Note: In the course of writing this blog post, I arrived at semantic satiation for the word speak, and maybe you will too. In Speak Louisa Hall plays around with concepts of speech and personhood and artificial intelligence. In alternating chapters, the reader hears from Alan Turing, one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence; Mary Bradford, a seventeenth-century diarist on her way to a new life in the New World; Ruth and Karl Dettman, who together (but separately) created the first iteration of an AI called MARY; Stephen Chinn, who built MARY into something dangerous and is now writing his…
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Conspicuous consumption. That could actually be my full post about Crazy Rich Asians, a book I read because Roxane Gay told me to. It is a book that depicts conspicuous consumption. If you like Jackie Collins and preferred Veronica to Betty because Veronica had all the cool stuff, Crazy Rich Asians might be for you. One of the characters literally has an outfit-picking computer program like in Clueless. Nick Young, scion of a derangedly wealthy Singaporean family, is bringing his girlfriend, Rachel Chu, home to meet his family, while his cousin Astrid Yeong faces the possible collapse of her marriage.…
28 CommentsThis week, we welcome Ashley back to the podcast to discuss what makes a library good (or bad). Then Ashley administers a game entitled: Real Lurlene McDaniel Book, or Nah?, in which you may witness the Jennys gradually losing track of reality and descending into madness. Finally, the Jennys review Lisa Lutz’s book How to Start a Fire. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go. Episode 46 Get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on…
1 CommentFor whatever reason, it’s shaping up to be a specfic kind of summer for me here at Reading the End. A glance at my reading spreadsheet reports that I did a sci-fi binge at the start of this year, and here I am having another one, what with Touch and Elysium and The Player of Games and some other books I didn’t tell you about because YOU DO NOT KNOW MY WHOLE LIFE. And now Ascension. Like The Player of Games, there’s a very “I am science fiction!” quality to Ascension, which I admit is not always my jam. I…
18 CommentsFranzen’s new book is out soon, and every joke the internet makes at its expense is music to my ears, yet also I sort of wonder if Franzen and his publisher and The Atlantic and The New Republic are pranking us. They must be, right? This can’t really be real? Anyway, for now let’s just enjoy making fun of Jonathan Franzen, as the founding fathers intended. Fantasy author NK Jemisin on disrupting the status quo. Note that the author of the interview refers to “stereotypical fantasy series like Lord of the Rings,” which is sort of insane because Lord of…
12 CommentsNote: I received The Night Sister from the publisher, Doubleday, for review consideration. HAUNTED MOTEL. I mean, let’s be cool about it, but: Haunted. Motel. Sisters Piper and Margot have done their best to forget the childhood summer they spent exploring their friend Amy’s home, the Tower Motel (now closed and in disrepair). But when Amy is accused of a horrific crime, their memories of that time come pouring back, and they must grapple with what they uncovered at the Tower Motel as teenagers. The Night Sister unfolds in three separate timelines: the present, as Piper and Margot try to…
11 CommentsSo the problem is that I don’t truly like hard science fiction. Or hard fantasy. Or I mean, I do sometimes, occasionally, but on those occasions it’s sort of despite the trappings of the genre, rather than because of them. So it may be that Iain Banks, whatever his virtues, is just not the author for me. (Which isn’t to say that I hated The Player of Games.) And Banks has created a fascinating world here: A civilization called the Culture has asked one of their finest game-players, Gurgeh, to pop over to an alien Empire and have a stab at…
11 CommentsWe talk about spoilers, finally! Whiskey Jenny and I have polar opposite views on them, and we get into it on this episode. We also discuss the news that the CW will be producing a gritty dystopian adaptation of Little Women (YAY). Finally, we review Naomi Novik’s novel Uprooted, one of Whiskey Jenny’s first forays into the fantasy genre! You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go. Episode 45 Books discussed in this podcast are listed, in order, below. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott An…
1 CommentThere’s Atticus Finch, and there’s the myth of Atticus Finch. There’s what he is, and what he’s come to stand for. What he is (and I say this with great affection for To Kill a Mockingbird) is an ur-text for the white savior story: a depiction of history that lets white folks today feel good about themselves. If we’d lived back then (we think while reading), we would not have been Bob Ewell. We would be Atticus Finch. (Or the commander in Glory or Skeeter in The Help — or, or, or.) It’s a problem for minority groups, of course.…
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