In a podcast first, Whiskey Jenny and Randon and I were all in the same room on a recording day! It was a very exciting time, and I think our deranged joy comes through pretty clearly in the podcast. We talk about gateway books for ushering people into the joys of new genres; we review Nick Harkaway’s Tigerman (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository); and we play a tricky game invented by Whiskey Jenny about pangrams. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go. Episode…
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The universe is more diverse! If you aren’t already participating in Aarti’s wonderful September event A More Diverse Universe, you definitely should. Check out her amazing recommendations here and here and here, visit her blog to check out what other people are reading, and follow the hashtag #Diversiverse on Twitter. My first read for this event is Dayo Olopade’s The Bright Continent: Breaking Rules and Making Change in Modern Africa, a book I’ve long had my eye on because of its brilliantly colored, eye-catching jacket design. It’s also a terrific book, an antidote to what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has called “the…
22 CommentsPersonal life update: I cut my hair this past summer! I cut it all off, shorter than it has ever been. My hair resembles (less now than when first cut, but still!) the hair of the girl on the cover of The Girls at the Kingfisher Club. This is the first time I have ever walked into a hair salon and asked them to cut off this much hair. Usually I am begging them to cut off less. Anyway, now I have a super cute flapper haircut, and when I put on my cloche hat I look hella jaunty. The…
22 CommentsI’d like to think I am pretty good at sorting out strategies to feel less sad on days when I am feeling sad. But sometimes my strategies bomb, and you are now reading a review of one of those times. I was feeling glum this one day, and I decided that to cheer myself up I was going to read a new book, and I picked The Descendants. Jeanne had said it was really good, and I knew vaguely from two-thirds-forgotten movie trailers that it was about a not-super-close family going on like — a road trip? Maybe? And it…
12 CommentsA new book by an art director at Alfred Knopf explores cover art and the work done by book jackets. He has another book out at the same time about visualizing while we read, and they both look brilliant. Here he is at Slate.com talking about the former. I have the latter checked out of the library, and it is gorgeous and strange. I want to hug MTV for creating this resource “See This, Say That.” These aren’t necessarily the exact things I’d recommend saying in these situations, but I dig that MTV is making the effort here. One of…
20 CommentsIn celebration of Whiskey Jenny’s visit to Louisiana, we play a game of Louisiana trivia, composed by the brilliant and beautiful Whiskey Jenny! You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go. Episode 27a Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much). Credits Producer: Captain Hammer Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee Song is by Jeff MacDougall and comes from here.
Leave a CommentWhat I thought was a reading slump has turned out to be a mania for rereading. I’ve reread Special Topics in Calamity Physics and am happily entrenched in HHhH. Wonderful rereading! It has been too long since I reread some of the excellent fiction on my shelves! Glorious!
13 CommentsNote: I received an electronic copy of this book from the publisher for review consideration. In my professional career, academics have occasionally been really, really snotty to me when I didn’t deserve snottiness. This isn’t a judgment on academics. When you work with a very large number of people from any demographic group, it is statistically likely that a couple of them will be jerks. But still: I have sometimes asked an academic a simple question, and s/he has responded with — instead of an answer to my question — a paragraphs-long, sarcasm-and-righteousness-laden treatise on his/her mistreatment at the hands…
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