I bought One Hundred Years of Solitude as a treat for myself right before I went to live in England for a year, and it was like if I had bought myself a bag full of delicious Reese’s peanut butter cups for a plane snack and then when I got on the plane I discovered it was just lumps of jicama inside the wrappers. (I hate jicama so much, I can’t even tell you. It makes my skin crawl just to think about it.) So I will never be won by a plethora of reviews comparing any book to Gabriel…
10 CommentsAuthor: Jenny Hamilton
In a review of a novel by Mussolini, Dorothy Parker wrote: If only I had a private income, I would drop everything right now, and devote the scant remainder of my days to teasing the Dictator of All Italy…Indeed, my dream-life is largely made up of scenes in which I say to him, “Oh, Il Duce yourself, you big stiff,” and thus leave him crushed to a pulp. And this is just how I feel about Jonathan Franzen. Not because he is a fascist or in any way a danger to America. Just because I find him extremely annoying, and…
9 CommentsOnward with my Africa reading project! David van Reybrouck’s Congo: The Epic History of a People, translated from Dutch by Sam Garrett and published by Ecco, has received widespread critical acclaim, and very very well deserved too. If you happen to know anybody in the market for an enormously long history of a failed state, may I recommend pointing them towards Reybrouck? Congo reads nearly like a novel, and Reybrouck heavily privileges African voices in telling the story of the country’s modern history. It’s an excellent, excellent book. So let’s get to it. Here’s the Democratic Republic of Congo: I know, I know. It’s very confusing that there are…
26 CommentsThe winner of my Greensleeves giveaway is Jill, from Rhapsody in Books! Congratulations, Jill! However, everyone else should order themselves a copy of Greensleeves anyway. It’s such a good book, and I am tired of being one of like five people who loves it, when the correct situation would be for literally everyone everywhere to love it. GET ON IT book blogging world!
4 CommentsSooooo remember when I said that I was concerned that Poison wasn’t going to work out for me? Poison…didn’t work out for me. By rough synopsis, Poison should have worked flawlessly for me. It’s a dark retelling of the “Snow White” story (if you’re thinking, That story doesn’t need to be retold dark; it was dark when we got here, I feel you) that deals with the complicated relationship between Snow White and her stepmother and the expectations men have of women. Except it doesn’t really deal with those things, at least not in any way that’s convincing or surprising. It looks like it’s…
7 CommentsNote: I received an e-galley of this book from the publisher for review consideration. My first experiment with Ana’s beloved Frances Hardinge was a mixed bag. A Face Like Glass started slow and continued very strange before getting abruptly very exciting towards the end. But Cuckoo Song looked more my speed from the word go, a story about Britain in World War I, about sisters, and about a changeling. (British authors and cuckoos, have you noticed? They can’t resist them! The cuckoo has infilitrated the British subconscious and hatched its eggs there.) Triss wakes up one day scrambling to recover her…
14 CommentsThe events in Baltimore and the elections in the UK have been occupying a lot of my internet-browsing time, so this is a shorter links round-up than usual. I tried to keep it positive, because the bad news on top of bad news on top of bad news can really get a girl down after a while. To keep it extra positive, I’m doing a giveaway! My birthday was this week, and I’ve decided to celebrate it hobbit-style. One of my all-time favorite books, Eloise Jarvis McGraw’s Greensleeves, was recently put back into print by Nancy Pearl. It’s a dear…
21 CommentsWe’re back again to talk about books with siblings! We find ourselves mystifed by the relative paucity of books about adult siblings, compared to the rich bounty in children’s, middle grade, and YA novels. And then we review Priya Parmar’s Vanessa and Her Sister, about Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go. Episode 39 Get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. Or if you wish, you can find us…
3 CommentsThe Devil in Silver is something like a horror thriller, set at an inpatient mental health facility in New York City, where the patients are being stalked–and sometimes killed–by the literal devil, who lives in their facility on a locked ward. Our protagonist Pepper teams up with a bipolar teenager called Loochie, a schizophrenic lifer called Dorrie, and a Ugandan immigrant, Coffee, to fight back against both the devil and the rigid structures of the hospital. This book vibrates with anger at the mental health system. The text itself is shot through with anger, and the acknowledgements afterward include a…
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