Skip to content

Reading the End Posts

Review: The Opposite House, Helen Oyeyemi

Published 22 Feb 2010 by Gin Jenny

When I do not expect to enjoy a book all that much, but I need to get it read so I can return it to the library, I leave it in my loo and read it in tiny increments when I am cleaning my teeth and contact lenses, or waiting for the hot water to heat up (my hot water acts like it’s ready to go and then turns from a gush to a trickle; you have to wait SO LONG to get it going properly.  Many lukewarm showers before I figured it out).  If the book turns out better…

Continue readingReview: The Opposite House, Helen Oyeyemi
20 Comments

Questions for you

Published 21 Feb 2010 by Gin Jenny

So here are two things that have been weighing on my mind. I read about the Bechdel Rule recently.  Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home, says that for a movie to be worth her time, it has to meet three conditions.  1) There have to be two female characters that are 2) having a conversation about 3) something other than a guy.  So I went and counted my movies, and checked to see how many of them would qualify under this rule.  I own 107 movies right now, of which nine met these criteria.  That’s ridiculous.  (I’m counting Breakfast on…

Continue readingQuestions for you
43 Comments

Review: Gunnerkrigg Court, Tom Siddell

Published 20 Feb 2010 by Gin Jenny

Can this count as part of the mini-challenge where we read graphic novels with animals in?  Animals are not main characters exactly, but they are around, and rather important.  And I didn’t like the other graphic novel I read for the mini-challenge, so I hereby decree Gunnerkrigg Court counts.  So let it be written; so let it be done. Gunnerkrigg Court is about a girl called Antimony Carver, who goes to live at a boarding school called Gunnerkrigg Court, following the death of her mother.  (Her father is off somewhere doing some sort of we don’t know what he’s doing.) …

Continue readingReview: Gunnerkrigg Court, Tom Siddell
9 Comments

My day yesterday

Published 19 Feb 2010 by Gin Jenny

Jenny: If fiction is going to be meta, it should be meta exactly like The Unwritten.  I HAVE DECREED IT SO. Universe: Oh yeah? NY Times: Zachary Mason’s The Lost Books of the Odyssey is metafiction and sometimes wonderful.  Read an excerpt. Jenny: I am unmoved by this excerpt. Slate and WSJ: Zachary Mason’s The Lost Books of the Odyssey is meta-licious.  We love it. Jenny: Whatever.  I will believe it when I see it. The Lost Books of the Odyssey: WIN WIN WIN. True story.

1 Comment

Review: The Unwritten, Vol. 1, Mike Carey and Peter Goss

Published 19 Feb 2010 by Gin Jenny

For the Graphic Novel Challenge! The Unwritten is about a guy called Tom whose father – long since disappeared without a trace – wrote an incredibly popular series of books about a character with Tom’s same name: Tommy Taylor.  However, it turns out that all the paperwork proving Tom is his father’s son has been forged.  At first it is theorized that he is a fraud, the son of Romanian peasants; then people begin to believe that he is, in fact, Tommy Taylor, brought into existence by the stories themselves.  The word made flesh. The Unwritten is set in London,…

Continue readingReview: The Unwritten, Vol. 1, Mike Carey and Peter Goss
18 Comments

Dull dreams

Published 17 Feb 2010 by Gin Jenny

I dreamed last week that I had checked out A Time to Keep Silence from the library, on Litlove’s recommendation, and was very let down by it.  Instead of writing about visiting monasteries, it was all about visiting chocolate factories!  In my dream, I got fed up with Fermor’s constant cutesy references to Willy Wonka, and in the end I took the book and stacked it neatly on top of the other library books I haven’t liked enough to finish.  And then this all receded into the fuzzy mess of vague memory, and as happens with absurd regularity, I forgot…

Continue readingDull dreams
27 Comments

Update on Fellowship

Published 15 Feb 2010 by Gin Jenny

It is now the middle of the month – tell us all how Tolkien is treating you over at The Literary Omnivore: (omnivore = all standards) If you’ve been with us since the beginning, how do you feel about the narrator compared to the narrator in The Hobbit? BETTER.  I didn’t hate the narrating style of The Hobbit or anything, but it didn’t feel like the Middle Earth world.  Reading Fellowship is nice – it starts out sounding rather cheerful and hobbity, like The Hobbit, but more Lord of the Ringsy, and then it slowly gets darker and darker.  By…

Continue readingUpdate on Fellowship
24 Comments

Review: Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones

Published 14 Feb 2010 by Gin Jenny

So Fire and Hemlock is a retelling of the ballad “Tam Lin”, but it incorporates elements from a dozen other fairy tales, myths, and legends.  I read this article one time that Diana Wynne Jones wrote, about the process of writing Fire and Hemlock and all the different strands of stories she used, which was quite, quite interesting.  The story begins with a young woman called Polly, who is packing her things for Oxford and has come across a book that she remembers being quite different to what it is now.  This leads her to the realization that she has…

Continue readingReview: Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones
46 Comments

Two books I didn’t like (sad, sad)

Published 10 Feb 2010 by Gin Jenny

I put the words “sad, sad” in the title line here, but that was silly.  I am not sad at all.  I am still very happy, because as you may recall, THE SAINTS WON THE SUPER BOWL, causing me to tear up happily every time Drew Brees opens his mouth (he’s such a sweet dear) or every time I see a picture of all the confetti and rejoicing.  And everyone is all “If only my daddy were alive to see this day,” and New Orleans is throwing the biggest party possibly every thrown, like even bigger than that party in…

Continue readingTwo books I didn’t like (sad, sad)
31 Comments