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Author: Gin Jenny

Me elsewhere

Hi friends! It’s Tuesday, and I’m over at Lady Business recapping the second episode of the greatest TV show in the world, Black Sails. Stop on by and let me know if you agree with my assessment of Eleanor Guthrie’s true love situation. Or if you haven’t watched Black Sails, my God, please watch Black Sails.

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Jade City’s Worldbuilding Blew Me Away

Like, seriously. I will never look at a secondary world fantasy the same way again. Jade City, the third book overall and first adult novel from author Fonda Lee, does such a phenomenal job of creating the country of Kekon and its religion and politics and economy and international relations, that it will be very difficult for other books to measure up. So Jade City is set in a fictional East Asian country called Kekon whose primary resource is a magical version of jade. Green Bones are warriors who are trained to use jade to make use of magical powers,…

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SFF Short Story Project Update #1

So one of my reading resolutions for 2018 was to read more SFF short stories, with the goal of finding a total of three stories that I really love and want to advocate for. As of this writing, I have read nine SFF short stories, which already is way more than I have ever read in a previous year. I will assume that you are duly impressed. Six of these (shut up) have come from the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017, edited by Charles Yu. I have no apologies to make. I didn’t say I’d be reading all…

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My Brother’s Husband Got Me Where I Live

Is everyone here familiar with the NPR Book Concierge? The most magical and glorious of end-of-year book lists? And I say that as someone who loves end-of-year book lists and never, ever tires of reading through them. The NPR Book Concierge is the The Millions Book Preview of end-of-year book lists. I get so many book recs from it that it is a Problem. Among them this past year was Gengoroh Tagame’s My Brother’s Husband. It’s about a guy called Yaichi who lives in Tokyo with his daughter, Kana. But their lives change when a large, bearded, lumberjacklike Canadian called…

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THE MILLIONS BOOK PREVIEW IS HERE: A Links Round-Up

That’s all I have to tell you this morning. THE MILLIONS BOOK PREVIEW IS HERE. GET PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMPED. THE MILLIONS BOOK PREVIEW. SIREN EMOJI. Intisar Khanani discusses her journey from self-publishing to traditional publishing. (If you haven’t read her books yet, you should do it now! I love her!) It’s good to change your opinion! On not widening the feminist generation gap. Why do women writers hate themselves? Maybe we’re asking the wrong question. YA author Dhonielle Clayton (her book The Belles is coming out later in the year!) talks about what sensitivity readers do, and why they aren’t nearly enough.…

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Future Home of the Living God Kept Me Up at Night

I didn’t go into Louise Erdrich’s latest novel Future Home of the Living God with the expectation that it would leave me so anxious about The Future that I had to read half of Archer’s Goon just to get myself to sleep. But you can see that this is my own error. Cedar Songmaker is pregnant at a time when evolution has begun to run backward. She visits her biological Ojibwe family to inquire about any potential medical issues, but has yet to tell her adoptive Minnesota liberal parents that she’s expecting. As she’s wrestling with all of this, the…

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Reading the End Bookcast, Ep. 95: 2017 in Review

It’s the start of the New Year, which means Whiskey Jenny and I get to do one of our very favorite podcasts: The year in review! We look back at what we read for podcast and what we read for pleasure; run down some of our bests and worsts of the year; revisit our 2017 resolutions to see how we did; and make awesome new resolutions for 2018. You can listen to the podcast using the embedded player below, or download the file directly to take with you on the go! Episode 95 Here are the time signatures if you…

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It’s Been Too Long Since My Last: Links Round-Up

Oops, the holidays happened and I forgot to post links round-ups. I know you have all been suffering terribly without them. My hope is that you improved the shining hour by catching up on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and The Good Place, my two favorite shows on TV. But if you just moped around a-waiting, here’s the goods at last. Black women have largely been left out of the conversation about harassment (quelle surprise). Rebecca Carroll talks about her experience of racist belittlement from Charlie Rose. On the state of Kentucky and the borders of the South. Gillian Flynn writes about how…

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A Skinful of Shadows Is Decidedly Unsettling

I bid farewell to 2017 by watching the Australian show Cleverman (all about an indigenous superhero fighting for an oppressed people) and reading Frances Hardinge’s latest book A Skinful of Shadows. It’s about a girl with the ability to carry ghosts inside her, and the aristocratic family that wants to use her as a storage facility for a whole passel of hostile ancestors. Every time Makepeace tries to escape, the Fellmotte family drags her back again — until their involvement in the English Civil War gives her the leverage that might gain her her freedom. She is also possessed by…

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2017 Reading in Review

Well, 2017 was awful. And Trump’s still going to be president in 2018, so my hopes for the upcoming year are not that high. On the other hand, I’ve reached a sort of equilibrium with the family members who dumped me, so I won’t have to relitigate that whole mess in the upcoming year (said Jenny optimistically). And I’ve seen so much bravery and ferocity from people I know: Y’all stay inspiring me. With that said, I had a pretty terrific reading year in 2017. I encountered some new instant favorites, books I loved so much I shoved them at…

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