel, it would be one early on. But I don’t want to get rid of things in a novel. [LAUGHTER]
And this is one of the things that, when it is good, it does really enhance my reading experience. And it feels very transformative to me. And the image of certain places where key character moments or key scenes happen—I agree with what you’re saying, that of course the point of it is not just to describe pretty mountains, but to do something for your book. But when it’s doing something for your book, it becomes an inextricable part for me of what it’s doing. And when I think back to that scene that was really powerful to me or something, it’s all of a piece. And I remember where it was supposed to be taking place, along with who was saying what, when it’s working.
GIN JENNY: Can I ask for an example of a book that you think the setting was really, really strong in and that it really enhanced your enjoyment of the book?
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I think you’re right in that it was strong in The Night Circus. That one was great at putting you in a place and describing where you were. I was also thinking of Station Eleven, which—
GIN JENNY: Really?
WHISKEY JENNY: For me I guess it doesn’t have quite such specific a setting as The Night Circus, which has these beautiful, intricate things it’s describing. But I distinctly remember the times that they would all sit around the campfire and the wooden wagon would be parked nearby. And I remember that at the end they went to an abandoned airport, which was such an interesting post-apocalyptic place for you to hole up. And it’s so eerie the way it’s described, then it’s reclaimed almost.
GIN JENNY: I’m so interested that you said Station Eleven, because we both read that book, and I also really liked it. And the setting—I mean, the airport, yeah, was a cool image, but I would not have thought of that ever as a book that has a really strong setting. That’s really interesting, Whiskey Jenny.
ASHLEY: The more I think about it, the settings that I have really liked in books are ones where, like you were saying, Gin Jenny, it’s a setting where I’ve already been, or I have some prior knowledge or some experience with what that setting looks like already. And so the pleasurable part of it for me is reading a description matches the image that I already have in my head.
GIN JENNY: I also think, going back to what you were saying, Whiskey Jenny, about the airport at the end of Station Eleven and being around the fire, I think that if there is one thing that is most likely to make me feel positively about setting in books, it’s if the author describes everyone doing something cozy in that setting.
Because I was looking at my bookshelves, and I was like, OK, which of these has a really vivid setting? And one of the ones that I thought of was I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith. The family is very poor and they live in this very, very rundown castle and almost no money. And I really can’t picture any part of the castle, but the main character Cassandra goes to take a bath in the cold room, and she has all her reading for her bath laid out.
ASHLEY: Yeah!
GIN JENNY: And she feels really like, oh, it’s my bath time. She has several different choices of what she’s going to read in the tub. That really resonated with me, that feeling of coziness and ritual. Which is interesting, because it’s not really about—I mean, it is about the place, because that’s where it’s taking place. But to me it feels like it’s more about the action she’s taking, but it did make me feel more connected to the setting.
ASHLEY: Yeah, I remember that scene really vividly, too. I love that book.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. Oh my gosh, it’s such a good book. But I mean—we’ll get to it, but I feel like this is, with By the Lake, what I struggled with, because a lot of the actions they were doing were not things that I was familiar with or could picture myself doing. And I hate to be—I feel bad about that, because I don’t want to be the kind of person who can only enjoy books where I’m already familiar with the type of thing it is. But yeah, it’s a challenge for me for sure.
ASHLEY: Me, also.
WHISKEY JENNY: I think it’s very easy to do badly, too. It’s very easy to just describe mountains, and then separately describe what your characters are doing, and not tie it in together. That’s a very easy trap to fall into, and happens a lot. Beautifully integrated settings aren’t a dime a dozen.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Well the other one that I really thought of—and this was so formative to me as a kid—is I had this picture book as a kid called The Speckledy Hen, by Alison Uttley and it was in a series of books about Little Gray Rabbit. It was all about little animals and they did human stuff. But this book was about the Speckledy Hen, and she gets tired of never having any alone time in her farmyard. So you can already see how this would appeal to me.
ASHLEY: Very relatable.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, so she goes off on her own with all her things. She finds a little hollow tree. And she goes in there, and she puts up a shelf, and makes a little curtain for her window. And she puts all her pots and pans on the shelf, and she makes a little door. And she’s all cozy and warm inside. And I think that was the peak of all book settings for me. And I think I read it when I was six, and it’s all been downhill from there.
WHISKEY JENNY: Boy, it does sound great, though.
ASHLEY: I read a lot of books that involved the character running away into the woods and making a little hidey hole, and that was always my dream.
GIN JENNY: That’s a great genre.
ASHLEY: Oh, God, yeah.
GIN JENNY: I think that The Speckledy Hen set the tone for me to only appreciate cozy settings, and everything else I’m like, nah. So Hogwarts, I’ll accept Hogwarts.
ASHLEY: Very cozy.
WHISKEY JENNY: Don’t you really like the long slog to Mordor, though? Because of the atmosphere?
GIN JENNY: Yes, but it’s more because of the atmosphere of doom, and the fact that anything could get them at any time.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, OK. It’s not that everything is grim and barren around them.
ASHLEY: Even the marsh with the faces?
GIN JENNY: No, the marsh with the faces is very, very effective. I will say that the dead faces in the water is so creepy.
ASHLEY: So good.
GIN JENNY: Maybe those are my two things. Maybe creepiness and coziness, and that’s all I love.
ASHLEY: Since we’re talking about creepy things that we like, I really like a creepy house.
GIN JENNY: Oh, sure.
ASHLEY: Especially if—it would be fine if it was described in a different way. Like, nothing about it is inherently creepy, but the way they’re describing it is there’s just like a sense of gloom hanging over everything. And they make paint colors sound menacing and stuff like that.
GIN JENNY: Yes. Oh God, like “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and she makes the wallpaper sound so horrifying.
ASHLEY: Yes!
GIN JENNY: As you were talking, I was thinking about haunted houses and creepy houses. And I think what makes them work for me is the really specific little off details. Like in The Haunting of Hill House, a very scary book, the doors won’t stay shut or open. They won’t stay the way they’re supposed to be.
ASHLEY: Yeah, that’s creepy.
GIN JENNY: So if they shut or open the doors, they’ll come back and the door will be the opposite of how they left it. And Diana Wynne Jones has a book called Deep Secret where something is off about the hotel where they’re having a big science fiction convention. The hotel is kind of set up in a square, so you keep turning right and you keep turning right and you keep turning right. It has more than four sides even though it can’t possibly.
ASHLEY: Ooooooh, that’s so scary!
GIN JENNY: Yeah, so it’s stuff like that, where it’s outside of what should be normal, that I guess works for me.
ASHLEY: I just read a book this little short novel called Wylding Hall?
GIN JENNY: Oh, I really like Wylding Hall!
ASHLEY: And that was another that’s exactly what you were just describing, where the layout keeps changing and they keep trying to walk through it. And yeah, the layout keeps changing and people keep getting lost. That was really creepy.
GIN JENNY: That book was really good. It’s about a 1970s band that goes to this old, creepy English manor house to record their next record, and it’s just creepy as hell in there. They walk into a room and it’s full of dead birds. It’s so creepy.
WHISKEY JENNY: Whoa.
ASHLEY: I think you’d like it. The structure is interesting, too. It’s all like they’re doing a documentary where they’re all being interviewed about what happened there. So it’s all 30 years later.
WHISKEY JENNY: Interesting.
ASHLEY: I think you’d enjoy it.
WHISKEY JENNY: When you were both talking about scary books, I was imagining that scary books would have to be particularly good at creating a setting. And it makes me sad that I’m too scared to enjoy them.
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: I think Wylding Hall would be the right level of scary for you.
WHISKEY JENNY: I’ll put it on my list.
ASHLEY: OK. I hope you like it.
GIN JENNY: And it’s short. I’m really glad that we came around to the discussion of horror settings. Because that was an element that I really hadn’t thought about, but that is a sphere in which setting actually, I think, pretty consistently works for me. So we’ve turned me around a little bit. At least—
ASHLEY: We’ve made so much progress.
GIN JENNY: At least 45 degrees, I’ve been turned.
ASHLEY: How many right turns in the hotel of this discussion have we made? I actually wanted to mention one more horror setting that I super love, and it’s The Little Stranger. That’s another one that’s very setting-heavy, and it is a setting that I’m not familiar with at all. But it’s a very creepy house. It’s described really vividly, and it’s crumbling and decaying in interesting and unhealthy ways.
GIN JENNY: And again, I think she does a good job of picking out small details that are creepy.
ASHLEY: Yeah, absolutely.
GIN JENNY: That there’s no real reason for them to be as creepy as they are.
ASHLEY: And the movie is excellent.
GIN JENNY: Oh, really? I haven’t seen it. Oh, great to know. I’ll have to watch it.
ASHLEY: Gosh, it’s so good. And the casting is just really perfect, as well. It’s Domhnall Gleeson and Ruth Wilson. Yeah, I loved it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Remind me if y’all have read Kelly Link?
ASHLEY: I have not yet somehow.
GIN JENNY: No, I haven’t.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I feel like she also is very good at recreating those small details in the physical space around you that are usually creepy. [LAUGHTER]
ASHLEY: I’ve got to read some of her stuff.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I keep meaning to. I don’t know why I haven’t. I keep meaning to.
WHISKEY JENNY: There’s so many books to read. That’s why.
ASHLEY: There really are, you guys.
GIN JENNY: Oh, God, it’s so true. I’ve really been feeling sunk beneath a pile of books and no time to read any of them. And I want to read all of them!
ASHLEY: Me too.
GIN JENNY: Instead I had to read That They May Face the Rising Sun. Whiskey Jenny, why did you do this to me?
ASHLEY: [LAUGHTER]
WHISKEY JENNY: Why did I do this to you? Why did you make me read lying liars and the lies that they tell?
ASHLEY: [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: Boy, I can’t tell you. I felt so guilty after I made you read Trust Exercise, and then when I started reading That They May Face the Rising Sun, I was like, boy, did that lady deserve all that she got last time.
ASHLEY: [LAUGHTER]
WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t—we get into weird territory with the Hatening. [LAUGHTER] It’s an odd thing to do to ourselves.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, we have been questioned about this in the past. No, I like the Hatening.
WHISKEY JENNY: I do, too.
GIN JENNY: OK, Whiskey Jenny, I’m so sorry. I jumped the gun. Do you want to introduce this, the worst book of all time?
ASHLEY: [LAUGHTER]
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I sure would. So this is Hatening Part 2. This is Hatening Part 2, you’ll have heard me say, which means that I have already tried and failed to like a book that was built for me to hate it. So don’t let Gin Jenny make you feel sorry for her, because she already inflicted something on me. This is not a weird torture that I pulled out of nowhere onto her.
But we read That They May Face the Rising Sun, which is also known as By the Lake in the US, By John McGahern. And I picked it because—
GIN JENNY: Of Ashley. Because of Ashley.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, because Ashley reminded me how much Gin Jenny hates Irish literature. And the setting was very important, and nothing happens and it’s just the quiet, everyday lives in a year of these people in a small town village. Oh, and it’s very ensemble-y. So all of these things Gin Jenny hates, and I was hoping to like it.
But I do have to say, when I started it I was like, oh God, now I feel bad. I do have to apologize. Because it is the kind of book that I like, and otherwise I would feel bad. But in the first 30 pages I think there were like two dogs shot, multiple rapes, some mental illness nonsense, and children beaten at a schoolroom. And I was like, boy. This is dark. [LAUGHTER] So for those reasons, I do apologize.
GIN JENNY: Did you like it in the end, Whiskey Jenny?
WHISKEY JENNY: Again, I think when you should start a book in the first 30 pages with all of that stuff, it’s pretty hard to get me back. And I would not say that this book got me back. I think without those things I would have enjoyed it, and there were aspects apart from those things that I did really enjoy. So maybe? Who can say?
GIN JENNY: Ashley, what about you?
ASHLEY: I did not like it. I didn’t hate it.
GIN JENNY: I didn’t think you were going to like it, and that is my revenge upon you, is you having to read it, since you did this to me.
ASHLEY: Yeah, no, I would say it is not my kind of book. I didn’t hate it. There were definitely times that I was like, [SIGH], OK, we’re going to do this. We’re going to read this book. I totally agree that the first 30 pages or so, not just throws in some dark subject matter, but treats it with a very casual, jocular tone.
WHISKEY JENNY: So flippant. Yeah, yes.
ASHLEY: So I did not care for that. Did not care for the fact that nothing happens. Not to get too in depth right away, but I found the dialogue in this book so strange.
GIN JENNY: Do you mean boring?
ASHLEY: Yes, definitely boring. [LAUGHTER] I get it what they’re trying to do I think, which is that these different characters all have bits that they do, which that I understand. My friends and I have bits that we do. I get the impulse to put those in and repeat them many times. But a lot of the bits are just like, oh, hello, how are you? Oh, I’m fine. I’m better than if I was in heaven but not as good as if I was in hell, or something like that. And then they repeat that throughout the book to show that everything stays the same over the passage of time. I feel like no one talks like this. And maybe because I’m not Irish. Maybe that’s how everybody talks in Ireland.
WHISKEY JENNY: I think that’s interesting, because that repetitive way that they interact with each other, actually that was one of the things that I really liked about it. I liked the comfort of those routines. I liked how almost ritualistic they were and what the bits were between all the different characters, how that was representative of their relationship. Yeah, I really liked all of that. It was one of the things that I was like, well this I could get into. It was very comforting to me that in this life, that they did the same things like that.
But I do think that there were some strange things about the dialogue to me, where I think at times the dialogue would be used to kind of kick us into a flashback.
ASHLEY: Yes, constantly
GIN JENNY: I wrote so much about this.
ASHLEY: Oh my God.
WHISKEY JENNY: The flashback—but the flashback did not start soon enough. So these poor people would have to monologue for a page about, like, remember when we first moved here, and have an entire paragraph where they’re just declaiming to their spouse the thing that they were both there for. And it was like, just start to flashback earlier. I don’t know why you have to make your characters say all this. It was very strange.
GIN JENNY: And that happened a lot at the beginning of the book, and I had such a hard time getting my bearings.
ASHLEY: Me, too.
GIN JENNY: Because sometimes what Whiskey Jenny described would happen. And at all times, nothing interesting happened in the flashback, so I couldn’t really understand why we were even having a flashback. And then it would be like, ah, but that was years ago. Now, leaning against the fence pole—and I’d be like, OK, was leaning against the fence pole the present day? Yes, it was—they have an identical conversation. And it was really challenging at the beginning because everyone has identical names. And I know that’s truth in television, because my people are Irish and I have like 16 Jims and Jameses in my family. But it makes for very challenging reading.
ASHLEY: Yeah, I don’t think it’s something that you have to replicate in literature just because it happens in real life. You can make things clearer in literature and no one’s going to be mad.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, you could definitely take artistic license. I don’t think it would ruin the realism of it. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: Yeah, and especially having so many characters, especially early on, whose names began with the same letter, that is provably very hard for readers to follow. [LAUGHTER] So they’d be like, a Jamesie and a Johnny and a John, and I was like, oh my God.
WHISKEY JENNY: And a Jim.
GIN JENNY: Who are—yeah!
ASHLEY: Way too many. I saw Whiskey Jenny on Saturday and I had just started the book, and I was like, I have no idea what’s going on. I was like, I genuinely don’t know where in time or space I am.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Space I feel like I had a good handle on.
GIN JENNY: Sure. Ireland.
WHISKEY JENNY: Timewise, though, I had to—I was like, what year is it? And I had to Google it.
GIN JENNY: What year is it?
WHISKEY JENNY: I think it was the ‘80s, because they mention a bombing at a town.
ASHLEY: Yeah, they talk about The Troubles a little bit.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, and one of the specific bombings they mentioned happened in the ‘80s, so I think it’s set in the ‘80s.
ASHLEY: I also think that, kind of going back to what I was saying about how you like a setting if it’s already familiar to you, you like to read about it if it’s already familiar to you. I feel like a lot of the details about the place, and also the dialogue and the cultural references were all kind of directed at people who already knew that stuff.
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m sure there were definitely cultural references that I missed. But I like this kind of book. And for me the things that happened were interesting to me. I don’t regret it for the plot, shall I say.
ASHLEY: Wow.
GIN JENNY: I actually sent Whiskey Jenny an angry picture of me when I got this book out of the library. Because my plan was—I knew I was going to hate it. But my plan was, OK, it’s going to suck. But what I’ll do is I’ll see how long each chapter is, and I’ll give myself a goal where I’ll read so many chapters at a time. And if I do that for a few days in a row, I’ll get through it in the end. And there are no chapter breaks in this God damned book!
WHISKEY JENNY: Newp!
GIN JENNY: So what I did instead, after taking an angry picture for Whiskey Jenny, what I did instead is I would give myself, I would be like, OK, you have to read 50 pages and then you can stop for a day. And I would plan to get through 50 pages, find a stopping point ish, and stop there. But everything was so pointless.
And I’m going to give an example. And what’s really frustrating to me is that this book is so boring that when something as boring as what I’m about to describe happens, I was still like, oh, thank God something is happening. And then I was like, I can’t believe this Goddamn book is forcing me to be relieved that I’m reading something so pointless, because it’s two degrees less pointless than everything else.
OK, so the main character, I guess, ‘s uncle wants to sell his, I don’t even know. Farm? Railway station? I don’t care. And he wants to sell it to his right hand man, but they can’t have a conversation about it. So the main character has to talk to his right hand man about it. So they’re like, oh, yeah, he’s interested. And they spend, oh my God, so many pages even just trying to discern if he’s interested in buying the place. But he is.
ASHLEY: Ugh, it goes on forever.
GIN JENNY: It goes on forever. So they’re going to get a bank loan. But when he goes to the bank the right hand man is insufficiently excited about getting a bank loan, so they don’t get the bank loan. So the uncle has to loan him the money. It goes on for so, so long. And I wanted to rip my eyes out, but it was still somehow more interesting than everything else that happened in the book.
ASHLEY: It was really interminable. And the reason that was frustrating to me wasn’t because nothing happened, but because the things that did happen were to me, especially regarding that, felt really predictable. The plot seems to be a lot of things—not this in particular, but a lot of other things—sort of returning to stasis.
The same main guy, he and his wife’s former boss, or his wife’s former boss comes to visit from London.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, Robert Booth, yeah.
ASHLEY: For the purpose of offering the wife a new job. And then they can keep this place that they have in Ireland, they can go back and forth between there and London, everything will be amazing. And I just knew she wasn’t going to do it. I was like, nope, nope, no one in this book is going to do anything like that. Everyone is going to return to stasis and stay by the lake. It’s like a sitcom. Everything has to go back to the way it was before. And of course that’s what happened.
And the right hand man going to the bank and talking himself out of the bank loan. I was just—it was so narratively frustrating to me, because it felt like the book was just trying not to let anything happen.
WHISKEY JENNY: I felt like from reading this book that farming was really easy. [LAUGHTER] Did they have a farm? They were never farming.
ASHLEY: It sounds like paradise.
WHISKEY JENNY: They’re doing it for like—he would do these things and be like, oh, that’ll only take like an hour a day, and the rest of the time they’re just painting. [LAUGHTER]
ASHLEY: Yeah, I actually had the same thought. I was like, this makes farming sound so easy. [LAUGHTER] The crops always grow the way they’re supposed to, as long as you just smile at them and work hard.
WHISKEY JENNY: They put the hay up in one day.
ASHLEY: The animals are—I actually thought the animals were the best developed characters in the book.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Aw, that little black cat was so cute. He would dart across their feet as a ruse to get picked up so that he wouldn’t have to get his little paws wet.
ASHLEY: And he brings Kate the dead rabbit in the morning.
WHISKEY JENNY: And her husband—I thought this was—this was a really funny scene to me, because her husband—
ASHLEY: I like that scene a lot, actually.
WHISKEY JENNY: He just watches it. And she wakes up she’s like, what the hell, dude? [LAUGHTER]
ASHLEY: She’s like, why didn’t you do anything?
WHISKEY JENNY: Why didn’t you do something? And he was like, I was frozen. I couldn’t.
ASHLEY: I also really loved the Shah’s sheepdog.
WHISKEY JENNY: Aw. The Shah’s sheepdog was really sweet. See, I liked that—I don’t know, I was really captivated by the Robert Booth visit. I almost missed my subway stop.
ASHLEY: [LAUGHTER] What?
WHISKEY JENNY: The fact that these two men, the uncle and the right hand man, had been business partners for 50 years but couldn’t possibly speak to each other about changing hands of the business was so ludicrous and yet so familiar that I just wanted to keep reading. And I really liked the right hand man. He didn’t get the loan because he couldn’t tell the lie! [LAUGHTER] I really liked him.
GIN JENNY: [LAUGHTER]
WHISKEY JENNY: The way that Jamesie would get so excited when his brother came, and talk about it forever and tell everyone that his brother was coming, and do all of the prep for his brother coming. And then as soon as his brother came, he was so annoyed at his brother he’d be leaving the house immediately to get away from his brother. All of those little details I thought were fascinating and I couldn’t get enough of them.
GIN JENNY: I’m so fascinated.
ASHLEY: I am, too.
WHISKEY JENNY: It would be a really different book for me if you cut out all the gross other stuff that I didn’t like.
GIN JENNY: I think the things that you enjoy about it are just not appealing to me. Which is not news, I guess.
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: That’s the whole point of the Hatening.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yup. Sure is.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: We did it again.
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: I do not regret any of this. I do not regret having to read the book. I don’t regret that being my punishment for helping pick this book. I love the Hatening so much. It brings me so much joy.
GIN JENNY: I like the Hatening, too. And one reason I like it is because it does force me out of my comfort zone. So even though I did really hate this book, I still think it’s good to try things that I wouldn’t normally. So I’m still glad that we do it.
I would, however, like to just briefly touch on some of the other things that I think we all found terrible about it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Boy, yeah. All right, here we go.
GIN JENNY: Well, I guess I’ll start with John Quinn.
WHISKEY JENNY: Eugh.
GIN JENNY: Who is a character who rapes women several times throughout the course of the book. And everyone in the book is like, oh yeah, he does rape women in front of all of us, but that’s just him.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s just a thing he does.
ASHLEY: Look how good his children turned out.
WHISKEY JENNY: People are weird. Just a thing he does. Yeah.
GIN JENNY: And they all just want to keep the peace. And I didn’t really understand what I was supposed to take away from that as a reader.
ASHLEY: Me neither.
GIN JENNY: But it felt very hostile to me as a reader.
ASHLEY: Totally agree.
GIN JENNY: And I really hated that no one in the village seemed to care at all and were perfectly content to enable him to continue doing this and be complicit in it forever.
ASHLEY: Oh, John Quinn, you scamp.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, that’s basically the reaction. And I think the two largest female characters, Mary and Kate, have—what’s the Winston Churchill recipe for a martini? It’s like you wave the bottle of vermouth at the glass?
ASHLEY: At the gin.
WHISKEY JENNY: I feel like he gave them that level of “we don’t like this” to say to cover his ass. Like, well someone in the book is protesting it, the least possible. But yeah, no, it’s horrifying.
GIN JENNY: It was bad, and I couldn’t figure out what it was there for. And I felt the same way—God, this is honestly what I find really consistent about a lot of regional fiction, is that there will be this casual horrific prejudice that the author I presume knows is horrific, but the book doesn’t address it. And it’s like, oh, well that’s just what people are like. And I really hate that. And I think people are like that because they don’t get challenged.
But towards the end of the book, Jamesie’s brother Johnny is talking about living in England, and he’s talking about the one black resident at their boarding house. And it’s so gross. He uses slurs for the guy. It’s stereotyped to where the guy just has sex constantly with all these different white women.
ASHLEY: And they can’t get enough of it. And yeah, it’s really gross.
GIN JENNY: And I would hope that the author knows that this isn’t an OK way for people to talk, but I don’t feel confident that he does. And also there was no evidence in the book that he did. And I couldn’t see an artistic reason to include this very casual racism. So it just felt crappy. As with the John Quinn stuff, it just really made me dislike the author and also everyone in the book for putting up with it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, no, I agree. I began my review of this book as, for those reasons I did not like it, but I will try and put up a nice Hatening front for it. [LAUGHTER] And for those reasons I apologize.
GIN JENNY: Obviously you didn’t know.
WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t think that is an emblem of the ensemble book, which is what I really wanted out of this.
GIN JENNY: And I know that you would not have on purpose Hatened me to read a book that had a bunch of racism and rape, because that’s not what the Hatening is about.
ASHLEY: Or me.
WHISKEY JENNY: I wouldn’t have picked it to read.
ASHLEY: Yeah.
GIN JENNY: OK, I liked one thing about it. I liked that they were constantly drinking Powers whiskey. That is a type of whiskey that I have seen drunk around me. I don’t drink whiskey.
ASHLEY: It’s real.
GIN JENNY: I know.
WHISKEY JENNY: I liked, there was one Christmas bottle of Powers whiskey that I feel like just got—someone brought it to someone else, and then they’re like, oh, I’ll bring it to so and so.
ASHLEY: I also don’t really drink that much whiskey, but I was like, give it to me. I will not be too humble to drink it.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: No, I don’t think anyone was refusing it in the book. I think they were just like, oh, how lovely, it’s Christmas and I’m heading to this other place, so I’ll bring it. And I don’t know if anyone ever actually drank that bottle, because they kept giving it to each other.
ASHLEY: I wanted somebody to drink it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Ashley, anything you didn’t hate?
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: Like I said, the animals were just all great. They were all the best dogs and cats and chickens and lambs and cows.
GIN JENNY: Boy, if you liked that, we should have just read the James Herriot books.
WHISKEY JENNY: We really should have. I would have liked those better, too.
ASHLEY: I love those. Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: I really liked that Jamesie pretended not to like his animals and was all like, oh, they’re so spoiled. But then when he went away—
ASHLEY: Oh, the dogs missed him!
WHISKEY JENNY: And the neighbor took care of them, he could tell they get petted a lot. [LAUGHTER] The cows are used to you petting them, and they recognize Jamesie when he comes back, and mooing excitedly when he comes back. And he’s happy to see them and petting them and is like, oh, they’re so spoiled. They’re meaningless to me. I don’t care at all about them. Goodbye. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: Well, Ashley, I think that Whiskey Jenny and I have really worked hard as podcasters these last two episodes.
WHISKEY JENNY: Right? Is it time for a cookie?
GIN JENNY: Tell us what the game is. I’m so excited about the game!
ASHLEY: OK. I did a famous fictional houses game.
JENNYS: Ooh!
ASHLEY: I’m going to give you—
GIN JENNY: I call Manderley.
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: I’m going to give you the name of a house or a dwelling, and you’re going to tell me what fictional property it’s from. Most of these are books, but not all.
GIN JENNY: Oh my gosh. I feel like I will know Manderley and that’s it.
WHISKEY JENNY: I feel like I’m going to fail at this, yeah.
ASHLEY: OK, I’m going to I’m going to pick a number between 1 and 50.
GIN JENNY: 36.
WHISKEY JENNY: 42.
ASHLEY: Whiskey Jenny goes first. It was 41. The first one is 221b Baker Street.
WHISKEY JENNY: Sherlock Holmes!
ASHLEY: Yes, you got it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Woo!
ASHLEY: Gin Jenny.
GIN JENNY: Uh huh.
ASHLEY: Manderley.
GIN JENNY: Hey! Rebecca.
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: Those are the only two that I’m doing out of order. You called Manderley, you got Manderley. Do you want to call any others right now, Whiskey Jenny?
WHISKEY JENNY: No. [LAUGHTER]
ASHLEY: OK. Whiskey Jenny.
WHISKEY JENNY: I like the one that I got, though.
ASHLEY: Thornfield Hall.
WHISKEY JENNY: Thornfield Hall. That sounds like Sense and Sensibility?
ASHLEY: Is that your final answer?
WHISKEY JENNY: So it’s not Sense and Sensibility? [LAUGHTER] I guess my other—I don’t—maybe Jane Eyre?
ASHLEY: Is that your final answer?
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, other than that, I don’t know what it is.
ASHLEY: You gotta pick one, man.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I really feel like it’s Sense and Sensibility.
ASHLEY: It is Jane Eyre.
OK, so Gin Jenny. Castle Grayskull.
GIN JENNY: Castle Grayskull. Uh, Game of Thrones?
ASHLEY: No. It’s from He-Man, Masters of the Universe.
GIN JENNY: Oh, well, that’s fine. I would never have guessed that, so I’m comfortable with what happened here.
ASHLEY: If I had been using more than one house per fictional property, I would also have included Snake Mountain, which is where Skeletor lives.
GIN JENNY: Oh, Snake Mountain is very good.
ASHLEY: Castle Grayskull is where He-Man lives. Whiskey Jenny. Efrafa.
WHISKEY JENNY: Efrafa! That is clearly Watership Down.
ASHLEY: Yes.
GIN JENNY: Oh, what a great book. I feel like you have thrown me this bone after the shame of getting Jane Eyre wrong. Thank you. I appreciate it.
ASHLEY: Gin Jenny. Chateau d’If
GIN JENNY: Chateau d’If. Oh, oh, Count of Monte Cristo.
ASHLEY: Yes. Very good. Whiskey Jenny. Godsend Castle.
WHISKEY JENNY: Godsend Castle? Boy, they think highly of themselves.
[LAUGHTER]I have no idea.
ASHLEY: I have read this book, I would never have gotten this. It is I Capture the Castle.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh. Well, there you go.
ASHLEY: Gin Jenny.
GIN JENNY: Yes.
ASHLEY: Pemberley.
GIN JENNY: Oh, Pemberley. Pemberley is Pride and Prejudice.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yay!
GIN JENNY: I mainly remember that because of Pemberley Digital in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.
WHISKEY JENNY: Me, too. [LAUGHTER] Wait, Ashley, are you watching Lizzie Bennet Diaries?
GIN JENNY: Yes, are you?
ASHLEY: I’ve seen like half of it.
GIN JENNY: Oh man. I just rewatched the whole thing and I was like, ah, this is so much fun. So much fun. It’s so fun.
WHISKEY JENNY: Whose turn is it?
ASHLEY: I think it’s yours.
WHISKEY JENNY: Hit me.
ASHLEY: San Salvatore.
WHISKEY JENNY: San Salvatore?
GIN JENNY: San Salvatore?
ASHLEY: I don’t know if I’m pronouncing that right.
WHISKEY JENNY: San Salvatore. Is that the island that The House at the Edge of the Night was set on?
ASHLEY: You’re kind of in the right neighborhood. It’s from the book The Enchanted April, which I love.
WHISKEY JENNY: OK.
GIN JENNY: Oh, that’s right, you did say that book was really good. But I still haven’t read it.
ASHLEY: It’s so charming, oh my God.
GIN JENNY: See, not taking other people’s recs is coming back to bite us in the ass.
ASHLEY: Yep. OK, so now it’s Gin Jenny’s turn, right?
GIN JENNY: Yes, my turn.
ASHLEY: House of Shaws.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, can you spell Shaws?
ASHLEY: S-H-A-W-S.
WHISKEY JENNY: Can you use it in a sentence?
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: I have no idea. That doesn’t even sound familiar.
ASHLEY: I wouldn’t have gotten it either. It’s from Kidnapped.
GIN JENNY: Oh.
ASHLEY: All right, Whiskey Jenny.
WHISKEY JENNY: Mm-hmm.
ASHLEY: House of Harfang. H-A-R-F-A-N-G.
WHISKEY JENNY: Hmm, Harfang. Sounds kind of vampirey, maybe? I don’t know, some Anne Rice thing.
GIN JENNY: Nice.
ASHLEY: It’s from The Silver Chair.
GIN JENNY: Oh. Well, I would never in a million years have gotten there.
WHISKEY JENNY: What is The Silver Chair?
GIN JENNY: It’s one of the Chronicles of Narnia.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, OK.
ASHLEY: Gin Jenny. And I might be mispronouncing this one, too, even though I have read this book also. Satis House. S-A-T-I-S.
GIN JENNY: [SIGH] Gosh. It feels brutally cynical.
WHISKEY JENNY: Thomas Hardy. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: Yeah, oh, great point, great point. Yeah, uh huh, so Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
ASHLEY: That’s not the answer that I was looking for, but not that far off. It’s Great Expectations.
GIN JENNY: Oh, nice, nice, nice. OK, then I was not incorrect in the way I was thinking.
ASHLEY: Oh, not at all.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I’m sorry if I led you astray with Thomas Hardy.
GIN JENNY: No, no, no, that was that was actually genuine. I would have really struggled to come up with a guess at all, so I appreciate your help.
ASHLEY: Whiskey Jenny, 124 Conch St.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, cripes.
GIN JENNY: It feels like it’d be the work of a literary modernist, like an early—
WHISKEY JENNY: Or like Madeline L’Engle.
GIN JENNY: Or like The Great Gatsby or something. Oh yeah, oh yeah, great call, great call. Madeline L’Engle sounds very plausible, too.
WHISKEY JENNY: Do I get half credit for author? [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: You should!
WHISKEY JENNY: Wait, is there an important house in any Hemingway? He’s Key West, right? There’s conchs in Key West. Um, let’s go with The Great Gatsby.
ASHLEY: Um, that is where SpongeBob SquarePants lives.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: So a real—
ASHLEY: So you were right about the literary modernist part.
GIN JENNY: We were so close.
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: You guys, I had both hands over my mouth. That took all of my self-control not to react in any way. I was crying. [LAUGHTER] Madeleine L’Engle and Hemingway!
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: I’m embarrassed.
ASHLEY: Don’t be embarrassed, I love it!
GIN JENNY: I said—[LAUGHTER]
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m crying! Boy, that guy who hates our laughter is gonna hate this episode.
GIN JENNY: Oh, man.
ASHLEY: All right, whose turn is it? Gin Jenny’s?
GIN JENNY: It’s me, Gin Jenny.
ASHLEY: OK. Misselthwaite Manor.
WHISKEY JENNY: Aw.
GIN JENNY: Oh, Misselthwaite Manor is Secret Garden.
ASHLEY: Very good.
GIN JENNY: Oh, man, that one was really in Whiskey Jenny’s wheelhouse.
ASHLEY: All right, Whiskey Jenny. Xanadu. I will actually accept—there are two answers that I will accept for this one.
WHISKEY JENNY: Isn’t that in that poem? [LAUGHTER]
ASHLEY: What poem is it?
WHISKEY JENNY: The “Kubla Khan” poem by Coleridge.
ASHLEY: So I was actually looking for Citizen Kane, but I’ll accept that because that’s where it came from first. So I’m giving you a point for that.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yay!
GIN JENNY: Down with—oh my God, I always do this. Orson Welles or HG Wells? Help me out.
ASHLEY: Orson Welles.
GIN JENNY: Both. Actually, they both suck, so down with both of them. But yeah, Orson Welles. OK, yeah, down with that guy. Up with Samuel Coleridge.
ASHLEY: Yeah. OK, last one. Except I have a tiebreaker, but I don’t think we need it. Last one for Gin Jenny is Marlinspike Hall.
GIN JENNY: Dracula.
ASHLEY: It is from The Adventures of Tintin.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh.
GIN JENNY: Oh.
WHISKEY JENNY: I was not going to say, marlin, could be Hemingway again, but I didn’t want to lead you.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, well, since last time I really screwed you.
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: So I have a tiebreaker even though—
WHISKEY JENNY: Give it to us.
ASHLEY: —Gin Jenny is winning, but I kind of want to just do it anyway just because—
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. We’ll work together on it.
GIN JENNY: We’ll do it sudden death.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, wait?
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Oh no, no, we’ll work together. That’s better. No, no, let’s work together. That’s better, obviously.
WHISKEY JENNY: We’ll work together on it, yeah.
ASHLEY: I actually think you guys will get this one, too. The tiebreaker is Combe Magna.
JENNYS: Say it again?
ASHLEY: Combe Magna.
WHISKEY JENNY: Huh. Spell it.
ASHLEY: C-O-M-B-E space M-A-G-N-A.
GIN JENNY: What are combes? Are they Scottish or something?
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, there’s catacombs.
GIN JENNY: I don’t know at all.
ASHLEY: This is a fictional property you guys have named already.
GIN JENNY: We’ve named Sense and Sensibility.
WHISKEY JENNY: We did.
GIN JENNY: We’ve named—PS, for my last one I almost guessed Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and then I was like, naw, Gin Jenny, that one’s probably called—
JENNYS: Wildfell Hall. [LAUGHTER]
WHISKEY JENNY: We named some Hemingway. We named some Madeline L’Engle, but I don’t think it’s either of those. We named Gatsby, but I don’t feel like it’s—is it Gatsby?
GIN JENNY: I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know the answer.
WHISKEY JENNY: Is it Sense and Sensibility?
GIN JENNY: I don’t know. Is it Sense and Sensibility, Ashley?
ASHLEY: It is!
JENNYS: Hey!
ASHLEY: It is absolutely Sense and Sensibility.
GIN JENNY: Whiskey Jenny’s very first guess.
WHISKEY JENNY: Finally! Finally we got a Sense and Sensibility in there.
ASHLEY: That’s where Willoughby lives.
GIN JENNY: Oh! Well, Ashley, that was an amazing game, thank you so much.
ASHLEY: I’m glad you liked it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yay! Thank you.
GIN JENNY: Whiskey Jenny, do you want to hear what we’re reading next time?
WHISKEY JENNY: I do. What are we reading next time? So for next time I thought I would give us a little palate cleanser and have us read just a YA novel.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yay!
GIN JENNY: So we’re reading a YA novel called Give Me Some Truth, by Eric Gansworth. He is a member of the Onondaga Nation, and this is a book about some kids living on a reservation, and they’re trying to get a band together for a battle of the bands that’ll be their ticket out of the reservation. It was in the NPR Book Concierge last year, which I love, so I thought I’d be fun. And also one of our resolutions for this year was to read at least one book by an Indigenous author, so I thought this would be a good one to do.
WHISKEY JENNY: Hey, great idea. Give Me the Truth?
GIN JENNY: Give Me Some Truth, by Eric Gansworth.
All right, well, before we head out, Ashley, where can the people find you online?
ASHLEY: Twitter is probably the best place. I’m @ashleybwells.
GIN JENNY: Thank you so much again for joining us.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, thank you. It is always such a treat to have you.
ASHLEY: Thank you for having me. I love coming on here.
GIN JENNY: Well, this has been the Reading the End Bookcast with the demographically similar Jennys and special guest Ashley. You can visit the blog at readingtheend.com. You can follow us on Twitter @readingtheend. We are 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 to help other people find the podcast.
And until next time, a quote from That They May Face the Rising Sun, by John McGahern.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh.
GIN JENNY: Because it’s a toast, and I kind of miss the toast days. “May we never die, and down with the begrudgers.”
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah!
[GLASSES CLINK] [THEME SONG] You don’t judge a book by its cover. Page one’s not a much better view. And shortly you’re gonna discover the middle won’t mollify you. So whether whiskey’s your go-to or you’re like my gin-drinking friend, no matter what you are imbibing, you’ll be better off in the end reading the end. [BEEP]GIN JENNY: I love that little sting. Sometimes I just sing it to myself as I’m going about my day because it’s very catchy.
ASHLEY: How does it go? How does it go?
GIN JENNY: It’s like, (SINGING) “It’s one last meaningless thing, to end this meaningless thing. We talk about sports and we draft things we know, like how beaches are terrible places to go—” false—[LAUGHTER] “No hot fruit for Michael, more Diet Coke for Joe. The PosCast, whoa. It’s one last, whoa, meaningless thing.”
WHISKEY JENNY: Yay!
ASHLEY: Yay! It’s adorable! It’s amazing.
WHISKEY JENNY: I love the little whoas in it. It’s so cute.
GIN JENNY: Me, too. And that was the thing that Ron Swanson left out. He left out the second set of whoa-oahs, which are my favorite ones, so.
WHISKEY JENNY: They’re good whoas. Yeah.
[LAUGHTER] [BEEP]WHISKEY JENNY: —scary books would have to be particularly good at creating a set. Ting. A setting. At creating a setting.
[LAUGHTER]Sorry I’m so—
GIN JENNY: Aw.
ASHLEY: It’s OK, I am, too.
GIN JENNY: Is that burner phone life wearing you out? [LAUGHTER] [BEEP]
ASHLEY: I had a thought when I was reading. I kept being like, what if this whole segment is just Whiskey Jenny asking us what Irish words me, and us being like, I don’t know?
[LAUGHTER] [BEEP]GIN JENNY: I’m going to go get my charger. I think my laptop is going to run out of battery before we run out of podcast. Be right back.
WHISKEY JENNY: OK. I feel like whenever this happens that I should say something hilarious to leave as a gift for Gin Jenny editing, but I don’t know what to say. Uh, you’re a beautiful genius. At least you’re not answering the door, because it’s scary when you leave to answer the door. I don’t like when you leave to answer the door. Who’s at the door?
[BEEP]WHISKEY JENNY: I heard Ripley!
ASHLEY: Hi.
[DOOR CREAKS]You want to get on the podcast?
WHISKEY JENNY: Yes!
ASHLEY: Last chance to say something before I close the door in your face.
[MEOW]JENNYS: Yay!
GIN JENNY: There it is. Hey, buddy.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, ask her what she thinks about That They May Face the Rising Sun.
ASHLEY: Did you like the black cat with the white paws?
WHISKEY JENNY: [GASP] Yeah.
ASHLEY: She’s black with white paws, except that she’s tuxedo, so she has other white parts, too. All right, are you going to be good? Are you going to sit there and stare at me like a creep?
WHISKEY JENNY: Probably.
ASHLEY: She’s thinking about it.
GIN JENNY: [LAUGHTER] If I know cats!
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: You gonna sit there and be creepy?
[MEOW]All right, I’ll leave that a little bit open. If you start being creepy, I’m closing it, OK? [BEEP]