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Reading the End Posts

Closing the book on spoiler-free September

Published 3 Oct 2010 by Gin Jenny

My 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.…

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I will never catch up on reviews

Published 1 Oct 2010 by Gin Jenny

…if I don’t do a bunch of short ones all at once. Thus: The Golden Mean, Annabel Lyon I checked this out on Gavin’s recommendation and because I love Alexander the Great. Your claims that he was a psychotic alcoholic have no effect on me because in my mind he is exactly the way Mary Renault writes him in Fire from Heaven and The Persian Boy. The Golden Mean is about Aristotle when he comes to Macedon to tutor young Alexander. Though Lyon was clearly influenced by Mary Renault’s books, she gives a more nuanced picture of Alexander, showing a…

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Review: The Tapestry of Love, Rosy Thornton

Published 29 Sep 2010 by Gin Jenny

Sometimes 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.…

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Review: The Exception, Christian Jungersen

Published 27 Sep 2010 by Gin Jenny

Buried in Print posted a review of Diana Wynne Jones’s Charmed Life the other day, and as I was preparing jubilant remarks in my head to comment on the post, I saw that there was already a jubilant-remarks comment on the post, by Jenny, and I was like, Whoa, did I comment on this post in a fugue state? It freaked me out, so I hastily clicked “Jenny” and that is how I found….British Jenny! Hooray! (Hi, British Jenny!) British Jenny had just read a book that was translated from the Danish (I am trying to read more books in…

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Review: The Rock and the River, Kekla Magoon

Published 23 Sep 2010 by Gin Jenny

If I may borrow a phrase from Renay, this book punched me in the soul. I have a thing where anything about slavery and civil rights struggles and that business immediately makes my heart hurt and then when the inevitable family member dies or gets sold or whatever, I cry and cry, and that’s why I don’t really read that many historical fiction books from those periods. But Jill said The Rock and the River was good, and I happened to see it at the library, so there you go. I had the hugest lump in my throat from page…

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Review: Devices and Desires, K. J. Parker

Published 21 Sep 2010 by Gin Jenny

Why, why, why would my library purchase one book in a trilogy and not the other ones? Why, library, why? In my library’s defense, it has managed to lose its copy of Devices and Desires too, so unless you were searching on the library catalogue, you’d have no way of knowing the library owns anything but Purple and Black and The Company by K. J. Parker, and you would not therefore be disappointed to be unable to find Devices and Desires on the shelf. Happily for me, a copy showed up on PaperbackSwap at an ideal moment. But that doesn’t…

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Review: Monsters of Men, Patrick Ness

Published 19 Sep 2010 by Gin Jenny

Dear heavenly God. This book. Listen, everyone: Monsters of Men is being released in America on the 28th. That gives you just about enough time to go get the first two books in the series, The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer, and read them before Monsters of Men comes out. I strongly advise this course of action if you have not already read the series. Do it now. You will thank me later. I started writing this post during Book Blogger Appreciation Week, and that feels fitting because if there is any set of…

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Review: Still Life with Fascists trilogy, Jo Walton

Published 16 Sep 2010 by Gin Jenny

Britain didn’t declare war on Germany. Instead they made peace, and Britain slid gradually into fascism. One might call the trilogy the Small Change trilogy instead, as the books are called Farthing, Ha’Penny, and Half a Crown, but I like the Still Life with Fascists title better. Each book has two narrators, one the first-person narration of a young upper-class English woman, and one the third-person narration of a morally compromised policeman called Carmichael. Don’t you love a morally compromised narrator? The first book, Farthing, is a country house murder mystery. The so-called “Farthing set”, famed for their integral role…

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Review: Jellicoe Road, Melina Marchetta

Published 13 Sep 2010 by Gin Jenny

One definite conclusion I have reached from the first half of no-spoilers September is that reading the end sometime saves you misunderstanding the point of a book. I was sure Jellicoe Road was a good fit for the RIP Challenge, a dark gothic fantasy orphan boarding school book. When really all along it was a dark family tragedy orphan boarding school book. Happily for me and my reading experience, I like family tragedy nearly as much as gothic fantasy, so this disparity made me merely muddled, and not ultimately dissatisfied. Orphan Taylor Markham is the leader of the Jellicoe School…

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I love y’all in the face

Published 13 Sep 2010 by Gin Jenny

Today, the first day of Book Blogger Appreciation Week, you are supposed to talk about great new blogs you’ve discovered in the past year. This is problematic for me because I have a wobbly relationship with time and can’t remember when I discovered anything, and also because there are so many wonderful blogs it’s hard for me to pick one, or two, or even eight or nine, of which I am especially fond. But I will try to tell you five blogs that I am pretty sure I have found in the last year. Stella Matutina – I think Memory…

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