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Category: 4 Stars

How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff

Published 5 Feb 2009 by Gin Jenny

I will preface this by saying that I liked this book a lot.  However, due to that habit I have of forming expectations when I read about things, it was also not at all what I thought it was going to be.  Because I forgot about the whole second half of Nymeth’s review or something, but the only thing that stuck with me was a girl goes off to live with her cousins (there is really no phrase I find more appealing in a book synopsis than goes off to live with) and I had a vague sense that they…

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The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro

Published 4 Feb 2009 by Gin Jenny

This is more like it.    I read Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go when I was in England.  I don’t remember why – maybe it was that phase in my life where I was getting book recommendations from book prize lists.  Book prize books are often not good books for me (see Darkmans).  However, I really liked Never Let Me Go, and I really liked this one too. The beginning: The Remains of the Day (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository) is all about a butler called Stevens who has been in service for many years, and has gone on…

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Of Other Worlds, C.S. Lewis

Published 13 Jan 2009 by Gin Jenny

You know how you complain about your family members sometimes, when you’re in a bad mood with them?  And you’re all, My father’s this, my sister’s that, when you’re talking to your friends?  And it’s okay for your friend to say things like “That does sound frustrating” or “She’s being unreasonable”, but if your friend ever says “Wow, your sister’s a bitch”, you get really really angry and tell your friend to mind her own damn business? That’s my exact relationship with C.S. Lewis.  I can say bad things about him, but you had better not.  Or if you do,…

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Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman

Published 13 Jan 2009 by Gin Jenny

Aw, Season of Mists is great.  I like it so much.  It makes me nostalgic for Past Jenny, who was young and dumb and had yet to discover most of her now-favorite films and music and TV shows (including, of course, the other six volumes of Sandman).  Oh, wow, that’s really, really true.  I hadn’t discovered Joss Whedon yet, or The Office, or Doctor Who; I hadn’t yet seen any of my current five desert island DVDs (fifth series of Buffy, MirrorMask, Empire Records, Angels in America, and Before Sunrise); I didn’t know the Decembrists, the Shins, Neko Case –…

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Year of the Griffin, Diana Wynne Jones

Published 13 Jan 2009 by Gin Jenny

I didn’t exactly mean to read this.  I am still intending to read all of Shakespeare’s plays, which I had forgotten about until just now.  I am in the middle of rereading the entire Sandman.  I have a whole bunch of books out of the library about sexual ethics and other interesting things – art controversies, STDs, Bohemians – and instead of reading any of those things, I’ve been reading Diana Wynne Jones.  Once I read The Dark Lord of Derkholm I yearned and yearned for Year of the Griffin and couldn’t concentrate on anything else. In Year of the…

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The Dark Lord of Derkholm, Diana Wynne Jones

Published 13 Jan 2009 by Gin Jenny

I love the hell out of this book.  I read it to my sister when we were younger.  It’s all about this world, and it’s a fantasy world, and a bad, wicked man called Mr. Chesney is using the entire world to give people from the real world tours.  And so the entire world has to do what he says: the elves have to pretend to be wicked, and the wizards have to be Dark Lords and be defeated by the tour groups dozens of times every year; and the cities have to get sacked.  And some wizards get tired…

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Dream Country, Neil Gaiman

Published 13 Jan 2009 by Gin Jenny

Evidently the stress of writing a nice coherent plot in The Doll’s House proved temporarily too much for Neil Gaiman, and he took a break to write some single-issue self-contained stories.  And these are some damn good stories.  Except I don’t like “Façade”.  I remember not liking it so um, I sort of skipped it this time.  I know!  I could read “24 Hours” but not “Façade”?  I don’t know what’s wrong with me. No, actually, I know exactly why I did that.  Lately I’ve been getting ready for bed around eight, then lying in bed reading for several hours. …

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The Doll’s House, Neil Gaiman

Published 13 Jan 2009 by Gin Jenny

Ooh, this volume is spookier than I remember.  It’s a bit hard to explain the plot, which is intricately linked to other storylines, but in short, it’s about a girl called Rose, who is looking for her little brother.  A number of other people are milling around: G.K. Chesterton, a woman who’s been pregnant for several years, a serial killer with teeth in his eyes, women with enormous spider collections, and that makes it interesting.  Still, essentially it’s all about Rose.  She has multicolored hair and numerous connections to the previous volume.  She is also a vortex, which means that…

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Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates

Published 9 Jan 2009 by Gin Jenny

I got this for Christmas.  Dorothy Parker really liked it, but I didn’t think I would, due to the sadness.  On the other hand, I thought, it has layers, and I like layers.  On the other hand, they are layers of misery and depression and unlikeable characters; which is to say, not my favorite type of layers. Revolutionary Road is all about this couple, Frank and April Wheeler (I just wrote Frank and Alice.  Twice.  Why does that sound so right?), who used to believe in their own independence of thought and action, but now they are living boring, stifling…

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Harriet the Spy, Louise Fitzhugh

Published 29 Dec 2008 by Gin Jenny

This weekend I did a lot of things I’ve been meaning to do for awhile, including covering my paperbacks with contact paper.  And in the process of doing this, I got started reading Harriet the Spy, which I haven’t read for ages and ages.  What a good book it is!  Harriet is an eleven-year-old girl who wants to be a spy, and she goes around spying on people and writing down everything she sees, and trying to figure out grown-ups. I identified so strongly with Harriet when I was a kid.  I once got into huge trouble for writing a…

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