Well, 2017 was awful. And Trump’s still going to be president in 2018, so my hopes for the upcoming year are not that high. On the other hand, I’ve reached a sort of equilibrium with the family members who dumped me, so I won’t have to relitigate that whole mess in the upcoming year (said Jenny optimistically). And I’ve seen so much bravery and ferocity from people I know: Y’all stay inspiring me. With that said, I had a pretty terrific reading year in 2017. I encountered some new instant favorites, books I loved so much I shoved them at…
14 CommentsReading the End Posts
I hope all the Christmas celebrators out there had wonderful Christmases! It’s Wednesday, and me and Whiskey Jenny are back to talk about the books we like to read when the weather turns chilly. We have a lot of thoughts about how this type of reading differs from comfort reading. Then we turn to Melina Marchetta’s first novel for adults, Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil, about which we each went on a dramatic emotional journey. 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.
1:00 – What We’re Reading
4:50 – Serial Box Book Club
10:53 – Cozy reads for winter nights
28:02 – Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil, Melina Marchetta
Books Discussed This Episode
The Skriker, Caryl Churchill
Whipping Girl, Julia Serano
The Templars, Dan Jones
Geek Actually (episodes 5 and 6)
Sunshine, Robin McKinley
Jo Nesbo
Robert Galbraith
Miss Marple mysteries, Agatha Christie
A Christmas Gone Perfectly Wrong, Cecilia Grant
A Curious Beginning, Deanna Raybourn
Ada. or Ardor, Vladimir Nabokov
The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton
City on Fire, Garth Risk Hallberg
Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil, Melina Marchetta
Get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. 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
If you want to read a transcript, check it out under the cut!
Leave a CommentSTAR WARS. STAR WARS. STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR WARS. I saw Star Wars and I was INTO IT, and also the characters all ended up, oh let’s say they all ended up where I wanted them to be. Let’s just say that. Please @ me on Twitter so we can talk about it. I loved it. Happy about: DOUG JONES WON ALABAMA. DOUG JONES WON ALABAMA. I’m so happy for the Dem voters in Alabama, who have worked hard and who deeply deserve this. White liberals, especially in the South, should remember this victory and spend as much time as we can in…
11 CommentsSorry this is so late! I somehow completely blanked on running final filters on our podcast last night, even though it was completely edited and ready to go, so it had to wait until this evening. HAPPY HOLIDAYS ANYWAY, and I hope that those of you who wrote to use via our Holiday Gift Guide can get a few ideas from amongst our many recommendations. You can listen to the podcast using the embedded player below, or download the file directly to take with you on the go!
Our Own Personal Gift Guides
Gin Jenny: Eyeglasses chain from Leslie’s Lanyards on Etsy
Whiskey Jenny: Litographs temporary tattoos
Gin Jenny: Black Sails on DVD (greatest show of our time)
Whiskey Jenny: P. much anything from Out of Print
Gin Jenny: Milk Makeup Ubame mascara
Whiskey Jenny: some kind of local CSA!
Gin Jenny: About: Blanks notebooks
Whiskey Jenny: Adorable salt and pepper shakers like these boat ones
Gin Jenny: Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey
Whiskey Jenny: Tombow markers
Holiday Gift Guide Recs
Claire’s dad
In the Woods (first in Dublin Murder Squad series), by Tana French
Fearless Jones series by Walter Mosley
The Bat (first in Harry Hole series), by Jo Nesbo
Sea of Poppies (first in Ibis Trilogy), by Amitav Ghosh
Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi
Ellen’s older daughter
The Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey
The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
Ray Bradbury short stories
The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins
Ellen’s younger daughter
Mars Evacuees, Sophia MacDougall
Dealing with Dragons, Patricia C. Wrede
Greenglass House, Kate Milford
Danny the Champion of the World, Roald Dahl
Cinder, Marissa Meyer
Ellen herself!
Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
Six Wakes, Mur Lafferty
The Passage, Justin Cronin
Sorcery and Cecelia, Caroline Stevermer and Patricia Wrede
Glynis’s husband
A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, Becky Chambers
“Fandom for Robots,” A GIFT BUT NOT THE KIND YOU CAN WRAP by Vina Jie-Min Prasad
The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach
Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
Chelsea!
Karen Memory, Elizabeth Bear
You’re Welcome, Universe, Whitney Gardner
The Inexplicable Logic of My Life, Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Sunbolt and Memories of Ash Intisar Khanani
A Hundred Thousand Worlds by Bob Proehl
Caroline’s mum
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (first of the Mary Russell mysteries), Laurie King
Lost Among the Living, Simone St. James
Crocodile on the Sandbank (first of the Amelia Peabody series), Elizabeth Peters
The Strangler Vine, M.J. Carter
The Shape of Water, Andrea Camilleri
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, John le Carré
Erica’s partner’s mother
Fingersmith, Sarah Waters
Life After Life, Kate Atkinson
The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Helen Simonson
Vanessa and Her Sister, Priya Parmar
Our transcript for this episode is under the jump!
3 CommentsOne of the beloved talking points of people who are currently Nazis is that there was a time in Europe when everyone was white. Mostly, they think this because they are crap people in search of crap beliefs that will support their continued quest to be terrible. In part, though, historians and teachers have contributed to this belief by beginning the stories of black Britain with the advent of slavery. But as Miranda Kaufmann’s new book Black Tudors shows, the reality is that people of African descent did live in early modern Britain, plying their trades alongside white residents. (For…
12 CommentsI’d say that I am currently at peak excitement for The Last Jedi, but it’s impossible to say with any certainty. As we draw ever closer to Star Wars Day (the 15th but actually for me probably the 16th), I likely will grow ever more excited until I see the movie or explode, whichever comes first. So let’s start this week’s round-up with some Kelly Marie Tran news. Kelly Marie Tran in Buzzfeed. Kelly Marie Tran in EW. Kelly Marie Tran sorting Star Wars characters into Hogwarts houses, an activity she’s so pumped to do. And lest we forget, here’s…
8 CommentsIt’s Monday and we all probably all need some romance novels in our lives. Here are two new ones that you might want to pick up if you need something to get you through the holiday season. I received electronic copies of both of them from the publishers for review consideration, which did not influence my review because my good opinion is more costly than ebooks. Wrong to Need You, Alisha Rai (Goodreads link!) Sadia Ahmad owns a cafe, tends a bar, and raises her son. When her dead husband’s brother comes back to town after years of radio silence,…
5 CommentsOh, friends, what a goddamn week. I’m sorry to everyone who had to live through that week. If you’re able to call your senators and representatives this upcoming week about the tax bill, please do it. If you’re not, hang in there because you have people rooting for you. Despite all the shit in Congress, I am feeling ~98.6% better about life than I was last Sunday. Here are a few of the reasons why: This week, one of my very favorite people came to visit, and I was able to give her a small gift that I’ve been hanging…
9 Comments