Mmm, this Wednesday y’all all get to experience one of my favorite things about Whiskey Jenny, which is how susceptible she is to advertising. When we see a commercial for Oreos she goes “wow I could really go for an Oreo” and when we read a book about living in a prank-filled super-broed-out polar prison, she goes “maybe I should get a job in Antarctica.” It’s very admirable because she is open to new experiences, but oh my God, don’t get a job in Antarctica. IT SOUNDS AWFUL. This week we’re chatting about books and genres we’ve changed our minds about, and reviewing Nicholas Johnson’s Big Dead Place. 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.
1:31 – What we’re reading
4:58 – What we can’t shut up about
13:04 – Lord of the Rings readalong (Book Six, Chapters 1-4)
23:43 – Books and genres we’ve changed our minds about
37:16 – Big Dead Place, by Nicholas Johnson
47:49 – What we’re reading next time
What we talked about:
The Far Field, Madhuri Vijay
Signs Preceding the End of the World, Yuri Herrera
recap of The Bachelor episode in question
Joel Embiid’s Instagram with puppy
Jane the Virgin
Killjoys
One Day at a Time
Parks and Recreation
Psych
Return of the King
Possession, AS Byatt
Arcadia, Tom Stoppard
The Color Purple, Alice Walker
An Orchestra of Minorities, Chigozie Obioma
Big Dead Place, Nicholas Johnson
South Pole Station, Ashley Shelby
Gingerbread, Helen Oyeyemi
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
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 back 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— [LAUGHTER] what are we supposed to talk about? We’re back to talk about books and literary happenings. [LAUGHTER] It’s been so long. But we’re glad to be back. On today’s podcast, we’re going to, as always, talk about what we’re reading. We’re going to talk about what we’ve been something else-ing, which is what we cannot shut up about to other people. For this episode, we read book 6, chapter 1 through 4 of Return of the King, and a lot happened in those, and we will get into it.
GIN JENNY: Yup.
WHISKEY JENNY: We will discuss genres or books that we have changed our minds about over time. We read Big Dead Place, by Nicholas Johnson, so a lot of Arctic talk and bureaucracy talk. And then Gin Jenny is going to tell us what we are reading for next time. So until then, what are you reading right now?
GIN JENNY: I am reading The Far Field, by Madhuri Vijay. It’s a debut novel by an Indian author, and it’s about a woman from Bangalore who is grieving the loss of her mother, and she goes to Kashmir in search of a man that her mother knew as a child. And while she’s there she gets tangled up in Kashmiri politics.
And it’s interesting to read this book right now, because there have been some recent acts of aggression between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, which is contested territory. And it’s not an area whose contemporary history I know super well. I roughly have an idea of why the conflict in Kashmir arose, but I really don’t know too much about what it’s like now. So I’m interested to read this book and find out more information.
It’s a little slow moving so far, but the protagonist is starting to become more integrated into the fabric of this Kashmiri town. So I think things are going to start picking up.
WHISKEY JENNY: Cool. Yeah.
GIN JENNY: What about you? What are you reading?
WHISKEY JENNY: I recently finished Signs Preceding the End of the World, by Yuri Herrera.
GIN JENNY: Oh, really?
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Which was one of my three suggestions for a book club that I’m in, because I knew that Gin Jenny had read it and really enjoyed it. And I was also looking for a very short book to read for book club.
GIN JENNY: Because you had several very long ones, right?
WHISKEY JENNY: We had several in a row very long ones, so I thought some variety would be nice, in terms of length. And I absolutely love this book. I thought it was amazing. I feel like I did not get any of the Aztec mythology, because I just don’t know Aztec mythology at all. But in reading interviews afterwards, I was like, wow! That’s so cool that all that’s worked in.
And all of the interviews that the translator did were also really fascinating, because the writer coined some new words that she had to think about a long time for how to translate. I was scratching the same itch as the translation talk from Umami that we read for the podcast.
GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: I think book club—we had a great discussion about it, as well. I don’t think everyone was quite as positive about the book itself as I was. But I thought we had a good talk, and I loved the book so—
GIN JENNY: Yay!
WHISKEY JENNY: For me it was a great experience. [LAUGHTER] Just all around great.
GIN JENNY: I don’t have to feel any responsibility to book club’s enjoyment of it, so I’m just really delighted that you read it and liked it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Thank you. And I’m really into this publisher now. Because I found out that they do a subscription model, which was the first time I’ve heard about that.
GIN JENNY: Who publishes it?
WHISKEY JENNY: They’re And Other Stories. And I just heard about Archipelago—is that how you say that word?
GIN JENNY: I’ve said Archipe-LA-go and Archi-PEL-ago, but I think your way is fine.
WHISKEY JENNY: OK.
GIN JENNY: She said optimistically.
WHISKEY JENNY: What if I say it both ways? No. [LAUGHTER] Just alternate every time I say it.
So I heard that Archipelago Books also does a similar sort of thing, in that you can subscribe and give the money in advance and then get books later on. And I’m into this publishing model, which I haven’t heard much about. And both are translated fiction, which I think is interesting. So yeah, that was a cool fun fact that I learned as well.
GIN JENNY: Cool. Awesome. Yeah, I like both of those publishers. And Archipelago’s books have—see, I did it the other way. Wait, did I?
WHISKEY JENNY: No, I think you did it—
GIN JENNY: Archipelago. Sorry.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, there you go. There you go. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: Archipelago also has French flaps on their books, which is very exciting for me.
WHISKEY JENNY: Those are great. I don’t know that I’ve read an Archipelago book.
GIN JENNY: I’ve read a couple. Some of them have been quite good. They’ve published several works of African fiction that I’ve liked quite a lot.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, cool. I’m trying to hearken back to all the French flaps I’ve encountered, and I think most of them are Europa’s.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, Europa does do a nice French flap.
WHISKEY JENNY: All right, well this time our Patreon patrons wanted us to talk about what we can’t shut up about. So Gin Jenny, what do you want to talk everyone’s ear off about?
GIN JENNY: I cannot shut up about the fence jump in The Bachelor.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: To be fair, it was amazing.
GIN JENNY: It was amazing. I’m not actually a Bachelor viewer anymore. I used to watch it, and I kind of tapered off. And now I consume Bachelor content via recaps and podcasts, but I really enjoy reading recaps and listening to Bachelor recap podcasts. And all this season they’ve been apparently teasing this clip of the bachelor, Colton, jumping over a fence, being like, I just can’t take this anymore and jumping over a fence. And usually when they have a very dramatic clip that they keep promoting throughout the season, you get to it and it’s incredibly undramatic and is boring and nothing actually happens. But in this case, for the first time maybe ever, it really lived up to the hype. It was incredible.
WHISKEY JENNY: Really? Huh.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t—OK. All right.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I mean, the Bachelor actually was like, I can’t take this. I’m leaving. He was so upset. He’d just had a breakup that he was very upset about, during which he basically told the girl, like, if you stay I’ll dump everyone else. I only care about you. When I’m with the other girls, I’m just thinking of you.
WHISKEY JENNY: A real Bachelor no-no.
GIN JENNY: A real Bachelor no-no, yeah. Yeah, it was so dramatic. But she left anyway, and he was like, aw, I’m done with this. And he just jumped over the fence and took off into the Portuguese night.
WHISKEY JENNY: I thought—they’re in Portugal?
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh. He did jump that fence very gracefully.
GIN JENNY: He did. Like a gazelle. It was a really elegant feat of athleticism.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I think my favorite part—well no. There’s a lot of favorite parts. I also watched this once I heard people talking about “the fence jump” and I had to look it up and see what these all capital references were referring to. Chris Harrison’s reaction to it is also pretty golden.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yeah, the whole thing, and how the all the producers of The Bachelor suddenly become CSI, Bachelor. They’re like—
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, there’s a dog barking over there, so.
GIN JENNY: Maybe he went that way. Yeah, it just seems incredible.
WHISKEY JENNY: But for me I think part of it is, it is extremely dramatic within the world of The Bachelor. Within the real world, a man was sad about a breakup and then walked away.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Sure.
WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t want to diminish it, because it was an amazing fence jump.
GIN JENNY: Hurtful.
WHISKEY JENNY: But on the other hand, he just walked away. Over a fence.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: You’re not wrong. And also, the show pretty quickly gets him back on track.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh does it? I have not heard of the aftermath of the fence jump.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, well what happens—and this is his mistake—
WHISKEY JENNY: Welcome back to The Bachelor Recap Podcast [LAUGHTER] with the Demographically Similar Jennys, neither of whom watch the show.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Actually, that would be amazing, if we just did mini Bachelor recaps based on what we’ve gleaned from pop culture.
WHISKEY JENNY: Because that is also my preferred way of consuming The Bachelor, is the nation around it. Anyway, sorry. Tell me what happened afterwards.
GIN JENNY: OK, so afterwards the producers went after him. They caught up to him and they were like, you know, come back with us. And he was like, no, I’m not going back with you. I’m done.
WHISKEY JENNY: Good for you, man. I hope you stick with that decision, even though you won’t.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, it was very exciting. But then this was his mistake. One of the producers was like, OK, it’s fine that you’re completely done. But at least let us give you a ride back to the hotel.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, buddy.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. And he was like—
WHISKEY JENNY: He got in the van.
GIN JENNY: Got in the van. Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Never get in the van.
GIN JENNY: So that was his mistake. He let them take him to a second location. [LAUGHTER] Street smarts.
WHISKEY JENNY: I know.
GIN JENNY: But it was just amazing. It really was everything that I wanted it to be and more. And you know, that’s hard to come by in this cold, cruel world.
WHISKEY JENNY: Indeed.
GIN JENNY: What about you? What have you not been able to shut up about recently?
WHISKEY JENNY: I recently discovered some of the greatest news of all time, which is that my favorite NBA player, Joel Embiid, has adopted a puppy, who is the cutest golden doodle little muffin of all time. And he has named this adorable little fluffball Klaus after Klaus in The Vampire Diaries.
GIN JENNY: Oh my God.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s amazing.
GIN JENNY: Oh my God. Worlds collide.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, so he already was my favorite NBA player partly because I knew that he watched and enjoyed The Vampire Diaries.
GIN JENNY: Sure.
WHISKEY JENNY: His favorite drink is also Shirley Temples, which he would order by the pitcherful, because he’s a seven foot tall giant, obviously. [LAUGHTER] He’s tall even for NBA standards.
GIN JENNY: Yup, yup.
WHISKEY JENNY: He’s on the Sixers, and he’s just the greatest. There’s a lot of videos of him stunting on regular people. Like he’ll just show up to basketball courts start blocking shots. [LAUGHTER] He’s amazing. I think he is originally from Cameroon. And he’s just the best, and everyone should look up pictures of his puppy. Maybe we could link to the Instagram on the show notes. The puppy is so cute. The puppy’s bed is called the Furrari, and it’s a little car. It’s so cute. It’s so cute.
GIN JENNY: Oh my gosh, that’s adorable. We also have a joint one that we can’t shut up about.
WHISKEY JENNY: We do. Yeah, you want to go?
GIN JENNY: Sure, yeah. So Whiskey Jenny and I have both become extreme finishers of TV shows, and I’m really excited about it. I’m really proud of us.
WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t know that I’ve become an extreme finisher, but I’ve finished two shows.
GIN JENNY: That’s extreme finishing.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s a really big deal for me, and for us.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. Say why it’s a big deal for you, because I think it’s actually a bigger deal for you than for me.
WHISKEY JENNY: I just never finish shows. As I don’t like season finales, and I particularly don’t like series finales, because they tend to be really dramatic and a bunch of things happen, and it’s too emotionally overwhelming for me.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, it’s actually quite difficult. Because Whiskey Jenny and I used to live together, and we would watch TV shows together. And it was really fun, and I would really enjoy it, but then we’d get to the end of the season and she’d be like, let’s watch something different.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Like we get to one more before it ends and I’d be like, you know what, I just feel like something else today. Couldn’t tell you why.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yeah, it was really hard to lure her into watching it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I was on the lookout for it.
GIN JENNY: What I would try to do is wait till you got up to get a drink, and then I would play the next episode so that you wouldn’t actually see that it was the final one in the season.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, clever girl.
GIN JENNY: Thank you.
WHISKEY JENNY: Did it work?
GIN JENNY: Sometimes.
WHISKEY JENNY: Good. Good for you.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: And for me, it’s less dramatic, I think, for me to do it, because I do not have this aversion to finishing seasons. But I have noticed that I start watching shows and I really enjoy them, but then I get distracted and I wander off to something else. What ends up happening with that is that I never finish shows that I’m actually really enjoying. So boo to that!
So I finished Jane the Virgin, which has a lot of episodes so I’m really proud of myself.
WHISKEY JENNY: Woo!
GIN JENNY: And that’s in advance of its final season, coming back later this spring. I finished Killjoys, the SyFy show about space mercenaries, which I also really enjoyed. And I finished all of One Day at a Time, the greatest show in the world. RIP.
WHISKEY JENNY: That’s three in a row. Way to go.
GIN JENNY: And now I’m finishing The Magicians.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, check you out.
GIN JENNY: I know. I’m really excited.
WHISKEY JENNY: I recently finished Parks and Rec.
GIN JENNY: Nice.
WHISKEY JENNY: Which was a nice thing to start with finishing, because it’s a very happy ending and all the things that you want for everyone happen, all loose ends get tied up, and it’s very comforting. And then I finished Psych, and I watched the Psych movie.
GIN JENNY: Very well done.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. And I’m excited to hear that there’s a sequel to the movie coming out.
GIN JENNY: Oh, boy.
WHISKEY JENNY: All kinds of Psych goodness in my future. And those also were very satisfactory. The end of Psych, I thought, was very satisfactory. The movie I had one concern with, but.
GIN JENNY: OK.
WHISKEY JENNY: So yeah, I finished Psych. I’ve been watching Psych but not watching the last two episodes of the final season for years. Because the penultimate episode is sort of a riff on horror movies, and it was legit scary to me when I tried to watch it both times. But this time I was just like, OK, I can do this.
GIN JENNY: Power through.
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m going to power through and then power through again, and then I know that I have the movie in my future.
GIN JENNY: Well, way to go.
WHISKEY JENNY: Thank you. Yeah. It was great.
GIN JENNY: I’m really proud of us.
WHISKEY JENNY: Me too.
GIN JENNY: So yeah, we’ll see how goes. I don’t know that I’ll stay with it all year, but if I finish The Magicians, that’ll be four whole shows finished.
WHISKEY JENNY: Four in a row.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, four in a row.
WHISKEY JENNY: Amazing.
GIN JENNY: Thank you. Well, do you want to get into Lord of the Rings? Because things were very dramatic this week.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I do.
GIN JENNY: All right, so this week we read chapters 1 through 4 of book 6 of Lord of the Rings, which is the third to last reading in this readalong.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Is there a special word for that?
GIN JENNY: Antepenultimate.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, yeah. There you go.
GIN JENNY: These chapters are so intense.
WHISKEY JENNY: Good. Lord.
GIN JENNY: I mean, it starts with Sam going to rescue Frodo from the orcs. And it’s so scary, because he constantly is hiding behind things, and the orcs are fighting and killing each other, and maybe they’re going to kill Frodo, and they’re going to do this and they’re going to do that. It’s really intense.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s really intense, and I think Tolkien did such a good job of making you feel that extreme terror and pressure of like, I’m going to get found out at any moment—at any moment! It’s very stressful.
GIN JENNY: And ultimately Sam finds an orc beating Frodo and he has to kill him to save Frodo.
WHISKEY JENNY: Before then, I was a little bummed. So Sam has a moment where he wears the ring, and he’s sort of tempted by all that the ring tries to tempt its wearers with—like, all your wildest dreams coming true—and I wish that he had gotten—it basically says, like, Sam knew that he didn’t deserve all that. And I was like, that’s not very nice, book. I feel like we should give Sam more of a hero moment for appropriately resisting the ring, because not everyone does that.
GIN JENNY: Well, that’s true. I would say that the fact that he’s able to think that thought is—I don’t think the book is underselling how heroic that is of Sam. I
WHISKEY JENNY: Think it undersold it. That was huge. I think it undersold it.
GIN JENNY: I do think that in the context of everyone else being so tempted by the ring, that for Sam to be able to ultimately give the ring back to Frodo, which is what he does—
WHISKEY JENNY: Is huge.
GIN JENNY: Well, it’s a huge moment. I am not sure I agree that the book undersells. It I thought it was really impressive.
WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t think the book undersells the moment where he gives it back. I think it undersells the moment where he resists the temptation while he’s wearing it.
GIN JENNY: Well, I might argue, though, that we know that hobbits are more resilient to the ring’s temptation than some other species, like humans. And also, Sam has never had the ring before, so this is his first ever time being tempted.
WHISKEY JENNY: Sure. Fine. You hate Sam. [LAUGHTER] I see how it is. You’re on the book’s side. [LAUGHTER] No, I’m kidding. I get what you’re saying. I just wish that the book, instead of framing it like Sam doesn’t deserve this, I wish it had framed it like Sam is great because he thinks he doesn’t deserve this.
GIN JENNY: But you know, no one deserves the type of power that the ring is promising. No one deserves that.
WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, I do. I don’t know what you’re talking about. [LAUGHTER] Sorry, hard agree with that statement as well.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: So I don’t think it’s a slam on Sam that he recognizes that.
WHISKEY JENNY: Mm-hmm. Yeah, OK.
GIN JENNY: But the moment where he gives the ring back to Frodo really is extremely lovely. Frodo is like, how dare you take it, give it back to me. And he’s angry for a second.
WHISKEY JENNY: Calls him a thief.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, calls him a thief. He’s really mean to him. And Sam also experiences a moment where he’s like, I don’t want to give it back. But he does. Frodo takes it back and is immediately very sorry for calling Sam a thief.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I was about to be so mad at Frodo, but then he immediately was like, oh God, I’m so sorry, what have I done? I forgave him a little bit.
GIN JENNY: And then it’s just intense slogging.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I was like, oh God. Oh God, I thought we’d finally gotten to Mordor, and now it’s just more slogging.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. They have nothing to eat. They have nothing to drink.
WHISKEY JENNY: I feel like particularly in this part, also, I had no idea of the geography of anything.
GIN JENNY: Me either.
WHISKEY JENNY: Like when Sam is running around that tower and then they have to get through the watchers—
GIN JENNY: Somewhere.
WHISKEY JENNY: Twice? I was like, why is this thing inside Mordor also guarding this one—I didn’t understand their purpose. So I was like, I don’t know where anything is and everything is just awful all the time.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yeah. I didn’t know how much ground they were covering. It was all very confusing.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, because at first it seemed like they were going to take a week, and then they fall in with a group of orcs that think they are also orcs and are like, march with us, you must. And they cover ridiculous amounts of ground in a day. It’s very confusing.
GIN JENNY: What I would posit is that it was going to take a week because they would have to be very sneaky and go in a roundabout way. But instead they were able to be on the main roads and moving quickly.
WHISKEY JENNY: I see. I kept expecting them to have to drink that orc potion that gives you strength and power.
GIN JENNY: Oh yeah!
WHISKEY JENNY: Which they gave to Merry and Pippin a bunch, but they never gave to Sam and Frodo. And I was like, that would have really helped this moment. But I will say, I feel like Sam and Frodo get saved maybe three too many times by orc infighting. It’s awfully convenient.
GIN JENNY: Well, it is. But also, just based on how much infighting there is amongst our own actual heroes, it does not surprise me that the orcs, who are evil, have even more infighting.
WHISKEY JENNY: That’s true. And there is sort of precedent beforehand. But it was just like, every time you think things are going to go bad to, the orcs just kill each other they’re like, oh great! And Sam and Frodo step over the bodies.
GIN JENNY: And they walk off. Yeah. [LAUGHTER] I will say, one thing I really appreciated in this section as Frodo and Sam are trudging, that Tolkien gives us a little timing updates. They’re trudging, they’re trudging. And Tolkien’s like, at this point, Theoden was dying on Pelennor Fields kind of thing. It was really nice.
WHISKEY JENNY: I liked that as well. I was really sad for Sam that he had to throw his beloved pans away.
GIN JENNY: Oh, me too. Yeah, they have to really divest of all their belongings.
WHISKEY JENNY: They’re like, we’re not going to make it. We have a week more to go—or maybe a day, I don’t know. [LAUGHTER] Who knows distances? But they have to get rid of everything to lighten their load. He had to get rid of his pans that he carried all the way into Mordor.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Then there was a line where Sam talks about trying to comfort Frodo with his arms and body. [LAUGHTER] And I was just like, oh Tolkien, you can’t just leave that out there for the fanfic writers to come along and pick up. You can’t just—[LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: I did think that. Yes, I noted that also.
WHISKEY JENNY: But then Sam literally carries Frodo on his back to Mount Doom, and it’s—oh God. So many tears. OK, so then we get to Mount Doom.
GIN JENNY: Gollum has been following them, and it’s decided that Frodo is going to go ahead to Mount Doom to throw the ring in, and Sam’s going to stay behind and fight Gollum. He takes pity on Gollum. He’s going to kill him. He has him where he wants him and he’s going to kill him, but he feels sorry for him and he lets Gollum live. This turns out to be a very momentous decision by Sam, because what happens at the crucial moment? What does Frodo do?
WHISKEY JENNY: Frodo can’t throw it away. Frodo is in the clutches of the power of the ring and is like, no, it’s mine. I’m claiming it, and puts it on. Sauron is like, oh shit, things are bad for me right now, and turns all of his attention to them. Which I imagine means that the Nazguls just drop out of the sky, because they no longer have the will to fly.
So Frodo has the ring on. He becomes invisible. Gollum is like, no! My precious! Leaps upon Frodo and is grappling with him. Bites off his finger with the ring on it.
GIN JENNY: Bite off his finger!
WHISKEY JENNY: So then Frodo reappears, he’s no longer invisible, and is like, ah, my hand! And Gollum is dancing around in glee, like, I got it, I got it, yay! And then falls to the fire.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. So turns out it was a good thing for Sam to leave him alive, but so much for Gollum.
WHISKEY JENNY: So much for the ring as well.
GIN JENNY: So much for the ring. And Sauron.
WHISKEY JENNY: I couldn’t remember, also when I was reading this I was like, does this mean that the whole thing is over?
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I wasn’t really sure about that either. Like, do the orcs know? The orcs that are fighting the humans, are they aware that they’re no longer—that they’ve have been let go?
WHISKEY JENNY: It seems like they kind of sense it. But there’s some skirmishes for everyone to clean up afterwards, but it seems like kind of yes. This means that yay, it’s over. That was huge.
And I want to point out that this happens like halfway through my copy of the book. And I was like, what else is going to— How much more do we have?
GIN JENNY: There’s still the Scouring of the Shire.
WHISKEY JENNY: I know. I don’t want to read that.
GIN JENNY: Well, we must. Yeah well, what really got me was, it flashes us back to the humans and everyone else fighting, fighting Sauron. And Gandalf cries out, “The realm of Sauron has ended. The ringbearer has fulfilled his quest.” And I was very emotional about that.
WHISKEY JENNY: That was so great. And I love the image of Gandalf being like, hey, eagle, we have a job to do, and flying off on an eagle to go save them is pretty dope. And also, the mountain is disintegrating at Sam and Frodo’s feet. And Frodo is like, “I’m glad you are here with me, here at the end of all things, Sam.” And they’re very sweet together, just like, well, we did it and now we’re going to die. And then they don’t! A fucking eagle comes up and they fly away on an eagle. [LAUGHTER] It’s so dope.
GIN JENNY: Well, OK, so this is what I had a problem with. They wake up back in Gondor. And they’ve been through so much. And Gandalf’s like, OK, it’s time to let go meet the king. And they’re like, oh, we don’t have any meeting the king clothes. And Gandalf won’t give them fresh clothes to wear. I think it’s really uncool.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Aw. Well, I see Gandalf’s point, too. It’s like, what you are wearing is the garb of the biggest hero in the land right now.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, but since they are the heroes and not their clothes, whatever they wear is now the garb of the greatest hero of the land.
WHISKEY JENNY: Sure. Also true.
GIN JENNY: So I just don’t know why they can’t have a bath and put on some nice clothes.
WHISKEY JENNY: But then they get to come out and people sing songs about them. And they’re so touched.
GIN JENNY: And Aragorn kneels down to them. Oh man, I got really choked up.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, I know, and puts them up on the throne, right?
GIN JENNY: Yeah [SIGH] Oh, Aragorn.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, Strider. And I like how Frodo and Sam are so happy. Like, oh, it’s Strider! Oh, good. [LAUGHTER] We know him! How you doing, buddy? They have no idea. It’s so cute. [LAUGHTER]
And then there’s a big feast. And then after the big feast we find out—the last we heard from Pippin in that battle was that he’d blacked out. And then we hear that Gimli saved him and saw a little pair of hobbit feet underneath a pile of bodies and dragged him out, and was really worried and tearing his beard out that he was dead, which is really sweet.
GIN JENNY: That is really sweet.
WHISKEY JENNY: They’re all having this nice moment, catching each other up on what everybody had been doing. And Merry and Pippin are way taller because they’ve been drinking ent stuff. And it’s so cute. And then, my experience of reading that was like, everyone’s having a nice lovely time. And then Gandalf is like, OK, they all really have been through a lot, so you should probably go get some more rest. And then Legolas is like, hey, I don’t need sleep. Remember that? I’m great. Bye. [LAUGHTER] It’s like, screw you, Legolas! We’re having a moment. He’s so annoying. [LAUGHTER] Well, I don’t need to sleep, so.
GIN JENNY: Well, good for you, Legolas.
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m immortal and perfect. bye.
GIN JENNY: Elves!
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, man. Elves. I just don’t know.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. And so that’s the end of the section. It’s a lot.
WHISKEY JENNY: Hooray!
GIN JENNY: Hooray! They did it. They tried so hard and they did it.
WHISKEY JENNY: It was a really big job, but they did it.
GIN JENNY: So next time we’re going to finish book 6. And then all we’ll have left is the appendices.
Well, we wanted to talk today about books we changed our minds about, and Lord of the Rings is actually a big one for me.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh really? How so?
GIN JENNY: For years I didn’t read these books. My older sister really loved Lord of the Rings. It was never my thing. I would always try and read them and I would wash out at Tom Bombadil.
WHISKEY JENNY: Tom Bombadil!
GIN JENNY: Boo! I think the furthest I ever made it was through the Council of Elrond. And then the movies came out, and I really liked Fellowship of the Ring, the movie. And it was a long time until the next movie was going to come out, so I decided to just skip reading Fellowship of the Ring and go straight to The Two Towers. And when I did that it worked great. I loved The Two Towers. I read Return of the King. And then when I finished reading Return of the King, I went back and read Fellowship of the Ring, and then it worked for me.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh. Yeah, interesting. So you’d already formed an attachment to all the characters.
GIN JENNY: Right, exactly. And I think that carried me through.
So I have a question. Because I’ve thought about this a lot, and I came up with nothing. What do you think makes a book hit you differently on a reread? Because I couldn’t figure out how to predict if a book was going to hit me differently on a reread.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I don’t really have anything predictable. I don’t have an algorithm either, I’m afraid. Because I think the book doesn’t change, you do. So it’s all the vagaries of human—
GIN JENNY: Character.
WHISKEY JENNY: Character development, I guess? I don’t know. And I think also I reread things less than you.
GIN JENNY: That’s true.
WHISKEY JENNY: So a lot of what I have written down is mostly about genres.
GIN JENNY: Oh, sure.
WHISKEY JENNY: And not so much specific books. So I particularly don’t have an algorithm for specific books. But I think, yeah, you’re in a different place whenever you reread it afterwards, because time marches ever forward.
GIN JENNY: True.
WHISKEY JENNY: It depends entirely upon you.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. It really brings into sharp relief the fact that reading is a relationship that involves two parties, the book and the reader. And sometimes it feels like the book is doing everything, but no, you as the reader are bringing a lot to it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. You absolutely are.
GIN JENNY: Well what are some genres that you’ve changed your mind about? I’m very interested. Because I have a lot of individual books and not so many genre changes.
WHISKEY JENNY: Interesting. Well, I’ll start with the—well, not negatives. But I’ll start with the ones that I’m much more wary of these days.
GIN JENNY: OK.
WHISKEY JENNY: Not that I won’t read them, but I won’t just pick it up willy-nilly. Something I have to have a strong recommendation, or a strong review or something like that. I’m not willing to waste my time reading a bad one, I guess, on these.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, totally.
WHISKEY JENNY: So the first one of these I wrote down is the sort of modern day—like a rom com in a book form. You know what style I’m talking about? Like the covers are that font.
GIN JENNY: Yes. I know exactly. And like a woman kicking a high heel.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, exactly. So when these are good, I really enjoy them. And I don’t want this to be taken as a crap on any of these genres whatsoever. When these are good, I like them. But I’m just much less willing to waste my time on a bad one, which is entirely me. I used to eat these up. But now I think I’m an old, bitter hag, and I need it to be good, or I have to be in a particular place if I’m good to sit through beautiful people finding love, whereas I’ve found none in my cold, dark heart.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: One of these for me is actually boarding school books, which I know is kind of shocking, because they’ve been like—
WHISKEY JENNY: [GASP] Really!
GIN JENNY: I know. I mean, it’s the same as you say about rom com books. It’s not that I don’t enjoy them—I really do. It’s just that I’m less willing to sit through bad ones than I used to be. I just have several books on my list that have been on my TBR list for a while, and the main draw of them was that they had a boarding school and maybe some magic. And I really do still like boarding schools and magic, but I just need more now.
WHISKEY JENNY: Exactly. It just can’t be the only draw anymore.
GIN JENNY: Right, exactly. Which is sad. I mean, I kind of liked it when I would be able to take enjoyment from just any boarding school book that I read, even if it wasn’t that good. But that’s just really not the case anymore.
WHISKEY JENNY: So I would say YA dystopias—
GIN JENNY: Ooh, yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: And fantasy books I would put in this category, as well. And I don’t think I have changed. I think that there are just so many now that I’m exhausted by them.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: I agree. I think because it’s a more buzzy genre than it used to be, publishers are more eager to publish them in quantity.
WHISKEY JENNY: Sure. Yeah, no, I mean, I get it. They want to make money, and I, too, love The Hunger Games. But some of them are real, real bad, and I don’t want to waste my time on them.
GIN JENNY: That’s what I mean. I think, as a function of quantity, there’s just more bad ones out there than there used to be.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, yeah, exactly. It’s a volume issue.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. OK, so I have one. This is a specific book, but it also kind of typifies my approach to this genre. There’s this genre of books where there are two timelines—we’ve talked about this—and one of them is taking place in history and one of them is taking place in the present day. And often the present day people are researching the past times people. It used to be this genre was catnip to me, even though I almost never actually enjoyed the books in this genre, because it’s very hard to pull off, and almost always it does not work.
But for the longest time to me, A.S. Byatt’s book Possession was the shining example of that genre. I would read a book in that genre and I’d be like, well, this is not as good as Possession. And the first time I read it, I couldn’t put it down. It blew me away. I think I finished it and then read it immediately again. And then when I reread it, I was like, huh. This is a book. [LAUGHTER] And it was really sad, because now I don’t have—I think that losing it as an example of that genre has made me very unwilling to read books in the genre anymore. Which is too bad, because when it’s good, I think it could be really good. But it never is.
WHISKEY JENNY: Did you not have any other examples of successful iterations of this?
GIN JENNY: Not really. Arcadia, by Tom Stoppard, but that’s a play.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, that still counts.
GIN JENNY: OK, then that one. That is the only one now.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s all on you, Arcadia.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: But I have reread, and I have a radio play of Arcadia that I relistened to quite a lot, and it’s really held up over the years. So I’m not worried that I’m going to lose Arcadia. But I would say that I have lost hope that I will find another Arcadia.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, sure.
GIN JENNY: So listeners, if you have read a book in this genre that you think is good, please let me know. But I don’t believe that you have.
WHISKEY JENNY: Watch out for bougainvillea if you had.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: A great point, yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: OK, well, the last one that I would say I am wary now of are just classics, and the canon in general.
GIN JENNY: Oh, God, yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: I also feel a lot more comfortable—I used to feel like I was really lacking in the books of the classics that I have read. Which I still am, but I’m less ashamed of it and more like, well, that’s just a fact, and that’s something that I am slowly trying to address. But address in the right way and read the good ones of the established canon, and then make up my own rogue canon as well. Because canon has major, major problems.
GIN JENNY: Yes.
WHISKEY JENNY: So yeah, in general I’m not going read something just because schools read it too.
GIN JENNY: I also used to be much more concerned to read the classics. I went through a phase from middle high school to the end of college where, not just for class but also outside of class, I would read classics just to see. Just to be like, is this any good?
I also think that I tried a lot harder to them than I would now, especially books by white dudes. Whereas now I’m just much less likely to pick up a quote-unquote classic that I haven’t read before. And once I do pick it up, I’m not super invested in finding it good if I don’t actually enjoy it.
WHISKEY JENNY: Which I think is part of our maturation and our trust in our own taste.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. Also I’ve become more critical of the idea of canonicity and the prejudices that have shaped what I consider to be classics.
WHISKEY JENNY: Absolutely.
GIN JENNY: Well, what are some genres that you used to not be crazy about and now you’ve changed your mind and you enjoy?
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I feel like maybe someone could’ve seen this coming, but there are three genres that I used to be terrified of that, through this podcast and others, that I have started reading and become happy with.
GIN JENNY: Yay.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. So I used to be really scared to go into comic stories because it was like a whole other secret society world that I do not belong in. And I really enjoy reading comics now. And I used to feel the same way about science fiction and fanfic. And we had two lovely guests who made reading lists and taught—gave a little extra to us. No. [LAUGHTER] Came along and answered all of my questions about SFF and fanfic, Kay and Renay. That was extremely helpful and such a blast. And I no longer feel afraid of those, as well.
GIN JENNY: Yay!
WHISKEY JENNY: I would say I’ve been more successful so far at seeking out my own fanfiction. I don’t think I’ve found any SFF on my own yet. But I’m not afraid to read it anymore, and I’m sure the day will come where I’m like, hey, have you heard about this great sci-fi book that no one else has heard about but me? [LAUGHTER] That day is coming. I just know it.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. I think that day is coming, too. For sure.
WHISKEY JENNY: So what about you? What have you changed for the better on?
GIN JENNY: I think that—well I will say first, before I get into the genre that I hope I have improved on. I would say that one of my favorite authors, Diana Wynne Jones, I always say that she’s better on a reread. But more specifically, I have liked almost none of her books the first time I read them. Which I think has made me more willing to give books a second look if I don’t enjoy them the first time. Because Diana Wynne Jones’s books, for some reason it just takes me a couple of times through them before I like them. And once I like them, I love them. But it just takes a little persistence, and I don’t know why that is, but it’s been very consistent throughout my life and throughout her many books.
WHISKEY JENNY: Hm. Interesting.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. Genre-wise, I don’t know if this is a function of me becoming more open minded or translators getting better or what, but I have forced myself to read books in translation more, to the point that I now actually get kind of excited about them and do not view them as a chore, which is not a great way for me to have previously viewed them. But it’s good. Like we were talking about Archipelago earlier. There’s several presses that publish literary translation that I’m now genuinely excited for.
And I think it’s a self-fulfilling thing, in the same way that I’ve made myself like certain foods by insisting I like them and eating them a lot of times, like spinach and egg rolls. I did consciously decide, I’m going to teach myself to like spinach, and I’m going to teach myself to like translation. And it worked. I did it, successfully. Moderately successfully.
WHISKEY JENNY: Hooray! Congratulations.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m so pleased.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I’m really pleased, too. And I’m hoping that as time goes on I will really fall in love with more books in translation. Because there’s a few that I’ve fallen in love with, which is awesome. And I just hope to continue that pattern, because the books that I love, I really, really love. And I think it makes me a better reader.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. And I think—obviously you’re still subject to the vagaries of what gets translated and what doesn’t, but I think it opens up so many more options.
GIN JENNY: It does, definitely. And I think that there’s a lot of really good, interesting translated work being published. And I hope that that also continues.
WHISKEY JENNY: Totally. I was just thinking, I think because of the strength of the recommendation of Signs Preceding the End of the World, I was like, Gin Jenny claims that she doesn’t like books in translation, but there’s an awful lot that she does like that are translated. [LAUGHTER] So you did it, yeah.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I did it. I mean, Signs Preceding the End of the World and HHhH are two books in translation that I genuinely really love so much and advocate for a lot. It’s pretty good. That’s better than zero.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.
GIN JENNY: So basically what I think it, is salutary to keep growing as a reader. And I hope that I never become so calcified in my tastes that I won’t try something new.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, totally. One day I’ll read all the books.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: No I won’t.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Actually, you know what I would like to work on, Whiskey Jenny, that I haven’t?
WHISKEY JENNY: What’s that?
GIN JENNY: Mysteries. I’m not great about reading mysteries.
WHISKEY JENNY: Mysteries! Gosh, I love them so much.
GIN JENNY: I do try them periodically, and very often I don’t care for them. So maybe I just need to persist. I don’t know.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Well, I don’t know how it worked with spinach and egg rolls, but anything you learned from that you can apply to mysteries?
GIN JENNY: I’m not sure of the answer to that. Well, one problem I think that I have is that a lot of mysteries that are quite popular are also quite violent, and I don’t want to do that to myself.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, but there’s a whole genre of cozy mysteries.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, but those are too cozy.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh. Ah.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, see, I’m hard to please. This is the problem.
WHISKEY JENNY: You really are. All right.
GIN JENNY: I know. I know, I am, I know.
WHISKEY JENNY: All right, well someday we’ll find your Goldilocks of a mystery.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yes, exactly. I will also say, before we leave this topic, I think that one big thing that causes me to change my mind about books is that I become more conscious of the author’s prejudice. So I think that I’m, for instance, much more aware of racial stereotyping than I used to be, certainly when I was a kid. And that makes it hard to enjoy some books.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, totally. I’m also just way more aware as an adult than I was as a child. But again, I don’t reread as much, so I don’t experience that disappointment as much, I don’t think. But when it happens, gosh, it sure is disappointing, both in yourself and the author.
GIN JENNY: Because I want them and past me to be better.
WHISKEY JENNY: Exactly, yeah.
GIN JENNY: But it’s also kind of good. I mean, there’s a part of me that, even though I’m sad, I’m kind of like, well that’s one less book that I need to bother about.
WHISKEY JENNY: No, obviously it’s ultimately for the good to be able to look critically at that sort of thing. And I didn’t even talk about when shitty stuff comes out about an author. Because I was like, I can’t even deal with that right now in my life. But obviously that also changes my opinion of books.
GIN JENNY: And see, that to me is sad in a way that finding out that the book is flawed is not. Because sometimes the book is still really good. Like Alice Walker has some pretty anti-Semitic views, but The Color Purple is still a really good book, and so that’s a challenging and disappointing thing to grapple with.
WHISKEY JENNY: Indeed.
GIN JENNY: Speaking of changing our minds, Whiskey Jenny, what did you—yeah, go ahead.
WHISKEY JENNY: OK. So I originally picked An Orchestra of Minorities. But then Gin Jenny started it before I did and did not want to read it for podcast, and so we moved on to Big Dead Place, by Nicholas Johnson, which is a nonfiction book about working in Antarctica, which we had heard about because we read South Pole for podcast. And I think in her footnotes, or her acknowledgments at the end, she talks about how a lot of the details about actually working in Antarctica, which were our favorite part of the book, she got from this book. So we thought well, we should just read that instead. So we did. What did you think about it overall?
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: There is just so much bro stuff in this book that I found it a little exhausting. The details were indeed extremely interesting, and I really enjoyed hearing that stuff. But it just sounds like the culture in Antarctica is super bro-y, and the writer takes a kind of weird, defensive tone about it at times that I didn’t like. So mixed feelings, I guess. It was an enjoyable book to read, but I kind of hated the author, and I kind of hated everyone at the South Pole.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, man. I feel like I should have, but that did not bother me so much. I was more astounded by the corporate greed on display.
GIN JENNY: Oh, really. Oh interesting. Say more.
WHISKEY JENNY: The thing that I was like, holy shit, humans are awful was, at the company that they all work for—which is like three subcontractors away from the National Science Foundation—I don’t even know. This book explained it and I still don’t understand who this man is actually working for.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yeah. Same.
WHISKEY JENNY: But there’s so many companies, and there’s always changing policies. And they’ll just cut bonuses without warning. And management is just trying to save their own ass. There’s asbestos and they’re trying to cover it up. Like, why is there not a Pelican Brief movie about the fact that there was asbestos, that these people were inhaling asbestos, and they were trying to cover it up! And successfully covered it up I think, because I was googling “Antarctica asbestos” afterwards and couldn’t really find anything. So I hope those people are all OK. But yeah, every single instance about that, about the company was willing for people to be at risk or die just so it would making money.
GIN JENNY: Maybe this just means I’m very cynical, but none of that surprised me at all. I was just like, yup, yup, this sounds like companies. Yup.
WHISKEY JENNY: No, it didn’t surprise me, but just the extent at which it’s documented in this, and all of our own cynicism at it, also.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, for sure. I think this goes back a little bit to the bro-y-ness that bugs me, because I thought that the author made a false equivalency between some of the corrupt and pointless bureaucratic stuff that the companies were doing with the companies’ very halfhearted efforts to improve the work environment there or back up harassment claims. He kind of made it sound like those two things were equally ridiculous. And it’s like, those aren’t, though. You should not harass people that you work with. And you shouldn’t make a hostile work environment to your fellow Antarcticans. It bugged me; I thought he was trivializing that stuff.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I definitely agree that he’s putting those things in the same bucket.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. I mean, it really just sounds awful there, by the way. Across the board, both the company stuff and the culture there both sound so horrible.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Well, I think I was more still like, huh, maybe I’ll look for a job there [LAUGHTER] than you are. But the company part sounded awful.
GIN JENNY: But they do crappy pranks on each other. You hate pranks.
WHISKEY JENNY: That’s right. I did kind of forget that prank at the end. They sent a guy to Russia!
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: A guy went to Russia! Yeah, there were a lot of large and small pranks. And I was like, who benefits by this?
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I don’t know. But people really do go crazy in Antarctica. It was madness. No, you’re right, you’re right. I should be relatable.
GIN JENNY: You would hate it.
WHISKEY JENNY: I would hate it. I would.
GIN JENNY: I think you would hate it even more than I would hate it.
WHISKEY JENNY: I think you’re right. I think also there’s such a layer of weird hierarchy within this society of people who work in Antarctica that he was talking about. You’re a Fingee when you first get there, which stands for Fucking New Guy. And once you’re not that it’s like, well have you done a winter over? And once you’ve done that it’s like, well have you done have you done a portion at Pole instead of McMurdo. There’s just all these tiny little one-upmanships that are always taking place. And I think that would always drive me nuts. There’s so much departmental stuff.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: That was the part of the book that I liked the best is the office life. You know what I mean, your work life living in Antarctica. Because that stuff gets really intense just in an office that you can leave at the end of the day, let alone if you’re stuck there all winter and no one can go outside.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, no, I agree. And that part is the most fascinating. I really want just a workplace comedy sitcom of Antarctica, because I think it would be amazing. There’s so much already in here. That lady who started vacuuming at 10:01 am on New Year’s Day because quiet hours end at 10:00. [LAUGHTER] That’s amazing.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yeah, that is such an aggro move and I love it.
WHISKEY JENNY: That sort of weird human nature stuff through an office, I agree, was fascinating.
GIN JENNY: And the author clearly has some perspective on it in some ways, and in other ways is just 100% in it. Like there’s a part where he’s talking about someone bringing tons of ET figurines that show up all over the station, and he’s obviously so annoyed.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: He’s really hating those things! [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: He’s just failing to contain his rage at the ET figurines.
WHISKEY JENNY: He really was, yeah. I think he was trying to, and it did not succeed.
GIN JENNY: It did not work.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: We know that you hate them, Nick.
GIN JENNY: Like not in the jokey way. Genuinely, truly felt an antipathy to these things.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I also really enjoyed, from people staying over at winter, there are actual bodily things that happen to you that cause you to feel like everything is sluggish and your brain doesn’t work. And everyone just mutually agrees that when you’re talking and people just fade off in the conversation and start staring at the wall, you don’t address it. That’s the end of the conversation then.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Oh, man, yeah. It really made it feel very vivid, what it’s like to be over there.
WHISKEY JENNY: I have a question.
GIN JENNY: OK.
WHISKEY JENNY: How long has this guy worked there? Over what time period did this book take place? A year? Ten years?
GIN JENNY: Not sure. It could be either of those.
WHISKEY JENNY: So I feel like that was maybe one feeling in the fact that I could never figure out, when he’s jumping around anecdotes, where he was in his career. Not so much his stint, because he always tells you like, the winfly was about to come in, or whatever, and you have to check the glossary, which is fun. But how long he was in his career. And I also thought that—I mean, I’m really just here for this string of anecdotes about Antarctic life, so it didn’t ruin it for me, but this man needs to learn a segue.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yeah, he jumps around a lot.
WHISKEY JENNY: Like, so much. There are many chapters still where I’m like, I don’t know what the unifying theme to that chapter was.
GIN JENNY: And I did think he lacked a certain level of introspection about his own behavior and the behavior of his colleagues.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. There are a couple of things about racism and like, oof. The n-word gets used. There’s some stuff about—he just sort of mentions that it’s mostly White people who take this job. And I really thought that that needed more exploration. He just sort of like recounts this n-word incident as another weird thing that happened. And yeah, it’s pretty gross.
GIN JENNY: There’s a part where it’s a Halloween party and one of his co-workers comes to his room dressed like a Nazi soldier with a Hitler mustache. And he just kind of breezes past that. He’s just like, eh, Halloween.
WHISKEY JENNY: You know. We’re kooky.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. And he’s just really clearly not giving it any critical thought at all.
WHISKEY JENNY: Someone also recounts a story about murdering puppies when he was a child, which I feel like we all know is a classic sign that things are not OK.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: And then is like, well, but you know explorers kill dogs, too, to eat them. Which is—
GIN JENNY: Pretty different.
WHISKEY JENNY: I feel like not the same thing. Obviously explorers have a lot to answer for, but I’m not sure that that’s one of them.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: They’re not doing it for fun.
GIN JENNY: [LAUGHTER] Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: I just thought that was—yeah. Speaking of weird things to equate.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Gosh, the anecdotes were so interesting, and I really did enjoy getting a sense of what life would be like there. But it did sound like I would hate life there with such an intensity.
WHISKEY JENNY: You’re right. I’m still, but it would be cool! I’m not being self-reflective enough. I would. I would hate it. It would be awful. Or I would go crazy and—
GIN JENNY: Kill a puppy.
WHISKEY JENNY: God no! [LAUGHTER] But I mean, I feel like there are a couple of people—I think Jane and Sasha eventually staged tiny little—not tiny, but little rebellions against the ridiculous changing HR policies and cut bonuses and fines for rooms being messy after three inspections—or after one inspection when they were told it would be three inspections. And they finally are trying to pin the company down and be like, what are the expectations and what are the consequences? And no one will ever answer them. And I feel like that would drive me nuts, as well. I would go crazy.
GIN JENNY: Yes, I would too. One thing that I did like, that I thought was really funny. He talks about how everyone always says—the company say this and the people say this—it’s a harsh continent.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Whelp, it’s a harsh continent.
GIN JENNY: And they would just say it in response—any time something went wrong, it’s a harsh continent.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, like an HR policy has failed about a room cleaning, and they’re like, well, it’s a harsh continent.
GIN JENNY: It’s a harsh continent.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: And I think he mentions this, too. Everything he’s struggling against is man made and not—
GIN JENNY: The climate. I love that. I want to adopt that in my daily life.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, it’s a harsh continent. Move on. [LAUGHTER]
I thought the one prank where they stole parts of the cook’s new stove and sent him ransom notes that he would have to sing a song in front of the all-team meeting in order to get them back. So he gets up and is like, for ransom I have to do this, and starts singing “I’m a Little Teapot.” [LAUGHTER] I assume that then the kidnapping was resolved. That was a charming one. The other ones are kind of horrifying and sometimes involved death threats.
GIN JENNY: Yeah!
WHISKEY JENNY: When he was like, sometimes people do fun things if you don’t log out of your computer, and then word for word recounts a horrifying death threat email.
GIN JENNY: Oh man. I definitely could not cut it in Antarctica. That’s my takeaway.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. But again, not because it’s a harsh continent. [LAUGHTER] It’s because of HR, and because of the other people.
GIN JENNY: Yes, 100%. I am sorry again that I failed at reading the proposed podcast book. It was really not for me.
WHISKEY JENNY: That’s OK. Whenever that happens I feel like I’m saved and I’m like, oh, OK. I don’t have to read it either.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: And I’m glad we got a chance to read this. It’s been on our radar for several years.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, totally. I feel like this deepens our understanding of what a harsh continent Antarctica is.
GIN JENNY: [LAUGHTER] Yes, I definitely agree.
WHISKEY JENNY: What are we reading next time, Gin Jenny?
GIN JENNY: So for next time we are reading Gingerbread, by Helen Oyeyemi, which I still to this day, I’ve read like 16 reviews of this book and I still have no idea what it’s about. It involves gingerbread and fairy tales, and that’s pretty much all that I have on it. It’s set in a fictional country. There’s a mother and daughter and they have this special gingerbread that they make. I’m excited for it. I love Helen Oyeyemi, as we have discussed.
WHISKEY JENNY: I am I’m hopeful.
GIN JENNY: I think your favorite of her books was Mr. Fox, right?
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I’ve only read Mr. Fox and Boy, Snow, Bird. I loved Mr. Fox. Boy Snow, Bird took a real turn at the end that made me not like it so much. And so we’ll see how this one goes.
GIN JENNY: You’re 50/50.
WHISKEY JENNY: But I adored Mr. Fox, and that is a book that I cannot shut up about and have recommended a whole bunch.
GIN JENNY: And I love her writing, so just for that alone I’m excited for it.
All right. Well, this has been the Reading the End bookcast with the demographically similar Jennys. You can visit the blog at readingtheend.com. You can follow us on Twitter @readingtheend. We’re both on Goodreads as Whiskey Jenny and Gin Jenny. And you can email us 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; it helps other people find the podcast.
Until next time, a quote from And The Ocean Was Our Sky, by Patrick Ness and Rovina Cai. “For there are devils in the deep, but worst are the ones we make.” Oh, that’s actually quite apt to Antarctica.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. No, it’s perfect.
GIN JENNY: Did not do that on purpose, but I’m happy about it.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s amazing. [LAUGHTER] It’s a harsh continent.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Clink.
WHISKEY JENNY: Clink.
[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.