Oh, the Penderwicks. Jeanne Birdsall has said that she wrote the sort of book she liked to read when she was a girl, by which I must assume that Jeanne Birdsall and I had vastly similar reading tastes. When I read one of the now three books in the Penderwicks series, it makes me feel like I am about ten years old and back in southern Maine, curled up reading on the attic bed in the little cottage we rented every summer. This, presumably, is exactly what Jeanne Birdsall intended. The Penderwicks books are about four sisters (I am one…
32 CommentsCategory: Favored authors
Review: Under the Harrow, Mark Dunn
Published 10 Jun 2011
by
Gin Jenny
If I may steal a locution from the Fug Girls: MarkDunnily played, Mark Dunn. Mark Dunn, as some of you may recall, is the author of Ella Minnow Pea, a delightfully clever satire that avoided the many pitfalls of a comic novel and utterly charmed me in the process. (Short version: It’s an epistolary novel in which letters of the alphabet gradually become verboten, so that the book in its later stages must do without half the alphabet.) Under the Harrow, Dunn’s most recent novel, overcomes its slightly cliched story using sheer charm and thoroughness of invention. The valley of…
13 CommentsReview: Shalimar the Clown, Salman Rushdie
Published 8 Jun 2011
by
Gin Jenny
My lovely Legal Sister bought me Shalimar the Clown at a book sale last year and gave it to me when she GRADUATED SISTER GRADUATED WOOOO YAY FOR SISTERS. Legal Sister reports that the family has a policy whereby we all give each other books we got at book sales and do not have to pay each other back. I am not sure this is a real policy, but I’m delighted to acknowledge it as if it were. Shalimar the Clown is one of the two fiction books by Salman Rushdie I had yet to read (not counting Grimus and…
37 CommentsThe Bird’s Nest, Shirley Jackson
Published 16 May 2011
by
Gin Jenny
Well, having praised “The Lottery” and expressed my preference for novels over short stories, I now must say some less-than-glowing things about Shirley Jackson’s novel The Bird’s Nest. I’ve had quite the string of less-than-glowing reviews, eh? And another one coming up, I’m afraid. I don’t know what to tell you except that they’re all being written on a rainy day at the start of May when there’s nothing sweet for me to eat and my cable box froze so I can’t watch my shows. (The ease with which I produced those three rhymes has cheered me up more than…
26 CommentsArcadia, Tom Stoppard (the play)
Published 27 Apr 2011
by
Gin Jenny
When I’m watching really good theater — or, well, less pretentiously, when I’m watching really engaging theater — I stop breathing. I’m not sure whether I forget to breathe, or make a subconscious decision not to breathe because breathing makes me feel like I’m punching holes in the fourth wall, but anyway I start feeling lightheaded and that’s when I remember to start breathing again. Or if there’s a joke, because then I have to breathe in order to laugh. Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia is very funny, and in the first scene I was laughing so much my stomach hurt, but…
38 CommentsReview: The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Dorothy Sayers
Published 22 Mar 2011
by
Gin Jenny
Tra-la, tra-la, I am jonesing so hard for Dorothy Sayers right now I don’t even know what to say about it. My clever-but-not-always-right friend tim stopped me from buying several other Dorothy Sayers mysteries or else it would be a Dorothy Sayers Festival all up in here. I want to read all her books. And then I want to travel to an alternate universe where she wrote more books than Agatha Christie, and read all those additional books. Many of them would feature Harriet Vane. Sigh. In The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, an old guy dies in the club…
39 CommentsReview: Serenity: The Shepherd’s Tale, the Brothers Whedon
Published 20 Feb 2011
by
Gin Jenny
Okay, nobody really calls them the Brothers Whedon. But perhaps they should. The Shepherd’s Tale is the story of Shepherd Book from Firefly. If you are not a fan of Firefly, what the hell, dude? Why are you reading this review instead of watching Firefly from start to finish? I’m only going to spoil it anyway so you might as well trot along and watch it. I promise it will be worth your time. If you are a fan of Firefly, you are probably aware that Shepherd Derrial Book is a man with a mysterious past. From his keen knowledge…
40 CommentsThree Black Swans, Caroline B. Cooney
Published 17 Jan 2011
by
Gin Jenny
Indie Sister and I are painfully addicted to Caroline B. Cooney’s young adult novels. Especially Indie Sister. Indie Sister would walk five miles in the snow to get a Caroline B. Cooney novel she hasn’t read yet. Over the Christmas holiday, she even wrote a letter to Caroline B. Cooney, although I suspect Caroline B. Cooney will read her letter and think that Indie Sister is eight years old, mentally challenged, or mercilessly mocking her (excerpt: “My other favorite of your books was Code Orange, because scabs are gross — ew”). But in truth, Indie Sister unironically loves Caroline B.…
49 CommentsReview: Pegasus, Robin McKinley
Published 6 Jan 2011
by
Gin Jenny
Robin McKinley writes lots of stories where girls (or, ever so occasionally, boys) make friends with people you wouldn’t necessarily think they would make friends with. A Latin geek and a monster; a baker and a vampire; a princess and a pegasus. This friend-making tends to happen in between lots and lots of worldbuilding. Whether I like the book or not tends to depend on how interesting I find the world, and how invested I become in one or both of the characters making friends. Pegasus is set in the kingdom of Balsinland, where the peace treaty between humans and…
43 CommentsBeau Geste, P.C. Wren
Published 15 Dec 2010
by
Gin Jenny
I am so glad right now that I invented my Sparkly Snuggle Hearts category. Because I have a weakness a mile wide for early twentieth century adventure novels, and I know that they are not objectively books of value. My parents gave me Beau Geste and its two sequels for Christmas a couple of years ago, and you know I brought them all with me to New York. I love these books so damn much. If you read them, you will probably think that I am a terrible person for managing to like books so blatantly classist, racist, and sexist.…
38 Comments