Reading the End

Anyone care to read the Browning letters with me?

Published 9 Apr 2013 by Jenny Hamilton

I’ve been wanting to reread their letters for a while now anyway, and it would be more fun if other people read them with me! I’ve just downloaded an epub copy of the whole set of them from the New York Public Library (thanks, library!). Gutenberg only has the first volume available for epub, so if you can’t find the full version with both volumes, please say so in the comments and I’ll email you the epub file. (I’ll do that regardless of whether or not you want to join me in this readalong, of course. I am not holding…

12 Comments

Review: Relish, Lucy Knisley

Published 8 Apr 2013 by Jenny Hamilton

I had a dream the other night where NetGalley had changed the way its Dashboard looks so that when you logged in, it had a list of all the books you’d requested and whether you’d reviewed them. And it was like, color-coded as it went down the list, in increasingly angry colors, to indicate that if you ignored THIS book you’d have reviewed half the books you requested (yellow), if you ignored this book too it would be forty percent (orange), and so forth down the list, in darker and angrier shades of orange and red. It was intense. (Sometimes…

15 Comments

Revisiting Harry Potter: Defending Sirius, Part 2

Published 5 Apr 2013 by Jenny Hamilton

I will acknowledge the following up front: Sirius is a little pissy in this book. At one point, he is pissy to Harry, and it hurts Harry’s feelings. My thesis is that you would be too so dial down the judgment. I’m going to take this to a slightly personal place right now. Bear with me. 2012 was an awful awful year, and the quality of its awfulness to my family was lots and lots and lots of unrelenting Life Stress. The quality of its awfulness to me, since I live far away, was lots and lots and lots of…

31 Comments

World War Z, Max Brooks; plus, ARGH GENDER STUFF

Published 1 Apr 2013 by Jenny Hamilton

It’s fitting to have this post publishing on April Fool’s Day because it seems like nonsense that I am writing this glowing review of a zombie novel. That’s weird. I hate zombies. I’ve never liked a zombie book a day in my life. Nor a zombie movie. Nor a zombie song probably. I hate zombies. I can’t wait for them to be all the way played out so I can get back to the life I had before we were all so weirdly obsessed with zombies. World War Z, is is the processest dystopia in the history of process dystopias.…

38 Comments

Revisiting Harry Potter: I have nothing to say about Grawp

Published 29 Mar 2013 by Jenny Hamilton

I’m not going to do a big post defending Harry because nobody on this readalong is saying Harry doesn’t deserve to get angry. Everyone who minds this book just says that reading about Harry yelling at everyone all the time is not fun. Which, fair enough. I do not mind it but I can see why a person would. Isn’t it kind of heartbreaking, by the way, to see who Harry does and doesn’t lose his temper with in this book? He stomps all over Ron and Hermione because he doesn’t consider them an emotional flight risk. But he hardly…

18 Comments

Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye is out in trade paperback today!

Published 26 Mar 2013 by Jenny Hamilton

As requested, I am posting this reminder about the release of Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon. My review of the series is here. The gist of it is that Matt Fraction and David Aja have produced something really cool, stylish, and unique, and you do not need to be in on all of the Marvel backstory to think it’s incredible. Go buy it immediately. Buy it at your local comic book store if possible! Buy several copies for your friends and relations. It’s not fair to this character for everyone to be thinking of him in terms of boring…

4 Comments

Review: Children of the Waters, Carleen Brice; or, A nearly unified theory of everything (that makes me enjoy a book)

Published 24 Mar 2013 by Jenny Hamilton

Two things: One, I really really liked this book. Two, I love the Wish List feature on Overdrive. Overdrive is a flawed and buggy system that forces you to use a very buggy program to access its content (Adobe Digital Editions you are the worst), but it is awesome to be able to add things to my TBR pile with just a click and access them anywhere with an internet connection. I know this sounds slightly like I am doing a commercial for OverDrive, but I’m not. It is my genuine opinion. If OverDrive were paying me to say nice…

27 Comments

Review: Changeover, Diana Wynne Jones (a book you will probably never read)

Published 22 Mar 2013 by Jenny Hamilton

I get a lot of credit within my family for being a good gift-buyer. Which is fair. I am really good at gifts. However, I sometimes feel concerned that Legal Sister’s considerable gifting prowess is underappreciated. I am always trying to find Legal Sister presents that will blow her mindhole, and I never exactly feel like I’ve accomplished it. Meanwhile she gets me crazy good presents including, most recently, Diana Wynne Jones’s extremely rare, difficult-to-find, and now that I’m thinking about it I really hope Legal Sister did not spend a fortune acquiring it, first novel. (You didn’t, did you,…

34 Comments

Review: In the Skin of a Lion, Michael Ondaatje; or, Talk to me about beautiful prose

Published 20 Mar 2013 by Jenny Hamilton

Disliking a book I expected to dislike always produces a strange mix of feelings. On one hand, I like being right. On the other hand, I like liking things. I greatly prefer liking things to disliking them. Given the choice, I would elect to like Michael Ondaatje, but the fact is that I just did not. I don’t like it when people indent dialogue instead of punctuating it normally, for one thing. Just punctuate it normally! Why do you think God invented punctuation in the first place? (My stance in favor of normal punctuation has been documented in this space…

39 Comments

Revisiting Harry Potter: Goddammit, feelings!

Published 15 Mar 2013 by Jenny Hamilton

Seriously, I’d have said that by this time, thirteen years since I read Goblet of Fire for the first time, I would be inured to how heartbreaking the last couple of chapters are. But here I am, thirteen years older and still wiping away tears when Harry tries to give his winnings to Mrs. Diggory. Why does Harry always try so hard to do the right thing? Goblet of Fire is my second-to-least favorite of the seven books, my least favorite still being Chamber of Secrets. However, unlike in Chamber of Secrets, everyone in Goblet of Fire appears to be…

44 Comments

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