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Reading the End Posts

Their Finest Hour and a Half, Lissa Evans

Published 28 Aug 2010 by Gin Jenny

Forgive the probable idiocy and inanity of this review. I read Their Finest Hour and a Half a few weeks ago, and now it is hard for me to remember things about it. It is a funny book–I kept saying “comic book” but that’s not really want I meant–about London during the Blitz. More or less, it centers on a propaganda film the British Ministry of Information is making. The characters are Edith, a seamstress and aspiring clothing designer who keeps getting bombed out; Ambrose, an aging film actor only interested in himself; and Catrin, an artist’s wife, newly tapped…

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It Ends with Revelations, Dodie Smith

Published 26 Aug 2010 by Gin Jenny

Poor Dodie Smith. What a shame to have written your first book, and it’s I Capture the Castle, not far off being the best book ever, narrated by a character that is the perfect blend of innocence and charming worldly practicality. Thereafter you can write more books, but none of them will ever be as good, and everyone will feel sad that your subsequent books are not I Capture the Castle. In fact it would not be unbearably dissimilar to the plight of the father in I Capture the Castle, except without the Joyce comparisons. It Ends with Revelations has…

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Mothernight, Sarah Stovell

Published 24 Aug 2010 by Gin Jenny

Sarah Stovell didn’t mock me like Martha Baillie. Sarah Stovell’s back-cover quotation about time was meant to console me. Her back cover quotation said “I was beginning to realize that time didn’t move forward here. It just spun round and round, circling an old date, endlessly.” Bad for the characters. Good for me. Or it would be if time really worked that way, which it doesn’t, and you can tell because I am now back home working on finding a job. But Sarah Stovell actually knows this. Later in Mothernight she says “Time is cruel. A relentless one-way street to…

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The Incident Report, Martha Baillie

Published 22 Aug 2010 by Gin Jenny

The week before I left my internship, I checked out six books from the university library, and the only two paperbacks (The Incident Report and Mothernight, of which more later) had nothing on their back covers except for quotations about time. It was like they were mocking me, like: Hey, your time in this internship is coming to an end, and pretty soon, oh no, you will run out of time there, and you will have to worry about the future! Mean old paperbacks, reminding me about time and how it never stops going and no matter how much you…

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Nonfiction

Published 16 Aug 2010 by Gin Jenny

I have been reading a lot of nonfiction this summer. It’s been fun, but I am also a little starved for fiction, and I have a massive backlist of books to investigate when I get home. Juliet Gardiner: The Thirties and Overpaid, Oversexed, and Over Here When I read Gardiner’s Wartime, I wished it had said more about the experience of being an American GI in England during World War II. Turns out the reason it didn’t is that Juliet Gardiner wrote a whole book about being an American GI in England during World War II. Overpaid, Oversexed, and Over…

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The other two Mary Renault books I got from the university library

Published 11 Aug 2010 by Gin Jenny

I am always trying to think of ways to maximize my reading pleasure when an author has written more than one book. Before I realized it was futile because everyone has different tastes, I used to go on Amazon and try to figure out what a shiny new author’s least popular book was, and then I’d read that one first so it would be all improvements from that point on. This did not work at all with, for instance, Salman Rushdie. I accidentally read his most-acclaimed book first, Midnight’s Children, and when (after consulting Amazon) I tried to read what…

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Giveaway winners; and links rounded up, part 2

Published 8 Aug 2010 by Gin Jenny

First of all: The winners of the giveaway! Karenlibrarian of Books and Chocolate! and! Proper Jenny of Shelf Love! Congratulations! I’ve sent you both an email, so let me know if you don’t receive it. And now, on to the links. Just Book Reading expected Witch Week to be sort of like Harry Potter though in fact it turned out to be quite different. Thomas of shepline thinks about his favorites of Diana Wynne Jones’s books. Spoiler: He likes Fire and Hemlock best because it is best. 🙂 Here he writes about how Fire and Hemlock influenced his own writing;…

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Second (or third, or fourth) chances

Published 7 Aug 2010 by Gin Jenny

The story of my Diana Wynne Jones reading life is this: Stage One: Begin book. Find world it is set in confusing. Find characters depressing and unpleasant. Give up reading it, or finish it with grim sense of duty to beloved author. Lament dissimilarity to books previously read by Diana Wynne Jones. Attain acceptance by telling self that no author can write good books every single time. Reread Fire and Hemlock consolingly. Stage Two (discovery of DWJ – 2003ish): Receive assurances from sister that book in question is good. Doubt her taste because of Juliet Marillier and similar. Point out…

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Win a used copy of Fire and Hemlock!

Published 5 Aug 2010 by Gin Jenny

This isn’t a proper post, just a line to tell you to drop over by things mean a lot to enter Ana’s giveaway of Fire and Hemlock. If I had a spare copy I’d be giving it away too. We just love the book that much. Everyone should have a copy.

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