Here are two recommendations to further your happiness: 1. Go read Too Close to the Falls. It is a lovely, touching, frequently laugh-out-loud funny memoir about Catherine Gildiner’s childhood in Lewiston, New York, and her friendship with her father’s delivery man, Roy. I cannot say enough good things about it. Toward the end, it gets quite a bit sadder, but the rest of the book is so wonderful that I did not really mind. Gildiner’s account of stabbing a classmate with a compass and being taken to a psychologist for evaluation is one of the funniest bits of life writing…
27 CommentsCategory: Favored authors
The Hand that First Held Mine, Maggie O’Farrell
Published 26 Nov 2010
by
Gin Jenny
Family tragedy book song time! (I’m kidding. I have not composed a family tragedy book song. YET.) Maggie O’Farrell’s newest book, The Hand that First Held Mine, focuses on two sets of characters in two different times: Alexandra (Sandra, Lexie), who goes off to London to seek her fortune (in the 1950s), and Elina and Ted, who have just come through a dangerous pregnancy and are struggling to recover from it (in the present day). If you suppose there is no connection between them, I can only assume you have never read a book before. The Hand that First Held…
34 CommentsThe Sundial, Shirley Jackson
Published 14 Nov 2010
by
Gin Jenny
Thank y’all for Shirley Jackson. Really. I mean it. I wouldn’t have read We Have Always Lived in the Castle or The Haunting of Hill House without your recommendation, and I like those books a lot. Shirley Jackson and her atmosphere-creating ways. The woman has a gift. When I was at the library the other day, getting books about British colonial encounters, I paused in the fiction section to check on the Shirley Jackson situation, and I was delighted to find that another of her novels was in, The Sundial. The Sundial is about the Halloran family, three generations of…
61 CommentsI will never catch up on reviews
Published 1 Oct 2010
by
Gin Jenny
…if I don’t do a bunch of short ones all at once. Thus: The Golden Mean, Annabel Lyon I checked this out on Gavin’s recommendation and because I love Alexander the Great. Your claims that he was a psychotic alcoholic have no effect on me because in my mind he is exactly the way Mary Renault writes him in Fire from Heaven and The Persian Boy. The Golden Mean is about Aristotle when he comes to Macedon to tutor young Alexander. Though Lyon was clearly influenced by Mary Renault’s books, she gives a more nuanced picture of Alexander, showing a…
36 CommentsReview: Devices and Desires, K. J. Parker
Published 21 Sep 2010
by
Gin Jenny
Why, why, why would my library purchase one book in a trilogy and not the other ones? Why, library, why? In my library’s defense, it has managed to lose its copy of Devices and Desires too, so unless you were searching on the library catalogue, you’d have no way of knowing the library owns anything but Purple and Black and The Company by K. J. Parker, and you would not therefore be disappointed to be unable to find Devices and Desires on the shelf. Happily for me, a copy showed up on PaperbackSwap at an ideal moment. But that doesn’t…
34 CommentsReview: Monsters of Men, Patrick Ness
Published 19 Sep 2010
by
Gin Jenny
Dear heavenly God. This book. Listen, everyone: Monsters of Men is being released in America on the 28th. That gives you just about enough time to go get the first two books in the series, The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer, and read them before Monsters of Men comes out. I strongly advise this course of action if you have not already read the series. Do it now. You will thank me later. I started writing this post during Book Blogger Appreciation Week, and that feels fitting because if there is any set of…
63 CommentsCurse of the Wolf Girl, Martin Millar
Published 14 Aug 2010
by
Gin Jenny
I…meant to write this review sooner. Actually I meant to write it the week this book came out. But I kept putting it off, because it’s hard to think of what to say about a book that is a) a sequel and b) awesome in ways that are difficult to convey in words. And now here it is already out, and I still have not written my review. In brief: Go and buy Lonely Werewolf Girl and read it. When you inevitably love it, go buy Curse of the Wolf Girl because it’s just as funny, sweet, and delightful as…
27 CommentsThe other two Mary Renault books I got from the university library
Published 11 Aug 2010
by
Gin Jenny
I am always trying to think of ways to maximize my reading pleasure when an author has written more than one book. Before I realized it was futile because everyone has different tastes, I used to go on Amazon and try to figure out what a shiny new author’s least popular book was, and then I’d read that one first so it would be all improvements from that point on. This did not work at all with, for instance, Salman Rushdie. I accidentally read his most-acclaimed book first, Midnight’s Children, and when (after consulting Amazon) I tried to read what…
38 CommentsGiveaway winners; and links rounded up, part 2
Published 8 Aug 2010
by
Gin Jenny
First of all: The winners of the giveaway! Karenlibrarian of Books and Chocolate! and! Proper Jenny of Shelf Love! Congratulations! I’ve sent you both an email, so let me know if you don’t receive it. And now, on to the links. Just Book Reading expected Witch Week to be sort of like Harry Potter though in fact it turned out to be quite different. Thomas of shepline thinks about his favorites of Diana Wynne Jones’s books. Spoiler: He likes Fire and Hemlock best because it is best. 🙂 Here he writes about how Fire and Hemlock influenced his own writing;…
43 CommentsSecond (or third, or fourth) chances
Published 7 Aug 2010
by
Gin Jenny
The story of my Diana Wynne Jones reading life is this: Stage One: Begin book. Find world it is set in confusing. Find characters depressing and unpleasant. Give up reading it, or finish it with grim sense of duty to beloved author. Lament dissimilarity to books previously read by Diana Wynne Jones. Attain acceptance by telling self that no author can write good books every single time. Reread Fire and Hemlock consolingly. Stage Two (discovery of DWJ – 2003ish): Receive assurances from sister that book in question is good. Doubt her taste because of Juliet Marillier and similar. Point out…
43 Comments