Wanna hear a joke? I got After Disasters out from the library the week after the election. Get it. Get it. Because the election was a disaster and now we are after it. After Disasters circles around a lot of different events, but the one at its center is the 2001 earthquake in the District of Gujarat, in India. Ted and Dev and Piotr and Andy are all involved in the earthquake disaster response, and this story follows their recovery efforts as well as how they came to be in their professions and how all their lives intertwine. It is…
6 CommentsReading the End Posts
Happy Wednesday! We’ve got a very giggly episode for you today, in which the Jennys supply a sea-or-space update, run down the books we’re excited about for spring, and launch the Second Annual Hatening. There is also some genuinely gold listener mail. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go! Episode 75 What We’re Reading The Boy is Back, Meg Cabot Monstress, Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda Winter 2016 Books Angel Catbird, Margaret Atwood and Johnny Christmas Cul-de-Sac, Robert Repino Everfair, Nisi Shawl Float, Anne…
1 CommentThe second week of January, I read Mychal Denzel Smith’s memoir Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching and Jesmyn Ward’s The Fire This Time, a collection of essays about America’s past and present and future. Both were published before the 2016 presidential election, and both speak with sorrow and hope about our country’s history and its potential. Smith ends his book like this: I hope my answers create a world where the Trayvons in waiting can see their own humanity. I hope I’ve fought hard enough to live long enough to see what questions they ask. I hope their…
33 CommentsWelp, this has been a flatly terrifying week. Everyone take good care of yourself this weekend. Eat some yummy foods. Hug some puppies. We’ll be here for you on Monday. My links are mostly unscary ones because I care about you and I’m guessing your Twitter feed has been scary enough lately. Writers always wrote for money, so why do we suddenly have this idea that good writing springs purely from love? Also, why writers are so reluctant to talk about their pay in specific terms. This article is a review of the edited collection Scratch, and the one above…
13 CommentsTwo biracial girls grow up in the same bit of northwest London, attending dance classes together. Tracey has real talent, and our unnamed narrator does not, and Swing Time is about the unexpected paths their lives take as they grow into adulthood. Content warning, there is very little dance school in this book. The narrator pretty quickly stops taking dance, so if you were going into Swing Time singing a little song to yourself like “dance school dance school dance school dance school,” you might end up disappointed. That’s not what I was doing or anything. It’s just something I…
28 CommentsWhen the Moon Was Ours is as good an argument as you’ll possibly ever see for the value of #ownvoices in publishing. I say that because I can’t stand magic realism and I’m not that excited about straight-up romance in YA, and When the Moon Was Ours — a magic realism romance — nevertheless still made me feel so happy and grateful for its existence. It’s the story of a Latina girl called Miel and a Pakistani-American trans boy called Sam and their struggles to come to terms with their identities and their feelings about each other and the mystical…
7 CommentsHappy Wednesday! The Jennys are back to chat about what we got for Christmas, which media we didn’t get around to in 2016, and to talk about Alice Pung’s YA novel Lucy and Linh. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go! Episode 74 Two small mistakes to note: I said I received the Rebecca Solnit atlas of New Orleans, and in fact it was the atlas of New York, which is the one I would prefer to have. Also, Whiskey Jenny said John Legend has…
2 CommentsNote: I received Death: An Oral History from the publisher for review consideration. All opinions are my own. So my favorite thing about Death: An Oral History is the story of its genesis. Casey Jarman noticed that he hadn’t yet lost anyone he couldn’t afford to lose, and it started to cause him anxiety about death. He therefore decided to spend the next few years of his life talking, reading, and thinking extensively about death, with the ultimate goal of producing a collection of interviews with people familiar with death. This is very very relatable to me. I have learned…
23 CommentsI’ve been bouncing around the internets with my writing thoughts. Have some of my word-related New Year’s Resolutions over at the Oxford Dictionaries blog! Then enjoy my picks for 2016 Smugglivus, over at Book Smugglers! Maddy Myers is great, y’all. Here she is on on-screen queer kisses over at The Mary Sue. Y’all, you guys, hey everyone, guess what! England is about to get the FIRST EVER Kurdish novel to be translated into English. How cool! How good for the Kurds! I hope it publishes in the US also! This Natalie Luhrs piece for Uncanny Magazine unpacks what’s so great…
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