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Reading the End Posts

The three main problems I had with Laura Kipnis’s essays on men

On a process level, Men: Notes from an Ongoing Investigation is a successful essay collection. Kipnis is a fluid writer with an eye for the mot juste; she varies her sentence structures with grace; nothing she writes ever feels forced. If that sounds like faint praise, it’s because (alas) I have a lot of problems with the sentiments Kipnis expresses in her elegant prose. Here are the main three: 1) So. Much. Freud. Lady, you are aware that further work has been done in psychology since the mid-twentieth century? Kipnis’s references to Freud, Oedipal complexes, and psychosexual development are so numerous they would make an excellent drinking game condition, an…

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Rounding up some more comics

It’s time again for a round-up of my comics reading! So many recommendations on this earth! Through the Woods, Emily Carroll Yeah, I can only assume that Emily Carroll knows me personally and designed Through the Woods to cater to my interests. It is a collection of some hella creepy stories about living near a forest. Girls go into the forest, and they come out different, or they don’t come out at all. This may be very shallow of me, but I love graphic novels where the lettering looks like proper handwriting. Though Saga has many charms, an early and prominent draw for me was…

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The Villette Readalong Staggers to Its Inevitably Irritating Conclusion

Yep, I screwed up the reading last weekend. I can only assumed I was blinded by rage when I approached the chapter numbers. Dr. John and Paulina did get engaged last time, and I just didn’t read that far. Whatever, you two. The fact that Dr. John pays court to Paulina by talking about how it felt when six-year-old her touched his cheek is yet another more way in which Victorians in general and Charlotte Bronte in particular are just SO FUCKING WEIRD. So M. Paul announces he’s leaving, and Lucy mopes around because he’s been really nice to her lately,…

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Links for a Thursday

Can I brag for a quick sec? This week I got renters insurance for the first time ever. BOOM. ADULTING. Though, I hope the hurricanes of the world won’t take this as permission to bring around a cloud to rain on my parade. If the internet were a high school. I like the BuzzFeed one the best. Also keep your eyes peeled for a cameo by the Lizzie Bennet Diaries‘s own William Darcy. Scott Tobias wrote an article called The Church of Scientology is Bad at Twitter, which is one of many reasons I cherish the internet. Trevor Noah is…

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The Villette Readalong Insults Paulina

We are nearly done with Villette, and I will go ahead and say right now that it’s not Charlotte Bronte’s best work. And I am not just saying that because I’m mad that Lu Paul turned out to be such a dud! It’s also that Villette lacks both the focus and the craziness that make Jane Eyre such a treat. Luckily this was a short reading section, and I didn’t have that much time to get mad at Lucy. “Not that much time,” however, does not equal “no time.” Lucy goes out to do some errands for M. Beck but…

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Into the Beautiful North, Luís Alberto Urrea

Well this was just a delight. It was such a delight that I was reading it, I wanted to propose it for podcast. We are supposed to propose books for podcast that we haven’t actually read yet, so I was considering perpetrating a teeny, tiny fraud* on Whiskey Jenny. But the book was such a delight, and we were stuck in a car in Agra because some VIP’s visit to the Taj Mahal had shut down the roads our driver needed to use to get us to Jaipur, that I could not resist reporting bits of it to her as I was reading. Here…

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The Kingdom of the Gods, N. K. Jemisin

There will be no tricks in this tale. I tell you this so that you can relax. You’ll listen more closely if you aren’t flinching every other instant, waiting for the pratfall. You will not reach the end and suddenly learn I have been talking to my other soul or making a lullaby of my life for someone’s unborn brat. I find such things disingenuous. I have this imagined thing when I’m trying to read more authors of color where I worry that I’ll reach a point at which there are no more books by authors of color that I want to read.…

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Reading the End Bookcast, Ep.37: Kanae Minato’s Confessions and Revenge of the Games!

Today’s pod kinda has two games! Because it’s been so long since we did any. One of them is a copy of a game Randon plays every year with his students, and the other is about REVENGE! You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go. Episode 37 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 us a good…

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The Villette Readalong, in which everyone is bullshit

Villette starts the next section by trying to make me not like Ginevra Fanshawe by having her be really snobby to Lucy Snowe. Joke’s on you, Villette! I never liked Lucy Snowe that much to begin with — except very occasionally when she starts blitzkrieging truth bombs — and I do like Ginevra Fanshawe because although she is a twit, she does not have conversations with Reason. (As far as I know.) It’s lucky I do like Ginevra Fanshawe, because everybody else in this book is horrible. Let’s do a rundown. Dr. John, having spent ignored Lucy completely since Paulina come to town, sits next…

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As usual, I need more internet: A links round-up

I have an exceptionally great collection of links this week, y’all. The internet is the best, isn’t it? Terry Crews on misogyny and toxic masculinity. Apparently this dude also works to prevent human trafficking. Yay for allies. Some thoughts on Islamophobia in dystopian fiction. Not sure of your language when you’re talking about race / sexuality / disability / whatever? The Conscious Style Guide is here to help, rounding up links that explain why you shouldn’t say that, what to say instead, and generally how not to be a dick accidentally. A reminder that these exceptionally gorgeous coloring books for…

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