Can I confess something? When I see people like Elizabeth tearing through their Mount TBRs like it’s going out of style, I become very embarrassed about my own terrible TBR habits. The trouble is that I own the books I own! The books I check out from the library will be due back in a few weeks! How can I prioritize the books with no deadline over the books with a deadline? I can’t! That would be nuts! Of course, when I do make time for the books that I own but haven’t read, I rarely regret it. I bought…
Leave a CommentReading the End Posts
What an absolute doll of a book Arcanos Unraveled is! My lovely friend Jeanne gave it to my mother earlier in the summer, and because I’m a disaster of a person, I read it before I read the book Jeanne actually gave me. (I’m saving that one for a rainy day. It looks delightful too. You will hear from me again re: that book.) Anya Winter is a hedge witch who works at a magical university, teaching the textile arts. Hedge witches don’t get nearly the same respect as proper (read: wealthy) wizards, but Anya believes in the work she’s…
Leave a CommentIt’s Friday! A day I used to not dread at all and now only slightly dread. Maybe this Friday nothing terrible will happen right at the very end of the day. Maybe if something terrible happens right at the very end of the day, I will already have gotten offline for the day. Aaaaaaaaaa. I thought we’d start this week’s links round-up with something heartening: An article about why the AskHistorians subreddit bans Holocaust denial on their platform. Here’s what’s been happening with the programming at WorldCon. For heaven’s sake. Mary Robinette Kowal and a team of other cool people…
Leave a CommentI’m going to say right up front that Whiskey Jenny only cries once in this episode, and I hope all y’all are impressed about that. For this month’s bonus episode (thank y’all again so much for your support), we decided to talk about the saddest books we read as kids, and Whiskey Jenny ONLY CRIES ONCE. (YES we included Where the Red Fern Grows. Come on.) (Gin Jenny, an automaton, cries zero times. She did get teary on Twitter today thinking about the characters in new Star Wars, though.) You can listen to the podcast using the embedded player below,…
Leave a CommentI write this post having conducted a mass slaughter of wasps on my front and back porches, heeding the advice of the internet to purchase a wasp-slaughtering project rather than swatting at their nest with a large stick and running away. (Internet: So bossy!) Glittery, limp bodies of dead wasps litter my front and back doorsteps. This is not a metaphor for anything; it is a merely factual report. A very happy summer to you, and now let’s get to the stories! I mostly do prefer to be positive in this space, but I was deeply, deeply frustrated with “Three…
Leave a CommentI don’t know if y’all heard, but I conned my pal Jodie (of Lady Business) into watching Black Sails and recapping it with me. Head over there to see what we have to say about Episode 3, the episode voted Most Likely to Bounce New Viewers Off the Show and For Good Reason Too But I Hope You’ll Stick With It Because It Really Gets So Good.
Leave a CommentI typically don’t review any of the academic nonfiction that I read here on the old blog, for a couple reasons: Sometimes I am reading it for writing research, and I feel weird talking on here about my creative writing. For whatever reason. Probably deep feelings of inadequacy. Let’s not dwell. Often it is very boring to people who are not me. I don’t want y’all to know how many books I read about the aftermaths of historical atrocities. A lot of academic nonfiction is inaccessible unless you have credentials with a university library; so a lot of folks wouldn’t…
Leave a CommentIt’s Friday! Hooray! I am participating in the 24in48 Readathon this weekend, and I could not be more excited for it. Are you participating too? Do you have all your snacks and books picked out? While we wait for its glorious commencement, have some links! THE MILLIONS BOOK PREVIEW for the second half of 2018 has dropped, bringing joy unto us all in these dark times. I was cranky when I read this and therefore only wrote down, like, six books on my TBR list. SUCCESS. “The idea that everyone involved is playing a game of three-dimensional chess at all…
Leave a CommentListeners, I got my first electricity bill since summer began in earnest, and I am delighted to report that it is NOT THAT BAD. My central air and heat has caused me some stress and dismay over the last year, but it’s all proving worth it. If you are in a place where central air comes standard, I congratulate you and rejoice in our shared happiness. If not, I hope that you are finding other ways to keep cool, and I commend to your ears this, our latest podcast. We read Lily Anderson’s YA horror novel Undead Girl Gang and suggest some candidates for Great American Authorship who aren’t white dudes. Plus, what we’re reading, what we’re listening to, and what we’ll be reading for next time. You can listen to the podcast using the embedded player below, or download the file directly to take with you on the go!
Here are the time signatures if you want to skip around.
1:43 – What we’re reading
6:09 – What we’re listening to
8:17 – LOTR Reread: Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapters 6-10
23:44 – Great American Novelists (who aren’t white dudes)
38:17 – Undead Girl Gang, Lily Anderson
51:06 – What we’re reading next time
Here’s the Jonathan Franzen profile that Whiskey Jenny is talking about. It’s magical.
Get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. If you like what we do, support us on Patreon. Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much).
Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour
Transcripts by: Sharon of Library Hungry
Transcript is available under the jump!
Leave a CommentMy wonderful friend Alice recently was excavating the origins of our friendship (we have been friends for six years!), and she found an email from me where I described my reading like this: The, uh, the really really trashy kind of trashy romance novels. Where everyone is called Alexandra and Gareth, and they cause a scandal and a hissing by making out in the arboretum and then Gareth is like, “Darling, why do you care what the cats at Almack’s say of you? Let’s make love all day in my decadently decorated bedroom!” and Alexandra is like, “And the men…
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