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Reading the End Posts

Changes are a-coming (and one of them is a podcast)

As some of you may know, I’ve been thinking about changing my blog name for a while now. I started up Jenny’s Books in college thinking that it would track my reading and entertain a few of my friends-and-relations. I really didn’t anticipate that it would last so long or that I would end up loving the book blogging community as much as I do. But so it has proved! So here’s the plan: I am renaming the blog. Yes! At last! I’m going to call it “Reading the End”. This is not the most hilarious of the blog names…

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Missing the window on kids’ books

Amidst the enormous pile of cullable books in my bedroom right now were these two books by Kit Pearson about British children evacuated to Canada. They’ve been there for a while because I started reading one of them and got bored, and then I never finished because I didn’t want to face the fact that I have these books about British children evacuated to Canada during World War II that I would not enjoy. That was sad for me. I like books about children being evacuated because of the Blitz. See also Michelle Magorian. Did you like Good Night Mr.…

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Revisiting Harry Potter: I guess now we have to say nice things about Scrimgeour

I decided to do all Disney gifs for this post. Why? Because as usual this readalong is making me feel a lot of feelings, and most of my feelings for the first Deathly Hallows post are wrathful feelings. And Disney makes me feel happy feelings. Exhibit A: Rita Goddamn Skeeter How dare she. I get so angry when I read the excerpts from her rotten biography. Righteously angry! With much stomping around and wishing I had her here in my living room. You know what especially pisses me off? I will tell you. It’s when she calls his relationship with Harry…

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The English, Jeremy Paxman

Before we get to my thoughts on this book (short version: not as enjoyable as Watching the English), let’s take a moment for a little segment I like to call PRAISE PLEASE. I am tearing it up re: reading and disposing of my huge stacks of TBR books. It is my most successful reading project ever, and I only started it a couple of weeks ago. I have read half of two books and decided I never wanted to finish them. I have elected to discard two books that I feel would only piss me off anyway (Perelandra and That…

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Review: Let’s Kill Uncle, Rohan O’Grady

I have made up a poem. Would you like to hear it? Rohan O’GradyIs really a lady. It’s true! Her name is actually June Skinner, which in my opinion is a name much better suited to the tone and contents of Let’s Kill Uncle than the rosy-cheeked-and-jocular-sounding “Rohan O’Grady.” But nobody asked for my opinion. Let’s Kill Uncle is about a pair of children, a boy called Barnaby and a girl called Chrissie, who have both come to live on a little island off the coast of Canada. Because all but one of the men on the island died in…

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Out of the Silent Planet, C.S. Lewis; or, I am never going to read the other books in this series ever

That’s right, NEVER. It’s not because I hated Out of the Silent Planet (I didn’t). It’s because I think if I read them, I would be in a huge fight with C.S. Lewis, and I hate to be in a fight with C.S. Lewis. I’d rather focus on his agreeablest qualities, viz.: I love how crazy in love he was with his wife. That is touching. If you can read A Grief Observed without crying you are just not human. I love how crazy in love he was with God. That is also touching. I love that he’s able to…

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Review: Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls, David Sedaris

David Sedaris comes to Louisiana on book tours. And I want to tell you that right now, because nobody comes to Louisiana on book tours because publishers I guess think that we are stupid and illiterate. If they do come to Louisiana, they only come to New Orleans, but not David Sedaris. David Sedaris has been known to come to Louisiana and go to more than one town. He does it so regularly that I was convinced he must be from Louisiana. Which he’s not. He just comes there on book tours because we are not illiterate and we buy…

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Slammerkin, by Emma Donohue

The interesting thing about working slowly through my TBR pile(s) is that quite often, I find that the reason I haven’t read the fiction books is that they are not quite my jam. It’s all these books that I want to be my jam — like Emma Donohue or CS Lewis’s sci-fi trilogy — but something inside me knows that they will not be. And that is why I have been putting them off. But no longer, friends! I have three huge stacks of TBR books, and I am going to READ THEM ALL BY GOD. What Slammerkin is not:…

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Revisiting Harry Potter: “I am not worried, Harry. I am with you.”

Oh the feelings. Oh I have them. I was reading the end of this book on one end of the couch while Miniature Roommate was reading Good Omens on the other hand, and every time she laughed at something in Good Omens, I would think she was laughing at me for crying. And in my mind I’d be all, THIS BOOK IS SAD OKAY? But I didn’t say it out loud because I recognize that would be irrational. But this book is hella sad. I forgot how Harry-Dumbledore-heavy the last part of this book is. All my notes on rereading…

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Days of Blood and Starlight, Laini Taylor

I have some serious reservations about Days of Blood and Starlight, which I will enumerate, but let me start by saying some nice things about it, because I enjoyed it very very much. Spoilers follow for Daughter of Smoke and Bone but not (unless marked) for Days of Blood and Starlight. First of all, Laini Taylor’s worldbuilding talents are still very much in evidence. Although we already know the outline of this world from Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Taylor presents a lot of cool new details about what the world has been like all along, and she sets up…

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