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Reading the End Posts

Review: Ground Up, Michael Idov

Published 22 Dec 2011 by Jenny Hamilton

This is a book about a couple who open up a coffee shop on the Lower East Side, with the notion that it will be an upscale Viennese coffee shop, with Viennese pastries and perfect coffee and loyal clients, and Mark and Nina will grow old together as the couple who owns the coffee shop, just like this other sweet old couple who ran a coffee shop that Mark and Nina frequented on their honeymoon to Vienna. This does not work out so well for them. The book is a really quite good satire of snooty New Yorkers (not that…

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What’s making me happy

Published 18 Dec 2011 by Jenny Hamilton

1. The Christmas gifts I bought for everyone. I don’t know if y’all know this about me, but one of my best skills is buying gifts. I am good at buying gifts and it is also one of my favorite things to do in all the world. I feel happy whenever I think about the gifts I have bought for everybody (except Mumsy; I don’t feel good about my Mumsy gift this year) and how pleased they will all be to receive them. And just Christmas gifts in general. Legal Sister is (probably) receiving a particularly excellent gift, and I…

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Onomatopoeia representation of a cry of anguish!

Published 7 Dec 2011 by Jenny Hamilton

Basically there have been two longstanding reasons that I want to go to Paris and they are these: 1. The Louvre. 2. Slathering on dramatic lipstick and going to Pere Lachaise and smooching Oscar Wilde’s grave. And you know, I’ve heard the Louvre is real great and all but when I imagine me in Paris, I imagine being at Oscar Wilde’s grave with a compact mirror applying dark red lipstick as I prepare to smooch his grave. People go to Oscar Wilde’s grave and they smooch it, and you know how when someone you love a very lot does something…

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Review: The Rehearsal, Eleanor Catton

Published 5 Dec 2011 by Jenny Hamilton

Every time I read a book set in a high school I am amazed that anyone got out alive. High school wasn’t the best years of my life or anything, but compared to the murderous hatred factories everyone in fiction seems to attend, I clearly went to Merciful Paradise High. Or else I had my eyes shut throughout the entirety of my four years in high school. I do not rule this out as a (metaphorical) possibility. The Rehearsal is about a girls’ school rocked by a teacher-student sex scandal, and a theatre school that makes the scandal the center…

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State of Wonder, Ann Patchett

Published 3 Dec 2011 by Jenny Hamilton

It comforts me when writers are bad at titles. Some writers are disturbingly good at titles, like Tennessee Williams. Some, like Ann Patchett, are not. I am not good at titles myself, although I keep meaning to embark on a project whereby I think of a title for the day before I go to bed at night. This is a more labor-intensive project than it seems, so I’m putting it off until I finish making my little cousin’s Christmas stocking. Maybe it can be one of my New Year’s Resolutions next year. State of Wonder is about a scientist, Annick…

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Review: The Long Song, Andrea Levy

Published 30 Nov 2011 by Jenny Hamilton

At last I have read something by Andrea Levy! I have been meaning to do so for many moons now, and when my book club decided to go with Angela Carter instead of Andrea Levy for next month, I trotted round to the library and got The Long Song. I wanted Small Island but it turned out I couldn’t be bothered climbing all the way up the stairs to the second floor where they keep the non-new fiction. (I know Long Song came out in 2010. Don’t ask me to explain the new/not new classification system of the New York…

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Zone One, Colson Whitehead

Published 18 Nov 2011 by Jenny Hamilton

There are certain writers in New York who seem to be everywhere but with whose work I am unfamiliar. On the weekend of Halloween, I decided to start making inroads. I am leery of Nicole Krantz, and I am actively unfond of JFranz so decided to go with Colson Whitehead, as I know nothing to his discredit and think he has cool hair. It was Halloween weekend, the weather was going to be a bit slushy (I innocently thought), and altogether it seemed like the perfect weekend for staying in and reading Colson Whitehead’s new zombie book, Zone One. But…

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Review: The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern

Published 16 Nov 2011 by Jenny Hamilton

The Night Circus is about two dueling magicians dueling it out in a circus setting. The, uh, the circus happens at night. It’s a night circus. What happened is that there were these two cranky old dudes wanting to see who was smarter, and they each took a protegee, and when the protegees grew up they were to engage in a Massive Magic Battle until one of them won. The consequences for the loser were not stated directly but were strongly implied to be Dire. Celia works as an illusionist at the circus that Marco (kind of) runs. They are…

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Review: Falling Together, Marisa de los Santos

Published 14 Nov 2011 by Jenny Hamilton

I love Marisa de los Santos, LOVE HER. Love Walked In and Belong to Me were two books I didn’t expect to like but have become regulars in my permanent rotation of books that captivate me no matter how many times I reread them (the Harriet Vane books also feature prominently, along with I Capture the Castle and The Chosen). As you may imagine, I was thrilled to hear that she was writing a new book. I wrote a begging letter to HarperCollins asking for a review copy, and they obliged. I shrieked out loud with joy when my book…

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Amy was right

Published 11 Nov 2011 by Jenny Hamilton

This Amy here. She was right all along. And so were all the other people who have been saying that The Vampire Diaries (wait, don’t leave yet! Hear me out!) is awesome. As it turns out? It is pretty awesome.  I started watching it right after the CW signed a deal with Netflix — thanks, CW! — because I thought it would be a fun show to semi-watch, semi-ignore while cross-stitching a Christmas stocking for my little cousin. I am much more watching, much less ignoring now. Kinda worried about the progress of this Christmas stocking, but I will keep…

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