Skip to content

Author: Gin Jenny

Reading the End Bookcast, Ep. 106 – Historical Fiction and Jordy Rosenberg’s Confessions of the Fox

Published 29 Aug 2018 by Gin Jenny

It’s Wednesday, and we’ve missed you! This week we’re nattering about historical fiction as a prelude to talking about a wonderful new historical novel, Jordy Rosenberg’s deeply strange and painstakingly researched Confessions of the Fox. Plus, we pick up the Lord of the Rings readalong with some more complaints about racial coding and some very noisy opinions about Treebeard and his greatness.

Confessions of the Fox

You can listen to the podcast using the embedded player below, or download the file directly to take with you on the go!

Episode 106

Here are the time signatures if you want to skip around.

2:21 – What we’re reading
6:31 – LOTR Reread: The Two Towers, Book 3, Chapters 1-5
22:20 – Historical fiction dos and don’ts
34:00 – Confessions of the Fox, Jordy Rosenberg
48:44 – What we’re reading next time

Here’s a list of books we mentioned!

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin
A Curious Beginning, Deanna Raybourne
The People in the Trees, Hanya Yanagihara
The Seagulls Woke Me, Mary Stolz
Master and Commander, Patrick O’Brian (PS here’s a tweet from the author of Check Please that is SPOT FORKING ON about Master and Commander)
Fingersmith, Sarah Waters
On Sal Mal Lane, Ru Freeman
Birds without Wings, Louis de Bernieres
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (streaming on Netflix)
The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi
The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert
Sea of Poppies, Amitav Ghosh (first book in the Ibis Trilogy)
The Last Brother, Natacha Appanah
Jane Austen and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor, Stephanie Barron
Confessions of the Fox, Jordy Rosenberg
A River of Stars, Vanessa Hua

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!

Continue readingReading the End Bookcast, Ep. 106 – Historical Fiction and Jordy Rosenberg’s Confessions of the Fox
Leave a Comment

Shortly Ever After: August

Published 27 Aug 2018 by Gin Jenny

It’s August, and I am so delighted to roll out my brand! new! logo! I commissioned the marvelous Ira to design a Shortly Ever After logo, which I am now delighted to reveal to you. In honor of this exciting occasion, I have a massive installment of the column for the month of August. Many, many novellas came out this month, and I am here to bring you the best ones around. First up, I want to start with two novellas from Book Smugglers Publishing, whose work is consistently weird, queer, and wonderful. This month they’re releasing a paired set…

Continue readingShortly Ever After: August
Leave a Comment

The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, Theodora Goss

Published 22 Aug 2018 by Gin Jenny

The blogger is prepared to stipulate that she bought a certain number of books at WorldCon. The actual number is not important. What we should focus on is that despite temptation, I did not purchase both The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter and its sequel, European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman, in hardback editions. In fact I purchased neither! I confined myself mainly to small, portable books. You may leave your accolades for my restraint in the comments. The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter is the story of Mary Jekyll, who discovers hints among her father’s papers that…

Continue readingThe Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, Theodora Goss
Leave a Comment

Review: The Secret Lives of Colour, Kassia St. Clair

Published 8 Aug 2018 by Gin Jenny

Can I confess something? When I see people like Elizabeth tearing through their Mount TBRs like it’s going out of style, I become very embarrassed about my own terrible TBR habits. The trouble is that I own the books I own! The books I check out from the library will be due back in a few weeks! How can I prioritize the books with no deadline over the books with a deadline? I can’t! That would be nuts! Of course, when I do make time for the books that I own but haven’t read, I rarely regret it. I bought…

Continue readingReview: The Secret Lives of Colour, Kassia St. Clair
Leave a Comment

Review: Arcanos Unraveled, Jonna Gjevre

Published 6 Aug 2018 by Gin Jenny

What an absolute doll of a book Arcanos Unraveled is! My lovely friend Jeanne gave it to my mother earlier in the summer, and because I’m a disaster of a person, I read it before I read the book Jeanne actually gave me. (I’m saving that one for a rainy day. It looks delightful too. You will hear from me again re: that book.) Anya Winter is a hedge witch who works at a magical university, teaching the textile arts. Hedge witches don’t get nearly the same respect as proper (read: wealthy) wizards, but Anya believes in the work she’s…

Continue readingReview: Arcanos Unraveled, Jonna Gjevre
Leave a Comment

Banning Nazis and curing toxic masculinity: A links round-up

Published 3 Aug 2018 by Gin Jenny

It’s Friday! A day I used to not dread at all and now only slightly dread. Maybe this Friday nothing terrible will happen right at the very end of the day. Maybe if something terrible happens right at the very end of the day, I will already have gotten offline for the day. Aaaaaaaaaa. I thought we’d start this week’s links round-up with something heartening: An article about why the AskHistorians subreddit bans Holocaust denial on their platform. Here’s what’s been happening with the programming at WorldCon. For heaven’s sake. Mary Robinette Kowal and a team of other cool people…

Continue readingBanning Nazis and curing toxic masculinity: A links round-up
Leave a Comment

Reading the End Bookcast BONUS: The Saddest Children’s Books

Published 1 Aug 2018 by Gin Jenny

I’m going to say right up front that Whiskey Jenny only cries once in this episode, and I hope all y’all are impressed about that. For this month’s bonus episode (thank y’all again so much for your support), we decided to talk about the saddest books we read as kids, and Whiskey Jenny ONLY CRIES ONCE. (YES we included Where the Red Fern Grows. Come on.) (Gin Jenny, an automaton, cries zero times. She did get teary on Twitter today thinking about the characters in new Star Wars, though.) You can listen to the podcast using the embedded player below,…

Continue readingReading the End Bookcast BONUS: The Saddest Children’s Books
Leave a Comment

Shortly Ever After: June and July

Published 30 Jul 2018 by Gin Jenny

I write this post having conducted a mass slaughter of wasps on my front and back porches, heeding the advice of the internet to purchase a wasp-slaughtering project rather than swatting at their nest with a large stick and running away. (Internet: So bossy!) Glittery, limp bodies of dead wasps litter my front and back doorsteps. This is not a metaphor for anything; it is a merely factual report. A very happy summer to you, and now let’s get to the stories! I mostly do prefer to be positive in this space, but I was deeply, deeply frustrated with “Three…

Continue readingShortly Ever After: June and July
Leave a Comment

Me, elsewhere

Published 25 Jul 2018 by Gin Jenny

I don’t know if y’all heard, but I conned my pal Jodie (of Lady Business) into watching Black Sails and recapping it with me. Head over there to see what we have to say about Episode 3, the episode voted Most Likely to Bounce New Viewers Off the Show and For Good Reason Too But I Hope You’ll Stick With It Because It Really Gets So Good.

Leave a Comment

Review: Down, Girl, Kate Manne

Published 23 Jul 2018 by Gin Jenny

I typically don’t review any of the academic nonfiction that I read here on the old blog, for a couple reasons: Sometimes I am reading it for writing research, and I feel weird talking on here about my creative writing. For whatever reason. Probably deep feelings of inadequacy. Let’s not dwell. Often it is very boring to people who are not me. I don’t want y’all to know how many books I read about the aftermaths of historical atrocities. A lot of academic nonfiction is inaccessible unless you have credentials with a university library; so a lot of folks wouldn’t…

Continue readingReview: Down, Girl, Kate Manne
Leave a Comment