Skip to content

Reading the End Posts

Fagles’s Odyssey: Divided loyalties in the first quarter

Published 30 Jun 2010 by Gin Jenny

Fagles’s translation of the Odyssey is so great it hurts my brain. Granted, I am a sucker for epic poetry. I took eight years of Latin when I was in school, and I never loved anything we translated like I loved the Aeneid. It is epic. Plus I love the Greek and Roman gods. So I am reading the Odyssey right now, in the Fagles translation, which I have to say appears to be the best translation in all the land. Fagles. (Not Lattimore, Capt. Hammer). Check this out: Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists…

Continue readingFagles’s Odyssey: Divided loyalties in the first quarter
44 Comments

What I have been doing with my fancy university library card

Published 28 Jun 2010 by Gin Jenny

Scaring myself, mostly. This library has a lot of books inside of it, but it also has the scariest damn stacks I ever saw. They have these dark, narrow aisles, and the doors in the stairwells between levels swing open and shut with loud, prolonged, ominous squeaks. I always have the exact call numbers of the books I want before I go, because sitting down at one of the catalogue computers, with my back to the darkened stacks, does not inspire feelings of comfort and safety. The main aisles are lit, but you have to press a button to turn…

Continue readingWhat I have been doing with my fancy university library card
57 Comments

Day of Tears, Julius Lester

Published 23 Jun 2010 by Gin Jenny

Typically I don’t read American historical fiction.  I had to do a lot of American history in school, and so I learned a dozen dozen times about the Revolutionary War and the Civil War and Reconstruction and the dreadful dusty Depression.  I feel like I have already paid my dues where learning about those things are concerned.  Louisiana history too.  That project on the flood of 1927 was both tedious and depressing, so I have decided that Louisiana history and me are quits.  I am a grown-up now, dammit, and that means I get to choose what countries and time…

Continue readingDay of Tears, Julius Lester
36 Comments

Diana Wynne Jones Week: 1 August – 7 August 2010

Published 20 Jun 2010 by Gin Jenny

Diana Wynne Jones is one of my favorite authors in all the land. In her long career as a writer, she has written around forty books (novels and short stories), mainly for children and young adults, and each one is new and weird and wonderful in its own particular way.  She has been compared to J.K. Rowling, in that her books are set in fantasy worlds and are full of humor and charm; she has inspired many writers over the years, including two of my favorites, Neil Gaiman and Megan Whalen Turner. If you’ve been reading here for a while…

Continue readingDiana Wynne Jones Week: 1 August – 7 August 2010
117 Comments

The Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim

Published 19 Jun 2010 by Gin Jenny

Oh Bruno Bettelheim, you silly bunny.  So many things about your book annoyed me until I flipped to your about-the-author and looked at your dates.  Turns out, there is some excuse for your dated Freudian psychology: you were born in 1903!  After I knew that, so many things about you still annoyed me.  I like for writers to use the phrases “oedipal conflict” and “oral incorporative stage” sparingly, if at all.  Your dates are no excuse!  I would have found it even more annoying if I had not suddenly remembered this (warning for language); and then every time Bettelheim said…

Continue readingThe Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim
37 Comments

Review: A Conspiracy of Kings, Megan Whalen Turner

Published 17 Jun 2010 by Gin Jenny

When I was a little girl, I used to finish a book and turn around and read it all over again.  The Little Princess, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Travel Far, Pay No Fare.  I’m not talking about rereading (I still do loads of rereading), but finishing a book and flipping it over and starting all over again, because you can’t stand the idea of leaving it behind right away.  And look, I was serious about Megan Whalen Turner before.  I loved those books.  When I finished the first three and got the fourth from my ever-obliging big sister, I left the…

Continue readingReview: A Conspiracy of Kings, Megan Whalen Turner
41 Comments

Review: Beyond the Vicarage, Noel Streatfeild

Published 16 Jun 2010 by Gin Jenny

HaHA.  A while ago I read the first two volumes of Streatfeild’s slightly-fictionalized autobiography, and I could not get the third one.  I believe I rather fatalistically said the library didn’t have it and it was out of print and I’d never ever find out what happened to Noel Streatfeild.  Obvious nonsense because of course we know she became a classic writer of children’s books.  But anyway the public library here shocked me by having the third book, and I read it on Sunday after church. I dunno.  My feelings were mixed.  I liked reading about Streatfeild’s becoming a writer. …

Continue readingReview: Beyond the Vicarage, Noel Streatfeild
17 Comments

Review: The White Road, Lynn Flewelling

Published 15 Jun 2010 by Gin Jenny

Two things I enjoy in fantasy books: Chicanery.  And political machinations.  Preferably at the same time, like when people use their wits to effect the toppling of regimes or noble houses.  I have no particular books in mind when I mention this, of course, although now that I mention it, I do seem to recall that there is a series of books by one Megan Whalen Turner that possess both of these elements.  IN SPADES. Two things I tend not to enjoy in fantasy books: Lots of made-up words.  And fuzzy-edged pseudo-mystic religions.  And look, it hurts me to say…

Continue readingReview: The White Road, Lynn Flewelling
48 Comments

Burma Chronicles & Love and Rockets

Published 13 Jun 2010 by Gin Jenny

And now for some comics that did not rock my world but count towards the Graphic Novels Challenge anyway: Burma Chronicles, Guy Delisle Once again Guy Delisle, French-Canadian animator and cartoonist, went a-traveling to a faraway land with an oppressive regime.  In this case, his wife Nadège was working for Médecins sans Frontières (MSF); Nadège, Guy, and their small son Louis take off for Burma (Myanmar) for a year.  Delisle notes at the beginning of the book that the UN has recognized the regime and calls it Myanmar, but that many countries, including Canada, have not.  Hence Burma. If I…

Continue readingBurma Chronicles & Love and Rockets
20 Comments