Happy Friday, friends! I am trying to get back into the regular swing of blogging now that it is the new year, but some of these links are slightly old. Oh well! Maybe you haven’t seen them yet! In which case, lucky you! What to do if you are white and straight and cis and male and not all the stories are about you anymore (Star Wars spoilers included herein). “More as heroines than damsels”: How Disney gave their Princess dolls business to Hasbro. Nichole Chung on microaggressions and the certainty that you are the only person who can make…
12 CommentsAuthor: Jenny Hamilton
Okay, it’s possible that the first chapters of Alexander Hamilton misled me about how nonstop thrilling Alexander Hamilton’s life was going to be. #HamAlong has now reached the stage at which Chernow dedicates almost thirty pages to describing each and every number of The Federalist Papers. Yo, I already knew the important thing, which is that HAMILTON WROTE! THE OTHER FIFTY-ONE! I do not need an entire chapter on this. In this section, Hamilton helps make a new Constitution, convinces George Washington to become President, and accepts a position as Treasury Secretary. Apparently he wasn’t even Washington’s first choice! Washington…
13 CommentsOld-timer book bloggers may remember the days when the fabulous Amy ran an annual event called Book Blogger Appreciation Week. It had everything: discovering new-to-you bloggers, Twitter squeeing, and an endless supply of internet hugs aimed at the bloggers you already know and love. I have teamed up with the incomparable Andi (of Estella’s Revenge), Heather (of Capricious Reader), and Ana (of Things Mean a Lot) to BRING BACK this glorious occasion. Sign-ups go live today! If you’re interested in, you know, rapturously embracing other bloggers (virtually), head over to the Estella Society and do so today! If you’re not…
13 CommentsThe Jennys return in 2016 to recap our year in reading in 2015, highlight some bests and worsts among our podcast reads, and discuss our past and present New Year’s Resolutions. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go. Episode 53 Books discussed (in order of appearance) (and not counting books we read for podcast) Witches of America, Alex Mar Books We Unexpectedly Loved Moneyball, Michael Lewis (Whiskey Jenny) Barbarian Days, William Finnegan (Whiskey Jenny) Funny Girl, Nick Hornby (Gin Jenny) Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel…
2 Comments“AKA WWJD” is my favorite episode of this series, even though (or maybe because!) it’s mostly just characters chatting. The closest thing to action is a whispered, cautious exchange of punches between Jessica and Simpson, when he’s trying to get in the way of Jessica doing what she wants. After the events of last week, Jessica has given up: She’s going to live with Kilgrave, in his creepy recreation of her childhood home. Though the house is full of servants and bodyguards who will kill themselves if Jessica attempts to harm Kilgrave, Kilgrave still insists that he wants her to…
10 CommentsI might maybe once or twice in the last few months have mentioned how I am super into Alexander Hamilton now? On account of that the cast recording of the musical Hamilton took over my whole life? You may have heard something about that. Anyway, when Alice said “Chernow biography readalong,” I was naturally like: (even though I don’t really read biographies and I find American history, like, pretty boring) Ron Chernow starts by destroying everything I thought I knew about Alexander Hamilton. He was a bastard, but not an orphan (his father was alive for much of his adulthood),…
40 CommentsThe good thing about “AKA Top-Shelf Perverts,” the mid-point of this season of Jessica Jones, is that it sets up a crucial turning point in the over-arching plot. No longer will the show waste our time pretending to care about Jessica’s private-eye business; from here on in, it’s going to be all Kilgrave all the time. This will not only permit us to really dig into the fascinating, creepy, nuanced performance David Tennant is capable of bringing to what could have been a very one-note villain. It also lets the show get back to doing what it’s truly good at:…
11 CommentsSo here we are at the end of 2015. I had this idea that maybe in 2016 I’ll get really good about writing down all the super-excellent things that happen to me that year, and that way I won’t be struggling to think of them when the end of the year rolls around. My best thing of 2015 (brace yourself for a shock) was the musical Hamilton. Not a full week after I whined to my friends that I feared there would never be another musical that made me feel the way Wicked and Rent made me feel, and maybe…
39 CommentsAnd now, the case of Luke Cage’s dead wife. In “AKA You’re a Winner,” Luke hires Jessica to investigate what appears to be a missing pothead but actually it’s stealthily about Luke trying to find out what happened to his wife. You remember Reva? Kilgrave ordered Jessica to kill her? And then he got hit by a bus right afterward, and Jessica’s failure to double-tap in that moment is what led us all to the events of this show? The first problem with centering an episode on Reva is that we are all tired of the trope where the superhero…
17 Comments