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Reading the End Posts

I’m Actually Really Anxious about Saturday: A Links Round-Up

Hi friends it is Friday but I have a Thing on Saturday that I’m terrified about, so Friday is no relief to me at all. Come Saturday night I will be relieved, and then not too long after that I have a vacation, and that will be very lovely indeed. In the meantime, have some links. Mallory Ortberg’s piece about trying a binder for the first time is immensely lovely and moving (though also quite melancholy). On Hemingway tourism in Cuba. Oh Hemingway. What a poop he was. Deji Bryce Olukoton writes on the future of Nigeria and Nigerian science…

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Something on Sunday (a Tiny Plan)

I have been seeing a lot of sadness and anxiety in the blogosphere lately; lots of people posting that they’re struggling to find motivation and time to read or post or go blog-hopping. And on one hand, I’ve been doing this for A DECADE and that just seems to be part of the natural cycle of blogging, to have times where you want to prioritize it more and times when you want to prioritize it less or maybe even step away. On the other hand, I suspect that the same is true for other bloggers as is true for me,…

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Nine Questions for the Book Smugglers

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably seen me screaming about the Book Smugglers Kickstarter. The Book Smugglers, Ana and Thea, are seeking some funds to help them publish the wonderful, diverse SFF they’re famous for. As of now, they’ve got nine days left, so we’re asking Ana nine questions! 1. What are you going to do with all this money? A: Lots of things! The idea is to fund our next season of short stories at a higher pay rate to writers and with freelance professionals working on the ebooks to help us out. We will open a…

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Reading the End Bookcast, Ep. 89: Fall Book Preview and Ashley Shelby’s South Pole Station

It’s Wednesday once more, friends, and this week has been a Week. I hope you are filling your houses with books and your mouths with chocolate, because that’s what we’ll all need to get by. After an accidental mini-hiatus, Whiskey Jenny and me are back to talk about the books we’re anticipating this fall, the new Serial Box serial Geek Actually, and Ashley Shelby’s book South Pole Station. You can listen to the podcast using the embedded player below, or download the file directly to take with you on the go! Episode 89 Here are the time signatures if you…

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Review: Playing Dead, Elizabeth Greenwood

Can a book about not really being dead count for RIP? Yes, right? I can count Playing Dead in my RIP list, right? Because when push came to shove, I discovered that I just didn’t want to read the posthumously completed The Painted Queen, or at least I do not want to read it yet. So I am subbing in Playing Dead. I think it’s fine. Death is spooky! Elizabeth Greenwood first became interested in faking her own death as she faced the inevitable facts of her six-figure student loans, on which she continues to pay mostly interest payments month…

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Too Busy Reading about Pirates: A Links Round-Up

Okay, full disclosure, in a bid to make my watch of Black Sails last longer, I have been reading a lot of pirate books in the evenings. I checked out I think fifteen of them from my library, and that’s not counting the ones I own from the last time I got interested in pirates. So I haven’t had as much time to compile links for you. I’ve made up for it by including the very very best links. First up, the Book Smugglers are running a Kickstarter so that they can continue to do what they do and pay…

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Review: A Taste of Honey, Rose Lerner

Note: I received a review copy of A Taste of Honey from the author. This did not influence the contents of my review. If you’ve ever asked me for feminist romance novel recommendations, I’ve probably enthusiastically pushed Rose Lerner on you. Consider this me doing so again. A Taste of Honey is the latest installment in her Lively St. Lemeston series, which focuses on middle and lower-class folks in a small British town in Regency England. As with most romance series, you don’t need to have read the others to enjoy this one. Be prepared now for me to overuse…

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RIP Read: Food of the Gods, Cassandra Khaw

By coincidence (OR WAS IT?)1 I read Food of the Gods directly after The Prey of Gods, which has led me to make numerous errors about which book title has the word the in which place. But both are weird, and both left me feeling decidedly unsettled after I turned over the last page. Food of the Gods is a combination of two novellas about Rupert Wong, who works part-time for the lord of hell and part-time as a chef for a particularly powerful ghoul mob boss with a taste for flawlessly prepared human flesh. Ordinarily this is fine for…

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Review: The Prey of Gods, Nicky Drayden

“Whatcha reading?” said someone to me as I was waiting in line at the post office the other day. I flipped up the cover of The Prey of Gods (which is a p. cool cover, as you will see below.) “What’s it about?” they said. And I was like, “My friend, that is a GOOD FUCKIN QUESTION.” The Prey of Gods was described to me by two separate people as being the craziest SF book they’d read in a while, and they were not mistaken. What’s it about? Gods and robots, sometimes working together, sometimes really not at all. Viruses.…

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A podcast misfortune

When we first started the podcast, our producer told us that we would someday lose an entire podcast. There would be a problem with the audio, or our computers would crash at an inopportune moment, and the podcast would be lost to us. Friends, today is that day. We tried to use an online tool to make it easier to welcome our special guest star, and it didn’t make it easier, and the audio is unlistenable. Whiskey Jenny’s audio is the worst because it fades in and out in a weird way, but all three of us sound like terrible…

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