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Author: Gin Jenny

In which I reveal the obsessive side of my nature

This is a longstanding complaint really, but I’ve been reminded of it today by Paperback Reader‘s lovely shelf of beige books.  See those Salman Rushdie books?  This is the source of my displeasure.  Because I like Salman Rushdie quite a lot.  In fact I am thinking it is probably time to read Shalimar the Clown, one of two of Rushdie’s books that I’ve been saving.  I like Salman Rushdie a lot, and I like these editions of his books (link is to The Moor’s Last Sigh, the other of Rushdie’s books I’m saving for myself).  But they don’t have my…

21 Comments

The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers, ed. Barbara Reynolds

This is the first volume of Dorothy Sayers’s letters, actually. It’s properly called, The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: 1899 – 1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist.  I am displeased at having two colons in the title.   You know what was most satisfying about this book?  How when I got all through with it, I kept remembering bits of it and thinking, Darn, wish I’d marked that passage, and then glancing back through the book and finding that I had.  Hurrah for me! Dorothy Sayers was an interesting lady, and this book covers the period of her life with…

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Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers

A few days ago, my friend tim mentioned Gaudy Night, and I realized that I wanted nothing in the world more than to read Gaudy Night.  I know I refused to read it or even think about it earlier this year when I was reading Strong Poison, but I have rarely enjoyed a reread as much as I did this one.  Reading Gaudy Night this time was like eating cilantro – you know what it’s going to be like, and you are thinking, man, this is going to be great, but no matter how high your expectations are, you find…

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West with the Night, Beryl Markham

For Jeane’s Dog Ear Challenge: West with the Night was the nonfiction book on an obscure topic/on a topic you don’t often read about.  I had a broad selection of Jeane recommendations for this one, since she is always reading books that sound interesting but that I would never pick up on my own. West with the Night is Beryl Markham’s memoir of growing up on her father’s farm in Africa, and becoming a horse trainer, and eventually learning to fly a plane.  Beryl Markham sounds like a pretty cool person, though from reading her Wikipedia article it sounds like…

14 Comments

Mothering Sunday, Noel Streatfeild

Mothering Sunday is the first Streatfeild book I’ve read that was written for adults – unless you count On Tour, which I guess you maybe could since it talks (albeit obliquely) about Victoria’s shocking flirty behavior.  In Mothering Sunday, Anna, the mother of five grown-up children, has started acting strangely.  She refuses to allow her favorite granddaughter to visit anymore; there are rumors that she has taken to wandering around aimlessly at night; and she refuses to even mention the name of her youngest son, Tony, who is involved in some unnamed disgrace.  The four older children agree to get…

8 Comments

Odd and the Frost Giants, Neil Gaiman

Imagine my surprise when I discovered this at the bookshop!  The American bookshop because the book is here in America now!  Who knew?  It’s thrilling!  Odd and the Frost Giants is about a boy called Odd who has bad luck.  His father has drowned, and his stepfather doesn’t much care for him, and an accident with a tree has left him with serious and lasting injuries to one of his legs.  He runs away from home, into the forest, where he meets a bear, a fox, and an eagle, who actually are Thor, Loki, and Odin, cast out of Asgard…

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Ballerina, Edward Stewart

Many thanks to Schatzi for the recommendation; I enjoyed it so much.  Ballerina is about these two girls, Christine and Stephanie, who are dancers in the same ballet school; upon graduation, they wind up in separate ballet companies but remain quite close.  Stephanie has a crazy stage mother who ditched ballet For a Man, and Christine, who is rich, has some sort of medical Condition, severe social anxiety, and parents who never come to see her dance.  There are lots of bitchy gay dancers and a slutty Russian guy that Christine and Stephanie get into a big fight over.  Heeheehee,…

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A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, Josh Neufeld

A.D. is a graphic novel about seven people from New Orleans.  The author interviewed these people extensively, visited New Orleans, took pictures, and then created this book.  It tells the stories of people who left and people who stayed, wealthyish people and poorish people, black people and white people. I liked reading this book, because it aligns very nicely with my memories of the hurricane.  The high school kids talked about how they were going to miss a couple of days of school, and everyone expected it to turn east the way they always do, and the doctor has a…

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I am a fail book blogger

I realized yesterday that I hadn’t read any of my other books for the RIP IV Challenge, and they all came due today, and I had to renew them by an unnecessarily complicated process because the library is also being fail lately.  Anyway so I grabbed Let The Right One In (why is it called Let Me In on my copy?) to read it and I came to a realization. I am just tired of vampires.  I have had enough.  There are vampires everywhere and it is too many vampires, and I need a break from them.  But there is…

30 Comments

Noel Streatfeild

I love me some Noel Streatfeild.  Turns out, she wrote several fictionalized autobiographical books about her life, and I just read two of them, A Vicarage Family and On Tour.  I think there is one more but my library very unobligingly does not have it.  She was the second of four children, and often felt out of place in her family.  Her older sister, Isobel, had asthma and as they had not yet invented the glory that is Albuterol, she was often an invalid.  The younger sister, Louise, was the beauty of the family and apparently never gave any trouble…

20 Comments