I looked up Richard III, and Wikipedia says that scholars consider it one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. Well, you know what, Wikipedia? Scholars apparently did not read The Daughter of Time at a young and impressionable age and acquire an emotional stake in the innocence of Richard III! I have a framed portrait of Richard III in my house, and one of these days I am going to borrow a drill to do a guide-hole, and hang the damn thing up. In my last apartment it hung right next to my bookshelf. Let me just say, Parliament had already passed…
17 CommentsCategory: Favored authors
Review: Henry VI, Part 3, William Shakespeare
Published 17 Nov 2009
by
Gin Jenny
Okay, I did actually forget all about my project to read all of Shakespeare’s plays, but DO NOT WORRY. I have remembered it now and I shall carry right on with it. I just finished reading Henry VI, Part 3, which is nice because I’m all done with Henry VI and can move along to my boy Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Remember how I said Part 2 was more like it than Part 1? Not exactly like it, but more? I regret to report that I can’t say the same thing of Part 3. It’s all, Okay, now Edward is…
16 CommentsThe Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers, ed. Barbara Reynolds
Published 9 Oct 2009
by
Gin Jenny
This is the first volume of Dorothy Sayers’s letters, actually. It’s properly called, The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: 1899 – 1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist. I am displeased at having two colons in the title. You know what was most satisfying about this book? How when I got all through with it, I kept remembering bits of it and thinking, Darn, wish I’d marked that passage, and then glancing back through the book and finding that I had. Hurrah for me! Dorothy Sayers was an interesting lady, and this book covers the period of her life with…
11 CommentsGaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers
Published 4 Oct 2009
by
Gin Jenny
A few days ago, my friend tim mentioned Gaudy Night, and I realized that I wanted nothing in the world more than to read Gaudy Night. I know I refused to read it or even think about it earlier this year when I was reading Strong Poison, but I have rarely enjoyed a reread as much as I did this one. Reading Gaudy Night this time was like eating cilantro – you know what it’s going to be like, and you are thinking, man, this is going to be great, but no matter how high your expectations are, you find…
24 CommentsMothering Sunday, Noel Streatfeild
Published 30 Sep 2009
by
Gin Jenny
Mothering Sunday is the first Streatfeild book I’ve read that was written for adults – unless you count On Tour, which I guess you maybe could since it talks (albeit obliquely) about Victoria’s shocking flirty behavior. In Mothering Sunday, Anna, the mother of five grown-up children, has started acting strangely. She refuses to allow her favorite granddaughter to visit anymore; there are rumors that she has taken to wandering around aimlessly at night; and she refuses to even mention the name of her youngest son, Tony, who is involved in some unnamed disgrace. The four older children agree to get…
8 CommentsNoel Streatfeild
Published 20 Sep 2009
by
Gin Jenny
I love me some Noel Streatfeild. Turns out, she wrote several fictionalized autobiographical books about her life, and I just read two of them, A Vicarage Family and On Tour. I think there is one more but my library very unobligingly does not have it. She was the second of four children, and often felt out of place in her family. Her older sister, Isobel, had asthma and as they had not yet invented the glory that is Albuterol, she was often an invalid. The younger sister, Louise, was the beauty of the family and apparently never gave any trouble…
20 CommentsThe Ask and the Answer, Patrick Ness
Published 8 Sep 2009
by
Gin Jenny
Y’all. For serious. Patrick Ness. The Ask and the Answer has caused me to lose the power to form sentences. I am not even lying. I was sat there in the Bongs & Noodles right after I finished reading the book (which isn’t officially out yet – I love it when the bookshop doesn’t care), and someone asked if the seat next to me was taken. I believe my exact words were “Nnng blfff chair sit. I mean, no,” and then I wanted to tell them all about The Ask and the Answer and how intense and terrifying it was. …
12 CommentsHer Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffenegger
Published 2 Sep 2009
by
Gin Jenny
Well, fittingly enough, I read this on the first official day of the RIP IV Challenge. I got an ARC from the lovely and obliging people at the Regal Literary Agency (thanks, y’all! I was so, so pleased to have it!) on Monday, and read it all in one go yesterday evening. In Her Fearful Symmetry, due for proper release at the end of this month, Elspeth Noblin dies and leaves her London flat to her twin nieces, daughters of her own estranged twin Edie. They can have it on their twenty-first birthday, and must live in it for one…
25 CommentsIrish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess: The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde, Merlin Holland
Published 1 Sep 2009
by
Gin Jenny
Ah, the book that Started It All, The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde, the transcripts of his libel trial against the Marquess of Queensberry. Yes, if it weren’t for my having seen this book in a Bongs & Noodles in Atlanta, I would never have had this wild (ha, ha, ha) fascination with Oscar Wilde. At that time I was very interested in the Scopes trial (I still am! It was interesting!) & spending lots of time trying to find excerpts from Scopes trial transcripts. I expect that is partly to blame for the fact that I saw this book…
9 CommentsSaffy’s Angel and Indigo’s Star, Hilary McKay
Published 16 Aug 2009
by
Gin Jenny
Oh I just love Hilary McKay. She has written these Casson books, which are among the most endearing books I have ever read. I organize my bookshelves (more or less) by how much I couldn’t do without the books, with the books on the right being the absolutely most essential ones, and then getting less and less essential moving to the left. And the Casson books, despite being a recent discovery, are on the far right of my children’s books section, along with the likes of The Ordinary Princess and Peter Pan and Indian Captive, which I read when I…
19 Comments