Let’s pause for a moment and wish a very happy 154th birthday to my girl Ada Leverson! She was a friend of Oscar Wilde’s. He adored her and called her “darling Sphinx,” and when he went to jail and such, she stayed his faithful and stalwart friend. Which not that many people did. Wonderful Sphinx! Anyway. Onward. This segment of the Master and Margarita readalong featured a magic show, so if you think that you are going to escape this post without plenty of Arrested Development gifs, you have seriously misunderstood who I am as a person. First up, we…
7 CommentsAuthor: Jenny Hamilton
Look, I know. I know. You want to read the hot takes on Luke Cage. I understand that’s where you’re at. I am RIGHT THERE WITH YOU. But I have only watched four episodes of the series, and thus I haven’t read that much criticism of it yet.1 You will have to wait for the next one for that sweet Luke Cage talk. Here’s what you can have: A complete history of Addy Walker, who I honestly still can’t deal with the fact that they retired her books and her doll. Hmph. Why clothes for women don’t have any goddamn…
15 CommentsIt’s time for another romance novels round-up! I recently did an awesome interview with a grad student who’s studying romance novels and feminism, and it reminded me that while I still read romance novels, I haven’t talked about them in quite some time. But in fact, I have been reading some incredibly adorable romance novels that you should know about, so let’s get into it. First up: Roller Girl, by Vanessa North. Tina Durham is a recently divorced former sportsing champion1 who gets a crush on her new plumber, Joe (short for Joanne). Through Joe, she gets involved in a…
15 CommentsNote: I received an e-ARC of The Swan Riders from the publisher via Netgalley, for review consideration. The Scorpion Rules was one of my favorite books of 2015, so I obviously snapped up the sequel, The Swan Riders, as soon as it showed up on Netgalley. I cannot talk about this book without giving major spoilers for The Scorpion Rules, so if you haven’t read Scorpion Rules yet, dash off and do that real quick, and meet me back here afterwards. IT IS REALLY GOOD, a take on YA dystopia that zigs when you think it will zag and values…
7 CommentsMy Africa reading project is so fun and great that it’s confusing to me it took me three-quarters of the year to reconvene it in 2016. There is nothing not good about it, except I guess the shortage of histories of African countries written by African authors in English and available at my library. But guess what, y’all. That is exactly what I got for Ethiopia, and I couldn’t be more pumped about it. Bahru Zewde’s A History of Ethiopia, 1855-1974 gloriously fulfills all my conditions. It is also real short, which meant that I read each section with extra-heightened…
26 CommentsI’m an aunt, y’all! Wooooooooo! Truly it is the happiest of Fridays! Though I can’t transmit my joy directly into your brains, I will nevertheless do my best to give you some happiness in the form of excellent links. Enjoy! In case you missed it, I wrote a fandom vocabulary primer for the Oxford Dictionaries blog. The goddess Alexandra Petri (the woman who brought us Emo Kylo Ren) outlines the Great American Novel. A history of Harry Potter fandom. The Seattle Seahawks made a loud noise about the statement they were planning to make before their opening game, but what…
18 CommentsIn my cynical old age, I’ve become leery of books about supernatural critters like vampires and werewolves. I don’t want to blame Stephenie Meyer, but she did kick off this whole, like, vampires-and-werewolves renascence1 that seemed like a good thing at the time but then reached a point where there was too much of it. Problem is, this too-much-of-a-good-thing thing didn’t erase my fondness for new interesting takes on supernatural critters; it just made me skeptical that there was anything new under the sun. So when Tor.com promised me that Mongrels was a take on werewolves I hadn’t seen before,…
9 CommentsNote: I received an e-galley of Everfair from the publisher for review consideration. The genesis of Nisi Shawl’s debut novel Everfair was the author’s bafflement that she had never gotten into steampunk, and her theory that the reason for this is steampunk’s uncomfortable connections with colonialism. Everfair, therefore, creates an alternate version of Congolese history in which white and black Europeans and Americans purchase land in the Congo to create a small country called Everfair. The residents of Everfair develop steam technology that allows them, in alliance with the indigenous king of the Everfair territory, to chase out King Leopold’s…
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