I’m an aunt, y’all! Wooooooooo! Truly it is the happiest of Fridays! Though I can’t transmit my joy directly into your brains, I will nevertheless do my best to give you some happiness in the form of excellent links. Enjoy! In case you missed it, I wrote a fandom vocabulary primer for the Oxford Dictionaries blog. The goddess Alexandra Petri (the woman who brought us Emo Kylo Ren) outlines the Great American Novel. A history of Harry Potter fandom. The Seattle Seahawks made a loud noise about the statement they were planning to make before their opening game, but what…
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In my cynical old age, I’ve become leery of books about supernatural critters like vampires and werewolves. I don’t want to blame Stephenie Meyer, but she did kick off this whole, like, vampires-and-werewolves renascence1 that seemed like a good thing at the time but then reached a point where there was too much of it. Problem is, this too-much-of-a-good-thing thing didn’t erase my fondness for new interesting takes on supernatural critters; it just made me skeptical that there was anything new under the sun. So when Tor.com promised me that Mongrels was a take on werewolves I hadn’t seen before,…
9 CommentsNote: I received an e-galley of Everfair from the publisher for review consideration. The genesis of Nisi Shawl’s debut novel Everfair was the author’s bafflement that she had never gotten into steampunk, and her theory that the reason for this is steampunk’s uncomfortable connections with colonialism. Everfair, therefore, creates an alternate version of Congolese history in which white and black Europeans and Americans purchase land in the Congo to create a small country called Everfair. The residents of Everfair develop steam technology that allows them, in alliance with the indigenous king of the Everfair territory, to chase out King Leopold’s…
18 CommentsWell that was a long and frustrating book. The New York Times review of Justine van der Leun’s We Are Not Such Things promised that the book would “overturn” the traditional narrative of Amy Biehl’s death, and in the process expose the weaknesses of the famed and beloved South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In case you aren’t familiar with Amy Biehl’s story (I wasn’t), she was an activist and Fulbright scholar who was attacked and murdered in the South African township of Gugulethu in 1993, on the eve of apartheid’s demise. Four men were convicted of her murder, then…
32 CommentsHappy Wednesday and please enjoy this very special edition of the Reading the End Bookcast, in which Whiskey Jenny and I were in THE SAME ROOM AT THE SAME TIME. You can pretty much hear the giddiness in our voices. Podcasting with Whiskey Jenny is always great, but it is double great when we’re in the same place. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go! Episode 66 What We’re Reading One Plus One, Jojo Moyes Blue Lily, Lily Blue, Maggie Stiefvater City on Fire,…
3 CommentsOkay, blogosphere, it’s your time to be excellent! As many of y’all already know, our own wonderful Kim, who blogs at Sophisticated Dorkiness and co-hosts Nonfiction November, recently lost her partner of eight years. I know many of us have been sending thoughts and prayers to our dear friend in this difficult time, and she’s recently let me know that there’s something we can do to help out. Kim recently started a new! awesome! job where I know she’s absolutely crushing it, but which necessitates a looooooooong commute. Like all of us with long commutes, Kim wants to spend these…
10 CommentsMorgan Jenkins is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers on the intersection of politics and pop culture, and this article about whiteness in Emma Cline’s The Girls is fire. Pixar has a list of storytelling rules of which one, I believe, is that you can use a coincidence to get a character into, but not out of, trouble. Here’s Alice Mattison on how to write coincidence well. Sexual harassment in the SF world. Did I tell you I’m fascinated with the stories of people who are in (or who leave) fundamentalist religions? So this Gothamist article about a meet-up…
29 CommentsHappy Wednesday, all! If your question was “will Gin Jenny find a way to scream about Star Wars Rebels on podcast even though it’s not a TV-show-related podcast?” the answer is (of course) yes. Watch Star Wars Rebels! You will definitely not regret it! You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go! Episode 65 What We’re Reading To the Secretary: Leaked Embassy Cables and America’s Foreign Policy Disconnect, Mary Thompson-Jones Star Wars Rebels (okay this I am watching BUT IT IS REALLY GOOD) Brooklyn, Colm…
Continue readingReading the End Bookcast, Ep.65: Best Eras in History and Charles Burns’s Black Hole
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