You can listen to the podcast using the embedded player below, or download the file directly to take with you on the go!

Episode 108

Here are the time signatures if you want to skip around.

1:00 – What we’re reading
2:18 – What we’re learning
6:05 – LOTR Reread: The Two Towers, Book 3, Chapters 6-11
15:53 – Culling books!
27:37 – The Third Annual Forcening commences with Alice Walker’s The Color Purple
48:24 – What we’re reading for next time

Get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. If you like what we do, support us on Patreon. 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
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour
Transcripts by: Sharon of Library Hungry

Transcript is available under the jump!

THEME SONG: You don’t judge a book by its cover. Page one’s not a much better view. And shortly you’re gonna discover the middle won’t mollify you. So whether whiskey’s your go-to or you’re like my gin-drinking friend, no matter what you are imbibing, you’ll be better off in the end reading the end.

GIN JENNY: Welcome back to the Reading the End bookcast with the demographically similar Jennys. I’m Gin Jenny.

WHISKEY JENNY: And I’m Whiskey Jenny.

GIN JENNY: And we are here to talk to you about books and literary happenings. This week, we’re going to read the first five chapters of the second book of The Two Towers—stay with me. We’re going to talk about how and when and why we get rid of books that we own. And we are going to kick off the third annual Forcening with Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.

But before we get into all that, Whiskey Jenny, what are you reading?

WHISKEY JENNY: I am reading The Ensemble, by Aja Gabel, which was one of my—summer? One of my books that I was excited about in a previous—

GIN JENNY: Seasonal.

WHISKEY JENNY: —season. [LAUGHTER] And I’m really enjoying it so far. This is the one that’s about a string quartet. And they’re trying to make it in the world of professional classical music, which is a world I don’t know anything about.

GIN JENNY: God, me neither.

WHISKEY JENNY: You know I like an ensemble story. So it’s four friends. It’s going great so far. We’ll see how it goes.

GIN JENNY: Cool. I also checked that out from the library. So I have it available to read, too.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, great. What are you reading right now?

GIN JENNY: I am reading the fourth and final Murderbot novella by Martha Wells.

WHISKEY JENNY: Ooh. How’s it going?

GIN JENNY: It’s good. This one’s called Exit Strategy. I’m only like, I don’t know, 10 pages in, but Murderbot’s in trouble, so.

WHISKEY JENNY: No! Murderbot!

GIN JENNY: I know. Per uzhe. Poor Murderbot. Can’t get a break. In case anyone hasn’t heard me yell about these books before, it’s a series about a security robot who gets free will. And it basically wants to be left alone so it can watch its TV programs, but it keeps running across humans that it cares about and wants to protect, so it gets enmeshed in all these corporate shenanigans and all kinds of things.

WHISKEY JENNY: I’ve only read the first one, but gosh, it was so lovely.

GIN JENNY: Wasn’t it? Yeah. They’re all great.

So for this podcast, our lovely Patreon patrons voted on what were something else-ing and selected what we’re learning, which I love it when the patrons vote for this, even though I’m not learning that much right now. Because it’s a hard time, and I’m mostly just doing very self-indulgent behaviors all the time.

WHISKEY JENNY: Making brownies and stuff. Yeah.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. I’ll do some civic action, and then I’ll be like, OK, now I just have to eat 12 omelets in a row. [LAUGHTER] So what are you learning, Whiskey Jenny?

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I’m cheating on this one, because as you said, I’m not learning a whole lot right now.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: But I am starting to learn about the very famous K-pop boy band BTS, because I feel like it’s part of the culture I need to catch up on.

GIN JENNY: Yeah

WHISKEY JENNY: You know me, I’ve always got my finger at the pulse of youth culture.

GIN JENNY: This is amazing. I know nothing about K-pop. What’s your plan of attack?

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, OK, so I said this is cheating because I’m starting. And one of the things I’m going to do is, I’m putting the call out, basically. If anyone can explain them to me or has a handy explainer that they could direct me to, that would be great. My first entry was—what were they on? They were one of the late nights, so I watched an interview with them and some performances by them. There’s like a bajillion of them. There’s like 14 members of this band.

GIN JENNY: What?

WHISKEY JENNY: That’s not true. But I think there’s like eight? Or seven?

GIN JENNY: Oh my God!

WHISKEY JENNY: There’s a lot, yeah. So there’s—

GIN JENNY: There should be five members of a boy band.

WHISKEY JENNY: I thought we all agreed that was what boy bands were. Yeah, but no, apparently BTS, they just do their own thing.

GIN JENNY: Well, you know, it’s another culture, so.

WHISKEY JENNY: They’re all amazing dancers from what I could tell of the performances. I watched a couple fan videos of their live shows, and those look really exciting and vibrant. They seem like they’re really good live performers and put on a great show, as is often the case with groups like these, I suppose.

GIN JENNY: Is their music fun to listen to?

WHISKEY JENNY: It is. It is very fun. They’re jams. With the ones that I listened to, I was like, yeah, I can get into this, absolutely. But that’s as far as I’ve gotten, so a long ways more to go. I still haven’t figured out—I keep asking people this, but I’m not sure who’s supposed to be the heartthrob of the group. I was trying to tell based on—because they introduced themselves individually on the late night interview, and everyone seemed to get really big cheers. So I couldn’t tell if they had a most popular or anything. So more to come on BTS, but.

GIN JENNY: Among other things, I have to say, having seven members in a group makes it hard to choose just one as the heartthrob.

WHISKEY JENNY: Exactly. Yeah, I don’t think you have to fall into quite the same roles, maybe, as you do with fewer members. You’re right.

GIN JENNY: Those roles are very helpful to me

WHISKEY JENNY: [LAUGHTER] We’ll see. So anyway, more to come. If anyone can help me out, let me know. [LAUGHTER] And yeah, BTS. What are you learning about?

GIN JENNY: Well, man, that’s a hard act to follow.

WHISKEY JENNY: Is it?

GIN JENNY: Yes! But I’m learning a little bit about the history of American schoolteachers and evolving discourse around them, which is kind of neat.

WHISKEY JENNY: So pretty different, yeah.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: I learn about important things too sometimes.

GIN JENNY: I know you do! You don’t have to tell me.

WHISKEY JENNY: What are you learning about schoolteachers?

GIN JENNY: Yeah, so I’m reading The Teacher Wars, by Dana Goldstein, which is a book I bought at a conference a few years ago and haven’t read yet. But all this talk of getting rid of books reminded me that I have a lot of books that I own and haven’t read yet.

It’s written by a journalist, not a historian, so kind of a caveat on that, but it’s well written. It’s going along pretty good. One of the things that the author says is that often ideas to improve teacher quality that we come up with now have been proposed and enacted numerous times unsuccessfully over the last few centuries. And we never seem to learn any lessons from that, so that’s cool.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, no. Oh dear.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: Does the book propose any alternatives?

GIN JENNY: I don’t know yet. I’m only two chapters in. So we’ll find out. Hopefully yeah. Hopefully they’ll have a solution to public education.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s all on this one book.

GIN JENNY: Well, do you want to get into The Two Towers?

WHISKEY JENNY: I do, yeah.

GIN JENNY: Let’s do it. So we read chapters one through five of book four of Lord of the Rings. And it’s the first part of Sam and Frodo in Mordor.

WHISKEY JENNY: Are they in Mordor? Have they gone to Mordor?

GIN JENNY: So here’s the thing. I don’t fully understand the boundaries of Mordor. Everyone refers to this as, it’s Frodo and Sam in Mordor. But I guess they’re in, like, the Mordor suburbs.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. OK, yeah, I’ll buy that.

GIN JENNY: A lot of people do not care for this section of the book. I think it’s very maligned. So I was just wondering how you feel about it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, did not care for it. I’m one of those people.

GIN JENNY: Hot take—I love it!

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I am fascinated by that. I hope you can swing me around, because—

GIN JENNY: I’m not sure I can.

WHISKEY JENNY: —we’re not there yet. They still have to slog through Mordor. So hopefully I can find some things to love about it. I think it’s actually pretty short compared to the other groups of five chapters that we read. But it feels real long to me.

GIN JENNY: Man. And this from the woman who loves Tom Bombadil. I just don’t understand.

WHISKEY JENNY: I know! This is maybe my Tom Bombadil for you. [LAUGHTER] This is my your Tom Bombadil. [LAUGHTER] So why do you love it?

GIN JENNY: Obviously it’s not flashy and golden, like the brave battle adventures of Aragorn and stuff. I know it’s a lot of Frodo and Sam wandering around in the mud, and I get why people compare it to the camping chapters in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. But I don’t always like epic fantasy battles, and to me this is a nice counterpoint to all the other stuff that’s happening. Like, it’s these three exhausted people trying to do a very small task that’s also the only thing that matters. And it’s creepy and atmospheric, and I think it makes a really interesting contrast—because we’ve seen a lot of green and glorious parts of Middle Earth. You can really see the devastation that Sauron has wreaked. Atmospheric, I think, is the main thing that I enjoy about it. And also I love Gollum, so.

WHISKEY JENNY: Really? All right.

GIN JENNY: Wait, do you hate Gollum?

WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, I don’t hate him. On paper I should find him really interesting, because he raises all these cool questions about mercy and redemption and morality.

GIN JENNY: Sure.

WHISKEY JENNY: Which is great. But I just found him really annoying to read about, and to read dialogue about.

GIN JENNY: This is how I feel about the house elves in Harry Potter, which I know is a heartless thing to say.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, wow, see? OK, fascinating. I can get on board with some house elves.

GIN JENNY: I don’t know, man.

WHISKEY JENNY: Dobby is so great.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: So you feel about Gollum how I feel about house elves.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, I think so.

WHISKEY JENNY: That makes sense. [LAUGHTER] Well, first of all, I want to say, you said it was a small task. I don’t think they’re doing a small task. It’s really hard, what they’re doing.

GIN JENNY: It’s hard, but it’s small in scale.

WHISKEY JENNY: Is it? What you mean scale? They have to go a long way.

GIN JENNY: You’re right. That’s fair.

WHISKEY JENNY: The saving grace for me about these chapters is seeing the bravery of most the people involved.

GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: In, as you said, not a battle scene, just, like, you just have to keep going. Which is sort of a different kind of bravery.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, well maybe that’s more what I meant, that what they’re doing is not the classically exciting type of bravery.

WHISKEY JENNY: Sure isn’t.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, no, it’s not. I mean, they’re just walking. That’s what they’re doing. They’re walking really far, in bad circumstance.

WHISKEY JENNY: Into more and more horrible areas, yeah.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: No, I get it. Yeah, I’m just really surprised that you like these, because nothing happens. Nothing happens!

GIN JENNY: Well, I think partly I was warned that they were going to be really boring, so my expectations were very low.

WHISKEY JENNY: There was some particularly—well I don’t know about particularly egregious. The whole book has been pretty egregious. But I want to call out in particular in these chapters, the racial coding.

GIN JENNY: Mm-hm. Mm-hm. Mm-hm.

WHISKEY JENNY: They see some dark skinned men walking to fight towards Mordor and they’re like, boo! These men are evil, clearly, because they have dark skin!

GIN JENNY: I wrote that down, too.

WHISKEY JENNY: And then they run into Faramir’s group and get left alone with some of them for reasons. And there’s a scene where they take off their masks and they’re like, oh, great, we see now they’re white. They’re good men because they’re white.

GIN JENNY: It’s just awful. I agree with you, this felt more egregious than previously.

WHISKEY JENNY: OK, I wasn’t sure if I had been—I don’t know. OK.

GIN JENNY: No, I think you’re right. Because they explicitly say they’re evil because they’re black. These ones are good because they’re white.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Oof. It’s not good. And Sam is the only one who’s like, maybe they’re also not evil?

GIN JENNY: Yeah, Sam does say like, maybe they have families. Maybe they’re making these choices for blah blah blah reasons. Nevertheless, the all the good people are white.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.

GIN JENNY: So, not to talk too much about the movie. But in the movie, Gollum attacks Sam and Frodo. He’s been following them all along, they seem to be asleep, and he jumps on them. Sam and Frodo do not come off great in the book. Gollum is following them, but in the book they attack him, tie him up, and make him go with them. And it’s supposed to be some huge piece of mercy that they attacked him and tied him up and didn’t kill him. And they’re always like, oh, you should be grateful that we didn’t kill you, this and that.

Come on, guys! You can say, hey, we can’t let you go because we think you’ll tell Sauron. But if that’s what you’re going to do, you should recognize that you’re being a bad person.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I don’t know about being a bad person, but you’re making a very specific choice, absolutely.

GIN JENNY: You’re harming someone else.

WHISKEY JENNY: You’re saying that the ends justify the means.

GIN JENNY: Right, exactly. That’s a better way of saying it. Yeah, and they seem so self-righteous about it. And they’re like, well, Gollum is the bad one and we are good. Um, not really, though.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.

GIN JENNY: And Sam is a huge jerk to Gollum.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, he’s not great at Gollum. It’s my least favorite part about him. I will say, in this reread Frodo seems like kind of a jerk to Sam and to Gollum.

GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah. Frodo thinks he’s the boss of everyone and he can just do whatever he wants.

WHISKEY JENNY: Shut up, Frodo.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: But yeah, no, Sam is definitely not very kind towards Gollum.

GIN JENNY: And he’s always like, oh, Gollum is bad because he doesn’t like me. But everything he says to Gollum is either insulting him or threatening him. So it wouldn’t hurt you to speak to him nicely.

WHISKEY JENNY: Maybe there’s a reason he doesn’t like you.

GIN JENNY: But yeah. They’re walking through the Mordor suburbs. And there’s this super great scene where they’re in the marshes, and there’s dead people in the water, it sounds like backlit.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it did sound really spooky.

GIN JENNY: And Gollum says that the men went down into the water to light little candles, which is such a creepy way to talk about it. And that’s the kind of mood thing that I really appreciate in this section.

WHISKEY JENNY: And I love how he phrases it that same way. He says, “very carefully, or hobbits go down to join the dead ones and light little candles.”

GIN JENNY: Eee.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I had such a good image, too. You could totally picture these spooky, floating ghostlike figures in the water.

GIN JENNY: And they get to the gates of Mordor, and Gollum freaks out and doesn’t want them to go. And he says, look, I’ll take you a different way into Mordor that’s more secret. And then you’ll have less of a risk of someone on finding you. Good job, Gollum.

WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, Sam did overhear hear him wanting to take them that way maybe for—

GIN JENNY: Nefarious reasons.

WHISKEY JENNY: —nefarious reasons, yeah.

GIN JENNY: You know, Gollum, still less nefarious than Sauron. So.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.

GIN JENNY: And then they run into Faramir, which is so exciting.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I really like Faramir.

GIN JENNY: God, I love Faramir. So, for listeners who haven’t read Lord of the Rings—which, I’m not sure why you’re listening to this section in that case, because we’re just telling you everything that happens. But Faramir is Boromir’s baby brother from Gondor. And he’s so nice to them. Although Frodo kind of indiscreetly tells them—Frodo and Sam, actually, are very indiscreet with him and just tell him all their business.

WHISKEY JENNY: Sam on accident.

GIN JENNY: But Frodo on purpose. And, you know, you don’t know, Frodo.

WHISKEY JENNY: He makes a split second decision and luckily it turned out OK. But who knows.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. But there’s this really sweet, lovely moment where Faramir asks—because Faramir finds out that Frodo was traveling with Boromir. And he says, were you a friend of Boromir? And Frodo says, yes, I was his friend, for my part. That’s really sweet, because he’s showing that he understands what was going on with Boromir, and that Frodo did still care about him and stuff. I don’t know, it really got me. Got me right here.

WHISKEY JENNY: It is sweet, yeah. And Boromir has already known that his brother died, because he had maybe a vision of the funeral boat of Boromir.

GIN JENNY: And he also—gosh, he’s so sweet, and he obviously has a general sense of what’s going on. And he and Frodo are talking about Frodo’s quest. And he’s like, look, I know you have something with you that belongs to the enemy. And not if I found it lying on the highway would I take it. Faramir!

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s so great. And then when he figures out what it is, because Sam let it slip.

GIN JENNY: Sam blabs.

WHISKEY JENNY: They pull their swords. They freak out and think he’s going to take it. And he’s like, first of all, I gave you my word that I wouldn’t, no matter what it was. And even if I did now find out that it could help me, I still wouldn’t take it, because I gave you my word. But I definitely don’t want it. Like I said, I still don’t want it. He tries so hard not to make the same choice that Boromir made. And it’s so great!

GIN JENNY: And it’s another good fake out by Tolkien, because Faramir’s like, well here you are, and here I am with my entire army. And then he goes into that speech. So it’s pretty good.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s really great. And in the movie he makes the same choice as Boromir! And I was like, are you kidding me? Why would you do that?

GIN JENNY: I don’t know. I was really mad about it.

WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t understand why you would do that and make that horrible choice.

GIN JENNY: Well, and plus because the actor they got for Faramir is terrific and I think does a great job. And I think there’s maybe something to the idea that Faramir, although brave, is kind of a gentler soul than Boromir, and that that gives him—that makes him more vulnerable in some ways, but it makes him stronger in other ways. And I think that’s interesting.

WHISKEY JENNY: Absolutely. And I think Faramir kind of touches on that. He talks about how Boromir is so much a soldier, and he has less of those valued attributes of a soldier. Like, he himself doesn’t think he’s less worthy. He thinks all things should be valued. But he still loves his brother. And yeah, he’s just a really interesting character from Gondor.

GIN JENNY: I completely agree with you. I think the movie made a huge mistake with that, and I don’t think got value add in exchange for it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Right.

GIN JENNY: Anyway, so Faramir does this wonderful thing. And he’s like, I’ll help you however I can help you as well.

WHISKEY JENNY: Even though if his horrible king found out about it, he’d be real pissed. He’s doing this against bad orders.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: Way to go, Faramir. We love you.

GIN JENNY: Love you, Faramir! And that’s where we leave them. So.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, I just want to say. Everyone keeps calling Sam dumb, and he’s not dumb.

GIN JENNY: He’s not dumb! It’s very unfair.

WHISKEY JENNY: He’s not dumb, and Faramir’s like, you’re dumb. Sit down. And Frodo’s like, yeah, you are. You probably should be quiet. And he’s not! He’s really not.

GIN JENNY: Also, even if he was, it would be polite of Frodo, in front of this stranger, to be like, you know what’s great about Sam? I’ll tell you, it’s this and this and this.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Stick up for him. You’re his friend—allegedly.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. I think it’s pretty clear he’s his employer.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, that is definitely coming through loud and clear on this read.

GIN JENNY: And it’s not because Frodo was under the influence of the ring, because he was like this before.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, some very English class issues coming through, shall we say.

GIN JENNY: Yes. Especially because I know what’s coming, and Sam is about to be incredibly loyal and brave, so.

WHISKEY JENNY: I hope everyone appreciates it!

GIN JENNY: So for next time, we’re going to finish up book four. We’re going to be reading chapters 6 through 10. And then after that, we’re going to get on to Return of the King! I can’t believe its time has come so quickly.

WHISKEY JENNY: I know. I’m pretty excited.

GIN JENNY: I’m so excited. So for this podcast, we got a amazing question from listener Erica that we’re going to talk about. She writes, “I plan to do a book purge and downsize the personal library. I’ve had to slash chosen to do this before, mostly because of moving house, and I’m curious for your thoughts on when and how to get rid of books. Question the premise if you must, but my shelf no longer reflects books I’ve loved and need to keep as I become less possessive about lending—” that is very different from me— “and as I use the library more and more.”

OK, I want to start with the premise. Why do we have to get rid of books? [LAUGHTER] No, I’m asking! Because I have an opinion, but I’d like to know yours.

WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, I guess if we had unlimited space we wouldn’t have to.

GIN JENNY: Right. Space. You’ve got to make room for new love.

WHISKEY JENNY: But we don’t—I don’t have unlimited space.

GIN JENNY: I mean, I have a lot of space, but it’s far from unlimited.

WHISKEY JENNY: And that’s the only reason. If I had unlimited space, I wouldn’t. That’s not true, I might still get rid of them.

GIN JENNY: Oh, because I was going to say, I’m fascinated if that’s true. If I had unlimited space, I would still get rid of my books. Also I would be magic, so I would do a lot of stuff different.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, yeah. Yeah.

GIN JENNY: I would still get rid of books, I think.

WHISKEY JENNY: I think I would get rid of some. Not as many.

GIN JENNY: Because tastes change.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, tastes change. And you feel like you don’t need to hang onto them any longer.

GIN JENNY: Right.

WHISKEY JENNY: You would just know that. It would be the ones where it’s easy to make that decision that you would get rid of.

GIN JENNY: Well and plus, I mean, so tastes change. You’re just interested in different things as a reader. And also, like we talked about, love fades.

WHISKEY JENNY: Or you realize things that you did love are problematic.

GIN JENNY: And like, too problematic to enjoy now.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.

GIN JENNY: Because there’s definitely a lot of problematic—like Harry Potter—problematic things that I love.

JENNYS: Lord of the Rings.

GIN JENNY: But yeah, your tolerance changes.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, sometimes it’s overwhelming.

GIN JENNY: And it’s I think it’s because we change as people and develop different kinds of critical awareness. And even if the book’s authors change, the books can’t change. So all that can happen is we can grow past it.

WHISKEY JENNY: That’s beautiful.

GIN JENNY: Is it? It’s very sad, I think. [LAUGHTER] Actually that’s not even true. I think we can also grow into them. Because I feel like as I’ve gotten older, I’ve appreciated new stuff in a lot of books.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Yeah.

GIN JENNY: OK, all right. So that was a needlessly pessimistic way of say it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I mean, we can grow past old books, but that’s not a horrible thing also, because that means you’re growing as a human. And then you grow into other books.

GIN JENNY: OK, so when do you think is the correct time to do a book culling?

WHISKEY JENNY: I need an outside force to pressure me to do it.

GIN JENNY: Like, what would be an outside force, for example?

WHISKEY JENNY: When you run out of room.

GIN JENNY: Is that the only time you ever get rid of books?

WHISKEY JENNY: Basically.

GIN JENNY: Interesting.

WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, I’m sort of at capacity right now.

GIN JENNY: Sure.

WHISKEY JENNY: So it sort of happens in small cases every time I want to get a new one.

GIN JENNY: Well, definitely when I’ve moved, I’ve gotten rid of books.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, if you have to pack them up.

GIN JENNY: It’s very motivating. If I get a new bookshelf, weirdly, I’m often inclined to do a culling. I think it’s just because there’s a book-related change happening, so I’m like, well, I might as well take this moment.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.

GIN JENNY: All right, well, how do you do it? How do you make these tough decisions?

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I think we need to separate—I think we—twist! I have categories.

GIN JENNY: OK, tell me the categories.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, first you have to cull the books that you have read, and you also have to cull the books you haven’t read.

GIN JENNY: That is true.

WHISKEY JENNY: So for the books that you have read, I want to talk about lending, because I feel like that was a really interesting thing that got brought up. Because if I think I might want to lend a book someday to someone, I don’t know, I really love lending a book. And that’s one of the reasons that I might keep it. If I’m like, I still support this book and I want to spread the word about it, I’ll keep it.

GIN JENNY: Fascinating. I never do that. I do sometimes acquire spare copies of books so that I can give them away to people.

WHISKEY JENNY: See, that seems really similar. And you just hold onto them without a person in mind until that person comes along.

GIN JENNY: Yes, and it has worked really well. I actually am just about to mail out two books to my friend Lauren that she expressed interest in, and I happen to have a spare copies, so everything is roses.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, great. There you go. Yeah.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: The other reason I might keep something or decide not to keep something is if I think I will or will not reread it.

GIN JENNY: Yes, that’s the big one for me, too.

WHISKEY JENNY: Which is a lot rarer for me than you, but someday plays a role.

GIN JENNY: So, since you don’t reread very much, how do you make that designation?

WHISKEY JENNY: If I want to someday, recognizing that life is finite and I might not get to it. But if I have the urge to, or think like, yeah, I might someday. If I can’t remember why I kept a book in looking back, if I’m like, well, I don’t want to reread it and I don’t want to lend it, maybe there was another specific reason at the time—so if I can’t remember why I kept it, then it goes into the get-rid-of pile.

GIN JENNY: Interesting. Interesting. I should also say before we get more into this, I love getting rid of things. So although getting rid of books is a little harder for me than getting rid of stuff like clothes, I still get a rush of happy brain chemicals when I do it. So I want to say, if I make this sound easy, it’s because it’s pretty easy for me. And I know that’s not the case for everyone.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, no, it is not easy for me.

GIN JENNY: There is nothing like the feeling of, I just read a book that I owned, I don’t want to keep it, and I get rid of it. It feels so good.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, no, that doesn’t feel good. Because I’m like, well why did I reread it? [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: To find out. To find out if you were going to keep it. And then if you were not going to keep it, then you have that space for a book that you do like and do want to keep, and it’s like, yay. The future is bright and golden.

WHISKEY JENNY: That’s true. And, as you said, tastes change. So if you’re looking back at something and you’re like, wow, turns out I don’t like that book after all in rethinking about it, then toss it.

GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah, that’s another thing. Sometimes I’ll have a book, and I liked it. And I’m like, I liked it, but with a caveat, but I think I would want to reread it, so I keep it. And then later as I look back, the problems that I had with it just loom larger and larger. And I don’t know what causes that to happen, but it’s definitely a thing.

WHISKEY JENNY: On the plus side, I will say, when you get rid of them, I don’t know what you do with them. But one thing you can do with them is post them on PaperbackSwap—

GIN JENNY: Yes!

WHISKEY JENNY: And then in exchange for them, get books that you do want to keep.

GIN JENNY: Yes, I do that.

WHISKEY JENNY: That’s exciting.

GIN JENNY: Oh, it’s so exciting. I love listing them on PaperbackSwap, or donating them to a local library book sale situation. Because then I feel like I’m paying into the ecosystem that I’m also taking many books out of.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and I found a non-snooty used bookstore that will often buy books. So and then you get credit at the store, and that’s really exciting, too. That was a call out to The Strand, in case you couldn’t tell. Because they’re real snooty about buying books.

GIN JENNY: They’re such jerks.

WHISKEY JENNY: They’re so mean about it. I don’t know why. You’re a used bookstore. You have a counter for selling books. Why are you mean about it?

GIN JENNY: I don’t know, but they are. One time I was selling books there—I know I’ve told you this, but I haven’t told the listeners, and I think they should be mad. I went and sold books there, and the guy made two stacks, one that they wanted to buy and one that they didn’t want to buy. And then he used his pen to push the rejects towards me, as if he could not even bear to touch them.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, they’re so weird about it.

GIN JENNY: Like, I’m not being paranoid. He was making a face that said, I am disgusted by this pile of books.

WHISKEY JENNY: Come on, dude.

GIN JENNY: And Whiskey Jenny can confirm, that’s the face that they make.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, they always do it. Yeah, they do. I’ve stopped—I don’t go there anymore.

GIN JENNY: It’s horrible.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s not like you’re asking a restaurant to do this for you. Like, you have a counter offering this service.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. Presumably it benefits them or they wouldn’t be doing it. Frickin’ The Strand.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, anyway, so yeah, so thinking about out where the books might go and what you can get out of them, I found, is a helpful technique.

GIN JENNY: Another thing I sometimes do is donate them to Books 2 Prisoners, if they’re paperbacks. And then I’m also happy because I like thinking about them reaching readers for whom they are a better fit.

WHISKEY JENNY: My last helpful tip for either category is to ask a friend to help you.

GIN JENNY: We’ve done this before.

WHISKEY JENNY: Gin Jenny—I did. I asked Gin Jenny to help me. I sent her a spreadsheet. I think this was just for the To Be Read books, but I think it applies to both. Ask a friend, and the friend will help you be honest.

GIN JENNY: That’s true.

WHISKEY JENNY: If they come over in person, you can do it in person and hang out together. It makes it a fun activity.

GIN JENNY: I would love to do that. Any friend I have, I would be—or, you know, near strangers. I would be so excited to come over [LAUGHTER] and help get rid of stuff. Not just books, stuff. I love getting rid of stuff.

OK, so fiction, I find this exceptionally easy. If I’ve had a book for a while and I’m just not excited about it, and I’ve owned it for more than two years and I haven’t read it yet, it’s pretty easy for me to say, you know what? I’m not that into this. I bought it for $2 at a book sale, but I’m no longer that interested. And if I let it back out into the world, like I said, it has a good chance of finding a reader who really will love it. Not me, a monster keeping it for myself, a dog in the manger.

WHISKEY JENNY: A monster? My God. Those are some harsh words.

GIN JENNY: Strong words. [LAUGHTER] It’s not how I really think about people who have books they haven’t read, by the way.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, good.

GIN JENNY: It’s just a useful way to frame it in my head, because then I never feel guilty. I’m just like, I’m helping this book and other readers. And then nonfiction—yeah, nonfiction can be hard, because with nonfiction, unless I’ve completely lost interest in that topic, which is pretty rare, it’s harder for me to get rid of nonfiction. But I try to be like, OK, I’m still interested in this topic, but it’s not my priority. So that’s a good reason to let it go.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s hard. I find that to be read category harder than the read category.

GIN JENNY: Does it ever help you to check and see if your local library has some of the books? Because that sometimes has helped me. It’s like a little insurance policy in case I change my mind.

WHISKEY JENNY: No.

GIN JENNY: OK. [LAUGHTER] So how do you make those decisions?

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, this is where I have to phone a friend especially.

GIN JENNY: Oh, this is the one.

WHISKEY JENNY: This is the phone a friend category.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: You have to be honest with yourself. I’m not going to read Tess of the D’Ubervilles. D’Urbervilles. Whatever. I don’t want to.

GIN JENNY: God, me neither.

WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t want to. But I just feel guilty about not, and making that choice. And you have to become OK with making the choice not to read it first. So that’s why, it’s a lot of emotional work for me.

GIN JENNY: That’s a really good insight, that you have to be honest with yourself. Because I do buy books sometimes aspirationally. And I’m like, I want to be the type of person who likes, what’s his name? Thomas Hardy?

WHISKEY JENNY: Thomas Hardy. I don’t even! [LAUGHTER] I hated every single Thomas Hardy I read. I don’t want to read this book! [LAUGHTER] I have gotten rid of that one.

GIN JENNY: Which is hard. It’s hard to let go of a vision of yourself that you wanted to achieve.

WHISKEY JENNY: It is difficult. But sometimes it’s harder to lie to a friend than to yourself. [LAUGHTER] About if you’re going to read Tess of the D’Urbervilles or not.

GIN JENNY: Especially if your friend is me, a person who thinks nobody should ever read Tess of the D’Urbervilles. [LAUGHTER] The strategy I’m always recommending is, if you want to get rid of books, just pick a number of books that you want to get rid of. Say you want to get rid of 20 books. And then pull all the books you might maybe want to get rid of, and line them up in order of how much you like them. Because I think it’s hard to look at all your books and say, OK, this one specifically should go. But I found it really easy to look at two books and say, I’m more interested in this one than this one. So if you do that a bunch of times, then you can just pick the bottom ones and toss ‘em. Or, like Whiskey Jenny did, just make a list of all your maybes and send them to me. Let me know how many of them need to go, and I’ll choose for you.

WHISKEY JENNY: I think I gave you some notes, too, about, like, I don’t actually want to read this, you’re right. [LAUGHTER] I’m thinking about tossing this one.

GIN JENNY: If someone is like, I’m thinking about tossing this, I mostly say, yes, toss it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yup. do it.

GIN JENNY: I have a very hard time with nonfiction that I have read, deciding to get rid of it, unless I really didn’t like it. Because I really like the feeling—I really like this image I have in my head of being the kind of person who’s like, a question arises and I’m like, hang on. I’ll consult my many nonfiction books, because I read something about it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, yeah.

GIN JENNY: Even though there’s just so little opportunity—it’s very unlikely that someone’s going to be like, oh, Gin Jenny, I have a really important question about Mary, Queen of Scots and her relationship with Elizabeth I. Also, if they did have that question, they would probably look it up on Wikipedia, and so would I. But I just cannot get out of that mindset of like, oh, I need to consult this later. And I don’t really have a solution to that currently.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. So you look at it like a resource.

GIN JENNY: Right, exactly. With fiction, if I don’t want to reread it, pfft. Easy. It goes. But with non-fiction—so, that’s a challenge.

WHISKEY JENNY: Does it help you to think about if they’re in libraries?

GIN JENNY: Yes. But, you know, libraries also cull their books. Rightly, so.

WHISKEY JENNY: So you’re saying they might have it now and get rid of it someday?

GIN JENNY: Well, yes.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well then why did you propose that to me?

GIN JENNY: Like, it’s an insurance policy, but I don’t actually think one typically will want to get the books that one has gotten rid of. So it’s more of a mental thing. Which you’ve now ruined by asking too many questions. So. [LAUGHTER] I would have gotten away with it if not for you meddling kids.

But my one real, real, real downfall—I know that I said at the start of this that this is pretty easy for me, but my one real downfall is any kind of box set, or matching editions. If there is attractive matching editions so a book, I am 10,000 percent more likely to acquire them in the first place and then keep them forever.

WHISKEY JENNY: What if they’re illustrated?

GIN JENNY: Oh, God, yes! And if they’re illustrated, yeah! [LAUGHTER] I have this fancy annotated Frankenstein. And I don’t even like Frankenstein this much, but it has so many pictures. There’s interesting annotations. It compares the different texts of Frankenstein that exist. It’s going to be hard to get rid of. I think eventually I’m going to do it, but it’s a tough one to do.

WHISKEY JENNY: That does sound interesting, though.

GIN JENNY: It is really interesting. It is. I mean, it has a lot of interesting content, but I’m not ultimately that into Frankenstein. Anything that makes a book more physically beautiful really ups the chances of it sticking around.

WHISKEY JENNY: Interesting. Yeah.

GIN JENNY: Well, Erica, I hope that answered your question, or helped.

WHISKEY JENNY: Good luck, Erica. Our hearts are with you.

GIN JENNY: They are. And seriously, Erica, if you want to send me a list of books you’re considering getting rid of, I would love to help you choose.

WHISKEY JENNY: Take her up on it. She’s very helpful.

GIN JENNY: Thank you. Thank you, I appreciate that. All right, do you want to launch into the third annual Forcening?

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, let’s do it.

GIN JENNY: OK, so for this Forcening, we read The Color Purple, by Alice Walker. I Forcened Whiskey Jenny. And this is a classic of American literature, I would say one of the great American novels. I just love this book with such an intensity, and rereading it I was just like, this book is so wonderful and so good, so I really hope you liked it. What, uh, did you think of it?

WHISKEY JENNY: I did, I liked it.

GIN JENNY: Oh, thank God!

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, no, I loved it.

GIN JENNY: Oh, good. Oh, I’m so relieved.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.

GIN JENNY: It’s really been haunting me. Like, I wouldn’t have been mad at you or anything. I would just have been like, aw.

WHISKEY JENNY: I know, yeah. The Forcening is really dangerous. I had a really hard time picking, as well, because I was like, well if she doesn’t like it I’ll be too heartbroken for that one.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, I would have been really heartbroken. Oh, I’m so glad you liked it. Oh, what a relief. OK.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I would’ve told you earlier to put you out of your misery, but I only recently finished it.

GIN JENNY: No, that’s OK. I like the buildup.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, no, I did. I loved it. And I was all ready to be like, you know, it was a good book, but I’d never want to read it again. It was too depressing, it was too dark, it was too hard to read. But you were right. Ultimately it’s not those things. It’s really hopeful and optimistic and I loved it.

GIN JENNY: Oh, I’m so glad. I’m especially glad that you found it hopeful and optimistic, because I can imagine loving it and still feeling it was too dark. And it is very dark. But oh, good, I’m really glad that I didn’t steer you wrong.

WHISKEY JENNY: I was ready to be like—

GIN JENNY: Gin Jenny’s a liar?

WHISKEY JENNY: Why did you make me do this? [LAUGHTER] I was not looking forward to reading it. It took me a while to pick it up. And I feel like in that way it’s an incredibly successful Forcening, because I might not have picked it up.

GIN JENNY: Yay!

WHISKEY JENNY: So great job.

GIN JENNY: Thank you. Well, I guess I should say what it’s about. It’s about a woman named Celie who comes from an abusive home life. And she marries a guy who is also abusive, and the guy makes her sister, who lives with them, leave. And she and her sister are separated and she never hears from her. And she’s just living with this guy and his awful children. And, you know, things look pretty bleak.

But then she meets the singer, Shug Avery, and, you know, good and bad things happen. It’s hard to describe. It’s hard to summarize.

WHISKEY JENNY: It is, yeah. I think it’s important to know it is epistolary, if you haven’t read it before.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. It’s also a pretty quick read.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it is.

GIN JENNY: Because it’s in letters, so it zips by very quickly.

WHISKEY JENNY: And I think it’s about this character growing and living her life.

GIN JENNY: Growing into herself and discovering who she is and what she wants.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.

GIN JENNY: So this is one of my—certainly one of my top three favorite books, and I depending on the mood I’m in, I’ve said this is my most favorite book in the world. But my really favorite thing about it is that, although it contains a lot of suffering and many people treating each other with cruelty, I think it’s mainly about people’s capacity to change and grow.

WHISKEY JENNY: I’m nodding enthusiastically.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, good. I don’t want to say redemption, because I don’t think Alice Walker gives her characters quite that much of a break. But I think that she makes space for people to change themselves. And we see other characters recognizing that, which I think is really lovely.

Like Celie’s husband is an awful person, and awful to her. And late in the book, she sees him changing himself. And she doesn’t say, like, I forgive you for hurting me. But she’s not scared of him, and she spends time with him because she wants to, and they develop a friendship.

The capacity for people to recognize when they’ve made mistakes and use that to change their behavior and change who they are is something that I don’t see super often in real life. So it has always meant a lot to me to see it in this book.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, and the capacity to recognize that in others, too. I don’t know, I think I would call it—maybe not redemption, but at least on the path towards redemption. But I think that it’s hard to throw that word around, because it gets overused. And the way that it’s written about, it’s not earned, and it’s not handled right. But I think it’s so impressive in this book that she gives them the space to get on that path, but doesn’t belittle any of the awful things that they did. It’s such an impressive fine line to walk narratively, and also as a human.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, it really is. And then the other side of that is that I don’t think that Alice Walker demands forgiveness from her characters. There’s this scene—oh, and it’s so good. It’s one of my favorite scenes in the book. I’m probably going to say everything’s my favorite, but I really love this book.

So Celie’s daughter-in-law, Sophia, very late in the book, she’s talking to Eleanor Jane, who is a white woman that she helped to raise. And they’re talking about Eleanor Jane’s son. And Sophia, over the course of Eleanor Jane’s life, has been treated with remarkable, astonishing cruelty and contempt by Eleanor Jane’s family. But this is many years ago that this happened, and Eleanor Jane is like, oh, here’s my baby. Don’t you love my baby? And Sophia’s like, no, I don’t. I don’t love your baby. I don’t care about your baby. He’s going to grow up, he’s going to treat me badly and treat my children badly, and I don’t have the space for him in my life. So Eleanor Jane is all miffed.

I think it’s a great scene that Sophia does not owe anything to this family. She doesn’t owe them forgiveness for what they’ve done to her. And she doesn’t even owe this kid who was nice to her anything in regards to her and her baby. And I appreciate Alice Walker making the space for both of those things, that you don’t have to forgive people, but you also can.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I thought it was so impressive. You know that that scene, handled by a white author, would have gone totally different. And Eleanor Jane would have been the main character of this book, and she’d be all white savior-y. Yeah, it would have been awful. But yeah, it’s so beautiful.

Sophia, she’s—all the characters, many characters are amazing in this book, and Sophia is among the most amazing, I would say. She was just so fascinating to read about. And yeah, she doesn’t owe Eleanor Jane anything. And Eleanor Jane sort of seems like she thinks that Sophia should be grateful that Eleanor Jane was nice, and then later realizes that she needs to ask why Sophia was in that house in the first place. And it’s not because she wanted to be there. It’s because she was forced to be there. So check yourself, Eleanor Jane.

But then I also really appreciated that later on, it sort of in passing mentioned that Eleanor Jane is now helping out with Sophia’s child. And again, Sophia is not forced to offer her forgiveness, and she’s also not forced to be like, yeah, Eleanor Jane is redeeming herself. That’s a choice that Eleanor Jane could make in the future.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, this book really does not try and make a tidy bow around anyone’s morality, and I really, really appreciate that. Things don’t cancel each other out.

WHISKEY JENNY: And Sophia also is like, and you know what? I don’t care. It’s helpful to have her now, but I’m not the one looking for redemption, she is. So if she stops it, that’s no skin off my back. And it was just like—[LAUGHTER] yeah, I really appreciated it.

GIN JENNY: Like you said, I love so many characters in this book. I feel like Sofia gets all the best lines.

WHISKEY JENNY: Totally.

GIN JENNY: There’s one time—oh, God, I think about this daily. Sophia is telling a story about Eleanor Jane’s family one time and how they find ways to be offended about everything and ruin her life in every possible way, even though they are ruining her life, they’re still like, why are you doing this? Why are you behaving this way? And she says, “white folks are a miracle of affliction.”

WHISKEY JENNY: A miracle of affliction.

GIN JENNY: Every day I think about it. I think she means they’re miraculous in how many ways they—we—can find to ruin other people’s lives. But I also like to think of it as miraculous in the ways we find to feel afflicted.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, that’s what I took it as

GIN JENNY: Even when we’re the ones causing and benefiting by the racial order.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, but to be like, oh poor me. Yeah.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. I truly do, I think about that almost every day.

WHISKEY JENNY: It is an amazing line. I feel like all the nice things I want to say about this book are the ways it could have gone wrong but it didn’t do. The task that it set for herself is so difficult. It could have gone so horribly wrong in so many different ways. And yet it didn’t, and it’s just such a testament to its author that it did not.

GIN JENNY: Yes. It’s so ambitious. It takes in the scope of so many years, and it takes on so many historical events. And ah, it’s incredible.

WHISKEY JENNY: Did your copy begin with a salty foreword from Alice Walker? [LAUGHTER] I want to say that I love the foreword, so I don’t want salty to come off as negative.

GIN JENNY: No, but now I’m jealous and I want one with a salty foreword!

WHISKEY JENNY: Basically it was like, it’s about religion, you fools! It begins with the words “Dear God.” [LAUGHTER] And it was amazing.

GIN JENNY: That’s so good.

WHISKEY JENNY: I really liked it, and she had a particularly good sentence about what she thought the book was about. And normally I, you know—

GIN JENNY: Death of the author, et cetera.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, you know, it’s your thing and it needs to stand on its own, but I really liked this phrase that she said. “The book’s intent is to explore the difficult path of someone who starts out in life already a spiritual captive but who, through her own courage and the help of others, breaks free into the realization that she, like nature itself, is a radiant expression of the heretofore perceived as quite distant divine.”

GIN JENNY: Aw.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, isn’t that just really beautiful?

GIN JENNY: Yeah, and it ties into so many of my like notes about Celie’s character development. So yeah, she killed it. If that was her goal, she did it perfectly.

WHISKEY JENNY: And yeah, I’d recommend checking out the foreword.

GIN JENNY: I’m actually on the hunt for a—Whiskey Jenny.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, boy. Yeah, lay it on me.

GIN JENNY: I just feel the time is right for a fancy reissue of The Color Purple in hardback with supplementary material. They can choose. This foreword, some other stuff, I don’t know.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. This foreword’s great. I highly recommend it.

GIN JENNY: But I don’t have a copy that’s hardback with a dust jacket, and I’m sad about that. And they just did The Chosen recently, and that was great for me. So I just think The Color Purple should get similar treatment.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. As I mentioned, I was ready to be like, it was good but this is not the time to read it, because I’m depressed about everything in the world. But actually it was the time to read it, because it is ultimately quite beautiful and hopeful. So yeah, I agree. Now’s the time to reissue it. Who should we write?

GIN JENNY: I’ll find out who her publisher is and be like, hey. Hey. Hey. I’ll just write them every month and be like, in these troubled times, sincerely yours.

OK, can we talk about Shug Avery?

WHISKEY JENNY: We definitely can.

GIN JENNY: Shug Avery is one of the greatest characters in all of literature. I love her so much. From the first second she shows up, she’s so much herself. Oh, she’s great. She’s so great.

WHISKEY JENNY: Can I just say, not having read this book, based on what I’d heard about it, I was not expecting this book to be gay.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. Super gay.

WHISKEY JENNY: And it definitely is. I feel like it does not come out often in summaries of it, and I feel like that is weird.

GIN JENNY: I’m surprised I didn’t tell you, because I feel like I talk about that often.

WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t think you did, because I was like oh, OK.

GIN JENNY: I’m so sorry.

WHISKEY JENNY: But you and the world doesn’t talk about it very much, either. I don’t mean you specifically, but like—

GIN JENNY: No, I agree. It’s strange to me.

WHISKEY JENNY: As you said, it’s a classic of American literature. I definitely heard of The Color Purple before, but I did not know that it had this beautiful relationship in it, so. Just weird. Anyway, sorry. Yeah, she is awesome.

GIN JENNY: She’s awesome. She’s a singer, she’s a nightclub singer. And she has had a long term, on and off affair with Celie’s husband, so she comes to stay at their house. And she really is the first person after Celie’s sister Nettie to see Celie. Like, everyone else kind of treats Celie like background, like she’s wallpaper.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I think Sophia, too, sort of at the same time.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, you’re right.

WHISKEY JENNY: You know, I don’t want to discount that. But yeah, Shug definitely comes from a different place.

GIN JENNY: But I think that’s when you see Celie start to think of herself as someone worthy of being seen and appreciated and liked, and then she starts thinking about the life she wants, and what kind of person she wants to be, and what she wants to do. And so for that reason, it’s just—oh, it’s such a lovely romance, even though, you know, there’s ups and downs.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.

GIN JENNY: But Shug really loves her in a very open-hearted way that Celie has very little experience with, and that was—I get pretty emotional about it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it is really beautiful. There’s a beautiful scene early on in their relationship, when Shug is getting over her illness and sings for the first time since, down at a juke joint. And she dedicates a song to Celie that she wrote and names after her, because she said Celie scratched it out of her head when Celie was taking care of her. And Celie is really moved by this, and I was really moved by it.

Talking about all the difficult tasks that this book set for itself, one of the tasks it set for itself is the main character’s horrible husband’s mistress comes to live with them, and then a relationship builds between the wife and the mistress. It’s something that you are rooting for, while never, ever thinking that Celie was downtrodden for allowing this to happen or for opening her home to this woman. That’s a really impressive thing to do.

GIN JENNY: Reading it now—and also always, but especially now—Shug Avery is this type of character—and the type of person exists—where regardless of their circumstance, they’re just entirely themselves. And Shug Avery is that kind of character. And she lives her life how she wants to, and it works. Like, you know she’s been through some stuff for sure. But she gets the life she wants, and it really means a lot for me to see that, and see her not be punished in the book for living this kind of life and being this kind of person. I felt really strongly about that.

It reminded me of, you know in Confessions of the Fox, when he says that the spider web people are living in the year We Escaped? That’s what Shug Avery seems to be doing. She seems to be living in the year We Escaped. And it’s just a hell of a thing to see for a queer black lady singer in 1930s America, and I feel like Alice Walker pulled that off so well. And it was just really meaningful to me.

WHISKEY JENNY: And in general I think, in a book where so many terrible things happen and so many terrible things have already happened to our characters, it never feels cruel. It never feels unkind to its characters. It never feels it’s reveling in their misery, in a way that a lot of books that contain such dark things can. And I really appreciate that, as well. I just feel like all the couple of things about the book where I was like, oh no, come on, that’s too much, it then turned around and did something with it that I was like, oh, all right.

GIN JENNY: You got me.

WHISKEY JENNY: You got me, yeah. Like I really thought the relationship with Sophia at the beginning was going to go somewhere different, because as we mentioned, Celie tells Sophia’s husband to beat her. But then they talk about it and she realizes her mistake, and they develop a relationship. And I really didn’t expect it to go that way.

So I guess this is a spoiler, but I was also really mad towards the end when you think that her sister Nettie has died for real, not because her horrible husband Albert hid all the letters.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, we’ll come back to that.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, definitely. But I was like, no, book, that’s too much. Come on, I really wanted them to—come on, come on. But then sort of came to an acceptance of it as going on a tiny grief journey. It’s impressive that as a reader you sort of go on this same journey of grief, and then anger, and then acceptance. Like, OK, well I guess not everything has to work out great.

GIN JENNY: It’s World War II.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s World War II, these things happen, and Celie is dealing with it, and if she can be eventually content then I can, too. And then Nettie totally comes back at the end it was so beautiful!

GIN JENNY: I had forgotten that they had that fake out. And when I got to it when I was reading it, I almost—I was so close to texting you and being like, you’re going to get to a place where it seems like Nettie is dead after all, but she’s not, so don’t worry.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, my note at the time was, “oh, come on!” [LAUGHTER] I was really worried.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, well, so another amazingly beautiful and heartbreaking thing about this book is that Celie’s little sister Nettie, Celie always really, really protects her.

WHISKEY JENNY: Ugh. Sorry.

GIN JENNY: No, it’s really—the beginning of this book is really rough. The book starts out with Celie being raped and impregnated twice by her father. And she’s constantly trying to think of ways to protect Nettie from having that same experience. And she just does everything to make sure that Nettie has a future. I’m getting goose bumps even talking about it, because it’s really lovely.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it’s amazing.

GIN JENNY: They’re separated, and Nettie promises to write and then Celie never gets any letters from her. And it turns out her husband has been keeping all of Nettie’s letters for decades.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Yeah, that’s what’s up.

GIN JENNY: It is awful. It’s awful.

WHISKEY JENNY: What a rotten, rotten soul to do that. And then that’s the same character later on you’re like, you know, she finds space for.

GIN JENNY: She calls him her people.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.

GIN JENNY: That’s kind of when Celie is able to assert her independence from him and really go and chase after the life she wants with Shug. Which is, it’s a hard couple of chapters to read, because she’s so angry. And we haven’t really seen her experience her anger in the past. It’s so powerful for her—and me, a very emotional person reading this book in 2018. But to talk about that, and to name his sin to him was just a lot.

WHISKEY JENNY: It is a lot. It is the first time that she’s angry. She’s talked before to Shug about, she has all these reasons to be angry, but she’s not. She’s just numb. So yeah, it’s incredibly powerful to read that anger.

GIN JENNY: And Nettie’s letters are a whole kind of other section of the book that’s a totally different thing, which is also really interesting. So Celie’s two children were given up for adoption, and it turns out they ended up living with this missionary family. And Nettie goes to stay with them. She goes to them after she has to leave Celie, and they end up as missionaries in Africa.

They’re saying with an African tribe called the Olinka. It’s not totally clear where in Africa they are. I know they start out in Liberia and then travel from Liberia, but I’m not sure exactly where they travel to. But it talks about the Olinka village being torn down to make room for rubber plants and the infrastructure that’s required for rubber plants, and then that the government requires them to pay rent on their own land.

Reading that now, I was like, oh yeah, that absolutely did happen. And at the time when I first read this book, I didn’t know really much about how corporations expanded to Africa and displaced indigenous people. And it was interesting to know with a little more context just how ambitious the scope of this book is, I guess.

WHISKEY JENNY: Totally covers religion and colonialism and trauma. How did you do all that in this short little book?

GIN JENNY: It’s a short little book! And it’s even shorter than it looks, because a lot of the letters, they won’t even cover a whole page sometimes.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s the spacing issue. [LAUGHTER] But no, when Nettie was talking about, they visit London, and they see all the beautiful things that England has stolen from other countries, it was just such a subtle callout that I was like, oh damn!

GIN JENNY: Yup! And then, I don’t know if this is jumping ahead too much, but their reunion at the end is so good. Like, when something’s been built up for the course of an entire book, it can be hard to meet that bar. But oh my God, it’s so good.

WHISKEY JENNY: And they’ve each built a family for themselves, despite everything.

GIN JENNY: I cry every time I read this scene. I first read this book probably when I was 17, 16 or 17. So I reread it, eh, once a year since then. So I’ve read it a lot. And this scene always just kills me. It’s so good.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s amazing. They just fall into each other’s arms and hold each other for a while.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. Celie says they knock each other down, which like, oh man. I’m tearing up.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. It’s amazing.

GIN JENNY: [TEARY] It’s so good.

WHISKEY JENNY: They get to join their lives now.

GIN JENNY: Even though it’s so cruelly unfair that they weren’t able to have these lives together all along, still they’ve each gone on these separate journeys and now they’re able to—ooh. Here we go. Here come the waterworks.

WHISKEY JENNY: And yet it successfully—it’s not saccharine at all.

GIN JENNY: No, not at all. Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: And that’s another way it could have gone wrong and it didn’t. I have a couple of other ways in which it could have gone wrong and didn’t.

GIN JENNY: Oh, good. Well, tell me those.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I think it could have—Celie definitely goes on a journey. But I think it could have denied her agency at the beginning. Because she definitely, she’s still a human being at the beginning, and she does have agency, and she is making choices to protect Nettie. And I think the book recognizes that that’s its own form of resistance, basically, and doesn’t dictate the ways in which you have to resist.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, and there’s so many different women in this book, all choosing different ways of living their life under this oppression. And so yeah, there’s like different models of how to—not even models, but there’s different examples of how to live your life. And yeah, like you said, she doesn’t valorize one above the others.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, and I really appreciated that. And I also really appreciated that it does not belittle Celie’s intelligence.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, there are some characters later on in the book that are like, don’t you want to talk differently? Don’t you want to talk like everyone else? Don’t you want to honor Shug when she takes you out?

GIN JENNY: Yeah, sound less country, and this and that.

WHISKEY JENNY: And you’re reading these letters in a very—

GIN JENNY: Yeah, it’s in dialect.

WHISKEY JENNY: And Celie is like, Shug isn’t embarrassed by me. I’m not embarrassed by me. No, I’m fine with the way that I am, while also not being like, no one needs education ever! It’s a pretty pro-education book, but it’s also like Celie—

GIN JENNY: She’s good where she’s at.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I’m just so impressed.

GIN JENNY: Yay! [LAUGHTER] I’m so happy. This book means a lot to me, and I’m so glad you liked it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, no, I really did. Great Forcening pick.

GIN JENNY: Yay. So what’s your Forcening pick for me?

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, all right. [LAUGHTER] I just feel like I have a harder time with the Forcening than with the Hatening, because you’ve read everything basically. There’s nothing I have to offer you.

GIN JENNY: That’s so false. That’s ridiculous. But continue.

WHISKEY JENNY: And then also you picked The Color Purple, which is pretty beautiful and amazing and a classic of American literature. So I was like, I have to pick something that’s also a classic of American literature, because I can’t pick another frivolous choice like I did last time. But that’s what I’m doing. I’m picking another frivolous choice.

GIN JENNY: OK, because I was going to say, I feel like you definitely can pick a frivolous choice. This was a pretty heavy one.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I thought maybe it would be good to have a balance. Yeah, you know, I guess I’m the frivolous one. I don’t know. But we’re reading Boat Squad John.

GIN JENNY: Oh my God! Oh my God. Boat Squad John. That sounds great.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. When I was like looking through my list, that was the one that I got really excited about. I was like, oh, I could reread Boat Squad John!

GIN JENNY: Can you tell the listeners its actual title and author?

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s called Ready to Roll by Suzanne Brockmann. And I hope you like it.

GIN JENNY: I have every expectation that I will love it.

WHISKEY JENNY: So yeah, so we’re reading Boat Squad John.

This has been the Reading the End bookcast with the demographically similar Jennys. You can visit the blog at readingtheend.com. You can follow us on Twitter @readingtheend. We’re both on Goodreads as Whiskey Jenny and Gin Jenny. And you can email us, please do, at readingtheend@gmail.com. We love hearing from listeners. If you like what we do, you can become a podcast patron at Patreon.com/readingtheend. And if you’re listening to us on iTunes, please leave us a review.

Until next time a quote from The Ensemble, by Aja Gabel. “It seemed to Jana to be more classic than that. A person falls for the dream of a place, for life that could be lived there, for something they were not but might be. It was about the shimmering itself, that almost-visible stuff that hovered just above the hot pavement of your life. Potential, aspiration, accomplishment.”

THEME SONG: You don’t judge a book by its cover. Page one’s not a much better view. And shortly you’re gonna discover the middle won’t mollify you. So whether whiskey’s your go-to or you’re like my gin-drinking friend, no matter what you are imbibing, you’ll be better off in the end reading the end.

GIN JENNY: The greater Mordor area. The greater, larger—it doesn’t matter. [LAUGHTER] I’m sorry. I was like, I want to make more jokes! But it’s not necessary. The joke has been made.

WHISKEY JENNY: It was a good joke.

GIN JENNY: I said scene twice. I’m going to edit that.

It’s different.

WHISKEY JENNY: I’m sorry. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: I’m my best podcasting self today.

WHISKEY JENNY: You are.

WHISKEY JENNY: OK, the thing is small, but that place is in the heart of fucking Mordor. [LAUGHTER] One does not simply walk into Mordor!

GIN JENNY: I just pictured those little guys in Shining Time Station.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it takes a real turn, but kudos to Alice Walker.

GIN JENNY: OK, I’m sorry. Go ahead.

WHISKEY JENNY: No, that’s on me. [BEEP]

The post Reading the End Bookcast, Ep. 108 – Culling Books and Forcening The Color Purple appeared first on Reading the End.

Episode 105

Here are the time signatures if you want to skip around.

1:43 – What we’re reading
6:09 – What we’re listening to
8:17 – LOTR Reread: Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapters 6-10
23:44 – Great American Novelists (who aren’t white dudes)
38:17 – Undead Girl Gang, Lily Anderson
51:06 – What we’re reading next time

Here’s the Jonathan Franzen profile that Whiskey Jenny is talking about. It’s magical.

Get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. If you like what we do, support us on Patreon. 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
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour
Transcripts by: Sharon of Library Hungry

Transcript is available under the jump!

THEME SONG: You don’t judge a book by its cover. Page one’s not a much better view. And shortly you’re gonna discover the middle won’t mollify you. So whether whiskey’s your go-to or you’re like my gin-drinking friend, no matter what you are imbibing, you’ll be better off in the end reading the end.

WHISKEY JENNY: Hello, and welcome back to the Reading the End Bookcast with the Demographically Similar Jennys. I’m Whiskey Jenny.

GIN JENNY: And I’m Gin Jenny.

WHISKEY JENNY: And we’re back to talk about books and literary events. We have a very exciting agenda today, a lot to get through on it. We will cover what we’re reading and what we read over the hiatus. I have several updates.

GIN JENNY: Oh, great.

WHISKEY JENNY: Our something else-ing topic, as voted on by our lovely Patreon patrons, is what we’re listening to. We will cover the final thrilling conclusion to Fellowship of the Ring.

GIN JENNY: Woo!

WHISKEY JENNY: Our topic this week is non-white dude great American novelists.

GIN JENNY: In belated honor of the Fourth of July.

WHISKEY JENNY: And, can I say this, in slight opposition to all the Franzen pieces coming out? [LAUGHTER] Mostly just the one.

GIN JENNY: Don’t trash that Franzen piece. It was such a source of joy.

WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, it was a great piece. But just the idea of Franzen being back in the running for great American novel contention, yeah. The book we read this time is Undead Girl Gang, by Lily Anderson. And lastly, Gin Jenny’s going to tell us what we’re reading next time.

GIN JENNY: Yes.

WHISKEY JENNY: Phew! So first item on the agenda. What are you reading?

GIN JENNY: I am reading The Great Gatsby like I said I was gonna. I’m so proud of myself.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, well, look at you, following through.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, exactly. I’m very excited to report that it’s holding up really well so far. F Scott Fitzgerald—

WHISKEY JENNY: That’s exciting.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, he’s a really good writer. And I agree with what you said before that it’s maybe not your type of story, and it’s not really necessarily my type of story either. But it’s sufficiently wry and self-aware that I’m able to enjoy it. And I’m hopeful that I’ll continue to all the way through. I’ll enjoy the whole thing and it will still be a book I like, which would be great

WHISKEY JENNY: Hooray.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, my only reservation, there’s been some slurs that people have used—there was a slur for a Jewish person that someone said in the book—which are mostly by—unlikable characters say them. But it’s still not super pleasant to come across.

WHISKEY JENNY: Sure.

GIN JENNY: What about you? What are you reading?

WHISKEY JENNY: I’m currently reading the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl YA prequel, Squirrel Meets World, by Shannon Hale and her husband Dean Hale, I think. And I am almost done with it, and it is just the cutest. Jessie, our lovely theme song composer, lent me her copy. And it is so cute and sweet, I am loving it.

GIN JENNY: Aw! Have you read the comics?

WHISKEY JENNY: I have not, no. This is my first Squirrel Girl experience, and it’s delightful.

GIN JENNY: Oh, well I think you’ll love the comics. They’re also delightful.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yes, I can’t wait. But I had no idea till Jessie pointed out to me that this book existed. And it was by Shannon Hale, who has written a bunch of other stuff that I have really enjoyed, like Austenland and The Goose Girl and that whole series, and all kinds of good stuff. So very exciting.

GIN JENNY: Awesome.

WHISKEY JENNY: But previously—I just wanted to cover two other things that I read. I picked up the second book by Lish McBride in her Firebug series called Pyromantic. And she wrote the Hold Me Closer, Necromancer series, which I loved, and then—anyway, there’s the first book in this series, which was OK. I didn’t love it, though, like I wanted to, so I was a little skeptical of Pyromantic, which is the second in the Firebug series. And it turns out it was so great. I loved it so much.

GIN JENNY: Aw!

WHISKEY JENNY: My favorite part was there’s really scary kelpies as apex predators in this book.

GIN JENNY: Oh, wonderful sea creatures!

WHISKEY JENNY: But one of the scary kelpies becomes really, really protective of a young human girl who’s on the team, and it’s so precious. I love it so much!

GIN JENNY: Yay! You were telling me about this, and it does sound great.

WHISKEY JENNY: I think if it sounds up your alley but you don’t want to wade through the first one, you don’t really even have to. You can just apply to me, and I will tell you all that you need to know, and you can just start with the second one, and it will be great.

GIN JENNY: Terrific. I’ll probably do that, then.

WHISKEY JENNY: Not that the first one was bad, but it was just like, this one’s so much more fun. And then also I wanted to cover, because I know that it is relevant to your interests, I read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt.

GIN JENNY: Yes! I was so excited about this. Listeners, I was really worried, because Whiskey Jenny asked me if this would be a good book for her book club, because nonfiction is often a challenge for book club discussions. And I said yes. And it haunted me. I was like, what if I’m wrong and the book club discussion is terrible? But it sounds like it went OK.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it went well. Yeah. Ashley in particular, Friend of the Podcast Ashley, who’s in this book club also, was very skeptical of this, a nonfiction pick. But I think everyone really enjoyed it and we had a good discussion. It was on a super hot Sunday, so maybe perhaps not as animated as it could have been had we not been afraid to move for fear of dissolving into a puddle of sweat.

GIN JENNY: Sure.

WHISKEY JENNY: But yeah, it was so much fun. I had no idea I was going to be so bananas. That book is batshit insane.

GIN JENNY: It’s nuts. And he does such a good job of capturing the way different people speak, which is amazing to me.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I was really impressed at how he handled the myriad of different characters that he’s covering. I think he mostly did a good job of reminding you and himself that most of the people I’m talking about are white, very upper class, and this is not everyone’s story in this town. This is not the tale of Savannah; this is a tale of Savannah.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: You know, he could’ve done better, but I think he did try, and that was really helpful. And also, it’s just bananas. Can you imagine going to that town and being like, you know, this is interesting. Maybe I should write a book. And then a murder happens! [LAUGHTER] It’s just so weird. It’s crazy!

GIN JENNY: And that’s when the murders began.

WHISKEY JENNY: It really is, though! [LAUGHTER] So anyway, it was a total blast, yeah.

GIN JENNY: I am so, so glad.

WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t know what my previous impression of that book was, but it was not this.

GIN JENNY: I read it a while ago, but I think that I had the same experience. I was expecting something way less fun and charming than this book turned out to be.

WHISKEY JENNY: Totally. So yeah, holds up.

GIN JENNY: Yay! Well, what are you listening to?

WHISKEY JENNY: So I checked my Spotify history from this week. And I have a big deadline at work coming up. I’ve been really having to buckle down and charge ahead and get a lot done. And when I really want to take care of business, I like listening to dance music. So I’ve been listening to a lot of Fast and the Furious soundtracks, [LAUGHTER] particularly number seven. I think number seven is my favorite. And a lot of Pitbull. So that’s been fun as well. What are you listening to?

GIN JENNY: Music-wise, I’ve been listening to Dry the River, which is a late aughts alt rock band that plays these very slow, mournful songs, but they have really lovely and interesting lyrics. And then I’ve also been—so my guilty pleasure is not so much watching The Bachelor and Bachelorette, because it varies so much in quality from season to season that I often skip it. But listening to Bachelor franchise recap podcasts makes me feel so happy and nice. [LAUGHTER]

So my forever favorite was The Right Reasons, which was a Grantland reality TV podcast with Juliet Litman and David Jacoby. And I’m always chasing that high. But Juliet Litman has a solo podcast at The Ringer now called Bachelor Party, which is also good. And I also listen to Here to Make Friends at The Huffington Post.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, that’s a nice title.

GIN JENNY: Right? Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Me too, podcast. Me too.

GIN JENNY: And Here to Make Friends has a Feminism Fail Scale, so at the end of every episode they evaluate the worst feminist moments of the episode.

WHISKEY JENNY: That’s helpful.

GIN JENNY: I stopped watching this season of The Bachelorette because the bachelorette is so sensible and reasonable that she’s kind of boring to watch.

WHISKEY JENNY: Are we still on Ti—no, not Tia? Ra—Raven?

GIN JENNY: No, Tia was in the running to be the Bachelorette, but they went with Becca because she was agonizingly broken up with on public TV.

WHISKEY JENNY: Becca, that’s right. But someone that she likes used to date Tia?

GIN JENNY: Yes.

WHISKEY JENNY: And they’re friends?

GIN JENNY: So there’s three people whose names I know who are left. Because it’s hometowns now. The three people that I know are left are called Blake, Colton, and Garrett. And those names are all very similar to me, so it’s very hard for me to keep track of which one is which. One of them I like, one of them dated Tia, one of them is an Instagram racist, but I’m not sure which is which, and some of those might be overlapping.

Well, do you want to talk about Lord of the Rings?

WHISKEY JENNY: I do. [SADLY] Aw, yeah.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. So we read the second half of book two of Fellowship of the Ring, which was I think chapters 6 through 10. And they travel through Lorien, they fight some orcs, Boromir attacks Frodo, and then they split up. It’s the breaking of the Fellowship. It’s really sad.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. That’s what the last chapter is called, “The Breaking of the Fellowship.” Yeah. Oh my god, they spend so much time in Lothlorien, too.

GIN JENNY: I was just going to say, coming into this you had some concerns. [LAUGHTER] How was it in reality?

WHISKEY JENNY: It wasn’t quite as bad as I was anticipating, but still, I was like, oh my god, are we still here? [LAUGHTER] I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the same feeling that you had for Tom Bombadil and Goldberry, who you referred to as a trophy wife. But the Galadriel and Celeborn relationship just drives me absolutely nuts.

GIN JENNY: It’s so dumb.

WHISKEY JENNY: Why is he there? She’s the one with the ring. She’s doing all the work, but she still has to call him “my lord” and stand behind him, and it drives me up the wall!

GIN JENNY: Oh, no, it’s terrible, I completely agree. That’s in my notes as well. And now that you’ve said elves are jerks, I can’t unsee it. And I don’t know if, without your input if I would have had the same response, but it’s all I can think about. They are so rude to Gimli.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh my god, yeah.

GIN JENNY: Like, for no good reason.

WHISKEY JENNY: That’s my first note. All caps, “Gimli is right to be mad about this.”

GIN JENNY: Yes!

WHISKEY JENNY: And Aragorn, our beloved Strider shakes his head and is like, dwarves are so stubborn. And I’m like, no! This is not Gimli’s fault.

So the elves decide when they first get to that land that because they have a rule that no dwarves can be there, basically—

GIN JENNY: Racist! Just straight up racist!

WHISKEY JENNY: Straight up racist. They’re like, you can come, but we’re going to have to blindfold you. And Gimli’s like, excuse me, I don’t want to come, then. Big problem. And everyone’s like, oh, don’t make a big deal out of it, Gimli.

GIN JENNY: And they just want to blindfold Gimli. They do not bring it up for any of the others.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s purely because he’s a dwarf.

GIN JENNY: It’s especially aggravating because they know that Gimli is someone who chose to come on this very dangerous quest to save all of Middle Earth. They have that information from Elrond.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. They have the update.

GIN JENNY: And he has indeed come through many dangers, defending the ringbearer and stuff. And moreover, it’s a bit rich to not trust him—I’m not trying to be Aragorn about it—but the elves are the ones who lost Gollum! The dwarves haven’t done anything!

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, they did lose him previously.

GIN JENNY: Elves lost Gollum, so I don’t think they can be up on their high horse about, like, dwarves aren’t trustworthy. Like, you lost Gollum!

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I really enjoy that Legolas, though, is like, I mean, it’s not that big if a deal, Gimli. It’s fine, don’t worry about it. And then Aragorn is like, OK, so to make it fair we’re all going to have to be blindfolded. And Legolas is like, whoa, let’s not make any hasty decisions here. [LAUGHTER] Surely we can come to some sort of agreement. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: I did laugh at Legolas for that.

GIN JENNY: I did. That was funny.

WHISKEY JENNY: The nice thing, though, that does happen between elf and dwarf relations in this is Gimli and Legolas become besties in these chapters.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, it was just so sweet.

WHISKEY JENNY: So sweet. It’s all sort of offscreen. It’s just like they start going on more of the little scouting parties while they’re in Lothlorien. I guess because they’re like, well, Jesus, I guess we’re going to spend four months here. We might as well get busy.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, what the hell? Again with the timelines.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it’s very strange. So they start going on scouting parties together, and I imagine that is where their bond is formed. And then when they’re dividing up boats, they’re like, well, obviously we’re going to be in the same boat, because we’re buddies.

GIN JENNY: We’re best friends now.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s so cute.

GIN JENNY: It’s lovely. But yeah, Celeborn just is a steady-on jerk a lot.

WHISKEY JENNY: Eugh.

GIN JENNY: Like, OK, the fellowship arrives. They tell him how sad they are that Gandalf has died. And instead of being courteous and sympathetic to his guests, he’s like, well, number one, dwarves are stupid. And number two, it’s pretty dumb for Gandalf to die in Moria.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah! Come on, man. Can they not mourn him without you butting in, please?

GIN JENNY: Seriously. OK, so Galadriel does correct him. She’s like, hey, that’s rude. And he’s like, oh yeah, my bad, that was pretty rude. But I don’t think you should have to be told that it’s rude to make fun of someone who’s just died to the people who are mourning that person.

WHISKEY JENNY: Who he died in front of. You’d think he would have known that.

GIN JENNY: He’s been around for a while.

WHISKEY JENNY: As they keep reminding us.

GIN JENNY: You know, I was glad Galadriel stuck up for them. But then she’s kind of a jerk too, and she tests all the fellowship members, suggesting telepathically that if they want to go home they could. Like, why? Why?

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I mean, that is kind of a jerk move, but also I see why. Because you want to see what’s going on there.

GIN JENNY: You know what? It’s none of her business. She’s not involved in this.

WHISKEY JENNY: I guess she is because she has a ring?

GIN JENNY: I guess.

WHISKEY JENNY: And all of the world is involved in this because the fate of the world depends upon it.

GIN JENNY: Sure. But she’s not going on the quest, you know what I mean? So for her to be like, I wonder if these people are brave enough to do this quest—like, shut up, man. They already have done it. So!

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, no, that’s true. Yeah. But I can see how you would want to do some recon.

GIN JENNY: I guess. Yeah, it just seemed like a sneaky, snotty way to do it. Like, poke inside their minds.

WHISKEY JENNY: No, absolutely. It’s a very elf movie.

GIN JENNY: It is. But I liked how Boromir said, “It need not be said that I refuse to listen. The men of Minas Tirith are true to their word.” It’s like, good for you, Boromir.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah! So what else did you notice about Lothlorien?

GIN JENNY: Well, I felt really sad for Sam, for a couple of reasons. First of all when the elves show up, they say that Sam was breathing so loud they could have shot him in the dark. And then afterwards you see him on purpose trying to breathe quieter. [LAUGHTER] I was like, aw, Sam.

And then also, I forgot this happened because it doesn’t happen in the movie. Galadriel shows Sam her magic mirror pool, and he looks into it and sees some of his own awful future in Mordor, and also the scouring of the Shire. And he’s really sad about it. He’s like, I don’t want to see any more magic. And he’s just being so brave, and it’s costing him a lot. And I really felt for him.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. He’s always in such an awkward position, where he—you know, eventually he’s the ringbearer himself, but he’s also the sidekick, the companion. So he always is a step behind, and Frodo’s the most important. And Frodo can see the ring on Galadriel’s hand, but he’s like, what are you guys talking about right in front of me? [LAUGHTER] Because I don’t see what you see. And he’s just always stuck in this awkward position where he doesn’t have all the same information. Not to mention the fact that he’s about to die at all times. Like all of them, but yeah. Sam.

I do really love the gift that he received, which is the dirt.

GIN JENNY: Yes.

WHISKEY JENNY: That he gets really emotional about.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. It’s dirt to help him grow plants when he’s back in the Shire. It’s very fertile dirt. I have to say, OK, she gives really cool gifts to people. She gives Aragorn a really fancy sheath for his sword and an expensive brooch. And then she gives Boromir a belt. And it’s like, we get it, you hate Boromir. I got it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Uck. Maybe if people weren’t so mean to Boromir all the time and offered to help Minas Tirith, instead of being like, well, if Minas Tirith could hold the pass, we’d be fine. Like, maybe help them out some and then he wouldn’t feel like he needed the ring.

GIN JENNY: Oh, I will say, my favorite thing is Aragorn—we find out that Aragorn’s plan was always that he was going to eventually go back with Boromir to Minas Tirith and defend Gondor. And I was like, that’s so nice. I’m so glad one person recognizes Gondor’s need and is going to help out.

WHISKEY JENNY: I thought we knew that Aragorn was going to do that from earlier.

GIN JENNY: Did we? I must’ve just forgotten.

WHISKEY JENNY: Basically before they left at Rivendell, I thought he was sort of like, yeah, I guess I’ll probably do that.

GIN JENNY: Anyway, it was nice. It was nice to see that reiterated.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it’s lovely. But even Aragorn was like, well, now that Minas Tirith isn’t holding the pass. It’s like, well, they’re trying, all right?

GIN JENNY: They’re doing their best, man.

WHISKEY JENNY: Nobody else is helping them fight the actual out front battle. Which still has to be fought. You can’t lose that.

GIN JENNY: Right, exactly. You have to hold that territory.

WHISKEY JENNY: Hmph.

GIN JENNY: But she gives Frodo a lantern type of thing, situation. And the line that she says when she gives it to him, “May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out,” is still just a really, really good line. It is justly famous.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I love the lines when she’s talking about Sam’s dirt, too. “It will not keep you on your road, nor defend you against any peril. But if you keep it and see your home again at last, then perhaps it may reward you.”

GIN JENNY: Aw.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s just so sweet, and normal, I guess.

GIN JENNY: It is sweet. And I think it’s nice because Sam kind of keeps hope that he’ll get back to the Shire through everything. So it’s nice for Galadriel to reinforce that and be like, yeah, that’s going to happen. Potentially.

WHISKEY JENNY: So the brooch that she gives Aragorn is token from Arwen? Is that right?

GIN JENNY: Yes, that is my understanding. Yeah, yeah. I think.

WHISKEY JENNY: I vary so much between being—because all the Arwen/Aragorn references are very cloaked in the actual book. And I vary between being getting really annoyed at the Aragorn/Arwen story, because we get so little of it, and then it’s just these veiled references that I’m supposed to care deeply about, I guess. And I’m like, why do you have to be so coded about it, JRR?

But then there’s that one line where he is talking about the hill in Lothlorien, and it gets me every time. [LAUGHTER] Also, I think it comes right after a time when I’m like, I don’t care about Aragorn and Arwen! [LAUGHTER] And then that hill happens and I’m like, OK, I do care actually. It’s so sad!

“‘Here is the heart of elvendom on Earth,’ he said, ‘and here my heart dwells ever, unless there be a light beyond the dark roads that we still must tread, you and I. Come with me.’ And, taking Frodo’s hand in his, he left the hill of Cerin Amroth and came there never again as a living man.” He said “here my heart dwells ever,” and he never gets to go there again! It’s so sad!

GIN JENNY: That is really sad.

WHISKEY JENNY: Aw. So yes, and then they finally leave Lothlorien.

GIN JENNY: In boats. They go down the Great River.

WHISKEY JENNY: Turns out a bunch of time has passed, because Sam’s like, wait, the moon moved. [LAUGHTER] And he thought they lost like two days and actually they lost a month or something? That part was unclear. It was like, eh, elf time.

GIN JENNY: Not really helpful, elves.

WHISKEY JENNY: Really not, no. Yeah, so they’re in the boats, and then they have to fight some orcs. And it’s scary.

GIN JENNY: And I want it noted that as soon as Samwise Gamgee sees something he suspects might be someone following them, he tells someone about it, Frodo.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, he does. He tells Frodo, though, and then they both agree that they don’t need to tell anyone else. Guys, why don’t we share this information?

GIN JENNY: Yeah, I don’t blame Sam. I know that he kind of follows Frodo’s lead. But I don’t know what Frodo’s problem is.

WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t either. I don’t know why he won’t share it.

GIN JENNY: Me neither And what made me really mad is that Sam refers to himself as being, quote, “no more than luggage in a boat.” And Frodo says, ha ha, no. You’re luggage with eyes. Frodo.

WHISKEY JENNY: Frodo!

GIN JENNY: You can take your bullshit and cram it directly up your butt!

WHISKEY JENNY: Seriously.

GIN JENNY: Disrespectful talk to Samwise Gamgee.

WHISKEY JENNY: Extremely disrespectful.

GIN JENNY: A living angel.

WHISKEY JENNY: He is also just so helpful.

GIN JENNY: He is really helpful!

WHISKEY JENNY: Just in the boats, he’s the one who’s like, oh no, let’s not run into those rocks, before they’re about to hit the rocks.

GIN JENNY: Luggage with eyes. What are you, Frodo? Luggage with eyes who’s constantly drawing the attention of the Dark Lord to where you’re at!

WHISKEY JENNY: Just don’t put the damn ring on, dude! It’s not that hard! I mean, it is hard. I know it’s hard. Because the ring wants you to put it on. But like, stop it!

GIN JENNY: But then we have the confrontation between Boromir and Frodo.

WHISKEY JENNY: Mrr.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: This was actually—I love Boromir, but actually he comes off a little worse in that conversation than I remembered. I was like, oh, Boromir, man, no, no. This is bad.

GIN JENNY: It’s bad. I like a lot, though, is he gets this concept in his mind as to why the ring actually should belong to him. And it’s good, because it’s very reminiscent of how Bilbo and Gollum both had a narrative where the ring was legitimately theirs.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, totally.

GIN JENNY: It was really creepy and effective, and I thought that was so, so good.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s very well done. And it makes sense, too, that he’s the one most in need of a powerful, battle-ready army.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: It makes character sense, too. It’s just like, oof, yeah. It is not a good luck for my dude Boromir.

GIN JENNY: It’s not.

WHISKEY JENNY: I do think it’s funny that he’s like, OK, but we haven’t tried it for men. Like, everyone else caved under it, but what about men of Minas Tirith? And it’s like, what? [LAUGHTER] It’s an evil ring. They’re probably still going to cave too.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, Galadriel and Gandalf both felt like they couldn’t take it. So, um.

WHISKEY JENNY: Eventually we just need to say it’s the ring not the bearer.

GIN JENNY: So Frodo puts on the ring to escape from Boromir.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yes. And then decides—he’s basically already made up his mind that he has to go to Mordor. And it cements his thinking that he has to go to Mordor alone. So he’s going to sneak down to the boats.

GIN JENNY: Right. And this is what I in fact found more unsympathetic in Boromir than just the original thing. Boromir goes back to the group and lies about what happened, so it takes them a while to realize that Frodo hasn’t come back to camp.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.

GIN JENNY: I was pretty mad about that with Boromir. Yeah, he was tempted in the moment, fine. It’s an evil ring. But the fact that he didn’t go back and cop to it really, really was not OK.

WHISKEY JENNY: Not cool, man. But Sam uses his non-luggage brain and figures out what Frodo’s plan is and is like, nope, you’re not going without me, and throws himself into the water even though he can’t swim. And he’s a beautiful, beautiful soul.

GIN JENNY: It’s so sweet. And I like it because everyone else in camp just takes off running, like where’s Frodo?

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, that was funny. Aragorn’s like, but buddy up! And everyone’s gone already.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. And he’s like, Boromir, can you go please get the hobbits, and I’m going to just watch Sam. And he goes looking, and Sam thinks through what is going on and how Frodo would have behaved and comes to a conclusion about where he is, which is just really—

WHISKEY JENNY: And it’s a correct conclusion. He nailed it.

GIN JENNY: He knows Frodo. He knows what’s up. It’s just a really great way for them to begin their journey together.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. So they go off in a boat on their own. And I totally forgot that that is where the book ends, because I think the movie ends a little bit later.

GIN JENNY: I mean, in a more sensible spot, I think.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah! So I was all ready, also, for the harrowing capture of Merry and Pippin and for Boromir’s redemption, sort of. And then it didn’t happen, and I was like, oh. Oh. But, no.

GIN JENNY: Oh, it was still so great.

WHISKEY JENNY: Do you have any thoughts on the book as a whole?

GIN JENNY: It was a lot what I remembered. I still found Tom Bombadil really irritating, so that tracks with my memory. [LAUGHTER] I think the biggest thing for me, I was surprised at how much the elves were jerks. I didn’t really remember that, and they are really big jerks.

WHISKEY JENNY: They really are. I don’t think I picked up on the racial coding that was happening the first time I read these. So that’s been a new experience. And there’s so much less fellowship than I was expecting. Like, they get started pretty late all together, and it feels like they’ve formed these unbreakable bonds, but actually they don’t spend all that much time together. They have two big battles—they have this last one and the first one in the mines.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, it’s not a lot.

WHISKEY JENNY: In my head it was so much more of them being all a team together.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: And then they split up. “The Breaking of the Fellowship.” It’s such a harsh chapter title, man.

GIN JENNY: It is. So for next time we’re going to start The Two Towers, my favorite in the series historically. We’ll see if that holds true.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh really?

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I think it’s my least favorite historically.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, a lot of people don’t like it. They don’t like the Sam and Frodo in Mordor stuff. But I do.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s not that I dislike it. It’s just, of all this stuff it’s not my favorite. But don’t we get Ents in this one?

GIN JENNY: Yes, we do get Ents in this one.

WHISKEY JENNY: I do love the Ents a lot. And I love the beginning of the Ent relationship, too, for sure.

GIN JENNY: So we’re reading chapters 1 through 5 of book three, which is the beginning of Two Towers, for next time. So join us if you wish. Spot the mean elves—actually, I think we’re mostly done with the elves. I think this is the most elves we’re going to get, right?

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I think there might be a bunch of them at the end again.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, right, at the end. But for now I think we’re on an elf hiatus. So, yay.

WHISKEY JENNY: Woo hoo.

GIN JENNY: Well, our topic for this week was your brilliant idea, so do you want to tell the people what we’re thinking about this episode?

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. So I think it was sparked by that article referring to Franzen as a great American white male novelist. So they did sort of qualify it like that, I suppose. But I was like, man, that title always gets thrown around to white dudes.

GIN JENNY: To white dudes, it does.

WHISKEY JENNY: So we thought we would throw it around to some some non-white dudes.

GIN JENNY: Woo hoo!

WHISKEY JENNY: Or some non–white dudes.

GIN JENNY: Yes, with an en dash.

WHISKEY JENNY: Get that punctuation correct, listeners.

GIN JENNY: So important.

WHISKEY JENNY: For those of you taking notes at home. [LAUGHTER] So we each picked five people that we would like to anoint with the title of Great American Novelist.

GIN JENNY: Before we start, I have a question for you. As I was making these notes, I was thinking, this is hard for me because I don’t read that much literary fiction by American authors, and most of what I do read by American authors is genre fiction. And then I discovered that what I think is that a Great American Novel can’t be a work of genre fiction, that it has to be literary fiction. And I was wondering if you felt the same.

WHISKEY JENNY: No, I picked a couple of genre people.

GIN JENNY: Oh, good for you.

WHISKEY JENNY: I think you’re probably right in that the traditional interpretation of it is never a genre.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: Unless it transcends the genre.

GIN JENNY: Right. I was sad to find this mental block in myself. Because I love genre fiction, as you know.

WHISKEY JENNY: Gosh, does that bring up a good point? Should we talk about, did you have any other qualifications or things they were looking for in these people?

GIN JENNY: Well, what were you looking for in the people that you were considering?

WHISKEY JENNY: I was looking for if I thought you really captured a specific American experience.

GIN JENNY: Mmhm, me too.

WHISKEY JENNY: —was one thing. Or if your books were like, an event when it came out.

GIN JENNY: Oh, interesting. OK.

WHISKEY JENNY: Not a Game of Thrones event, but an everyone takes notice sort of event.

GIN JENNY: I didn’t think of that, but that’s a really good qualifier. So can we start by you telling me one that the qualifier was that it was an event? Because I’m curious what’s an example of that.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I crossed off Donna Tartt because I was like, well surely Gin Jenny will mention her, so I don’t have to waste a space on her.

GIN JENNY: That’s true. She’s on my list.

WHISKEY JENNY: OK, great. she’s one that I would put in that category of when there’s a new Donna Tartt book, it’s a thing, you know?

GIN JENNY: Mmhm. She’s published so few.

WHISKEY JENNY: For valid reasons, and yeah, because there are so few. So the other person, that I’m actually using a space on— [LAUGHTER] and thanks for letting me do that.

GIN JENNY: This was not discussed, listeners. She just knows me.

WHISKEY JENNY: So the other person that I would put in this category of an event is Marisha Pessl, who, we read Night Film for podcast and have also both previously read Special Topics in Calamity Physics. And I mean, they’re not perfect books, but I think they are very impressive endeavors, both of them.

GIN JENNY: Ambitious.

WHISKEY JENNY: And I guess that’s another qualification, is the ambition behind the books, too.

GIN JENNY: That’s a great point.

WHISKEY JENNY: So that’s who I’m putting up on the board. Who’s your first one?

GIN JENNY: So I think I also agree that I wanted it to capture the American experience, whatever that may be. And I did also think about ambition. And also kind of—well, no, that’s not true. I was going to say variety, but that’s not really true. Although if an author does have a wide variety of things, I do find that at least interesting.

WHISKEY JENNY: Ooh, like within a single author’s oeuvre?

GIN JENNY: Yes, exactly. If they try different things.

WHISKEY JENNY: OK, cool. That’s a good point, yeah.

GIN JENNY: I didn’t actually put that into practice. I said that to you, but it’s not really what I’ve gone by.

WHISKEY JENNY: I think—it’s a good note, though, I think. We’ll pick it out there. [LAUGHTER] Yeah.

GIN JENNY: All right. Well, we’ve already spoiled one of my picks, so I’m just going to say it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, sorry.

GIN JENNY: Donna Tartt. Donna Tartt. No, don’t be. [LAUGHTER] I think each of her books is very local in an interesting way. Like, Secret History is very, very New Hampshire. The one I didn’t like—what is it, The Little Friend—is very much like the South. And The Goldfinch is several different locations, but I thought she did a good job with each of them.

WHISKEY JENNY: Totally.

GIN JENNY: That was the thing for me. And then also, yeah, the ambition and scope of her books. They’re all just big, strange kinds of books that deal with a lot of themes.

WHISKEY JENNY: Lot of themes, lot of plot, lot of characters. Yeah.

GIN JENNY: So I say Donna Tartt. Also, I feel like as an author, she has author mystique, you know what I mean? She’s always looking so cool in her author photos and is like, I only release one book every 10 years.

WHISKEY JENNY: Totally. Absolutely. Does she give a lot of interviews? I feel like no.

GIN JENNY: I feel like no. Also, I went to a talk she gave one time and I had her sign my copy of A Secret History, which is not something I really care about usually. And I gushed about it a bunch, and she was like, [VERY QUIET] thank you.

WHISKEY JENNY: Man. Respect.

GIN JENNY: I was like, all right.

WHISKEY JENNY: Sure. I guess that’s just her way.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, I guess so. But that seems like a very Great American Author thing to do.

WHISKEY JENNY: Absolutely. [LAUGHTER] Uh, your praise is noted.

GIN JENNY: Right.

WHISKEY JENNY: My second one is, I’ll say Alice McDermott next, because I think that she also does what you said for Donna Tartt, which is really get into a very specific place and maybe time. Alice McDermott, I think her jam is Catholics in the northeast, I suppose.

GIN JENNY: My people! My ancestors!

WHISKEY JENNY: Your ancestors, yes. And I am not a Catholic in the northeast, so I cannot speak to its accuracy. But having read one, all the rest of them feel very familiar. So they’re at the very least consistent.

GIN JENNY: High praise indeed.

WHISKEY JENNY: I just think that she also captures the giant range of emotions that often goes overlooked in small domestic moments. But there’s still just a lot going on behind the scenes of that one visit to someone’s shop, and that one conversation between these two people. So I think it gets at something in the human experience. How’s that?

GIN JENNY: It’s very good.

WHISKEY JENNY: Who’s your next person?

GIN JENNY: I’m going to go with another Alice—Alice Walker. As you know, I really love The Color Purple. The Color Purple is one of my all time favorite books, in my top 10 for sure. And The Color Purple is set in 20th century South, and I just think she does so well at exploring the racism of that era, and also writing about the ways that people found hope in very dark circumstances, but not eliding how much suffering they endured based on white people’s prejudice, which I feel like is pretty fundamental to America. So yeah, I just think that her writing is amazing. I don’t know what to say. I love The Color Purple so, so, so much. It’s, gosh, it’s so great. I could read it every year. I pretty much read it every year.

WHISKEY JENNY: Is that the one that you’re constantly deciding whether or not to Forcen me to read?

GIN JENNY: Yes it is.

WHISKEY JENNY: Where do you stand?

GIN JENNY: Yeah, I mean, if we do the Forcening again, I’m definitely going to Forcen you to read it, for sure.

WHISKEY JENNY: What do you mean if we do the Forcening again?

GIN JENNY: I mean this year.

WHISKEY JENNY: We’re not going to do it again? I thought we were.

GIN JENNY: No, no no! I more meant, you might not wish to be Forcened to read The Color Purple, and I don’t want to Forcen you if you actually really don’t want to. Because it’s a rough read. There’s a lot of violence. It’s a dark book, even though ultimately, I think, really hopeful.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, we definitely will do the Forcening again. I think we both sort of forgot about it after this Hatening.

GIN JENNY: Yes we did.

WHISKEY JENNY: We should do it soon.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, we should reconvene the Forcening. OK. If, when we reach the Forcening, you’re up for quite a dark book, that’s probably what I’ll choose. Alice Walker, the best.

WHISKEY JENNY: OK. I guess these three are all more on the early side of their careers.

GIN JENNY: Ooh, exciting! That’s great.

WHISKEY JENNY: —than the previous Alices we’ve talked about.

GIN JENNY: You’re anointing them early.

WHISKEY JENNY: Or maybe this is like a Great American Novelist preview. I hope they become Great American Novelists, maybe? I don’t know.

GIN JENNY: I love it.

WHISKEY JENNY: But so in this youngster’s category, now, I’m putting—I think we actually read all three of their books, too, for podcast. I think maybe they’re all your picks, so great job choosing.

GIN JENNY: Thank you.

WHISKEY JENNY: The first one I will mention is Yaa Gyasi, who wrote Homegoing.

GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah, yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: Did we read that for podcast? We did, right?

GIN JENNY: Did we? I don’t—

WHISKEY JENNY: Did we not?

GIN JENNY: —remember. We might have. Gosh, we’ve been podcasting for so long, who knows?

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, to humble brag. [LAUGHTER] It just gets hard to remember all the lovely episodes we’ve spent together.

GIN JENNY: Yes, it does.

WHISKEY JENNY: But I just thought that that novel was stunning. It had such a scope, it had such a hard structure to accomplish. And it totally nailed it. And I was just blown away by it. Every chapter is a different perspective, and it’s a different generation, starting with slaves from Ghana who get forcibly brought over to the US, and runs through the present day of all of their descendants. And it’s just, it’s breathtaking, really, I thought. So yeah.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, absolutely. It’s amazing.

WHISKEY JENNY: So I can’t wait to see more from her.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. OK, so my next one, actually—OK, so this is not so much a Great American Novelist nomination as a Great American Novel, which I hope is OK.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.

GIN JENNY: It’s Americanah, by Chimamada Ngozi Adichie, who is Nigerian, so I’m cheating a little. But I think that this novel gets really deeply into immigrant experience and race in America in ways that I think are really interesting. And I feel like those are two—race and immigration are two really huge parts of the American experience, so I’m fudging it a little. But I think I’m right, though. It’s called Americanah, so it’s basically right there in the title.

WHISKEY JENNY: I think it’s certainly a Great American Novel. I eliminated her purely because I was like, wait, is she Nigerian-American or is she just Nigerian? And she’s just Nigerian. But I needed random reasons to eliminate things, so it was actually helpful.

GIN JENNY: I understand perfectly.

WHISKEY JENNY: So I don’t think there’s any rules that you’re breaking. I don’t think we established novel versus novelist. But I agree that that book was so great.

GIN JENNY: Yes, it’s really good. I want to reread it. It’s been—I don’t think I’ve read it since we read it for podcast, so it’s been a while, and I want to—

WHISKEY JENNY: I definitely haven’t.

GIN JENNY: —want to go back to it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, the second person who’s only written a debut—I should mention, Homegoing was her debut novel, so it’s even more impressive that she accomplished all that. So the other debut author that we read for podcast that I wanted to mention is Brit Bennett, who wrote The Mothers.

GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah. Oh, that’s a good one.

WHISKEY JENNY: Which I think we both really enjoyed. It wasn’t perfect, but sort of in a similar way to Alice McDermott, I though it also did a great job of capturing the drama of family life and small moments, and it also had that ambition and scope, in that it had a sort of a Greek chorus character.

GIN JENNY: Which I liked a lot.

WHISKEY JENNY: So she gets points on the board for that, [LAUGHTER] for trying new things like that. And just the writing was gorgeous. What are all the Great American Novelist writing words I can use? It was lush. The prose was lush.

GIN JENNY: Lyrical.

WHISKEY JENNY: Elegiac, lyrical. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: Elegiac. Nice, that’s really good.

WHISKEY JENNY: So I loved her writing, and for both of these people. I’m just so excited for whatever they do next.

GIN JENNY: Oh yeah, absolutely. Well, now I’ve got an older entry into the category.

WHISKEY JENNY: OK, hit me.

GIN JENNY: Which is Shirley Jackson, who I just love.

WHISKEY JENNY: Ooh.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, this is the closest to a genre pic that I had.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s pretty genre, right?

GIN JENNY: It’s pretty—yeah, it’s genre-y-ish, kind of.

WHISKEY JENNY: OK.

GIN JENNY: Well, because The Haunting of Hill House is horror, but if someone shelved it in literary fiction and not horror I wouldn’t be like, that’s absurd.

WHISKEY JENNY: Get it out, now!

GIN JENNY: That’s ridiculous!

WHISKEY JENNY: Thank about what you’ve done!

GIN JENNY: Yeah, it’s definitely ambivalent if there’s any supernatural elements going on. I don’t have much to add. I just really think her books are super weird and creepy and get at the claustrophobia of being looked at in society, which I think is really interesting. And I don’t know, I just think she is the best.

WHISKEY JENNY: I think I had a very strange interpretation of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

GIN JENNY: Wait, what was your interpretation?

WHISKEY JENNY: I was just like, I just wanted those two sisters to be happy, and whatever it takes for them to be happy, I’m fine with. Like, kill whoever you want.

GIN JENNY: That is a hot take.

WHISKEY JENNY: I kind of read the book as a happy ending at the end, because they get to just do whatever they want now.

GIN JENNY: Oh man, that’s amazing.

WHISKEY JENNY: But I think you’re right that it captures that skin crawling sensation of everyone dissecting you and being under the microscope. And I think because she captured that so well for those two sisters, I was 100% on their side no matter what they ever decided to do. [LAUGHTER] So it’s a testament to her skill.

GIN JENNY: Oh, wonderful. Well, good, I’m glad my choice is approved. What’s your final one?

WHISKEY JENNY: Of course, all of your choices are always approved. My final one is—we read him for podcast, but it wasn’t a debut novel. He’s got several out, so he’s maybe not quite as early in his career. But I just thought The Changeling, by Victor LaValle was—

GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: —such a blast. And I guess this is my sort of genre pick. Well, it’s straight up genre.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: It was definitely horror. But I don’t read a lot of horror, and I was so impressed at what he was able to accomplish within that horror novel, and everything that he covered theme-wise and emotion-wise. I was impressed at everything that he was able to say about race and parenthood and ginormous topics like that through the sort of folk tale and fairy tales entryway that he picked.

GIN JENNY: I agree, and I read one of his other books, The Devil in Silver I think similarly did a really great job with dealing with a lot of issues in the carceral mental health treatment, and race as well, through the lens of maybe there’s a monster in this institution. So I agree, I think that’s a great choice. Also our only dude. Is that true?

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I believe that is true.

GIN JENNY: Really happy with that, actually. OK, so my last one is Zora Neale Hurston. I just love Zora Neale Hurston. Separate from her novel writing, she did a lot of really important work collecting folklore, which is really important to preserve. They recently had that thing come out that she had interviewed a survivor of the slave ships, which is really an incredible thing to preserve. But also the book that I read of her, Their Eyes Were Watching God was again just a really great book about race and gender in America. I’m probably not going to reread it because it deals with the Great Flood of 1927, which is too much for my little heart. But it was a really good book, and she’s an amazing author, and I feel like everyone should be reading her books. Everyone without exception should be reading her books in school.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.

GIN JENNY: She’s the one I feel most strongly is 100% Great American Novelist.

WHISKEY JENNY: Wow. Great endorsement.

GIN JENNY: And that’s all I got.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well hooray! Yeah, they’re all on the board now. It’s official.

GIN JENNY: If you have suggestions for Great American Novelists who are not white dudes, leave us a comment, or send us an email, or tweet at me. Because I had a hard time coming up with my list, and I’d be curious to get additions for it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Always. Well, for this time we read Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson, which was originally brought to my attention by Friend of the Podcast Ashley. In this book, our main girl is Mila, and her best friend Riley has just died. She thinks it was murder. The autopsy went down as suicide. And so she does a spell and brings her friend back from the dead. What did you think of it?

GIN JENNY: So I liked it. It was a fun summer read in a lot of ways. But also, oh my gosh, there were parts that were very, very, very dark indeed. So a roller coaster of reader response.

WHISKEY JENNY: Seriously! Yeah, it felt really packed in, too, to me. It’s pretty short, but there’s a lot of roller coaster twists and turns emotionally in it that I did not see coming. So it felt especially whiplashy, almost.

GIN JENNY: Yes, it did. There were a lot of tonal swings. Which in fact just kind of resonant with my past experience of Lily Anderson’s books. Mostly they’re super charming and delightful, and then there’s some dark as hell moments, and then it’s back to being charming. And you’re like, wait, did that just happen? But it did.

WHISKEY JENNY: Can we just—yeah.

GIN JENNY: Let’s start with the good stuff, I guess? The charming part.

WHISKEY JENNY: For me, the most charming was that when she resurrects Riley, she also accidentally resurrects two other girls who also died recently in this town, ah-ha-hem. And these girls were in the popular crowd, and they were not friends of Mila and Riley, and they were mean to them. But throughout the week a friendship formed between all four of them. And I found it really, really sweet.

GIN JENNY: I did, too. So I didn’t care that much about resolving the murders, and they also didn’t seem to care that much about solving their own murders.

WHISKEY JENNY: Right. Which is an interesting stance, but sure.

GIN JENNY: It is, yeah. But I really enjoyed them all going around town buying clothes, or stealing clothes, or stealing food, and hanging out and developing their grudging respect. That was fun. And I liked that the book didn’t pretend that either side of them didn’t exist. It was true that June and Dayton could be really fun and nice, and it was also true that they were horrible to Mila and Riley when they were alive. So those things are both true, and I like that Lily Anderson doesn’t try to pretend one of those is canceled out by the other one.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I agree. It was well handled. And it’s not saying that, oh, actually Mila and Riley just misunderstood them. They have that depth to them.

GIN JENNY: I really loved Dayton. I was so charmed with Dayton.

WHISKEY JENNY: She was so nice! Yeah, she was great.

GIN JENNY: My favorite part is Mila’s trying to figure out how to do another spell, and she says, “Now we have to figure out where to get a calf’s heart,” and Dayton claps her hands and says, “From a baby cow!”

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, gosh, yeah. They were just great.

GIN JENNY: She was great. And she always tries to protect Mila. She goes with the flow, she’s really cool. She’s nice about being resurrected, which I would be pretty annoyed by.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I think when we originally picked it we talked about this, but one of the things that Ashley really liked about it that I also did was the worldbuilding around the their zombie state, which is that they had to be within 100 feet, I think—100 paces? I don’t know. 100 somethings—of Mila and they look totally normal. But when they go outside of that zone, they look like scary zombies and they shamble around. And they don’t have some of their memories, but otherwise they are themselves. They don’t want any brains or anything.

GIN JENNY: Right. Yes, they do not. Which is great. I’m all for that.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I found it was a really interesting take on the zombie structure, and also really helped build that grudging respect that we like so much, because they had to be around each other all the time. I think the counter side to that is we don’t ever really get to see Riley and Mila be friends. We get to see Mila grieving her, and then when Riley comes back, she obviously is pretty conflicted about being brought back—rightfully so!

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: But therefore the only glimpses really that we get of their friendship is kind of muted. And especially in contrast with this beautiful blossoming friendship with the other two girls, I wish we had gotten more of their friendship before she died.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, no, I did too.

WHISKEY JENNY: Any other charming stuff?

GIN JENNY: No, do you want to talk about the traumatizing stuff?

WHISKEY JENNY: Yup, that’s all of the other notes.

GIN JENNY: There were a couple of things. Where to begin? You go ahead, because there was one huge thing that was going to haunt my nightmares forever, but there were several other things that I was like, Jesus.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well OK, I would say a compliment of the sad things is, I think at the very beginning it is really accurate at the grief of missing small things. Like Mila says something about how the hardest part of Riley’s funeral is she doesn’t have anyone to sit with, because normally she’d be sitting with Riley. And she wants to text Riley all this stuff, and I thought that the everyday responses were really spot on.

OK, so the first thing that I was like, whoa, holy shit, is Mila’s family is not great.

GIN JENNY: No.

WHISKEY JENNY: And it’s not even really addressed. It’s just like, her parents are awful and are like, I don’t know, it’s been a couple of days. You’re not over your best friend dying yet? Why aren’t you over her?

GIN JENNY: Right, shockingly dying. Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: And she’s really—Mila herself is really mean to her sisters, but then her sisters are also like, I don’t know, could you cry quieter at night? [LAUGHTER] There’s a lot going on there.

GIN JENNY: None of the adults in this book are much good.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, no. But I kept expecting it to be like, actually, my parents didn’t say that, I was just misinterpreting it. At the end, we came to a mutual understanding. It was like, no, her parents are just awful the whole time, but it’s not the point of the book.

GIN JENNY: Which I guess is like real life. Teenagers have things happen to them that don’t involve their terrible parents.

WHISKEY JENNY: True. Yeah, but man they were terrible.

GIN JENNY: Yeah they really were bad. Another set of responsible adults in Mila’s life are the people at the magic shop.

WHISKEY JENNY: Mmhm.

GIN JENNY: They show up at the zombie hideout with guns and just shoot the whole place up while Mila’s inside.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. That was the scariest part to me. The old ladies, who she thought she could trust, with guns.

GIN JENNY: And they’re not sorry.

WHISKEY JENNY: No, not at all. They’re like, well, you shouldn’t have done that, so we were in the right. Um, no you weren’t, ladies. You were not in the right.

GIN JENNY: You just can’t show up and shoot up a house that contains children. You just can’t do it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Like, no.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, that was really, really alarming.

WHISKEY JENNY: You brought a bajillion shotguns to a bunch of children. What are you doing? So that was really scary.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, it was scary. And at the end the adults are like, well, it was your own fault. And Mila’s like, OK, I can kind of see that. It’s like, no! Nuh-uh!

WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t know, I kind of feel like it was the fault of the people with the shotguns.

GIN JENNY: Yeah! And Mila’s like, yeah, I should be more responsible. Like, no! [LAUGHTER]

WHISKEY JENNY: Mm-mm. Mm-mm.

GIN JENNY: I mean, she should be more responsible, but shotguns are not an appropriate response.

WHISKEY JENNY: Agreed. Yeah, for sure. Also I don’t feel like the girls were that much of abominations. They’re going to go back in their grave at the end of seven days. I don’t understand what the big deal was.

GIN JENNY: And they were being pretty nice and chill. They did a couple of dead girl shenanigans that they oughtn’t. [LAUGHTER] But when they were alive, they did live girl shenanigans that they oughtn’t. So settle down.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, they didn’t come out at anyone with shotguns, either, so in the grand tally here [LAUGHTER] of shotguns.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, the magic shop owner’s not coming out ahead.

WHISKEY JENNY: Not at all. OK, the next traumatizing thing I want to talk about is Riley and Mila’s fight. Is it time for spoilers? can we do spoilers now?

GIN JENNY: It is now the spoiler section.

WHISKEY JENNY: So it turns out that the person who’s been doing all the murders is Riley’s older brother Xander, who Mila has always had a crush on, and who has been becoming closer and closer with after Riley’s death. They don’t have—they’re pretty sure it’s him, but Mila’s like, OK, well, we have to end him now. And Riley’s like, I need a little time, because he’s my brother and it’s hard for me to believe this, and maybe there’s another explanation, and I don’t think we should jump to conclusions. And Mila gets so furious at her for not thinking her brother is a murderer. And calls her an abomination.

GIN JENNY: Oh no, yeah, that’s right.

WHISKEY JENNY: And leaves her, which is even worse than just leaving the person who you were a ride for, which she is. But Riley is super dependent on her. She doesn’t have a cell phone. She can’t call anyone else. She doesn’t have any—

GIN JENNY: Recourse.

WHISKEY JENNY: —other people she can call. She has literally nothing else she can do. She can’t be seen around town because A, she’s supposed to be dead, and B, when Mila leaves she’ll turn into a zombie looking person. And it was just like, that’s not even a bridge too far. That’s a continent to far. [LAUGHTER] You just can’t do that to her. And she did. And then at the end, Riley had to apologize to Mila and was like, I’m sorry I didn’t immediately believe my brother was a murderer. And Mila’s like, that’s OK, I understand, [LAUGHTER] and never apologizes for her horrible behavior. I was so upset about that.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, and especially because Riley did not ask to be resurrected. That’s all on Mila.

WHISKEY JENNY: No. She did not.

GIN JENNY: So Mila has resurrected her and then stranded her. That’s terrible.

WHISKEY JENNY: Can I just read the passage? Because reading the words again are, oh my god. “‘The coven was right,’ I say softly. ‘You’re an abomination. My best friend, my real best friend, wouldn’t protect a murderer—’” who by the way is her brother and she just wants to make sure. “‘So whoever you are, whatever you are, you can go straight to hell. Because you aren’t the Riley Greenway I wanted to bring back.’ And then I leave her crying in front of the house she’s not welcome in any more, the gash in her forehead spreading wider and wider the farther away I get.”

GIN JENNY: It’s brutal.

WHISKEY JENNY: Dude, you can’t do that. You just can’t do that.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, no, it’s terrible.

WHISKEY JENNY: So let’s talk about Xander. Did you see that coming? Because I did not.

GIN JENNY: I pegged him as the murderer immediately.

WHISKEY JENNY: I did not. Did not at all.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, I did.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, good for you. Congratulations.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t mean that sarcastically. I mean actually congratulations, you did it.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, no, I don’t really guess endings, partly because I’m not that smart, and partly because I read the end so I never really have a chance to think about things. I’m just like, oh, I wonder who the murderer is, and then I go and check. Which in fact happened. I was like, oh, I bet he’s the murderer, and then I flipped to the end, and he was indeed the murderer.

WHISKEY JENNY: Super the murderer.

GIN JENNY: He’s super was. For a weird reason. I wasn’t totally sure about his motive. But regardless, I will never ever stop being traumatized by the fact that Mila casts a spell to make the murderer rot, and he starts growing mushrooms, mushy white mushrooms all over his body.

WHISKEY JENNY: Everywhere.

GIN JENNY: And at the end she talks about how he has mushy white mushrooms instead of tonsils. And I’m telling you that because I don’t want to be alone with it. I have to live my life now with that image in my mind.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yep. Everywhere. Everywhere!

GIN JENNY: Ew, tonsils. In his mouth! Bleh!

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, god.

GIN JENNY: It was such an effectively gruesome image.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it was very gruesome, and a pretty dark ending, because he ends up trying to murder them all, and then they have to murder him. And I really like a protective older brother character, and I was very sad to see it twisted into something so horrifying this time. It was not my favorite. [LAUGHTER] And I just did not see it coming. I mean, I guess once the mushroom thing started happening [LAUGHTER] the writing was on the wall.

GIN JENNY: Sure. [LAUGHTER] It was so gross. It was so, so gross.

WHISKEY JENNY: Golly, it was. But then have that happy, fun yay we’re dying tomorrow party. Which was actually really sweet. I loved the party at the end.

GIN JENNY: The undead girl gang was the best part of this book, Undead Girl Gang.

WHISKEY JENNY: For sure. Yeah, their last party was very sweet. I like the activities that they chose to do. I thought that was really fun.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, I did too. I have one final thing. So a content note for talking about suicide now. I guess this is probably really predictable, but I felt like the way the book talked about suicide was pretty irresponsible. I know, you’re shocked that I would have that opinion about something.

WHISKEY JENNY: In what way? Can you say on?

GIN JENNY: Yeah, so none of the adults in the book respond in a helpful way to what in their mind is a rash of teen suicides. And I get that in part the book is satirizing people who respond badly to unexpected death. But it felt really irresponsible to me in a YA book not to have a voice of reason who’s actually addressing the reality of teen suicide. It’s almost not even treated as a real problem.

And especially—this is what I really, really hated—there’s a part where Mila is talking to her school counselor, who later we’re supposed to view as a voice of reason, even though her school counselor was one of the shotgun people. But I don’t think we’re meant to think Dr. Miller is a terrible person, right?

WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t think we are either, which was surprising, because she’s a shotgun person.

GIN JENNY: Shotgun! [LAUGHTER] So Mila says, “What makes more sense, three unrelated suicides, or three connected murders?” And the book doesn’t push back on that. And it’s very infuriating to me, because it is very basic and find-outable information about suicide contagion—knowing someone who has died by suicide is a really significant risk factor for attempting suicide. So if two students die in a suicide pact, as Dayton and June are believed to have done, then the other kids at school are actually at really high risk. And Dr. Miller should have known that, and the book should have known that, and it was really messed up that they didn’t say anything about it. And I know I’m getting super serious about a goofy fun book, but I feel really strongly about this, and I was upset that the book didn’t even talk about that at all.

WHISKEY JENNY: You know, you still have a responsibility to get important things right, no matter how goofy and fun your book is.

GIN JENNY: Right.

WHISKEY JENNY: First of all. And second of all, this got plenty dark in other cases. So it’s not like it’s afraid to go there, I suppose.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, so that made it—I enjoyed the book mostly, but that made it harder for me to view it as just a fun romp. I would be reluctant to recommend it to an actual teen.

WHISKEY JENNY: True. Yeah.

GIN JENNY: Take care of yourselves, guys.

WHISKEY JENNY: Always.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, so do you want to hear about what we’re reading for next time?

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, lay it on me.

GIN JENNY: So for next time we’re reading Confessions of the Fox, by Jordy Rosenberg. It is about a college professor who finds a manuscript that appears to be the memoirs of a real thief from the Georgian era in London, Jack Sheppard. And the professor’s annotating the manuscript and trying to authenticate it. And it appears from reading it that Jack Sheppard was a trans guy, as is the professor. So it’s about Jack Sheppard and how he comes to his life of crime, and his rivalry with a thief taker and criminal gang leader called Jonathan Wild. And then in the footnotes it’s also a little bit about the professor’s life and his job woes and the run ins he has with an increasingly capitalist university situation. And it just sounds really weird and fun and cool and weird. Sarah McCarry, who is another author I like, wrote a really good review of it on Tor.com and said she just really loved it, so I’m super excited about it.

WHISKEY JENNY: It sounds really cool. I love some fun footnotes. I love a double structure like this.

GIN JENNY: Yes! Me too, me too.

WHISKEY JENNY: So it should be fun.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, excellent. I’m really looking forward to it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yay!

GIN JENNY: Well, this has been the Reading the End bookcast with the Demographically Similar Jennys. You can visit the blog at readingtheend.com. You can follow me on Twitter @readingtheend. We are both on Goodreads as Whiskey Jenny and Gin Jenny. And you can email us, please do, at readingtheend@gmail.com. If you like what we do, you can become a podcast patron at Patreon.com/readingtheend. And if you’re listening to us on iTunes, please leave us a review.

And until next time, a quote from Too Much and Not the Mood, by Durga Chew-Bose. “Backyard things have never appealed to me. Weather-worn plastic chairs, flimsy, spongy cushions, benches with wrought iron roses, ivy, and grape clusters that look, however modest, haunted or trapped in time—cursed, even. Backyards for me have either been fiction or totally spooky. There are few things more unnerving than when, in the dead of night, a backyard light motion detects something but reveals nothing.”

THEME SONG: You don’t judge a book by its cover. Page one’s not a much better view. And shortly you’re gonna discover the middle won’t mollify you. So whether whiskey’s your go-to or you’re like my gin-drinking friend, no matter what you are imbibing you’ll be better off in the end reading the end.

The post Reading the End Bookcast, Ep. 105 – Great American Novelists and Lily Anderson’s Undead Girl Gang appeared first on Reading the End.

This can be a quick one. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

So here are my fifteen books that will always stick with me, more or less in the order in which they entered my life:

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Emily Climbs, L.M .Montgomery
Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
Macbeth, William Shakespeare
The Chosen, Chaim Potok
The Color Purple, Alice Walker
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling
Greensleeves, Eloise Jarvis McGraw
American Gods, Neil Gaiman
The Invention of Love, Tom Stoppard
I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith
Showings, Julian of Norwich
The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie

These are all books that left me breathless.  Is that what we were after?

The post Booking Through Thursday appeared first on Reading the End.

The Color Purple. Wow.

When I was young, my mother had told me once that The Color Purple was one of her favorite books of all time, and I remember her telling me her favorite line (“White folks is a miracle of affliction”), and in early middle school I asked her where her copy was because I wanted to read it. And that’s the only time in my entire life I can remember my mother telling me not to read a book. She said wait a few years and I’d like it better. When I finally did read it (and oh my God, it blew me away), I assumed that she had been trying to steer me clear of it because of the fairly extensive sexual and violent content, but I asked her and she said no, she just thought I’d like it better if I waited a few years. She said that giving it to an eleven-year-old to read would be like giving To Kill a Mockingbird to a precocious kid of eight – the kid might be able to read all the words, but s/he’d be missing out on all the richness that’s there. She said you only get to read a book for the first time once, and there are some books that you just really deserve to have the best first-reading experience possible.

I totally agree with that.  And this is a damn good book.  It’s one of those books that everyone should read.  Everyone in the whole world.  In fact I’m just off to ship a few hundred copies off to world leaders.  Do ’em good.

P.S. Although they are both Important Black American Women writers, I am forced to read Toni Morrison much more often than I am forced to read Alice Walker.  In fact I have never had to read Alice Walker, except for one short story once, whereas I have had to deal with Toni Morrison kind of a lot.  And you know what, you know what?  I.  Don’t.  Like.  Her.  Beloved makes me feel queasy.  The Color Purple is a much better book and everyone should just, just, just revise their damn syllabuses.

The post The Color Purple, Alice Walker appeared first on Reading the End.