At first blush, you might turn up your nose at the premise of The Witches of Lychford, in which a group of slightly-misfit women in a quiet British town find themselves arrayed against the forces of darkness in the form of a proposed new superstore whose placement will (though most of the town does not realize it) open up the gates that separate our world from the world of the fairies. Like, you could see that premise and think it seemed heavy-handed. However, Paul Cornell — a veteran writer on Doctor Who, among other things, responsible for some of my…
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Every November, four wonderful bloggers (Kim and Leslie and Katie and Rebecca) team up to bring us the marvelous Nonfiction November. The theme of this week is book pairings, in which we pair our fiction reads with a nonfictional counterpart. Earlier in the year, I had the inestimable privilege of participating in Alice (of Reading Rambo)’s readalong of Matthew Gregory Lewis’s book The Monk. It was…deeply stupid. HOWEVER. As I was scouring my reading spreadsheets for nonfiction books to highlight in this book pairing, I remembered that I read a book earlier this year in which every insane thing done…
23 CommentsSo I read Christian Kracht’s much-praised satirical novel Imperium, and for once, I enjoyed satirical writing for the length of a full book. Typically after a chapter or two, satirical novels become too arch for me to enjoy, but no, Kracht keeps it up pretty good. Me and this book could have been friends, I think, if it hadn’t kept making me sigh. Have you had books like that? Where they’re not so ideologically maddening that you want to write a post denouncing them and all that they stand for, but there’s just a couple of things about them that…
21 CommentsFor the past few years, I’ve been working on making my reading less white. As Aarti keeps pointing out, this doesn’t require any shift in my book-reading habits, but only my book-finding habits. And one thing I have found is that if you follow more authors of color (on whatever social media platforms you wish), you’ll find more authors of color. I discovered Aliette de Bodard because I followed Zen Cho (author of Sorcerer to the Crown); since following Aliette de Bodard, I’ve added several more specfic books by authors of color to my TBR list. Because of signal-boosting. THAT…
25 CommentsThe marvelous Kiese Laymon on Confederate flags and SEC football. On competing for the one single diversity spot in the writers’ room: Aisha Harris writes about the unbearable whiteness of TV writers’ rooms. Nobody could be more excited about the new Star Wars trailer than stars John Boyega and Daisy Ridley. Recovering the history of years in slavery, and the story of a forgotten forced deportation: An article that opens with an oddly upsetting anecdote. New details emerge about that Harry Potter play! (It’s not a prequel, it’s a sequel! Joke’s on you, prequel-wanters! You’ll never ever learn more about…
7 CommentsSo it’s the last week of Monkalong, and also the week in which I knew Antonia was going to get raped, because it’s not like we’re getting out of this book without that happening. I admit I dragged my feet on reading this section. I had to really force myself to do it, using the inducement of your wonderful comments and the other marvelous Monkalong posts. (Oh, I forgot to tell you, I’m only using Crimson Peak gifs this week, because it’s the greatest movie of our time, yet could not have existed without this garbage fire of a book.)…
14 CommentsI have a lot to say about Carry On. WHERE TO BEGIN. Carry On is an extension of the book-within-a-book from Rowell’s last-but-one book, Fangirl, set in the world of Simon Snow where Fangirl‘s Cath chose to spend so much of her time. And yes, when you start out, you’ll think Gosh this is awfully Harry Potterish, but then of course you’ll find that Rainbow Rowell knows this and is playing with it, and you’ll be all right after that. Simon Snow is destined to be the world’s greatest Mage; but as his maybe-a-vampire nemesis roommate Baz is constantly reminding him, he’s…
43 CommentsThis book is so stupid. It’s good we’re reading it in chunks, because I’m pretty sure if you read it all in one go, its overwhelmingly stupidity would cause you to go blind. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve said “Oh fuck off” out loud to this book. But let’s get in on this. So in the first chapter of the third volume, it seems that Agnes is not only merely dead, she’s really most sincerely dead. Alphonso (the world’s most boring storyteller) takes to his bed in his grief, while Lorenzo believes everything a nun tells him,…
19 CommentsThe Jennys are here to hash out the new genderswapped Twilight! Then we talk about some fall books we’re excited to read, and we review Aline Ohanesian’s debut novel Orhan’s Inheritance. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go. Episode 49 Here’s the gay Twilight link of which I spoke. Here’s the full, entire live-tweet of genderswapped Twilight. Be warned that after Whiskey Jenny and I recorded this podcast, the live tweet of genderswapped Twilight took a Turn. There was a Great Divergence from original…
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