Episode 154

Here are the time signatures if you want to skip around!

1:18 – What we’re reading
8:04 – What we’re cooking
11:27 – PRESENTS
19:00 – Superlatives of 2021
35:12 – The Brilliant Abyss, by Helen Scales
57:08 – What we’re reading for next time!

What We Talked About

“Secret Santa,” by TrickPhotography (link)
An Eternal Audience of One, Rémy Ngamije
Wordle (link)
“What to Do When Playing Wordle Isn’t Enough” (link)
Bon Appetit – Spiced dal with fluffy rice and salted yogurt (link)
Mary Corbet’s Needle ‘n’ Thread (link)
Firebreak, Nicole Kornher-Stace
The Power of Knitting: Stitching Together Our Lives in a Fractured World, Loretta Napoleoni
Amy Herzog’s Ultimate Sweater Book: The Essential Guide for Adventurous Knitters
A Marvellous Light, Freya Marske
Spoiler Alert and All the Feels, Olivia Dade
The Wife in the Attic, Rose Lerner
The Thief on the Winged Horse, Kate Mascarenhas
The Robber Bride, Franny Billingsley
Antigonick, Anne Carson
How to Read a Dress: A Guide to Changing Fashion from the 16th to the 20th Century, Lydia Edwards
Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad, Michela Wrong
Oscar Wilde: A Life, Matthew Sturgis
Sugar Town Queens, Malla Nunn
The Death of Jane Lawrence, Caitlin Starling
The Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern, Mary Beard
A Royal Pain, Rhys Bowen
Reprieve, James Han Mattson
The Space between Worlds, Micaiah Johnson
The Thursday Murder Club, Richard Oseman
Plain Bad Heroines, Emily Danforth
Yellowjackets (Showtime)
The Chosen and the Beautiful, Nghi Vo
The Heroine with 1001 Faces, Maria Tatar
The Library of the Dead, T. L. Huchu
Murder in G Major, Alexia Gordon
Light from Uncommon Stars, Ryka Aoki
Fireborne and Flamefall, Rosaria Munda

The Brilliant Abyss: True Tales of Exploring the Deep Sea, Discovering Hidden Life, and Selling the Seabed, Helen Scales

Anish Kapoor and Vanta Black, an explainer (link)

Enchanted April, Elizabeth von Arnim

You can get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. As a brand new feature, you can also follow me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on the Storygraph! If you like what we do, support us on Patreon. Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much).

Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour
Transcripts by Sharon of Library Hungry

The post Episode 154 – 2021 in Review appeared first on Reading the End.

Did you miss us? We missed you! It’s the holiday season, therefore the perfect time to talk about how to be ethical when doing art. tldr; you still have all the same moral responsibilities when making art that you have at any other time. We also have the opportunity to chat about TL Huchu’s The Library of the Dead, a very fun ghost story and the first in a series of ghost story mysteries. (Huzzah.) You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below, or download it directly to take with you on the go!

Episode 153

Here are the time signatures if you want to skip around!

1:47 – What we’re reading
5:41 – What we’re watching
10:43 – The Three Musketeers readalong
24:33 – Ethics and art
38:15 – The Library of the Dead, by TL Huchu
52:59 – What we’re reading for next time!

What We Talked About

Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers
Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir
Sunshine, Robin McKinley
Nice Girls, Catherine Dang
Second First Impressions, Sally Thorne
The Hating Game, Sally Thorne
The Flatshare, Beth O’Leary
Taskmaster
Taskmaster NZ
Taskmaster Norway
Grease
The Three Musketeers, chapters 30-38
Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle
Bad Art Friend article and a postmortem
“Cat Person,” by Kristen Roupenian
Cat Person Slate article
Music and Lyrics
The People vs OJ Simpson (and criticism thereof)
Sylvester, or, The Wicked Uncle, Georgette Heyer

The Library of the Dead, TL Huchu
The Brilliant Abyss, Helen Scales

You can get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. As a brand new feature, you can also follow me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on the Storygraph! If you like what we do, support us on Patreon. Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much).

Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour
Transcripts by Sharon of Library Hungry

The post Episode 153: Art Friends and TL Huchu’s The Library of the Dead appeared first on Reading the End.

Episode 152

Here are the time signatures if you want to skip around!

1:03 – What we’re reading
4:06 – What we’re watching
14:26 – The Three Musketeers readalong
33:02 – 2021 Book Preview, Part 1
47:21 – Dial A for Aunties, by Jessie Q. Sutanto
59:11 – What we’re reading for next time!

What We Talked About

His Only Wife, Peace Adzo Medie
I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, Holly Black
Sunshine, Robin McKinley
Olympus Has Fallen
White House Down
London Has Fallen
Angel Has Fallen
Leverage: Redemption
The Three Musketeers, ch 26-29
Deal with the Devil, Kit Rocha
Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables, Joshua McFadden with Martha Holmberg
The Thursday Murder Club, Richard Oseman
The Lesson, Cadwell Turnbull
Labyrinth Lost, Zoraida Cordova
For Real podcast

Gin Jenny’s Picks

The Devil You Know, Kit Rocha
Bad Witch Burning, Jessica Lewis
Several People Are Typing, Calvin Kasulke
No Gods No Monsters, Cadwell Turnbull
Tunnels, Rutu Modan, trans. Ishai Mishori
Unfollow Me: Essays on Complicity, Jill Louise Busby

Whiskey Jenny’s Picks

Grains for Every Season: Rethinking Our Way with Grains, Joshua McFadden and Martha Holmberg
The Man Who Died Twice, Richard Oseman
The House of Rust, Khadija Abdalla Bajaber
Martita, I Remember You, Sandra Cisneros
The Inheritance of Orquidea Divina, Zoraida Cordova

Dial A for Aunties, Jesse Q. Sutanto

The Library of the Dead, TL Huchu

You can get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. As a brand new feature, you can also follow me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on the Storygraph! If you like what we do, support us on Patreon. Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much).

Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour
Transcripts by Sharon of Library Hungry

Transcript is coming soon!

The post Episode 152 – 2021 Book Preview (Part 2) and Dial A for Aunties appeared first on Reading the End.

Episode 151

Here are the time signatures if you want to skip around!

1:33 – What we’re reading
5:43 – What we’re doing on the weekends
14:17 – Polar explorer update!
17:19 – DNFing (Did Not Finish) books
31:07 – Hana Khan Carries On, Uzma Jalaluddin
47:27 – What we’re reading next time

What We Talked About

The Devil You Know, Kit Rocha
A Marvellous Light, Freya Marske
Arsenic and Adobo, Mia P. Manansala
A Bad Day for Sunshine, Dorinda Jones

here is a BMW E30:

The Italian Job (new one)
The Italian Job (old one)
Leverage (IMDBtv via Amazon Prime)
Leverage: Redemption (IMDBtv via Amazon Prime)
Enough (movie)

The scientists lost the submarine! (link) But they are going to try again. (link)

About Time (movie)
We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson
The Whole Art of Detection, Lyndsey Faye
A Royal Pain, Rhys Bowen

Hana Khan Carries On, Uzma Jalaluddin

You’ve Got Mail (movie)
Accidentally Engaged, Farah Heron
French Kiss (movie)
Dial A for Aunties, Jesse Q. Sutanto
This Close to Okay, Leesa Cross-Smith

You can get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. As a brand new feature, you can also follow me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on the Storygraph! If you like what we do, support us on Patreon. Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much).

Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour
Transcripts by Sharon of Library Hungry

Transcript is coming soon!

The post Episode 151 – The Life-Changing Magic of DNFing Books appeared first on Reading the End.

Episode 150

A Master of Djinn is available wherever books are sold, and you can find P. Djèlí Clark on Twitter, on Instagram, or at his website.

You can get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. As a brand new feature, you can also follow me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Storygraph! If you like what we do, support us on Patreon. Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much).

Credits
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour
Transcripts are by Sharon of Library Hungry

Transcript is coming soon!

The post Episode 150 – Interview with P. Djèlí Clark, Author of A Master of Djinn appeared first on Reading the End.

Episode 149

Stuff We Talked About

Boyfriend Material, Alexis Hall
Glitterland (the Essex Alexis Hall romance)
Pansies (the North Alexis Hall romance)
First Comes Like, Alisha Rai
Girl Gone Viral podcast
Ted Lasso (Apple TV)
Prodigal Son (HBO Max for season 1; Hulu for season 2)
the You’re Wrong About series on the DC Snipers (first episode here)
Elatsoe, Darcie Little Badger
Plain Bad Heroines, Emily Danforth
Our Last Echoes, Kate Alice Marshall
The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
Black Chalk, Christopher Yates
Life of Pi, Yann Martel
Hana Khan Carries On, Uzma Jalaluddin

You can get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. As a brand new feature, you can also follow me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on the Storygraph! If you like what we do, support us on Patreon. Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much).

Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour
Transcripts by Sharon of Library Hungry

Transcript is coming soon!

The post Episode 149 – Moms in Fiction, and the Hatening Concludes appeared first on Reading the End.

Episode 148

You can find Anne of Manhattan wherever books are sold! You can find Brina on Twitter and Instagram, and at her website.

You can get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. As a brand new feature, you can also follow me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Storygraph! If you like what we do, support us on Patreon. Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much).

Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour

Transcript

Gin Jenny  00:37

Welcome to the Reading the End Bookcast with the Demographically Similar Jennys. I’m Gin Jenny, and I’m here today with author Brina Starler, who wrote the new romance novel Anne of Manhattan. Brina, welcome to the podcast.

Brina Starler  00:49

Thank you. How are you?

Gin Jenny  00:51

I’m what my friend calls quarantine fine. How are you?

Brina Starler  00:55

Yeah, same.

Gin Jenny  00:58

Well, would you start by telling us a little bit about the book?

Brina Starler  01:01

So Anne of Manhattan is based on Anne of Green Gables, the iconic book and series by L.M. Montgomery, which came out in, I believe it was, 1918. So I’ve changed it a little bit. I took the bare bones of the characters and wrote them a modern story, how I would imagine Anne and Gilbert Blythe, a boy that she’s had a rivalry with her whole life, and then her best friends and all that, and I sort of took the basic of the original storylines and reworked it.

Gin Jenny  01:40

Yeah, I noticed that you did– I mean, spoilers, I guess for anyone who hasn’t read Anne of Green Gables yet, but I noticed you didn’t kill Matthew. Thank you.

Brina Starler  01:48

Yeah, well, I have had, too many times–because I’ve read the original books so many times. I can’t even tell you. I’m such a huge fan–and every single time, I ugly cry.

Gin Jenny  02:00

It’s devastating.

Brina Starler  02:01

It breaks my heart. And for people who don’t know who Matthew is, it’s her adoptive uncle sorta, I guess you would say? I think of Marilla more as her adoptive mother in that way. And then so I think of Matthew, Marilla’s brother, as her adoptive uncle.

Gin Jenny  02:17

Yeah, definitely. And he’s the first person who really clearly likes her a lot. And like immediately.

Brina Starler  02:22

He has big like dad vibes, even though he’s the uncle. It’s kind of like that. “She’s my angel and she could do no wrong.” He always indulges her, and I think he probably was the first person in her life who just unconditionally loved her.

Gin Jenny  02:39

I’m getting teary just thinking about Matthew dying. It’s so awful. Really. Thank you for sparing us.

Brina Starler  02:44

Yeah, it really is heartbreaking. So I couldn’t do it. I did not have it in me. I couldn’t do it.

Gin Jenny  02:51

Well, tell me about your first encounter with Anne of Green Gables. Did you read those books as a kid?

Brina Starler  02:55

I have read them so many times. I honestly couldn’t tell you the first time. I think I was a young teen. I went through a phase where I was obsessed with Anne of Green Gables and Little Women and The Secret Garden, all those sort of similar classics. Little House on the Prairie. And yeah, I just remember I kept coming back to Anne of Green Gables because Anne Shirley is eminently relatable for me.

Gin Jenny  03:24

How so?

Brina Starler  03:24

I’m an only child. I’m not adopted. But I am an only child. And my mom likes to joke about this. But I was always my head in a book. I was very imaginative. When you’re an only child, a lot of times, I think you have to make your own world, to make your own friends, your own fun, and it’s all kind of very insular. I had cousins, but not anybody who lived near me. So I was very much a loner in a lot of ways. I spent a lot of time playing by myself and whatnot. And I made up a lot of different worlds in my head. And also, I would get the report cards that always said, Brina is a social butterfly. I kind of related to that. And it’s very funny in the way that she is very excitable and she has a lot of imagination, and she just wants to share with everyone all the time.

Gin Jenny  04:16

And that was you.

Brina Starler  04:16

Yeah. I’ve calmed down a little bit since being a kid.

Gin Jenny  04:22

But, um, so did you read the whole series? Like you read the whole sort of arc of Anne of Green Gables, like through to Rilla?

Brina Starler  04:27

I never read Rilla. Yeah. And I kept meaning to because I keep hearing Oh, my God, it’s so good. It’s so good. But I think I just got really obsessed with the Anne of Green Gables arc, all the way to like, Anne’s House of Dreams. So all the way to the end and her kids and everything. Which is my favorite? I mean, I think the first one is obviously a classic, and it’s really funny. Yeah, none of the others are quite as funny, because she’s growing up and she started mellowing. But the first one is hilarious. I mean, it’s laugh out loud funny to me in certain parts. But I think later on when Anne is an adult and her and Gil are married, and they go through some things in their marriage where they wind up losing a baby, they have a stillborn. And then when their kids are older, and I think it’s World War One has started, and several other boys go off to war, and only one of them comes back.

Gin Jenny  05:26

Oh, God.

Brina Starler  05:27

Yeah, some of those books later on, I didn’t appreciate them as much, I think, as a younger person. But now that I have teenage boys in my own, I kind of can relate to those a little bit more too.

Gin Jenny  05:40

I think that I found that to be true of a bunch of some of the books you were mentioning like Little Women. Not Little Women so much, although that one too. But like Louisa May Alcott’s other books, like some of them had kind of an emotional depth that I didn’t fully appreciate when I was a kid.

Brina Starler  05:51

Right. And then the great thing about books like Anne of Green Gables and Little Women and The Secret Garden is that you can enjoy them as a kid, but you also can enjoy the complexity of them as you’re older too, and sort of read them with a new viewpoint.

Gin Jenny  06:06

Yeah. Which can be both positive and negative. I mean, I think Secret Garden– Yeah. Secret Garden is tougher to reread at times. I mean, but I still love so many parts of it.

Brina Starler  06:15

Yeah, it is, it is tougher to read. And the same thing with Little House on the Prairie, you find racism in there, which I couldn’t see as a kid. And part of that is who I am. I’m a white woman who was raised in a middle class home in New England. I was raised Jewish, but it was very much in like a white Ashkenazi Jewish community. And so when I went back to look at these books, and read these books as an adult with a completely different viewpoint, and completely different life experiences, I was like, oh, wow, I don’t remember this at all.

Gin Jenny  06:47

This is honestly a benefit of having siblings, because, not always but sometimes, the childhood classics get kind of divided up between you, and Little House on the Prairie books were really my older sister’s thing, so I didn’t really get into them. So I didn’t have that like emotional connection to deal with in adulthood.

Brina Starler  07:04

Yeah. And it is hard sometimes when you look at those books that you have such a nostalgic feeling for. And so I think that’s kind of like, you can love something and be really critical of it. Yeah, I love, I love Anne of Green Gables. But there’s this part in there that’s iconic about how Anne gets from a shifty peddler. She hates her red hair. So he says, Oh, I have something. I’ll make your hair nice and dark. And she’s always wanted like raven-black hair. So she’s like, great, and she takes the hair dye, and she does it and it turns her hair green. And that’s a really funny iconic scene that people who love this series know about. What I didn’t realize was that the peddler in it was called the Wandering Jew. A couple of mentions about that shifty, Jewish, untrustworthy peddler. So you know, I’ve been– I didn’t– Even as a Jewish kid. I didn’t take note of that, as always.

Gin Jenny  07:59

Yeah, definitely.

Brina Starler  08:01

You know, I can look back now and say like, I love LM Montgomery, and I love her books, and I love her characters, and it’s great, but this aspect is problematic.

Gin Jenny  08:09

Sure. Did you read others of her books besides the Anne of Green Gables series?

Brina Starler  08:13

I really didn’t. I never really got into any of the other ones. I tried a few of them. But no, I think it was just the characters of Anne of Green Gables just really, really stuck with me.

Gin Jenny  08:22

Yeah, absolutely. Which ones did you try?

Brina Starler  08:24

I honestly am blanking on it. It was so long ago.

Gin Jenny  08:28

No, that’s totally– The reason I’m asking is I’m gearing up to pester you into reading The Blue Castle, which is my favorite of hers.

Brina Starler  08:34

Oh, somebody else was telling me to read The Blue Castle too.

Gin Jenny  08:37

It’s great. I mean, typical caveats about LM Montgomery and her old time books, but it’s terrific. It’s about this woman who’s, you know, she lives with her family. She’s the kind of Fanny Price sort of person where everyone kind of dumps on her and she doesn’t have that much agency. And she has like a really beautiful cousin called Olive, and everyone’s like, well, Olive’s so great and Valancy is also here. And then one day, she finds out that she has a year to live, and so she decides to just live life however she wants to, and she’s just going to do what she wants and say what she wants.

Brina Starler  09:05

I’ll have to check it out.

Gin Jenny  09:06

Yeah, you really have to. I’m sorry to be a Blue Castle evangelist. But it’s so good. There’s this dinner scene where she’s talking to all her horrible relatives and just saying whatever she’s wanted to say to them for her whole life. It’s so good.

Brina Starler  09:19

Yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s the type of book where you know, you can really fall in love with it. But then of course, it breaks your heart at the end.

Gin Jenny  09:26

I won’t spoil anything about what happens. But you know, LM Montgomery isn’t like the most sad ending person, I’ll just say.

Brina Starler  09:32

True. She will get you sometimes.

Gin Jenny  09:34

Oh my God, it sounds like she had a very sad life. I don’t know that much about her. But from what I’ve read–

Brina Starler  09:39

I think she had a lot of depression.

Gin Jenny  09:42

Oh, bless her. So how did this specific book come to be? What made you want to write a contemporary retelling of Anne of Green Gables?

Brina Starler  09:48

So this is actually a really funny story. So I’m huge on Twitter. You know, we met on Twitter.

Gin Jenny  09:54

We did! I think we met on Twitter because people were talking shit about the South and we both got mad.

Brina Starler  10:00

Yeah, for people who don’t know, I live in North Carolina, but I’m a transplant. But I’ve lived here almost as long as I lived in any other place, including where I grew up. So I’ve acclimated. But I am really into Twitter. It’s kind of like my social media platform of choice. And I follow several editors and agents, and I happened to see one day that Tessa Woodward, who is an executive editor at Harper Collins, William Morrow, was tweeting about some manuscript wishlist that she’d love to see come across her desk. And she was talking to a friend of mine, and they were just chatting. And I had followed Tessa for a while, but she didn’t know me. We didn’t know each other. Well, Tessa had said, Oh, I’d love to see a modern Anne of Green Gables. I jumped in and was like, Oh, my God, you know, what would be amazing? Is if it was like, I don’t know, New York City, and they were competing grad students or something, something like that. And Tessa literally tweeted back: I would love to see that, too! Can you write that for me?

Gin Jenny  11:02

Oh, my gosh.

Brina Starler  11:03

Yeah. And I was like, obviously. But no, but I was like, Oh, my God, that would be amazing. Sure. And she’s like, great. Let me know when you’ve got something. At that time, I had been in talks with Mackenzie Walton over at Carina over a different manuscript, and so I was working on that. And I kind of thought Tessa meant, like, when you get something, send it over. So I wrote down my idea. I wrote down like a summary I came up with and then I left it alone, I went back to work on the other manuscript. And I don’t know, about a month or two later, I had responded to something else of Tessa’s that she’s tweeting out, just like, Oh, yeah, that sounds awesome. And she’s like, yeah, you know what also sounds awesome? She’s like, I would love to see that book come across my desk. Where are you at? I was like, Oh, you meant like, go write that now! Oh! So I explained to her that I hadn’t been writing it, because I’ve been working on something else. But I had a summary, and would she like to see it? So she said, Yeah, send it to me. So I sent it to her. And like two days later, she sent it back and was like, I love it. I’m so excited. I’m super, super excited. I love Twitter. I love Anne of Green Gables. When can I have the book?

Brina Starler  12:15

Wow.

Brina Starler  12:17

Yeah. And I was like, Well, I don’t have a first chapter. I don’t have an agent, so I had to get an agent. So then I sent out some feelers, because I knew a lot of agents. So I sent out some feelers and talked to some people, and then got on phones, conversations with several agents. And then I wound up with my first agent. She’s really great. Jen Eaton, who is no longer with the agency that I’m at now. So I transferred at that point, I was at New Leaf Literary. So I transferred over to Susie Thompson, who was amazing. But I made the deal when I was with Jen. And what happened basically was that we talked to Tessa and she’s like, Okay, give me four chapters and a good synopsis. And then if I like it, then I’ll send it on to acquisitions. And we’ll go from there. And she liked it. And she sent it on, and they bought the book, and then I wrote the book.

Gin Jenny  13:16

Man, so it was just total– A lot of it was really serendipity, then!

Brina Starler  13:19

Very much! I think it was very much being in the right place at the right time and taking advantage of that.

Gin Jenny  13:26

Yeah, absolutely.

Brina Starler  13:27

I definitely could have probably just walked away from it and been like, Oh, no, this is too intimidating, just too much. I’ve never written a full book before. But I was like, This is Anne of Green Gables.

Gin Jenny  13:40

Yeah!

Brina Starler  13:40

Nobody else– I did research. Like nobody else has done an Anna Green Gables updated novel. I don’t know why.

Gin Jenny  13:48

Absolutely baffling to me! Because I was also, as I was preparing for this podcast, I was thinking about that. And I was looking and there’s like nothing.

Brina Starler  13:55

It really blew my mind.

Gin Jenny  13:57

Yeah, especially because it’s so beloved. Did you watch the TV, like various TV adaptations as you were preparing for this? Or were you trying to keep your distance from adaptations of it?

Brina Starler  14:06

I’ve seen the Megan Follows one like a million times, of course, growing up. I love that one, the Canadian TV show one, and I’m a huge devotee because that’s the one that I watched, you know, when I was in my formative Anne of Green Gables years. But I could not watch Anne with an E, because I was writing the book. Even though it was set way back then. You know, it’s kind of the same thing when you’re writing an established property. You never ever, ever go on and read fanfic about it or anything. You have to keep that story, I think, original and in your head and not let anything influence it from the outside. So I really was just too nervous to watch Anne with an E. I was like, I don’t want to get any of that in my head.

Gin Jenny  14:48

Yeah, no, I totally get that. Well, if you do end up going to it, I thought the young actors who played Anne and Gilbert had just superb chemistry, and the kid who plays Anne is just excellent. They were great.

Brina Starler  14:59

Yeah. I will probably get to it. I just don’t watch very much TV, but I will probably. I think it’s in my queue.

Gin Jenny  15:06

Well, you also shouldn’t listen to me because, I hesitate to bring this up to you, lest it affect our friendship. But I was always more of an Emily of New Moon guy than an Anne of Green Gables guy. So I feel like my opinion on the adaptation is worth nothing because I’m all in the Emily in New Moon camp.

Brina Starler  15:21

No, because I think, I know for a fact there are a lot of people who are huge fans of the show who never even read the books. Just like any property. You know, where people love the Harry Potter movies who never read the books, or Percy Jackson or whatever. What’s the most popular one right now?

Gin Jenny  15:38

Shadow and Bone.

Brina Starler  15:39

Shadow and Bone! There are a lot of people who have read the books and that’s cool. That’s fine. Like I am very much of a mind of however you get to the fandom does not matter. If you get there via Emily of New Moon, because you decided to read that because you loved Emily of New Moon, and you wanted to watch Anne with an E, or read the books, then I don’t care.

Gin Jenny  16:05

What do you think makes an adaptation good? Like what are some favorite adaptations of yours?

Brina Starler  16:09

Mmm. Definitely all in on Shadow and Bone, cause I am a huge Six of Crows fan.

Gin Jenny  16:17

Oh my God. Six of Crows is great. Like I watched the whole thing this weekend, and Jesper and the goat were just absolutely flawless. I mean, all of it was enjoyable. But like Jesper and the goat were the best.

Brina Starler  16:28

Yeah. And I’m really, really, really looking forward to next season because I know Wylan will be coming in. I don’t even know who they have playing him yet.

Gin Jenny  16:35

No, I don’t either. But I feel like all the actors they cast have been excellent so far.

Brina Starler  16:39

And I will say in a reverse sort of adaptation of the universe, Star Wars obviously came out with the first three, and it wasn’t an adaptation, it was movies. But then the Star Wars literature, the novels came out. They started coming out, not long after, I think in the 80s they started the first ones. But I would say Timothy Zahn is my favorite Star Wars author, and I say that having several friends who have written Star Wars. So I love you guys, but!

Gin Jenny  17:09

So is he the guy who invented Thrawn? Is that the guy?

Brina Starler  17:12

Yes.

Gin Jenny  17:13

Yeah, so I haven’t read– I read a couple of Star Wars books when I was a kid and I first got into Star Wars, but I haven’t read any more. But my brother in law is super into Thrawn.

Brina Starler  17:21

I read he’s coming out with something new, and then I think they’re adapting Thrawn for the screen.

Gin Jenny  17:27

Oh, are you excited?

Brina Starler  17:28

Yes, very excited. But yeah, and then another property,  would say an adaptation that I’m actually excited about is the Dragonlance–Dungeons and Dragons Dragonlance–is coming out in a year or two. They’re doing a movie, and I am super excited because I was obsessed with Dragonlance as like a young teen. I actually did not know it was Dungeons and Dragons. That was literally not on my radar until three years ago.

Gin Jenny  17:58

No, me neither. I found that out just now as you said it.

Brina Starler  18:02

I actually did not know that, but I was completely obsessed with that whole world.

Gin Jenny  18:06

Wow. I’m really surprised. I feel like I need to pin my brother in law down and discuss this with him.

Brina Starler  18:11

Oh, you definitely should, but but be prepared to have like an hour of free time if not more.

Gin Jenny  18:16

Oh no. I am. He’s a big Dungeons and Dragons guy. I think he runs his current group’s campaign. So I know what I’m getting into.

Brina Starler  18:24

Yeah, my son also, my oldest one, he’s 15, he DMs. He’s a dungeon master for his group too.

Gin Jenny  18:32

It seems really hard.

Brina Starler  18:33

Yeah, it’s well, you know what? He gets very creative. He’s actually– He does some writing himself. Now he’s like, into a little bit romance, too, as far as like, storylines.

Gin Jenny  18:44

Awww!

Brina Starler  18:45

He’s always busting into my office like, what if?

Gin Jenny  18:51

Oh, that’s really really sweet. Oh, bless him.

Brina Starler  18:55

The only thing that my son has written that is like an existing property, oddly enough, is he wrote a short story, completely– No words, but it was from the game Unravel.

Gin Jenny  19:05

I love that game! I’ve played two games and that’s one of them!

Brina Starler  19:09

And he really likes– It’s very relaxing, like listening to the music.

Gin Jenny  19:13

Yes, it is. Yeah, I had to stop because the last level was really stressful, because the poor little yarn guy is in the snow and can’t escape from the snow. It’s horrible.

Brina Starler  19:21

Oh, I don’t know that he ever went that far into the game, so.

Gin Jenny  19:24

Well, I advise him not to. It’s depressing. So as I was reading this book, so I knew you were a fic reader anyway, because we’ve we’ve talked about it on Twitter, but had we not been, there’s a part in this book where Anne tells Gilbert that the bananas we eat today aren’t the same as old time bananas.

Brina Starler  19:42

I did fact check that by the way, but do you know where I got that from?

Gin Jenny  19:46

Yes, I do. From Steve Rogers fanfic, I assume.

Brina Starler  19:49

Yes, and usually, if that fact appears, it is Stucky, the Steve and Bucky romances. That’s where I first heard it. And it made me laugh and I was thinking about it and I was like, I’m gonna throw that in there and see if anyone notices. I did fact check it to make sure, because fanfic writers love to throw things in there and pass them off as facts and then you have to guess.

Gin Jenny  20:16

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. One thing I like about my current fandom is people often will post–because I’m in Untamed fandom now, RIP me–and people will post little like sources lists for their fics, which I really appreciate.

Brina Starler  20:27

Yeah, I do too. The author’s notes, a lot of times will contain notes about anything that you see that you might have a question about, or trigger warnings, which is helpful.

Gin Jenny  20:38

Yeah, I love it. Do you think of this book as being fanfic?

Brina Starler  20:41

I do. And I don’t think Tessa loves what I say that. She’s never said anything. But I was thinking from her point of view, she probably doesn’t love when I keep telling people it’s authorized fanfic. But, being that it’s in the public domain right now, it’s not like I’m cribbing off of anyone’s actual work that they’re–that’s–out there.

Gin Jenny  21:00

Yeah, like copyrighted work.

Brina Starler  21:02

Yeah, copyrighted. I kind of do think of it that way, because it’s an existing property, and I’m sort of playing on somebody else’s playground, which I really love. But it’s funny, because a lot of people have this attitude about fanfic, they see it as like not real writing, not real stories. I actually think that sometimes it takes more imagination, or at least just as much imagination, to translate somebody else’s work into an entirely new story, and not like tooting my own horn, but I can think of several other authors whose fanfic stories I’ve read that are just, I mean, better than probably 70% of original work that I’ve read out there.

Gin Jenny  21:49

Oh, God, yeah. Yes. Oh, my God. And I think in some cases, even to the point that for me, it kind of replaces the canon. Not to be predictable, but especially with Harry Potter, where the canon is now so like, depressing to think about.

Brina Starler  22:04

Oh, yeah. And, you know, I’m completely on the JK Rowling– To me, I do think of her as a TERF. I am so immeasurably disappointed in the person she turned out to be, and I think she did stain her legacy. And the books themselves have some issues, but no, actually, that’s one of my most active fandoms that I read in, is Harry Potter. And I just love it, because people are so– They put in so much diversity into it, that it’s kind of like, this is what Harry Potter could have been.

Gin Jenny  22:34

And they get really deep, I think, into the moral questions that the book either doesn’t grapple with or grapples with shallowly, but that the fic really digs into, which I love so much. How did you get into fanfic?

Brina Starler  22:45

Actually, via the BBC Sherlock.

Gin Jenny  22:48

Oh, sure. Sure. Yeah, drew so many people in. Yeah!

Brina Starler  22:51

And I don’t remember who first told me about fanfic. It was a long time ago. So I came in as an adult.

Gin Jenny  22:56

Me too.

Brina Starler  22:57

Yeah. But I look back now too, and I think: Well, actually, I mean, reading Timothy Zahn and Dragonlance with the Dungeons and Dragons, and then reading comics coming up is all kind of fanfic. Every new comic writer in a series, the person who’s currently writing a Captain America series or She-Hulk or Batman, I mean, they’re writing fanfic, because you’re writing new stories off of established characters. You know, I think for me, it wasn’t that big of a sidestep. It was just an, Oh my God, look at all this stuff already online. And it’s free. There is a lot of wading through.

Gin Jenny  23:33

Yeah, but I mean, I think that’s true with anything.

Brina Starler  23:35

One thing I have noticed, and there are such, I mean, just like with anything, and we see this a lot with like the Star Wars movies, you have a really toxic element of the fandom. But you also have people who just love the media, they just love the books, or they just love the movies, and they just want to experience that joy and spread that joy. So that’s one of the best parts about fandom.

Gin Jenny  23:58

Yeah, absolutely. What are some of your favorite tropes?

Brina Starler  24:02

Enemies to lovers is my number one. Always my number one favorite. I love that. Proximity is another one, and that can be translated into like only one bed or just kind of like thrown together in a situation or even a physical space where they’re kind of stuck with each other.

Gin Jenny  24:20

Yeah, I love a shared project for proximity.

Brina Starler  24:23

Yeah. And that one I used.

Gin Jenny  24:25

I was gonna say, yeah, which I loved. Yeah!

Brina Starler  24:27

Yeah, I used that one. So I guess you could include rivals to lovers too, which is what I kind of wrote with this one. Also, and recently, I’ve come to appreciate friends to lovers, because there’s a lot to mine there. I think that I didn’t used to appreciate, when I was younger, that sort of looking at someone in an entirely new light, who’s been in your life forever, or that you’ve been friends with forever, and then all of a sudden, you realize, Oh, my God, actually, I’m really attracted to them. I really, actually, I’m in love with them and I have been for I don’t even know how long, and like, wow, I’m an oblivious moron.

Gin Jenny  25:03

Yes! It’s so satisfying.

Brina Starler  25:06

Yeah. And I love the trope of like one character being really grumpy and sort of has a lot of shields up to avoid getting hurt. And then the other one is just like this ray of sunshine who comes in like a wrecking ball and just upends their entire life and worldview.

Gin Jenny  25:22

That’s the best. I mean, that’s really the source of my Untamed fandom in these troubled times.

Brina Starler  25:27

Yeah.

Gin Jenny  25:27

You had a shared project in Anne of Manhattan, which I thought was so fun. Can you say a little bit about what Anne and Gilbert are forced to do together?

Brina Starler  25:34

They’re paired up, and this doesn’t usually happen. I did do some research. Usually, if you have a thesis project or thesis paper, you’re working on your own, but there can be group efforts.

Gin Jenny  25:45

Also, who cares? It’s fun!

Brina Starler  25:46

Right! Author’s license! So I decided that because of lack of space, or whatever, that their thesis advisor would say, Okay, you know what, you guys work together, and I’m going to mentor you both at the same time. So being that they were both in the teaching master’s program, I had them working on where they had to come up with something to collaborate on, and so what they settled on was working with middle school-aged kids in an afterschool extra program for kids who were struggling with their English language arts classes, or who wanted to elaborate a little bit more on learning creative writing, just kind of those combinations, those all volunteer, but definitely would help the kids in their grades or just furthering. The school that they picked was sort of an art school, focused more on creative arts and everything. Like, you do have those. I think the most famous one is from Fame, the movie Fame, which is like really old, and I don’t think many people now have seen it. That’s what I was thinking of. But yeah, I decided, I thought that would be kind of fun, because I actually really liked the idea of them trying to figure out how to interact with middle school kids. Having a 15 year old and a 13 year old, I’m like, mwahahahhah, they can be terrible snd give them a hard time. But no, I liked the idea of them collaborating on something and also sort of showing different sides of being able to relate to these kids and how to figure it out, and how to figure out how to work together in these situations.

Gin Jenny  27:26

Yeah, especially because I think that when kids are portrayed in media very often, especially teenagers, very often it’s like, these kids are terrible. And I appreciate that you didn’t do that, because I love teenagers. I think teenagers are great and hilarious.

Brina Starler  27:38

Yeah, and they can be because it’s the age. But like, I mean, I remember what middle school is like. It’s rough. But yeah, they’re also good kids.

Gin Jenny  27:49

I’m totally out of step with everyone, because I had a great middle school experience, and then high school was when things got really– Like, I think like elementary school was terrible, high school was terrible, but middle school! I got my braces off. I grew really tall. I was good at Latin.

Brina Starler  28:04

That’s so funny. I had the opposite experience. I actually transferred from public school to private school because no, bullying was so bad.

Gin Jenny  28:12

Oh, my God, you poor baby. I basically had that experience in elementary school and like, got it over with.

Brina Starler  28:17

I don’t know what happened. I was fine in fifth grade, and then we transferred to middle school and it was like open season. I transferred, and it was like, I went through seventh, eighth, ninth, and sophomore year. And I transferred back to public school, and then it was okay, because even though the same girls kind of picked up where they left off, I was a lot more confident in myself. So I had a lot of different experiences with kids from all over the world. I don’t know. It just gave me a lot more confidence in myself, and especially when you have the attention of teachers and mentors, but it was also cool because James Van Der Beek went to school with me.

Gin Jenny  28:55

Oh, my God! Dawson crying gif himself.

Brina Starler  28:58

Yeah, we went– We used to be in the same theater plays. We were in theater together.

Gin Jenny  29:03

Whoa, that’s wild.

Brina Starler  29:04

Yeah. My mom has photos of him somewhere in a cow costume. It was really funny. He was Danny Zuko in Grease.

Gin Jenny  29:14

Oh, that’s good casting, I think. Who were you in Grease?

Brina Starler  29:17

Oh, I was like an extra. I can’t sing.

Gin Jenny  29:22

That’s what I was about to ask.

Brina Starler  29:23

I was background.

Gin Jenny  29:26

That sounds really fun, though.

Brina Starler  29:28

Yeah, it was fun.

Gin Jenny  29:29

One thing I thought was really fun and cool in this book, in Anne of Manhattan, is that, you know, it’s set in the present day, but there’s also flashbacks to when Anne was a kid, some of which map quite closely on to Anne of Green Gables. How did you choose those scenes? Like what things did you want to revisit versus what did you want to leave out?

Brina Starler  29:45

You know, it was almost intuitive. In fact, it’s really funny because sometimes I go back and I read it and I’m like, Whoa, I didn’t even remember that I actually wrote that as an echo. I was just writing it. And I forget how much of that I have in my head. It’s like permanently burned into my brain. Yeah, no, mostly it was just a: This was funny, or I felt like this was a really important part of her life, so I want to throw it in there. There were scenes that I couldn’t, or things in the original book that I couldn’t make into entire scenes, like the time that Anne accidentally got Diana drunk and sent her home. And it was a whole big thing, and her mother freaked out. But I made like a quick reference to it and translated it, of course, for modern time. I didn’t want to leave it out completely. I was like, but it’s such a funny story!

Gin Jenny  30:35

Yes, it’s so charming. And it’s such an LM Montgomery scene, like having read some other stuff, it’s like a classic LM Montgomery scene.

Brina Starler  30:44

It really is. And then I have a couple things tucked away that I might put on my website that were flashback scenes that never made it into the book.

Gin Jenny  30:53

Yeah, no, for sure. How did the book change as you were writing it, and as you were going through the editing process?

Brina Starler  30:58

Oh, it changed so much. In fact, if you look at the original synopsis that I sent Tessa versus the finished book, I’m shocked that Harper Collins wasn’t like, This is not the book you sold us. The bare bones that are still absolutely where they were, where it’s their grad school, and they were rivals to lovers, and from seventh grade on they went to school, but then I also had them taking a break, because I thought it’s better if they separated for a while and then kind of come back together as reunion. But no, I think a lot of it shifted. Anne’s sleazy advisor– This is where I kind of wish that publishing companies would allow you to put trigger warnings on books. And I feel a little bit guilty, because I feel like it might be springing this on people, but I definitely have sort of a MeToo situation going on in there. And I think it’s probably a situation that a lot of women are familiar with, with her mentor just being kind of a scumbag but doing it in a way that’s so subtle, most of the time that you can’t really call him on it.

Gin Jenny  32:05

Yeah, totally.

Brina Starler  32:06

It’s very predatory. And I think, you know, maybe you haven’t had a professor who’s done it, but maybe you’ve had a manager who’s done that, or you’ve had someone else in a position of power who’s done that.

Gin Jenny  32:17

A high school teacher, for instance.

Brina Starler  32:19

A high school teacher, yeah. People have said, you know, youth group leaders.

Gin Jenny  32:23

Oh, yeah.

Brina Starler  32:24

Yeah! And it doesn’t necessarily mean anything will ever come of it or that that person even truly is trying to make something come of it, but just sometimes the way they make you feel is super uncomfortable, like prey! Unfortunately, a situation a lot of women are very familiar with.

Gin Jenny  32:44

Yeah, regretably. It was very, like how far can Elle go?

Brina Starler  32:48

And that situation– Actually, that plotline came about when Tessa and I had met at Romance Writers of America national conference the last year that they actually held it in person, which is 2019, I think.

Gin Jenny  33:01

I can’t remember that far back, but I believe you.

Brina Starler  33:04

Yeah, I think that’s the summer 2019. And this was before she had bought the book, but we were talking about it. I said, Oh yeah, here’s what I want to do; and she said, Would it be too much to put in some elements of this? I was like, No, I like that idea. And so then I came up with the plotline. But I also kind of think of that as a reference to Legally Blonde. Yeah, I have a couple different sort of homages to different properties.

Gin Jenny  33:31

How did you reconceptualize these different characters? Like Diana is one that struck me because I feel like– I do want to preface this by saying I only read the first three books, I think, in the Anne of Green Gables series. So I don’t know what happens to Diana ultimately, in her life, but I feel like in the book, she was kind of drippy. And I feel like you did a good job of fleshing– Poor Diana! Bless her heart! But I feel like you did a good job of fleshing her out. So I mean, how did you kind of build the characters? What did you drawn from the original and what did you want to add to them?

Brina Starler  33:58

Well, I wanted to keep the friendship between Diana and Anne, because I feel like that is such an important female friendship. They call each other their bosom friends. So close as sisters. And I think it’s incredibly important because Diana is Anne’s first true friend who wasn’t part of her imagination. You know, and again, other than Matthew, probably one of the only people has ever unconditionally loved her from the very beginning. She didn’t have to grow to love her. She didn’t have to love her in spite of various flaws, but she was the first person who just looked at Anne immediately and was like, You’re amazing! Even though she was a little scared in the original books, because she was such a sedate person. She’s not very adventurous in the beginning. Anne was as good for her, drawing her out of her shell and making her more adventurous, as Diana was for Anne, giving her someone who just loved her like that.

Gin Jenny  34:54

Yeah.

Brina Starler  34:55

But yeah, you’re right. In the original book, she is very quiet in a lot of ways. She’s very much a scaredy cat. And sadly, she’s portrayed as not very smart, especially compared to Anne, who’s like brilliant, blazingly smart. So next to Anne, Diana comes up short a lot of time. So I wanted to keep the original friendship and everything. But I felt like I needed to evolve Diana a little bit, give her a little bit more of a chance. And in the original book, she actually does wind up with Fred, and they pop out a whole bunch of babies. And, you know, her ambition, that’s what she wanted, she want to be a housewife and a mother. And that’s what she did. And that’s what she wanted. She was comfortable doing that. And that’s great. But I wanted to change that a little bit for this book, especially because they’re not really at that time of their life where they were interested in doing that. And I also, one of the things that apparently has been a bit of a bone of contention for early readers is that I’ve put a lot more racial diversity and LGBTQ diversity in there. One of the things I did with Diana is I changed her to a Black woman. I did that because I felt like in the original books, they’re super white, and super Christian, and super straight, which makes sense. It was 1918. She lived in Prince Edward Island, which is at that time majority white, majority Christian, and that’s what she knew. And that’s what she wrote. But I don’t think that makes sense for someone who’s growing up on Long Island and then lives in New York City. Yeah. So I just changed it up, and some people are like, Oh, it’s diversity for diversity’s sake. And I’m like, Why does it have to have, you know, a motive there? And one of my favorite things is– Somebody sent me, they saw on Reddit, there was a thread about it. And I thought it was really funny. The person who had started the thread was like, yeah, so apparently, she’s gotten dragged a couple of times on Goodreads for diversity, and somebody is mad because she put a LGBTQ relationship in the book, that wasn’t in the original books. She’s like, Sometimes people are just gay, Diane! And it made me laugh, because I was like, Yeah, that’s true. Sometimes people are just gay. There doesn’t have to be a motive.

Gin Jenny  37:11

Yeah, you wouldn’t say they were in there being white for whiteness’s sake, although they are! Would you ever write more in this world? Or would you ever write more in the LM Montgomery, like drawing from the LM Montgomery pool?

Brina Starler  37:21

I don’t think so. And as I would love to, I had talked to Tessa about doing a spin-off, books with Jane and so on, and she said, I think I just want to do a standalone. And I was okay with that. Because I feel like once I knew that, I was able to weave a little bit more into the background, but I couldn’t really concentrate too much unfortunately, on this background relationships. No, I definitely have some other ideas for original stories. But also, there are a few other adaptations kind of floating around in my brain.

Gin Jenny  37:53

Oh, can I ask what properties?

Brina Starler  37:56

So I had a couple of adaptations in my brain. And I haven’t sent anything over to Tessa yet. But so I was thinking of one that was sort of a adaptation, the bare bones of The Secret Garden. And then: I Capture the Castle meets the Vanderbilts. So yeah, sort of along those lines, and then another one I was thinking of was– Oh, so you know, Pride and Prejudice retellings are super popular. Such a great story! I was like, well, Pride and Prejudice, but Mary Bennett’s story. Because I was thinking, Mary Bennett is so obsessed with like music, and you know, she’s kind of like dour and religious. But if I cut that part out. Pride and Prejudice, but Mary Bennett meets A Star Is Born.

Gin Jenny  38:39

Yeah, I love that.

Brina Starler  38:40

Which is a weird, a weird idea. And I–

Gin Jenny  38:43

No, I love that.

Brina Starler  38:45

That makes sense in my head.

Gin Jenny  38:47

It makes total sense. I’m rereading Mansfield Park right now, and I love Mary Crawford so much. So the whole thing of like, pulling out smaller characters in Jane Austen to do something with them is so fun.

Brina Starler  38:58

Yeah, I was thinking about Mansfield Park at one point. And then interestingly enough, Swan Lake hit me too. I have a prose version of it by Mark Halpern that was given to me. It’s a beautifully illustrated cloth bound book. It was given to me when I was like, 12, I think. It’s surprisingly adult, for a story that is put together like a children’s book.

Gin Jenny  39:23

Yeah.

Brina Starler  39:24

it’s very political. Yeah, it’s a really interesting story.

Gin Jenny  39:29

I think I had that same book when I was a kid. Was it like kind of a blue, and it had a picture in the center?

Brina Starler  39:36

Yep. And it was like a swan taking off from a lake in the center of the cover.

Gin Jenny  39:42

Yes. I totally had that book!

Brina Starler  39:43

And it’s funny. It’s like, again, I read it as a kid and was like, oh, cool story! And then I read it when my first son was a baby. He was terrible at going to sleep. So I was like, What can I read that’s gonna bore him and put him to sleep? And I started reading it. I was like really caught up, and I’m like, wow there’s a lot of politicking in here, and a lot of hierarchy drama and royal court drama in here, and then there’s forbidden love, secret love. As Anne would say, a tragical ending. But then it’s really not. You think it’s a horrible tragic ending, but actually the very, very end, there’s a lot of hope.

Gin Jenny  40:23

Oh, man, I need to go to my parents and see if they still have it and reread it. I read it as a kid but I barely remember it.

Brina Starler  40:28

It’s really lovely.

Gin Jenny  40:29

Yeah. Okay, cool. All right. So those are all, those are the things you have in the in the hopper?

Brina Starler  40:34

Yeah, those are kind of things are bouncing around. But then I also have a couple of, you know, you always got to have like, a million things cooking, right? Because you never know what’s gonna stick. I have something set in the 90s during like the grunge era, sort of my love letter to my growing up: flannels and Doc Martens and Pearl Jam and you know, Stone Temple Pilots, you know, and then I have a road trip book.

Gin Jenny  40:56

Oh, I love a road trip book!

Brina Starler  40:57

Yeah, who doesn’t like a good road trip? That’s sort of that thrown together trope.

Gin Jenny  41:02

Oh, I’ve just gotten really nostalgic for like all my favorite road trip books. Well, before I let you go, what are you reading right now?

Brina Starler  41:09

What I’m reading right now: On my desk, I have The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake. She came on my radar actually as a fanfic author, and she’s under Olivie Blake so I’m not outing her. When I said earlier that there were some people out there who write fanfic that is mind blowingly good, and like 70% better than any original stuff I’ve read, I was talking about her. She’s amazing. She wrote a 350,000 word fanfic that can literally be broken into probably four books, long books. There were something like 24 points of view, and literally everyone in that story has their own arc. And then it weaves into an overarching art and it is tight. So it’s really good. She makes me jealous as a writer. And then I have The Meet Cute Club by Jack Harbon, which– He’s really great. He writes really cute, funny stuff, and then he writes like super filthy stuff, and he’s great at both.

Gin Jenny  42:15

Great! The two food groups!

Brina Starler  42:16

Yes, exactly. That’s what’s on my desk like right now. And I had, just last night because it came out today, something hit my Kindle. I’ve been reading a lot more print lately.

Gin Jenny  42:28

I tend to prefer print, unfortunately, because I love romance, and a lot of that is just in ebook form. But I do prefer reading print books.

Brina Starler  42:35

Well, I got Arsenic and Adobo: A Tita Rosie’s Kitchen mystery book, by Mia P. Manansala. And I hope that i’m pronouncing that right. But she is completely new on my radar. It looks so good.

Gin Jenny  42:48

Yeah, I read that. I really enjoyed it. I don’t read that many mysteries. Don’t necessarily take my word for anything, but I found it so fun and charming. And there’s so much food in it, which is great.

Brina Starler  42:57

Oh, awesome. I’m super excited for that. Yeah, no, I am not usually a mystery person either. My mother is. She’s huge into, especially, cozy mysteries. So I have to tell her if I really liked this one, I’ll have to tell her.

Gin Jenny  43:08

Well, thank you so much for talking with me. Where can people find you online?

Brina Starler  43:13

Well, I am online as Brina Starla everywhere. So I’m on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. But I’m most active, I would say, on Twitter and Instagram.

Gin Jenny  43:24

Well the book again is Anne of Manhattan. It’s so warm and lovely. And if y’all are LM Montgomery fans, you should read it. And if you’re not, you should still definitely read it.

Brina Starler  43:31

Thank you so much for having me, Jenny,

Gin Jenny  43:34

Thank you so much for coming on. And please do read The Blue Castle. I think you’re gonna love it.

Brina Starler  43:38

I will. I will definitely put that on my radar.

Gin Jenny  43:41

All right, take care. Thanks for talking with me.

The post Episode 148 – Interview with Brina Starler, Author of Anne of Manhattan appeared first on Reading the End.

Episode 147

Things We Discussed

Prague in Black and Gold: The History of a City, Peter Demetz
Bartimaeus Sequence, Jonathan Stroud (first one is The Amulet of Samarkand)
Ghost Talkers, Mary Robinette Kowal
The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Natasha Pulley
Twilight, Stephenie Meyer
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Hulu)
Mercy Thompson series, Patricia Briggs
Zotero (bibliography/note-taking app)
Miro (online post-it board)
The Untamed (Netflix)
Fruits Basket

You can find Nicole on Twitter here, and her website is here. The book is The Lights of Prague, and it has vampires and gas lighting, and you should check it out!

Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour
Transcripts by: Sharon of Library Hungry

Transcript is coming soon!

The post Episode 147 – Interview with Nicole Jarvis, Author of The Lights of Prague appeared first on Reading the End.

Episode 146

Things We Discussed

Sweat, Lynn Nottage
“A Tradition of Violence: The History of Deputy Gangs in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department”
Kim’s Convenience
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Oscar Isaac training to play Moon Knight
Babylon 5
Black Sails
Sense8
Envy, Sandra Brown
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey
Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff
Sarah McCarry
Boyfriend Material, Alexis Hall
Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake, Alexis Hall
Archivist Wasp, Nicole Kornher-Stace
Mort(e), Robert Repino

Gin Jenny’s Picks

The Rib King, Ladee Hubbard
The Mirror Season, Anna-Marie McLemore
Renegade Flight, Andrea Tang (companion novel to Rebelwing)
The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred, by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Sorrowland, Rivers Solomon
Black Water Sister, Zen Cho
Firebreak, Nicole Kornher-Stace
The Library of the Dead, TL Huchu
The Chosen and the Beautiful, Nghi Vo
The Jasmine Throne, Tasha Suri

Whiskey Jenny’s Picks

Quiet in Her Bones, Nalini Singh
Accidentally Engaged, Farah Heron
Lightseekers, Femi Kayode
Dial A for Aunties, Jesse Q. Sutanto
Malefactor, Robert Repino

Star of the Sea, Joseph O’Connor

You can get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. As a brand new feature, you can also follow me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Storygraph! If you like what we do, support us on Patreon. Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much).

Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour

Transcript

WJ: Hello, and welcome back to the Reading the End Bookcast with the Demographically Similar Jennys. I’m Whiskey Jenny.

GJ: And I’m Gin Jenny!

WJ: And we are thrilled to be back talking about books and literary happenings. On today’s podcast, we are going to talk about what we’re reading; we’re going to talk about what we’re watching. We will preview the first half of 2021 in books, and we will embark upon the Hatening, Part One. Did you like my boat pun, embark?

GJ: Yes. Oh my gosh. Oh, so strong. That’s fantastic; way to go.

WJ: The Hatening, Part One, for which I picked a book that I thought I would like and Gin Jenny would hate, which was Star of the Sea, by Joseph O’Connor. And then we get to find out what Gin Jenny has Hatened for the reverse, when the shoe will be on the other table. But before we get into that, what are you reading, Gin Jenny?

GJ: So I am reading a play called Sweat by Lynn Nottage, which I believe either it or she won the Pulitzer. She might have won the Pulitzer for a different play. But it’s about a group of friends who work at a paper mill, I think, and there’s a union and there’s like union busting, I think.

WJ: Boooooo.

GJ: And at some point, the sons of some of the friends do a crime, because the play starts out eight years in the future, and the sons are both like talking to maybe a parole officer sort of a person.

WJ: So it’s modern day?

GJ: Yeah, their original timeline is in 2000, and the jump forward is to 2008. So present day ish.

WJ: So is there a Richard Armitage type character?

GJ: No, no Richard Armitage type character.

WJ: From North and South, no?

GJ: So that’s what I’m reading. What are you reading?

WJ: What I’m reading is not a book, but it’s a long journalism series. Is that a thing?

GJ: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

WJ: Multi-part investigative journalism series. So it’s by Cerise Castle, and it’s about gangs in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

GJ: So, uplifting reading.

WJ: But I just want to clarify, it’s about gangs of sheriffs. The gang members are the sheriffs.

GJ: I’m nodding sadly.

WJ: And the whole series is called “A Tradition of Violence.” It’s available online at knock-la.com. I’ve only been able to read the first section so far, and it is a wild ride. Like it’s insane, and also horrifying. But it’s really interestingly reported, and I am looking forward– Not looking forward;  I am going to read the next article to continue my education.

GJ: Oh, well. Good work!

WJ: Thanks!

GJ: What are you– Well, hopefully you’re watching something a little more cheerful.

WJ: I am! I’ve been watching Kim’s Convenience on Netflix.

GJ: Oh, how is it? It’s been on my list forever!

WJ: I really like it. It’s so sweet. It’s a little more sort of emotional and angsty than I normally would have wanted, but everything is mostly okay. Like it gets resolved.

GJ: Okay, so how emotionally angsty is it on a scale between like, New Girl and One Day at a Time?

WJ: I have not seen one day at a time.

GJ: Oh yeah, you would cry a lot so that’s fair.

WJ: I need another top end for the scale. Well, more than New Girl…

GJ: Out of every five episodes, how many do you think you cry during?

WJ: I don’t know that I’m a good bellwether for that.

GJ: So all of them?

WJ: Yeah.

GJ: Okay. You’re right. That was a foolish question.

WJ: What does cry mean, really? Oh, and also there’s a really handsome man in it. I think he’s gonna be in a Marvel something something. When I first saw him, I was like, Jesus Christ, this man is like really attractive and like really buff for this part? Like, he is in Marvel shape! And then it turns out it’s because he is going to be in a Marvel property.

GJ: Oh, great. I saw a video of Oscar Isaac training to be in a Marvel and it was a very good video.

WJ: His name is Simu Liu. He’s gonna be Shang-Chi.

GJ: Okay, in what?

WJ: Shang Chi and the Legend of the 10 Rings.

GJ: Oh, he is very good looking!

WJ: So good looking! I don’t know what the Marvel workout thing is, but I would never want to do it.

GJ: Oh my God, me neither. To be clear, he wasn’t like doing like exercises. He was like practicing fight scenes.

WJ: Oh, that’s fun!

GJ: Yeah, it was very fun!

WJ: What are you watching?

GJ: What am I watching? I’m watching Babylon Five, which is an older sci fi series. My friends told me it was her Black Sails. She really wanted me to watch it, and she was like, It is to me as Black Sails is to you. And I was like, well, you know, in the interests of friendship. It’s by the same writer who wrote Sense8. So it has a similar like, slow start, but I think I’m getting into the meat of it now. It’s pretty dark. And there’s like religion stuff in it, which is kind of like fun and interesting and dark. And yeah, I’m enjoying it. It’s very like thinky SF, and the production values are what you would expect from 1990s science fiction TV, but I think they make it work pretty well. And they have interesting like, not monster of the week, but like problem of the week episodes, and I’ve been given to understand that the ongoing story arcs are also very strong. So I’m excited to get further into it. I’m like, middle of season one, I think.

WJ: Before we move into spring preview, I would like to introduce a new segment, which is an update on the mailbox books.

GJ: Oh, fantastic! That’s such a good segment! Go!

WJ: Mostly because I wanted to complain about this one thing.

GJ: This is great. This is like when a friend texts soon is like, Can I be really petty for a second?

WJ: This is me being really petty. My mom got from the mailbox library a book called Envy by Sandra Brown, like one of those thriller romance sort of a genre. She returned it because it had an unreliable narrator, which I did not know she was also not a fan of but she was like, No. Get that out of the house.

GJ: Runs in families.

WJ: I came by it honest. But near it on the bookshelf was a book by Stephen Covey. Do you remember this guy? The like Seven Habits of Highly Effective People?

GJ: Oh, sure. Sure.

WJ: This man had the gall to come up with a book called The Eighth Habit.

GJ: [gasp]

WJ: Right?

GJ: Oh my God! He has enough gall to be divided into three parts. I’m outraged.

WJ: The eighth habit? You held this back from the first book? The whole premise was that there were seven habits!

GJ: Well, and the other thing is, once you start with this, once you say Oh, actually there’s eight habits, like there could be an infinite number of habits now!

WJ: Where does it end?

GJ: We’ve lost faith in you now!

WJ: I was appalled. I couldn’t believe it.

GJ: I’m horrified.

WJ: So that’s the update from the mailroom. Also, I liked your gall joke.

GJ: I actually have a mailbox update as well. It’s a little free library update. Okay, so as I was looking for a Hatening book to Haten you with–

WJ: I’m so excited.

GJ: I was looking at like some books on my shelves, some books that I have on my like various lists, books in the library, etc. I had Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff on my shelves, which I had picked up from a little free library. And I was like, doesn’t that have an unreliable narrator? Because I remember people talking about it in the same breath as Gone Girl, and I don’t think it had quite the same type of twist as Gone Girl. But I thought I remembered it being something like that. So I picked it up, and I was kind of looking through it. And I was like, this seems like it has like some suburbia-is-soul-killing content that Whiskey Jenny would really hate, but I was nervous because I didn’t know what the twist was going to be, and I didn’t want to accidentally haten, you for something really horrible. So I went online and looked up spoilers and it sounds awful. I’m just gonna give it back. It looks like both of us would hate it a lot.

WJ: Oh, no! What is the plot?

GJ: Well, so I don’t know the whole thing. But it’s this couple that gets married and blah, blah, blah, they have whatever suburban life they have, and then they go to like a party or something, and the husband finds out that the wife did not come to him a virgin and he’s very upset. It’s like set in, like, now times!

WJ: What the hey?

GJ: Anyway, he’s a real jerk to her, and he finds out she was once a kept woman by this guy that they meet at the art gallery or whatever.

WJ: And it’s definitely modern times? Boy!

GJ: Anyway, so then it’s like all about her horrible life and the like humiliating life she had when she was this guy’s kept woman and how she like schemed to get this second guy to fall in love with her and get married. It just seemed really like grim and sordid, and like it would just depress me no end. And I thought you would hate it, but I also now feel like I would hate it.

WJ: Yeah, not quite the point.

GJ: Yeah, so I’m returning that son of a gun to the little free library. And I wish others joy of it.

WJ: Godspeed. I think many people loved it.

GJ: I’m excited to be able to just get it off my shelves because as you know, I love culling books.

WJ: Yeah! You can let it go.

GJ: Yeah, as the bard says. So we want to talk about books we’re excited for in the first half ish of 2021. And I picked a lot, so I’m going to do two to every Whiskey Jenny’s one. I plead that you bear with me.

WJ: I’m very excited to hear what they are.

GJ: Yeah, I mean, there’s some really good books coming out. Okay, so my first one is called The Rib King by Ladee Hubbard, which came out in January from Amistad Press. And it’s about a well to do white family with a large staff of like maids, cooks, etc, who are all Black, and the family falls on hard times, so to get money going, the patriarch sells his Black cook’s recipe for rib sauce, which is really legendary, like using a lot of racist caricatures on the packaging and in the marketing. So that’s the first half of the book and then the second half skips ahead 10 years later, and it’s dealing with a Black woman named Jenny, who used to be a maid for this family and she’s trying to get her own business off the ground selling beauty products, but she kind of can’t get out from under the shadow of this white family. So it sounds really weird and interesting. And I’m excited to read it. I heard a lot of good things about this author’s first book, which might have been short stories.

WJ: Yeah, I like that concept. I feel like food justice and colonialism getting reckoned with in food writing as well is on the rise, which I love. And I’m excited to see that in fiction as well.

GJ: Yeah, it’s always so fascinating when I read like journalism about it. So yeah, I’m also excited to see it in fiction. Then my next one is The Mirror Season by Anna Marie McLemore. coming out in March from– Well, so, is out now from Feiwel & Friends. Anna-Marie McLemore writes, these extremely beautiful, like magic realism-y queer YA novels that are based on fairy tales. So if you liked Sarah McCarry, which I feel like people who liked Sarah McCarry are like feral for Sarah McCarry, but she wasn’t that well known. And I feel like she didn’t hit it quite the right time. But Anna-Marie McLemore’s books are a lot like that. This one’s based on the Snow Queen. And I think the subject matter is pretty tough. I think it’s about two kids who two teenagers who get sexually assaulted at a party and kind of form a relationship after that. So content warnings, for sure. But this author’s books have been so consistently amazing. And every time they come out with a new one, I’m just like, really thrilled. Their writing is gorgeous. What is your first book for 2021?

WJ: My first book came out in February from Berkeley. It’s called Quiet in her Bones, which I think is an amazing title.

GJ: Such a good title!

WJ: By Nalini Singh. It’s a mystery set in New Zealand. So I believe it’s a rich cul de sac. Those cul-de-sacs are just rife with murder.

GJ: Oh, yeah, absolutely. That sounds great. I love a rich cul de sac murder.

WJ: So rich cul de sac near a forest, and I really like the hopefully juxtaposition of the wild and the developed. I believe our narrator’s mother disappeared 10 years ago, and then they just now found her body in those forests. So she didn’t just run away. She got murdered.

GJ: Oh, damn!

WJ: I know! And then also in that description, and everyone thought she just like ran away and stole a bunch of money from rich people or something, but nope, she got murdered. And then also it’s like, her son, who heard a bloodcurdling scream on the night she disappeared, like, won’t rest until the truth. And it’s like, now you’re like, oh, maybe that scream was– Like, wouldn’t you have been like, oh, I wonder what that scream was that I heard that night my mother disappeared forever. Oh, well, probably fine!

GJ: How old was he at the time, though?

WJ: I don’t know. Yeah, I’m sure it all will become explained. He is now old enough to do an investigation. So he was minus 10 from that. I don’t know.

GJ: Have you read anything by Nalini Singh before? Because she writes romance novels that people really love that I haven’t read yet.

WJ: I didn’t know that. Have you?

GJ: No, I haven’t. But I hear really good things. They’re paranormal romance.

WJ: So what’s your next two?

GJ: The first one is Renegade Flight by Andrea Tang which came out in March from Razorbill. I really enjoyed her first YA novel,Rebelwing, and this is a companion novel. So it takes place like 15 years after the first one, I think, which I think is a fun time jump. I love a companion novel. And it’s about a girl who goes to like an elite pilot school for piloting dragon mechs. And she’s supposed to find out why peacekeepers keep going missing. I don’t know what that means, but I love an elite school book, and the first one was really fun. It’s like pilot shenanigans, making friends with people. It just sounds like a extremely fun adventure story.

WJ: Did you say dragon mechs? They’re piloting like, built dragons?

GJ: Yeah, like dragon machines? Yeah.

WJ: Boy. That’s cool.

GJ: Yeah!

WJ: Was that in the first one?

GJ: Yes.

WJ: Boy, that sounds great.

GJ: Yeah, I know. And then my next one, which I think is my only nonfiction one is the disordered Cosmos by Chanda Prescott Weinstein, which came out in March from Bold Type Books. It’s about particle physics, which I don’t understand. But it also takes a look at how the science profession fails to include marginalized people, because the author is a Black queer woman in science. And I’m very daunted by the science side of things, and I may end up skimming some of that. But I’m really going to give it a try and I think even if I can’t understand the particle physics, which seems pretty likely, I’m still interested in kind of the like, sociology of science stuff.

WJ: Yeah, sounds cool.

GJ: Yeah. What’s your next one?

WJ: So my next one came out in March. It is called Accidentally Engaged. Aren’t you excited already?

GJ: Yes. So excited.

WJ: It’s by Farah Heron. It came out from Forever Press. Here are just some keywords that I will throw at you. Fake engagement. Sourdough starter. Baking competition. And the description of the romantic hero is “the body of Captain America, a delicious British accent, and lives right across the hall.

GJ: Oh, fantastic. Neighbors. Great.

WJ: I feel like that’s, that’s everything that I needed to know to want to read this book. When I got to sourdough starter… Bread! Yay!

GJ: There’s another baking competition romance novel coming out this year, so I should read them as like companion novels.

WJ: Ooh, which one is that?

GJ: Did you read Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall?

WJ: Not yet. My Libby app keeps saying that my hold will come in soon. So I’m excited but not yet.

GJ: Well, anyway, Alexis Hall has another book coming out this year called Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake, and I believe it’s set at a baking competition.

WJ: Yeah, we should do a pairing.

GJ: Oh, man, that sounds wonderful.

WJ: What’s your next one?

GJ: Okay, my next one is gonna be a bit of a change in tone. It’s called Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon, coming out in May from Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. I don’t know too much about this book, but I know it’s about a young Black girl who flees from an abusive cult when she’s pregnant with twins. So perhaps not your thing, Whiskey Jenny. Genre wise, I think it’s kind of magic realismy, kind of SF-y, kind of horror-y, but I think the world of this author, I’ve read some of their past work, and I’m excited that they have a new novel out. But definitely all the trigger warnings for pretty much everything that’s scary and terrible about cults. And then in a cheerier mode, Black Water Sister by Zen Cho, which is out in May from Ace. A girl called Jess moves back to Malaysia, where she hasn’t lived since she was very small, and when she’s there, she starts hearing like the voice of her dead grandmother, and her dead grandmother is like, All right, I need you to get revenge on this gang boss. And she’s like, What? No!

WJ: Oh, that sounds great. I love ghosts.

GJ: Yeah, exactly. So the grandmother’s like, Yeah, he’s offended a god and I’m dead, so you’re gonna have to do it. She’s like, but I don’t want to!

WJ: That’s amazing. Nothing for it! You’re gonna have to to do it! I am immaterial.

GJ: As you know, this podcast is a big fan of Zen Cho. So I mean, this is a book from her that’s set I think in like our world, but with ghosts, which is a new fun thing for Zen Cho, for her novels, so yeah, I’m really excited about it.

WJ: So my next one is coming out in March from Mulholland. It’s called Lightseekers. It’s by Femi Kayode. At least I think that’s how you pronounce it. I couldn’t confirm online, so apologies if it’s wrong. It is set in Nigeria. I believe the author used to be a professor of psychology, and our detective is a professor of psychology. So I’m excited for that conceit. I love when it’s not– I mean, I love a private eye. I guess I like when it’s not a police detective.

GJ: People with jobs!

WJ: Yeah, people with jobs investigating a civilian investigator, I think is really interesting. He is called down to a, I think, small town in the south of Nigeria, I believe, where there was in the past a murder of three university students. But the case is not quite as cold as they thought, I think was one of the words in the brief.

GJ: Fantastic.

WJ: Yeah, one of those “the past and secrets haunt us” books. Those cold cases. They never, ever stop reverberating in the present, do they?

GJ: That sounds wonderful. I have really enjoyed reading like mystery novels set in non-Western countries, and it is part of my mystery novel exploring remit to find more books like that. So that sounds great for me as well.

WJ: And let me know when you find them, because I’m exploring as well.

GJ: I will, I definitely will!

WJ: We’ll explore together. What are your next two?

GJ: Okay, so my next two! My first one is Firebreak by Nicole Kornher-Stace, coming out in May from Saga Press. So she wrote Archivist Wasp, which I loved, and she writes stories that are very friendship-forward. She writes a lot of stories with relationships that are not romances, which is like a nice change of pace, though I love romances, too, as we all know. So Firebreak is set in a very like dystopian corporation-controlled future, and this girl Mallory discovers that the company has created like super soldiers, and she wants to save them. But that means setting herself in opposition to this like world-owning corporation. I think this book sounds like Ready Player One, except it doesn’t suck and actually has things to say about capitalism.

WJ: Ooh, burn!

GJ: So, Ready Player One, but good.

Unknown Speaker

Sounds great.

GJ: And then my next one is sort of a mystery, but with magic. It’s called The Library of the Dead by TL Huchu, coming out in June 2021 from Tor. It’s about a girl named Ropa, who’s a ghost talker, so her job is she talks to the ghosts of Edinburgh and like carries their messages back to the living. She uses a combination of Scottish and Zimbabwean magic, which sounds really fun, and then she finds out that kids are going missing on her turf, so she has to investigate.

WJ: Holy smokes, that sounds cool.

GJ: Doesn’t that sound great? There’s like a magic library. She like makes a best friend. It sounds like so much fun and so up my alley.

WJ: Yay, friends.

GJ: Yay, friendship! Yay, magic library too. There’s so much about this that I’m excited for. What’s your next one?

WJ: My penultimate pick is going out in April from Berkeley. It is called Dial A for Aunties. It’s by Jessie Q. Sutento, and friend of the pod Ashley was the one who turned me on to this book? It’s described as both a romcom and a murder mystery, and I think our protagonist accidentally killed her date or something. You know how that happens! And then her aunties have to be called in to help her clean up. And it just sounds great.

GJ: It sounds so fun. Yeah, I’m excited for this one, too. It sounds like a delight.

WJ: So thank you, Ashley, for telling us about it.

GJ: Oh, and as always, Ashley has great book recommendations.

WJ: As always, indeed. What is your penultimate two?

GJ: No, my ultimate two!

WJ: Oh, no, you’re already on ultimate?

GJ: Yeah, because…

WJ: Oh, yeah, you went first. Oh, boy. I’m sad it’s over.

GJ: Okay, so my second to last one is kind of cheating, because I have in fact, already read it. But it’s The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo, out in June from Tor. I am cheating by including this because I have already read it, but I’m so excited for this book to come out. I’m so excited for it. It is a retelling of The Great Gatsby from the point of view of a queer Vietnamese American Jordan Baker. And there’s like a soupcon of magic involved. And it’s so good. It’s so good. I read it, and I was like, well, so much for The Great Gatsby, it’s been superseded, we don’t have to care about it anymore. The writing was beautiful. The magic was like just creepy enough. It felt very good for the end of a pandemic because it’s like roaring 20s, and everyone’s at parties drinking champagne, and it just made me feel very yearny for parties. And I don’t even like parties that much. So really a true feat by the author. It’s just so good. Everyone should preorder it. It is fantastic. It’s going to be one of my top probably three books of the year. I’m prepared to say that already.

WJ: Wow, that sounds really fun. So it’s still set in the 1920s? Interesting.

GJ: Yeah, it’s a pretty close retelling of The Great Gatsby. But the point of view is different, obviously, which makes a big difference, and then there is magic, so I liked it a lot. A lot. A lot. A lot.

WJ: That sounds really fun.

GJ: Yeah. Okay, and then my last one is The Jasmine Throne, by Tasha Suri, coming out in June from Orbit. Tasha Suri writes these secondary world fantasy novels, which is not my favorite subgenre, but she makes them so good and like so easy to get into. And they’re also very romance inflected, so like they are fantasy novels, but the romance is typically very important to the books. And this one is the first in a new series by her, and it’s about a princess who has been imprisoned by her horrible dictator brother. Yeah, and the princess’s maidservant, who I think uses illegal magic. And I think what happens is they go on a mission to topple the empire whilst pining for each other. Sounds wonderful! Yeah, so that’s, that’s my last one. And I’m, I’m just unbelievably excited for it.

WJ: I’m so sorry. I think you’ve done this a million times before. But can you remind me what secondary world means again?

GJ: Yes, it means it takes place in a fictional fantasy world that’s not our world.

WJ: Okay. Just a totally different world.

GJ: Just a totally different, made-up world, yeah.

WJ: Like Mars.

GJ: Nope. Mars is real.

WJ: Are you sure? Have you ever been there?

GJ: As my little nephew would say, There’s a rover there named Curiosity. He liked Mars so much, he flew up there to take pictures for us.

WJ: That is so cute. Oh my God, you just killed me. Yep, that’s what happened. Accurate!

GJ: What is your last book?

WJ: My last book comes out in August. But that’s still summer, so I’m counting it, and I will not be taking any further questions. It comes out from Soho Press. It is by friend of the pod Robert Repino. It’s called Malefactor. It’s the final in the War with No Name trilogy, which started with Mort(e). It’s the sci fi he wrote about animals getting sentient, larger and sentience and going to war with the humans. This is the conclusion of the trilogy. I believe it takes place after the war and their rebuilding efforts, but then wolves. I don’t know much else, but I am very excited for, you know, the return of our beloved characters.

GJ: Yeah, just see how it all wraps up.

WJ: Yeah. Third one, Return of the King. I mean!

GJ: Yeah, a lot riding on it.

WJ: And also beavers. I’m really excited for the beavers to return.

GJ: So excited for the return of the beavers. We love the beavers.

WJ: So yeah. Malefactor! And I’m also really excited, his covers have all had really– They’ve just been like, one really bold color and black and white, sort of like silhouettes of an animal. So I’m really excited to see the cover of Malefactor.

GJ: Definitely. I love the cover designs for these books.

WJ: They’re really gorgeous. Yeah.

GJ: And it must have been a very tricky book to do the initial cover design for. It seems like it’d be very hard to represent graphically, and I just think they nailed it.

WJ: Absolutely. Yeah. The themes and the concepts and stuff are very wide ranging and to represent all that in like nine by twelve.

GJ: Crushed it. Is nine by twelve the size that you think books are?

WJ: Could be! No. I’m just bad at numbers.

GJ: I thought you might have just like converted to centimeters, and you’re like, down with the imperial system! I’m onto metric now!

WJ: I still do have trouble estimating distances and measurements.

GJ: Oh, God, me too.

WJ: Normally I use eight and a half by eleven as just like my– You know, like, I know how big that piece of paper is. So I measure everything by how big it is in relation to that piece of paper. But you’re right, I went wrong on this. Books are not bigger than that piece of paper. They are smaller.

GJ: This is a books podcast!

WJ: Sir, this is a Wendy’s.

GJ: I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pick on you. I apologize.

WJ: No, you did it correctly. Well, can I just say, it’s nice to have things to look forward to in 2020. 2021. It’s 2021.

GJ: It is, and I think there’s so many good books coming out later this year. And I don’t know if it’s just that there’s a lot of books, or if it’s because stuff got pushed back, or what, but there’s like so much stuff I’m looking forward to.

WJ: Yay! Hope!

GJ: Woo! Books!

WJ: I hatened this year Star of the Sea, by Joseph O’Connor. I picked it because it was, a, by an Irish author, and we know Gin Jenny hates just the Irish people in general.

GJ: I don’t. I love the Irish people. Like, I just don’t love your literature. I do love the TV show Derry Girls more than anything.

Did you watch their Bake Off?

No, I haven’t yet. I want to watch it with my sister at sister night.

Well, I recommend it. It was great.

Did you see that–I’m so sorry to stan Derry Girls–but did you see that tweet that was like, Derry Girls accurately represents the five types of teenage girls: horny, pretentious, lesbian, feral and wee English lad.

WJ: Boy, that’s a good tweet.

GJ: Anyway, despite my love of Derry Girls, it’s true that I do not love Irish books at all.

WJ: So that was one of the reasons I picked it. It also, I thought from the description that it was going to be like an ensemble story, you know, not multigenerational family, but multiple perspectives and narratives all tied together. On the opposite side, since it is 2021, I didn’t want to go full sadist. So it was set on a ship, which I thought would be interesting for both of us. And there was a murder, so there was interesting plot stuff happening. So it’s set in the 1840s on a ship called Star of the Sea that is going from Ireland to New York, and it takes place over the course of the 25 days of the voyage, and there’s a murder. I did not realize this before starting it, but it’s also sort of– not epistolary, but–

GJ: It’s set up as if it’s a book that one of the characters is writing.

WJ: Yes, thank you. Some, like, found documents thrown in. So what did you think of it?

GJ: I would say overall, it could have been worse. I feel like my response to it was exactly where you were aiming, Whiskey Jenny, like, the precision of a master darts player. In that, like, it wasn’t the most brutal chore. I didn’t hate it the way I really hated that last Irish book. And I didn’t resent it the way I resented Island at the Edge of Night or whatever that one was called. But it was not fun to read, and I didn’t like anyone in it, and yet I was really mad that things went badly for all the characters. iI think I would have actually preferred the book I thought I was getting, which was about all the different people on the famine ship?

WJ: Oh, absolutely.

GJ: So I thought it would be about a bunch of different characters, and it was really only about like a very small group of characters. A lot of it takes place not on the famine ship, which is kind of disappointing. But the magic of ships worked though! I think we learned that setting the story onboard a ship is a big offset to the book elements I hate, because all the stuff that happened on the ship, I was like, really into.

WJ: Completely agree with everything, except for the compliment about me being like a good darts player, because when I did not nail with me loving it. I feel like I had the same reaction. In particular. I also thought we were getting a different book. I thought it was gonna be a lot more stories. And as you said, it’s like three people.

GJ: Right. And a lot of it’s just about their past. It’s like not about the ship.

WJ: Yeah, exactly. I needed more about the daily life on the ship, and I needed more points of view. In particular, more points of view in steerage!

GJ: Yeah, absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. I thought it was gonna be like an Upstairs/Downstairs kind of book.

WJ: But on a boat! Why can’t we have that book! That book sounds great! Let’s do that!

GJ: Actually, we should have that as a like a show.

WJ: What do you mean?

GJ: That should be like a miniseries!

WJ: Oh, a TV show? Okay. Yeah. I thought you meant like, WE should have that as a show!

GJ: No, like a, like an ITV series.

WJ: That would be great. I would love that.

GJ: It’s like a month-long sea voyage. And we get to know everyone and all their lives and stuff. That’d be so fun.

WJ: Yes. So I completely agree: All this stuff on the ship was the most interesting. Just like the small details of that life, I think, when they’re first introducing one of the main characters, Pyatt?

GJ: Pius!

WJ: Anyway, sorry, yeah, Pius! One of the things that they say is weird about him is you like really, really, really had to press him to give an opinion on the fiddle players on board, which is just such a sweet detail of like, that’s what everyone’s talking about. But otherwise, it picks the wrong stories to tell, to me, and it told those stories from the wrong point of view as well. Not wrong! Not the one that I would have picked. I also had no idea that it had this conceit built around it that it’s written by one of the passengers. And I don’t think I liked that concept.

GJ: Oh, I like that concept a lot. That’s the type of thing I tend to like.

WJ: I normally do really enjoy epistolary stuff. But I had a hard time getting on board with this, because the whole time I was just sort of like, Who the fuck is this guy telling me this? And why do I care about him? And how do you know any of it? Because most of it isn’t found documents! Most of it is you writing about points of view that you wouldn’t have known, and I just got really mad at him.

GJ: I think that the reason that I was feeling more charitably towards it is that some of the chapters were quite short. And as you recall, one of my issues with the goddamn last book is there were no chapter breaks. I think just from a reading perspective, I was like, Oh, good a break! Because the chapters are pretty short, and not to be really shallow, but it’s 2021. I’m very, very old. And like, that was a blessing unto me.

WJ: I like that that’s what you liked about it. I just think it’s so weird that on this ship, if you are– I mean, like separating the horrific classism and conditions down in steerage, if you are in first class, there’s only 15 of you, and you’re just like expected to hang out and eat dinner together. That’s weird! Like if you had to hang out with your passengers on a plane, these randos, for like a month! It’s just so weird! And I think that’s such a more interesting story about like, how do you get along with these people for a month? You don’t know them! You have to eat dinner with them every night!

GJ: I so agree. Whenever I read about the British in India, in colonial India, I feel like this comes up a lot, because they had to eat dinner with the same like 10 people constantly. And if you didn’t like them, it was like, too bad.

WJ: Too bad! You got to keep hanging out with them!

GJ: Not only did you have to keep hanging out with the same small group of people, but because they were like, well, we don’t want to like let India influence us in any way, so they were really really rigid about like class distinctions. So you basically had to sit next to the same people at dinner every time, because your rank never changed. So you were just stuck with your, like, neighbor to the left and your neighbor to the right at every dinner. Sounds awful.

WJ: It sounds awful. Yeah, I mean, not any more awful than being in steerage, but yeah, awful!

GJ: No, a very different kind of awful. And I think that when they did have scenes with them all having dinner together, it was like comically terrible, and I enjoyed that.

WJ: It was a lot more like soap opera-y than I was expecting. There were so many — where it was like — oh, well, this is a spoiler, but: Actually, they’re siblings! Or actually, the person she married was your half brother who was estranged! I think part of the reason that I didn’t love it as much as I thought I would is because I did read it in this the year of our Lord 2021. And so I was kind of putting a lot of stuff on it. Like two years ago, I probably would been like, sure that was a fine romp. This year. I was like, I don’t have time for this. I’m not into this, like this, classism, no. It has a bunch of racist stuff in it. You know, the characters are racist in the way that characters from that time period were racist. I just don’t want to read that. And then I just feel like Mary was the actual main character, and she got so few actual point of view chapters. One of the ones from her point of view was a letter from her husband, so it wasn’t even her voice. So then I just got myself into this feminist rage. And then I was so pissed at it, which is a weird position  I was pissed that it was so soapy, because if a woman had written this book, it would been like, Oh, it’s so overdramatic, and look at women with their feelings again, but no, no, a man wrote it, so it’s literary. So I recognize that a lot of that is coming from me, but also not.

GJ: Yeah, I was gonna say, you’re actually touching on a lot of things that I genuinely had a problem with. I think that, in response to what you’re saying about Mary Duane, there was a lot of this sort of like, good women having things done to them by wicked, irresponsible men, which got really old.

WJ: Yeah, like constantly!

GJ: Constantly. Yeah. And then the voices that are heard are mainly the voices of men. So the women are backburnered in a way that I found exhausting. Also, hilariously, they described a woman as coltish at one point, and I was so excited and angry for you.

WJ: Oh, my God. I didn’t– I totally missed that! Maybe I was like already in a rage blindness. It’s the kind of book that describes women as coltish.

GJ: Yeah, and it did. So.

WJ: To your point, that it’s mostly told from the point of view of men who are doing these things to women, it’s rich men, also, who are doing these things to women, for the most part.

GJ: Yeah, I didn’t like the main poor man either.

WJ: I mean, no, he’s awful too!

GJ: Well, and this went to something that I find tiring about Irish literature in general, like Pius Mulvey does shitty things to be shitty. And I didn’t begin liking him more when he started being kinder because then he was pitiful, and I felt like the book was very much in that mode of like the “nasty, brutish, and short” thing of human life, which is fine. It’s not my personal cup of tea, and it does tend to be what I don’t like about Irish literature. Sorry, Ireland. So yeah, I mean, you nailed it with that.

WJ: Yeah. But that’s not what I like about Irish literature. So I did not nail it for me. I think you hit the nail on the head. I think the entire thing is joyless. Nothing good can come from humanity, seems to be the premise of this book.

GJ: Yes. Agreed. Also, I want to go back to something you were saying earlier. This is not a hatening thing; I think this is just bad craft. I was mad that the author chose to use racist slurs in what felt to me like very unnecessary ways. Like, I was glad that it didn’t gloss over the fact that a lot of English money at this time came from slavery in the Americas. But there are several occasions where racist slurs are used, like including the N word several times–

WJ: Uncensored. Like, printed out.

GJ: Yeah, not starred out. Right. And I don’t think the author really was bothering to grapple with the weight and violence of that word, and I think he was using it more as stage setting. Like: these are the times and you know it because they’re using this word, which I really don’t like, and I think happens a lot in white writers writing historical fiction, especially white non-American writers writing historical fiction. And although it is period-typical, he’s curating what goes in and what stays out. Like he mentions in his author’s note that he’s made up some US adoption law to make it more racist. But then there’s another place where a character is gay, and the narrator’s like, that’s fine, though. So like choices are being made. And I think the choice to put the N word in at least three times without having any characters of color is uncool. And I really thought he shouldn’t have done it, and I thought it was bad craft.

WJ: Yeah, no, completely agreed. I glossed over that in my rant, and I shouldn’t have.

GJ: No, No, you didn’t!

WJ: Yeah, I think this is emblematic, two of my notes back to back: So we got a scene set in Whitechapel. So my note says, “Well, I do appreciate that this is not just portraying London as full of white people, I guess.” Which was me trying to find the silver lining in the way that characters of other nationalities were being referred to in that section. And then right after that, I have a sarcastic note, which says, “Oh, good. Now there’s blackface.” So I think you’re completely right. It’s just stage setting, and it’s not at all grappled with. You nailed it. I also think that the violence of the famine and that suffering was sensationalized? I think that that was another type of horror and trauma that got not grappled with, but just treated as set dressing.

GJ: Especially with, very early on, there’s a part where it’s clear that a father has killed his child, and then himself. And I think that is meant as, again, stage setting, to say like, this is how horrible the famine is. And I don’t want to make it sound like the famine wasn’t that horrible because it clearly was! It was manmade, and it was really, really horrible.

WJ: Yeah, exactly. I’m not saying that the descriptions were inaccurate. I’m saying that they seemed to revel in the horror of it a bit too much for my liking.

GJ: Yeah, totally. That said, I mean, I don’t want to be like completely negative. At times I thought the writing was quite lovely, and at other times, I thought it was very funny. Like there’s a part where it’s saying that a character doesn’t fight fair, and it says, “The Marquess of Queensberry, he was not. But as admirers of another flamboyant Irishman will know, neither was the Marquess of Queensberry.” That’s a good Oscar Wilde joke. I appreciated it.

WJ: I totally missed that. Can I go back? You said that there was a gay character, and I think I missed that as well. Who was that?

GJ:  It just comes up barely, barely, barely again, at the end, one of the sons of David and his wife, Laura. At the end, the narrator, who’s the kids’ stepfather, mentions he thinks that one of the boys, now an adult, prefers the company of men.

WJ: Oh, I missed that too. As you say, choices being made. I want to go back to your point, though, about sometimes the writing being good. Because, yeah, I think I was mostly just sort of faintly annoyed the whole time reading this, followed by periods of being extremely annoyed, and then I’d go back to just being faintly annoyed. But then every once in a while, there was a sentence that would just like, knock me on my ass. I did really appreciate that. So he’s talking about his brother’s faith, basically. And Pius is saying, is denouncing like, all faith as a lie, basically. But just the way he phrased it, I thought was beautiful, because he says that his brother “is translating that fact,” meaning the fact of like, existence, “translating that fact into a sententious fiction because he lacked the courage to read it in the original.” I just really liked that like, lies are translated versions of the original was just such an interesting concept. So yeah, so every once in a while, there would be this phrase or this concept that I would like sit there with for a while.

GJ: Yeah, no, totally. Yeah, the writing was really good. I mean, I think, overall, this book is probably as close to being something I might enjoy as any book of this type could be.

WJ: Can I… I have some plot questions.

GJ: Okay. I mean, I’ll really give it my all. I finished reading this quite shortly before podcast recording. So like… I think I maybe could do it. So: Spoilers from now.

WJ: Who killed David? The writer?

GJ: The writer. Yes.

WJ: The writer.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Episode 146 – 2021 Book Preview and The Hatening Begins appeared first on Reading the End.

Episode 145

Things We Discussed

If the Boot Fits, Rebekah Weatherspoon
The King Must Die, Mary Renault
Fearing the Black Body, Sabrina Strings
Vanishing Falls, Poppy Gee
The Midnight Bargain, CL Polk
Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho
Chocolate olive oil cake from Smitten Kitchen
the Indian grocery store where I placed my online order!
Meera Sodha’s Bombay Rolls recipe
Real Men Knit, Kwana Jackson
Permanent Record, Mary HK Choi
We Ride Upon Sticks, Quan Berry
The Likeness, Tana French
Act of God, Jill Ciment
Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia
the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Patricia C. Wrede
Sorcery and Cecilia, Caroline Stevermer and Patricia C. Wrede
Meghan Markle’s Oprah interview
To Have and to Hoax, Martha Waters
To Love and to Loathe, Martha Waters
The Space Between Worlds, Micaiah Johnson
Norma Jeane Baker of Troy, Anne Carson
Death Wins a Goldfish, Brian Rea
Thorn, Intisar Khanani
The Dark Fantastic, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas
Paul Lewin
Plain Bad Heroines, Emily Danforth
The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, Gina Apostol
Black Sails
Leverage
Star of the Sea, John O’Connor

You can get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. As a brand new feature, you can also follow me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Storygraph! If you like what we do, support us on Patreon. Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much).

Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour

Transcript

Gin Jenny: Welcome to the Reading the End Bookcast, with the Demographically Similar Jennys. I’m Gin Jenny.

Whiskey Jenny: And I’m Whiskey Jenny.

Gin Jenny: And we are back to talk about books and literary happenings. On today’s podcast, we’re going to talk about what we are reading and making. We’re going to recap our reading in the year 2020, the year that lasted 1000 million years, and then we’re going to talk about Emily Danforth’s novel Plain Bad Heroines. Whiskey Jenny, it’s been a minute. I’ve missed you so much.

Whiskey Jenny: I have missed you so much too. It is a pleasure and an honor to be podcasting with you again.

Gin Jenny: What are you reading?

Whiskey Jenny: I am reading one of my, I forget what season but previous forthcoming preview—

Gin Jenny: Oh yeah, yay!

Whiskey Jenny: Which was If the Boot Fits by Rebekah Weatherspoon.

Gin Jenny: Remind me the premise? I know it’s Cinderella-based, but I can’t remember.

Whiskey Jenny: Yeah, so there’s a, it’s an actor and a Hollywood assistant have a one night stand, but she leaves the next morning, she accidentally gets his Oscar, and they get their gift bags— It’s Cinderella but she’s an assistant and he’s an actor, and then it turns out her best friend’s wedding is about to happen on his family ranch that does events. So they’re gonna have to, you know, work it all out.

Gin Jenny: Oh my God, that sounds great.

Whiskey Jenny: Yeah, so I’ve only just started it, I’m not very far in, but the assistant’s boss is horrible, and I’m hoping she’s not as horrible as she seems. I’m hoping that it’s gonna be like, Actually…

Gin Jenny: The next book’s about her, and she reforms!

Whiskey Jenny: Yeah, exactly, yeah. Because right now, she seems pretty awful. I know and I don’t want that for anyone.

Gin Jenny: Well if she is awful. I’m confident that the heroine will find a new better exciting job.

Whiskey Jenny: I feel safe in Rebekah Weatherspoon’s hands, who I think we both said should be more — Is she famous yet?

Gin Jenny: I mean, you know, in some circles, but like she’s not as famous as she should be. She should be on the like New York Times bestseller list.

Whiskey Jenny: I do too. I think she’s so great.

Gin Jenny: But I think, you know, the time is coming.

Whiskey Jenny: Is she on the uptick?

Gin Jenny: I don’t know, but I hope so! I feel like a lot of authors that, the romance authors specifically, that I used to be like, oh they should be better known, are like, on their way up.

Whiskey Jenny: Great. Where are you reading right now?

Gin Jenny: What am I reading? I finished three books last night that I had been reading for what felt like 1000 years.

Whiskey Jenny: Shut the front door! Three?

Gin Jenny: Yes, I mean, I was very close to the end of all of them, but I was like, you know what, I’m not having this, I’m gonna sit down and finish these books.

Whiskey Jenny: Goodness, I’m so impressed.

Gin Jenny: Thank you. So one of them was a reread of The King Must Die by Mary Renault and one was Fearing the Black Body, by Sabrina Strings, which is about like the racial origins of fatphobia. Yeah, it was very interesting, and I, there was some third book, I swear to God, but I just… Oh, oh, it was Vanishing Falls by Poppy Gee or Gee. It’s spelled G E E. Which is a mystery novel set in Tasmania.

Whiskey Jenny: Oh, how was it?

Gin Jenny: It was pretty good. I enjoyed it. She had a list at the end of the book of like her favorite book set in Tasmania, and I was like, great! I’m going to read all of those! And my library has two of them so. And it was not the most exciting sounding two.

Whiskey Jenny: Is the author from Tasmania?

Gin Jenny: She is!

Whiskey Jenny: Excellent. I feel like there’s this weird— I mean, not weird, it goes back to colonialism, but there’s a trend in mysteries where white expats write like a ton of the popular mystery novels set in non-western countries. Uh huh. I am guilty of perpetrating and reading and enjoying those books, but I’ve been trying to do better and seek out mysteries by native authors. But I’m just putting it out there in the universe for recommendations to come my way, so that I can avoid the white expats. Not that they’re not enjoyable as well, you know. You know!

Gin Jenny: I think I probably have some recommendations but let me think about it more. Anyway, what I’m actually reading is The Midnight Bargain by CL Polk, which is a fantasy novel. It’s super fun, it’s set, it’s like secondary world fantasy, but the world it’s set in is kind of reminiscent of Jane Austen’s era of like, Regency-era books. So the premise is that women go into the main city, and they’re on like the marriage market, basically. Our main gal is a like sorceress and she wants to like learn more and more sorcery and get better and better at it, but if she gets married, they do a thing that like prevents women from doing sorcery.

Whiskey Jenny: No! No!

Gin Jenny: Right, exactly, but her father has like mortgaged all their assets to pay for her season so that like… You’re making a face and I understand why, but it is actually like quite enjoyable.

Whiskey Jenny: It sounds so stressful and horrible, but I’m glad you’re enjoying it. I’m so glad you’re enjoying it.

Gin Jenny: It reminds me a little bit of Sorcerer to the Crown, and books like that, so I’m enjoying it a lot. It’s very, very— And I don’t think she’s gonna end up getting married and being stuck in that bad situation.

Whiskey Jenny: What’s the tone, I will ask?

Gin Jenny: It’s not quite as light-hearted as the tone of Sorcerer to the Crown, but it’s pretty light-hearted. So I’m enjoying it a lot.

Whiskey Jenny: Well, I hope it remains enjoyable, and that nothing terrible happens, which is what I hope for most books.

Gin Jenny: So for today we’re talking about what we’re making. I’m very proud of myself. Whiskey Jenny, what are you making?

Whiskey Jenny: I made a vegan, gluten-free cake. That was good! Which I say with surprise because I’m not traditionally a vegan or gluten-free baker, so I don’t have a lot of experience in those realms. It was a chocolate olive oil cake that was originally a recipe from Smitten Kitchen, and I learned that this sort of cake has its roots in Depression-era baking, because there wasn’t any eggs or butter. That was a fun historical tidbit. And then I tweaked it, and we had these really delicious mandarin oranges, so I, instead of using water, I used their juice, and I added some of their zest to it, and it was like mandarin orange chocolate cake and it was, it was pretty good. Oh, and I used oat flour instead of flour flour to make it gluten-free, because I’m slightly nut-averse. I’ll say averse instead of allergic. So yeah, vegan, gluten-free mandarin chocolate cake.

Gin Jenny: Boy, that’s amazing. That sounds great.

Whiskey Jenny: What have you been making?

Gin Jenny: So, my one of my New Year’s Resolutions was to cook one new recipe per month for dinner, like dinner recipe, because I’m not a very adventurous cook, and I felt like some of my old stuff had been getting kind of, I was tired of it. I want to try some new things, especially because as I have mentioned too often perhaps on this podcast and the internet because I’m so proud of myself, I learned to make doubles in quarantine. It was a huge cooking victory for me.

Whiskey Jenny: They sounded amazing.

Gin Jenny: They are good. I’m so excited to make them for you when the times are normal. And so it’s, it’s made me feel like empowered to try other additional things. So, I just did a, I ordered a big boatload of Indian groceries from Kalyustan’s, which ships Indian groceries, which is great. So I got some of the like spices and stuff that I needed and couldn’t get locally without actually going into a store, which I’m not doing, and I made chana masala from Meera Sodha’s cookbook, and it came out pretty good. I have tried to make chana masala numerous times and have not come up with the result that I was happy with, but this came out really good. And I did an innovation off my own bat, which is that I tasted it, and I was like, this is pretty good, but I think it would be better if I added, amchur powder and cayenne red pepper.

Whiskey Jenny: What is amchur powder?

Gin Jenny: It’s like dried mango powder. It was one of the things that I had ordered from the Indian grocery. It definitely worked. It made it so delicious.

Whiskey Jenny: Nice! Look at you! Innovating and saying baseball metaphors!

Gin Jenny: I tasted it, I was like man, I feel like it needs like a citrus. Do I dare put lemons in it or would that be bad? And then I was like, wait, you have this other thing that’s not exactly a citrus but it’s sort of close ish.

Whiskey Jenny: Uh huh. That sounds delicious. I haven’t had Indian food in ages I should make some.

Gin Jenny: Oh man, we’ve been ordering Indian food a lot, and it’s very good.

Whiskey Jenny: Problem is my mom doesn’t like cumin, and I don’t know how to make Indian food that doesn’t have cumin in it.

Gin Jenny: Well, I’ll look at my I’ve got like a whole backlog of Indian recipes that I’ve saved, so I’ll look through them and see. There’s this recipe that definitely doesn’t have cumin, but it’s also not a main dish. They’re called like Bombay rolls and you have puff pastry and you put like cilantro and mint chutney on them, and some other stuff and then you roll up and bake them.

Whiskey Jenny: Well, that sounds great.

Gin Jenny: Yeah, they look great.

Whiskey Jenny: That sounds delicious. She doesn’t like cilantro either but I’m just gonna make those just for me.

Gin Jenny: So Whiskey Jenny, do you want to talk about 2020? Not the year itself, it was so stupid, but books?

Whiskey Jenny: I do want to talk about books in 2020, but it’s going to be, even that is going to be a weird, weird. It’s weird. Weird. I can’t help it. I’m sorry, but yes, let’s go, let’s get into it.

Gin Jenny: Yeah. All right, let’s get into it. So I want to start with just podcast books because I feel very confident in my best and worst for you.

Whiskey Jenny: Oh, okay, let’s do it. Let’s do it. Let’s do worst. This is telling me that I’m wrong,

Gin Jenny: Is it?

Whiskey Jenny: Yes, about my picks for you.

Gin Jenny: Why?

Whiskey Jenny: Because in a historical move, for the first time ever, I picked the same one for the both of us.

Gin Jenny: For both?

Whiskey Jenny: Yeah.

Gin Jenny: Whoa.

Whiskey Jenny: I’m picking up that uh, you didn’t do that so I must be wrong, but anyway, doesn’t matter. I don’t need to Clue this out.

Gin Jenny: Okay, so I thought your worst would be Real Men Knit.

Whiskey Jenny: Nope! It was Permanent Record.

Gin Jenny: Oh, I forgot about Permanent Record. I mean I looked at our full list when I was doing this and obviously I just discounted it. Okay, all right, Permanent Record, fair enough.

Whiskey Jenny: But I would say, the gap between expectation and enjoyment was the largest for Real Men Knit.

Gin Jenny: I think that’s why I picked it because I didn’t like, it was a huge letdown for you.

Whiskey Jenny: I mean, and no shots to the book or the author. It just was not what I wanted. It was a letdown but I think, like, on a scale of one to 10 enjoyment-wise, Permanent Record was still lower, alas.

Gin Jenny: All right, that makes sense. Well, so I think that I was sort of projecting then on you in terms of like expectation gap versus reality and the reading experience it produced.

Whiskey Jenny: Interesting. Since I already spoiled it I thought that Permanent Record would have been your least favorite as well

Gin Jenny: It was We Ride Upon Sticks.

Whiskey Jenny: Really? Man, I knew you didn’t enjoy it, but I didn’t know you didn’t enjoy it that much, or that little

Gin Jenny:  I think it was exactly a function of what we said, that like I really, I had very high expectations for it, and then reading it I was like, Mmmm. Well, so I had picked two as your potential best, and having listened to you say that you picked the same one for both of us, I remain unenlightened.

Whiskey Jenny: Okay, well you say your pick, because if I say mine, it spoils both.

Gin Jenny: Oh, right. Okay, so I think your favorite was Take a Hint, Dani Brown.

Whiskey Jenny: Oh! No.

Gin Jenny: But my second guess was Vanishing Half.

Whiskey Jenny: Yes!

Gin Jenny: I think I get like half a point for that and no points for the first one.

Whiskey Jenny: I think you do too. Oh can I pick a second guess?

Gin Jenny: Yes, of course!

Whiskey Jenny: Since it’s not The Vanishing Half. Thorn!

Gin Jenny: So yeah, it was a toss up for me between Thorn and Take a Hint, Dani Brown, and I couldn’t choose between them.

Whiskey Jenny: Fascinating.

Gin Jenny: Why, why? I mean I loved Vanishing Half, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like in terms of like what I’ll return to, it is probably one of those two.

Whiskey Jenny: Oh that’s fair. No, I feel like usually we at least get one right and we didn’t get any right. Fuck you, 2020!

Gin Jenny: It’s probably because I haven’t been able to visit you recently. I’ve lost my keen grasp of your psyche.

Whiskey Jenny: No, no, it’s still there, but I do want to visit you.

Gin Jenny: Me too. Very much.

Whiskey Jenny: Interesting.

Gin Jenny: I mean, I guess I’m not surprised because it’s not that you’ve told me anything I didn’t already know about like your general reading tastes.

Whiskey Jenny: Interesting, interesting. We also had a smaller pool this year.

Gin Jenny: Which you would think would make it easier!

Whiskey Jenny: Shhhhhh. With your logic!

Gin Jenny: I was actually gonna ask before we get into like our actual superlatives: How was your 2020 as a reading year overall?

Whiskey Jenny: Uh, small. It’s even more shameful for someone who hosts a — Not shameful, but even more disappointing for someone who cohosts a podcast about reading but I did not do a lot of reading last year.

Gin Jenny: I did way less than in previous years, which is weird because I have nothing else to do.

Whiskey Jenny: Right? What do I do all day? I feel like I just work, and cook, and then clean up after cooking and that’s it, and sleep.

Gin Jenny: Yeah, that’s it. I don’t do anything. I don’t understand where my time goes!

Whiskey Jenny: Where does it go? The stats of 2021 are on the upswing already, which I’m taking as a promising sign both towards my own mental health, and the world in general.

Gin Jenny: Oh, yes, I didn’t read as much in 2020 but when I was looking back at my reading year, I read a lot of books that I really loved. So I think like, despite reading less, I’m gonna still call it a win, because I found a lot of really great books.

Whiskey Jenny: Well that’s good. That’s exciting. It’s also surprising to look back at how few books I had read in 2020. When you’re sort of in the midst of it, you’re like, you know, it’s just this one week or something.

Gin Jenny: But no, it’s every week!

Whiskey Jenny: It’s every week, it was every week. I did reread a lot more last year.

Gin Jenny: Oh that sounds so nice! Yeah, I’m trying to reread more this year. I’m trying to like have at least one reread book on the go all the time.

Whiskey Jenny: How did you feel about podcast reads in general? You know what we should mention? Together, we didn’t read any white men.

Gin Jenny: Oh that’s right, I forgot about that. Yeah and I feel great about it I do not feel that my reading was impoverished.

Whiskey Jenny: Oh God no, not at all. I feel great about it as well, and I will also say I don’t think we, I mean, obviously we always try and make sure we read diversely, but we didn’t set that as a goal. But I will say I noticed it about halfway through the year, and then I didn’t ever want to be the one to break the numbers. I was like, well if she doesn’t, I can’t! I think it turned out really well.

Gin Jenny: I just read a lot fewer white men if I don’t have to. And I feel like because there’s so much good stuff being written in all the genres that I love the best… It’s been nice. Way to go, publishing.

Whiskey Jenny: Yeah, you’re not gonna like what I have for Hatening.

Gin Jenny: You know, obviously I read some books by white guys, but like yeah it’s definitely not the bulk of my reading.

Whiskey Jenny: And I’m glad we didn’t for podcast, and I hope we can keep it up at least majority non-white.

Gin Jenny: Yeah, totally.

Whiskey Jenny: I’m gonna bring the numbers down for the Hatening.

Gin Jenny: Oh God, I’m excited and dreading it.

Whiskey Jenny: We mostly read American though! We only read one non-American author.

Gin Jenny: Yikes, we gotta do better.

Whiskey Jenny: I know, yeah.

Gin Jenny: But not with Irish guys though.

Whiskey Jenny: Oh, you’re not gonna like Hatening at all, which is like kind of cheated because I did it last time but it went so well!

Gin Jenny: Except it didn’t go that well because you didn’t like it either.

Whiskey Jenny: That’s fair, that’s fair. A good time was had by all though.

Gin Jenny: All right, well, what’s a book that you unexpectedly, not in a planned way book that you hated?

Whiskey Jenny: Again, there were so few that I read this year that it was almost difficult to do these superlatives. I think I also worked really hard to avoid books that I thought I wasn’t going to like. It wasn’t as much of an unexpected thing but I went with a book that I liked the least, which is coincidentally The Likeness, by Tana French, who is a mystery writer that people just adore, and I didn’t love her first one, but I thought I would give it another try, and I didn’t love the second one either. So I think I have successfully determined she’s just not the gal for me and that’s okay.

Gin Jenny: Yeah, same here as she’s also not the gal for me. Unfortunately, I would like her to be.

Whiskey Jenny: I would too! People love her, there were things about the two books that I liked, but just in general, not my bag of tricks. What was your unexpected hate?

Gin Jenny: So mine was a book called Act of God by Jill Ciment. I’m not sure how to say it, C I M E N T. I don’t remember who recommended this to me but it’s been on my to be read list for a really long time, and I finally read it in December of last year, and I didn’t like it at all. It’s about this glowing fungus that shows up in New York apartment buildings, and I don’t like fungus. And I hated the people died from it, and it was honestly like too close to real fears.

Whiskey Jenny: Wait, you read a book about a deadly substance?

Gin Jenny: Yeah.

Whiskey Jenny: Infecting people in December 2020?

Gin Jenny: Yeah, I didn’t really 100% understand what the contents of the book were gonna be

Whiskey Jenny: Boy, you’re a better woman than I am.

Gin Jenny: Well I’m not because I hated it, although the book I unexpectedly love also features a deadly fungus. So, you know, who knows, Whiskey Jenny.

Whiskey Jenny: Turns out you do like fungus!

Gin Jenny: I don’t!

Whiskey Jenny: You heard it here first!

Gin Jenny: If I get athlete’s foot I like freak the hell out which is a very like overall completely harmless fungus but yet I’m like, I’m infected. This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to anyone. It really triggers my contamination issues.

Whiskey Jenny: You don’t like fungus, yeah.

Gin Jenny: I really do not.

Whiskey Jenny: And yet, tell us your unexpectedly loved book.

Gin Jenny: Okay, so my unexpectedly loved book was Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

Whiskey Jenny: My dad gave me that for Christmas, I haven’t read it yet.

Gin Jenny: Well I really loved it. The reason I didn’t necessarily expect to is my track record with this author is that I’ve enjoyed all her books that I’ve read, but they have always been sort of not quite exactly my thing, so I thought this was gonna be fine. And then I like loved it. It’s a gothic novel set in 1950s Mexico, and it is so scary and creepy. It’s like the perfect example of a gothic novel. It’s like creepy in all the ways you want a gothic novel to be creepy, and I just loved it. I thought it was stupendous.

Whiskey Jenny: Good to know. Is there a love story as well?

Gin Jenny: Yes, yes, but as with all gothic novels, you don’t know if like, the guy’s cool and really into her, or if he is potentially a murderer, which is the fun of gothic novels, I feel. What about you?

Whiskey Jenny: Book I unexpectedly loved was actually a reread, which was the Dealing with Dragon series by Patricia C Wrede.

Gin Jenny: I love that series.

Whiskey Jenny: Me too, and I’d loved it as a, as a youth, but had not revisited it in adulthood and I was worried, it wasn’t going to hold up or it’s going to be sort of like too young and I couldn’t recapture the magic but it was still just like such a little confection. I had the best time. I ended up listening on audio for two, three, and four, just not the first one. There are full ensemble cast audiobooks.

Gin Jenny: Oh my gosh that’s amazing

Whiskey Jenny: Which are so fun. Some of the voices I was like this is not who I would have picked but it’s fine. I can’t have everything. The voice that they picked for the rabbit who turns into a donkey was just like, so opposite for— It was so, like, slow and—

Gin Jenny: And what were you picturing?

Whiskey Jenny: More rabbity!

Gin Jenny: Yeah, that’s what that’s what I was just thinking.

Whiskey Jenny: He’s a rabbit who’s a donkey, he’s not a donkey who’s a rabbit.

Gin Jenny: Get your head out of your ass, audiobook.

Whiskey Jenny: Yeah, this is who I would have picked to voice like—

Gin Jenny: A donkey who had turned into a rabbit, as you so correctly stated.

Whiskey Jenny: Exactly. It was a very like slow galumphing voice, but anyway it was still a great experience. There was a period of time where I was avoiding screens, I had a teeny tiny concussion so I had to avoid them, and so I did a lot of audiobook listening. This is bleeding over into 2021 so I’m cheating a little bit, but I started the series in 2020, and they were just, they really held up!

Gin Jenny: Boy, you have really engendered in me a desire to read those books.

Whiskey Jenny: It’ll take you like one night, I mean the audiobooks will take longer but like they’re so short, they were great.

Gin Jenny: The Patricia C. Wrede book that I reread the most obviously is Sorcery and Cecelia: Magic and Crumpets, but I like some of her other books a lot and I really have not read the Dragons books in like years. Boy, you’re a genius.

Whiskey Jenny: Highly recommend. There was some stuff in the beginning about like princesses are boring.

Gin Jenny: Yeah, I feel like we’ve moved past that as a culture, yeah it was a counterbalance to what was going on.

Whiskey Jenny: Exactly, yeah.

Gin Jenny: It was long before Meghan Markle, uh…

Whiskey Jenny: Holy shit! I can’t stop thinking about it! I can’t think about it so much that she said, and the fact that they got married before the wedding that we all saw his bullet point number like, 11. In any other interview, that’d’ve been like wait what?? I love that they got to have that special moment. I think it’s really sweet but also like, no one’s even talking about it!

Gin Jenny: Yeah they’re having a girl! That’s also barely being talked about. So excited for them! 100% chance they name the child Diana!

Whiskey Jenny: [heartrending gasp] Oh, God.

Gin Jenny: I mean I don’t know! I thought William was gonna name his daughter Diana and he didn’t, so what the hell do I know?

Whiskey Jenny: Yeah well, screw William.

Gin Jenny: Yeah, down with William.

Whiskey Jenny: Oh my god, oh my god.

Gin Jenny: Yeah it was a lot.

Whiskey Jenny: Boy, you really got me with that. Of course they are! Of course they are, though! Jesus!

Gin Jenny: My friend, I kind of was like, oh I have to watch the Oprah interview and she was like, why?, and I was like, Oh sit down and I’ll tell you, and she didn’t really know anything about the British Royal Family. I was like, all right, well, I’m on this walk and you’re just gonna hear about it! And she’s like very sort of you know—not that we all don’t want to topple the patriarchy, but she really does a lot, and she does like labor organizing and stuff so like the Royals are really not her thing at all. But she messaged me today and she was like, I cannot stop reading about the Royals What have you done to me?

Whiskey Jenny: Aw, yay!

Gin Jenny: Yay! Anyway.

Whiskey Jenny: Anyway, where were we? .

Gin Jenny: So, the Oprah interview got a lot of attention. What’s a book that should have gotten more attention? See, I’ve done a segue there!

Whiskey Jenny: Seamless.

Gin Jenny: I still got it.

Whiskey Jenny: Amazing. I really enjoyed To Have and to Hoax, by Martha Waters, which was a period romance that I read last year that I didn’t hear about anywhere. Again, this could be on me for not—for being, like in the void, I think as someone referred to it. The structure of it was something I had not read before and, you know, that’s pretty rare for Regency romance. So these two people fall in love and get married, but then they have this huge fight, and the book basically starts five years later and they don’t even speak to each other. But it’s Regency so they’re still married. And they got to work it out! They’re obviously still in love, spoiler alert.

Gin Jenny: So I wasn’t sure you would like that—because I read that too, I did enjoy it. I wasn’t sure you would like it because it’s got pranks and you hate pranks.

Whiskey Jenny: Well, sounds like I hate fun

Gin Jenny: No it doesn’t! Pranks are terrible!

Whiskey Jenny: I mean, I’d love a small harmless prank, I think you’re right, it could have gone awry, because there’s a lot of lying as well in this book but I think most of the lies they don’t have to hold on to for very long. They get revealed and then there’s like a different lie, and then that one gets revealed. I would just like to mention the prank that you pulled on me and Snapple Alex when we were all living together.

Gin Jenny: I’ve just done air quotes to indicate how not a prank this was.

Whiskey Jenny: I think about this so much, it was such a sweet Gin Jenny thing to do. She was secretly refilling the soap in the bathroom, and waiting for us to be like huh, this soap, it’s, it’s magic. Both Alex and I were so clueless that we were— like we’re so oblivious that we were both just like, wow I guess we use less soap than we thought.

Gin Jenny: It was months. And at least once I would be like, Hey guys, do we need more soap? and they’d be like, No, we have plenty of soap.

Whiskey Jenny: It still seems full to me! Like we were so oblivious to magic happening before our eyes. It was the magic regenerative soap dish in our bathroom and we are like, eh, I guess you don’t need to buy soap today.

Gin Jenny: I mean you shouldn’t question magic when it happens to you, I guess. It’s actually funny because I’m doing a version of that same exact thing right now, and I guess we’ll find out what happens.

Whiskey Jenny: Oh, keep us posted.

Gin Jenny: I think I can say this because my dad definitely does not listen to this podcast. So he has been having some health issues recently, and my sister was talking to me and she was like, Listen, I gotta confess, I bought $100 worth of Girl Scout cookies, so they’ll just have a lot of Girl Scout cookies on hand for my dad; and I was like, oh my god, I also bought $100 of Girl Scout cookies for the exact same reason. And then she thought this was really funny and so she told this to our oldest sister, and our older sister was like, oh my god I also bought $100 worth of Girl Scout cookies.

Whiskey Jenny: This is the sweetest family story ever, and it’s not even over. Okay, keep going.

Gin Jenny: So we just all have a lot of Thin Mints, and we’re just kind of doling them out to my dad, as you know, we feel he needs them.

Whiskey Jenny: Are you sneaking the boxes into his home?

Gin Jenny: No, we just have an endless supply so at some point in the year, one presumes he’s going to be like, this is still somehow happening even though Girl Scout Cookie season ended a really long time ago. I don’t think he’s ever gonna notice. I think my mom might.

Whiskey Jenny: I don’t think he’s ever gonna notice either. I don’t think I would! I think I would just be like, Oh great! More Girl Scout Cookies! Thanks!

Gin Jenny: I mean I have like 20 boxes of Thin Mints, you know.

Whiskey Jenny: So he’s a Thin Mint man.

Gin Jenny: Yeah. Oh 100%. Yeah, he does not stray, like I like some different Girl Scout cookies, but yeah he’s 100% Thin Mints all the time.

Whiskey Jenny: So your mom’s not in on it either. Interesting. Interesting. Well, keep us posted.

Gin Jenny: I will. On my non-prank prank.

Whiskey Jenny: So you also read To Have and to Hoax. What did you think?

Gin Jenny: I enjoyed it! I thought it was really fun, and there’s a sequel coming out so I’m excited to— I forget what it’s called but it looks also fun.

Whiskey Jenny: Do you know who’s in it?

Gin Jenny: To Love and to Loathe.

Whiskey Jenny: Is it one of the friends, and by the friends?

Gin Jenny: Oh, it’s the widowed lady, Diana.

Whiskey Jenny: Diana! And the guy, the friend. Good good. I did like them, they had good banter. What is your book that you wish had gotten more attention, like the Meghan Markle and Harry interview?

Gin Jenny: Okay so I cheated a little bit. This is a 2020 book but it was like one of the first books I read in 2021.

Whiskey Jenny: I’ll allowed it.

Gin Jenny: But it published in 2020 and I feel like it kind of like disappeared into the void and I’m so sad about it.

Whiskey Jenny: I’m so sad for any author who published in 2020!

Gin Jenny: Me too, especially a debut author, which this one was.

Whiskey Jenny: God, I’m sorry.

Gin Jenny: Anyway, the book is The Space Between Worlds, it’s by Micaiah Johnson. It is so good, it absolutely blew my mind, it’s about this woman who works for a company, and their whole deal is that they send like travelers between alternate universes, to get stuff and learn stuff and do missions. But the problem is, if your counterpart, so if the like Whiskey Jenny in the next world over is alive and you, Whiskey Jenny, travel to that world, you’ll probably die.

Whiskey Jenny: I will or she will?

Gin Jenny: You will. You the traveler will. So the way that the company recruits people to do this work is they look for people who are more likely to have died young, in alternate universes so they’re like child soldiers.

Whiskey Jenny: Woof.

Gin Jenny: Yeah, right, exactly! So the protagonist is one of those people, and she grew up in like the sort of slums, which are run by like a, you know crime boss guy. She’s only alive in like seven of the like 300 possible universes.

Whiskey Jenny: Oh, they know?

Gin Jenny: They’ve been able to send travelers to those universes and be like, look for people, you know, in each one who were dead. Yeah, yeah, so it’s about her, and there’s so many like plot twists and turns that I can’t even like hardly describe what it’s about but it’s, it’s so good. It was so like twisty turny, and I loved all the characters, and all the people you thought you understood who they were, it kept getting like turned on its head, and they like knew more than you thought they knew, or they, you know, had hidden depths you didn’t know about. It was just a great book, and even though it was pretty dark, I feel like the way the ending was left space for any of the characters to become the best versions of themselves, if they wanted to. Yeah! Even though it’s quite dark, I still found it pretty hopeful in the end, and it just was like a really, I loved it. I can’t say enough about it. It was so so so so good, and it’s a debut, and it was so good and like assured and smart and I loved it.

Whiskey Jenny: Wow.

Gin Jenny: Yeah, The Space between Worlds. Y’all should get on it, it’s so good.

Whiskey Jenny: Is there gonna be another one?

Gin Jenny: She’s not done writing, but I don’t think she’s doing a sequel to this one, or at least as far as I know.

Whiskey Jenny: Anyway, where were we?

Gin Jenny: We were at best book title.

Whiskey Jenny: Best book title! What is your best book title?

Gin Jenny: My best book title is Norma Jeane Baker of Troy by Anne Carson. That makes me laugh every time I think about it. Norma Jeane Baker, in case anyone doesn’t know, is Marilyn Monroe’s actual name before she changed it to Marilyn Monroe, and it’s a book of poetry and I loved it.

Whiskey Jenny: Mine is Death Wins a Goldfish.

Gin Jenny: That’s great!

Whiskey Jenny: Isn’t that so cute? It’s by Brian Rea, who I think is like a New Yorker illustrator. It is really really cute. It’s an illustrated little gift sort of style book, do you know what I mean? Wherein Death, he’s never gone on vacation and he’s acquired all these vacation days., I guess in this universe, there’s lots of Deaths that work at the Death Corporation. He is but one Death. They make him use his vacation days, and so he goes out in the world, and he’s just really cute like little pencil sketch drawings, and at one point he wins a goldfish at a carnival and it’s just like, unsurprisingly melancholy but oddly, sweet and beautiful. Podcast composer Jessie put me on to it, so hat tip to Jessie for the rec.

Gin Jenny: That sounds amazing. I will definitely get it at my library if possible.

Whiskey Jenny: Do try and get the hardcopy. As with the book we read for for podcast, podcast.

Gin Jenny: Yes, oh my god, yes, great point. What was your favorite book cover of the year?

Whiskey Jenny: Well, I guess I’ll go for a genre. I’m still really enjoying that the like flowery covers are still a thing. You know what I mean.

Gin Jenny: Yeah I do! The like Instagram ready ones. I know exactly what you’re talking about.

Whiskey Jenny: Yes exactly! That genre, there were like all those articles like, why do all the covers look like that? And I’m not mad at it I’m still into them. I think there’s also, all the romance novels that I was looking at and particularly enjoyed last year have like a really bright background with sort of a sans serif cover font, and one cute little illustration. I think that’s sort of a big trend, and I’m enjoying that trend as well. But my actual favorite cover was Thorn.

Gin Jenny: Oh yes, I love the cover of Thorn.

Whiskey Jenny: Thorn is gorgeous, it’s got this like beautiful intricate patterns, and it’s pretty teal, it’s just so cool.

Gin Jenny: Yeah, It’s really pretty. I was looking at the cover for the companion novel that has come out by the time this podcast airs, and it is just as beautiful, it’s so pretty. Oh, just beautiful to look at.

What was your favorite book cover?

Whiskey Jenny: My favorite book cover of books I read last year was The Dark Fantastic by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas. The cover art is by this amazing artist called Paul Lewin, and it’s an image of a woman holding out her hand to a red hummingbird, and it’s just really beautiful, like I would put it on my wall. It’s so pretty. And all his stuff is gorgeous. I’m subscribed to his newsletter now because I was like, I just want to see these things.

That sounds fun.

Gin Jenny: Yeah! We decided not to do new year’s resolutions this year, we’re very old.

Whiskey Jenny: We’re very old! We’ve got enough going on, man!

Gin Jenny: I can barely handle all the working and sitting I’m already doing!

Whiskey Jenny: Seriously. But I would like to mention my one resolution for the writing industry.

Gin Jenny: Fantastic. Go.

Whiskey Jenny: No more passages from the point of view of the creepy killer, or the creepy stalker. We just don’t need it. We don’t need it.

Gin Jenny: It adds nothing. I couldn’t agree more.

Whiskey Jenny: It adds nothing. All it tells us is the creepy person is creepy.

Gin Jenny: Which we knew!

Whiskey Jenny: And then it gives you this like weird permission to be gross, and you don’t have that permission! Away with it!

Gin Jenny: I completely agree.

Whiskey Jenny: Anything you wanted to decree?

Gin Jenny: Yeah, so I have three actually, but they’re all pretty much the same resolution as each other and as what you just said. Number one, don’t publish books by fascists. It’s so simple.

Whiskey Jenny: It’s so easy.

Gin Jenny: There’s so many Trump administration people who might want to publish a book and rehab their image. Don’t do it!

Whiskey Jenny: Don’t you do it! They’re gonna do it.

Gin Jenny: They’re definitely gonna do it.

Whiskey Jenny: But they don’t have to!

Gin Jenny: They don’t have to! It’s a choice that they’re making. All right, number two.

Whiskey Jenny: Yep.

Gin Jenny: Another thing they’re definitely going to do. No more Nazi romances, just stop with the Nazi romances.

Whiskey Jenny: Oh, they’re super gonna do that.

Gin Jenny: To be clear, I don’t want to do any of this ideological nickel and diming where you’re like, well, the hero of this book did fight in the German army during World War Two, but he had to, so he’s not technically 100% all the way a Nazi. Like, just don’t do it! Just don’t do it!

Whiskey Jenny: For some reason, I decided to look up the plot of that final Star Wars movie that you told me wasn’t worth the time watching, and it made me so angry. And like… you Google Kylo Ren, and it’s like—

Gin Jenny: I think that’s one of my many reasons why this resolution is a good idea, so people can have a brain cleanse from wanting to humanize the Nazis! We actually just don’t need to do that! Nazis are a going concern in the country right now, so we just don’t need to worry about it.

Whiskey Jenny: We need to worry about the present ones!

Gin Jenny: And that they’re bad, and we don’t want to be them, or date them.

Whiskey Jenny: No I don’t.

Gin Jenny: Thirdly and finally, I feel bad saying these are all the same because this one is of course quite different, but no more books about how hard it is to be related to a disabled person. Fiction or nonfiction. Like,  I’m aware that the failed infrastructure and crumbling safety net in the US, it’s very hard and draining to be a caretaker, etc. And I have personal experience with that. However, like, this is the only story people keep telling about disabled people, and it creates this idea that like disabled people are people who get talked about and like can’t speak for themselves, which is not true. So I’ve decided to place a 10 year moratorium on books of this type.

Whiskey Jenny: Yeah, I think that’s fair.

Gin Jenny: And I may renew it, when the 10 years are up. We’re gonna see how things are.

Whiskey Jenny: It’s a lease-to-own sort of a deal. Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Gin Jenny: Also I decided just for my personal life, I’ve decided to stop saying something aged badly if what I mean is that it’s racist. Because if it’s racist now, it’s also racist then. I can still say something aged badly if like we acquired new information. So like if I 10 years ago was like, I think Chris Pratt is the best Chris because he’s funny, which I would not have said 10 years ago, but if I had, and now it’s now, and we know he sucks, I think it would be fair to say that statement aged badly.

Whiskey Jenny: We do know he sucks, why do we keep litigating it? We know he sucks! Stop bringing it up! We solved it!

Gin Jenny: We cracked the case.

Whiskey Jenny: We know the answer: He sucks. He’s the worst Chris!

Gin Jenny: Yeah, nominate new Chrises to the Chris consortium.

Whiskey Jenny: Truly! They don’t all have to be white, to begin with.

Gin Jenny: So yeah that’s all the resolutions for the publishing industry! I suspect they’re going to do— Let me look back over at them. None of those things.

Whiskey Jenny: No they’re not.

Gin Jenny: But they should though.

Whiskey Jenny: Yes, and we can only hope and keep trying and pushing the needle infinitesimally further one way.

Gin Jenny: And hope for the best.

Whiskey Jenny: So I have a coworker in England whose child is in primary school, and one of the child’s classmates was family was moving away, they’re going to a different school, so the class was doing this little like zoom gathering to remember their time with the child. You know, like a little like, goodbye party, but the child’s name is Hope, so all these emails kept flying around about like, Hope is leaving us this Friday. On Friday, we’re saying goodbye to Hope!

Gin Jenny: So my, my soap opera, Guiding Light, one of the characters, she had this baby who she was going to name Hope, but I think someone kidnapped the baby at the time of its birth. So Cassie just kept for like the rest of the year, she kept being like, ever since I’ve lost Hope.

Whiskey Jenny: I didn’t know you used to watch a soap opera.

Gin Jenny: Oh my God, Guiding Light. Yes I did. I really loved it.

Whiskey Jenny: When did you watch it?

Gin Jenny: The first time I watched it was in, I don’t remember exactly how old I was, but like younger than high school, I think, which is when they cloned Reva, which was very exciting.

Whiskey Jenny: Oooh, cloning!

Gin Jenny: Yeah, her plane went down on the desert island, and it was believed she was dead, so her grieving husband had her cloned, which is like not in line with the general rules of the soap opera. It was like a weird thing that they did.

Whiskey Jenny: This is not a thing that they have in this—

Gin Jenny: No.

Whiskey Jenny: But see, I love that soaps are just like, fuck it, we’ll try it! What a great, great way to look at it.

Gin Jenny: Yeah, so they cloned Reva, and they had like an aging potion that they gave the clone to like, age her up to Josh’s age, so that he could marry her again,

Whiskey Jenny: Wait, they cloned a baby?

Gin Jenny: Well that’s how clones work.

Whiskey Jenny: Is it? I don’t know how clones work.

Gin Jenny: Yeah, if you clone a sheep, it starts from an embryo or whatever.

Whiskey Jenny: Did that know that. Cool, so they have a baby sheep. I mean, they have a baby woman.

Gin Jenny: Baby Reva, yeah. A baby, as we call it.

Whiskey Jenny: Yep, sorry. And they gave her an aging potion. Oh boy, do they kindly and thoughtfully explore the ethics of this decision?

Gin Jenny: Yeah, of course, in great depth. Naturally. No, what actually happened is that Original Recipe Reva was alive after all, and she eventually made it back to whatever it was called, Springfield or whatever. But, by that time, the clone was grown and in love with her husband, Josh, so when Reva came back, the clone kidnapped her and imprisoned her, like in a room in the house, like a secret room. So she had Reva imprisoned for all this time and eventually Josh found her and rescued her, and he was like, Oh my beloved wife, and then the clone saw their pure love for each other, and a while later took all the aging potion to kill herself so that Reva and Josh could be together, and that was like the termination of that arc.

Whiskey Jenny: Goodness. A lot to unpack there.

Gin Jenny: Yeah.

Whiskey Jenny: I watched The Young and the Restless when I was in college in France. It was great. It was dubbed in French. I watched it with my host mom when I could, and when I couldn’t watch it, she would catch me up on what happened.

Gin Jenny: Oh, that’s the best.

Whiskey Jenny: And the French title translation of The Young and the Restless is The Fires of Love. But I’m starting to think I picked the wrong one, because Young and the Restless is just about like, who’s banging who and who’s doing what business deal with whom. There are no clothes or anything like that. That sounds fun!

Gin Jenny: The clone thing was an outlier. But to be clear, like I really enjoyed it when it was just a standard soap opera. You know how it is, like all the evil people are on their way to becoming good and reforming, and all the good people are like, potentially teetering on the edge of becoming evil, and it’s like, yeah, it’s just a fun time.

Whiskey Jenny: It is a real fun time.

Gin Jenny: And anytime the actors have chemistry, no matter who they are to each other, the soap opera people are immediately like, yeah.

Whiskey Jenny: They’re on it! They’re on it!

Gin Jenny: They’re on it, every single time!

Whiskey Jenny: The like main power couple on The Young and the Restless is… I just thought this was so funny! Is named like Nicole and Victor, and their kids are a male Nicholas, Nicky, and a female Victoria, or something like that. Like they’ve genderswapped their names, which is really confusing in French.

Gin Jenny: That is so stupid, but in like such, the best proper way.

Whiskey Jenny: Yeah! Soap Opera Appreciation Month!

Gin Jenny: And also can CBS please put Guiding Light on your app so I can watch it? For God’s sake?

Whiskey Jenny: Oh, is it not?

Gin Jenny: No!

Whiskey Jenny: What is that thing for? It just made me change to Paramount Plus, as if I needed it to be rebranded.

Gin Jenny: I barely understood the first brand, and they still don’t have Guiding Light, and I just don’t understand. Like, people love soap operas. That is objectively like — you’re just leaving money on the table. That said.

Whiskey Jenny: Don’t know where we were. Were we about to start this soap opera of a book?

Gin Jenny: Yes, we’re about to talk about Plain Bad Heroines! Plain Bad Heroines was my pick, question mark?

Whiskey Jenny: Yeah, because it’s my Hatening pick [next].

Gin Jenny: It is a story about a like, girls’ school in New England, where a number of mysterious deaths happened in the past, so it goes back and forth between the olden times and the present day, when a filmmaker is making a movie about these events. So it’s sometimes set in the past but a lot of the time set in the present, and it goes between the author of the book the movie is based on; the star of the movie; and the also other star of the movie. I began this sentence and then I realized I kind of set myself up for failure. The two stars of the movie.

Whiskey Jenny: Yeah, so the three main heroines in the present are the two stars of the movie and the writer of the book, and in the past, we mostly get the headmistress or the principal of the school and her wife.

Gin Jenny: Yeah. So what did you think?

Whiskey Jenny: Boy. Yeah, no I enjoyed it. I’m so glad we read it for podcast because I have like so many thoughts and things to talk about with this book. I overall like really enjoyed it, really loved it. It’s called a horror book, and it’s all like Gothic and scary and stuff in the marketing materials, so I should have known. I should have seen it coming. But I guess, like it was horror comedy, and I thought it was going to be making fun of scariness, in a way, but really it was just scary with jokes. It was like a different brand of horror comedy, and it was terrifying. I mean I don’t read a lot of scary stuff, so: grain of salt. But there’s a scary bad scene, and I was taking a bath when I was reading it. It was terrible! But yeah, overall I really enjoyed it.I still haven’t decided if it’s too long, it might be a little too long.

Gin Jenny: I don’t disagree with that. I was gonna say like, you know, not that this isn’t true every time because I’m not a careful reader, but like, should you have questions about the plot, I’m like 75% sure I won’t be able to answer them because it’s long but I was enjoying it, so I read it slow to make it last. I like couldn’t hold on to all the things, as I was going through.

Whiskey Jenny: Yeah, I think it was a little too long. I thoroughly enjoyed it though. It’s illustrated, which I thought was really fun.

Gin Jenny: I loved the illustrations too. It’s not like every page but yeah just often enough, it was like a, yeah, gave spice to my life.

Whiskey Jenny: It also feels. I think because it’s set, it’s emulating the style sort of a book of the time period of the first happenings, I guess, so it feels very like Dickensian, that sort of era, where you get addressed as a reader, and like the character names are bolded and things like that, but I think that also contributes to confusion, which I think also is on purpose. But there are a million characters, and the narrator is constantly, like this one’s important!

Gin Jenny: Don’t forget this one! And I was like, as soon as every time a new character was introduced, I’d be like, Wait, is this a new character or have I been told previously who they are and I should have remembered that?

Whiskey Jenny: So podcast bought — podcast money, of which we have tons and tons — but we were able to read this exciting new book because of our Patreon sponsors, which is really exciting, and I got a hardcopy thanks to them, and it’s beautiful and illustrated, but I was driving myself crazy being like, Have I met this person before? So I bought the ebook, just so I could search for like a specific name. But that happens a lot when you’re like, wait, shit is this a new person? I don’t say this often…

Gin Jenny: I was just about to say!

Whiskey Jenny: There should’ve been a cast of characters!

Gin Jenny: Yeah, agree, I couldn’t agree more.

Whiskey Jenny: And that’s in keeping with the periodness of it.

Gin Jenny: Yeah, they had that in Insurrecto.

Whiskey Jenny: Exactly, yeah! Needed a cast of characters. It was a goddamn delight to read a book with so many women characters.

Gin Jenny: Same! And so many queer woman characters, it was really nice.

Whiskey Jenny: So nice! There was one nonbinary character who got referred to by their pronouns, which was just lovely to see.

Gin Jenny: Yeah, I just like, like everyone in this book is gay. It was great.

Whiskey Jenny: I don’t know if we want to talk about the ending.

Gin Jenny: Yeah, let’s talk about the ending!

Whiskey Jenny: I don’t think I’ve ever read, a female threesome book before!

Gin Jenny: Same, since you mentioned it.

Whiskey Jenny: I’m pretty sure this is the first one.

Gin Jenny: Same! And I loved it! I was like this is great. I didn’t expect it to go in this direction; I love it.

Whiskey Jenny: I know! I was so rooting for them all together, like please live your beautiful lives together. I love it so much.

Gin Jenny: Yeah, because it sets it up pretty early on that the writer and the actress who’s sort of the, what do you call it? She’s, you know, she’s first on the poster or whatever. She’s like the person that gets the movie funded because she’s a big name.

Whiskey Jenny: First billed?

Gin Jenny: Yeah, she has first billing. Yeah, so she’s like a big hotshot actress and she and the writer character like immediately have a romance pretty quickly after they meet and they go on a really lovely romantic date which I enjoyed a lot.

Whiskey Jenny: I loved their date so much! I love their date so much. They go to a chandelier tree in LA, which is this beautiful tree lit up with chandeliers, all throughout it, on its branches.

Gin Jenny: It was like a perfect date.

Whiskey Jenny: It was such a beautiful day and such a beautiful image. It reminded me so much. Of The Night Circus in that like I, with every fiber of my being, wanted to be in that moment right then, seeing what they were seeing. It was so perfectly described; it was the best date I’ve ever read. Maybe. It was so good.

Gin Jenny: It was amazing, and I thought that the third woman, Audrey, who is like kind of a much more minor actor so this is a big break for her. I was worried she was just going to be on the outside of that relationship for the whole book, so I was like so happy that, yeah, they just all — It turned out they all really liked each other and cared about each other, developed a mutual respect. Actually, Whiskey Jenny, I want to ask you about this because one of the parts of the book is that the director tells Audrey, who’s the lesser actor, he’s like, listen, the others don’t know this, but in addition to shooting the movie, we’re also going to be at the same time shooting a secret documentary about filming the movie, and we’re going to make some like creepy stuff happen, but it won’t be too bad, so like, don’t worry, but they won’t know and you’ll know. And I was worried about that that might spoil your enjoyment with the book.

Whiskey Jenny: Well, I didn’t like it, I did not like it one bit. Got really profane in my notes. I got really mad at the director and like everyone involved in saying okay to this. It turns out that they gave that same pitch to Merritt, the writer, and Harper also knew, so everyone that Audrey kind of thought she was being forced to con already knew.

Gin Jenny: Right, I was so relieved!

Whiskey Jenny: I was relieved, but I was then like a little bit more mad at Harper, because I feel like she had more power in that situation than Audrey did, and she still said yes, but anyway, Audrey gets messed with without knowing at all that she’s being messed with. And her mom and her best friend are involved, and I was so upset, and I was so mad.

Gin Jenny: That scene was really creepy too!

Whiskey Jenny: It’s so creepy. She doesn’t know what’s going on. Oh, it’s horrible.

Gin Jenny: Yeah, what they do is that they, there’s like a creepy little song, like a school song, the lyrics refer to yellow jackets which is like yellow jackets are the cause of some of the deaths that have occurred at the school, the creepy deaths. So Audrey is alone at her house, and suddenly the audiobook bursts on at top volume seeing the creepy song, and at the same time she finds all these dead yellow jackets in her sink, which is so scary. They didn’t orchestrate the yellow jackets; that seems to be actually like her being a little haunted. But they did orchestrate the audiobook thing, and that’s so uncool! I would never ever ever do that to you, Whiskey Jenny. And if I knew someone was gonna do it to you I would tell you!

Whiskey Jenny: Thank you! Let’s please make a pact never to terrify each other for the sake of art because Bo was like, oh Harper will understand. She’ll be into the final product. No, I would not! No! It’s not worth.

Gin Jenny: It’s not worth it. Don’t do cruel scary pranks to people.

Whiskey Jenny: I was thinking how well this book would pair with Pretty as a Picture.

Gin Jenny: I was too! It was such a good, yeah, it was such a good pairing, I agree.

Whiskey Jenny: I think that book more heavily indicted, the director of that movie, in Elizabeth Little, than it did Bo, the director in this book. And I would like to rectify that. I still think Bo is a monster who is messing around people’s real lives and real feelings, for the sake of his quote unquote art, and I just don’t think it’s worth it, however good the end product is, it’s not worth it. You can’t, you can’t do that! You can’t fucking do that!

Gin Jenny: I agree, and I do not accept the premise that it gets you a better piece of art at the end.

Whiskey Jenny: Yeah, yeah. Try acting! Completely agree!

Gin Jenny: Like, if you don’t think your actors are good enough, cast different actors! Elizabeth Olsen’s out there.

Whiskey Jenny: Couldn’t agree more.

Gin Jenny: Yeah. Did we read Pretty as a Picture last year? Time has lost all meaning, so.

Whiskey Jenny: Sure did.

Gin Jenny: Okay, well, that was one of my favorites too as well. It was really good.

Whiskey Jenny: Absolutely, and I think I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. It was also funnier than I thought it was.

Gin Jenny: It was very funny and very enjoyable, yeah, I loved it. I keep checking to see if that author has like has a new book coming out, and so far no joy.

Whiskey Jenny: We mentioned how nice it was to have only women in this book. I was so angry when a man intruded and sexually assaulted someone. I guess I should have — Like it’s a creepy horror book about women. It’s not that it wasn’t on my mind, but it was such a relief that up until the very end it had not happened yet. And then when it did happen, I was just so furious. Motherfucking Jonathan Rash. I really wrote “motherfucking Jonathan Rash” on my little notes.

Gin Jenny: Yup, I can see it, I can see it right there.

Whiskey Jenny: It would have just been nice not to have.

Gin Jenny: I thought the same thing.

Whiskey Jenny: It was so creepy and scary without that.

Gin Jenny: Overall, I think I much much much preferred the modern day stuff to the past time stuff. Because I really liked all three of those characters, they weren’t sympathetic every time, but I just found them really compelling and I really enjoyed reading about them, and with the olden time stuff, yeah, I just didn’t enjoy the past time stuff as much. Maybe because I knew it was all going to be unhappy endings, like unhappy endings, all the way down.

Whiskey Jenny: Boy. I mean I think the parallels were really skillfully done between the past story and the present story. The story we mostly get is a story of the principal and her wife at this school, but the book and the movie is about an incident that has just happened at that school between students, Flo and Clara, and I thought that was so interesting also that that was like the, um…

Gin Jenny: Like the precipitating event of the plot.

Whiskey Jenny: Thank you, thank you, that’s the precipitating event. But we actually don’t spend hardly any time with Flo and Clara, even though our two main actresses in the present are playing Flo and Clara. I thought that was such an interesting choice, but like Flo and Clara have this relationship and Eleanor is sort of like the awkward third wheel because she accidentally watches them at one point, and then Libby and Alex are a couple and then Adelaide watches them, and I was, I was like so worried that, as you said before, that it was gonna turn into Audrey being the awkward third wheel, between Harper and Merritt. More throuples in books! It was so fun to read about a happy ending with a throuple. I mean kind of happy.

Gin Jenny: For a spooky book, happy.

Whiskey Jenny: Yeah, my interpretation is they’re still a little bit haunted, but they’re going to be okay together. Bo is more haunted.

Gin Jenny: I agree, and I agree with everything you’ve just said. It reminded me a little bit of someone was talking about Portrait of a Lady on Fire and how at the end, when a guy shows up, it’s like a jumpscare. The jumpscare is the patriarchy. And the guy’s not doing anything, he’s just there.

Whiskey Jenny: Booooooo!

Gin Jenny: Like she comes down to breakfast and there was a guy there and it’s like, what? why?

Whiskey Jenny: What the hell? Go away!

Gin Jenny: But it was really nice in the same way. It was just like, nice to have a world that was mostly women and like how women relate to each other.

Whiskey Jenny: I thought at the beginning, I think this is part of the, it was a little long, but it was a little slow to begin for me. It reminded me of something you said about the Quan Berry We Ride upon Sticks book, which was like it was like a waterfall of prose hitting you. A little bit it felt like this with that, with this book. Honestly I think part of that is intentional. I think it’s contributing to this dense cloying atmosphere where you don’t fully know what’s going on, and it’s confusing, and there’s just like too much all around coming at you. So it’s not a criticism but just like a, you know, it’s not that enjoyable.

Gin Jenny: I think you’re right, that was the intended effect. Yeah, I mean, as with all the parts of the book, I was quite interested in Merritt and Audrey and Harper, and I was so much less interested in what was going on at Brookhants In the olden days, so I think that’s what I would have cut down if I were in charge of cutting things. But, you know, I wouldn’t even necessarily want to because I feel like this is such a specific type of book, and it seems like she wrote the exact book she wanted to write. So I feel like, you know, having said that, I actually don’t know that it would be even a good idea to change it because I feel like it’s like a good endeavor to have out there.

Whiskey Jenny: Indeed, indeed. When Merritt was first flirting with Harper, were you like, Oh, this is fun flirting?

Gin Jenny: I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure if she was doing fun flirting, or if she like had an agenda. Okay, why, what about you?

Whiskey Jenny: She just seems really mean from the get-go to Harper, which is an odd thing to say because Merritt is like the normal, shall we say, and Harper’s a super famous movie star. So I understand the instinct to be self-conscious and try and cut the other person down, and I also understand the instinct to try and give the power of that conversation to Merritt the writer and not Harper the movie star, but she was just like really cruel from the get-go to Harper. And I eventually ended up rooting for them, but at first I was just like, what’s happening?

Gin Jenny: Well, I think Merritt is a little mean, like, as a self protective measure, and I think that when I was reading that, I also, like Merritt, I was also suspicious of Harper’s motives. I was like, why is a famous person flirting with a normal person? Like, is everything okay here? But then once they went on the date, I was like, Oh no, she like really wants to take her out on like this date date, so it didn’t really bother me because I felt like I understood where Merritt was coming from, and I thought Harper was gonna turn out to be a phony.

Whiskey Jenny: When they said about Audrey, I was like, man, Harper better not know they’re doing this to Audrey or I will be out, and she kind of did, and she kind of didn’t. So, she’s a little bit less in my eyes than before but she did not have the like huge fall that I was dreading.

Gin Jenny: I also felt just like overall, as I was reading this, I was like, I know we kind of said this already, but I just kept thinking, Man, I wish more books like this existed, where it’s just like big sprawling, weird books.

Whiskey Jenny: Ambitious!

Gin Jenny: Ambitious books, right!, about women. Yeah, I just loved it and I felt like it partook of genre conventions in a really interesting way.

Whiskey Jenny: The footnotes were really fun.

Gin Jenny: Love a footnote. Gina Apostol’s new book is out, and it has so many more footnotes than I was expecting. And it’s like people arguing with each other in the footnotes. So I’m extremely excited to read it.

Whiskey Jenny: That’s cool. I enjoyed how much the narrator hated Charles. Every time they mentioned Charles, was like, stupid Charles. Dumb Charles. Fucking Charles. It was a really really great touch.

Gin Jenny: It was great, and since you brought it up, that is also what I have been saying to all my friends since Sunday, since Sunday’s Oprah interview. Let me ask you this question. Would you watch— There isn’t one, so I don’t want to like get you all excited. Would you watch a TV series adaptation of this? Because I’m super would!

Whiskey Jenny: Ooh, um, I don’t know.

Gin Jenny: I guess it would depend on the casting.

Whiskey Jenny: It would totally depend on the casting, and that was one question I wanted to ask you: if you had any casting thoughts. But I think both of these questions speak to the real sweeping, I don’t want to say cinematic because that seems tropey in a book about a movie, but, but it is, it’s an epic. It’s like an old-fashioned epic.

Gin Jenny: Yeah, it really conjures the different settings in your mind, even for me, a person with a very poor visual imagination.

Whiskey Jenny: I don’t know if I’d watch a TV about it, because it might be too scary.

Gin Jenny: Oh, if they cast someone for Audrey who really is like a minor… like if they cast for Audrey like the girl from like Happy Death Day.

Whiskey Jenny: Yep, yep. So I was picturing Kristen Stewart for Harper this whole time.

Gin Jenny: I also was, not so much in the sense that I was like, Oh, they should cast Kristen Stewart, although I think she’d be good, as I was thinking, like, Emily Danforth is thinking of Kristen Stewart.

Whiskey Jenny: Like, modeled after Kristen Stewart, right?

Gin Jenny: I don’t know enough about Kristen Stewart to like, make a proclamation, but I felt like her like cool thing that she does? I don’t know, yeah. She reminded me of Kristen Stewart for sure.

Whiskey Jenny: Absolutely. I wrote on page 78 — And I think this is just speaks to being in the hands of a female author was a delight. I wrote on page 78, I swear to God, if someone says coltish to describe one of these women, I will flip a table. They didn’t.

Gin Jenny: Hooray!

Whiskey Jenny: And this is how you successfully describe three like sexually attractive women without being gross about it. It is possible.

Gin Jenny: It is possible! I would also like to talk about, so there’s like, the creepy song about the yellow jacket, and I really appreciate that the narrator gave us the tune for it. She it’s the same tune as the song from Dirty Dancing at the end, and secondly, probably a week after I read that part, I was having kind of a bad day at work, and I was like, Ah, nothing will cheer me up, I’m sad forever. And then I suddenly had the epiphany that I was gonna watch Dirty Dancing that night. It was like, this is the best idea I’ve ever had! And it was so good still!

Whiskey Jenny: I do not have that connection to Dirty Dancing that many people my age have.

Gin Jenny: That’s very surprising because you like dancing movies.

Whiskey Jenny: I don’t know what it is. It’s pretty dark, I think. It’s like, you know what? I don’t need to…

Gin Jenny: It is. I mean you’re not wrong.

Whiskey Jenny: Yeah, I weirdly like Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, but I love, like a couple of my most favorite dancing scenes in rom coms are homages to Dirty and Dancing. Really and truly appreciate its affect on the culture and how influential it was. I mean there’s that lift in Crazy Stupid Love where Ryan Gosling lifts Emma Stone, which is just like one for the ages.

Gin Jenny: It really is. That movie is terrible, but the whole sequence when Emma Stone comes and kisses him in the bar, and then they go back to his place. That whole, that whole sequence is gold.

Whiskey Jenny: It’s like as magical as the first date of Merritt and Harper.

Gin Jenny: It’s great, it’s like perfect.

Whiskey Jenny: It’s perfect. Exactly. It is the like golden hour of dates.

Gin Jenny: Yeah, agreed. The golden hour of dates, that’s very good, Whiskey Jenny.

Whiskey Jenny: I’m feeling so lyrical because this book!

Gin Jenny: Yeah, it had so much prose!

Whiskey Jenny: On top of like, it covers so much ground and plot! Like, there were so many sentences that I was like, ah, that is what it is like!, which is the exact feeling you want from beautiful sentences.

Gin Jenny: Yes, totally. And also I felt like it was very exciting for me because one of my favorite authors is Sarah Waters, who writes kind of like big sprawling gay British books, so I was like, well this is exciting, now I’ve got the big sprawling gay American book. Maybe Emily Danforth — Because Sarah Waters hasn’t written a book for like a number of years. The pump is primed. And so having this to read really felt great. I still want Sarah Waters to release a new book.

Whiskey Jenny: This doesn’t let you off the hook, Sarah!

Gin Jenny: No pressure, but like, yeah I would love one. The Paying Guests was a while ago. But similarly, it’s the same kind of thing, where like, the prose is good, the plot’s enjoyable, like it just kind of has everything going for it, so it was great.

Whiskey Jenny: Yep!

Gin Jenny: Well good, I’m so pleased you liked it! I worried the length would be too much because like especially during the pandemic, I feel like my tolerance for long books is less.

Whiskey Jenny: It is for me as well, and I, well, it was a bit of a struggle at the beginning, I’ll be honest, but I think just a testament to how great is that it was in fact 617 pages, and yet I still read it in the year of our Lord 2021.

Gin Jenny: Amazing. Truly amazing.

Whiskey Jenny: Thank you, Emily Danforth.

Gin Jenny: And even when I was like, finding it a little slow, it never felt like a slog to read I was always like, excited to go back to it.

Whiskey Jenny: Yes, it was very much one where I was thinking about it when I wasn’t reading it.

Gin Jenny: If people who are not Whiskey Jenny want some more polyamorous groups, you should watch the television show Black Sails.

Whiskey Jenny: Ah. I was like, but why not me? I want—oh, okay. Well, can we just make Leverage the thing that fandom wants?

Gin Jenny: Like, this is probably unrealistic, but I—

Whiskey Jenny: They’re not.

Gin Jenny: There’s a large part of me that’s really hoping…

Whiskey Jenny: They’re not. They’re not. Don’t get your hopes up. They’re not.

Gin Jenny: You’re right.

Whiskey Jenny: But the fic will!

Gin Jenny: Yeah, you’re right.

Whiskey Jenny: I don’t want to crush your hopes but they’re not. They’re not.

Gin Jenny: No, you’re right.

Whiskey Jenny: I want them to! I’ve been rewatching some Leverage episodes, and it’s been really fun watching it through that lens to be like, oh, this.

Gin Jenny: Also, seasons four and five are like so shippy! I was watching, I was like, they know what they’re doing!

Whiskey Jenny: They know, but they’re not going to do it.

Gin Jenny: All right, well, what book that I’m definitely gonna love are we reading for next time?

Whiskey Jenny: After that home run, since you started with the baseball metaphors—

Gin Jenny: I also, listeners, you should know, I begged Whiskey Jenny to haten or forcen me for something. I was just like, I need to be told something to read.

Whiskey Jenny: I was selfish and I found Forcening too like emotionally charged to do at the moment, so I picked Hatening, so I hope that’s okay.

Gin Jenny: Which, I’ve kind of mortgaged my future, because I don’t really have a good like scheme for what to Haten you to read, but I’m sure I can find something. I’ll figure it out.

Whiskey Jenny: We always do.

Gin Jenny: All right, so Angela’s Ashes, I assume.

Whiskey Jenny: Well, we’ve already talked about that it’s an Irish author. It is an ensemble tale, so many perspectives.

Gin Jenny: Gross. I mean I like multiple perspectives, but I don’t like an ensemble tale.

Whiskey Jenny: They often go hand in hand, so sure.

Gin Jenny: Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t.

Whiskey Jenny: Okay, yeah, fine.

Gin Jenny: Fine, fine.

Whiskey Jenny: Yeah, all right, this is solidly an ensemble tale, though. I just you can’t, okay, whatever.

Gin Jenny: I’m going to collate some examples, and then I’m going to bring them to you and you can tell me.

Whiskey Jenny: I am not saying that all multiple perspectives are ensembles, but I’m saying that a lot, more than not, ensembles are multiple perspectives.

Gin Jenny: All right, I can accept that.

Whiskey Jenny: Yeah, great.

Gin Jenny: All right, great. So we no longer disagree. Continue.

Whiskey Jenny: Handshake, we agree. It’s set in 1847, so white people historical times, which you hate.

Gin Jenny: I do. Also I think this is oppressive against me, as an Irish American, to have to read the great tragedies of my people.

Whiskey Jenny: Yep, it’s on a famine ship.

Gin Jenny: Oh God.

Whiskey Jenny: But it’s set on a ship on the sea.

Gin Jenny: I do like ships, so maybe that will salvage something for me.

Whiskey Jenny: It’s just like everyone on the ship and what’s going on on the ship, and there’s also maybe a killer on the ship, but that’s not a big part of it. It’s a literary killer. The killer was inside us all along. And it’s called the Star of the Sea, by Joseph O’Connor.

Gin Jenny: Well, honestly—

Whiskey Jenny: I’m part Irish as well, so I think I’m allowed.

Gin Jenny: This could be worse, like, at least there’s a ship. I got so excited when you said killer. I was like, this might be salvageable after all, but okay, a literary killer, I understand.

Whiskey Jenny: It’s still a Hatening! I wasn’t gonna go like full extreme, because it’s, again, 2021, but I’m not going to give you a softball.

Gin Jenny: Well the egg — That doesn’t work. You’re really gonna have—

Whiskey Jenny: On whose foot is the egg?

Gin Jenny: You’re really gonna have egg on your face, if there’s a chapter from the perspective of the creepy killer and you’re gonna feel foolish.

Whiskey Jenny: I really truly am. You are correct.

Gin Jenny: Then the shoe will be on the other foot.

Whiskey Jenny: Throwing the egg.

Gin Jenny: They don’t have any eggs! It’s a famine!

Whiskey Jenny: So, until next time, listeners, a quote from, well it’s from Plain Bad Heroines, quoting Mary McClane: “I have read of women who have been strongly grandly brave.”

Gin Jenny: This has been the Reading the End with a Demographically Similar Jennys, you can visit the blog at readingtheend.com. You can follow us on Twitter at reading the end, we are both on Goodreads, as Whiskey Jenny and Gin Jenny, and you can email us, we love it when you do, at readingtheend@gmail.com. If you like what we do, you can become a podcast patron at patreon.com/readingtheend. And if you’re listening to us on iTunes, please leave us a review, it helps other people find the podcast.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Episode 145 – A Belated 2020 Recap and Emily Danforth’s Plain Bad Heroines appeared first on Reading the End.