Look, y’all know me, and you know that when The Millions releases its book preview, I am ruined for all else for a while. This year, Lithub has also begun releasing a book preview too, which, I mean, there can never be too many large-size book previews, right? The first half of the year book preview is up at The Millions! And here’s the Lithub one, which I haven’t perused yet so I can’t speak to how solid or unsolid it is or isn’t. This is a very good review of Marriage Story. Women can write spy thrillers too! Goddammit.…
Leave a CommentAuthor: Gin Jenny
Well, 2019 is over, and I say good riddance to bad rubbish, overall. So many trash things happened this year that when I discovered Notre Dame burned down this year, I had to fact-check it thrice. (It did though.) (Not over it.) On the positive side, I read a lot of terrific books, and there are many more awesome books in the offing for 2020 — which will be a separate post, of course! Here’s a list of my favorite reads of the year, listed in the order in which I read them. There are thirteen of them, which I…
Leave a CommentWhat, and I cannot emphasize this enough, the fuck. Kate Alice’s Marshall’s sophomore novel is the scariest book I have read in… I don’t know, maybe ever? It’s hard for me to say from my current vantage point of being huddled up under a warm blanket mumbling soft prayers for safety in a world so cold and bleak. Rules for Vanishing is fucking scary. Read it in the dark. Read it in the winter. Let it seep into your brittle bones and fuck you all the way up. Sara’s sister Becca disappeared one year ago. Probably she ran off with…
Leave a CommentSo my dear friend and podcast soulmate, Whiskey Jenny, recently made casual reference to “the TS Eliot batshittery,” and when we asked for more details, she sent a link that I will share with you shortly. First, some context: TS Eliot once had an… affair? with a woman named Emily Hale, over the course of which he exchanged many, many letters with her. He destroyed all her letters to him. She saved all his letters to her, and she donated them to Princeton with the stipulation that they should not be opened until 2020. I learned about this many years…
Leave a Comment2019 has been a no-good very-bad year, but the creativity and work of many brilliant people has gotten me through it. As this stupid thankless year draws to a close, I’m writing thank-you notes to some of the people who made things that brought me joy in a dark time. Dear Emma Southon, Thank you for writing Agrippina! My friend Alice of the For Real podcast recommended it to me by quoting small passage from it until I was charmed into acquiring it, and that’s in a year when my nonfiction consumption was heavily regulated (by myself) (I am a…
Leave a CommentThe last Friday before Christmas is upon me, and there are so many presents yet unwrapped and even one present yet unprocured, which is not the way I like to comport myself. But here we are. Luckily in the midst of all this turmoil and disarray, I still have the Netflix show The Untamed to sustain me, and it is the most searingly romantic thing that perhaps ever has burned itself across my greedy eyeballs. Please hit me up here or on Twitter if you need a show to watch over the holidays. I am happy to give you an…
Leave a Comment2019 has been a no-good very-bad year, but the creativity and work of many brilliant people has gotten me through it. As this stupid thankless year draws to a close, I’m writing thank-you notes to some of the people who made things that brought me joy in a dark time. Dear Pru and Waldorph, Thank you for making the Ride or Die podcast. One of my weird I’m-in-this-now-and-I’m-going-to-stick-to-it projects for 2019 was to finish shows that I’d begun and then wandered away from,1 including the absolute fucking idiocy that is Supernatural. (I should stipulate that I never intended to watch…
Leave a Comment2019 has been a no-good very-bad year, but the creativity and work of many brilliant people has gotten me through it. As this stupid thankless year draws to a close, I’m writing thank-you notes to some of the people who made things that brought me joy in a dark time. Dear Yoon Ha Lee, Thank you for the matchless gift of Kel Cheris and Shuos Jedao. They are the quintessential match-up of stern stoicism and absolute ferality, and I fucking live for their uneasy alliance/?friend?ship? (Would we call them friends? I cannot decide. Uneasy allies, anyway!) I often find it…
Leave a CommentJoyous, joyous day! The NPR Book Concierge for 2019 has landed! As usual, my TBR list has exponentiated as a result. It’s Friday and I have other links, but realistically, the one we care about is the Book Concierge. Find books in good health, friends! Here’s what it’s like to be an audiobook narrator. I wouldn’t exactly call Gaudy Night an “overlooked” novel but that doesn’t mean I will turn up my nose at this appreciation of Gaudy Night and its heroine, my favorite character in all of literature, Harriet Vane. So here’s the thing about My Favorite Murder. (Disclosure,…
Leave a CommentKnives Out is the best movie of 2019, according to me, a person who has seen no other movies in 2019 and also remembers nothing that happened longer than two weeks ago. (For instance, it has been alleged that Captain Marvel came out this year, and that simply cannot be. Captain Marvel came out at least three years ago. It is strange and cruel of the internet to insist on this fiction that Captain Marvel came out in 2019.) Knives Out begins with the housekeeper finding the body of wealthy crime writer Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), then skips forward to…
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