For lo, this shall be Mary Renault Week on the blog! In case you missed hearing about this (not that I’ve been shrieking loudly about it or anything), Mary Renault’s books have been released in ebook format at last! And are now available for purchase wherever ebooks are sold! Thus, this week I have decreed shall be the week in which I post only about Mary Renault. If you post about her too please tell me so in the comments and I’ll add links to my posts. Today I am reviewing The Persian Boy; on Wednesday my lovely Mum will…
13 CommentsCategory: 5 Stars
Review: Night Film, Marisha Pessl
Published 20 Sep 2013
by
Gin Jenny
Hurrah, I have convinced my beautiful and intelligent mother to write a guest post for me on Marisha Pessl’s new book Night Film. Whiskey Jenny and I discussed it on the podcast, and now you may also hear a third view, that of my mumsy. This review is certified spoiler-free. This is what Marisha Pessl’s new novel Night Film is like: It’s like walking into your living room to find a live kangaroo in there. It’s unexpected, it’s pretty scary, it’s extremely lively and very uninhibited; it feels dangerous and destructive, and at the same time, almost comically absurd. …
20 CommentsHHhH, Laurent Binet
Published 11 Sep 2013
by
Gin Jenny
THIS BOOK RIGHT HERE. LISTEN. Listen to me about this book. It is awfully good, and I am going to recommend it to you very highly. I am going to highly recommend it in spite of: Nazi brutality; and Translated (from French) Never mind about the grammar of that list. Just understand that it is a list of two things I am unfond of. I read HHhH because I got a copy for free from a coworker and finished my other book on the subway. And also because I picked HHhH to win the Tournament of Books (it did not),…
29 CommentsMore Than This, Patrick Ness
Published 9 Sep 2013
by
Gin Jenny
PATRICK NESS PATRICK NESS. I love me some Patrick Ness, and here is his brand-new book coming out tomorrow so PLACE YOUR ORDERS because Patrick Ness is amazing. The beginning: A boy called Seth drowns. When he wakes up (from death), he is at the house in England where, through some unspecified but terrible fault of Seth’s, an unspecified but terrible Event with lasting neurological consequences befell his younger brother Owen. Seth has not lived in England for years; his family lives in America now, and he goes to an American school and has American friends. But here he is…
19 CommentsReview: Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Published 19 Aug 2013
by
Gin Jenny
My coworker Baby B started reading Half of a Yellow Sun, our current work book club book, before anyone else did, and she spoke of it with crazy-eyed love of the sort I have previously only seen in her with reference to the creative team behind Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. In case you do not know, Half of a Yellow Sun (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository) is a novel about four characters living in Nigeria before and during the Biafran War. The beginning: There are three point-of-view characters, in alternating chapters: Ugwu, a house servant for Odenigbo, a professor…
21 CommentsJenny and Mumsy go on about the Brownings (Part 1)
Published 24 Jun 2013
by
Gin Jenny
Welcome one and all to the Browning Letters Readalong! We are kicking off this readalong by chatting about the letters between Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett from January to May 1845 (the first five months of their acquaintance). I am your humble host Jenny, and I have roped my lovely Mumsy into talking about these Browning letters with me. We talk about them all the time anyway so it’s not that difficult for us. I hope you are enjoying them as much as Mumsy and I are in this first round! Jenny: Obviously Robert is the sweetest dear in all…
21 CommentsRevisiting Harry Potter: “Kill the snake?” “Kill the snake.”
Published 14 Jun 2013
by
Gin Jenny
Here is my main complaint with this section of the book, which I otherwise love very much: How’s Harry going to use the Cruciatus curse on the Carrow sibling who spits in McGonagall’s face? (I find the Carrows boring and have not bothered to learn their names.) He was unable to do this curse on Bellatrix Lestrange two seconds after she killed Sirius Black, but somehow he can manage to do it just because some Death Eater insults one of his teachers? Number one, that is bullshit. Number two, don’t torture people. Torture is wrong, and Harry could have accomplished…
30 CommentsRevisiting Harry Potter: I guess now we have to say nice things about Scrimgeour
Published 17 May 2013
by
Gin Jenny
I decided to do all Disney gifs for this post. Why? Because as usual this readalong is making me feel a lot of feelings, and most of my feelings for the first Deathly Hallows post are wrathful feelings. And Disney makes me feel happy feelings. Exhibit A: Rita Goddamn Skeeter How dare she. I get so angry when I read the excerpts from her rotten biography. Righteously angry! With much stomping around and wishing I had her here in my living room. You know what especially pisses me off? I will tell you. It’s when she calls his relationship with Harry…
27 CommentsA Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki
Published 29 Apr 2013
by
Gin Jenny
Here is a book I purchased for my mother’s birthday although I had not read it and I had read very few if any reviews of it at the time of purchase and I didn’t read it first. I got it for her only on the basis of the short excerpt NetGalley provided in their “Buzz Books” sampler. That is how much I love the narrative voice of Nao Yasutani. A very very lot. I’m leading with that because the synopsis of this book would not have induced me to read it. One of the two lead characters is —…
22 CommentsRevisiting Harry Potter: Dumbledore has a purple suit and psychic paper
Published 26 Apr 2013
by
Gin Jenny
Oh God, it’s so wonderful to have Hogwarts back to normal. I never realize how miserable Umbridge’s reign at Hogwarts was really making me until I get to the sixth book and McGonagall’s bossing everyone around without a mean toad lady going “Hem hem” at her shoulder all the time. Yes, Snape is teaching Defense against the Dark Arts, and yes, I think that blows and also, isn’t it sort of irresponsible of Dumbledore to keep giving that job to people when it’s plainly jinxed? Like, couldn’t he knock the subject of Defense against the Dark Arts on the head…
28 Comments