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Tag: JK Rowling

Reading the End Bookcast BONUS: The Saddest Children’s Books

Published 1 Aug 2018 by Gin Jenny

I’m going to say right up front that Whiskey Jenny only cries once in this episode, and I hope all y’all are impressed about that. For this month’s bonus episode (thank y’all again so much for your support), we decided to talk about the saddest books we read as kids, and Whiskey Jenny ONLY CRIES ONCE. (YES we included Where the Red Fern Grows. Come on.) (Gin Jenny, an automaton, cries zero times. She did get teary on Twitter today thinking about the characters in new Star Wars, though.) You can listen to the podcast using the embedded player below,…

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My Name Is Roger Murdock: A Links Round-Up

Published 24 Feb 2017 by Gin Jenny

Another Friday, another links round-up. This week I had some super good chili and spoke with a sternness to my elected senator at a town hall. What’s your week been like? Regardless I have brought you this links round-up for your enjoyment, and I hope that your weekend is full of sunshine and baby kisses. There is an excellent kicker to this New York Times story about Neil Gaiman and his new book. Why yes I WOULD care for a Frankenstein story by Victor Lavalle that also pulls in the Black Lives Matter movement. THANK YOU FOR ASKING. Angelica Jade…

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JK Rowling Does What She Wants: A links round-up

Published 4 Mar 2016 by Gin Jenny

Emily Asher Perrin (writer of the superb Harry Potter Reread series on Tor.com) has some thoughts on JK Rowling’s constant expanding of the Harry Potter universe, and most of them are also my thoughts, so go see what you think. The controversial Professor Bhaer: An investigation in five parts at the Paris Review. Bros writing about southern food (& why it should be more ladies), over at a website I newly love, The Bitter Southerner. This piece by Kiese Laymon about Bill Cosby and minimum standards of human decency is so, so good. The stories you have the right to…

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Mocking Jonathan Franzen: A links round-up

Published 22 May 2015 by Gin Jenny

In a review of a novel by Mussolini, Dorothy Parker wrote: If only I had a private income, I would drop everything right now, and devote the scant remainder of my days to teasing the Dictator of All Italy…Indeed, my dream-life is largely made up of scenes in which I say to him, “Oh, Il Duce yourself, you big stiff,” and thus leave him crushed to a pulp. And this is just how I feel about Jonathan Franzen. Not because he is a fascist or in any way a danger to America. Just because I find him extremely annoying, and…

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The Cuckoo’s Calling, Robert Galbraith i.e. STEALTH JK Rowling

Published 29 Jul 2013 by Gin Jenny

There are days where I feel like I am drowning beneath a tremendous pile of exciting books. Do you ever have those days? I did on the day my library emailed me to say my hold had come in on The Cuckoo’s Calling. (Advantage, incidentally, Louisiana. I would have been like the 150th person on the hold list for the New York ebook copies. My home library got me a copy within twenty-four hours. I’m just saying.) The Cuckoo’s Calling came in, I started reading Patrick Ness’s forthcoming book More than This, and I got approved for three AMAZING (-sounding) nonfiction…

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Revisiting Harry Potter: “Kill the snake?” “Kill the snake.”

Published 14 Jun 2013 by Gin Jenny

Here is my main complaint with this section of the book, which I otherwise love very much: How’s Harry going to use the Cruciatus curse on the Carrow sibling who spits in McGonagall’s face? (I find the Carrows boring and have not bothered to learn their names.) He was unable to do this curse on Bellatrix Lestrange two seconds after she killed Sirius Black, but somehow he can manage to do it just because some Death Eater insults one of his teachers? Number one, that is bullshit. Number two, don’t torture people. Torture is wrong, and Harry could have accomplished…

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Revisiting Harry Potter: I guess now we have to say nice things about Scrimgeour

Published 17 May 2013 by Gin Jenny

I decided to do all Disney gifs for this post. Why? Because as usual this readalong is making me feel a lot of feelings, and most of my feelings for the first Deathly Hallows post are wrathful feelings. And Disney makes me feel happy feelings. Exhibit A: Rita Goddamn Skeeter How dare she. I get so angry when I read the excerpts from her rotten biography. Righteously angry! With much stomping around and wishing I had her here in my living room. You know what especially pisses me off? I will tell you. It’s when she calls his relationship with Harry…

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Revisiting Harry Potter: “I am not worried, Harry. I am with you.”

Published 3 May 2013 by Gin Jenny

Oh the feelings. Oh I have them. I was reading the end of this book on one end of the couch while Miniature Roommate was reading Good Omens on the other hand, and every time she laughed at something in Good Omens, I would think she was laughing at me for crying. And in my mind I’d be all, THIS BOOK IS SAD OKAY? But I didn’t say it out loud because I recognize that would be irrational. But this book is hella sad. I forgot how Harry-Dumbledore-heavy the last part of this book is. All my notes on rereading…

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Revisiting Harry Potter: Dumbledore has a purple suit and psychic paper

Published 26 Apr 2013 by Gin Jenny

Oh God, it’s so wonderful to have Hogwarts back to normal. I never realize how miserable Umbridge’s reign at Hogwarts was really making me until I get to the sixth book and McGonagall’s bossing everyone around without a mean toad lady going “Hem hem” at her shoulder all the time. Yes, Snape is teaching Defense against the Dark Arts, and yes, I think that blows and also, isn’t it sort of irresponsible of Dumbledore to keep giving that job to people when it’s plainly jinxed? Like, couldn’t he knock the subject of Defense against the Dark Arts on the head…

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