Nope, not talking about the Senator from Minnesota (that’s weird, right? The lines between entertainment and politics are weirdly thin these days. Was it always thus?). I am talking about the books I have been reading lately, which have been full of people who lack integrity. Now I am ready to read about Betsy and Tacy, whose biggest deceptions involved reading Lady Audley’s Secret on the sly (I just wrote Lady Chatterley’s Lover. That would be legitimately inappropriate for a twelve-year-old). The Sealed Letter, Emma Donohue After I read Room (yeah, yeah, I read it), I thought it might be…
31 CommentsReading the End Posts
I’ve said before that I like the kind of novel where you have two sets of characters in two different time periods, and the novel goes back and forth between them. Especially when one of the sets of characters (the modern one) is researching the other set (the old-time-y one.) So when I saw that Jennifer Donnelly, beloved of the blogosphere (that is you) for her Rose books and then Northern Lights, had written a book of this sort, I was…well, I was mildly intrigued. I thought I might get it from the library sometime if I remembered to. Then…
42 CommentsNB: I am not really back. If I were back I would be reading your posts and posting comments that are witty and insightful as my comments always are (RIGHT?), and I really miss reading y’all’s posts because I love y’all. However, I am still doing The Transition, and also while The Transition is going on, my laptop is being repaired, and sadly there is some sort of general delay on parts, so it is taking ages for my laptop to become healed, so I am borrowing my aunt’s computer and I feel guilty using it for hours like I…
35 CommentsI got a job! A really cool job that is exactly what I wanted! A job whose interview passed in such a way that upon getting the job, I had to sit down and think about all the life decisions I’ve made (learn Latin, go to college in Louisiana so as not to have debt, not go to grad school for library science), and gloat about what good decisions they all were. It’s very validating. I love it when people say “Jenny, you were right,” and it’s even that much better when it’s the universe saying “Jenny, you were right,”…
136 CommentsInitially I had it in my head that both of the books my library had on the subject of the Black Panther Party (that I wanted – they had some older books, but I wanted shiny new ones with slightly more time perspective and declassified FBI documents, I hoped) were published by the University of Alabama Press. And I was going to say a few words about how fun it was for me to watch the Alabama quarterback being sacked over and over last night by South Carolina, almost funner than seeing my alma mater win after pulling a very…
22 CommentsWARNING: If you are not interested in Oscar Wilde and his life and friends and everything, and you do not want to read this post, I totally understand. But do yourself a favor if that is the case, skip to the end of it and read the poem in block quotes. It’s magnificent and I want to read it every day for the rest of my life. The full title of this book is really Alfred Douglas: A Poet’s Life and His Finest Work, but I couldn’t put that for a few reasons, the first one being that as far…
17 CommentsIf you’ve reviewed Room lately, I’ve probably commented on your blog to say, You have reviewed this book well, but it sounds way too upsetting and I am never, ever, ever, ever going to read it myself. That is still (probably) true, so my mother has kindly agreed to guest-review it for me. Here is Mumsy! (The review on the cover of my copy of Room says: “Potent, darkly beautiful, revelatory.” I have no idea what that even means.) To Ma, Room is a twelve-by-twelve nightmare prison, the scene of repeated rapes and beatings since she was kidnapped at nineteen.…
14 CommentsMy verdict: Never again. There is this one episode of Doctor Who where the Doctor is standing around waiting for a monster to show up, and he says “Is this how time normally passes? Reeeeally slowly, in the right order?” and if you substitute “books” for “time” (and “pass” for “passes”, to retain proper grammar), that is exactly how I felt throughout the month of September. Except more depressed. I think part of the reason I have been lax about writing up reviews is that my reading was so dreary and depressing compared to normally, I couldn’t face writing reviews.…
71 CommentsSometimes there is just a pleasing confluence of events. Litlove reviewed The Tapestry of Love a few weeks ago, and I thought it didn’t sound like the kind of thing I normally read at all, but that didn’t necessarily mean I wouldn’t like it / shouldn’t try it. So when the author emailed me to ask if I wanted to review it, of course I said yes. The Tapestry of Love is all about a divorced woman called Catherine Parkstone who decides to move to rural France and set up shop there as a decorator and seamstress. As you do.…
33 Comments