Well this was just a delight. It was such a delight that I was reading it, I wanted to propose it for podcast. We are supposed to propose books for podcast that we haven’t actually read yet, so I was considering perpetrating a teeny, tiny fraud* on Whiskey Jenny. But the book was such a delight, and we were stuck in a car in Agra because some VIP’s visit to the Taj Mahal had shut down the roads our driver needed to use to get us to Jaipur, that I could not resist reporting bits of it to her as I was reading. Here…
11 CommentsAuthor: Jenny Hamilton
Today’s pod kinda has two games! Because it’s been so long since we did any. One of them is a copy of a game Randon plays every year with his students, and the other is about REVENGE! You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go. Episode 37 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 on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good…
1 CommentVillette starts the next section by trying to make me not like Ginevra Fanshawe by having her be really snobby to Lucy Snowe. Joke’s on you, Villette! I never liked Lucy Snowe that much to begin with — except very occasionally when she starts blitzkrieging truth bombs — and I do like Ginevra Fanshawe because although she is a twit, she does not have conversations with Reason. (As far as I know.) It’s lucky I do like Ginevra Fanshawe, because everybody else in this book is horrible. Let’s do a rundown. Dr. John, having spent ignored Lucy completely since Paulina come to town, sits next…
10 CommentsSo this is how the fourth section of the readalong begins: Lucy gets back from vacay and has an extended conversation with Reason. That is not a person. She has an imaginary conversation with her own personified faculty of Reason, who has blue lips and is kind of a dick. “But I have talked to Graham and you did not chide,” I pleaded. “No,” said she, “I needed not. Talk for you is good discipline. You converse imperfectly. While you speak, there can be no oblivion of inferiority—no encouragement to delusion: pain, privation, penury stamp your language.” Hey, Lucy, I’m on your…
21 CommentsDan Jones’s The Plantagenets is a hugely enjoyable read, particularly if you are (as I am) already roughly conversant with the early kings and queens of England. Since I have a vague outline in my head of the course of early British history, this book might as well have been Gossip about the Plantagenets. My main takeaways were on a theme, that theme being People from History Who Were Way Worse Than You Thought. First up: Thomas Becket. I know you learned in school that Thomas Becket was a martyr to his faith, and “will no one rid me of this turbulent priest” etc. That is true as far as it…
16 CommentsThe Once Upon a Time challenge is upon us once more! And this year I am not just going to talk about participating. I am going to really do it! And I mean — look at how pretty the button is (as always). So I want to do Quest the Second, in which I will read one book apiece in each of the challenge’s categories: fantasy, folklore, fairy tales, and mythology. Here’s my plan. Fantasy: I am already reading Caroline Stevermer’s A Scholar of Magics, so that’s going to be my fantasy read. It is about an Oxford-like college at which people do magic. There is a…
6 CommentsThis was supposed to be the episode we recorded together in India, but tragically, my microphone broke down in transit. Now I am saving up for a new one, and borrowing microphones off of other people in the meantime. (Woe.) Anyway, we’re here to talk about intimidating books (we have a taxonomy) and Kiran Desai’s book Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go. Episode 36 Here are the contents of the podcast if you want to skip around: 1:09 –…
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