Happy Wednesday, friends! This podcast is late because I tried to go to my senator’s town hall meeting, which was hella full before I even got there, so I just drove a kind of long way for no reason. At least there are lots of engaged citizens doing their thing though, right? Take this as inspiration to call your electeds today! Tell them pulling out of the Paris Accords is hot bullshit. And then when you come back, you can listen to our latest podcast! You can listen to the podcast using the embedded player below, or download the file directly to take with you on the go!
Here are the time signatures for the different segments, if you want to skip around:
1:01 – What we’re reading
7:31 – Serial Box Book Club (The Witch Who Came in from the Cold)
17:02 – Literary Travel
30:24– The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas
42:15 – What We’re Reading Next Time
Get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads, as well as Ashley. 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
Transcript is available under the jump!
GIN JENNY: Welcome 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 to you about books and literary happenings. On today’s podcast, we will be discussing episodes nine and ten of The Witch Who Came in From the Cold as part of our Serial Box book club. I just got back from a vacation where I bought many books, so we’ll be talking about literary travel. And we’ll finish up by talking about Angie Thomas’s New York Times–bestselling book The Hate You Give. But before we get into all that, Whiskey Jenny, what are you reading?
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I’m currently reading Embassytown, by China Miéville.
GIN JENNY: Oh, how is it?
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m only about a quarter of the way through.
GIN JENNY: Okay.
WHISKEY JENNY: It feels like it’s supposed to be a nonfiction memoir by the narrator.
GIN JENNY: Oh, okay.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s got this very sort of dry, unemotional style, I would say so far.
GIN JENNY: Okay.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s about language a lot, and linguistics and things like that. So I think the language in use in the book is also important.
GIN JENNY: That sounds kind of intimidating.
WHISKEY JENNY: I haven’t figured it out yet, and it’s a little tough to get into so far. [LAUGHTER] But it is for book club, so I’m excited that I will have other people to help me figure it out.
GIN JENNY: Oh, that is good. That’s helpful. I’ve tried to read books by China Miéville before, and I’ve had the same problem. I found them hard to get into. I read the first maybe—I don’t know, I read the first little bit of The City and the City a while ago, which sounded really good. But I just couldn’t get into it, and I kind of set it aside for another time. So I’ll be interested to hear what you think of Embassytown when you get through it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I’ve also heard that—for people who’ve read a lot of his stuff, I’ve heard that Embassytown is very different from Perdido Street Station or things like that. So I don’t know, maybe he’s just all over the map.
GIN JENNY: That’s kind of what it sounds like. It sounds like he writes a wide range of different things, yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: But even more exciting—well, I have three exciting updates.
GIN JENNY: Oh boy. Okay.
WHISKEY JENNY: I just finished rereading Sorcery and Cecelia.
GIN JENNY: [GASP]
WHISKEY JENNY: I just recommended it to someone and then got a hankering for it.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: How did it hold up?
WHISKEY JENNY: Great. Still great. [LAUGHTER] Holds up on multiple rereads, which is exciting. I also—did I tell you that I finished A Gentleman’s Game, which was a romance recommendation I think from you? That was the one—
GIN JENNY: Right!
WHISKEY JENNY: —about the lady secretary spy and horse racing.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, yeah. How’d you like it?
WHISKEY JENNY: I loved it.
GIN JENNY: Yay!
WHISKEY JENNY: Hooray! It was really cute and funny, and the characters just joke around a lot with each other.
GIN JENNY: They do. I enjoyed that as well.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, absolutely enjoyed. And lastly, I just would like some praise, please. Because I just finished The Inexplicable Logic of My Life, by Benjamin Alire Sáenz.
GIN JENNY: Yes?
WHISKEY JENNY: And that was on my spring preview, which means I have finished four out of five of my spring preview books.
GIN JENNY: [GASP] Wow! [LAUGHTER] Good job, Whiskey Jenny!
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Thank you. I feel like you’re talking to me like your dog.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: No, no, I’m sorry. No, that’s exciting. What did you think of The Inexplicable Logic of My Life?
WHISKEY JENNY: I enjoyed it.
GIN JENNY: You did?
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I did. I liked it. Gosh, I have to think think—I feel like I’ve read so much since then, but I haven’t. [LAUGHTER] I liked it quite a bit. It did not exactly go where I thought it was going to go. And it’s very much real life problems YA high school. And it’s very friendship. It’s not romance.
GIN JENNY: Oh, that’s nice.
WHISKEY JENNY: So that was nice. Yeah, which is always fun. What are you reading?
GIN JENNY: Well I, I actually—so Megan Whalen Turner, who is the author of the Queen’s Thief series, released a new book this year, which is really exciting. Because I first read this series in 2010, and she had just released a book in 2010. And this is the first book she’s released since then.
WHISKEY JENNY: Wow. Since 2010? Oh, stars.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. This is a series that now has five books in it, and she started releasing them in I want to say ‘95 to ‘97 area. So it’s a long wait in between books, Megan Whalen Turner, is what I’m saying.
WHISKEY JENNY: It sure is.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I know. It’s rough. So I read her new book, Thick as Thieves, and I really liked it. But then I wanted to go back and read the series from the beginning. So now I’m reading the first one, The Thief.
Which led to a very anxious conversation with you earlier today where I was like, I don’t think you’re going to like The Thief, actually.
WHISKEY JENNY: But you said you think I would like the whole series in general, right?
GIN JENNY: I do. I think we’ve worked out a good compromise,
WHISKEY JENNY: Which is that I’ll read The Thief but you spoil some stuff for me in advance, because otherwise I’ll be angry.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. The narrator of The Thief is not wholly reliable, and I know how Whiskey Jenny hates that.
WHISKEY JENNY: I do. I really do.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: So I’m reading The Thief. Actually, I asked for The Thief and the other books for Christmas the year I read them for the first time. And my grandmother got me the first two for Christmas that year. And I haven’t reread The Thief since then, so this is the first time I’ve reread it since then. And she it turns out she put one dollar bills in the book.
WHISKEY JENNY: Aw!
GIN JENNY: Interspersed throughout. I know. So I’m just finding them.
WHISKEY JENNY: That’s so sweet.
GIN JENNY: I know, and I’m just finding those now, which is a really sweet surprise. So I’m reading that, and then I just, just, just started reading Daryl Gregory’s book Spoonbenders, which is the one about the family of TV psychics.
WHISKEY JENNY: Ooh, yeah.
GIN JENNY: Who are past their TV psychic prime. And I thought it was about one of the sons of the family, but it turns out it’s about the grandson, or one of the grandsons. So it’s actually in three generations now, this family. I am on page 12, so I really don’t know what to expect yet, but I’m excited.
WHISKEY JENNY: I have a question. Did you read the confusing space mystery?
GIN JENNY: Yes, I did, I did! I really liked it. You’re talking about Six Wakes, by Mur Lafferty?
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t know. You told me—
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Let me try again. You’re talking about Six Wakes, by Mur Lafferty.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, cool. What’d you think?
GIN JENNY: I really liked it. I thought it was just terrific. It was not confusing at all. It was a really fun mystery. I actually totally think you would enjoy it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, great. So my questions were addressed.
GIN JENNY: Yes, your questions were addressed pretty early on. And actually I texted you shortly after I started reading it to let you know. And listeners, you might want to know this as well. So this is the story where it’s six people on a spaceship. And the deal is that they are all—if they die on the spaceship—which they will, because it’s a generation ship, so it lasts a really long time. So when they die on the ship as they’re piloting it to its destination, they’ll wake up again in brand new clone bodies. They all wake up in their new clone bodies way ahead of schedule. All of their previous bodies are floating around the spaceship super murdered, and they have no memories of what’s happened since they came onto the ship, which it looks like was about 25 years ago.
WHISKEY JENNY: Bum bum bum!
GIN JENNY: Bum bum bum! And it also turns out that all of the members of the crew in their previous lives were criminals, and they got this job with the understanding that when they reach their destination, their criminal records would be wiped.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oooh.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. So there’s additional layers of stuff to uncover.
WHISKEY JENNY: That sounds very fun.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I liked it a lot actually.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, great.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. Recommend it to our listeners. That’s Six Wakes, by Mur Lafferty. So do you want to talk about Serial Box book club?
WHISKEY JENNY: I sure do.
GIN JENNY: Spies and Witches?
WHISKEY JENNY: I sure do want to talk about Spies and Witches, Gin Jenny. Spies and Witches nine and ten.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. So this week read episode nine, “Head Case,” by Max Gladstone, and episode ten, “ANCHISES,” in all caps, by Lindsay Smith.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: ANCHISES! You have to yell it.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: So Whiskey Jenny, what did you think? Some stuff went down this week.
WHISKEY JENNY: Some stuff definitely went down this week. I just—Gin Jenny already had to hear me complain about this.
GIN JENNY: No, I agree with you.
WHISKEY JENNY: In the “previously on” in episode nine—so before I’d even gotten into it—[LAUGHTER] the little previously on is basically like, previously on, Gabe woke up a golem and it rampaged throughout the streets, and he did nothing. So that’s where we are. Here you go. [LAUGHTER] Let’s check in and see what Gabe’s doing while not catching the golem.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: And if you tuned in last week, you know that Whiskey Jenny and I are already pretty annoyed with Gabe for not addressing the golem issue that he created.
WHISKEY JENNY: So I’m already upset, and then— [LAUGHTER] Okay, this is a direct quote from Gabe.
GIN JENNY: From Gabe.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: They’re worried about, like, I don’t know, the science conference or something. Whatever. This is a direct quote. “The golem hasn’t been a problem so far because it’s preying on locals. But what if it takes one of the delegates?” [LAUGHTER] He straight up says, it’s fine, it’s only murdering Czech people?
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Are you kidding me?
GIN JENNY: Gabriel.
WHISKEY JENNY: What? Hasn’t been a problem so far because it’s preying on locals.
GIN JENNY: I have completely turned against Gabe.
WHISKEY JENNY: Me, too!
GIN JENNY: I mean, kind of as of last week, but definitely as of this week. He needs to get his act together.
WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, that is—just that’s not cool at all.
GIN JENNY: That’s not at all cool.
WHISKEY JENNY: Inhumane. Like, no. It definitely is a problem. It’s murdering people.
GIN JENNY: And also, he set it loose. So it’s not like it’s a miscellaneous problem that he bears no responsibility for.
WHISKEY JENNY: Just one of many problems happening in Prague right now. Nope. You made this one happen.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, he’s the cause of this problem. I can’t with you, Gabe.
WHISKEY JENNY: I can’t with him, either. I guess I’m glad we’re both fed up with him.
GIN JENNY: I was happy that when he goes to Jordan for help—Jordan is our favorite character—she’s like, okay, just do what I say. And she gives him some stuff. And he’s like, oh, but I don’t know what to—She’s like, shut up. I’m doing you the hugest favor. Good for Jordan. I want Jordan to be the protagonist instead of stupid Gabe.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. More Jordan, less Gabe. I did find it very amusing at the beginning of chapter ten, when both Gabe and Josh were like, la la la, everything is going to go great. This operation is going to have no hitches. [LAUGHTER] I was like, oh, guys. Why would you say that?
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: OK, but in fairness to them, in episode nine, Gabe does have to—Gabe and Tanya do manage to kill the golem, finally.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yes, but only tangentially. He wasn’t hunting it. It found him, and then he was like, eh, all right. I guess now I should deal with it.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. But whatever. The golem is dead.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yes. They finally do get rid of it, yes.
GIN JENNY: It’s no longer preying on locals in Prague. But then I have to say, operation ANCHISES, as of episode ten, did indeed go really smoothly.
WHISKEY JENNY: Did it?
GIN JENNY: Yeah, didn’t they get the guy out?
WHISKEY JENNY: I guess. Yeah, I guess they did get him out.
GIN JENNY: So it went pretty good.
WHISKEY JENNY: That’s true.
GIN JENNY: You know why, Whiskey Jenny? You know why it went so well?
WHISKEY JENNY: Is it because he has magic from Jordan?
GIN JENNY: No, it’s because Dom was in charge.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, well, yes. Yeah, mm-hm. Here’s the thing. I want more from Dom. I want Dom to explain what he’s doing there and what his deal is.
GIN JENNY: He’s a competent agent of the CIA who is helping with Operation ANCHISES. Duh.
WHISKEY JENNY: I just feel like there’s more to it. I just feel like there’s more to it, and I want to know what it is.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: I think that’s coming up on us pretty soon. Actually I was really surprised and disappointed that we didn’t see more of—I want to say Verena?
WHISKEY JENNY: Zerena.
GIN JENNY: Zerena, yeah. I was sad that we didn’t see more of her. I mean, they were at a diplomats party, so it would be a natural place for her to be. And I thought she was going to mess up ANCHISES, but I guess that’ll happen in the next episode. Because this episode all went so smoothly that I’m very suspicious. Especially, as you say, with Josh and Gabe both being like, this is going fine! There’s no problems at all.
WHISKEY JENNY: I did like sweet little Josh practicing how to pick up suitcases, though.
GIN JENNY: Oh my god, me too.
WHISKEY JENNY: I shouldn’t call him little. I don’t know what size he is. Is he little?
GIN JENNY: They mention that he’s a kid. Someone calls him a kid, so he seems young at least, yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, he practices picking up suitcases because one of his covers is going to be a bellhop, [LAUGHTER] and he practices picking up suitcases and I can’t get over how cute that is. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: I know, and also there’s a point where he says—it’s a section that’s being narrated from Josh’s point of view. And he’s like, OK, so maybe nobody would confuse Josh Toms for James Bond. And I was like, oh, sweetheart.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: No, they definitely wouldn’t. But you’re so cute. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: I liked having a point of view section from Josh. And you know how he’s taking some risks, getting himself in that spy action. I was excited for him.
WHISKEY JENNY: The spy action and the romance game.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. Personal and professional risks he’s taking.
WHISKEY JENNY: I was very excited about the romance stuff that we got.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Because I really want some more romance, so I’m glad we got some.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, there is not a lot altogether, I have to say.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Josh and Alestair have some smoldering glances and some smoldering—
GIN JENNY: Smooches.
WHISKEY JENNY: —kisses. Yeah.
GIN JENNY: Josh takes the initiative. Good for you Josh. Your life could end tomorrow, so live every day like it’s your last.
WHISKEY JENNY: That’s right. So at the end of nine, the guy they’re trying to get out for ANCHISES!, Sokolov—oh, he’s a host, too. because everyone in this world is magic.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: I was excited that he didn’t know about magic and stuff.
WHISKEY JENNY: Uh-huh. He’s just sort of accidentally a host. It seems like they’re real common. I don’t know.
GIN JENNY: It does seem like they’re fairly common.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: There was one thing at the beginning of episode nine that Tanya said that really bugged me.
GIN JENNY: Oh, what’d she say?
WHISKEY JENNY: They’re dressed up as hotel maids planting bugs. And she says, “Forty rooms to check on this floor, bugs to plant, then surveillance to make sure no one removes them. There’s a fine line between impersonating menial laborers and performing menial labor.”
GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: And I just thought that was a crappy thing to say about hotel maids.
GIN JENNY: Hotel staff. Yeah. She’s just being a poop.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Yeah. And it just came out of nowhere, and I was like, wait, what the hell, Tanya? I’m supposed to be rooting for you. I think.
GIN JENNY: I don’t know, I am mainly rooting for Jordan at this point. I want Jordan really to succeed.
WHISKEY JENNY: That’s true. Team Jordan. Yeah, so between that and Gabe being like, eh, it’s only preying on locals.
GIN JENNY: I have to say, not only are Gabe and Tanya kind of doing things that irritate me on a moral level, such as these two things we’ve just mentioned, but also because they’re not great at spying, I’m kind of turning against them in their regular lives as well. Right now I’m all about Josh and Dom and Jordan, who are really good at their jobs.
WHISKEY JENNY: Absolutely. Or adorably nervous about their job, if you’re Josh. But he also succeeded at—
GIN JENNY: Yeah, he succeeded at his task despite his nervousness.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yes he did. He passed on the thing, I think, was his job? I don’t know. Sometimes I get lost in the spy stuff.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Oh, bless Josh’s heart. I hope he doesn’t die in the coming battle. I got really nervous about everyone when Josh and Gabe were like, yeah, this is going great. Nothing’s going to go wrong. It’s all fine.
WHISKEY JENNY: Me too! Nothing’s going to go wrong. It’s going to be perfect. It’s going to be a piece of cake.
GIN JENNY: I was like, pipe down guys. You’re just jinxing yourself. I don’t say stuff like that in my life, because I know it’s a jinx.
WHISKEY JENNY: And my life isn’t even—
GIN JENNY: Yeah. My life is very low-stakes.
WHISKEY JENNY: —life or death spying. Yeah. I feel like I want—well, I just don’t have a handle on Nadia. I just don’t know what her deal is.
GIN JENNY: I don’t have a handle on Nadia at all. Yeah, Nadia is Tanya’s co-Russian spy and co-agent of the Ice. And what’s kind of weird to me, actually, in this section, is that she talks with Tanya about how the Ice is just keeping human bodies frozen in ice. And she’s like, you’re right, we do do that, but it’s for the best.
WHISKEY JENNY: I thought that was last time. Is that this time?
GIN JENNY: Oh, was that last time?
WHISKEY JENNY: That definitely has happened. And then this time, she just was sort of like, oh it’s too bad Tanya found that out before she was supposed to. She was not like, oh it’s too bad we’re freezing bodies. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I’m just not sure about anyone’s morality here.
WHISKEY JENNY: I did like how she was like, I’m great at parties because I know about jazz and boxing. [LAUGHTER] Or I’m great at Western parties. [LAUGHTER]
Speaking of the spy covers, I really want more people having to pretend to talk about corn.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Agreed. Yeah, but I did enjoy that we got rid of the golem. That was really stressing me out, how it was just running around willy-nilly. And I’m glad we got to see Dom in action. He lived up to his reputation so far.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, he was great. Do you think he knows Solokov? Do you think that’s why he called him Max?
GIN JENNY: I hope so. I hope that we’re going to find out his magic connection soon.
WHISKEY JENNY: Any other hopes and dreams for 11 and 12?
GIN JENNY: You know, I want Josh to survive. Bless him. Gabe can die, though.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I’m fine with that.
GIN JENNY: And I would like Jordan to come out looking great, living her life in perfect safety, just getting everything she wants. I want all her dreams to come true. What about you?
WHISKEY JENNY: I want those things to happen. I want to figure out Nadia. I’m still into this radio that talks about Tanya’s grandfather. I want some resolution, either—just about the magic world in general. I want Tanya to either be like, okay, I’m not an agent of the Ice anymore and you’ve been fooling me all along, or you have been but I’m fine with it. She’s in this in between part like, oh, I don’t know, maybe they’re not great.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: I want her to land on one side of the fence.
GIN JENNY: So we’re going to do 11 and 12 next time, and then we’ll have one more to go, 13. So our final Serial Box Book Club episode.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, only two more, can you believe it? Three more to read, two more to talk about.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, it’s crazy. So yeah, we’ll do 11 and 12 next time, and the time after that we’ll do 13 and a wrap up.
WHISKEY JENNY: Sound good. I can’t wait.
GIN JENNY: Well, do you want to talk about literary travel?
WHISKEY JENNY: I do!
GIN JENNY: I just got back from London, a very literary destination. And I bought a lot of books there.
WHISKEY JENNY: So I know you wrote about it already, but can you tell us how you chose what books to buy? Do you have different criteria for travel purchases?
GIN JENNY: I try not to buy books very often in my life, because if I let that wall down, I’d just be doing it nonstop. But I do buy books when I am traveling. And when I was in London, I tried to buy books that I didn’t think I could get easily in the US, if they were new, or if I got a good price on them used. So those are my two very loose criteria.
So I ended up going to like eight bookstores and buying about 23 books, which I think could have been worse.
WHISKEY JENNY: I agree.
GIN JENNY: I got a really good sale on some X-Men comics that I’m excited about that Joss Whedon wrote. They’re mostly about Kitty Pryde, and I love Kitty Pryde.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, yeah.
GIN JENNY: I got some plays.
WHISKEY JENNY: Ooh. Those are really hard to find.
GIN JENNY: They are hard to find.
WHISKEY JENNY: Just in general, plays are hard to find.
GIN JENNY: They are. I think actually—I’m trying to remember, but I bought the third volume of Christopher Fry’s plays, and I’m pretty sure that I bought the previous two volumes on previous trips to London, because they’re so hard to find and I never see them anywhere else.
WHISKEY JENNY: How did you decide what bookstores to go to?
GIN JENNY: Some of them I already knew about, like the Foyles on Charing Cross Road, and—well, all the Charing Cross Road bookstores, really. And some of them people told me about, like I didn’t know there was an enormous Forbidden Planet comic store on Shaftesbury Avenue, so that was exciting. The Notting Hill Book and Comic Exchange I’d been to before. I met up with book bloggers and they chose some bookstores.
WHISKEY JENNY: That sounds delightful.
GIN JENNY: Oh, it is delightful. I have to tell you, if you want some fun, go book shopping with other book bloggers, because they’re enablers, number one. [LAUGHTER] And number two, they know where all the good book stores are, which is great.
WHISKEY JENNY: Did you do any other literary travel while you were in London?
GIN JENNY: Not really. I went with my friend Alice. She did a lot of literary traveling. She went to a lot of literary destinations in London. Like she went to Samuel Johnson’s house. She talked about going to Keats’s house, but I’m not sure she ended up doing that. So she went to several places like that.
And she is in general a big fan of going to places where authors are from. She had talked about going up to see the Brontes’ house, but she didn’t end up having time to do it. Are you one for visiting authors’ homes or author destinations, Whiskey Jenny, in general?
WHISKEY JENNY: I think I am, yeah. I really am interested in the process of writing in general, so I really like seeing people’s set up. Like which desk they wrote at, and what they were looking at when they did that.
GIN JENNY: Interesting.
WHISKEY JENNY: Which is hard for historical accuracy sometimes, I’m sure, but. But yeah, I really enjoy seeing people’s set up and how that affected their routine. Are you?
GIN JENNY: No, not at all.
WHISKEY JENNY: Why not?
GIN JENNY: I don’t know. You know, when I was making notes for this I was trying to pin down a reason, and I couldn’t figure out what it is. But I really am not that interested in where authors lived and what they did day to day. Like, Oscar Wilde lived in London, and I had no interest in going to any London Oscar Wilde destinations. I don’t want to go see the Brontes’ house, although I love Jane Eyre.
Actually, I went to Stratford-upon-Avon when I was in college. And I love Shakespeare; I really love Shakespeare. I felt nothing. I went in his different Stratford-upon-Avon houses and the theater there. And I just—it didn’t do anything for me. I felt a connection to the history, but not really to like, Shakespeare. Nothing happens in my stony heart, Whiskey Jenny!
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, see, I don’t think that’s true at all. Because as you said, you do feel connected and are interested in authors’ backgrounds and histories. So you like learning fun facts about Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde.
GIN JENNY: I do.
WHISKEY JENNY: You just don’t want to see their bathroom. That’s fine. [LAUGHTER] I don’t think that means you’re a stone cold killer.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: I don’t know. It’s just not for me. I can’t figure out if it’s of a piece with me being nervous to meet authors in real life, or if it’s related to me not caring about places that much. I don’t know. I don’t know what it is.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well I also am petrified of meeting authors in person. But I’m petrified of meeting most people in person, so I don’t know if those correlate or not.
GIN JENNY: Are there author destinations that you want to go to in the future? Are there specific places that you want to go?
WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t really have any, oh gosh, I really want to go to so and so’s house. But I always like, whenever I pick a place to go to and travel, I always like figuring out what the nearby literary destinations are. It’s certainly a thing that draws me somewhere and that I like doing while I’m there. But I don’t have any particular ones in mind.
GIN JENNY: Well I will say, I would like to see Oscar Wilde’s grave. I think that was the one thing that I was interested in going to. But I think partly because I know what I would do when I got there. The thing that everyone did was, you would put on dramatic lipstick and smooch his grave monument, so it had smooches all over. And I’d really like to do that, but they actually put up a barrier, because it was degrading the statue. It was degrading the stone. So you can’t do that anymore. But going to see graves—he was Catholic, I’m Catholic. I can say a prayer at his grave and that feels like a thing to do. And then I’ll be done and I can leave, and I won’t have to stand there waiting to feel something.
And I would to go to Prince Edward Island, but I think more because—
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, man.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: But more because I’ve heard that it’s beautiful than because I think I’m going to get anything out of it relating to L.M. Montgomery.
WHISKEY JENNY: It was very beautiful. And I would say in general that’s also, I would say, more what draws me to places, is if someone writes about them sounding beautiful. I definitely wanted to go to Prince Edward Island, because that’s where Anne of Green Gables was set more, and then secondly I thought it was cool that is where she grew up. And she set it there because she was from there. So it was her writing about it that drew me to it, not the fact that that’s where she wrote about it.
GIN JENNY: Did you see—were there L.M. Montgomery houses type things that you went and saw while you were there?
WHISKEY JENNY: There is. So you can see this site of the house where she grew up with her grandparents. But she spent a lot of time also at her cousins’ house, or her aunt and uncle’s house that she walked through beautiful wooded areas to get to. And then that house I think actually did have green gables.
GIN JENNY: Aw.
WHISKEY JENNY: It definitely has gables. I don’t know if they were green at the time, but it definitely has gables and they’re green now. And it’s a really sweet little—they kept a little wooded path between the two places, so you can sort of imagine that you’re walking Lover’s Lane or whatever. It’s very cute, yeah. The actual house where she grew up, though, isn’t there anymore. It is a little—like, they don’t know whose room was for sure whose. She never actually lived at that Green Gables house. But they do have one room that has an Anne looking dress out, and then a little bottle of raspberry cordial in the kitchen. So they definitely lean into it, but most of it is like, well, imagine! [LAUGHTER] It is the house, it is the house that inspired it, but I think there’s some liberties taken as well.
But I thoroughly enjoyed visiting there. I sent Gin Jenny some postcards from it. I think one of them said “Anne rules” and the other said “Emily drools.”
GIN JENNY: That’s true. No, actually one of them said “Anne rules, Emily drools,” and one of them was like, “I’m just kidding, you’re the best Gin Jenny.”
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Oh. Well, good. But yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I would like to do that one day. That’s one that I would enjoy that. But again, more because of the island’s natural beauty than—
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, it’s very beautiful.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard. Actually, Whiskey jenny, I have a related question. Have you watched Anne with an E?
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, god, no. [LAUGHTER] I read a review of it and wanted to flip over some tables. [LAUGHTER] So no.
GIN JENNY: I was kind of trying to—I was keeping an open mind. I hadn’t decided one way or another if I was going to watch it or not. But I read some very negative reviews when it first came out that made me think I didn’t want to watch it. And then my sister watched it and she was like, oh, I actually really liked it. She said the first two episodes were rough, but then after that it became really good. And she said all the child actors—including Diana, which is, you know, Diana’s kind of boring, but apparently not in this adaptation. She said all the child actors are really good, and she said the kid who plays Gilbert is excellent. And the kid who plays Anne is—you know, everyone has said the kid who plays Anne is very, very good.
WHISKEY JENNY: Sure, sure.
GIN JENNY: So I don’t know now. There’s a lot of things out there to watch.
WHISKEY JENNY: There’s so much. I just don’t think I know what this story is going to bring me.
GIN JENNY: Sure.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, period. I don’t know—I don’t know what it’s—[LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: Well, I’ll watch it and then I’ll tell you what I think.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yes.
GIN JENNY: Maybe.
WHISKEY JENNY: Let me know if you do.
GIN JENNY: Well, Whiskey Jenny, what about going places that you’ve read about in books? Is that a thing for you?
WHISKEY JENNY: It is a thing for me. I don’t know how much I’ve successfully done, but—
GIN JENNY: Yeah, same here.
WHISKEY JENNY: Like, I still want to go to Antarctica from Troubling a Star. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: Aw, that’s really sweet.
WHISKEY JENNY: Strangely—what was that book? Oh, Snow Falling on Cedars.
GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Really made me want to visit that island up in the Pacific Northwest. It sounded very foggy, and just pines jutting out through the fog. it sounded very beautiful. Which is weird, because that book is very tragic.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: This is a very you conversation, though. This is like when we’re watching TV, and whatever there’s a commercial on for, you’re like, I could use some ear buds. Thanks, television!
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: I am very inceptable.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yeah, I do think most of the places that I currently want to see or have specifically made the effort to go see are places that I’ve read about in books. Like I longed to go to India before we went to India, and it’s because I’ve been reading books about India my whole life. I don’t think that’s where I exclusively get place-visiting recommendations, but I do think books have this incredible power to make a place sound really, really appealing.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, agreed.
GIN JENNY: Like you said, even when the book itself isn’t necessarily portraying the play putting its best foot forward, like in Snow Falling on Cedars.
WHISKEY JENNY: No, definitely. I think that’s really interesting, because I think you’ve said you don’t necessarily enjoy descriptions of a place.
GIN JENNY: I don’t.
WHISKEY JENNY: So what is it about books that make you want to visit places?
GIN JENNY: I don’t know. I guess it’s that what I like about new places is when I start to feel at home in them. So when books make a place sound homey, that makes me want to go there and feel that feeling in that place. I think that’s what it is. Because all these books—you know, I read tons of British kids’ books when I was little. And a lot of those books have characters, or are written by people, or both, who were born in India and then were sent back to England for school and just really, really missed it, and would think about the home comforts that they left behind in India. So I think that stuff probably made a pretty big impression on me when I was little.
So I would be like, oh yeah, if I could go there and have tea, and everything would smell like jasmine. And I did go there, and I did have tea, and everything really did smell like jasmine.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, there you go.
GIN JENNY: That is not false advertising.
WHISKEY JENNY: And you got to sit in one of the chairs that you wanted to sit in.
GIN JENNY: Yes! I got to sit in a Bombay fornicator, just like I wanted.
WHISKEY JENNY: There you go.
GIN JENNY: But I think overall, I’m not a literary pilgrimage kind of gal.
WHISKEY JENNY: Are there big main literary pilgrimages?
GIN JENNY: Well, I think Stratford-upon-Avon is probably a pretty big one.
WHISKEY JENNY: Sure.
GIN JENNY: Don’t people like going to Baltimore and seeing Poe stuff? I feel like Baltimore is so into Edgar Allan Poe.
WHISKEY JENNY: I feel like it’d be fun to camp out at his grave on Halloween night.
GIN JENNY: That would be fun.
WHISKEY JENNY: And see if you spy someone doing something.
GIN JENNY: I’ve heard really good things about going to the Brontes’ house. I’ve heard that place is great. Their awful dark parsonage or whatever.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Lovely. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: Well honestly, everyone who’s been there has been like, yeah, it was great, you should totally go. It’s a really good house museum and whatnot. I mean, I don’t know.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, no. I’m glad they enjoyed it.
GIN JENNY: So that’s one. I guess—you know what, people love to go to King’s Cross and take pictures at King’s Cross like they’re Harry Potter. I have been to King’s Cross, but not for that purpose.
WHISKEY JENNY: That’s true. I did that. [LAUGHTER] And I am very happy about it. It made me happy, so I’m fine with that one.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, so there you go. Or Oxford. People love to go to Oxford for all sorts of reasons. I think those are some main ones. Maybe not the main ones.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I was just trying to think what the most popular ones would be.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. I went to Stratford-upon-Avon, and it was not my favorite thing I did the first time I was abroad. A lot of catcalling in Stratford-on-Avon. Like, a lot.
WHISKEY JENNY: Really! That is not what I thought you were going to say. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: And really, weird, specific and gross catcalling.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, yeah.
GIN JENNY: Not just me. A lot of the girls in my group.
WHISKEY JENNY: That is very weird.
GIN JENNY: It was really strange. It was not what I expected. That was in 2005, so maybe things have changed.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, I’m just so startled. You have flummoxed me.
GIN JENNY: Oh, you know what I will say, though, to all our listeners, if you get a chance to go see a play at the Globe Theatre in London as a groundling, I really recommend that. It is so much fun. But that’s not really because of Shakespeare. I mean, it is because of Shakespeare, because the Shakespeare is the plays that are being performed. But it’s more because the plays are really good, and it’s fun to see a play from right up close by the stage. So I think that’s the one thing that I would really ardently recommend as a literary pilgrimage.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, and as you say, that would be great even if it wasn’t—well, no, I mean, it wouldn’t be great even if it wasn’t written by Shakespeare.
GIN JENNY: Well, I think it would. I think if they performed a good play by someone else.
WHISKEY JENNY: Other good plays. There you go.
GIN JENNY: It’d still be pretty good. Well listeners, if you have been on literary trips that you thought were really good, or if you think that we’re totally wrong for not going on all the author pilgrimages.
WHISKEY JENNY: I did go to—when I was at Oxford for a night, I definitely stopped into the Eagle and Child. I am that person.
GIN JENNY: You did! That’s so fun!
WHISKEY JENNY: That’s where I had alone dinner that night.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, that’s nice. I went there and had a drink. Yeah, the Bird and Baby. This is the problem. Someone told me it’s called the Bird and Baby, and I know it’s called the Eagle and Child. I can’t shake the fake name out of my head.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, but I feel like the fake name is cooler.
GIN JENNY: The fake nickname is fun. Yeah, Oxford’s pretty good.
WHISKEY JENNY: And I wish I got to go more.
GIN JENNY: Oh, me too.
WHISKEY JENNY: Or at all. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: We should go one time. When we’re wealthy we should go to Oxford.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, that’d be great.
GIN JENNY: Wouldn’t that be fun?
WHISKEY JENNY: It would be very fun.
GIN JENNY: Well, should I get into what we read this time?
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, let’s do it.
GIN JENNY: So for this week we read The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas. And it’s about a girl named Star who is leaving a party. Her childhood friend Khalil is driving, and they’re pulled over by the cops. Khalil gets out of the car on the cop’s instructions, and when he leans back into the car to ask Star if she’s okay, the cop shoots and kills him. And then a whole media circus breaks out, and Star is trying to deal with her own feelings of loss, figure out how to address it with the kids at her mostly white school, figure out if she wants to be a witness for the case and how public she wants to be about it. So it’s about all the fallout from Khalil’s death. Whiskey Jenny, what did you think?
WHISKEY JENNY: I thought it was great. What did you think?
GIN JENNY: I thought it was great. I thought it was so good. It’s been on, and I think is still on, the New York Times–bestseller list, and I just think it’s so well-deserved. I think the author does an amazing job with this story. And there were a lot of ways that it would have been easy to flatten out the nuance and just make the villains really villainous, and the innocents the most innocent, and have everything happen in primary colors. And I think she avoids that in every possible way, which I think is really great writing, and also just really impressive for a book with a premise as fraught as this one is.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it’s so difficult to tackle complex issues like this, and I think she particularly set out to write a book inspired by a lot of the real world things that are happening. So especially when you’re trying to write—I don’t mean issue book in a negative way, but you’re trying to write a book that tackles an issue like that, it’s very easy to fall into those traps. So I also was very impressed by how skillful it was.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. Did you cry?
WHISKEY JENNY: Are you kidding? [LAUGHTER] I cried a whole bunch. The subway ride home, including today, got to see me tear up a little bit.
GIN JENNY: It was really sad. I mean, it was really heartbreaking.
WHISKEY JENNY: It was very heartbreaking, and I was dreading reading it. I think I put it on my spring list as well.
GIN JENNY: You did.
WHISKEY JENNY: So I did want to read it, but I was also dreading reading it, because it’s a really difficult topic to read about. But in the midst of it, I was also pleasantly surprised at this sort of happy moments and lightheartedness that she was able to find in Star’s life.
GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah, definitely. And also I thought she just did a great job of portraying—I don’t want to say two conflicting truths, but two truths that sit uneasily alongside each other. Like there’s a part towards the beginning where Star—so Star goes to a private school. Most of her classmates are white. And early in the book, she talks about how she never has friends over to her house. She lives in a neighborhood with high crime rates. And she talks about when she was a kid and she had some friends over for the first time from her school, the friends’ parents were not okay with it, and it never happened again.
And that’s a really heartbreaking story. But at the same time, Angie Thomas doesn’t try to say definitively that Star’s home neighborhood is the right choice for her. It’s familiar, it’s a community, and that stuff’s really important. And Star’s best friend was killed when they were 10 in that neighborhood. And I really like and respect that the author puts those truths alongside each other and lets the reader sit with that discomfort, and lets us see the characters grappling with which of their values is most important, and how they’re going to resolve that dissonance in their own lives.
WHISKEY JENNY: I also was impressed that you get a sense of a lot of the characters dealing with those kinds of—it’s very good at giving inner lives to even everyone who’s not Star, who’s our narrator. But even though she’s first person, I still felt like I knew the other people really well as people and understood the similar struggles that they were going through, as well, as much as you can through the eyes of a single person.
GIN JENNY: I think that’s right. And especially the way that they found different answers to the same questions. And I thought that she did a good job of not condemning people for coming to different answers than Star does.
WHISKEY JENNY: Or like her parents, who start out on different sides of that issue.
GIN JENNY: Mm-hm.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, definitely.
GIN JENNY: I loved her dad.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh my god, I love both of her parents so much.
GIN JENNY: I love her parents. I love that she had such a great family. All the members of her family were just terrific.
WHISKEY JENNY: All the members of her family are great. And she loves them, and knows that, and talks about how great they are. And I really enjoyed that as well. She calls her parents her OTP, and I thought that was really cute.
GIN JENNY: That was so sweet. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, and I really loved her brother, Seven. He’s her half-brother. And Star is friends with another of Seven’s half-sisters by the other parent, if that makes sense. And I love that all through the book, she’s always talking to her friend about Seven, and her friend is always like, my brother Seven, and Star is like, well, he’s my brother, too.
I just love that you see Seven as a presence in her life, and how—I mean, really, my heart broke for Seven. Because he’s trying to reconcile his responsibility to his mother and his two little sisters, who are living in very difficult circumstances. And he’s trying to find a way to be responsible for all of them and still have the life that Star’s father wants to give him. It was just—I would read a sequel from Seven’s point of view, very much.
WHISKEY JENNY: Absolutely. He’s totally pulled in all sorts of directions.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. It is heartbreaking.
WHISKEY JENNY: It is very heartbreaking. There’s this really heart-wrenching scene at the end where he’s like, I have to go back. I have to protect my mom. And his two sisters are the only ones able to convince him not to, and that sometimes you can’t. And that’s just a really hard realization for anyone, but particularly a teenager.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. Well, and when you said the thing about her doing a good job of portraying the interior lives of all the secondary characters, I hadn’t specifically framed it that way to myself, but that’s so true. Because you can see all these people going through their own journeys. And even though it’s not the focus of the story, because Star’s our protagonist and she’s the one we’re seeing the story through, it’s clear that everyone else has their own stuff going on on the side. And a lot of those things are very emotionally engaging as well, even without us being inside those characters’ heads.
WHISKEY JENNY: Agreed. And some of it is explicit and comes out. Like at the end, Star and Kenya—Seven’s half sister—talk about why Kenya always says my brother and not our brother. And that’s a really moving scene, as well.
GIN JENNY: It is, yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, it’s moving because you realize the groundwork has been laid for it the whole time, and you understand just that little bit more about who Kenya is, even though she’s not our main girl.
GIN JENNY: I liked that as well, a similar thing in relation to Star’s boyfriend. She’s dating this white kid from her school who’s kind of basic. And I really thought they were going to break up pretty early on.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: I kind of did, too, to be honest. And then he was a real, like, I don’t know—they don’t. I guess that’s a spoiler, but I was like, man, all right. Great. [LAUGHTER] He stuck around longer than I thought.
GIN JENNY: I liked it that the book went the route of having her boyfriend say hey, talk to me about your feelings, and showing him trying to understand and improve, even though he messes up sometimes.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I mean, I actually love that about it.
GIN JENNY: Well, I think it’s the same as with Kenya, where she’s doing something that hurts Star, but Star talks to her about it and they both reach a better understanding of each other. And I thought it was the same with her and her boyfriend.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it goes back to what you were saying about the innocents aren’t totally innocent. Even these people that we’re rooting for her are very human and make mistakes. But that doesn’t mean we’re not rooting for them.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: There are people we’re not rooting for, but there are people that we do root for who still make mistakes, and that’s okay as long as they acknowledge them and try to work with them.
GIN JENNY: By a similar token, I liked it that, as the book goes on—because of course what happens in the aftermath of Khalil’s death is that the media and the police kind of put him on trial to say like, well, was he a drug dealer? Was he a quote unquote thug? Did he deserve what happened to him, essentially. And I really liked it that Angie Thomas didn’t go the route of having him be some completely blameless kid. Because regardless of what he had done in his life, it would always have been wrong for the cop to shoot him in this way. And I liked that she let it be that he had made some mistakes, like all our characters have.
And he of course didn’t deserve what happened to him, and couldn’t possibly deserve what happened to him. And I liked how clear that is to Star at every moment, and how she’s constantly trying to find a way to honor his memory without—I don’t know, without plunging her life into total chaos. I just thought she did a really great job on all fronts.
WHISKEY JENNY: I did, too. I thought it was really great. There was one spot in the middle where I sort of came out of the book and thought I didn’t super believe that this conversation was happening between these two people. It was when Star and her dad were talking about the meaning of that Tupac song that the title comes from. And it just didn’t ring true to me that this would be when these characters would have talked about that.
Particularly because Star talks about how when she was 12, her parents sat her down and had two talks with her. She got the sex talk, and also how to act around cops so you don’t get shot talk. Like, she knows the ten points of the Black Panther Ten-Point Program, and has since she was a small girl, and has them all memorized. It just didn’t totally ring true to me that this would be the first time that she and her father, who she calls a black militant, would be talking about, we live in an unfair system.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, that makes sense. I did love it that her house was so steeped in the Black Panthers Ten-Point Program. I liked it that the book portrayed that as a positive part of their lives, because I think the Black Panthers tend to be extremely vilified in the way that white American history is taught. So that was really nice and refreshing to see.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, definitely. That one part in the middle that I complained about, obviously, is very much a quibble. But I feel like it was so good at, in general, successfully having characters having conversations like that about very serious and often horrible issues.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, it would have been very easy for it to feel preachy, and to me it never did.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, and it also has some—I think “the trap of the white standard” is a phrase that she used one time that I had never heard and was like, oh, yeah.
GIN JENNY: That’s really good.
WHISKEY JENNY: Now I know what to call that. [LAUGHTER] It was one of Chris’s not finest moments.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Oh, Chris.
WHISKEY JENNY: I also especially liked—so she’s dating Chris, a white boy. And I really liked that when her father finds out that she’s dating a white boy—
GIN JENNY: Which is something she’s very worried about.
WHISKEY JENNY: Her mother has known for a couple of years, I think. Her uncle found out. And her uncle, she and her mom, I think, lived with while her father was in prison for three years. So she’s very close to her uncle, as well. I just thought it was extremely emotionally true that her father first and foremost was angry that the uncle knew before he did. Because he has a lot of emotions around the fact that he couldn’t be there for her during that time in her life, and her uncle was. And I just thought that that made so much sense for that character. And then his second reaction, that we see, at least, is he asks if she has a problem with black men, but frames it because he says, because I’m a black man, and there’s that saying that daughters end up dating someone who is their father. If you’re not dating someone like me, is it because I did something wrong? And I just like—I’m tearing up already.
GIN JENNY: I was going to say, that made me really sad, too.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh my god, her father was just such a beautiful, beautiful human being.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, her father was great. I think the father was such a great character. I mean, I know we just talked about secondary characters and I don’t mean to be super repetitive. But I just thought she did such a good job of creating this whole community full of people, and it felt like any one of them could have starred in the book and I would have been really psyched to read.
WHISKEY JENNY: I’d have been so excited to read it. Yeah, absolutely.
GIN JENNY: I’m not saying it should be a series, but it could be. And I would read it.
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m not saying it shouldn’t be a series.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I’m not saying it shouldn’t be. [LAUGHTER] Who knows where Angie Thomas’s life will lead her?
WHISKEY JENNY: Who knows? So it already got picked up for a movie, right? Hunger Games actress Amandla Stenberg is going to star in it.
GIN JENNY: Oh, nice. I like her.
WHISKEY JENNY: Great.
GIN JENNY: That kid seems smart, and she was very, very good in The Hunger Games, I thought.
WHISKEY JENNY: It has a director and a scriptwriter, so I think it’s really happening.
GIN JENNY: Exciting.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.
GIN JENNY: I might not watch in in movie format.
WHISKEY JENNY: We’ll see.
GIN JENNY: We’ll see. I do like Amandla Stenberg. I think she’s great, and I want her to succeed. So I don’t know. We’ll see. I’m really glad the book is doing well. Having read it, I think it’s terrific, and I would love for the author to have a long career of many successful books.
WHISKEY JENNY: Agreed. I’m excited to read more by her.
GIN JENNY: Me, too. I can’t wait for whatever she’s going to do next.
WHISKEY JENNY: I still can’t believe this her first book. Way to go.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, it’s so assured.
WHISKEY JENNY: Very much.
GIN JENNY: I love a good debut novel. Well, do you want to talk about what we’re going to do next?
WHISKEY JENNY: I sure do.
GIN JENNY: See what I did there?
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.
GIN JENNY: So for next week we are going to read Zan Romanoff’s new book Grace and the Fever, which is one of the books on my summer book preview. And I have now read it, and I loved it, and now I’m badgering Whiskey Jenny into reading it also.
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m very excited. It was a very light touch badgering.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: So this is the story of Grace Thomas who, in middle school everyone was a fan of this band Fever Dream. And her other friends kind of moved on with their interests, but Grace stayed kind of obsessed with them and is in their online fan community and believes that two of the band members are in a secret gay relationship that they can’t reveal to the public. And one summer night she’s out and about in LA, where she lives, and she runs into one of the band members. Not one of the ones she’s been shipping, the heartthrob one, Jess.
She just runs into him. He’s kind of escaped his handlers and is out smoking. And they strike up a short conversation, and she gets photographed with him. And after that she’s kind of pulled into the band’s orbit. So I really liked it. I think Whiskey Jenny is really going to like it. We also are going to have Zan Romanoff on the podcast to talk to us about her process and fandom, so we’re excited about that.
WHISKEY JENNY: Very excited. I already have links from Gin Jenny about scholarship on fandom for me to read.
GIN JENNY: Do you?
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m going to be all studied up. Yeah.
GIN JENNY: Did I?
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.
GIN JENNY: All right, cool. I must have done this in a fugue state.
WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, you weren’t forcing them on me. You mentioned it and I was like, that sounds cool, I want to read. Give them to me, too. And you’re like, okay, here you go.
GIN JENNY: Huh. Well, I don’t remember this at all. Well, great, fantastic. Yeah, so it’ll be exciting. And you guys should all read Grace and the Fever, because I liked it a lot.
WHISKEY JENNY: This has been the Reading the End bookcast with the demographically similar Jennys. You can visit the blog at readingtheend.com. You can follow us on Twitter @readingtheend. We’re both on Goodreads as Whiskey Jenny and Gin Jenny. And you can email us, we love hearing from listeners, at readingtheend@gmail.com And if you’re listening to us on iTunes, please leave us a review.
Until next time, a quote from The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas. “Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong. The key is to never stop doing right.”
[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-drining friend, no matter what you are imbibing, you’ll be better off in the end reading the end.