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Reading the End Posts

Jenny and Mumsy go on about the Brownings (Part 1)

Published 24 Jun 2013 by Jenny Hamilton

Welcome one and all to the Browning Letters Readalong! We are kicking off this readalong by chatting about the letters between Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett from January to May 1845 (the first five months of their acquaintance). I am your humble host Jenny, and I have roped my lovely Mumsy into talking about these Browning letters with me. We talk about them all the time anyway so it’s not that difficult for us. I hope you are enjoying them as much as Mumsy and I are in this first round! Jenny: Obviously Robert is the sweetest dear in all…

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The new site is live!

Published 23 Jun 2013 by Jenny Hamilton

This is not a proper post, just a quick update to let you know that the new site, ReadingtheEnd.com, is now live! I’ll be duplicating posts for a little while on the old site, but I’d like to stop that fairly soon. So please update your feed readers and bookmarks with the new web address. The new feed is here, and the podcast feed will be here. Our first podcast, in which my friend Jenny and I discuss Claire Messud and Where’d You Go, Bernadette (among other things) drops this Wednesday. We will be insanely excited if you download it. Other than…

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The Madwoman in the Attic, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar

Published 17 Jun 2013 by Jenny Hamilton

Verdict: Here is a book that deserves all of its accolades and its foundational status. I’ve hit a point with my TBR reading (seriously, y’all should see these piles, they are ridiculous) where I’ve picked off the low-hanging fruit (the quite-short nonfiction like Janet Malcolm’s Psychoanalysis and Anne Fadiman’s At Large and at Small) and now there’s a lot of enormous books left, and particularly enormous nonfiction books. And since I have had a rough month, I decided to treat myself by reading the (presumed) loveliest of my nonfiction books first. And indeed, I chose well! The Madwoman in the…

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Revisiting Harry Potter: “Kill the snake?” “Kill the snake.”

Published 14 Jun 2013 by Jenny Hamilton

Here is my main complaint with this section of the book, which I otherwise love very much: How’s Harry going to use the Cruciatus curse on the Carrow sibling who spits in McGonagall’s face? (I find the Carrows boring and have not bothered to learn their names.) He was unable to do this curse on Bellatrix Lestrange two seconds after she killed Sirius Black, but somehow he can manage to do it just because some Death Eater insults one of his teachers? Number one, that is bullshit. Number two, don’t torture people. Torture is wrong, and Harry could have accomplished…

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Review: The Woman Upstairs, Claire Messud

Published 12 Jun 2013 by Jenny Hamilton

Verdict: Good, but heavy-handed. The exciting thing about The Woman Upstairs is the intensity of its protagonist’s anger. Nora is an elementary school teacher and artist manque, who bitterly regrets the opportunities she has given up in her life in the interest of being “a good girl”. Into her life comes the Shahid family: the young son, Reza, is in her class; the mother, Sirena, a video installation artist who befriends Nora; and the father, Skandar, with whom Nora comes to enjoy discussing philosophy and politics. Feeling that she has been brought to life by these new friendships, Nora throws…

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Review: At Large and at Small, Anne Fadiman; or, A Review Post that Took a Turn for the Introspective

Published 10 Jun 2013 by Jenny Hamilton

Verdict: An excellent and eclectic collection of essays. I liked-not-loved the first Anne Fadiman collection I read, her book Ex Libris, which contained essays only about books. I think the problem may have been the similarity in subject matter — when everything’s books, it’s easy for me to feel like I’m in an argument with Anne Fadiman about one thing or another. The essays in At Large and at Small cover a much wider range of topics, from ice cream to Arctic explorers to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the constant throughout is Anne Fadiman’s enthusiastic interest in and affection for…

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Review: In Great Waters, Kit Whitfield

Published 5 Jun 2013 by Jenny Hamilton

Here is the premise of In Great Waters. It’s a hell of a premise so be prepared. In an alternate version of our world, mermaids and humans live side by side, connected by alliances like regular nations and by the existence of hybrids (bastards) who are half-mermaid and half-human. Such creatures have bifurcated tails and human reproductive organs; they can walk on land and hold their breath for as long as fifteen minutes. They are also, by tradition, the rulers of Europe. In the sixteenth (I think) century, a hybrid child called Henry, cast up on land by his mother,…

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Elinor Lipman Redux

Published 3 Jun 2013 by Jenny Hamilton

And now we return to the subject of my newest comfort author, Elinor Lipman! Acquiring comfort authors as an adult can be difficult because there’s such a vast universe of books to read, and I have the internet as an endless recommendation machine, whereas young Jenny often checked out the same book from the library over and over again until it became as familiar as a teddy bear. But Elinor Lipman’s books were like a teddy bear right away, so I was very excited to see two — a new novel and a collection of essays — pop up on…

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Review: Tighter, Adele Griffin

Published 31 May 2013 by Jenny Hamilton

You know who Adele Griffin is not? She is not Adele Geras. I thought she was the whole time I was reading her book Tighter. My bad, Adele Griffin. You can see how I would make that mistake. Adele Geras is the author of this book my middle school librarian gave me (I helped her in the library so she would often let me pick out a book at Book Fair and she’d buy it for me), a dark retelling of Sleeping Beauty called Watching the Roses in which the protagonist has withdrawn from regular life after being raped by…

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