Having read histories of Namibia and the DRC, I got nervous that I was being a size queen about this Africa reading project, and I decided that to avoid incurring such a criticism, I would next learn about a very tiny country. So I selected Lesotho, an eensy wee little country surrounded on all sides by South Africa, and I read Elizabeth Eldredge’s 2007 book Power in Colonial Africa: Conflict and Discourse in Lesotho, 1870–1960. I have anticipated your next question: Why is that country inside of another country? The answer (not contained in my book, which only deals with Lesotho history…
21 CommentsReading the End Posts
By a stroke of good fortune, I happened to read Joanna Russ’s feminist classic How to Suppress Women’s Writing just prior to reading Anne Jamison’s Fic (Smart Pop Books), which made for an interesting pairing. On one hand, Russ’s book feels depressingly current: You need only spend a few minutes on Twitter to witness all of the tactics for suppressing women’s writing that Russ details. But on the other hand, even with all of these tactics being leveled at the (mostly female) writers of fanfiction (especially the “poor author too pathetic and forlorn to get a man” trope), here we…
20 CommentsSometimes when you impulse-pick up the newest book by a famous author you have never tried before, it turns out to be a mistake because their latest book is not their best book, but you don’t know that, so what you think is, I don’t like this author. When maybe what you’ve just done is write off J. R. R. Tolkien because you didn’t like The Silmarillion. I wasn’t, in short, wild about Hiding in Plain Sight. It’s about a woman named Bella who suddenly becomes guardian to her niece and nephew after their father, her beloved older brother Aar,…
12 CommentsThis week, the Jennys are trying to get over feeling guilty about their guilty pleasures (but still, we have some). We review Jandy Nelson’s wonderful YA novel I’ll Give You the Sun, and we play an amazing game invented by Simon. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go. Episode 41 Get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give…
8 CommentsNote: I received a copy of The Life and Death of Sophie Stark from the publisher, for review consideration. Let’s get one thing cleared up off the bat: Sophie Stark is not the dreamy Game of Thrones redhead who keeps getting promised in marriage to psychopathic twerps. That is Sansa Stark, played in the show by Sophie Turner. But I can see how you would get confused. I have been confused about that myself. Moving on. Sophie Stark (nee Emily Buckley) makes films. From her earliest documentary short about a college athlete she’s obsessed with, she tells stories that don’t belong to her. What matters to Sophie is getting…
8 CommentsI could not be more excited about the new Lifetime show UnREAL. “Now I’m going to do that racist thing where I touch your hair.” Saeed Jones on being black in the book world. A moderate voice on trigger warnings for the classics. And another piece on trigger warnings generally, which makes the point that it’s not about whether to teach this or that troubling text, but how. Brit Bennett of the Paris Review on Addy Walker and black dolls in American culture. No joke, y’all, I reread the Addy books recently and they are fucking brutal. Gender differences in…
15 Comments