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Reading the End Posts

Review: Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me, Steven Hyden

Okay, I know we have The Ringer now, and The Ringer has brought us Actual National Treasure Sam Donsky. Is it wrong that I still miss Grantland, though? They had an incredible stable of writers with a particular gift for writing about important things through the lens of seemingly unimportant things. Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me (affiliate link: Book Depository), from Grantland alum and UpRoxx writer Steven Hyden, reminded me of what was so special about Grantland’s glory days. And yes, okay, the subtitle is a little grandiose. The meaning of life isn’t on offer here, but Hyden gets…

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Fall Entertainment: A Links Round-Up

Okay, last week was all out of wack, so I didn’t round up as many links as usual. A bunch of y’all have asked where to give money and how to help with the recent flooding in my home state, so here’s a round-up of places where you can give. Big hugs to all the kind people who’ve gotten in touch to check on me and my family — you’re sweet, and we’re fine, just trying to find ways to help the areas that got hit hard. When immigrants tell their own stories, they do a better job than when…

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Review: Even in Paradise, Elizabeth Nunez

Okay, Elizabeth Nunez got me good about two-thirds of the way through her latest book, Even in Paradise (affiliate links: Book Depository, Amazon). As a writer from my homeland put it in her fictionalized version of a romance between Miranda and an educated Caliban: Pass [the Miranda test] and I believe you. Fail it and all you say about the races being equal, that character, not color, is what matters, becomes theoretical. I was like, Oo, a romance between Miranda and an educated Caliban? SOUNDS GREAT, and I googled it thinking probably Cesaire, and while Cesaire did in fact write…

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Me, elsewhere

Happy Monday, team! Today I’m over at the Oxford Dictionaries blog yammering about genre. Basically it is my considered opinion that literature has genuinely failed us by having so few available filters, and I think the publishing world should do something about it. In 2013, the most recent year for which we have data, the US, UK, and Canada published over half a million books altogether. Yet of this infinitely categorizable bounty, we’ve apparently only managed to sort books into as many genres as your neighborhood Waterstones has clusters of shelves. I call shenanigans! Why should it be so hard…

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My Holiday in North Korea, Wendy E. Simmons

Every time I read anything about North Korea, I spend the next two weeks collaring everyone who comes near me and screaming my new North Korea information into their faces. I have still not recovered from the image Barbara Demick left me with in Nothing to Envy of dozens and dozens of North Koreans squatting at the sides of all the roads, waiting and waiting for something that was never going to come. So it was with photographer Wendy Simmons’s My Holiday in North Korea: The Funniest/Worst Place on Earth. The full post here could just be moments in this…

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Reading the End Bookcast, Ep. 64: Books We Want More Of and The Regional Office Is Under Attack

Happy Wednesday, everyone! Thanks so much to everyone who’s asked about flooding in Louisiana and checked in to see if I’m okay. My bit of the state’s totally fine, so it’s just lots of worry and hug-sending to the people in places where water was several feet deep. Anyway! So now it is podcast day! I included a cut at the end of the podcast so y’all can witness THIS phenomenon, which is very real: I like pretending Whiskey Jenny is insulting me. she falls apart reassuring me of her love. she just shrieked NO YOU ARE THE COOL RABBIT.…

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Social Justice Book Club: The New Jim Crow (Halfway Through!)

Here it is mid-August, and we are midway through The New Jim Crow, and I’ve decided to take this opportunity to teach us all about asset forfeiture. Did you know about this? Did everyone know about this but me? Basically, if the police think that someone’s car or money or computer is being used in the commission of a crime, they can just TAKE it. And then they can just, like, KEEP it. Even if the person who owns the property doesn’t know or agree to their property being used in commission of a crime (Alexander uses the example of…

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Demand the Hurston-Hughes Road Trip Movie We All Deserve: A Links Round-Up

Happy Friday, everyone! How to cull your books: The Awl guide. Let me tell you my method, team. Take all the books. Line them up on the floor, right to left, by how much you love them. Then draw a line somewhere in the middle of that long line of books and cull everything to the left of your line. Boom. Done. More on fan entitlement (and a bit of side-eye for Steven Moffat, which I am never not here for) from The Mary Sue. I’m really digging Maddie Myers’s work on The Mary Sue these days, y’all! Go follow…

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Hex, Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Hex is the scariest book I’ve ever read. Hex was so scary that when I was reading it in bed, I got too frightened to continue and also had to walk around the upstairs of my apartment checking the closets for bad guys/ghosts/monsters. Hex was so scary that I thereafter stopped reading it before bed and only read it during my commute. The basic premise seemed fine. There’s this town called Black Spring where once upon a time a woman called Katherine was forced to murder her own son, then hanged as a witch. Her ghost has haunted the town…

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Social Justice Book Club: The New Jim Crow

Very very belatedly, I have managed to write a post for the wonderful August edition of the Social Justice Book Club, hosted by the glorious and brilliant Kerry at Entomology of a Bookworm. I promise to be more prompt in future posts. 1. Where do you plan on discussing this book the most? Feel free to share links to your blog, social media channels, snap handles, etc. Mostly on the blog! I’ll be answering mid-month and end-of-month discussion questions, and I’ll also probably be twittering about it at @readingtheend as I go along, with the hashtag #SJBookClub. 2. Why did…

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