Friends in the Carolinas and Virginias, the thoughts of this podcast are with you. Please stock up on flashlights and batteries, don’t store important documents in the dishwasher, and buy plenty of good booze to see you through. Or if you’re in an evacuation zone, please please evacuate. Meanwhile, here’s some stormy day podcast listening for everyone. We’re doing a seasonal book preview — always one of my favorite types of episodes to record! — and reviewed Vanessa Hua’s debut novel A River of Stars.
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.
1:56 – What we’re reading
3:30 – What we’re cooking/eating
5:40 – LOTR Reread: The Two Towers, Book 3, Chapters 6-11
20:54 – Summer book preview check-in
22:23 – Fall book preview
31:22 – River of Stars, Vanessa Hua
42:09 – What we’re reading next time
Here are the books we mentioned.
A Duke by Default, Alyssa Cole
The Girl from Everywhere, Heidi Heilig
The Two Towers, Chapters 6-11 of Book 3
Armistice, Lara Elena Donnelly (fanfic post!)
Witchmark, CL Polk
The Poppy War, RF Kuang
Temper, Nicky Drayden
Undead Girl Gang, Lily Anderson (podcast!)
On the Come-Up, Angie Thomas
Number One Chinese Restaurant, Lillian Li
The Ensemble, Aja Gabel
Washington Black, Esi Edugyan
Half-Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan (podcast!)
Transcript, Kate Atkinson
Life after Life, Kate Atkinson
A God in Ruins, Kate Atkinson (podcast!)
The Best Bad Things, Katrina Carrasco
Zero Sum Game, SL Huang
“The Little Homo Sapiens Scientist,” SL Huang
Waiting for Eden, Elliot Ackerman
Hearts Unbroken, Cynthia Leitich Smith
Retablos: Stories From a Life Lived Along the Border, Octavio Solis
Exit Strategy, Martha Wells
All Systems Red, Martha Wells
The Royal Runaway, Lindsay Emory
Eternity Girl, Magdalene Visaggio
River of Stars, Vanessa Hua
One Red Paperclip blog
The Color Purple, Alice Walker
“The Kite Maker,” Brenda Peynado link
Get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. If you like what we do, support us on Patreon. Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much).
Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour
Transcripts by: Sharon of Library Hungry
Transcript 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.
WHISKEY JENNY: Hello, and welcome to the Reading the End bookcast with the demographically similar Jennys. I’m Whiskey Jenny.
GIN JENNY: And I’m Gin Jenny.
WHISKEY JENNY: And we’re back to talk about books and literary happenings. On today’s podcast, we’re going to talk about what we’re reading. We’re going to talk about what we are cooking slash eating. Mine’s a lot of eating in this hot, hot weather, I will admit.
GIN JENNY: Same.
WHISKEY JENNY: We read chapters 6 through 11 of book three of The Two Towers. We are going to check in on books we were excited to read about for this summer and also talk about what we’re excited that’s coming out in the fall. For this podcast we read A River of Stars by Vanessa Hua. And then Gin Jenny is going to begin the Forcening with her Forcening pick for me, which I will find out on air.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, you have no idea yet.
WHISKEY JENNY: So big surprise. [LAUGHTER] We sound sarcastic, I feel like, but we really don’t—I really don’t know.
GIN JENNY: Oh, well I feel like when I tell you you’re going to be like, oh yeah, I did know that.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, is it? Ugh, okay.
GIN JENNY: [LAUGHTER] That’s why I asked if you were up for it!
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I forgot that it was going to be that one, though. All right, well, too late now.
GIN JENNY: But I don’t want to—I mean, right, but I don’t want to force you into anything that—
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s literally called the Forcening. [LAUGHTER] Gentle herding, we should rename it. But before then, what are you reading right now?
GIN JENNY: I am reading A Duke by Default, by Alyssa Cole. I love Alyssa Cole, and I feel like she has become much more famous in the last maybe two years, which I’m really excited about. She’s a romance novelist, and this is a series she’s writing about black women who end up in relationships with royalty. It is so great. The first one was A Princess in Theory, which I loved. And A Duke by Default is equally great so far.
It’s about a girl who kind of has kind of made a mess of her life, and her parents are very disappointed in her. And she takes an apprenticeship—
WHISKEY JENNY: Aw.
GIN JENNY: I know. And she takes an apprenticeship with a swordmaker in Scotland.
WHISKEY JENNY: Ooh.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. And he’s very gruff.
WHISKEY JENNY: Aw, I bet he has a heart of gold, though.
GIN JENNY: He does have a heart of gold. He teaches little children how to do little fighting with the sword fighting.
WHISKEY JENNY: Aw, I knew it!
GIN JENNY: And spoilers I guess, but it’s kind of in the title. It turns out that he is secretly a duke. He doesn’t even know it. She finds out. So it’s pretty great. It’s pretty delightful.
WHISKEY JENNY: What year is it?
GIN JENNY: It is now year. Current year.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, it’s now year. Sorry, all the swordfightery.
GIN JENNY: Oh, right! Yeah, that was very misleading. Right. But think how charming it is now.
WHISKEY JENNY: Aw, it sounds even better. [LAUGHTER] And it’s living up to its delightful premise?
GIN JENNY: Oh my gosh, absolutely. I was trying to decide if I like it better than A Princess in Theory, and I don’t think I do, because A Princess in Theory features a fictionalized version of the African country of Lesotho, a country I really like. And this one’s set in Scotland, which is not my favorite romance novel location. But it’s still pretty good. What are you reading?
WHISKEY JENNY: I am reading The Girl from Everywhere, by Heidi Heilig.
GIN JENNY: [GASP] And how are you liking it?
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m really enjoying it so far.
GIN JENNY: Yay!
WHISKEY JENNY: What are you eating slash cooking right now?
GIN JENNY: Oh, right. Our lovely Patreon subscribers voted for us to talk about we’re something elseing this week, and they voted on cooking or eating. And I have not been cooking a whole lot lately. But I was recently in the Bay Area, and I ate as much Ethiopian food as I possibly could.
WHISKEY JENNY: Ooh.
GIN JENNY: In particular I got takeout from a place called Tadu, T-A-D-U, and it was so good. It was the best Ethiopian food I’ve ever had. Their kitfo was amazing—which, fine, kitfo is always good. But their sambusa were so good. I don’t even care about sambusa usually. They’re not high on my list of savory hand pies. But these were so good. We only ordered four, and I wish we had ordered infinity.
WHISKEY JENNY: That’s quite a recommendation.
GIN JENNY: Oh my gosh, it was so good. [SIGH] Ethiopian food. I love it so much.
WHISKEY JENNY: Hooray!
GIN JENNY: Hooray! What about you? What are you cooking or eating?
WHISKEY JENNY: Well as I mentioned, I’m not cooking very much, because it is quite warm. But I have been getting a lot of tomatoes from my CSA and just having giant tomato, mozzarella, basil salads for dinner.
GIN JENNY: Ooh.
WHISKEY JENNY: Which has been pretty great.
GIN JENNY: I love basil.
WHISKEY JENNY: And I fully stand by that as a complete dinner.
GIN JENNY: I mean, I’ve been eating a lot of breakfast tacos with just eggs and pesto and feta.
WHISKEY JENNY: There you go. So that’s been my cooking shining moments recently. And then eating-wise, I have been going a little bit too much, I would say, to a nearby Chinese noodle shop called Xi’an Famous Foods. And oh god, it’s so good. I had it for lunch today. I really have to stop. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: What’s your go-to order there?
WHISKEY JENNY: I like the spicy pork cumin noodles. But I request it to be—like, don’t add any more spice than is already there. Because standard is they add more spice, and I can’t do it. I’m too much of a spice baby. Because it’s already some spicy. So when I ask for it, don’t add any more. Just as spicy as it already is and nothing more. [LAUGHTER] It’s already at the upper limits of my spice tolerance.
But I ate it today at lunch while I was watching the hot wings YouTube show that I really enjoy, and I felt like I was going on this journey with them, almost. [LAUGHTER] And I’m sure it’s not even as hot as the early wings.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Well, good. Sounds delicious.
WHISKEY JENNY: So shall we talk about Two Towers?
GIN JENNY: Yeah, let’s talk about The Two Towers. I want to open with CSI: Two Towers. I’ve done some research into Gandalf’s potential horse theft.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Okay. Noted horse rustler Gandalf. What’s his deal?
GIN JENNY: Okay, so in the last podcast you said that we should go back and have a look and see what Gandalf said about Shadowfax in Fellowship of the Ring.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, yes! I’m so glad that you did that, because I totally forgot.
GIN JENNY: I did that, and here’s what Gandalf says about Shadowfax in Fellowship of the Ring. He’s telling the story of his being captured by Saruman, et cetera, et cetera. “In Rohan I found evil already at work, the lies of Saruman. And the king of the land would not listen to my warnings. He bade me to take a horse and be gone, and I chose one much to my liking, but little to his. I took the best horse in the land, and I have never seen the like of him.”
WHISKEY JENNY: Okay, so he admits that it didn’t go great.
GIN JENNY: And also, in the previous section, Éomer says—Gandalf came to Rohan, he begged for help, and then Éomer says, “Speak not the name of Gandalf loudly in Theoden’s ears. He is wroth, for Gandalf took the horse that is called Shadowfax, the most precious of all the King’s steeds, chief of the Mearas, which only the Lords of the Mark may ride.” So this is basically like if Gandalf came to stay with the king, and the king was like, yeah, you can borrow some clothes. I see you don’t have any clothes. And Gandalf was like, cool, and just left with the guy’s crown. That’s what happened here.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. It’s the king’s horse, that only kings ride. [LAUGHTER] I’m like, well, I’ll just take this crown. Bye!
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: That’s what’s going on here. And I just want to be clear about that because, you know, I’m glad Gandalf has a good horse, but good heavens, Gandalf. Acquired by slightly shady methods.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, definitely shady methods. Although it does sort of all come out in the wash in this book, I suppose.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: No, I mean, it does.
WHISKEY JENNY: It works out great for Gandalf in the end, but he definitely stole that horse to begin with.
Well, how did you enjoy this section?
GIN JENNY: I liked it a lot. It was very exciting.
WHISKEY JENNY: So much to cover! Yeah, same.
GIN JENNY: Well, it starts out with them going to Rohan like they promised Éomer, which is good.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah!
GIN JENNY: And it’s hilarious. Because at Rohan, the guards are like, oh, you can’t bring any weapons in, including your staff. And Aragorn’s like, well I don’t want to leave my sword behind. And Gandalf’s like, no, you should leave your sword behind. We’re guests here, we should follow the etiquette, or whatever. And then everyone tells Gandalf he has to leave his staff behind, and he’s like, oh no, I need it for stuff.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Just a little old man. You’re gonna take a staff from a little old man? And even Aragorn’s like, you’re gonna take a staff from an old man? They’re all totally in on it.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yeah, which I think is great. Aragorn is such a good bro. Even though Gandalf didn’t back him up, he’s still like, yeah, you should definitely let him have his staff.
WHISKEY JENNY: Before we talk about what happens after that, I want to talk more about Aragorn and his sword. I just like when he is all kingly. So far we don’t get to see super powerful King Aragorn very often.
GIN JENNY: That’s true.
WHISKEY JENNY: So it’s fun when he just busts that out randomly. But they’re like, give us your sword, give us your sword. It is the will of Theoden. And Aragorn says, “It is not clear to me that the will of Theoden—”
GIN JENNY: Oh my god, I love that so much! “It is not clear to me.” Sorry, continue. That was just so good!
WHISKEY JENNY: That was just passive aggressive work email stuff. [LAUGHTER] With like, you know exactly what’s happening, but you’re just like, hmm, I don’t actually fully understand why we would do it. [LAUGHTER]
Anyway, “It is not clear to me that the will of Theoden, son of Thengel, even though he be Lord of the Mark, should prevail over the will of Aragorn, son of Arathorn, Elendil’s heir of Gondor.” Boom! [LAUGHTER]
Oh, gosh. He eventually does leave the sword, which is nice. But I like that for a while he was very saucy about it.
GIN JENNY: He really was.
WHISKEY JENNY: And then we go in and defeat Wormtongue instantly. I was expecting way more of a build up with this dude.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yeah, well, Gandalf is Gandalf the White now, so things are different.
WHISKEY JENNY: Things are so easy! [LAUGHTER] Let’s just bring this guy with us everywhere.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, and also, why didn’t he do it the first time he was in Rohan? Just a question.
WHISKEY JENNY: Uh, maybe he didn’t have time? There’s a lot of things that he doesn’t have time for that I’m like, well, maybe you should have made time for it, Gandalf.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I mean, it took 30 seconds. [LAUGHTER]
WHISKEY JENNY: But yeah, I can’t answer that.
GIN JENNY: But then hilariously, they free Theoden from Wormtongue’s influence. And Theoden’s like, wow, how can I repay you? And Gandalf says, oh, give me Shadowfax. “He was the only lent before, if loan we may call it.”
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: That’s not loans!
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: My dude! That’s not a loan!
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Gosh. Also, that was totally empty, Theoden being like, okay, cool, thanks, man. I owe you one. And Gandalf is like, all right, great. So that horse, then. We have our first meeting of Éowyn.
GIN JENNY: Éowyn!
WHISKEY JENNY: Who is a really important character later on.
GIN JENNY: And I love her. She’s a shieldmaiden.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. She doesn’t get a lot to do this time, though. Except she’s left in charge while they’re gone, which is great.
GIN JENNY: Which is so great. Because Theoden’s like, oh, there’s no one to leave in charge because Éomer is coming with us. Who actually is like, oh, you should leave Éowyn? Who actually says that?
WHISKEY JENNY: I think it is— Oh, Háma.
GIN JENNY: Aw, Háma.
WHISKEY JENNY: I know, Háma. The head of the guard or whatever.
GIN JENNY: Well, good for Háma. Man.
WHISKEY JENNY: I know.
GIN JENNY: Defeating the patriarchy, sort of.
WHISKEY JENNY: He calls her fearless and high-hearted.
GIN JENNY: True information.
WHISKEY JENNY: I also like that Theoden said—they’re going out to war, and he says, you know, I don’t have any children, so Éomer, my nephew, is next in line. And if neither of us return, then choose a new lord as you will. [LAUGHTER] Which really seems quite vague to me.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yeah, it did not work out well for Alexander the Great.
WHISKEY JENNY: What method are they going to use?
GIN JENNY: Everyone knows, you’ve gotta make a will.
WHISKEY JENNY: A specific will. Am I reading this correctly that Éowyn’s developing a crush on Aragorn?
GIN JENNY: Yes.
WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, I feel you, Éowyn. But anyway, Aragorn and the rest of them leave Éowyn in charge and they go off riding towards Helms Deep.
GIN JENNY: For the Battle of Helms Deep.
WHISKEY JENNY: Indeed.
GIN JENNY: Which, I forgot how important Fangorn Forest is to this battle, by the way.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. They were about to lose the battle, and then—when are we calling those? Huorns?
GIN JENNY: Huorns, yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Hoorns?
GIN JENNY: Like, sub-Ent Ents.
WHISKEY JENNY: And they rout the rest of the orcs and the men who were fighting on the orcs’ side.
GIN JENNY: They do.
WHISKEY JENNY: But at the beginning of the battle, Gandalf is like, I gotta run a quick errand, though. Bye, everyone. He doesn’t tell anyone where he’s going, when he’s going to be back, why he has to do it right now. [LAUGHTER] Again, it would have taken 20 seconds for him to be like, I’m going to go do X.
GIN JENNY: Again, Gandalf’s time management, I have notes.
WHISKEY JENNY: And then, he has the nerve, when Éomer says, “Once more you’ve come in the hour of need, unlooked for.” And Gandalf is all offended. He’s like, “Unlooked for? I said that I would return and meet you here.”
GIN JENNY: At some point!
WHISKEY JENNY: “But you did not name the hour, nor foretell the manner of your coming.” [LAUGHTER] Like, yeah, Éomer’s right. You can’t get mad at him for being like, well, we had no idea when you were coming back, so this is a nice surprise, thanks!
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Especially because the battle wasn’t going to last forever. They needed him to come back within a certain time frame.
WHISKEY JENNY: And luckily he did. But he came back right as they were about to lose everything. But everyone fights really well in the battle. All of our fellowship members survive. Legolas and Gimli are competing over how many orcs they’ve killed.
GIN JENNY: Which is cute.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Our beloved Háma—
GIN JENNY: Crusader for gender equality, kind of.
WHISKEY JENNY: Háma dies, in battle, heroically. But he has a lovely grave all to himself.
GIN JENNY: Which is nice, I guess. Although everyone else had probably families, too, and it probably would have meant a lot to them to have fancy graves. But fine, whatever.
WHISKEY JENNY: Just one for Háma. And everyone else gets piled up in the same one.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: And then everyone goes to Isengard.
WHISKEY JENNY: Forth to Isengard! And Gandalf again [LAUGHTER] doesn’t tell them what to expect to find there, even though we find out that he was there last night. Could have told the members of the fellowship to expect Merry and Pippin, and that Merry and Pippin are no longer presumed dead. But does he?
GIN JENNY: No, he does not.
WHISKEY JENNY: Like, if you’re worried about time management this time, they had an entire journey.
GIN JENNY: For him to mention that information.
WHISKEY JENNY: And he never does.
There’s also a line that I enjoyed where Theoden is talking about, even if they win all the battles from now going forward—“‘However the fortune of the war shall go, may it not so end that much that was fair and wonderful shall pass forever out of Middle Earth.’ ‘It may,’ said Gandalf. ‘The evil of Sauron cannot be wholly cured, nor made as if it had not been. But to such days we are doomed. Let us now go on with the journey we have begun.’“
I just really liked that that sentiment was expressed. Best case scenario from now on, Sauron is still evil, and what he has done they’re still going to have to clean up after. But all you can do is go on.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I agree. That was really lovely.
WHISKEY JENNY: So then they get to Isengard. And what do they find at Isengard?
GIN JENNY: Pippin and Merry!
WHISKEY JENNY: Pippin and Merry! Smoking some smokes, eating some feasts.
GIN JENNY: Which, by the way—so Pippin and Merry tell him the whole story about the Ents storming Isengard, and defeating Saruman, and da da da. I really liked, there’s a small false note in this. Because everyone’s real happy, they’ve won the thing, they won Helms Deep, they defeated Isengard. And then Aragorn is like, well, where did he get the pipe-weed that you’re smoking? And Pippin and Merry are like, I dunno.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s probably fine. Don’t worry about it.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, and everyone’s like, no, it’s weird, though. And I don’t remember the book super well, but I’m assuming this is a foreshadowing of the Scouring of the Shire at the end of The Return of the King.
WHISKEY JENNY: I think so, too. I think it is.
GIN JENNY: That was neat. That was a little detail I didn’t remember.
WHISKEY JENNY: I do like that Theoden is nice to the hobbits when he first sees them. Which is not always the case. Sometimes people are really mean about them. He’s nice to them and starts asking them about tobacco and stuff. And then afterwards Pippin is like, man, that king was really good. I like him.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Which is good for Pippin, because he’s about to go hang out with a very uncool king.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I thought it was interesting, the structure that Tolkien has Merry and Pippin at this point recount the story, as you mentioned, rather than narrating it. And having them be a surprise, again, for Legolas and Gimli. I just thought that was interesting. Because we knew what happened to them, that they were with Ents and that they had gone to Isengard. But we didn’t know what happened once they got to Isengard. Those Ents really took care of business there.
GIN JENNY: Sure did. Which is a very satisfying thing to have happened.
WHISKEY JENNY: Also, it’s one more insult at Gandalf and his time management skills. [LAUGHTER] When Gandalf, the night before Helms Deep, comes sprinting to Isengard and sees Pippin, and Pippin’s like, oh hey, cool, you’re alive. Me too, in case you were worried. Gandalf doesn’t say anything about, like, hey, hello. He says, “Get up, you tomfool of a Took! Where in the name of wonder in all this ruin is Treebeard? I want him, quick.” And he could have—I just feel like he could have said hello.
GIN JENNY: Been a little cooler? Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: He couldn’t been a little nicer, a little more human if he said hello. But Pippin does say after he has his little confab with Treebeard, he tells them that at least Legolas and Aragorn and Gimli are alive.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I guess.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: But he could have said it beforehand. I don’t know.
GIN JENNY: Okay, so then there’s a really, really, really cool scene where they all go to talk to Saruman, who’s on top of his tower. He tries to persuade them that he’s on the side of righteousness. And it is such a good scene.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s pretty great.
GIN JENNY: Especially because Saruman tries to convince Theoden, the cool king, to make a peace treaty with him. And he’s laying out his case, and he’s using his magic to persuade people. And Theoden finally says, we will have peace. And you think he’s fallen for it, but then he’s like, “We will have peace when you and all your works have perished.”
WHISKEY JENNY: Perished!
GIN JENNY: It’s so good!
WHISKEY JENNY: He did not fall for it. And then Saruman tries to convince everyone in turn, finds no one bending to his will.
GIN JENNY: Boggart rules kind of apply. It works less well because there’s all these different people, and he has to tailor his pitch to each one. And Gandalf even offers him the chance to surrender.
WHISKEY JENNY: He does.
GIN JENNY: He’s like, we’re not going to hurt you if you surrender. And Saruman’s like, no.
WHISKEY JENNY: And then you sort of see Saruman’s self, and they’re like, whoa. Ew. No. [LAUGHTER] And then Gandalf totally owns him.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Gandalf is like, I’m Gandalf the White now. Your staff is broken. And then it breaks. And he’s like, go away, and Saruman crawls away.
GIN JENNY: And then, hilariously—hilariously, Wormtongue just throws a big ole heavy orb at them, which is so funny to me. [LAUGHTER] Like, I picture him in the back, he’s listening to all this, and he’s like, you guys are jerks! And he just throws something.
WHISKEY JENNY: I hate everyone right now!
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: But Pippin picks it up, and Gandalf’s like, hey, gimme that, and takes it away. For good reason, it turns out.
WHISKEY JENNY: What was it?
GIN JENNY: It’s a palantir, a communication stone. And we find out that that is what Sauron was using to contact and control Saruman.
WHISKEY JENNY: Before we find out what the palantir is, we say goodbye to the Ents. And it’s a really—
GIN JENNY: [SADLY] Oh, yeah. We leave the Ents behind.
WHISKEY JENNY: He says, “We have become friends in so short a while that I think I must be getting hasty.”
GIN JENNY: And then he resays the little verses—
WHISKEY JENNY: —that they had the meeting to officially put them in! It calls them, “Hungry as hunters, the Hobbit children, the laughing-folk, the little people.” So then, Pippin really wants to see the stone again, for some reason. No idea why.
GIN JENNY: Definitely not shady reasons.
WHISKEY JENNY: This doesn’t remind us of anything that’s happened with the ring before. So he does.
GIN JENNY: But it works out okay. It’s very scary.
WHISKEY JENNY: He kind of freezes up and drops it, and they find him. And it takes a while to rouse him out, and they don’t know what’s wrong. And then Gandalf is questioning him about what happened. And he got stuck in there, basically. As soon as he looked in there, Sauron was waiting and was like, aha, got you. And tortured him to tell him information. And he told him he was a hobbit. But that’s all he said, because then Sauron was immediately like, okay, great, you’re mine. I’m going to hang up now. [LAUGHTER] And didn’t ask any more questions. Which turns out was a good thing, because he would have forced Pippin to say a lot more.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: I was pretty mad at Gandalf beforehand, because one of the reasons—Pippin justifies it to himself by being like, well he wasn’t very nice when he took it from me. And I’m like, that’s true, he wasn’t very nice when he took it from you, Pippin! [LAUGHTER] But Pippin’s definitely in the wrong here. He totally steals the thing and replaces it with a rock.
But afterwards, Gandalf is really sweet about it. And he says, “Other men would not have done so well.” He calls Pippin “a fool, but an honest fool.” And he says he forgives him, and he says it could have been much worse, and it’s totally fine. And then carries him back to bed and was really, really sweet about it. And he made up a lot for me then.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: And later on he was like, he might’ve actually helped. Because if I had done that, who knows what would have happened?
GIN JENNY: That’s true. That’s a good point. The downside is, it kind of moves their timeline up, though. Because Sauron now thinks that Saruman has the ringbearer. So he’s going to come sooner than later to come looking for them. So Gandalf has to take Pippin ahead to Gondor, and the rest of them stay behind. They’re going to get the fighters for Rohan and the Westfold together to come to Gondor’s aid. It’ll be the last great battle of men against Mordor.
WHISKEY JENNY: Why did he take Pippin? I was unclear on that.
GIN JENNY: I don’t know.
WHISKEY JENNY: He just takes Pippin with him.
GIN JENNY: Who knows why?
WHISKEY JENNY: I missed it until he told Pippin. Pippin was like, so when are we going to get to Theoden’s house? And Gandalf is like, oh no, we’re not going there. We’re going to Minas Tirith.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: A much worse place.
WHISKEY JENNY: A long ways away. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, so if he said that beforehand, I missed it. And I was like, oh, really? Oh, okay. But maybe tell your passenger early on. I don’t know.
GIN JENNY: Come on, like Gandalf would ever do that.
WHISKEY JENNY: He really withholds information, that one.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: He really does.
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m not excited for the terrible king coming up.
GIN JENNY: Well, we’ve got some time.
WHISKEY JENNY: Do we?
GIN JENNY: Yeah. Up next we’re going to read chapters 1 through 5 of book four. The rest of The Two Towers is Sam and Frodo in Mordor.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, great! Well, shall we check in on what books we were excited for in the summer?
GIN JENNY: Yeah. So I read three of my five books.
WHISKEY JENNY: Woo hoo!
GIN JENNY: I read Armistice by Lara Elena Donnelly, which in fact I had already read when we did the book preview. Because we did our summer book preview kind of late. So I really liked the book, and also I had the author on my blog for an interview about her fanfic influences, which was super fun.
And I read Witchmark, by C.L. Polk. It was an alternate England with magic, and I really dug it. It was really, really delightful. And I read A Duke by Default, by Alyssa Cole. Well, I am in the process of reading it now, so I’ve read 2.5 of these books.
WHISKEY JENNY: Congratulations! That’s way better than me.
GIN JENNY: Thank you. I haven’t read The Poppy War, by R.F. Kuang yet, because frankly it looks pretty dark. And I’ve been reading a certain number of dark books lately, so now I’m kind of on a break and reading some romance novels.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yes.
GIN JENNY: And I haven’t yet read Temper, by Nicky Drayden just because my library hasn’t had it in yet.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, there you go.
GIN JENNY: What about you?
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, we read Undead Girl Gang for a podcast, by Lily Anderson.
GIN JENNY: We sure did.
WHISKEY JENNY: But that, unfortunately, is the only one that I’ve read.
GIN JENNY: Summer is a busy time.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, and it felt like a particularly busy summer. One of them, though, I couldn’t have read even if I’d wanted to, because it got pushed back. That is On the Come Up, by Angie Thomas, got pushed back to February.
GIN JENNY: That makes sense, because I haven’t seen anything about it.
WHISKEY JENNY: So not my fault. [LAUGHTER] But then the other three that I have not read, but I am still quite excited to, are Number One Chinese Restaurant, by Lillian Li, The Ensemble, by Aja Gabel, and Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik.
GIN JENNY: I also want to read that one, too. So what are you excited for in the fall, Whiskey Jenny?
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I will mention first the one that is sort of on both of our lists and that we might read for podcast.
GIN JENNY: Yes, I hope so.
WHISKEY JENNY: Which is Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan which comes out in September, which is now, by Knopf. It is set in olden days.
GIN JENNY: Barbados.
WHISKEY JENNY: Barbados.
GIN JENNY: Oh.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Barbados in olden days. And an 11-year-old boy who is a slave becomes a manservant to his master’s brother.
GIN JENNY: Who is a scientist.
WHISKEY JENNY: Who is a scientist, a naturalist, an abolitionist. And a man is killed, and there’s like a bounty out on their heads, and they have to flee together all across the world. And they eventually end up in the Arctic.
GIN JENNY: So up our alley!
WHISKEY JENNY: It really does. We’ve previously read Half Blood Blues, also by this author, on a previous podcast. And I think we both overall enjoyed it.
GIN JENNY: And this one, I think, really jives with some of my historical interests, so I’m very curious to read it.
WHISKEY JENNY: And also, the Arctic.
GIN JENNY: The Arctic as well! I know, so many things! But also, the scientist in question is working on building a dirigible.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, I didn’t see that.
GIN JENNY: Well, an airship. But I’m choosing to call it a dirigible, because that is better.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: What is your first one besides this one that you’re excited about?
GIN JENNY: We finally remembered to coordinate our picks to make sure we weren’t accidentally overlapping. And I was so—I was trying not to be worried about it on chat, but I was so surprised that you didn’t choose this one on your list at all. Which is, there’s a new book by Kate Atkinson coming out from Little Brown in September called Transcription. And it’s about a woman called Juliet who works in an espionage department during World War II in London. And now it’s ten years later and the past is coming back to haunt her. And it just sounds like such a good Whiskey Jenny book, I was just really surprised that it wasn’t on your list. And you didn’t even have to think about it. You were like, nope, not on my list.
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m not not excited for it. It just make the—
GIN JENNY: Didn’t crack the top five.
WHISKEY JENNY: —top five cut here. No. Well if you recall, I was not that high on Life After Life. I just don’t think Kate Atkinson is my number one favorite writer. While the concept sounds amazing, I’m going to wait and see how this one is received and then play the long game on it, I guess.
GIN JENNY: [LAUGHTER] Yeah, Kate Atkinson—I really liked Life After Life. Kate Atkinson isn’t maybe my most favorite author ever, but I liked Life After Life, and I like the premise of this enough that I’m pretty excited for it.
WHISKEY JENNY: What was the sequel to that one?
GIN JENNY: A God in Ruins.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I enjoyed both of those, but I also didn’t adore either of them and had some issues with them. So let me know how it goes.
GIN JENNY: I will keep you posted. What’s your next one that you actually are the most excited about?
WHISKEY JENNY: My next one is The Best Bad Things, by Katrina Carrasco, which is set in also olden times, in the US. It is a time in which the Pinkerton Detective Agency is still a thing, so.
GIN JENNY: Ooh, fun.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s coming out in November by MCD. So our main character is a woman. Some drugs from her female employer, who’s also her former lover, go missing, and she goes on the hunt for them. But she goes undercover as a man and is like trying to play both sides, being a spy, which sounds very intense. But I really enjoyed the queer and gender exploratory aspects of it. So I’m looking forward to it.
GIN JENNY: Cool.
WHISKEY JENNY: Hopefully there’s not too much lying, but there might be a lot.
GIN JENNY: [LAUGHTER] Yeah, I think with a double agent, probably some lying is to be expected.
WHISKEY JENNY: But hopefully not too much. What’s your next one?
GIN JENNY: Okay, my next one is Zero Sum Game, by S.L. Huang, which is coming out from Tor in October. When I was at Worldcon I went to a Book Smugglers reading, which was great. And S.L. Huang was reading from her short story “The Little Homo Sapiens Scientist,” which is a queer retelling of The Little Mermaid. And A, it was good. But also B, she is such a good reader. She really put her whole heart into the reading. She was very expressive.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, those are very different skills.
GIN JENNY: Yes, exactly. Very different skills. And she was an amazing reader, and it just made me really want to go all in on S.L. Huang. So this book has been self-published in the past, but Tor is now releasing it in a traditional publication format, so it’ll be in print. And it’s about a lady with math superpowers who discovers that there’s this secret organization that’s planning to take over the whole world using mind control, and I guess she has to stop them. So it sounds really fun.
WHISKEY JENNY: It does, yes.
GIN JENNY: I love a lady math genius.
WHISKEY JENNY: Sure.
GIN JENNY: What’s your next one, Whiskey Jenny?
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m excited about Waiting for Eden, by Elliot Ackerman, which comes out in September from also Knopf. This is by a former soldier, and also a story about a soldier who is injured and lying unconscious in a hospital bed. And it’s narrated by the ghost of his friend, who I infer died in battle. And his wife is also by his side, and apparently things from the past get revealed? And it asks—I don’t know if it answers, but it asks the question, according to the book blurb, what makes a life worth living. So small things like that.
GIN JENNY: [LAUGHTER] Sure.
WHISKEY JENNY: What’s your next one?
GIN JENNY: My next one is a young adult book called Hearts Unbroken, by Cynthia Leitich Smith, which is coming from Candlewick in October. And this is a YA novel about a Muscogee teenager named Lou who works on her school paper. And the school play of The Wizard of Oz is trying to cast inclusively, and a bunch of parents in town are like, oh no, it’s reverse racism. So she’s trying to report on it, and her little brother’s playing the Tin Man, so she’s trying to protect him also. I love books about putting theatrical productions on, so I’m excited about that. The author is a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, so that’ll be cool. Candlewick in general publishes a lot of great stuff, and this looks really interesting and good.
WHISKEY JENNY: Cool.
GIN JENNY: What’s your next one?
WHISKEY JENNY: My next one is Retablos, by Octavio Solis, who is actually a playwright, and this is his first book? I say that hesitantly, because it’s billed as a memoir but told in a bunch of small little vignettes from his life growing up in El Paso along the border.
GIN JENNY: Cool.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I’m excited about the format. And as you know, I don’t delve often into nonfiction, so I thought this would be a good genre-crossing one for me. And I thought as a playwright he would have an interesting voice.
GIN JENNY: That sounds really good. And I, too, am excited about playwrights writing memoirs.
WHISKEY JENNY: Retablos is coming out in October from City Lights. I think it’s my only one that’s an indie publisher, so I should really be better about that. But that one is. Yay! What’s your next one?
GIN JENNY: My next one is Exit Strategy, by Martha Wells, coming from Tor in October.
WHISKEY JENNY: Woo!
GIN JENNY: I am so excited about this. It’s the final installment of the Murderbot novella series, which if you haven’t read the Murderbot books yet, I recommend getting right with your life, listeners.
WHISKEY JENNY: I do as well. They’re so great.
GIN JENNY: The first one is All Systems Red. Whiskey Jenny, remind me how many of them have you read?
WHISKEY JENNY: Just the first one.
GIN JENNY: Okay. So there’s three out now. The last one, Exit Strategy, is coming out in October, like I said. But, the joy is not over. Martha Wells has plans for a Murderbot novel after this.
WHISKEY JENNY: Ooh.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. So I think the arc is going to be wrapped up in Exit Strategy, but then there’s going to be like more to come. But they’re these stories about a security robot that has broken free of its control and is against its will kind of gotten sucked into trying to take down an evil corporation, even though what it actually wants to do is chill out alone by itself and watch TV.
WHISKEY JENNY: Just wants to watch its stories.
GIN JENNY: Oh, god, it’s the best. It’s the greatest. Okay, what’s your last one?
WHISKEY JENNY: So my last one is the fluffy one. It’s called The Royal Runaway, by Lindsay Emory. Comes out in October from Gallery Books. And it’s modern day. A princess gets left at the altar.
GIN JENNY: Great.
WHISKEY JENNY: She’s bummed. I think she sneaks out and goes to a bar. And who does she meet at a bar but a sexy Scottish man—
GIN JENNY: [GASP]
WHISKEY JENNY: Who turns out to be the brother of her I assume deadbeat fiance.
GIN JENNY: Oh my gosh. Oh my goodness.
WHISKEY JENNY: He is also a former soldier, super soldier, I don’t know.
GIN JENNY: Great, great.
WHISKEY JENNY: And they have to team up to figure out what happened to the deadbeat brother. I assume they also fall in love. If not, I want my money back. [LAUGHTER] I’m pretty sure they do.
GIN JENNY: I’m pretty sure they do, too.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. And so it’s got so many of the things I like, which are Scottish accents, royalty falling in love with non-royalty, and romance mixed with action. So I’m pretty excited.
GIN JENNY: Sounds great. That sounds perfect.
WHISKEY JENNY: What’s your last one?
GIN JENNY: My last one is kind of a downer. I’m sorry, I should have chosen a fluffy one for last. [LAUGHTER] No, your strategy was the better one. It’s Eternity Girl, by Magdalene Visaggio, coming out from D.C. in September. I’ve heard a lot of really great things about this author. She’s written a series called Kim and Kim that I’ve heard really wonderful things about, but my library doesn’t have it.
It’s about a superhero named Caroline Sharp who is depressed about having to live forever. And a foe, a nemesis of hers, offers her a deal where she can not live forever, but she just has to destroy the rest of the world first. Which doesn’t seem like a super tempting offer, so I’m kind of curious how it’s going to all play out.
WHISKEY JENNY: So wait, she lives forever, but to avoid that she can kill the rest of the world?
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Huh.
GIN JENNY: Right? Yeah. I’m really excited to read something by this author because I’ve been wanting to for a while. I’m not totally sure I understand the premise.
WHISKEY JENNY: Hopefully it’ll all become clear.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I think it’ll all become clear.
WHISKEY JENNY: Shall we move on to River of Stars?
GIN JENNY: Yes, tell us about it.
WHISKEY JENNY: It is by Vanessa Hua. It is her debut. It is about a woman in China who has an affair with her boss and gets pregnant, and gets sent to a maternity house in the US to have the baby. She escapes from that, goes on a road trip with another pregnancy house lady who is a teenager. And they have to build a new life for themselves as they are dealing with their pregnancy and their newborns, and being immigrants, and running from the people looking for them. What did you think about it?
GIN JENNY: I, uh, ah, I really enjoyed it.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: So 100% enjoyed it, right? Not conflicted at all. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: I know that sounded very equivocal, but I think I was a victim of my expectations at first. Because I read a book recently that dealt with, I want to say transnational surrogacy or something like that, and it was very serious and literary. And that’s kind of what I was expecting at first from River of Stars.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, so for the first quarter of the book I was like, that’s what this is trying to be. It’s trying to be very highbrow. And then I realized, no, it’s like more of a Horatio Alger story. It’s not exactly rags to riches, but kind of. Making it in America pluckily kind of story.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. A lot of pluck, I would say, yeah.
GIN JENNY: So once I made that adjustment, I was really into it. What did you think of it?
WHISKEY JENNY: I was also really into it overall. I think I have some quibbles that I will air shortly. [LAUGHTER] But yeah, overall I really enjoyed it. You know, I think it just had some debut issues that I’m sure with further books by this writer will get worked out.
GIN JENNY: Do you want to start by talking about what we didn’t like, and then we can go to the good stuff?
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. What did you not like about it?
GIN JENNY: I was not totally sure—so Scarlett is the main narrator. She’s the woman who gets pregnant and runs away from Perfume Bay, which is the pregnancy home. So she was the main narrator, but there were also sections that followed the father of the child, Boss Yeung, and also the director slash mastermind of the pregnancy center, Mama Fang. And the Boss Yeung stuff I could kind of understand, but the stuff with Mama Fang felt a little tacked onto the main story. She’s somewhat relevant, but her story just didn’t feel that relevant to the rest of the story. I just wasn’t sure about that as a decision.
WHISKEY JENNY: I would agree with that. I think the book does a great job, particularly with the boss’s narration and Scarlett’s mom’s perspective, of using it to deepen these characters that previously we’d only seen Scarlett’s perspective on. And we really come to be a lot more forgiving of them, I would say, and to see them in a different light.
But I didn’t feel the same way about Mama Fang. She did never get more or less complex, and I wanted her to. Particularly because one of my favorite lines was about Mama Fang. Scarlett says she reminded her of characters in fairy tales who were the go-betweens, who weren’t the villains or the heroes, but upon whom the plot hinged.
GIN JENNY: Ooh, yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: And I really liked that characterization of Mama Fang, and I was hoping that that was where it was going to go and we would get a little more in-depth into her. And we do, but it didn’t really help.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, she’s pretty unpleasant and unsympathetic, even after we learn more about her character.
WHISKEY JENNY: So we don’t ever shift our perspective on her. And I wanted a bit more shift.
GIN JENNY: Me too. She’s kind of a foil for Scarlett because they have a lot in common. But she—I think Mama Fang is kind of the darker timeline version of Scarlett. Which is fine as a literary device. It just kind of bummed me out.
WHISKEY JENNY: Mama Fang did not get a great deal either.
GIN JENNY: No, God. Not at all. So yeah, it didn’t add a ton to the story, and it made me sad, and also I didn’t enjoy spending time with her. So it was kind of a perfect storm of—
WHISKEY JENNY: Lose-lose-lose.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: I would agree. I thought the first thing you were going to say was that there was not nearly enough road trip.
GIN JENNY: No, it’s okay. I resigned myself to that early on. That was actually—that’s true, that was probably a thing I was a victim of expectations of early on, too. But I adjusted. I recalibrated for that pretty easily.
WHISKEY JENNY: Good. Because I think I said it was a road trip, but I was merely parroting previous blurbs of it, who really played up the road trip aspect. They drive for like a day. [LAUGHTER] It felt like.
GIN JENNY: It’s true. And then they end up in San Francisco.
WHISKEY JENNY: And they’re like, cool, we’re in San Francisco now. Let’s get rid of the van forever.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yup. You said there were some hallmarks of this being a debut novel that weakened it for you.
WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t know if they’re hallmarks, but I’m just attributing them to that, I suppose. I shouldn’t call them hallmarks.
GIN JENNY: What were some more of those?
WHISKEY JENNY: I was surprised when suddenly she was a master chef, when previously she had said I don’t even know how to cook at all. That transition happened a little quickly for my taste, as it were. Heyo! [LAUGHTER] That pulled me out of it, and instead of going along with her cool new business and being excited about that, I was like, you learned how to run a super popular food truck, or cook for one, in a day, it feels like. So things like that, with the road trip thing as well, where the shifts in the plot are sudden and almost jarring.
And the other thing—I’m not going to say this is a negative, but I did not see at all coming—and I guess this is a spoiler.
GIN JENNY: Oh, Daisy’s—
WHISKEY JENNY: But I did not see it all that Daisy’s boyfriend had secretly become a pop star. [LAUGHTER] He was super famous. That really surprised me.
GIN JENNY: And he really just hadn’t received her calls, for real.
WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, I expected that. I thought that he was going to be just right next door in his dorm the whole time and had lost his phone, or his parents had taken it away. I didn’t think he was going to be the evil [INAUDIBLE] that Scarlett was worried about. But I did not expect him to become an international pop star in the meantime. [LAUGHTER] That was a bit of a shock. And it turns out he has been the singer of this song that Scarlett has been hearing everywhere, and that was a little—a little pat for me.
GIN JENNY: I agree with you about that, and also about Scarlett being suddenly an amazing and successful food truck chef.
WHISKEY JENNY: Not that I begrudge her it. I’m glad for her.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: No, I understand. But for me this was kind of the adjustment that I made when I decided it was more like a Horatio Alger book. I was more able to roll with some unbelievable parts of the story.
WHISKEY JENNY: I suppose I didn’t adjust enough.
GIN JENNY: Because there were a lot of things about Scarlett’s ascent as a food truck person that weren’t necessarily super reasonable. But I was fine with that.
WHISKEY JENNY: There’s a lot I was fine with. I think she’s been—we have the background of her having business acumen.
GIN JENNY: Sure.
WHISKEY JENNY: And that’s not really on display for the food truck. Suddenly it’s all about her cooking. And it was an odd missed opportunity to have her take someone out—like, maybe she doesn’t have to be the cook, but she can be the business person behind it, because it’s already been established in the world that she came from.
But what I did love, and I think this is definitely in keeping with her character, is all the schemes and trades that she does. So when there’s some months where she can’t pay her rent, or she has problems that she needs to solve, and she always comes at them really creatively, and will have a five-chain-long trade beforehand in order to get the thing that the person that she needs to convince wants. And they were always really interesting, and I love them.
GIN JENNY: And I love that it worked. It was just so nice to read a book where someone is in a bad situation, and they come up with these schemes, and the schemes work, and things work out.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I’m very happy that things all worked out in the end. We had a very lovely happily ever after epilogue at the end.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, and I was fine with all of it. I was like, yup, yup. This is what would happen, 100%.
WHISKEY JENNY: No, that I was fine with. I was just like, but I don’t think she’s a master chef. I don’t know why that part bothered me.
GIN JENNY: The trades thing reminded me of this blog a while back called One Red Paperclip.
WHISKEY JENNY: Totally! I remember that, yeah.
GIN JENNY: Listeners, the guy starts out with just a regular red paper clip, and he starts making trades for it. And his goal is to trade up to get a house, which he eventually did do. Although I have follow up questions. But whatever, I don’t care, it’s a success story. He traded his paper clip for a house.
WHISKEY JENNY: He did, eventually. Yeah.
GIN JENNY: And that’s what Scarlett’s schemes reminded me of. So it was very pleasing to watch her do it.
WHISKEY JENNY: What did you think about not having Daisy, the teenager along with Scarlett, as a narrator?
GIN JENNY: Oh, I didn’t even think about that. I liked it. I think the relationship between Scarlett and Daisy was really lovely, and a version of building a family that I maybe haven’t seen before. I think I liked it. I liked seeing her through Scarlett’s eyes, because you get to see her love and also her frustration with Daisy, who is much younger, obviously. And also they’re just in a bad situation together, so at times, of course, they take their frustration out on each other. Did you wish she was a narrator?
WHISKEY JENNY: I kind of do. I appreciate what we got from Scarlett’s perspective. And I suppose it’s really more Scarlett’s book, because we get her lover who is the boss who is another narrator, and we have him visit her mom, so we get more information on her. So it’s really more Scarlett’s book. And I would have been interested to read more about Daisy’s experience of all this as well.
Especially because, while Scarlett is becoming a master food truck chef, Daisy is the one taking care of both of their babies. And I did not think that Scarlett was very nice about that. When Daisy was like, it’d be cool if I could come work at the food truck for a little bit and not have to take care of two newborns all the time. And—
GIN JENNY: Yeah, and she’s like, too bad!
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I would have been interested at least to hear what Daisy is doing at that time, and how she’s dealing with raising two newborns as a teenager herself.
GIN JENNY: That’s a great point. I didn’t think of it, but I totally agree now that you’ve raised this issue.
WHISKEY JENNY: I did love the story that the title draws from.
GIN JENNY: Yes!
WHISKEY JENNY: Which, as with the characters, also has a twist over how it gets interpreted right at the very end. And I thought it was really lovely and reminded me that I really enjoy folktales and I should just read more of them. I don’t know why I don’t.
GIN JENNY: Oh gosh, me too.
WHISKEY JENNY: Let’s read some folk tales for podcast.
GIN JENNY: Oh my gosh, that’s a great idea. Listeners, send us your recs. Especially if you have any that are beautifully illustrated, because I’d like to get some for my nephew.
WHISKEY JENNY: Great idea. And I also really liked—there was one comparison, I think Scarlett says about being a mother now that she used to love going for drives with Boss Yeung. But she says now that she’s a mother, it’ll be a long time before she was a passenger again. I thought that was a nice, like, you’re in charge now. You’re the one being the driver. You’re the one doing all the protecting of this tiny newborn. So I thought that was a nice image.
GIN JENNY: Really of the whole family. Because also she kind of has to provide for and protect Daisy and Didi.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, because Daisy’s so young. Absolutely. I got very emotional when me learned more about Scarlett’s mom, and when Scarlett changes her own perspective on the sacrifices that her mom had to make. And when Scarlett’s boss goes to visit the mom, she gives something to the boss that she’s kept for so long that’s really a beautiful token of her unspoken love for her daughter. And I just really enjoyed the depth that her character got.
GIN JENNY: Definitely. It was a good read. I was expecting it to be more literary and serious than it was. And it was kind of nice for it to be a little bit more of a fancy. A grounded fantasy.
WHISKEY JENNY: A grounded fantasy, for sure. But it all works out in the end, and that was very nice to see, for sure.
GIN JENNY: It really was. All right, you ready for the Forcening?
WHISKEY JENNY: Drumroll, please
GIN JENNY: Okay, this is another book where things work out fine in the end, basically. You may not believe me, but it’s true.
WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: Well, time will tell. [LAUGHTER] For this year’s Forcening, I’m finally getting Whiskey Jenny to read The Color Purple, by Alice Walker, which is one of my all time favorite books. It is so beautiful, and so wonderful, and really ultimately joyful and life affirming. And I know you don’t believe me, but I think that you’ll find in the end that it is. It’s about a girl named Celie who lives I think in Georgia in the early 1900s. And she really has a very difficult life. It is a difficult read, listeners, so be prepared for that. It’s epistolary, and I don’t know what to say about it. It is really one of the best books I’ve ever read, on so many different levels. And it just deals with a lot of, gosh, a lot of issues from American history. And it’s just a really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really great book. And I really think, Whiskey Jenny, that you’re going to like it. I really, really do. I wouldn’t Forcen you to read it if I didn’t truly think you were going to like it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, we will see.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, we’ll find out. [LAUGHTER] My last Forcening didn’t work out so good.
WHISKEY JENNY: What was the last Forcening?
GIN JENNY: It was The Secret History.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, that’s right. Yes, no, sorry.
GIN JENNY: No, that’s okay. You like what you like. But high hopes for The Color Purple. Gosh, it’s so—it’s just so good. I really think you’ll like it. It’s so good.
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 are both on Goodreads as Whiskey Jenny and Gin Jenny. And you can email us, please do, at readingtheend@gmail.com. If you like what we do, please become a podcast patron at Patreon.com/readingtheend. And if you’re listening to us on iTunes, please leave us a review.
And until next time, a quote from Brenda Peynado’s story “The Kite Maker” on Tor.com, I read short fiction now. “I understood him wanting the biggest, best thing you couldn’t have. I wanted his unexhausted hope. That’s what I wanted. I wanted forgiveness without having to name my sins.” [GLASSES CLINK]
THEME SONG: You don’t judge a book by its cover. Page one’s not a much better view. And shortly you’re gonna discover the middle won’t mollify you. So whether whiskey’s your go-to or you’re like my gin-drinking friend, no matter what you are imbibing, you’ll be better off in the end reading the end.
[BEEP]WHISKEY JENNY: And we’re back to talk about books and literary happenings. Of our own, though. Nothing to report. That’s weird. Why would I say that?
[LAUGHTER] I don’t know, for some reason I just suddenly felt like a reporter in front of breaking news. [LAUGHTER] [INAUDIBLE] is warranted, but nothing new to report right now. Back to you in the studio, Bob. [LAUGHTER] Ugh! No. [BEEP]WHISKEY JENNY: I would want to talk more about Aragorn and his sword. And I don’t mean—anyway. [LAUGHTER] [BEEP]
WHISKEY JENNY: —of a de-boo. Day-boo. That’s not how you say it. [LAUGHTER] I swear I haven’t even finished this beer. [LAUGHTER] I’m not even one drink in.
GIN JENNY: Can I have your permission to put that in the outtakes? I don’t want you to feel awkward, because I know you know how to say the word debut.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: No, you can put it in. [BEEP]