What a genuinely great, fun book. Six Wakes was one of my most anticipated books for spring, and with good reason! In this future, humans have perfected cloning: with regular backups (called mindmaps) and a fresh computer, a clone can die as many times as it likes and wake up again in a brand new body. If you haven’t backed up your mind lately with a new mindmap, and you die, your clone will be missing some time. Space janitor and chef Maria Elena wakes up in a new clone body to find that her last body is dead. The…
14 CommentsAuthor: Jenny Hamilton
Happy Friday! There are no more good weeks in our barren world; there are only weeks where the world falls apart. Eat cheese and chocolate accordingly, and plan to call your senators a whole lot next week. The always-marvelous Angelica Jade Bastien unpacks the debate about black American and British actors. This isn’t new, but I hadn’t seen it before: An interactive self-care guide that is legit pretty great. If you’ve read The Thief and The Queen of Attolia, may I direct your attention to this Tor.com appreciation of Eugenides? It contains significant spoilers for two eminently spoilable books, so…
6 CommentsMy concerns going into The Watchmaker of Filigree Street were, one, that it would be too twee, and two, that I didn’t care much about solving a mysterious bombing at Victorian Scotland Yard by Irish freedom fighters. Happily for my peace of mind, though it starts off seeming like a rather twee mystery about a bombing at Victorian Scotland yard by Irish freedom fighters, that really isn’t what the book is at all. Our hero, Thaniel Steepleton, comes home from a difficult day at the telegraph office (bomb threat, something something) to find that his flat has been broken into,…
14 CommentsMy God, Laini Taylor has a lot of ideas. Have we talked about how many ideas Laini Taylor has got? The inside of her brain must be an absolutely wild place to be. Strange the Dreamer is the first in a new series (her earlier one having finished up with Dreams of Gods and Monsters in 2014), and it’s a hell of a ride. Lazlo Strange has always been a dreamer, and what he’s dreamt of is the lost city across the desert. For many centuries, travelers came to Lazlo’s country on camels, bringing stories of a city of domes…
10 CommentsHappy Wednesday, friends! This podcast is late because I tried to go to my senator’s town hall meeting, which was hella full before I even got there, so I just drove a kind of long way for no reason. At least there are lots of engaged citizens doing their thing though, right? Take this as inspiration to call your electeds today! Tell them pulling out of the Paris Accords is hot bullshit. And then when you come back, you can listen to our latest podcast! You can listen to the podcast using the embedded player below, or download the file directly to take with you on the go!
Here are the time signatures for the different segments, if you want to skip around:
1:01 – What we’re reading
7:31 – Serial Box Book Club (The Witch Who Came in from the Cold)
17:02 – Literary Travel
30:24– The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas
42:15 – What We’re Reading Next Time
Get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads, as well as Ashley. 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
Transcript is available under the jump!
Leave a CommentIt’s time for another romance novels round-up! I have read some pretty m.f. great ones in the last month, and I bring them all to you for your delectation and delight. I frequently recommend Alyssa Cole’s Off the Grid series to romance newbies, particularly ones who are coming to romance from SFF. Her latest book, An Extraordinary Union, maintains everything I love about her earlier work, but this time with spies! Elle Burns is a former slave, former staple of the abolitionist circuit, and current spy for the Union. Her eidetic memory makes her a unique asset, and she’s posing…
14 CommentsOkay, this is super late and I apologize to everyone. I was on vacation. Some of these links are old! Old but STILL SO GOOD. I love you all, and I hope you have an excellent weekend, though unless yours contains a crawfish boil it won’t be as good as mine. I’m glad to see We Rate Dogs receiving the credit it deserves for linguistic innovation. Here’s what happened when one person ate three eggs for breakfast every day of the week. There are in fact several reasons I’m not watching The Handmaid’s Tale, some personal and some ideological, but…
10 CommentsAs I think I have said in my reviews of Ausma Zehanat Khan’s previous books, I don’t read a lot of mysteries. When I do get hooked on a mystery series, I don’t tend to review each one, but I’m making an exception (as you can see!) for Among the Ruins, the third in Ausma Zehanat Khan’s Esa Khattak / Rachel Getty series. I was initially drawn into Khan’s work because of my general desire to support POC authors working in genre fiction. But I’ve stayed with the series because each book has done such a beautiful job of incorporating…
10 CommentsDid you hear that I went to London? My beautiful London! I haven’t been to London since 2009, in spite of my very intense love for it, so it was great to be reunited. I went with my lovely mum and my lovely friend Alice, which was an absolute treat all around. We had Ethiopian food and Persian food and delicious gnocchi and Pieminister pies, and I bought, um, a certain quantity of books. The thing is, London has kind of a lot of excellent bookshops, and I had left a lot of spare room in my suitcase, so. I…
29 Comments