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Reading the End Posts

Reading the End Bookcast, Ep.6: Defying Genre; We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves; and J. J. Abrams’s Book Trailer

We have returned once again to talk about more books! This week, we have a discussion about genre and how to make it better (spoiler alert: WHOLE TABLES OF BOARDING SCHOOL BOOKS), review Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository), and answer a listener question about book trailers. Except we say “reader question” in the podcast. We have no idea why we keep saying that. We know you are listeners. We know that. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with…

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Review: The Memory Effect, eds. Russell Kilbourn and Eleanor Ty

You know how sometimes when you’ve been drinking you hit that stage where you are ready for bed but you can’t actually go to bed yet, and you’re not really listening to people around you but you want to pretend you are to be polite? So you put on a really serious face to make it appear that you are listening and comprehending every word that’s being said, and periodically you nod enthusiastically? Have y’all had this? Because that was how I felt during some of the essays in The Memory Effect. I requested it on NetGalley and I was…

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HHhH, Laurent Binet

THIS BOOK RIGHT HERE. LISTEN. Listen to me about this book. It is awfully good, and I am going to recommend it to you very highly. I am going to highly recommend it in spite of: Nazi brutality; and Translated (from French) Never mind about the grammar of that list. Just understand that it is a list of two things I am unfond of. I read HHhH because I got a copy for free from a coworker and finished my other book on the subway. And also because I picked HHhH to win the Tournament of Books (it did not),…

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More Than This, Patrick Ness

PATRICK NESS PATRICK NESS. I love me some Patrick Ness, and here is his brand-new book coming out tomorrow so PLACE YOUR ORDERS because Patrick Ness is amazing. The beginning: A boy called Seth drowns. When he wakes up (from death), he is at the house in England where, through some unspecified but terrible fault of Seth’s, an unspecified but terrible Event with lasting neurological consequences befell his younger brother Owen. Seth has not lived in England for years; his family lives in America now, and he goes to an American school and has American friends. But here he is…

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Leaving Atlanta, Tayari Jones

Between 1979 and 1981, at least 28 black children and adults were killed by a serial killer in Atlanta. Tayari Jones grew up in Atlanta in this time period, and two of the murdered children were from her elementary school. Leaving Atlanta is about those experiences–what it’s like to be a black child in a time and place where black children are being snatched and murdered. It is a little bit like being afraid for your life, but it’s much more like going to school and worrying about the distinction between being from near the projects rather than actually from…

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Reading the End Bookcast, Ep.6: Books as Objects and Night Film

This week we’re here to talk about the thingness of books–why we like physical books, why we buy ebooks, and BOOKS IN BOXES (well, that part is mostly me), review Marisha Pessl’s wonderful new book Night Film (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository), and play a game of guessing where movies came from. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go. Episode 6 Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We…

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Now is a good time for you to read Mary Renault

(Also, there was never a bad time to read Mary Renault.) Almost the whole of Mary Renault’s oeuvre is being put into e-book format as of next week. !!!!!! As you may know if you have hung around this blog or reviewed Song of Achilles or spoken of Mary Renault at all in any way ever, I am a huge huge HUGE fan of hers. My lovely mother handed me Fire from Heaven when I was thirteen or so, and I have loved Mary Renault ever since then. No author I have ever read before or since has managed to…

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The Inconvenient Indian, Thomas King

NetGalley is a dangerous place for a curious girl with an ereader. I always want to go through and request everything every university press produces. It’s good because I have to read nonfiction books fairly promptly if I get them through NetGalley, or else I’ll lose them. They expire. I can’t fall prey to that thing where the nonfiction books end up at the bottom of my TBR pile just because fiction books move faster and I’m worried about screwing up my posting schedule. As is evident from his book Green Grass, Running Water, Thomas King is interested in the…

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Cuckoo in the Nest, Michelle Magorian

I have been burning through PaperbackSwap credits like they aren’t making them anymore, y’all. All of a sudden, everything on my wish list has been coming in at once. Lovely PaperbackSwap. If you are not familiar with them, please let me know and I will send you a referral. I have gotten such wonderful books from PaperbackSwap, including both of Joan Wyndham’s first two books (which are the two I wanted anyway). And earlier this month I got Cuckoo in the Nest, another Michelle Magorian book about British evacuees and their challenges on both ends of the evacuation process. (The…

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