Happy Wednesday! This week’s episode is FULL OF THINGS, including another sea-or-space update (you’re welcome), our run-down of recent and forthcoming TV and movie adaptations of books, and the conclusion of the Second Annual Hatening. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go! Episode 76 What We’re Reading Wildlife, Fiona Wood (I also mentioned YA authors Melina Marchetta and Stephanie Perkins. Stephanie Perkins wrote Anna and the French Kiss, Lola and the Boy Next Door, and Isla and the Happily Ever After) Equatorial Guinea: Colonialism,…
4 CommentsAuthor: Jenny Hamilton
The time has come, the walrus said, for another romance novels round-up! I know you’ve been yearning for it. This election season was difficult, the results were worse, and these last few months more than ever I’ve needed cuddly tropey fluff to get me through. Ruby Lang is a new-to-me author I discovered through the wonderful Romance Novels for Feminists (which has never yet steered me wrong), and I received Hard Knocks for review consideration from the publisher. Hard Knocks is about a hockey player nearing the end of his career (Adam) and a neurologist (Helen) who thinks he’s cute…
25 CommentsIf you are an enjoyer of handsome men, this is the links round-up for you! To be quite honest, the world has been mighty daunting these past two weeks, and I haven’t wanted to include a lot of things in my links round-up that would bum you out more. I tried to mostly have fun stuff in here instead. Not sure if this is going to be the new path forward for these links round-ups? I don’t know. Do y’all have a preference? Incisive commentary, or fluffy cheering-up items? A blend? Angelica Jade Bastién wrote that piece for Vulture a…
18 CommentsMm, at last, a thriller set in Martha’s Vineyard that takes into account the bloody conflict between India and Pakistan (and sometimes China) over who rightly owns Kashmir. I read about author A. X. Ahmad in NPR’s 2015 Book Concierge, and yes, I am embarrassed that it took me over a year to finally read The Caretaker. But such is the life of a reader. I was kind of joking before — I have not been specifically yearning for a mystery novel set in Martha’s Vineyard that also incorporates the Kashmir conflict. But it’s kind of great that one exists.…
20 CommentsMmmm, this was the YA duology I badly needed, you guys. Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton saw into my soul and recognized that I have had a slightly grim reading year this far and that I needed a ballet boarding school book, the soapier the better. Tiny Pretty Things and its sequel Shiny Broken Pieces were there in the clinch. What a perfect book (and sequel) for my mood. Tiny Pretty Things follows three narrators at the American Ballet Conservatory: Bette, the blonde legacy ballerina whose bullying hounded another girl out of school the year before; June, who struggles with…
6 CommentsHappy Wednesday! We’ve got a very giggly episode for you today, in which the Jennys supply a sea-or-space update, run down the books we’re excited about for spring, and launch the Second Annual Hatening. There is also some genuinely gold listener mail. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go! Episode 75 What We’re Reading The Boy is Back, Meg Cabot Monstress, Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda Winter 2016 Books Angel Catbird, Margaret Atwood and Johnny Christmas Cul-de-Sac, Robert Repino Everfair, Nisi Shawl Float, Anne…
1 CommentThe second week of January, I read Mychal Denzel Smith’s memoir Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching and Jesmyn Ward’s The Fire This Time, a collection of essays about America’s past and present and future. Both were published before the 2016 presidential election, and both speak with sorrow and hope about our country’s history and its potential. Smith ends his book like this: I hope my answers create a world where the Trayvons in waiting can see their own humanity. I hope I’ve fought hard enough to live long enough to see what questions they ask. I hope their…
33 CommentsWelp, this has been a flatly terrifying week. Everyone take good care of yourself this weekend. Eat some yummy foods. Hug some puppies. We’ll be here for you on Monday. My links are mostly unscary ones because I care about you and I’m guessing your Twitter feed has been scary enough lately. Writers always wrote for money, so why do we suddenly have this idea that good writing springs purely from love? Also, why writers are so reluctant to talk about their pay in specific terms. This article is a review of the edited collection Scratch, and the one above…
13 CommentsTwo biracial girls grow up in the same bit of northwest London, attending dance classes together. Tracey has real talent, and our unnamed narrator does not, and Swing Time is about the unexpected paths their lives take as they grow into adulthood. Content warning, there is very little dance school in this book. The narrator pretty quickly stops taking dance, so if you were going into Swing Time singing a little song to yourself like “dance school dance school dance school dance school,” you might end up disappointed. That’s not what I was doing or anything. It’s just something I…
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