Happy, happy New Year! In today’s abbreviated podcast, Whiskey Jenny and I talk about our podcast reading statistics for the year, our personal New Year’s resolutions, and the New Year’s resolutions we would like to see the publishing industry adopt. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go. Episode 13b Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We will appreciate it very very much). Below is a beautiful chart created by…
6 CommentsAuthor: Jenny Hamilton
Merry Christmas, Christmas celebrating people! Today’s very abbreviated podcast talks about the Christmas books we love! Whiskey Jenny, Randon, and I all list our favorite Christmas books, some well-known and some wildly underappreciated. Let us know your favorites too! You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly here to take with you on the go. Episode 13a Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We will appreciate it very very much). Credits Producer: Captain Hammer If you visit…
2 CommentsDAMN this was a good year for books. As I was scrolling through old posts trying to make a Best of 2013 list, I was astounded at the percentage of posts this year that were four or five stars. Now, I will say that as years go on, I have become ever less inclined to review books about which I felt neutral, but even so, 2013 was an incredible year for books. It was so good that I gave up on the Best of 2013 idea, which would have felt uncurated because it would have included almost everything I read…
54 CommentsThe beginning: The beginning of Lament (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository) is not promising, dear friends. A teenager called Deirdre (Dee) meets a mysterious and handsome boy called Luke at a music festival, and they play a stunning duet together. There is some mysterious magical stuff going on, and then Dee and Luke are madly in love forever. Cover report: Ooo, this one’s tough. Aesthetically I think the British cover is better, but I hate the tagline, and I think the American cover says more about the contents of the book. I’m giving it to the American cover in…
18 CommentsLast week, in pursuit of the question Why are there not yet Lizzie Bennet DVDs in my greedy hands?, I found a very dispirited Google Doc in which Bernie Su, showrunner of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and now Emma Approved, addressed criticisms he has evidently been receiving about the new series. Apparently people out there in the Pemberley Digital fandom are upset about problems including but not limited to: Delays in the DVDs of Lizzie Bennet Diaries; lack of diversity in the Emma Approved universe; not enough transmedia stuff in the Emma Approved storyline; the creators having Sold Out; Emma Approved…
36 CommentsI have discovered that what I like in a biography is lots and lots and lots of quotations. When I was reading Julie Phillips’s excellent biography of Alice Sheldon, I kept reading bits of it out loud to Mumsy, and Mumsy said, “This is an autobiography?” It’s not, but Julie Phillips has brilliantly pulled together a multiplicity of letters, journals, and papers to create a wonderfully vivid picture of Sheldon’s life. To step back slightly: James Tiptree, Jr. was the pseudonym of science fiction writer Alice Sheldon, a woman who wrote fantastically creepy sci-fi stories about sex and death and…
11 CommentsThis week on the Reading the End Bookcast, we talk about music and the role it plays in books, and we review Jennifer Egan’s greatly beloved A Visit from the Goon Squad (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository). Then we play a game of matching similes to the authors who wrote them, and wrap up by answering some listener mail. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly here to take with you on the go. Episode 13 Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy…
3 CommentsAs you have probably heard by now, Jim Kay has been commissioned to give the Harry Potter books “a full colour makeover in a complete set of new editions.” The team that decided who would do this included J. K. Rowling, and Jim Kay is the brilliant genius who illustrated A Monster Calls. Below is his rendering of Hogwarts. Look, I know. How cool is that tunnel-staircase-pathway-thing that terminates in a creature mouth? My question now for the illustrated Harry Potter people is, What does full color mean exactly? I am so excited by the idea that it might mean…
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