We have been trying to get our friend Alexis on the podcast and it finally succeeded, but because destiny opposes our works and ways, Whiskey Jenny was too sick to join us. Luckily Alexis and I still have lots of opinions between the two of us, and we had a grand time (though not as grand as it would have been if Whiskey Jenny had been there with us) chatting about book clubs and book swaps, and what we’re reading and listening to, and Aminatta Forna’s latest book, Happiness.
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 if you want to skip around!
1:48 – What we’re reading
6:25 – What we’re listening to
12:19 – Book clubs and book groups and book swaps
29:38 – Happiness, Aminatta Forna
Alexis is listening to The West Wing Weekly and My Dad Wrote a Porno! And I’m listening to songs from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and the Dear Prudence podcast, with Daniel Mallory Ortberg FORMERLY OF THE TOAST. (Watch Crazy Ex-Girlfriend if you’re not already.)
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
Transcript is available under the jump!
THEME SONG: You don’t judge a book by its cover. Page one’s not a much better view. And shortly you’re gonna discover the middle won’t mollify you. So whether whiskey’s your go-to or you’re like my gin-drinking friend, no matter what you are imbibing, you’ll be better off in the end reading the end.
GIN JENNY: Welcome to the Reading the End Bookcast with the demographically similar Jennys. I’m Gin Jenny.
ALEXIS: And I’m Alexis!
GIN JENNY: And we are here again to talk to you about books and literary happenings. Y’all, this is a very sad week. Because we finally were able to get Alexis back to the podcast, we’re so excited about that. Welcome, Alexis.
ALEXIS: Thank you. Happy to be here.
GIN JENNY: But Whiskey Jenny was struck down with an illness in the prime of her youth.
ALEXIS: Oh, yeah, we had to take her out back like Old Yeller.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: That’s a terrible idea!
ALEXIS: But it is a literary reference, so it’s apropos.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: We actually previously recorded a podcast with Alexis. We recorded the whole podcast, but something went awry and we lost the entire thing and had to scrap it. It was terrible. It was so sad.
ALEXIS: It was a fun experience, however, so I’ll hold the memory of it in my heart, even if you can’t listen to it.
GIN JENNY: But we are excited she’s back to hang out with us, even if poor Whiskey Jenny can’t be here, but she’s here in spirit. So today we’re going to talk about what we’re reading and what we’re something else-ing, as voted on by our lovely patrons. We are going to talk about book groups and book clubs and what makes them great. And we’re going to review Aminatta Forna’s new book, Happiness. So before we get into all that, Alexis, what are you reading?
ALEXIS: I had a very bad idea, which is that, not being a fan of Hemingway and not holding anything against— well, actually, I hold a little bit of something against—
GIN JENNY: I was going to say. Yeah.
ALEXIS: —people who I consider bro lit.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, he seems like a real butt.
ALEXIS: Yeah, not a good person. But also just his novels are usually not to my taste. However, I was traveling, and I was staying in a hotel which he set part of A Farewell to Arms. It’s in Stresa, Italy, about an hour or so outside of Milan. And so I thought being in that hotel, it would somehow make the experience more—
GIN JENNY: Less loathsome?
ALEXIS: Yeah, yeah. [LAUGHTER] I think I got about 30 pages in and I said, OK, maybe— I don’t know what. But maybe I just need to approach it the way he did with life, with a lot, a lot of drinks.
GIN JENNY: I mean, I don’t think that would save the experience, but I think it would make it more bearable. [LAUGHTER] So you haven’t read any of his novels?
ALEXIS: I’ve read a few, usually under duress. Like they were required reading. [LAUGHTER] I mean, how else do you describe the experience of reading The Old Man and the Sea? You feel, even though it’s such a short book, you feel the absolute and utter exhaustion of the old man, because that book ages you.
GIN JENNY: So I haven’t read The Old Man and the Sea, and I haven’t read A Farewell to Arms. I read The Sun Also Rises.
ALEXIS: Yeah, that’s the one with the bullfighting and the impotent man.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, the bullfighting and the broken dick.
ALEXIS: Yes, I also read that one in another— I was traveling to Madrid, and I thought, oh, I’ll read it. And honestly, I kind of enjoyed laughing at him, so that made it a not waste of time. I’m going to get hate mail.
GIN JENNY: No, I think it’s going to be fine. I mean, so yeah, I didn’t like it. I had to read it for school, and I didn’t like it at all. And I definitely have no plans to read additional Hemingway books ever.
ALEXIS: The short stories aren’t too bad, honestly. There are some that we had to read— as I was pursuing my degree in writing, there were a lot of instructive Hemingway short stories. But I think it’s telling that we were never asked to read excerpts from his novels.
GIN JENNY: That’s a very polite burn on Hemingway’s novels.
ALEXIS: [LAUGHTER] You burn in hell, Hemingway!
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yeah, so I am reading basically the opposite of Ernest Hemingway. I’m reading Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado.
ALEXIS: Which was another possibility for this podcast, wasn’t it?
GIN JENNY: It was, yeah. And Whiskey Jenny opted for Happiness instead, and then she ended up not being able to join us.
ALEXIS: Yes. It’s the opposite of happiness.
GIN JENNY: That’s very true. Especially because she was so excited about the foxes and so was I! Anyway, so I’m reading Her Body and Other Parties. I’ve been reading it for a while, because it’s short stories, and I don’t like to read too many short stories by one author in a row. So about halfway through. I just got through with my favorite story so far in the collection, which is called “Especially Heinous: 272 Views of Law And Order: SVU.”
ALEXIS: Oof.
GIN JENNY: And it’s structured as episode synapses over the course of 12 seasons. It’s very meta and creepy and surrealist.
ALEXIS: I’ve heard great things about this book and I would like to read it myself. But you’re talking about SVU, and I’d just like to briefly tell you of a time that I played a very misguided drinking game to an episode of SVU.
GIN JENNY: Oh my gosh, tell me.
ALEXIS: The rules were written for just regular Law and Order. [LAUGHTER] And one of the drinking cues was any time they had that duh-duh sound, which if you watch a regular episode of Law and Order, that happens literally the entire episode, all the time. It is used much, much more judiciously and the SVU episodes. I think it only went about twice. And the content of the episode was rather horrifying. And so I think we were all— we learned never to play that game again.
GIN JENNY: Or at least play one that’s specifically tailored to SVU so you can get good and drunk to get through all the violence.
ALEXIS: Yeah.
GIN JENNY: So I’ve never seen a single moment of SVU. I’ve in fact never seen any Law and Orders at all. So I can’t speak to whether it’s an interesting or thoughtful take on the show in particular. But I did think it was really interesting as a take on television and the way we conceptualize victimized girls and women in popular media. It’s essentially fanfic, so obviously it appealed to me from that direction. And it’s really weird. I mean, all the stories in the book are weird, but this one is weird in a way that I really enjoyed.
ALEXIS: Great. I look forward to reading it.
GIN JENNY: I would very much be interested in your opinion once you’ve read it.
ALEXIS: Well, when I finish cleaning up the embers of a burned copy of A Farewell to Arms, maybe I’ll get around to it.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: OK, and then we have our what we’re something else-ing segment, which I’m enjoying. This is only our second one, but I’m enjoying it so much so far. And our patrons voted us to talk about what we’re listening to. So tell us what you’re listening to.
ALEXIS: I am one of those people who was very late on the podcast game. So I’m still catching up. Like, I’m still in the first or second seasons of podcasts that have at least seven seasons so far. I, like many people, was brought on by Serial. But I have been enjoying revisiting The West Wing Weekly, which is a podcast—
GIN JENNY: Aww!
ALEXIS: —that is two men, Hrishikesh Hirway and Joshua Malina. Joshua Malina people might recognize as an actor who’s been in a number of things, but also The West Wing. He was in the latter seasons of it, arguably the less good seasons. [LAUGHTER] He has a very healthy sense of humor about that, too. He talks about how his appearance signaled the demise of the show. [LAUGHTER] They go episode by episode, so each podcast looks at a single episode of the television show, of which there are many. There are seven seasons. So I’ve got quite a ways to go. Although I’m not sure— I think they’ve gone to the fourth season, is where they are in present day.
And then I’m also usually listening to the podcast that the Jennys introduced me to, which is—
GIN JENNY: Our own. Just kidding.
ALEXIS: —My Dad Wrote a Porno. Oh, well, that one as well. Always, always. I mean, it’s just a foregone conclusion. Why would I even bring it up? But I’ve been using My Dad Wrote a Porno to sort of— it’s good for me to listen to to in the morning, because you already have this sort of utter nonsense and delight to start your day.
GIN JENNY: Yes! Oh man, I love My Dad Wrote a Porno. The thing is, I like it so much I don’t want to be finished with it, so I try to parcel it out to myself slowly. So I’ve only listened to— I’ve listened to the whole first season, and then probably about half to two thirds of the second season.
ALEXIS: That’s probably where I am right now.
GIN JENNY: Have you heard the Daisy Ridley episode? Because she’s just so charming, and I was so delighted.
ALEXIS: She is. In fact, I belatedly realized that I hadn’t heard the footnotes episodes. And so I went back and— because they kept talking about Elijah Wood. And I was like, when was Elijah Wood— what? [LAUGHTER] And so I went back into my app, and I realized there were all these little delightful goodies that I had missed out. I also really enjoyed the episode with Rachel Bloom
GIN JENNY: Oh, me too, me too!
ALEXIS: From Crazy Ex-Girlfriend fame. She had some fantastic conspiracy theories.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, she’s awesome. She’s hilarious. Oh, man, this makes a perfect segue to what I’m listening to.
ALEXIS: [LAUGHTER] Is it “I Went To the Zoo?” “I Go To the Zoo,” sorry.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: It basically is, yeah. I’ve been kind of stressed lately. I’ve been kind of like, ah ah ah, jittery. So I made myself a little playlist on YouTube of my favorite songs from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which is most of them. And I’ve been listening to those. I just find it so soothing. I love “I Go To the Zoo.” I love “We’ll Never Have Problems Again.” I put “We’ll Never Have Problems Again” on a loop sometimes. It really cheers me up.
ALEXIS: For some reason that was one that never really— I appreciated its position in the show, and it was very appropriate and entertaining. But it’s not one of my go-tos. “I Go To the Zoo” is definitely a go-to. “It Was a Shit Show” is another—
GIN JENNY: Oh yeah, very strong.
ALEXIS: —I tend to go back to a lot.
GIN JENNY: I like “I Gave You a UTI.” I listen to that one a lot. Listeners, if you haven’t watched Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, I know I’ve talked about it a lot on the podcast before, but since Alexis is here, another person who has watched it, I think now is a good time to reiterate what a great, great, great show it is.
ALEXIS: And I was very, very resistant to it, too. Because I— I feel like another thing I could be stoned for— I don’t love musicals in the way that people who love musicals love them.
GIN JENNY: Like me!
ALEXIS: I can often say, whenever a television show that isn’t normally a musical decides to have a musical episode, it is almost universally my least favorite episode of that show. But Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is truly a delight and wonderful, and I’m so glad that we’re going to have more seasons of it! Yay!
GIN JENNY: Well, one more season. Which, I’m sad that they’re not planning, you know, infinity seasons, but I’m also kind of glad that they had in mind a four season arc, and they’re getting to do that full arc, and then they’re going to leave on a high note.
ALEXIS: A literal high note, or?
GIN JENNY: Oh my god, that’s so good. I’m so glad you’re on the podcast. [LAUGHTER] So I’ve been listening to those. And then for podcasts, I really enjoy the Dear Prudence podcast at Slate.com, which is an advice column podcast. So the advice column has been running at Slate.com for many years. And ever since Daniel Mallory Ortberg came on as the current Dear Prudence, he’s had a podcast. And you know, if y’all are familiar with The Toast, you know what Daniel Ortberg’s sense of humor is. He just has a really down to earth, sensible take on questions, and he’s also really funny. And he has lots of really great guests on the show to share their thoughts, also. So if you like advice columns at all, that’s a good one. And I think has pretty good relistening value, which I never relisten to old episodes of podcasts that I’ve already heard. But in the case of the Dear Prudence podcast, I do.
ALEXIS: I did not know that there is a Dear Prudence podcast, and that is an exciting revelation.
GIN JENNY: Isn’t that awesome? It’s really good. He’s had Lindy West on. he has a bunch of really good guests on.
ALEXIS: And I’m just a fan of Ortberg’s work in general, so that’s great.
GIN JENNY: Absolutely. Have you checked out his new book yet?
ALEXIS: I have not. I have not, no. But another thing to add to my ever-expanding—
[LAUGHTER]I wonder which expands faster, the universe or my book list?
GIN JENNY: I’m going to say my book list.
ALEXIS: OK.
GIN JENNY: It’s pretty much infinite. Also as technology expands, people keep finding more and more ways for me to add things to various book lists. So like, my academic library catalog just got revamped, and now they have a lists feature. So I can keep a separate list of all my academic nonfiction that I want to read.
ALEXIS: Oh, that’s nice. Very handy.
GIN JENNY: I know. I’m so excited about it. I did some testing for them, and when they showed me the lists feature, I got so excited they laughed at me.
[LAUGHTER]ALEXIS: Whatever!
GIN JENNY: Well Alexis, we had you on the podcast today— I keep saying we is if Whiskey Jenny is here. I miss her.
ALEXIS: Always in spirit.
GIN JENNY: We had you on the podcast today because we want to talk about book groups and book clubs, and you and I actually have been in a book club together.
ALEXIS: We have.
GIN JENNY: What a blessed time that was.
ALEXIS: Yes. Although it feels so long away now.
GIN JENNY: I know. It really was a long time ago now. [SNIFFS] [LAUGHTER]
So are you in any— go ahead.
ALEXIS: I’m not— I think you’re about to ask me if I’m in any current book clubs, and I’m not, unfortunately.
GIN JENNY: I’m not either. I know. I miss it, and I keep meaning to start one, but then I keep getting nervous that I’ll be a bad book club host and everyone will be like, oh, this is terrible.
ALEXIS: That would never happen.
GIN JENNY: Thanks, but you don’t really know. It’s— you know, the world is infinite.
[LAUGHTER]ALEXIS: I would know. I think we’ve talked about before how I’ve done book exchanges. I’ve hosted— at work I’ve done sort of a quarterly book exchange. Some were very simple, like a one to one exchange trying to pick out a book for someone. Some we used a theme that was given broad interpretation. But I was kind of the dictatorial leader [LAUGHTER] of said book exchange. Because these things are only successful if people participate at an equal level.
GIN JENNY: Yes!
ALEXIS: So if you’re doing an exchange where you have 16 people coming in with the book, and if only 15 people come in with a book but 16 people show up, someone doesn’t get a book. And I had a zero tolerance policy for that. And in fact I threatened to evict people—
GIN JENNY: Expulsion!
[LAUGHTER]ALEXIS: —for repeatedly showing up without a book on the day of, with an IOU instead. And look, an IOU—
GIN JENNY: That’s terrible!
ALEXIS: —is three letters. It is not a book.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, books have way more than three letters. Everyone should know that.
ALEXIS: Right. So while I’m sympathetic to, you know, things happen in our lives, and we try to do our best. But generally speaking, people had about a month lead time to get their book together. So.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. And also, New York is full of bookstores, you know. So what made you decide to launch the book exchange at work?
ALEXIS: So coming out of the publishing world and working in a different industry, I was surprised to find that a lot of people don’t read. They don’t have time, or they just consume media in other ways. I’m trying not to be judgmental, but.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, no judgment from me. People can do whatever they want with their free time. But I agree, it’s always surprising to me.
ALEXIS: It’s funny, because I was recently asked last week while interviewing for a position, what are some of my hobbies? And I didn’t bring up reading books. And I thought about it after the fact, and it’s because reading to me is involuntary. It’s just a compulsion. So I don’t consider it so much a hobby as like, do you consider showering a hobby? [LAUGHTER] It’s just a thing you do in the daily course of your life. So I wanted to create a little space for book lovers to come together.
And also I felt that there were some— I was in a position to talk with people in all different groups within the company, but some people were kind of siloed away. And so I thought— not to say that all book lovers are introverts, but—
GIN JENNY: Some of us are.
ALEXIS: Yeah. And I thought, well, this is a good way for people to celebrate something that they like. And the thing that I missed about book club is that it drew me towards books that I wouldn’t have necessarily pursued on my own.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, this is one of my bullet points.
ALEXIS: Yeah, so I kind of was trying to replicate that experience. That said, I have still not read the last book that I got.
GIN JENNY: What was it? What is it?
ALEXIS: It’s called We Need New Names.
GIN JENNY: Oh, by— is the surname Bulawayo or something like that?
ALEXIS: Yes, yes. I feel like Violet something?
GIN JENNY: See, together we have it.
[LAUGHTER]ALEXIS: It looks very good. I think it was shortlisted for the Man Booker. It looks wonderful, and I’m sure I will get to it. I just haven’t yet.
GIN JENNY: So what are some books that you’ve read for book club or that you’ve gotten through book exchange that were kind of outside your comfort zone but you still liked. Oh, or you really hated. I’m interested in both of those things.
ALEXIS: Um, OK. So I’m trying to think of what books we have read. So I think that I definitely would have read some of her work, but probably Half of a Yellow Sun wouldn’t have been where I’d started.
GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah.
ALEXIS: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
GIN JENNY: Right, right. And we read that for our book club, right?
ALEXIS: We did.
GIN JENNY: I really liked that book.
ALEXIS: Yeah. It was heartbreaking.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
ALEXIS: I still have not seen the film adaptation.
GIN JENNY: No, and I’m not going to. Because the book was already hard enough without visual representations of those very tragic events.
ALEXIS: Another book that we read together that I didn’t like as much was— was it Four Quarters of an Orange?
GIN JENNY: Yeah, Four Quarters of an Orange. Five Quarters of an Orange? Is that possible? It was a Joanne Harris.
ALEXIS: Yes. That one also deals with wartime.
GIN JENNY: It sure does.
ALEXIS: We did a lot of wartime stuff. It was sort of— I gave it a medium. Again, I’ve been criticized for being a little harsh on my Goodreads rating. Because for me, three stars out of five is, yeah, that was pretty decent.
GIN JENNY: It’s fine. Yeah, that’s pretty good. Yeah, I agree.
ALEXIS: Just fine.
GIN JENNY: I think I would give three stars to the Five Quarters of an Orange book, as well. It was fine.
ALEXIS: That’s how I rated it.
GIN JENNY: So for me, I don’t think I would have read Half of a Yellow Sun anytime soon, at least. I already liked Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, but I don’t tend to like books that are really, um—
ALEXIS: Full of war?
GIN JENNY: Full of war, yeah. It’s really hard for me to read wartime books. But I ended up really liking it. And it was extremely sad, but different than I expected, and a terrific, terrific book, and I’m really glad that book club got me to read it. The big one I always think of is we read— and I think this was before I met you, actually. Tell me if I’m wrong— but we read Consider the Lobster. Were you around for that?
ALEXIS: I think that was the one right before I joined that book club. So I did not. I have not read it, and I honestly I’m not sure I will. Because I feel like— oh, maybe this was unavoidable. Mary Karr wrote something recently that sort of—
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
ALEXIS: It didn’t incite so much as just reminded people of kind of what a not nice guy David Foster Wallace was. I don’t know where you want to go with that.
GIN JENNY: No, that’s true information. Yeah, it sounds like he was quite abusive to her during their relationship. I haven’t read Mary Karr’s books, but my sister does, and I remember her showing me that part. So I read her description of the stuff he did when they were together, which is horrible. And I don’t blame you at all for not wanting to read any of his books ever. My reluctance was kind of that David Foster Wallace seemed like one of those authors that bros read and really want me to read. You know, like Philip Roth and people like that.
ALEXIS: Reading David Foster Wallace will not get you out of being mansplained David Foster Wallace.
GIN JENNY: I know. I know! I’ve discovered that to my cost. [LAUGHTER] I do have a thing I like to do. I’ll tell people that I’ve read Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, and bros will be like, well what about Infinite Jest. You should really read Infinite Jest. And then I make a face like I’m trying to be polite and tactful, and I say, you know, I thought that was pretty self-indulgent. But I’m really glad you liked it.
[LAUGHTER]ALEXIS: Oh, burn. We’re really burning the bro lit.
GIN JENNY: Oh my gosh. I mean, and I have tried reading Infinite Jest. And I have a friend who really likes it, and she’s awesome, and I’m sure there are circumstances under which a person could enjoy it. But oh my gosh, all the self-indulgence of his nonfiction, but none of the, I don’t know, charm? Definitely not my thing.
ALEXIS: I bookmarked it for whenever I broke my leg in four places. [LAUGHTER] That was always kind of the plan. I’ll get to it then, when I literally can’t move.
GIN JENNY: But now you can clean it off your list. You never have to worry about it again, because he is such a butt. Or was such a butt.
ALEXIS: Yeah, I mean, sometimes I have that morbid curiosity that will drive me to read things like Hemingway again.
GIN JENNY: Sure, yeah.
ALEXIS: And I’ll never learn. I just keep touching that hot stove.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yeah. Well one other thing that I really love about book club is that even if I don’t like the book, it’s always interesting to talk to people who did like it. Because most often it’s not that I can’t understand where they’re coming from. So it’s always interesting to hear their perspectives. And sometimes it makes me like the book more, because they’re highlighting things about it that maybe, because I didn’t like it, I wasn’t engaged enough with it to notice, if that makes sense?
ALEXIS: Yes, absolutely. That’s an interesting point.
GIN JENNY: Because I remember that about Let the Great World Spin, a book I absolutely could not stand.
ALEXIS: Oh.
GIN JENNY: I didn’t think I was going to like it, and I was quite correct. But Whiskey Jenny, I think, I really liked it. And so listening to her and other people in the book club talk about the things that they thought were interesting, and the motifs and the different things the author was doing that were clever and interesting, made me feel at least more kindly towards it as a piece of literature.
ALEXIS: Yeah. At the point of the podcast My Dad Wrote a Porno that I’m at— just to tie this back in—
GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah.
ALEXIS: —the hosts of the podcast are embarking on writing their own book.
GIN JENNY: [GASP]
ALEXIS: And they start to talk with such sympathy towards the author of the original Belinda Blinked books, about how, you know, writing a book is a hard, hard thing. It is a huge endeavor, and so even if I don’t love it, I can appreciate the effort and trial that went into it.
GIN JENNY: Well, and Whiskey Jenny’s not here, but I just want to say so that the people know, she’s in I think three, maybe four book clubs.
[LAUGHTER]ALEXIS: Yeah, it’s terrifying. I don’t want to hear that many people’s opinions.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: I think she enjoys it. I think that, though, there’s an imbalance in the number of book clubs we’re each in. So I think I need to— maybe she needs to drop one and I need to pick one up, and them we’ll be closer to OK.
ALEXIS: Maybe so. Have you ever participated in a book club that met virtually?
GIN JENNY: Ooh, no. That sounds terrible. It sounds like it would eliminate all the good things about book club and make it really hard to have a conversation. I know that’s ridiculous for me to say, because I talked to Whiskey Jenny a lot not in person about books. But you know. Have you ever done a non-in person book club?
ALEXIS: I haven’t, but I have had as of recently a number of requests from people to read books and give them my thoughts, but these are people who live hundreds of miles away from me. So maybe not so much of a book club. A virtual exchange of ideas on a book. Loves, hates, pros, cons, sure.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, no, it’s always fun. What are some pitfalls you’ve encountered with book clubs? Like, what goes wrong with book clubs that you’ve found?
ALEXIS: People not bringing a book.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, for God’s sake!
ALEXIS: Number one problem. I’ve had people try to drop out. Because particularly with the one to one exchanges, they were afraid that— and some of these I actually engineered so that people who didn’t know each other would be selecting books for each other, with the idea that this could be a new way for them to connect and get to know this person. With those sort of exchanges, I usually ask people to name, like, three of their favorite books and the last great book that they read, so that there’s some sort of framework there. But sometimes people are just afraid of giving someone a book that they won’t like. Whereas you and Whiskey Jenny revel in it, which I love.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: So I don’t care. I think Whiskey Jenny gets really sad when she accidentally give someone a book they don’t like.
ALEXIS: Yeah, I mean, I was specifically talking about the Hatening.
GIN JENNY: Oh, right. Yes, of course. [LAUGHTER] Well, once a year, you know, it’s good once a year. I don’t think I could do it every time.
ALEXIS: The Purge, but for books.
GIN JENNY: Yes.
ALEXIS: I’ve actually not seen those movies, I don’t know.
GIN JENNY: Me either. I never watch horror movies. I said yes, but I actually don’t know if that’s even remotely a good—
[LAUGHTER]ALEXIS: Me either. Stricken from the record. Yeah.
GIN JENNY: I’m not going to edit it out. I’m leaving it in there. Yeah, so I think that we had a good system in the book club that you and I were both in in avoiding making any one person feel too responsible for the success of a given book.
ALEXIS: Yeah, I thought that the voting on the top three was a very democratic approach, and I’ve advocated for it when other people have asked me about running book clubs.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. So what we did, listeners, is— so the deal was, whoever most disliked the most recent book we read got to choose for next time. And they would pick out three books that they were interested in reading, and they would make a little poll. And everyone would vote. And it was a blind vote, so you didn’t know what other people had voted for until you had already cast your vote. And then whichever one was the winner would be the book that we read. And I think it was great, because it increased buy-in amongst the book club participants, number one. And number two, it really, really— like, speaking for myself, it really took the pressure off. Because if everyone hated a book, it wasn’t just my fault.
ALEXIS: And there was at least one occasion where a book had been included in the top three multiple times, never actually got voted. And so I just had to be like, no, I just gotta go read this on my own. Because I do want to read this book, and if no one will read it with me, I’ll read it with myself.
GIN JENNY: What was it?
ALEXIS: That was Mr. Fox.
GIN JENNY: Aw, Mr. Fox. I would have loved it if Mr. Fox had gotten chosen. Although it’s a really weird book. I’m not sure how that discussion would go.
ALEXIS: That’s why I kind of wanted that discussion. Because it is a weird book, and definitely I think there are things that I may have missed, or just not had honed in on as much as others.
GIN JENNY: Oh my gosh, me too. Yeah, that’s true. It would have been interesting to see what all the different people in book club picked up on in that book, because I bet it would have been different than what I picked up on.
ALEXIS: Sure.
GIN JENNY: Listeners, this is a book by Helen Oyeyemi about a writer who, basically one of his characters comes to life and starts challenging him for always killing off his female characters. And it’s very, very strange.
ALEXIS: But delightful.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, it’s very charming and playful, and she’s playing around with different folk tales, and it’s super meta. Like a lot of Helen Oyeyemi stuff, it’s not always completely clear what’s going on. So I think I feel like I would have benefited by hearing other people’s opinions of that book.
ALEXIS: Yeah, definitely worth a reread, probably.
GIN JENNY: Yes, I haven’t reread it since I first read it, which was at least five years ago. So I need get it out of the library and revisit it.
ALEXIS: I think that was actually one that I had borrowed.
GIN JENNY: Well, let me ask this. When it’s your turn to recommend books for book club, how do you choose what you’re going to suggest?
ALEXIS: I think— well I do keep one— well, I guess I have two lists of books that have come up and that I find intriguing. So I guess I use Goodreads, and then I also have another wish list that I keep track of things on. I think I do try to cater to the crowd, not picking something that I think only I will enjoy, or that I just don’t think has more universal appeal. Which maybe is kind of not the point of it, but I think the most interesting book club conversations come when people either really liked a book or really hated it, but it inspired some kind of reaction. Whereas the more middling, like, eh, it was all right— the two or three star books really don’t bring up a lot of spirited discussion.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. I also think it helps if it’s the kind of book that will spark conversations about values. I know that makes me sound like a dork. But I think it’s true in the same way that talking about advice columns makes you kind of clarify your values in your own mind. I think when there’s a book that brings up those questions, it helps to make a good book club discussion.
ALEXIS: Yeah.
GIN JENNY: I was reading this book Educated, by Tara Westover, recently, which is a memoir about this woman who grew up in a very fundamentalist, survivalist Mormon family in the mountains, where she didn’t have a birth certificate, she never went to school, her family refused to ever go see doctors. And she eventually got out of that life and got her PhD at Cambridge, I think. And it was a bananas book, and it talked a lot about the relative values of family and education and religion, and I feel like that would make a really good book club book. Because people have a lot of opportunities to identify her very one-end-of-the-spectrum life, identify where you yourself fit along that spectrum of various things.
ALEXIS: Yeah, it’s interesting, because I feel like I tend to shy away from nonfiction when it comes to book club. But I’m actually looking at a list of things that we read together, and we read a few. The first one I believe was Moonwalking with Einstein, where we learned all about our mind palaces.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I thought that one was just OK as a book club book.
ALEXIS: Yeah, the discussion on this one wasn’t the best.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I do agree with you, though. By and large, I think nonfiction can be a tricky beast to navigate in book clubs. Because oftentimes it’s just conveying information, and everyone’s like, ah, we learned some things. But yeah, I think you’re right. I think the trick is not finding necessarily the best books in the whole world, or even the books that the most people will love, so much as books that will raise interesting issues to talk about.
ALEXIS: Yeah, for sure. Like I said, for me the big value draw was being introduced to literature that would not necessarily be foregrounded for me. Also it was usually a good excuse to go to a bar and have a couple of drinks and talk with friends who, you know, as we get older and we have different things in our lives, sometimes it’s hard to get a group of people together.
GIN JENNY: Yeah! Yes, definitely.
ALEXIS: So I always enjoyed the company of a group of people that I like and whose opinions I value.
GIN JENNY: That was actually the whole inciting force of that book club, as I recall. I believe that me and Whiskey Jenny, I think, and Friend of the Podcast Jessie Barbour were waiting for a meeting to begin. And we were talking about an article we’d all read about how if you had one monthly get together with friends, your happiness increased as much as it would if you got a $10,000 raise.
ALEXIS: Oh.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. And we’re like, well, shoot, that’s an easy thing to do. We should do that.
ALEXIS: In the same way that I make my bed every day because I once read that people who make their bed are more productive in general, so.
GIN JENNY: I’ve read that before. And I’ve gone through phases where I make my bed every morning, but I’m so fundamentally lazy, especially in the morning when I haven’t had coffee yet, that it’s just very difficult for me to keep up.
ALEXIS: I mean, for me, it is a good way of signaling to myself— I work from home a lot— no, you can’t crawl back in to me.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Sure.
ALEXIS: It’s like, you know, baby gates. Like, no, this isn’t the area that you can be in of the house right now.
GIN JENNY: OK, do you want to talk about our book for this week?
ALEXIS: Is it the main event time? Yeah!
GIN JENNY: It’s main event time, yeah. OK, so for this week we read Happiness, by Aminatta Forna. It’s about an American fox enthusiast and a Ghanaian psychologist who specializes in war crimes and trauma survivors. And they meet in England— they kind of bash into each other on a bridge. And they end up being in each other’s lives a little bit, because he’s looking for his niece, and it turns out her little son has disappeared into London. And the fox enthusiast has this network of fox spotters around the city. So she kind of engages her network to find the kid, and she and her psychologist form a friendship. So Alexis, what did you think of this book?
ALEXIS: Well, I first wanted to say, I don’t know how accurate it is to call her a fox enthusiast. Yeah, I guess that’s what it boils down to, but I would just say that this is a woman who actually studied different animals and their—
GIN JENNY: Right, different urban animals. I didn’t really know how to describe what her job was.
ALEXIS: There was some coyote tracking, which we learned about her experience. So it sounds so whimsical, she’s a fox enthusiast.
GIN JENNY: No, you’re right, you’re right.
ALEXIS: But she’s a scientist.
GIN JENNY: You’re right, I undersold her, and I apologize.
ALEXIS: No, I just wanted to give her a little bit more stature, I guess.
GIN JENNY: No, you’re super correct.
ALEXIS: Yeah, look at me. I come on and I’m contrarian. How surprising.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: I was going to say, I think that’s kind of your brand, a little bit.
ALEXIS: Ah, yes. I enjoyed it. I might even venture to say I would give it four stars.
GIN JENNY: [GASP] Yes.
ALEXIS: Just because so rarely do books do this sort of different perspectives while also introducing different timelines, that’s hard to do well. I wouldn’t necessarily say this is the best that I’ve ever seen, but I thought it was fairly seamless. And sometimes in reading books that try to dabble with those devices, you’re reading a new chapter and you’re like, I don’t know what’s happening. You have to go back and see. I was never questioning where I was in the storyline, which was a relief. What about you?
GIN JENNY: So I made a joke last episode that the more bougainvillea a book has, the less likely it is that I’m going to enjoy it. And Whiskey Jenny made a joke to me that this book has a nonzero about of bougainvillea in it, which kind of boded ill for the book in general. And when I started, I was like, OK, here’s bougainvillea, but I still enjoy the book, so my hypothesis was wrong. But having finished the book, I don’t think my hypothesis was wrong. There’s some bougainvillea in this book. Not a ton, so I didn’t hate it. But there’s some, and I wasn’t wild about the book. And so I think it’s proved my hypothesis kind of correct.
And that has actually been my experience. This is the third book I’ve read by Aminatta Forna. And I keep trying, because in every case there are things about her books that really appeal to me and are directly relevant to my interests. Like the Ghanaian psychologist studies war crimes and trauma survivors. I’m really interested in that. So I don’t know, somehow her books are never exactly what I want them to be. And I think— so sadly, I think I’m calling it on Aminatta Forna. I think we’d have a ton to talk about in real life, but I think her books are maybe not for me.
ALEXIS: Yeah, I mean, I appreciate that you’re willing to give it the old college try time after time. But if by three you haven’t yet clicked, then I fear that her writing may not be for you.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, this is like Michael Chabon.
ALEXIS: [SIGH]
GIN JENNY: And the same thing. In every case, I don’t know. I was interested in things about it. I cared about the relationships in them. I thought the writing was good. But it just somehow wasn’t as enjoyable a reading experience as it should have been.
ALEXIS: It’s interesting, I think also part of my experience was shaped by the fact that the book that I read prior to this it took me forever to get through. And so—
GIN JENNY: What was it?
ALEXIS: It was The Night Manager, which I wanted to want to read just so much. Because Whiskey Jenny has talked about how the central character, Jonathan Pine, is one of her favorite— how did she describe it? It’s not that he’s her favorite protagonist, it’s just something about his particular brand that she really enjoyed. And I was very much looking forward to the serialization of it, with some actors that I really enjoy. And I’ve read John le Carré’s work before and have been way more into it for some reason. I didn’t actually start to get interested in what was happening until the last 50 pages or so.
GIN JENNY: Oh, yikes.
[LAUGHTER]ALEXIS: Which at that point I was like, well, I’m in it for the long haul. But in this one, I think, as much as I was like, would I like Jean if I met her in person? I’m not sure that I would. But for some reason I just enjoyed the time spent on her motivation, where she got to be— how she ended up this American urban animal scientist living in London and making rooftop gardens for very nervous customers. I enjoyed that, and I was definitely interested in the psychiatrist Attila, and I enjoyed visualizing the scenes in which people bump into him, or make notice of his size. It’s just one of those things, you know, children are usually the first to like— they don’t have that filter, and they’re like, my, you’re big. But adults absolutely do it, too. They just think they’re clever about it, and rarely are they as clever as they think they are, right? So I just enjoyed visualizing those experiences.
GIN JENNY: Probably my favorite thing in this book, there’s a line where he’s talking to someone who’s surprised that his name is Attila. And they say something like, what kind of parent would name their child Attila? And he says, did you know there are parents who still name their children Victoria? And I just thought that was such a good burn. [LAUGHTER] I loved it. I loved it so much.
ALEXIS: Yeah, you get the sense that he had— I think it actually makes mention in the book that he’s had to deal with this his whole life. But like, how rude? Like, how rude are you to go— [LAUGHTER] Why did you get named— I didn’t pick it!
GIN JENNY: Yeah. I mean, look. You know, as a girl named Jenny born not too long before Forrest Gump came out, I have very little patience with jokes about names.
[LAUGHTER]ALEXIS: I’m trying to— I have the book in front of me now and I’m trying to go back. The way I operate is, I don’t like to make marks and books, but I do dog-ear pages.
GIN JENNY: Me too! Whiskey Jenny fusses at me.
ALEXIS: Why? They’re your books.
GIN JENNY: [CHAGRINED] No, they’re library books. She makes a very stern face at me.
[LAUGHTER]ALEXIS: Ooh. I— mmmm. Yeah, I might have to agree with her there.
GIN JENNY: Well, hey, but good news. I just received a present of a bunch of really adorable page flags. I think things could be turning around. It could be all page flags all the time from now on.
ALEXIS: That’s wonderful. The books will thank you for that.
GIN JENNY: OK, so, sorry. You dog-ear your pages.
[LAUGHTER]ALEXIS: So again, whenever I’m analyzing the book, I know the real thing should be did you enjoy it? But sometimes I’m looking at the craft behind it. I’m usually really compelled to read authors who I think do something interesting with language. But I will say that I have no dog ears in the latter 200 pages of the book. So maybe I just enjoyed the beginning. Although I didn’t kind of rush through in the end. But I was trying to find something that I really enjoyed, and this phrase came out at me. “Were the French so self-consciously Gallic? The English behaved as though they were playing themselves in a farce.”
GIN JENNY: Ha!
ALEXIS: As someone who’s lived in England, what do you think of that?
GIN JENNY: Oh, I think that can be very true sometimes. I think English people are very conscious of their reputation as English people. Whereas I think Americans often want to escape their reputation as Americans, I feel like British people really lean into being British.
[LAUGHTER]ALEXIS: Yeah, which I— mean I’ve definitely—
GIN JENNY: By which I mean—
ALEXIS: I’m sorry, go ahead.
GIN JENNY: No, I just want to make sure I’m not insulting our British listeners. By which I mean, British people like to make jokes about how British people always talk about the weather, and they’re uncomfortable talking about feelings. I just feel like I hear British people make jokes about that constantly.
ALEXIS: Whereas I pretend to be Canadian when I travel.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: You just say aboot all the time? I’m sorry, Canada, that I did that. I apologize.
[LAUGHTER]ALEXIS: No, no, I talk about poutine and hockey.
GIN JENNY: Oh, sure. [LAUGHTER] I mean, you’re Cajun, so you’re essentially Canadian, just further back.
ALEXIS: I can’t believe you brought that up, Jenny. It’s so traumatic to think that, nobody gets kicked out of Canada. Ah! No! People do get kicked out of Canada!
GIN JENNY: By the British, damn them.
ALEXIS: Yeah, exactly.
GIN JENNY: So you mentioned the writing in this book. I liked the writing, but to me the book moved kind of really amazingly slowly.
[LAUGHTER]ALEXIS: OK, OK.
GIN JENNY: Did you find that to be the case?
ALEXIS: I thought that it was uneven. And then there are chapters that are much longer than others, and some that have way more action than others. Now that I’m reflecting back, I’m trying to think if the main characters were all given equal weight. I guess, would you say that Attila and Jean are basically the main actors in this story?
GIN JENNY: Yeah. Yeah.
ALEXIS: I will say, though, I feel like the beginning was kind of a red herring, with the wolfer.
GIN JENNY: I agree. Yeah, I agree. Continue.
ALEXIS: I kept waiting— I mean, I know that she, Jean, there’s a character in her present day life that is sort of an antagonist to her work. And that was really kind of the only connection that they made, other than establishing why wolves weren’t so plentiful anymore. I don’t know. It didn’t really connect as much, so I’m glad that I just barreled through that and didn’t really give it that much thought.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. I said the same thing. For the book to feel satisfying, I wanted all the disparate parts to feel more connected than they did. Which I get isn’t what Forna was going for. So it’s not necessarily a criticism of her writing. It’s just a disconnect between what I enjoy in a book and what this book was.
ALEXIS: Sure. I will say, if I may, the thing that I really enjoyed most was just the network of street sweepers and other—
GIN JENNY: Yes, that was great.
ALEXIS: —people throughout the city, who are mostly immigrants, mostly African immigrants. And how they all sort of banded together with this shared experience of being an immigrant, of being an outsider, of being sort of the unseen. You know, the doormen, and the street sweepers, and the traffic light people. So I love that it brought them out into the light a little bit more. Like I would never, ever think about the inner life of one of the painted guys in Times Square.
GIN JENNY: Yes!
ALEXIS: Because, well, I try not to go there. But I mean, have you ever thought, oh, maybe this genuinely is someone who, he does all this and then he goes to his second shift working in the kitchen of a hotel. I mean, I was honestly probably more interested in their stories than in Jean’s. But I was glad to get what glimpse we did. And of course they were employed to great effect in order to find poor Tano.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, and they were lovely. And I did think that, to me, was a very significant strength of the book. I think the author lives in London, which didn’t surprise me, because I feel like she writes with such love and vividness about life in London and the people who live there. And even when she’s writing about things that are not great about the city, her love of it and the people is so clear. And that was really great, because I also really like London a lot.
ALEXIS: Yeah, I feel like in order to love a city, you really need to know it.
GIN JENNY: And she clearly does.
ALEXIS: And accepts it.
GIN JENNY: But I mean, overall I would say not my very most favorite.
ALEXIS: OK. Yeah, this, to me, was sort of refreshing, coming from something that took me forever and then having to kind of speed through this. It’s funny, I was telling someone about this book, because I told them how many chapters I needed to read today to be finally finished and ready to do this wonderful, wonderful podcast of which I’m so delighted to be a part of. But I was saying, you know, it’s funny, the book isn’t really about happiness. And then finally we get to where that was all going, which is one of the main characters’ keynote speeches at a conference about the paradoxical relationship we have with happiness. Did you have any thoughts on that? I’m very curious as to what you thought of his speech.
GIN JENNY: It was interesting. He was talking about that people think that trauma will inevitably lead to bad outcomes. And he was talking about the cases where that doesn’t happen, and that people can be very resilient. And in the afterword she talks about a particular person’s scholarship that she was drawing on for that speech. And I would be interested to read more of that person’s writing, because that was just interesting to me to read. Partly, I think, because Attila is coming at this from the perspective of someone who works in trauma and trauma recovery. And so he’s kind of providing a corrective and saying not everyone who experiences trauma has these negative outcomes. And I feel like in the broader world, people don’t necessarily assume or take seriously the aftermath of trauma. So it almost felt like a corrective to something we don’t need a corrective for. Which is why I would like to read more about what this scholar says, so that I could be a little better informed.
ALEXIS: So I was also thinking of how, you know, obviously this character’s supposed to be a preeminent practitioner in his field. He’s really well regarded. But you talk about trauma recovery. It seems like he’s really— and I think he says as much— that he’s more of a cataloguer of traumas, rather than someone who goes and tries to correct them.
GIN JENNY: Right, right. Yes.
ALEXIS: And remedy them. So and he talks about how he’s brought into these war torn regions, and there’s really nothing that they can do. They can’t prosecute the perpetrators of these horrible crimes. They have to negotiate with them. And so I was like, well, he has a very, very specific experience with trauma. Obviously this is all based on a fictional character. But wouldn’t it be such an optimistic and such a hopeful thing if someone who has seen all this trauma can say, hey, I don’t think it necessarily changes you for the worse. I think that you might be able to heal from it and the better. That, I would be delighted to discover that that’s true.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I’m just not sure that it is.
ALEXIS: Me neither, unfortunately. But it’s an interesting premise, for sure.
GIN JENNY: It is. And it was an unexpected direction for the book to take at the end, so I at least found it interesting and surprising.
ALEXIS: Was there anything that you particularly really disliked?
GIN JENNY: No, not really. And this has been the case across all three of her books that I’ve read. There’s nothing that I could put my finger on and say, this is bad, I don’t like this. It’s just that the book moved a little slowly. It’s a lot of slices of life, rather than— what connects the book is more themes than plot, and I tend to be a plot person. So it’s not a great fit for me in that sense. But no, I mean, there was definitely nothing that I really hated. Was there anything you disliked significantly?
ALEXIS: No, because I really enjoyed the stoicism of the character of Attila. I love all the little scenes where he’s like, whatever. I’m just going to do my little like rumba, or just practice a tango in my room. For someone who’s been through so much, and experienced so much loss, and witnessed so much loss, I enjoyed that he was just sort of a pillar of strength and all that. And maybe he wasn’t. Maybe there’s some internal stuff that he’s not— I find it interesting, I have a sibling who’s a psychiatrist who will talk about things with real authority. But I think she also acknowledges that sometimes she can’t necessarily turn that lens back on herself.
GIN JENNY: Uh huh.
ALEXIS: So I think it’s possible that there’s maybe some more that Attila’s dealing with that he’s maybe not quite totally cognizant of, or willing to be cognizant of.
GIN JENNY: Well one thing that I did like about the speech at the end and the idea of resilience in the face of trauma, is that I appreciated— I was thinking of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talking about the danger of a single story, and how we’re constantly telling the story about Africa and Africans of violent conflict and trauma, and kind of asking African authors and African people to perform trauma for a Western audience. So in that respect I thought that that speech was a really interesting and useful corrective.
ALEXIS: Yeah, I understand the point that he was making about victimizing a patient before they’re even allowed to come to terms with what they’ve experienced. So automatically putting them in that negative, and putting them in the red, I guess, emotionally.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, oh, that’s a good way of phrasing it. But yeah, I think I respected this book more than I liked it.
ALEXIS: Yeah, maybe that’s how I’m feeling too. I’m backpedaling now, because I— No, I did. I did enjoy it. I was glad to have read it. I’m a little jealous that I didn’t get to read Her Body and Other Stories. But now I can read that on my own, and now that you’re reading it, I can still talk to you about it.
GIN JENNY: Yes, please do. It’s really weird, and I would be very interested in your perspective.
[LAUGHTER]ALEXIS: I love weird. Weird is great. This is not a weird book. This was pretty normal.
GIN JENNY: I wanted to think up a fox-related game, but I ran out of time to think of one. Which is fortunate, because Whiskey Jenny is not here, so I could not have administered the game in any case. I apologize, you know, just to everyone. I couldn’t think of a fox game to administer anyway.
ALEXIS: That’s OK.
GIN JENNY: I’m so sorry. But can you tell us about fennec foxes?
ALEXIS: Oh! Yeah. This was my way of trying to see if I could bring that up, actually.
GIN JENNY: Yes, no, I badly want you to. Please tell me about them. [LAUGHTER] And also tell me what they’re called, because I think I got it wrong.
ALEXIS: Fennec foxes is how I always said it. And they are basically bunny foxes. That’s how they look.
GIN JENNY: Aww!
ALEXIS: Because they live in dry deserts, they have these very large ears in order to hear prey. And I don’t know that much more about their evolution, but they’re sort of small, dainty foxes. They’re the color of sand, because they’re in the Sahara.
GIN JENNY: Sure.
ALEXIS: They’re very adorable. And I know it is not necessarily fair to try to domesticate a feral animal, but people have successfully done it. And you can go on YouTube and watch people show you their fennec foxes. My favorite are the ones where they’ve integrated them into a home with another cat.
GIN JENNY: Oh my god.
ALEXIS: Because usually they’re pretty friendly, and the cat’s like, why? [LAUGHTER] But they do make a kind of unenjoyable high-pitched shrill noise. But they don’t make it all the time. They’re not just reverberating with the shrill noise all the time.
GIN JENNY: Sure, sure.
ALEXIS: Listeners, I implore you to go look them up and see how adorable they are, with their giant, giant ears and cute little fox faces.
GIN JENNY: OK. And I’m going to try and find some pictures to link in the show notes.
ALEXIS: They’re pretty great.
GIN JENNY: Well, thank you for that magical fox update, and I’m very sorry that the fox game didn’t pan out. We had a game the first time you recorded with us about cheese, and it was terrific.
ALEXIS: I was so bad at it. I was ashamed of how bad I was at it, because I love cheese.
GIN JENNY: I was not good at it either. I know, me too. It was really shaming. Well, listeners, we cannot report what we’re reading for next time, because Whiskey Jenny is not here with us. I hope she is in bed sleeping. You’re going to have to wait until next time to find out what we’re reading. It’s going to be a surprise to you and to me.
ALEXIS: [GASP]
GIN JENNY: I know. This has been the Reading the End bookcast with one of the Demographically Similar Jennys and the beautiful and terrific Alexis. Thank you so much for coming on. This has been the best.
ALEXIS: Thank you so much for having me. Jenny, we miss you.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, we miss you so much.
ALEXIS: I’m sure we’ll be reunited soon.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. 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 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. Until next time, we are just toasting to Whiskey Jenny’s health and hoping that she can return to the raucous good health that she has enjoyed in the past.
ALEXIS: Salut.
[GLASSES CLINKING]THEME SONG: You don’t 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.