I named my links round-up after the first link in the bunch because if I named it after the last link I would cry. This is a horrible week, and I haven’t been able to do much reading yet of the no-doubt-terrific analysis that folks are doing on the situation in Minneapolis. In lieu of that, I’ll just link to the bail fund and encourage folks to donate. I also very much encourage you to call your secretaries of state and ask them to enable expanded mail-in voting for future elections. This country. Anyway. Some links! Here are so, so…
Leave a CommentAuthor: Gin Jenny
Attentive listeners will notice this is NOT the podcast in which we review Quan Berry’s book We Ride Upon Sticks, and also that one of us Jennys is absent from it. Whiskey Jenny is taking a short podcast break (everything is fine! she just needed a pause!), but since we both want you to have cheery quarantine content to enjoy, I am pressing on, with the assistance of some kind and helpful guest hosts. Today I’m welcoming Friend of the Podcast Renay to chat about the media we’re consuming in quarantine, how the heck to recommend comfort reads effectively, and…
Leave a CommentWelp, the end of another week is upon us. Is the weekend a punishment or a reward, or neither? What distinguishes our days, if we can’t even go to the goddamn library? (Oh my God I miss the library.) (I don’t want the library to reopen until it can do so in a way that’s safe for library workers; I just miss it.) I have a plan to mark the passage of time by making a new batch of frozen breakfast burritos. This seems fine, but do you remember the time Before when a person could go out to a…
Leave a CommentRemember a long time ago when you first read Donna Tartt’s debut novel The Secret History? Remember how you were like, blown away by it? And then some time went by and maybe you sort of forgot or didn’t trust the memory of how wildly in love with it you were? Especially because the books you read the year you studied abroad all feel like a weird fever dream because you were terribly depressed that year (like the time you read The Time Traveler’s Wife and were so consumed by grief that you literally couldn’t get out of bed for…
1 CommentThe coronavirus situation sure does continue to continue, doesn’t it? I hope everyone who is reading this and all your families are doing okay on health and okay on money, and that you have plenty of nice things to keep your head above water in the midst of all these terrible things. Suzanne Walker considers the disability narrative (such as it is) in the otherwise really fun show The Witcher. No one knows anything, and everyone’s mad. Anne Helen Peterson continuing to bring truly excellent reporting on the human elements of the pandemic. Ancient monks struggled with isolation, too. Naomi…
Leave a CommentWho here has seen Harvey, anyone? The old movie where Jimmy Stewart has an invisible friend that is a six-foot-tall rabbit named Harvey, and this friendship causes some anxiety to his friends and relations? I ask because there’s a scene late in the movie where Jimmy Stewart says, “In this world, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant. Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.” A of all, I am pleased to have quoted him. Secondly, this moment from the movie Harvey exactly sums up my approach to language. For years…
Leave a CommentI recently began reading fairy tales to my little nephew, on the grounds that everyone should know fairy tales and he hasn’t really experienced them before. He was either into it or giving a good impression of being into it because he’s very into me: We read “Snow White” first and then he picked out “Rumpelstiltskin” and “The Frog Prince” from my book, and on another day he asked me for a story and I told him “Rapunzel.” It should be noted that there are no positive messages in any of these stories. The couple in “Rumpelstiltskin” allegedly live happily…
Leave a CommentThis is a transcript of a conversation between KM Szpara, author of Docile, and NK Jemisin, author of numerous books but most recently The City We Became. Video of the interview can be found here. I am posting the transcript on behalf of the friend who made it (who wishes to remain anonymous), because it’s the only place I’ve really seen where anyone involved in this book has addressed its racial issues in any capacity. Docile is set in a near-future alt-America where, according to its author, racism does not exist. It is about debt slavery in the city of…
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