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Reading the End Posts

Praise please!

Published 26 Jan 2011 by Gin Jenny

I don’t know if I mentioned this to you, but one of my 2011 New Year’s Resolutions — which I’m beginning to sense were overwhelmingly food-based — was to modify several existing recipes to create one amalgam recipe, and then use that amalgam recipe to cook an official food of Louisiana and have it come out awesome. Very specific resolution, you say? All the happier she who accomplishes it! If you are not yet sold on retroactive New Year’s Resolutions (but it seems like everyone was, and I appreciate your support), I strongly encourage you to give them a try.…

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Review: Exit Wounds, Rutu Modan

Published 25 Jan 2011 by Gin Jenny

Exit Wounds was a gift from Ella, formerly of Box of Books and now of Now with Pictures. Ella is fantastic. She has a series of picture vignettes about her imaginary ancestors that you really need to go investigate right now. (Here is the first one.) One time she drew an awesome picture of a memory I shared with her about playing hurricane with my sisters as a kid. Recently I came home from a smashing day of discovering $3 margaritas, and found, fittingly, a box of books on my doorstep from Ella. It contained Cold Comfort Farm, Exit Wounds,…

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New Year’s Resolutions: A Manifesto

Published 23 Jan 2011 by Gin Jenny

I have seen many lists of New Year’s Resolutions around the blogosphere this month. People are setting admirable goals for themselves, and you would think that I, having had a highly successful round of New Year’s Resolutions from 2010, would be raring to set still more awesome goals for myself this year. In fact the exact opposite is true. All through January of 2011 I have shied away from making Resolutions, even in my brain, because I think that in general they are unrealistic and ultimately a self-esteem suck. Having goals is one thing, but New Year’s Resolutions tends to…

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The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon; trans. Lucia Graves

Published 21 Jan 2011 by Gin Jenny

Y’all. What is wrong with me? This isn’t a rhetorical question. What really is wrong with me? Lovely Kristen of We Be Reading, one of my favorite people in the blogosphere and fellow Diana Wynne Jones lover, gave me this book as part of her blogiversary giveaway last summer, and I am only just getting to it now. What? Why am I like this? I was fully aware that this was a delightful adventurey booklover’s novel, and yet I let it sit around my Louisiana room for months and months, and then I let it sit around my New York…

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Review: The Rescue Artist, Edward Dolnick

Published 19 Jan 2011 by Gin Jenny

Y’all may recall the time that Edvard Munch’s The Scream got stolen. Remember that? Nope, not the 2004 time (the one I actually do remember). The 1994 time, the 1994 version of the painting. It was eventually recovered through a sting operation executed by the Norwegian and British police, and aided by the Getty Museum. If I were the Getty Museum, I would be telling other museums about this constantly in mock-casual tones: “Tchyeah, the time that we recovered The Scream for the National Gallery in Norway, that was good times….what’s that, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum? Your paintings are still…

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Three Black Swans, Caroline B. Cooney

Published 17 Jan 2011 by Gin Jenny

Indie Sister and I are painfully addicted to Caroline B. Cooney’s young adult novels. Especially Indie Sister. Indie Sister would walk five miles in the snow to get a Caroline B. Cooney novel she hasn’t read yet. Over the Christmas holiday, she even wrote a letter to Caroline B. Cooney, although I suspect Caroline B. Cooney will read her letter and think that Indie Sister is eight years old, mentally challenged, or mercilessly mocking her (excerpt: “My other favorite of your books was Code Orange, because scabs are gross — ew”). But in truth, Indie Sister unironically loves Caroline B.…

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Review: Columbine, Dave Cullen

Published 15 Jan 2011 by Gin Jenny

On Sunday, after a lovely day curled up under blankets in my pajamas eating and watching films, it occurred to me that it had been ages since I sat down and read a book cover to cover. There are few things I enjoy like I enjoy sitting down with a book and not getting up again until the book is finished. So after I caught up on teh blogz, I went into my living room and– Well, I went into my living room and watched the Packers game. With the Saints out of it, I’m supporting the Packers for the…

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Review: I Kill Giants, Joe Kelly and J. M. Ken Niimura

Published 13 Jan 2011 by Gin Jenny

Sigh. Sigh. Sigh. Sigh. I will never stop sighing. Every time my eye falls on this book, I heave a huge sigh. Oh, expectations. I am your slave and you always make my life more difficult if you possibly, possibly can. Why are you like this? It has been ten thousand years since I read a graphic novel that made my heart sing. Yes. Ten thousand. That’s how many years it has been. I haven’t read a graphic novel that made my heart sing since the year 7990 BCE. Unless Gunnerkrigg Court and The Unwritten count. Just, like, no graphic…

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Review: Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares, David Levithan and Rachel Cohn

Published 11 Jan 2011 by Gin Jenny

How good for there to be a sweet little book about Christmas in New York City for me to read after my first Christmas season in New York City (the first of many!). I found this book for $1 at the Strand, which is all very fitting for a book that starts with its protagonist finding something unexpected at the Strand. I selflessly gave it to my mother and didn’t even read it before giving it to her because that’s the kind of angelic saintlike daughter I am. But then I swiped it from her two seconds after Christmas and…

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Review: A Peace to End All Peace, David Fromkin

Published 9 Jan 2011 by Gin Jenny

Phew. Finally. I was reading this book for a good, ooh, three weeks I guess, before I finished it at last. Now I know a lot more things than I knew previously about the formation of the modern Middle East, but still not a lot. As with Three Empires on the Nile, much of the information contained in A Peace to End All Peace went in one eye and out the other. (That’s a gross image but “ear” doesn’t work with reading, so, er, sorry.) A Peace to End All Peace is about the fall of the Ottoman Empire and…

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