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Author: Gin Jenny

Dull dreams

I dreamed last week that I had checked out A Time to Keep Silence from the library, on Litlove’s recommendation, and was very let down by it.  Instead of writing about visiting monasteries, it was all about visiting chocolate factories!  In my dream, I got fed up with Fermor’s constant cutesy references to Willy Wonka, and in the end I took the book and stacked it neatly on top of the other library books I haven’t liked enough to finish.  And then this all receded into the fuzzy mess of vague memory, and as happens with absurd regularity, I forgot…

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Update on Fellowship

It is now the middle of the month – tell us all how Tolkien is treating you over at The Literary Omnivore: (omnivore = all standards) If you’ve been with us since the beginning, how do you feel about the narrator compared to the narrator in The Hobbit? BETTER.  I didn’t hate the narrating style of The Hobbit or anything, but it didn’t feel like the Middle Earth world.  Reading Fellowship is nice – it starts out sounding rather cheerful and hobbity, like The Hobbit, but more Lord of the Ringsy, and then it slowly gets darker and darker.  By…

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Review: Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones

So Fire and Hemlock is a retelling of the ballad “Tam Lin”, but it incorporates elements from a dozen other fairy tales, myths, and legends.  I read this article one time that Diana Wynne Jones wrote, about the process of writing Fire and Hemlock and all the different strands of stories she used, which was quite, quite interesting.  The story begins with a young woman called Polly, who is packing her things for Oxford and has come across a book that she remembers being quite different to what it is now.  This leads her to the realization that she has…

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Two books I didn’t like (sad, sad)

I put the words “sad, sad” in the title line here, but that was silly.  I am not sad at all.  I am still very happy, because as you may recall, THE SAINTS WON THE SUPER BOWL, causing me to tear up happily every time Drew Brees opens his mouth (he’s such a sweet dear) or every time I see a picture of all the confetti and rejoicing.  And everyone is all “If only my daddy were alive to see this day,” and New Orleans is throwing the biggest party possibly every thrown, like even bigger than that party in…

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Review: Peter and Max, Bill Willingham

I won Peter and Max from Cecelia of adventures of cecelia bedelia – thank you!  I was having a terrible day, and when I got home I had not one, BUT TWO packages on my doorstep.  One was Peter and Max, and the other was a package of two books and a bookmark from Jeane.  It was amazing.  It caused my day to stop being terrible, and be awesome instead.  (True story.) If you haven’t read Fables, you should really do that.  In fact, go do that now, and when you have finished, you may come back and we can…

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Update

In case you are wondering: 1. I cried several tears of happiness. 2. I have only a very small, croaky voice left. 3. We will have to think up new hell-froze-over jokes. 4. There is much street-dancing, horn-honking, screaming, and fireworks. I BELIEVE THIS MEANS THAT LENT IS CANCELED. I AM HAPPY. WHO DAT!

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My new crush

Brand new mad crush on June Jordan.  How can it be that June Jordan is this great, and yet at the same time I have never heard of her before, and I might never have heard of her at all if I hadn’t been reading random poems on the Poetry Foundation website?  June Jordan!  She was this amazing poet and activist, and I am in love with her!  I don’t really know how to review books of poetry, and I am not through with her memoir, Soldier, to review that either, and I have not yet gotten to the one…

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Writing swear words in the margins (Review: Deep Secret, Diana Wynne Jones)

I was trying to figure out, earlier today, what year it would have been that I started reading to my little sister.  I have read her scads of books over the years, but I’m pretty sure the first one was Half Magic, and I’m pretty sure that after finishing it, we went straight on to Magic by the Lake, which means I must have had them both at the time.  I have definite proof that I got Magic by the Lake for Christmas of 1995. Let’s say I started reading to Social Sister early in 1996.  That was fourteen years…

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Beginning Fellowship

Wow, it has been a long time since I read Lord of the Rings.  I own a shiny hardback box set of them, which I got on sale at Bongs & Noodles for $15, and which I now discover are the editions with fold-out maps in the back.  I want to snip the maps out with careful snips and hang them around my room – except I know my snips would not be tidy, and even if they were, the maps would get all Blue-Tac-y in the corners and need to be folded up and stored next time I move,…

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Review: Committed, Elizabeth Gilbert

Not a reflection on the quality of Committed, but just something I thought of when I started reading it:  I feel like the premise of the book could be tweaked a bit to make it into an obnoxious little romantic comedy starring one of those actresses that do “quirky” roles.  Elizabeth Gilbert, successful journalist and bestselling author, never wants to get married again!  Until a US immigration officer gives her a deadline: Get married in the next year or be an exile forever!  If this were a movie, she would spend the year meeting wildly unsuitable guys and ignoring her…

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