Episode 124

Content warnings for the review portion of Give Me Some Truth: We talk about an adult having a relationship with a fifteen-year-old. They don’t end up having sex, but we Jennies were both seriously troubled by it. We also talk some about alcoholism and alcohol abuse.

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

1:18 – What we’re reading
6:08 – What we’re playing
11:04 – The Three Musketeers readalong (Chapters 1-7)
24:38 – Update on summer book preview
26:26 – Fall book preview
34:33 – Give Me Some Truth, Eric Gansworth
44:37 – What we’re reading next time!

What we talked about:

I Believe in a Thing Called Love, Maurene Goo
Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir
The Right Swipe, Alisha Rai
Fumbled, Alexa Martin
Intercepted, Alexa Martin
Parcheesi
bouldering
Untitled Goose Game
trailer for the Untitled Goose Game
interview with the Untitled Goose Game geniuses
The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas pere
The MVP Machine, Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik
The Rest of the Story, Sarah Dessen
In West Mills, De’Shawn Charles Winslow
Hot Comb, Ebony Flowers
Evie Drake Starts Over, Linda Holmes
There’s Something about Sweetie, Sandhya Menon
Magic for Liars, Sarah Gailey (podcast about it!)
In West Mills, De’Shawn Charles Winslow
Null Set, SL Huang
The Right Swipe, Alisha Rai
When the Plums Are Ripe, Patrice Nganang

Whiskey Jenny’s Fall 2019 Picks

Permanent Record, Mary HK Choi
No Judgments, Meg Cabot (except Gin Jenny kills her buzz about it)
Royal Holiday, Jasmine Guillory
The Starless Sea, Erin Morgenstern

Gin Jenny’s Fall 2019 Picks

Chilling Effect, Valerie Valdes
Out of Darkness, Shining Light, Petina Gappah
The Twisted Ones, T. Kingfisher
Light It Up, Kekla Magoon

Castle Hangnail, Ursula Vernon
The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
The Rock and the River, Kekla Magoon
How It Went Down, Kekla Magoon
Give Me Some Truth, Eric Gansworth
An Indigenous People’s History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Custer Died for Your Sins, Vine Deloria Jr

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

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

WHISKEY JENNY: And I am Whiskey Jenny.

GIN JENNY: And we are here again to talk about books and literary happenings. On today’s podcast, we are going to commence our readalong of The Three Musketeers. We’re going to do our fall book preview, which is always so much fun. And we will review Eric Gansworth’s not as chill and sweet YA novel as I was expecting, [LAUGHTER] Give Me Some Truth.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, chill and sweet are not words that I would use to describe this book.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, what I took away from book descriptions about it was not representative of the contents of the book. Whiskey Jenny, what are you reading?

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh I just finished I Believe in a Thing Called Love, by Maureen Goo.

GIN JENNY: Aw, how is it? I have that checked out right now.

WHISKEY JENNY: It was—good. I liked it. No, I liked it. It was just like—it felt a lot more lying-ish than I was expecting.

GIN JENNY: Oh, OK. Is that the food truck one?

WHISKEY JENNY: No, it’s not the food truck one. It’s the K-drama one.

GIN JENNY: Right.

WHISKEY JENNY: And our main girl decides to follow the steps in a K-drama to get this boy to like her.

GIN JENNY: Right. No, I already read that one. I have a different—I think I have the food truck one checked out.

WHISKEY JENNY: OK, OK. And yeah, it just felt a lot more like, oh, this feels—

GIN JENNY: Deceitful?

WHISKEY JENNY: Deceitful, and my stomach hurts. I was like, oh, this will be like a fun little YA romance. And also I didn’t really like the boy that much. And I think that liking the love interest is quite key for me enjoying a romance. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: Oh my gosh, absolutely.

WHISKEY JENNY: I was like, I don’t really care about this Luca dude, so. [LAUGHTER] It made me want to read more by the author for sure. I really liked the voice and the jokes and things. But I think the concept was not for me.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, that makes total sense. I believe this one is her first novel. So I enjoyed it enough that I was like, oh yeah, I want to see how she develops as an author. So I’m optimistic about the food truck one.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I mean, I love a food truck. And I love a food industry romance in general.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, oh my God, yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: What are you reading?

GIN JENNY: I am reading basically the opposite of a food industry romance. I’m reading this book called Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir, which I bought as a special treat for myself after having a rough day at work. And I don’t usually buy books sight unseen, but I’ve heard really good things about this one, and it has black-tipped pages, which is pretty cool.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.

GIN JENNY: I’m enjoying it a lot. It’s about a soldier called Gideon. She is an indentured servant on one of nine necromancy houses on her—I’m not sure if it’s on her planet or in the system? But definitely necromancy and space are involved. And the lady of the house who is her archenemy, Harrow, tells her she’ll set her free and let her go do what she wants if she does this one last job. And the job is basically she and Harrow have to go to this palace, and I think they have to fight or otherwise somehow defeat the heads of the other necromancy houses. And so far it’s been that there’s puzzles that they have to solve in the house.

WHISKEY JENNY: Ooh.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, but I think it’s going to get to the point where they actually have to fight the other ones.

WHISKEY JENNY: Are they doing necromancy also?

GIN JENNY: So yes, they are. They do a lot of necromancy. One of the things in the book is that they reanimate skeletons to be their servants, and depending on how good you are at necromancy, that determines how high quality your servants are.

WHISKEY JENNY: Your servants are. Sure, sure. Servants to make dinner and stuff?

GIN JENNY: Yeah, and to serve you, yes. Mm-hmm.

WHISKEY JENNY: Interesting. OK.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, it’s really weird. And it’s funny, because all that I’ve said makes it sound grim and dark, and it is kind of. But also Gideon is like—I read a review that called her a sweetly basic kid, and that’s pretty true.

WHISKEY JENNY: Aw.

GIN JENNY: She’s confronting this one horrifying task with the lady of her house, with Harrow. And there’s this creature, and it has all these scary things, and it kept keeps pulverizing all the skeletons that Harrow sends in to fight with it. And Gideon’s like, its arms kind of look like swords, so I want to fight it. [LAUGHTER] So she’s really sweet. She’s good at fighting. Bless her heart. Bless her heart.

WHISKEY JENNY: I hope she—boy, Gideon.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. And also, I believe that she and Harrow want to bang and eventually will.

WHISKEY JENNY: Great.

GIN JENNY: Tl;dr, lesbian necromancers in space. I’m really into it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Are the other heads of houses, are they also ladies? Is this a lady-fronted necromancing society, or is Harrow unusual in this?

GIN JENNY: Neither of those. It’s a variety of genders.

I’m also finally reading The Right Swipe by Alisha Rai, which I’m almost done with, and it’s just been great. Oh my gosh, I really like Alisha Rai. This is a romance novel about a woman who’s created a feminist dating app, and she has to for professional reasons work with this retired football player who ghosted her after a one night stand, but for a sympathetic reason. Oh man, it’s been great. It’s the second football-related romance that I read recently that dealt with CTE, and that’s been great. It’s funny and fun, but also there’s emotions. I got pretty teary reading it earlier.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, that sounds lovely.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: What was the other football romance? Was it good?

GIN JENNY: Yes, it was good. It’s actually a series by Alexa Martin, who herself was a football girlfriend for a while. Her husband, I think, was on the Baltimore Ravens. Yeah, so she’s drawing on that. And the two books that are out now are called Fumbled and Intercepted, and I enjoyed both of them a lot.

WHISKEY JENNY: Nice.

GIN JENNY: So this week, our something else-ing is what we’re playing, because I have a really exciting one. So Whiskey Jenny, do you want to tell the people what you’re playing?

WHISKEY JENNY: Sure. Well I have two answers.

GIN JENNY: Oh boy.

WHISKEY JENNY: We played a classic old school board game, Parcheesi, at a work board game night the other time, which was really fun. Sometimes we play the hot new games, and sometimes we play super old school stuff. And Parcheesi was surprisingly fun.

GIN JENNY: Oh. I don’t remember really what Parcheesi is. Can you just briefly refresh my memory?

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, so it’s a board game, and you’re trying to get all your dudes around the circle and into your home base in the middle.

GIN JENNY: Oh, right.

WHISKEY JENNY: But if you land on a square that someone else is on, you send them back to the beginning. So there’s a lot of jockeying for position like that. And if you have two of your people, it’s a blockade and nobody can get around it. And there’s also various safe spots throughout the you’re trying to get to. And to start you have to roll some combination of fives, so it’s hard to get out of home base, as well.

Yeah, it was fun. Also, the board is not that big, but the gameplay took way longer than I was expected, because you keep getting sent back. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: Sure.

WHISKEY JENNY: But yeah, that was fun. Also I think my grandparents had this game when I was growing up. And they had quite thick Southern accents, so I always said it was called Pacheesi. It’s not. It’s Parcheesi. [LAUGHTER] So that’s a fun twist.

So then also, this felt a lot like playing. I went bouldering for the first time last night.

GIN JENNY: What is that? Gosh, you are so great. You always do new things and stuff. It’s very admirable.

WHISKEY JENNY: Boy. I mean, it was terrifying. Thank you.

GIN JENNY: It sounds terrifying.

WHISKEY JENNY: Podcast theme song composer Jessie is an expert at bouldering and brought me. And we went to this place that has outdoor bouldering under the Manhattan Bridge.

GIN JENNY: What is—?

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s like rock climbing, with the little colored handholds and stuff. But there’s no rope attaching you, So you’re just—

GIN JENNY: Oh my God!

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s a short wall, and you just clamber up and then clamber down.

GIN JENNY: Cool.

WHISKEY JENNY: So I didn’t even do the—I did one green one, which was super, super easy, and the rest I did were purple, which were super, super, super, super easy, like the warm-ups for everyone else. I was like, I’m just going to stick to the nice little purple ones this time, if that’s OK. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: Yeah, and just see how it goes. For sure.

WHISKEY JENNY: But it was really fun watching other people do it, because it’s a lot of problem solving, and staring at it and figuring out your path, and being like, maybe try it this way. Nope, that doesn’t work. Maybe try it this way.

GIN JENNY: Oh, that does sound fun, actually.

WHISKEY JENNY: Techniques and stuff. And it’s really fun to watch Jessie do it, because she’s very graceful and balletic.

GIN JENNY: Well, that’s really cool. I have never heard of that before.

WHISKEY JENNY: Bouldering.

GIN JENNY: Bouldering!

WHISKEY JENNY: And now I’m sore.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, well, I can imagine, yeah. [LAUGHTER]

WHISKEY JENNY: Even doing that one green one really took it out of me. [LAUGHTER] What are you playing? Do I know the answer?

GIN JENNY: Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, you know the answer. [LAUGHTER] I’m playing Untitled Goose Game. In case you have not heard of this game, it’s a video game where—I never play video games, by the way, so this is unusual for me. Not only did I talk my brother-in-law into buying it, because he has the equipment to buy stuff, I then played it myself. So this is very new for me.

It’s a video game where you play a goose in a little village. And the game is you wander around doing minor mischief and inconveniencing people in non-permanent ways.

WHISKEY JENNY: Are you a good goose or a bad goose?

GIN JENNY: [LAUGHTER] You’re definitely a bad goose.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah!

GIN JENNY: The only things the goose can do are walk or run around, pick things up, flap its wings, and honk. And those are your only powers. And for each section of the game—first you have to finish the gardener section, and then you have to do the little town square section, and so on.

WHISKEY JENNY: And you have a little list, right?

GIN JENNY: Yeah, and then for each section of the game, they give you a little to-do list of mischief tasks that are so cute. It’s like, make the gardener hammer his thumb. Break the dartboard in the pub. It’s so much fun. It’s really fun.

I played it with my little Godson, who is truly too much of a good citizen to play this game. We’ve taught him too many good values by accident. And it’s actually quite difficult to convince him to do the naughty goose things. He’ll do the OK-ish things where he takes food to make a picnic, but then he doesn’t want to put the rake in the lake, or knock the kid over.

WHISKEY JENNY: That’s very nice.

GIN JENNY: It was so much fun to play. I was just giggling the whole time. I haven’t even played the full run of it and I’m already like, where’s my sequel?

WHISKEY JENNY: I’ve heard that there’s a dedicated honk button. How good is the dedicated honk button?

GIN JENNY: Oh my gosh, so good. Sometimes, my Godson kept getting annoyed at me because I would honk for no reason. He was like, you not need to honk! [LAUGHTER] I know.

WHISKEY JENNY: This dedicated honk button, though! It’s right there. That’s what it’s for.

GIN JENNY: I have to say, I really face challenges remembering what buttons do what, again, because I’m new to video games. So I kept messing things up. But I think I did overall pretty OK.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, it sounds delightful. The trailer is amazing, if you have not heard of it, listeners.

GIN JENNY: And I’ll link that in the show notes, because it’s wonderful. And I’ll also link, there was an interview on Vulture with the creators of the Goose Game. Yeah, and it was really interesting. And basically at the end they were like, yeah, we just thought it would be funny to make a game about a goose. [LAUGHTER] And it is.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Nailed it.

GIN JENNY: All right, do you want to get into The Three Musketeers?

WHISKEY JENNY: I absolutely do.

GIN JENNY: Oh my God, I’m so excited.

WHISKEY JENNY: I’m so excited!

GIN JENNY: So we read the first seven chapters of The Three Musketeers for this readalong. And off to a great start in my opinion. What do you think?

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I mean, I was surprised at how much ground we covered.

GIN JENNY: Me, too. There was a lot of stuff. It starts with d’Artagnan setting out from his home. You know, he wants to go to the city and be a musketeer.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, where is he from? I don’t think he mentions that!

GIN JENNY: It’s funny. Yeah, he mentions that a lot.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s a joke. He does mention it a lot. [LAUGHTER] It’s jokes.

GIN JENNY: So even before he gets to the city—Whiskey Jenny, I don’t want to get entangled in another horse controversy with you.

WHISKEY JENNY: Boy.

GIN JENNY: I think we’ll be on the same page about this one.

WHISKEY JENNY: He should not have sold the poor horse.

GIN JENNY: His father gives him—admittedly, it’s a crappy horse. But the father gives him this horse and is like—

WHISKEY JENNY: All right. [LAUGHTER] Fine. You go on, and then I’ll go.

GIN JENNY: Well, the book seems to think it’s a crappy horse, I guess. But the father gives him this horse, it’s a yellow horse, and is like, don’t sell this horse. He’s like, the horse will be with you until you die. And D’Artagnan quickly has a duel with someone over insulting the horse, and he almost dies in a duel. And then five seconds later, he sells the horse like it’s nothing!

WHISKEY JENNY: But I just want to say that I think the horse looks funny but has deep inner strength.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: And I think that’s why—I don’t think he’s a bad horse. It’s not a crappy horse. It’s not a crappy gift that his father gave him. It’s just he doesn’t look like a good horse, but I think he really is a good horse.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, no.

WHISKEY JENNY: I think D’Artagnan knows that, because when he receives the words he knows that the horse is worth like 20 pistoles, or something? [LAUGHTER] I don’t understand the unit of money here.

GIN JENNY: No, I totally agree with you. I think the horse is like the Millennium Falcon, where it looks like a piece of crap but actually it’s really good.

WHISKEY JENNY: That was the only reason I was arguing. And I also think that yes, people around immediately look at the horse and be like, what a silly horse. But it’s a great horse, and you shouldn’t have sold it.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, Han Solo would not sell the Millennium Falcon. Except he did gamble away the Millennium Falcon. But nevertheless, he wouldn’t sell the Millennium Falcon.

WHISKEY JENNY: I’m pretty sure? I don’t think he would, either.

GIN JENNY: Let me restate. Rey would not sell the Millennium Falcon.

WHISKEY JENNY: There you go. Exactly. And he did it so cavalierly, like he didn’t regret it at all.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, it was like it was nothing. I was also, speaking of covering a lot of ground—I did not remember that we met Milady this soon.

WHISKEY JENNY: Boy. Like, page two.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. The guy that he gets in a fight with about the horse is her bodyguard.

WHISKEY JENNY: Is that who he is? I couldn’t quite tell who he was. I know he was meeting with Milady and do an intrigue, but I did not know what his role was.

GIN JENNY: I guess, I don’t know. He was some person, I don’t know. You’re right.

WHISKEY JENNY: But yeah, he’s in the Milady household.

GIN JENNY: Yes, exactly.

WHISKEY JENNY: He’s affiliated with Milady. Yeah, so he sets out from Gascon. Gas-cone. Gas-conya. And gets into a fight on page two. I really appreciated how much he was spoiling for a fight. Because that was his father’s advice, was don’t take shit from anybody. And then this dude tried to make fun of his horse, and he was like, not on my watch. And then he almost dies.

GIN JENNY: Yup. Yup.

WHISKEY JENNY: And then, yeah, intrigue starts right away, too. Because he almost dies at the hotel. And, twist, the guy who’s making fun of the horse is part of Milady’s household. And they’re doing stuff with a box that can’t be good.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, they’re clearly doing crimes. We just don’t know too much about it yet. But then he does get to Paris and he meets Monsieur de Treville, which, I have to say, does not seem like the greatest head of an organization.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh really? Well, what do you think he should do differently?

GIN JENNY: Well, OK. You remember when we were watching Hard Knocks that one time and the coach was like, now, listen.

WHISKEY JENNY: [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: Don’t get into any fights, because you shouldn’t. But also, I don’t know how I feel about fights.

WHISKEY JENNY: [LAUGHTER] But also sometimes you have to, and don’t ever back down from one.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. It was basically like, but honor does demand that you get in fights sometimes, but don’t. But you have to sometimes. But don’t.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I do remember that. It was driving me crazy. Even still, I still don’t know if that man wanted them to get into fights or not. I still don’t know. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: I don’t, either. And the same with Treville. I don’t think he’s doing a good job of controlling the Musketeers in the streets of Paris.

WHISKEY JENNY: Sure. No, he’s definitely not. I think he is clearer, in that he does want them to get into fights. He definitely does.

GIN JENNY: Well, I don’t think that’s a good head of organization way to be, in my opinion.

WHISKEY JENNY: Sure. But I think his instructions are at least clear.

GIN JENNY: OK, that’s fair.

WHISKEY JENNY: Which is get into fights and win them.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. So Treville agrees to recommend d’Artagnan for a thing. But d’Artagnan is like, oh, I gotta go, because he thinks he sees someone who’s done him wrong, and he wants to chase after that guy.

WHISKEY JENNY: He thinks he sees the dude who almost killed him, right? And stole his letter of recommendation. It’s the horse dude.

GIN JENNY: Yes, yes, yes. Yes, you’re right.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s the horse insulter.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, so he takes off after him and is incautious in his running. He bashes into Athos, and then Porthos, and he schedules duels with both of them, because that’s who he is as a person, fundamentally.

WHISKEY JENNY: And Aramis eventually. Are we not there yet?

GIN JENNY: Yes, and then subsequently runs into Aramis and also schedules a duel for that. So he has three duels in one day.

WHISKEY JENNY: At noon, one, and two.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. [LAUGHTER]

WHISKEY JENNY: So he did scheduled them appropriately, I think.

GIN JENNY: Oh, no, absolutely, for sure.

WHISKEY JENNY: So yeah, Athos gets mad at him for running into him because Athos is wounded and it hurt him when d’Artagnan ran into him. I like that bit. It’s not just because he did a dumb thing. It was that Athos was cranky because his shoulder just hurt because this guy just punched him in his sword wound or something. I don’t know.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, no, that’s totally fair. Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: And I also really like that Porthos gets mad when he gets run into because d’Artagnan sees that his shirt or something? Whatever that thing is. The front is gold, but he can’t afford it all gold, so the back is just plain leather. And he’s been wearing a cloak to cover this up. But d’Artagnan, when he runs into him, they get tangled up and d’Artagnan sees that the back is just leather, and he starts making fun of Porthos for this. And Porthos at first isn’t totally sure that he’s making fun of him, but he’s sure enough to be mad about it, but doesn’t get the references. [LAUGHTER] I love Porthos.

GIN JENNY: I like them all. Well, Aramis actually has in my opinion also quite a good reason, which is that d’Artagnan blows up his spot.

WHISKEY JENNY: Seriously. [LAUGHTER] D’Artagnan does not read the room.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, Aramis is trying to get d’Artagnan to shut up about something that would kind of expose the lady he’s been banging to opprobrium. And d’Artagnan’s like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I think it’s fair enough by Aramis in that case.

WHISKEY JENNY: No, completely agree. Yeah, Aramis tried to tell him, like it’s not mine. Stop it, it’s not my handkerchief, nothing. [LAUGHTER] And d’Artagnan is like, what is this handkerchief here? But so then the duels are scheduled for noon, one, and two. And he shows up to fight Athos first, and then Porthos and Aramis show up as Athos’s second and third.

GIN JENNY: Twist!

WHISKEY JENNY: And they’re like, what are you doing here? What am I doing here? What are you doing here?

GIN JENNY: It’s great. They have a really nice chat about it, about the duel. And d’Artagnan is like, you know, Athos might kill me, so I might not get to fight you two guys, and if so, I’m really sorry, because I do prefer to pay my debts and stuff. And he also—I thought this was really sweet. He offers his special tiger balm or whatever to Athos for his wound.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I thought that was nice, too. And I liked how, they did have a really nice conversation that they’re all getting along great. And they’re like, boy, we really get along. It’s too bad we have to kill each other. [LAUGHTER] It’s just really too bad. [LAUGHTER] You know, them’s the rules.

GIN JENNY: But luckily, just as they’re about to get to dueling, the Cardinal’s men show up and they have a set to.

WHISKEY JENNY: Bum bum bum!

GIN JENNY: And d’Artagnan, who likes the Musketeers better, joins up to defend them. And so I think it really bonds them together.

WHISKEY JENNY: He joins up in such a good way, too! The Musketeers are like, uh oh, we have to fight these dudes, but we’re only three. And d’Artagnan is like, excuse me, four.

GIN JENNY: We are four.

WHISKEY JENNY: We are four!

GIN JENNY: I don’t get how this government functions, I have to say.

WHISKEY JENNY: Boy, me neither. [LAUGHTER] I do not understand anything that’s happening outside of the four Musketeers’ friendship. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: I know that I’m saying this in 2019 America. I guess no governments really function forever correctly. But it just seems imprudent for the two main armed forces to be constantly going out onto the moors or whatever and killing each other. [LAUGHTER]

WHISKEY JENNY: It just seemed like such a weird way to solve your political differences.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. And what’s really crazy to me, not only do they not really get in trouble for this, but they get into another fight a little bit later, and the king is like, oh, I like your spirit. Have some money, kid.

WHISKEY JENNY: OK, so no, no, no. At first he’s mad. This is really confusing. Oh wait, I have one more thing to say about the duel first.

GIN JENNY: Oh yeah, yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s five against four, so I think Aramis is taking on two and everybody else gets one. And d’Artagnan takes care of his dude and then is looking—according to the rules of duels then you can help somebody else out. [LAUGHTER] So it’s like, great, there’s rules for this situation.

GIN JENNY: Help a pal.

WHISKEY JENNY: Great. And he’s looking around trying to figure out which one he should help. And Athos, who was previously wounded, it says is too proud to shout for help, but he could look, and gives him a look that’s like, dude, here, right now. Me! Pick me! But damn it, he could look. So he tells him with his eyes that he needs help. And then d’Artagnan’s like, cool, got it, and goes over and helps him.

GIN JENNY: See, they’re already a great team!

WHISKEY JENNY: And then I really liked the one do that they were fighting, Bicarat or whatever, is also really brave and will not give up until he is given a direct order by a superior. And then he’s like, OK, well, if it’s an order, and then breaks the sword across his knee and then starts whistling a pro-cardinal song. And all the musketeers are like, man, this dude’s pretty cool. [LAUGHTER] Again, too bad we’re enemies.

GIN JENNY: I just don’t understand the breaking the sword thing. That seems like a lot of expense.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, no, I don’t understand what anything costs in this world.

GIN JENNY: No, me neither. It’s all totally confusing. And I don’t understand, when the king does give d’Artagnan money, I don’t understand what that will buy him.

WHISKEY JENNY: Nope, me neither. So after the duel they go to play tennis. They’re best friends now and now they play tennis together. It’s just immediate. Like, great, we’re best friends. Now we play tennis.

GIN JENNY: Which is the sweetest pastime that they choose to do. I love it.

WHISKEY JENNY: But then d’Artagnan’s like, no I can’t actually. Because I might get hit in the face by the ball, and I don’t want to meet the king like that. Because the king is supposed to congratulate them for winning that fight. And I like that he’s worried about his face.

But then, yeah, then they get in another fight with the cardinal’s men. And this time the king gets mad at them for it, but then is cool with it again? It was very confusing.

GIN JENNY: I just really don’t think—like, poor regular Parisians. You know, whatever, the cardinal’s men probably deserve it, and the musketeers definitely deserve it. But I don’t really understand why the average Parisian citizen has to walk around their city like this, constantly in the middle of fights.

WHISKEY JENNY: At the drop of a hat. And then you have to pick sides or the other side’s going to get mad at you.

GIN JENNY: Seems terrible. I don’t like it at all.

WHISKEY JENNY: Very alarming. But yeah, then the king congratulates them, gives them 40 bucks. 4,000 bucks? Don’t know. [LAUGHTER] But he’s just like, hey, how much cash do I have on me? Here you go.

GIN JENNY: Why does he have any cash on him? I don’t carry cash and I’m not even a king.

WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t know. I think he has to ask someone else.

GIN JENNY: Oh, cool. That’s fair.

WHISKEY JENNY: Like he has to ask his cash man. I guess. I don’t know.

And then I like that now all the musketeers—I’m just going to call them all musketeers even though d’Artagnan isn’t officially one—they all go to work together now.

GIN JENNY: It’s really nice.

WHISKEY JENNY: Even though d’Artagnan’s work is different. So now his work has four people instead of one new person. It’s really cute. They just go to work together. It would be like if I every morning was like, hey, Gin Jenny, where are we going to work today? [LAUGHTER] It’s so cute.

GIN JENNY: And then there’s a whole section where they’re talking about the valets of each of the musketeers, which I admit I kind of skimmed.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it’s a little like, these are people too, so it’s weird that you’re talking about beating them, so.

GIN JENNY: Each of the four men has a valet, and I was reading the end notes that went along with it. And in the end note it says the Aramis’s valet sucks the most because, quote, “the scheming Aramis is,” quote, “the least sympathetic of the musketeers.” And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s not say anything we don’t mean.

WHISKEY JENNY: Whoa.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: My goodness.

GIN JENNY: I think it’s because in the sequels they’re kind of at odds with each other, which is why I never read the sequels. Maybe Aramis does bad stuff in the subsequent books, but I don’t choose to engage with that.

WHISKEY JENNY: I have read some of them, all of them, and it was all for dumb reasons, if I remember, that they were mad at each other. It wasn’t legit. It was like a rom com separation before they could come back together.

GIN JENNY: Well, based on what I have seen of them so far that seems super true. [LAUGHTER]

WHISKEY JENNY: So can we just run through who everyone’s character is for a little bit? Because we don’t get a whole bunch of glimpses into everyone.

GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

WHISKEY JENNY: Porthos is like—

GIN JENNY: The high-living—

WHISKEY JENNY: Like a dumb hothead, right?

GIN JENNY: Yes.

WHISKEY JENNY: OK. Dude likes to wear fancy clothes and have people think that he’s super rich.

GIN JENNY: Yes.

WHISKEY JENNY: OK. Aramis wants to be a priest?

GIN JENNY: Yeah. He’s the learned one slash ladies’ man. Aramis has a lot of facets.

WHISKEY JENNY: And Athos is like the noble one?

GIN JENNY: Yeah. He’s the noble one with the difficult past. That’s Athos.

WHISKEY JENNY: OK.

GIN JENNY: I think he’s like the moral center of the group. Such as there is one, it’s Athos. And I think they kind of look up to him, and they’re like, oh, this guy knows what life is like.

WHISKEY JENNY: He knows what’s up. He’s got histories.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, and he does. Which we’re going to find out I assume.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, those are some bold words, end notes.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, I was really shocked and horrified.

WHISKEY JENNY: Least sympathetic. Huh. I mean—yeah.

GIN JENNY: I love Aramis. I love Aramis. I don’t know what to say.

WHISKEY JENNY: I love them all.

GIN JENNY: I do too, but I mean, I also love Aramis. Like, Aramis is not least in my affections.

WHISKEY JENNY: He might be least, but—

GIN JENNY: He might be most in my affections. I like him because he likes books.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, he likes books. And ladies.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, I’m a simple woman. [LAUGHTER] It was a great opener and I’m just really excited to read more.

WHISKEY JENNY: Right? It really starts with a bang. I’m so excited, too. I’m glad that they’re friends now.

GIN JENNY: Oh my God, me too.

WHISKEY JENNY: Best tennis-playing friends now.

GIN JENNY: So for next time, listeners, if you’re reading along with us, we’re going to read chapters eight through twelve. So join us, won’t you?

Do you want to go first on summer book preview recap or should I?

WHISKEY JENNY: I’ll go first, because mine’s going to be pretty quick. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: OK. Summer book preview. Hit it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Summer book preview. I did not read any of my summer books, unfortunately.

GIN JENNY: So what were your ones that you did not read?

WHISKEY JENNY: So the ones I did not read were The MVP Machine, by Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik, which I did start. It’s very interesting so far. I was explaining to my family last time I was home the concept of pitch tunneling, which is a fun concept to get and apply to other things. That’s where you want all your pitches to be the same for as long as possible, and then at the end do something crazy.

GIN JENNY: Oh, all right. Cool.

WHISKEY JENNY: So you fool them, yeah. So that was a fun concept. The Rest of the Story, by Sarah Dessen. And I was really looking forward to reading that one on a beach, and I just never made it to a beach.

GIN JENNY: Oh, boo.

WHISKEY JENNY: But I own it. In West Mills, by De’Shawn Charles Winslow, which just has such a pretty cover. I’m still very much looking forward to it. Hot Comb, by Ebony Flowers. And Evvy Drake Starts Over, by Linda Holmes, which I was also like, boy, this is such a perfect beach book, and I never made it to a beach. So I’m still looking forward to all of them. None of them have dimmed in the light of my eyes. So what is your recap?

GIN JENNY: So I read four of my five, which I’m really impressed with myself.

WHISKEY JENNY: Whoa! Check you out.

GIN JENNY: Well, but I just read two of them this week, so you know, I was gaming the stats. So I read There’s Something About Sweetie, by Sandhya Menon, which was a YA rom com. Very delightful. I thought this one felt a little more didactic than her previous ones, but it’s being didactic about body positivity, so I’m not mad at the lesson being taught. Magic for Liars, by Sarah Gailey, which we read for podcast. Null Set, by S.L. Huang, which was the sequel to Zero Sum Game, and I really liked it, and I’m excited for a third one. And The Right Swipe, by Aisha Rai, which I am almost done with. The one that I didn’t read was When the Plums Are Ripe, by Patrice Nganang, because it has been very consistently missing from the library. I think my branch lost their copy, because it’s not there.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh no.

GIN JENNY: What’s your first book that you’re excited about for fall, which in this case covers September to December?

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I will say as to my process—

GIN JENNY: Oh, yes!

WHISKEY JENNY: So normally, first I check my Goodreads To Read list and see which ones are coming out in those months. And then I scour the internet for other ones, and read The Millions book preview and things like that.

GIN JENNY: Oh, yes.

WHISKEY JENNY: Which is a great resource but bad for my bank account. But this time I already had four To Reads on my list that I am excited about. So I was like, well, great. I’m just going with this Goodreads list. So I did not scour the Millions book preview. These are just the four that I already wanted to read. So I don’t know what that says. I don’t know if that’s better or worse, but we’ll see how it goes.

GIN JENNY: Cool.

WHISKEY JENNY: So the first one is Permanent Record, by Mary H.K. Choi.

GIN JENNY: Oh, I’m surprised, because Ashley did not like the other one so much.

WHISKEY JENNY: I know. But this one is like, famous person/regular person.

GIN JENNY: [GASP] Ooh, yeah. Ooh, that’s the good stuff.

WHISKEY JENNY: I just really like that. So I’m giving it a try.

GIN JENNY: I think Maureen Goo might have a book out now that’s like that. There might be like a K-drama star/regular person romance.

WHISKEY JENNY: Really?

GIN JENNY: I think so. I don’t think I’m making that up.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, this is very exciting news, as well. But that’s coming out in September, which has passed. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: So it came out in September.

WHISKEY JENNY: It came out in September from Simon and Schuster.

GIN JENNY: My first one is Chilling Effect, by Valerie Valdes, which came out also in September from Harper Voyager. It sounds like it’s a space opera kind of along lines of Firefly. So it’s a ragtag group of misfits who do odd jobs in space. And the captain, Eva, her sister is kidnapped by an ominous syndicate, so she has to either raise the ransom money or get her sister back. It’s a debut novel, and it sounds like it’ll be really fun, and maybe have some heisty elements, but definitely have team slash found family elements, too. You know, I love a sister story, so it just sounds right up my alley in many ways.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, great. My next one is No Judgments, by Meg Cabot, which also came out in September by William Morrow. And I really like Meg Cabot’s adult romances. She is the writer also of The Princess Diaries, so maybe more famous for those. And this one is on a little island outside of Florida, and there’s a storm coming, and she’s got to save all the animals or something?

GIN JENNY: Oh! Oh, I know something bad about this book.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh no! What’s the bad thing?

GIN JENNY: It uses prison labor at the end as recovery efforts. And the main character is like, wow, it’s so great they’re using prison labor for this.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, Jesus. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: It is just slavery, guys. It’s just slavery. You shouldn’t be happy about that. It’s straight-up slavery.

WHISKEY JENNY: Did not see that coming.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, so just be prepared.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh no. Well, I was hoping it would be a nice fluffy romance where they’re saving animals, but maybe not.

GIN JENNY: Well, it’s toward the end, so maybe you can skip it. Oh my God, Meg Cabot, learn a lesson, though.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, very disappointing.

GIN JENNY: I’m sorry.

WHISKEY JENNY: No, it’s true.

GIN JENNY: I thought you’d want to know.

WHISKEY JENNY: I would want to know, it’s true. What’s your next one?

GIN JENNY: Next up for me is Out of Darkness, Shining Light by Petina Gappah, which came out with Scribner in September. I read this author’s first book, The Book of Memory, and I really liked it. She’s a Zimbabwean author, and this is her second book. And it’s the story of the African people who brought David Livingstone’s body to Zanzibar. Like, Dr. Livingston, I presume. That guy.

WHISKEY JENNY: [LAUGHTER] Oh, that guy.

GIN JENNY: That guy. And I think it supposed to be a challenge to the way that colonizers stories have historically been prized over the stories of the colonized. And it sounds really, really good. I’m super excited to read it. Like I said, I really liked The Book of Memory. I kept thinking it was going to be—it was a kinder book than I expected, I guess I would say. Because a lot of literary fiction can be kind of like, we’re all just sacks of meat stumbling towards the grave.

WHISKEY JENNY: Sure. Sure, yeah.

GIN JENNY: And this book wasn’t. And I was just surprised by how lovely and kind it was.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, that sounds good.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: So my next one is Royal Holiday, by Jasmine Guillory, which came out in October by Berkeley. I have read The Wedding Date by her, which I loved. This one, an American goes to England for work/vacation to style a royal family member, and then I believe has a romance with the private secretary of one of the royals. And I’m really excited for this royal romance.

GIN JENNY: Cool. Well, that sounds really fun. You didn’t read her second book, did you?

WHISKEY JENNY: No. All of them are on my list, but I have only read The Wedding Date so far. I’ve never read The Proposal, which is the baseball one I think. And then I don’t remember what the third one is called. But no, I’ve only read The Wedding Date thus far.

GIN JENNY: I was just curious how—because I had some notes on The Wedding Date, so I was kind of curious about how her writing, how her books have progressed since then.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, totally. I was going to say, I think The Wedding Date had some first romance hiccups, I would agree for sure. But there was a lot I liked about it, so I’m excited for this new concept.

GIN JENNY: Cool. My next one is The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher, coming from Saga Press in October. T. Kingfisher also writes as Ursula Vernon, who wrote Castle Hangnail, which was a middle grade book I could not shut up about last year. But this one’s for adults, and it’s about a girl who, her grandmother dies and I think she inherits her grandmother’s house. But regardless, she has to go to her grandmother’s house in the forest, I think, and she has to go clean out the house. And it turns out it is haun-ted! Haunted. So it sounds like just so much fun. I love a haunted house story.

The one thing that’s giving me pause about this, I’ve been excited for a while, and I just read a thing that was like, oh, it’s drawing from this 1900s really famous horror story. And it makes a lot more sense if you’ve read that first. So I went to read it and I was like, my eyes are going to fall all the way out of my head from boredom. It’s not even that long, and I got a third of the way through it and I was like, oh my God.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh no!

GIN JENNY: So hopefully it’ll still be good without having read that.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’ll be a fun take on that, right?

GIN JENNY: Yeah, that’s what I think. I mean, this author is clearly very fun. I’ve read two of her books, they’re so much fun. So I’m not worried it’s going to be boring. I’m just worried there’s stuff about it that I’m not going to get. But surely she wrote it intending it for an audience of people who have not—

WHISKEY JENNY: Who have not read it, yeah.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. I’m optimistic.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, my last one is The Starless Sea, by Erin Morgenstern, coming out in November. Erin Morgenstern wrote The Night Circus, which I adored, and has not really written any books since. So this is a very exciting follow up for me personally. I can’t really tell what it’s about. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: Me neither. Not at all.

WHISKEY JENNY: So the description starts out being like, this dude finds a mysterious book, and then finds his own story in it. And then there’s a secret world, and something something?

GIN JENNY: Yeah, that’s what I’ve taken from it, too.

WHISKEY JENNY: So I’m really confused, but I really liked The Night Circus, so I’m excited. I’m a little concerned, because I think sometimes when books talk about the magic of books, it gets a little twee. So I’m a little, like, my twee radar is up.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, I hear you.

WHISKEY JENNY: But we’ll see how it goes.

GIN JENNY: That’s a very real problem. My friend Alice one time said that oftentimes books like that, you read them and they’re intended to make you go, aren’t book people the best people? Yes they are! Five stars!

WHISKEY JENNY: And I really did love Night Circus, so I’m hoping it’s more like Night Circus.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, I think it will be. I think we have many reasons for optimism.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.

GIN JENNY: OK, my last one is Light It Up by Kekla Magoon which is coming out from Holt in October. I am baffled and furious that Kekla Magoon is not super famous. I cannot fathom why she is not crazy famous. She writes YA and middle grade books. They are so good. They’re very emotionally resonant, and beautiful, and complex, but they’re also really compelling reads, like you really want to keep reading them. She wrote The Rock and the River, which wrecked me, and How It Went Down, which wrecked me even worser. And her books are so good. They’re so good. I do not get it. I don’t get it. I don’t get it.

Light It Up is about a Black teenage girl who get shot by the police and the aftermath of that. And I just always feel like every new book by Kekla Magoon is going to be her breakout one where she becomes a household name. And I really hope it’s this one, because I love her, and I want everyone to have read all her books, because she’s amazing.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. What a plug.

GIN JENNY: The end. [LAUGHTER] So that’s Light It Up by Kekla Magoon. But anything by Kekla Magoon is great.

Do you want get into Give Me Some Truth?

WHISKEY JENNY: Let’s do it.

GIN JENNY: This podcast we read Give Me Some Truth, by Eric Gansworth. I told Whiskey Jenny that this was about a Native kid trying to get a band together. That is a much more sunny description of what the book is, and also is not really representative of its contents. But it’s about—it’s alternating perspectives, which I love, between this kid Carson and a girl named Magpie, who’s come back to live on the reservation after several years in the city. Gosh, it was a lot sadder than I was expecting. Whiskey Jenny, what did you think of it?

WHISKEY JENNY: Boy, so sad and dark. I thought it was—good? It was very difficult to read. And I—there’s a pretty key relationship between our main girl, Maggie, who’s 15, and a dude in his 30s.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: It happens for so long, and I didn’t love how it ended. And it was such a big part of it that that kind of colored it for me.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, I think that’s good to mention up front anyway. I guess this is a spoiler, but I would not have been able to keep reading the book if I had not known it. So they don’t end up having sex. I kept being worried he was going to assault her and he doesn’t, but they also don’t have sex at all. So yay.

WHISKEY JENNY: I’m very thankful that you warned me that, as well. Because even with you had told me that, it still just feels extremely predatory, and it’s just extremely anxiety-ridden the whole time reading about every time they’re together. But also, there’s not a satisfying like—I don’t know. At the end she’s sort of like, maybe someday. And I was like, well, I just really want to tell this 30-year-old preying on this 15-year-old to fuck off. And I feel like the book to not tell him to fuck off.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, and also he’s, you know, kind of racist.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, there’s a lot of other things wrong with him.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. There’s a lot of other things wrong with him completely separate from the fact that he should not be getting involved with a child. No, so I agree. I think that also I thought the book was going to be structured around the battle of the bands. And it kind of isn’t, at all really. The main organizing principle is actually more about the kids growing into their activism. Which was really great, and I really, really liked that stuff. But I agree. I think that the gross predatory plot line, which I really—that kind of thing really, really, really squicks me out. So yeah, that made it harder to read.

WHISKEY JENNY: I agree around the structure though, particularly, I guess, having read the description, it definitely surprised me in where it went.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it’s not around the battle of the bands. It’s not this big—it sort of is still this big, all-important thing at the end, but not in the way that you think, and it’s not actually THE important thing at the end. Yeah, I did enjoy that aspect of it.

GIN JENNY: It really gets into systemic oppression and how it recreates itself and da da da. And a lot of the plot hinges on Native identity and Native history and why those things are important. So at the start of the book, Carson’s brother gets shot at this crappy restaurant called Custard’s Last Stand. And as the book goes on, you realize he wasn’t just doing a robbery to do a robbery. He was reacting against this restaurant owner’s racism. And Carson just really starts to think about how oppression functions in his world and looks for ways to push back on it. And that I thought was really, really lovely.

WHISKEY JENNY: Totally, yeah. So it’s Carson and Magpie are the two narrators. As you said, it’s alternate perspectives. And I do like that, but in this case, I thought everyone else around them also had such interesting stories to tell that I—

GIN JENNY: Yes, I wanted a Lewis section!

WHISKEY JENNY: I wanted for sure a Lewis section. I wanted Maggie’s older sister, Marie. I wanted Carson’s older brother, Derek. I wanted so many more perspectives on this story, too, because I thought everyone had such an interesting story to tell here. So I was a little bummed in this case that we only got Carson and Magpie.

GIN JENNY: What I think made me want that even more is that this book is very centered around community. So there were a lot of different characters around, and obviously they all had stories. And so yeah, I agree, it really made me want to know more about them. Especially Lewis. I really wanted to know more about Lewis. Like, bless his heart. I want the best for him.

WHISKEY JENNY: So much. I just want the best for him. I still really haven’t forgiven Carson for being so mean to him.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, so Lewis is Carson’s friend. And he has been in the past viciously bullied in school, and Carson just let it happen and was like, whatever.

WHISKEY JENNY: And now also is not a good friend to him. He’s just really manipulative and is always—

GIN JENNY: Yeah, he’s not straight with him.

WHISKEY JENNY: Teasing him and—yeah.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, I was mad at Carson, too. Although, I mean, he grows up a lot in the course of the book.

WHISKEY JENNY: For sure.

GIN JENNY: I don’t know, I would definitely—even as hard as this book was to read in parts, I would definitely read a sequel about Lewis.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh my God, yes. Yes. I agree, that would be the number one next story that I want to hear, or the next perspective that I would want in this book. And I also really appreciated that Carson in his section is very, like, swaggering, and I’m the coolest, and I’m in charge here. And Magpie, in her sections, I think she does a really good job of breaking that down and seeing through him and being like, oh, you’re just a scared kid like all of us. So I did appreciate that we do get this other picture of Carson from her. But yeah, yeah. I still haven’t forgiven him for Lewis. [COUGH] Sorry. I think my allergies are acting up.

GIN JENNY: Aw.

WHISKEY JENNY: Did you think that Carson and Magpie’s narrative voices were different enough?

GIN JENNY: Not super.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. In the first Carson section he uses significant capitals a lot, which I thought was really interesting and really in keeping with his rock star persona of himself. I like a significant capital to indicate things, as well. So I was like, OK, cool. That’s a cool voice. But then Magpie does it too, and I was like, I can’t—I don’t—all right. They just sounded very similar to me. I wanted them to be a little more different.

GIN JENNY: I agree. And I think it wouldn’t have mattered so much if it were not alternating. Like if it were just two different books, I don’t think it would’ve mattered as much. But as alternating perspectives, yeah, it was definitely noticeable that they sounded pretty similar.

One thing that I really loved about this book, and again, this was a huge difference of my expectations. The premise that I thought I was getting, to win the battle of the bands and get out—the premise that I thought I was getting is about getting out a place and severing connections, essentially, to where you grew up, or weakening connections. Which I think is a really common theme, obviously, in YA fiction.

But the actual arc of the story is about greater integration with and greater understanding of their community, and I found that really lovely. And I don’t think the book arrests anyone’s forward progress. Like the book’s not saying that you can never leave the reservation. It’s just that the characters are able to see what’s valuable and meaningful about what they already have, and I thought that was a really interesting inversion of what I often see in YA, and I really liked it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Absolutely it was definitely a different take on the “I just want to get out and move to New York” story. Absolutely.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: And I also appreciated—well, I’ll say two things. There was one moment towards the end where Carson is like, oh, is this what caring for people is like? And I was like, my dude. Yes. [LAUGHTER] Like, he learns what it is to care for people, and says it out, almost, to himself. I was like, all right. [LAUGHTER]

I also really appreciated that in Carson learning more about his community and his history, me, an uneducated white reader, also got to learn more about his community and his history. And I think the book does a really good job of not making it feel like an expo dump when Carson starts talking about those things, but is still conveying information to you. And expo dumps happen all the time and are such an easy trap to fall into. So I really appreciated that.

GIN JENNY: No, I definitely agree. I thought it did a great job of all of that. It felt very organic to the plot and organic to the characters. It was really good.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I was going to say, we still—like, Doobie is a member of the band, and I feel like I know nothing about him.

GIN JENNY: Same. Yeah, same.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s just like, the band conceit is really not the conceit that it’s built around. It’s really not.

GIN JENNY: No, it really isn’t. Which is fine. I mean, I do like the conceit that it’s built around. I just misunderstood what it was going to be.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s just not what I was expecting.

GIN JENNY: So one thing that I found challenging about the book overall is—and Carson talks about this. There’s a culture on the reservation of ironic detachment and humor around painful issues. Carson says it’s kind of a coping mechanism for how much shit Native people have had to deal with historically and still have to deal with, which is super valid. But it was also kind of distancing for me, because I did not—you’ll be shocked to hear this, listeners. I did not jive with the whole ironic detachment thing that was the zeitgeist of my childhood. [LAUGHTER] And I’ve been super excited that naked sincerity and enthusiasm have come back into vogue.

So that was kind of hard for me. But at the same time, I’m glad that I stuck with it, because I thought the emotional payoff of the book was considerable. Not just the relationship between the characters, but just watching the kids grow up. I felt really emotional at the end of it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, absolutely. I did, too. Oh my God, when Lewis—so I guess this is a spoiler, but Lewis gets on the battle of the bands stage by himself at the beginning and just destroyed me.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. It was—and also, the last line of the book is so—I was like, oh, oh, my God. Oof.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I agree on both points. I found it super, super emotional, but yeah, it is such a difficult coping mechanism to read about. And obviously, because as Carson says, all this shit is happening to Native people, we’re also witnessing it happening, and it’s just a difficult read in general.

GIN JENNY: One other thing I just do want to mention. There’s a really—I found it very hard to read. There’s a really, really rough scene around alcohol abuse, I guess, where Carson and Magpie have to kind of rescue Lewis’s uncle, who’s drunk. Like, even talking about it is hard for me, because it’s really, really awful. So if that’s a thing that you find hard to read about, just be aware that it’s coming. Because it was really, really difficult for me.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, super difficult.

GIN JENNY: Before we leave this book, I did want to add one more thing. I’m a liberal child of liberal parents, and I read Howard Zinn in AP American History, and I thought I basically understood what white colonialism had done to the indigenous people of this continent. But I then read An Indigenous People’s History of the United States, by Roxanna Dunbar-Ortiz, and I realized there was still much that I really didn’t know. So I just want to recommend that book to everyone. I recommend it to people all the time. But it’s really good, and it’s really, really enlightening about a lot of elements in American history that a lot of white kids don’t get taught, honestly. But I think it’s our responsibility to know.

And also, Give Me Some Truth recommends Custer Died for Your Sins, by Vine Deloria Jr., which I have heard from many places is supposed to be really, really great, and I do want to read it soon.

Well, do you want to tell us what we’re reading next time?

WHISKEY JENNY: So we are picking back up something that we did for spring, which is that we are each picking a book that we would like to read for podcast from each other’s fall preview selections. You will have noticed a theme from my fall book preview, which is that I am very much into just nice joyful books right now. So the one that you talked about with heists and found families, I don’t know how you expected me to pick something else. But we will be reading Chilling Effect, by Valerie Valdes.

GIN JENNY: Cool, sounds great. I’m excited about it. I hope it’s a fun romp. Because I thought this one was going to be pretty lighthearted, and it was not. So.

WHISKEY JENNY: It really wasn’t. God, yeah. We didn’t even cover Carson’s abusive father. Jesus.

GIN JENNY: Oh my God, yeah. So I’m worried my ability to read blurbs successfully is damaged.

WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t think it was your ability to read the blurb. I think it was blurbed to be a fun battle of the bands book. [LAUGHTER] I think that’s how the blurb was. But I’m looking on Goodreads, and this one says hilarious and offbeat in the first sentence. So that sounds good, right?

GIN JENNY: Perfect. Yeah, no, totally.

WHISKEY JENNY: So that’s what I’m reading next time.

GIN JENNY: Awesome. That sounds wonderful.

WHISKEY JENNY: Do you know which of my books we’re going to read next time? Or next next time?

GIN JENNY: Gosh, I need to think about it. I’m going to give it some thought. A couple of them sound good, so I just need to decide what—it’ll probably come down to what I’m in the mood for next time.

WHISKEY JENNY: I’m looking forward to finding out.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. So Whiskey Jenny, we’re changing a thing. We’re doing something different.

WHISKEY JENNY: We are. Oh, yeah, we are. I didn’t know we were going to talk about it.

GIN JENNY: Should we not talk about it?

WHISKEY JENNY: No, yeah.

GIN JENNY: Just, listeners, know that we know that you’ll have noticed.

WHISKEY JENNY: You know I can only hear so many we know that you know that we knows. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: Yeah. We’re switching to a prerecorded outro, because well, it’s been a couple of years, and Whiskey Jenny and I are tired of saying the same thing every time.

WHISKEY JENNY: And also finding the script. Because I can’t ever keep it in a place that it’s easy to find. And I’m always like, give me—wait—hold on, where is it?

GIN JENNY: But yeah, all that’s changing. Pre-recorded outro from now on. It’s going to be a brave new virtually identical world.

WHISKEY JENNY: But we’re still going to keep a quote, because we really like that. So we’re changing up the order.

GIN JENNY: Quote first, then outro. What?

WHISKEY JENNY: Twist, I know. It’s crazy. Hopefully the universe won’t ripple. [LAUGHTER]

So as always, thank you for listening. Welcome to this brave new world. And until next time, a quote from The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club—

GIN JENNY: Yay!

WHISKEY JENNY: By Dorothy Sayers. “Books, you know Charles, are like lobster shells. We surround ourselves with them, and then we grow out of them and leave them behind as evidences of our earlier stages of development.”

GIN JENNY: 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 are both on Goodreads as Whiskey Jenny and Gin Jenny. And you can email us, we love it when you 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. It helps other people find the podcast.

The post PODCAST, Ep. 124 – Fall Book Preview and Eric Gansworth’s Give Me Some Truth appeared first on Reading the End.

Episode 119

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

1:26 – What we’re reading
3:09 – What we’re listening to
5:30 – Lord of the Rings Readalong – Return of the King (conclusion!)
24:32 – Update on spring book preview
26:10 – Summer book preview
35:40 – Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley

What we talked about:

Witch Week, Diana Wynne Jones
Protestants, Alex Ryrie
The Best Bad Things, Katrina Carrasco
The Return of the King, JRR Tolkien (Book 6, chapter 5 to the end)
The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Marlon James
The City in the Middle of the Night, Charlie Jane Anders
The Night Tiger, Yangsze Choo
American Spy, Lauren Wilkinson
Walking on the Ceiling, Aysegül Savas
Return of the Thief, Megan Whalen Turner
The Kingdom of Copper, SA Chakraborty
The True Queen, Zen Cho
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, David Treuer
Gingerbread, Helen Oyeyemi
A People’s Future of the United States
The MVP Machine, Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik
The Only Rule Is It Has to Work, Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller
There’s Something about Sweetie, Sandhya Menon
The Rest of the Story, Sarah Dessen
Magic for Liars, Sarah Gailey
“Stet,” Sarah Gailey
In West Mills, De’Shawn Charles Winslow
The Turner House, Angela Flournoy
Null Set, SL Huang
Hot Comb, Ebony Flowers
The Right Swipe, Alisha Rai
Evie Drake Starts Over, Linda Holmes
When the Plums Are Ripe, Patrice Nganang
Devil in a Blue Dress, Walter Mosley

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

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 here to talk about books and literary happenings, as always. On today’s podcast, we are going to, of course, tell you what we’re reading and what we are something else-ing. We are going to be discussing the final installment of The Return of the King, which I just can’t believe.

GIN JENNY: I know.

WHISKEY JENNY: And we have an exciting announcement once we finish that. We will check in on our spring book preview and talk about books we are looking forward to in summer 2019. For this podcast, we read Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley. And then we will find out what we are reading next time from Gin Jenny at the very end, as always.

So before we get into it, what are you reading right now, Gin Jenny?

GIN JENNY: Well, I just finished rereading Witch Week, by Diana Wynne Jones, which is one of my favorites of her books. It’s set at a boarding school, which is great.

Also, one of my New Year’s resolutions was to be better about reading my own books, including non-fiction. And I am very, very gradually working my way through one of my very longest non-fiction books. I think I got it for free, and I’m not sure if I need to know all the information it’s teaching me. But we’re here now. I’m a third of the way through. That is Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World, by Alec Ryrie. Since it’s about all of Protestantism, it is over 500 pages long, but I’m going to finish it.

WHISKEY JENNY: All of Protestantism? My goodness.

GIN JENNY: Allegedly, yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: That’s a lot. That’s a lot of ground to cover.

GIN JENNY: I know. I’m a third of the way through it and we just got to America. So I think it’s going to be kind of frontloaded a little bit.

WHISKEY JENNY: Phew. All right.

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

WHISKEY JENNY: I am about to start—I read the first two sentences of it so that I could say that I was reading it, but that feels like cheating.

GIN JENNY: No, that’s not cheating.

WHISKEY JENNY: So I haven’t really started it. But I will start The Best Bad Things, by Katrina Carrasco, which was one of my autumn/winter previews of 2018, I think. So I’m excited to pick that up.

GIN JENNY: Remind me what that one’s about?

WHISKEY JENNY: This one is set in the 1800s, and it’s about a woman who was trained by a Pinkerton agent, and then she has to do a job. And she dresses up as a man to do that investigative job.

GIN JENNY: Cool. I remember this, I think.

WHISKEY JENNY: So I’m excited.

JENNYS: Yeah.

GIN JENNY: Well, for this podcast our patrons voted for—actually, there was a three way tie on what y’all voted for. So we just chose from amongst the three way tie.

WHISKEY JENNY: Like a dictator!

GIN JENNY: So we’re going to talk about what we’re eating. What are you eating?

WHISKEY JENNY: I discovered a place that delivers to me that does dosas and other South Indian food.

GIN JENNY: Oh.

WHISKEY JENNY: South India is where I spent some time for work a few years ago, and Gin Jenny came and visited me. I feel like South Indian food is not—if you go to an Indian restaurant, that’s not the typical food that you get. So I’m really enjoying that we’ve got some dosas, and I got some idli, and I just got all kinds of delicious things.

GIN JENNY: Remember that fast food place?

WHISKEY JENNY: And some yellow dal. Oh man, it was so good. Yes, I do remember that fast food place.

GIN JENNY: God, that place was good. I think about it all the time. It was this fast food place in India, and I guess it’s all over India, but it was really good.

WHISKEY JENNY: It was a chain. Yeah was a chain.

GIN JENNY: You would get I think three idli and three different kinds of—it was two chutneys and sambar. And it was really good. It was delicious and filling, and it was very cheap. It was great.

WHISKEY JENNY: So good. So that’s what I’ve been eating. I discovered this. It is not cheap, but it is delicious. But it’s been funny seeing the fancified Brooklyn version of it. [LAUGHTER] Not fancified, but just more expensive Brooklyn version. [LAUGHTER] What are you eating?

GIN JENNY: So there’s a place, a restaurant that I go to somewhat regularly because they have a nice happy hour. And when I go there, I have a standard order. I always get three small plates. One is a blue mac and cheese, one is roasted asparagus, and one is carrot soufflé.

WHISKEY JENNY: Which is a blue mac and cheese? Is that mac and cheese with blue cheese?

GIN JENNY: Yes.

WHISKEY JENNY: Got it.

GIN JENNY: And it’s great, but it’s slightly too much food, and it’s not quite the perfect balance, because the soufflé and the mac and cheese are both quite rich. It’s just a tiny bit too much food, and I think it’s the carrot soufflé’s fault. But it’s so good that I always eat the whole thing.

WHISKEY JENNY: Is it sweet, this soufflé?

GIN JENNY: Yes, it’s sweet. It’s got powdered sugar on top.

WHISKEY JENNY: I like a sweet potato pie, and carrot soufflé sounds very similar to that.

GIN JENNY: I would guess that yes, it’s similar. But I went there the other day, and my nephew was with me, so they gave us the kids menu, which is how I learned you can buy quite a large chocolate chip cookie there for one American dollar.

WHISKEY JENNY: Whaaaat?

GIN JENNY: Which is the perfect thing! I know. So now the meal is mac and cheese and roasted asparagus, and the dessert is chocolate chip cookie. My order is now perfect. I’m so happy about it.

WHISKEY JENNY: You cut out the soufflé? You just cut it out?

GIN JENNY: I did. Yes, I did.

WHISKEY JENNY: Whoa. After all that talk.

GIN JENNY: I know.

WHISKEY JENNY: Why did I bother learning what it was? [LAUGHTER] Well, great. You fixed it.

GIN JENNY: I fixed it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Congratulations.

GIN JENNY: Thank you.

All right, Whiskey Jenny. It’s been such a journey.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s been such a journey. I don’t want to end!

GIN JENNY: I don’t either. I really love Lord of the Rings. I was kind of glad when you forgot about it that one time, because then I was like, oh, we’re still doing the readalong for a little longer.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. This end bit that we read covers a whole bunch of ground.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. I was going to start with the Faramir and Eowyn.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yep, that’s where I would like to start as well, and I would like to say—so this is chapter 5 of the last bit of Return of the King, is what we started with, and then just till the end, until before the appendices. And I don’t know, the beginning of that second page, I started weeping just knowing the beautiful love story that was coming for me on the subway.

GIN JENNY: Aw!

WHISKEY JENNY: I really like Faramir and Eowyn so much.

GIN JENNY: Oh gosh. First of all, I do really like Faramir and Eowyn. I however took issue with—this is really not a problem with Faramir or with Eowyn so much as it is a problem with the scarcity of female roles in this book.

WHISKEY JENNY: Is it the gender roles thing? Yeah, yeah.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, because there’s just one of Eowyn, just one lady warrior. So when she decides she’s not going to be a warrior anymore and she says Faramir has tamed her, it was not my favorite.

WHISKEY JENNY: No. That part is not my favorite. I think I just pretend like that didn’t happen, and then it’s great.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, pretty much.

WHISKEY JENNY: Because I really like that of men of Gondor, Faramir is not the most pro-battle one. In their relationship, if you forget the part that—

GIN JENNY: Just forget. [LAUGHTER]

WHISKEY JENNY: —she’s to warrior one and he’s the quieter thinker, and I just really like that dynamic. They’ve been through so much and they find each other in the darkest of dark times. And it’s just really great. I’m really, happy for them.

GIN JENNY: It’s really great. I am happy for them, too. I remembered in the past feeling like when I’ve read this book before I’ve been like, oh, Eowyn gets shuffled off with the backup Aragorn.

WHISKEY JENNY: [HORRIFIED GASP]

GIN JENNY: But that was really unfair.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, that is really.

GIN JENNY: Well again, I don’t think it was really about Faramir so much as it was about just the way that women are treated in this book.

WHISKEY JENNY: That’s fair. But you know, there’s not a whole bunch of love stories in this book.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, and I really like this one. I really like them together.

WHISKEY JENNY: And we also get to see them fall—not as much as I would like. I would read an entire book about those six days of their conversation walking in the gardens together. Wouldn’t that be great?

GIN JENNY: Ooh, yeah. Someone surely has written that fanfic, right?

WHISKEY JENNY: Surely. Let’s find that out.

GIN JENNY: Day one, day two. That must exist.

WHISKEY JENNY: Let’s find that out.

GIN JENNY: Oh, Whiskey Jenny, and it’s six days. So it’s fertile ground for a five plus one.

WHISKEY JENNY: Boom. Nailed it.

GIN JENNY: Thank you.

WHISKEY JENNY: But we actually get to see them fall in love, whereas the other two—which I guess are Strider and Arwen, who cares. I don’t.

GIN JENNY: [LAUGHTER]

WHISKEY JENNY: I know I’m supposed to, and I care about Aragorn. But I just do not care about Arwen at all. I’m glad he’s happy. Whatever. And then Sam and Rosie—he’s just always had a crush on her, so you don’t get to see it from the very beginning like we do with Eowyn and Faramir. And it’s really great.

GIN JENNY: And it’s fortunate that it happens early on in the section, because there’s a lot of just people milling around in this section.

WHISKEY JENNY: I’m going to get to it later. Well, I can get to it now.

GIN JENNY: Listen, first of all, just in general, Frodo says, OK, let’s go home. I really want to go home. And then like four months later they actually go home.

WHISKEY JENNY: That does give us the time for a funny joke, though. He’s like, I want to go home. And Aragorn is like, I feel like I want to do a thing, but I’m not going to tell you that thing is.

GIN JENNY: Yes! Guess what it is! He’s such a bridezilla. What is it?

WHISKEY JENNY: But wait, so then Frodo asks Gandalf, do you know what the thing is? He’s like, yeah, but I’m not going to tell you. And then Frodo to Pippin was like, I thought you told me he wasn’t as weird and mysterious as he used to be. He must have been tired that day, because he is back to form. [LAUGHTER] And I really enjoyed that joke.

But the big thing is his wedding. He wants to get wedded to Arwen. OK. Good for them. Yeah.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. And it’s a secret. It’s so strange. It’s such a bridezilla move on Aragorn’s part.

WHISKEY JENNY: He was waiting for a sign, and then he and Gandalf take a walk in the woods, and then they find that a mystical tree or whatever. This is the part where I was like, are you kidding me? [LAUGHTER] Because Gandalf starts listing the lineage of the tree. And I was like, even the tree? I have to listen to son of so-and-so, son of so-and-so. Or sire, or whatever you call children of trees. [LAUGHTER] Seriously? The tree has a lineage?

There is another lovely moment before bridezilla Aragorn comes out, when the army is just back from victory and is outside the walls of Gondor. And Faramir has come out to meet him as Steward of Gondor. And then the four hobbits get to walk up with Aragorn to be like, hey, Gondor, your king is here. And I really like that moment for the hobbits.

GIN JENNY: Oh, the other thing that happened that I was really mad about. As attentive listeners may recall, we were pretty miffed that Beregond saves Faramir from certain death, but everyone’s like, well, but you are in trouble because you did disobey the king.

WHISKEY JENNY: You know, letter, maybe, but spirit-wise, we all know what he was doing. Right!

GIN JENNY: But Aragorn goes to him. He’s like, listen. The penalty for disobeying the king is death. But we’re going to commute that sentence. But you’re still fired from your job. But you have to move to a new city. And it’s like, well, you haven’t really given him no punishment, though. You’ve still given him a pretty significant punishment. He gets to go work with Faramir in Ithilien, which I guess is nice, because Faramir is great. But maybe he wants to live in Gondor. He’s got a kid!

WHISKEY JENNY: Like, where all of his friends and family are. Yeah. And then the book is like, and Aragorn is such a beautiful and merciful king, and Beregond was so happy with this judgment. And it was like, well, it could have been better, though. No, I completely agree, though.

GIN JENNY: This is like if you did something that was not permitted by policy at your work and it ended up saving the whole company, and then the company was like, well, listen, that was so helpful. Thank you so much. We’re not going to go punish you at all, but you are fired and you have to work in Hoboken from now on.

WHISKEY JENNY: Not for us. For somebody else. [LAUGHTER] Right? But thank you so much, again.

GIN JENNY: I just really feel like you would experience that as a punishment.

WHISKEY JENNY: No, I absolutely agree. Yeah, it’s dumb to not have flexible rules.

GIN JENNY: It really is. And I just hope that they gave Beregond a relocation budget. That’s all that I hope.

WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, I hope for more, but that’s one of the things, yeah.

GIN JENNY: Sure.

WHISKEY JENNY: I hope his wife and kid moved with him. I hope they weren’t like, nah, we’re going to stay here.

GIN JENNY: I hope when he gets to Ithilien Faramir’s like, what happened? Aragorn said what to you?

WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, good to see you, man, but jeesh. [LAUGHTER] Aragorn has his wedding. Yay. There’s probably some songs, I don’t know.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. And the hobbits set out and go on a long-ass journey back to the Shire.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, no, we don’t go to the Shire yet. First we all have to go with Theoden’s body to Rohan. Well, A, I like that Aragorn kept his promise to the forest people, and so the forest is theirs now.

GIN JENNY: Yep. Good, good.

WHISKEY JENNY: And then we had other feasts at Rohan where it was just like—literally it seems to be, like, and then a dude stood up and read off a list of names. [LAUGHTER] Really? And one of the names is Aldor, brother of Baldor the Hapless. And I was like—

GIN JENNY: The Hapless!

WHISKEY JENNY: —you’re just messing with me now, J.R.R. [LAUGHTER] Then I think we start off to the Shire.

Before they do that, Arwen says goodbye to her father Elrond, because she has chosen to be mortal and stay in the world, and the elves are going—elsewhere? I remain unclear on where the elves are all going and why they have to.

GIN JENNY: West.

WHISKEY JENNY: What’s west? What’s happening west?

GIN JENNY: I think it’s just elf heaven.

WHISKEY JENNY: And Arwen is choosing to stay and be mortal and eventually die. And then go to elf heaven?

GIN JENNY: I don’t know. I don’t think so. Because I think elf heaven is a real, concrete place that you can get to by boat. So I think it’s slightly different than human heaven would be.

WHISKEY JENNY: OK, got it. I just feel like I’m supposed to be really sad that Arwen’s not going to see her family ever again. I am, but I’m also like, the elves don’t have to go.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. And also the elves are jerks. So she’s probably going to have a much better life with not-jerk not-elves.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. She’s going to hang out with Strider all the time. He’s the best.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, he’s great. They’re on the road again. This drove me nuts. They run into Saruman, and Gandalf is like, well, you should really be imprisoned, but I’m kind of busy, so I guess good luck. And then they just leave him. It’s a weird choice by Gandalf.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. He thinks Treebeard should not have let him go, but he’s not now going to reimprison him, I guess, because he’s like, now we’re going to show you mercy, or something something?

GIN JENNY: Yeah, I didn’t really get it. I feel like he should be imprisoned, or face a war crimes tribunal or something.

WHISKEY JENNY: I think it’s really just for plot reasons, is my take on the matter.

GIN JENNY: It absolutely is. Although it was good, because it meant that he was not scouring the Shire as long as I feared.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yes. Oh, same. Yeah. So basically we do a reverse road trip.

GIN JENNY: Right?

WHISKEY JENNY: And do all the greatest hits that we have just witnessed, and it’s amazing. Beginning with the Ents. Were you not excited to see the Ents again? Because I really was.

GIN JENNY: God, yeah. I love the Ents. And they really contributed a lot to this whole effort.

WHISKEY JENNY: They really did.

GIN JENNY: Just, claps to them.

WHISKEY JENNY: Our dude gets all happy again when he sees Merry and Pippin, and they have one last drink together.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. And then they go to Rivendell next?

WHISKEY JENNY: Yup.

GIN JENNY: Yup. Go to Rivendell next to see Bilbo. And that part was really sad. That made me really sad. Because Bilbo has gotten quite old and forgetful. He can’t remember all this stuff. And towards the end of his visit—oh, gosh, it’s so sad. Towards the end of his visit he’s like, oh, Frodo, whatever happened to that ring of mine that I gave you? I would like to see that ring again. And Frodo tells him he lost it. It’s just really sad.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, and then and then Bilbo was like, oh, right. Oh yeah, that was that whole thing, it was on purpose. That did not make me as sad as it sounds like it made you.

GIN JENNY: I guess I just found it very, very poignant.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s very poignant, yes. Yes. It’s emotional, but it’s not sad tears. Oh, and then Elrond gives some code whisper to Frodo about when the heaven boat is leaving, and it was like, can none of you people talk normally? [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: They could. They’re just choosing not to.

WHISKEY JENNY: Because when he said it, I was like, I know this is important, and you’re talking about the boat to heaven, but even knowing that, I don’t really know what you mean. And then we get to Bree.

GIN JENNY: And they’re like, well, things are hard here. Things are rough here in Bree.

WHISKEY JENNY: Things are not great, even in the Shire. But we have your pony! We have Bill the pony!

GIN JENNY: I could not believe Bill the pony survived! I did not remember this at all. I was so excited Bill the pony was alive.

WHISKEY JENNY: I’m so happy! Bill the pony made it!

GIN JENNY: You know, of all the people to make it through, way to go Bill—I mean, creatures to make it through, way to go Bill the pony.

WHISKEY JENNY: Absolutely. Good for him. May he you have a long, oat-filled life of leisure.

GIN JENNY: He should get some sort of special pony honor. Not like that other horse. You know my views.

WHISKEY JENNY: I think looking back, our biggest disagreement was not Tom Bombadil but whether that stupid horse should have had a funeral or not.

GIN JENNY: It shouldn’t and I stand by it. But we don’t need to relitigate it. Now that I’ve gotten the last word.

WHISKEY JENNY: I stand by my position. No, I stand by my position, as well. You can’t have the last word. We both have the last word. [LAUGHTER] For Tom Bombadil we’re both happy to be like, we just have different opinions. On the horse funeral, we’re like, no! I will die on this hill!

GIN JENNY: Well, you know what, Whiskey Jenny? If you’d been riding that horse, you would have died on that horse.

WHISKEY JENNY: Ey-oh!

GIN JENNY: Ey-oh!

WHISKEY JENNY: And I’d have had a deserved funeral.

GIN JENNY: Anyway, they get Bill the Pony back. And then we get to the scouring of the Shire, which really was so much less awful than I remembered it being. Not because it wasn’t sad, because it really was. The hobbits are going through a hard time. Some of them have turned on others. It’s not great in that regard.

And Gandalf should, by the way, feel bad for making the decision to let Saruman go so the hobbits had to face him alone.

WHISKEY JENNY: And purposefully is like, no, you guys have to do this alone. I’m done with helping. I feel like he could have helped.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. He’s just tired and he doesn’t want to. The hobbits also don’t want to, but they’re stuck with it, so what’s up, Gandalf? Gandalf probably wants California to secede from the rest of the country.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, Gandalf. Don’t break my heart, Gandalf.

GIN JENNY: Anyway, Saruman’s only had a few weeks to do all this mischief. Which again, I don’t understand why they took such a slow route home. This is like in football games and coaches don’t watch the clock and you get a delay of game penalty. And it’s like, that was so avoidable! You did not have to do that. But the scouring of the Shire is really only like a five to ten yard penalty in the grand scheme of the war.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. And you’re right, the actual experience of reading it lasts less longer than I was remembering, too. I remember it as going on and on and being like, oh God, this is awful. But I guess if you know it’s coming—the first time I read it, I was like, man, I thought we were done with all the bad stuff! And then it pops you in the nose just one last time.

GIN JENNY: Right. I thought it was more of a grinding hell force than it turned out to be. I was kind of picturing that by then the Shire had been turned into Eisengard south.

WHISKEY JENNY: Same. Yeah, absolutely, same.

GIN JENNY: But it’s really not that bad at all.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s not. It’s fine. They fix it. I do like that they call all of the evil people who were working for Saruman to bring down the Shire ruffians. That’s what they just call them the whole time, just the ruffians.

GIN JENNY: Ruffians. [LAUGHTER]

WHISKEY JENNY: So the ruffians do this thing a lot. They have all these rules—and I don’t understand how this entire thing happened in a week or two weeks.

GIN JENNY: Me neither, by the way.

WHISKEY JENNY: It seems like a lot happened in two weeks and people were pretty fine with this change the rules. I don’t know, maybe it’s longer than two weeks. I don’t know. But one of the rules is that now the ruffians come around and mark down how much grain you’ve raised or whatever, and gather it. And then they’re supposed to redistribute it, but they don’t, obviously. And I was like, is this a communism knock? [LAUGHTER] Is that what we’re doing now?

GIN JENNY: Oh, I don’t know. That’s a good point.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. But then they then, our fearless four hobbits, rally the Shire and bring it back. And I like that Merry is the battle genius.

GIN JENNY: Oh my gosh, me too. I loved seeing how competent they are amongst the average run of hobbits. It was just a great character growth yardstick.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. And they from the very get-go are putting up with none of these ruffians and their shenanigans. They’re just like, no, we’re not doing that. And it’s amazing.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: I also really liked, so Lotho, who’s a relative of the Bagginses, is the one that they sold Bag End to, right? His mother is Lobelia. And Lotho is, for a little bit, head of the bad people. And no one really liked his mom, either.

But his mom was one of the people who got thrown into jail because she refused to follow the rules, and beat them up with her umbrella, and got thrown in jail. And then when they released her, everyone was really excited and happy to see her. And she’d never had that before, because she wasn’t very popular. And I was like, man, I did not expect to be this emotional about Lobelia Baggins. [LAUGHTER] I just really loved this cranky old lady who was like, get away from me with her umbrella to the fascists.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, she’s a real Neville’s grandmother in that regard.

WHISKEY JENNY: Mm-hm. Well, then they’re all bummed because they’re like, we’ll have to rebuild the Shire, bit our children and our children’s children won’t see what it’s for, because he cut down all the trees. His goal was just to mess up the Shire. He was not trying to profit or anything. He was just, I just want to mess with these nice hobbits.

So they just tore down a bunch of trees and burned a bunch of stuff, and so they’re all sad that they’ll have to replant everything, and it will be a while before it all comes back to its former glory. But Sam uses his special elf dirt and it comes back to its former glory immediately, and they have a special tree. And I got really weirdly original, and—the flowers.

GIN JENNY: It’s really nice. And they deserve it. They deserve it.

WHISKEY JENNY: They deserve it. Yeah.

GIN JENNY: So then at the very end—and I was irritated with Frodo for a couple of reasons about this. At the very end, Frodo asks Sam to come with him to Rivendell. He’s like, it’ll just be a short little trip. “Not more than a fortnight.” Which, Sam has a new baby. And if my husband were like, oh, babe, I gotta go for this trip with my friend. We’ll just be gone for a fortnight, I’d be like—

WHISKEY JENNY: I’m sorry, what?

GIN JENNY: No, no, no.

WHISKEY JENNY: But wait, the baby’s name is Elanor because it’s that flower.

GIN JENNY: Aw, yeah, I forgot about that. Aw, that’s really sweet. Yeah. So Sam ditches Elanor for two weeks, and they set out ostensibly to Rivendell, but halfway there they run into the elves. And it’s revealed that Frodo on Bilbo are both planned to go with them into the west, “catching the boat” using Elrond’s cunning boat code.

WHISKEY JENNY: Right. So they’re going to elf heaven?

GIN JENNY: Yes.

WHISKEY JENNY: Are they then going to die? Or do they now live forever in elf heaven?

GIN JENNY: No, I think they live forever in elf heaven. I’m not really sure. It’s a little confusing. Maybe the appendices will clear up this matter.

WHISKEY JENNY: Maybe. And Sam also, if he wants, gets to go to elf heaven when the time comes, right? Because he was also a ring bearer for a while.

GIN JENNY: Correct. But we also learn—Pippin and Merry show up, and it turns out Frodo Irish goodbyed them.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. He absolutely did. And Gandalf was the one who was like, no, no. Merry and Pippin need to come. Sam does not need to ride back alone for a fortnight from you being like, psych! I’m going forever. [LAUGHTER] So way to go Gandalf.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, really retrieving that emotional moment.

WHISKEY JENNY: You know, Frodo never really recovered, though. Frodo got some pretty bad PTSD, and I’m happy that he will now be at peace. I guess? That elf heaven solves PTSD?

GIN JENNY: Yeah. Nuh-huh. Yeah, so Frodo leaves on the boat, and Sam goes home and sits down in his house. And he says, well, I’m back.

WHISKEY JENNY: That’s literally the last line. And I just think it’s so beautiful that this book recognizes—I’m getting all emotional again. But this is not a suburbia is soul sucking book, I’ll just say. [WHIMPER]

GIN JENNY: [LAUGHTER] It’s not. You OK, Whiskey Jenny? [LAUGHTER]

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s just really sweet. He just goes home to his wife and his kids, and the book knows that that’s really beautiful and special. [WEEPING]

GIN JENNY: Yeah. [LAUGHTER]

WHISKEY JENNY: I’m so sorry. [LAUGHING AND CRYING] But Rosie and Elanor are there.

GIN JENNY: It’s a very hobbit-like ending, as well.

WHISKEY JENNY: He gets to go have a nice meal with his family and be by the fire, and be at peace for the rest of his days.

GIN JENNY: And that is the end of Lord of the Rings.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh my God, I can’t believe it.

GIN JENNY: I can’t believe it either! We’re going to have one more sort of Lord of the Rings installment, because we’re going to do a little bonus episode on the appendices. So we’re not quite at the end, but basically we are. And Whiskey Jenny, do you want to tell the people what our next move is?

WHISKEY JENNY: I do. So we are so enjoying doing the readalongs that we’re going to keep doing them. And for the next readalong, we’re going to read The Three Musketeers.

GIN JENNY: Yay! I’m so excited.

WHISKEY JENNY: Hurray! We have not worked out the installments yet, so we’ll keep you posted. But it’s going to be great. I think it’s going to be really fun and plot-heavy and delicious.

GIN JENNY: Goofy. Yes, I agree.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. A lot more goofy than this, I think.

GIN JENNY: So I have read this book before, but a really long time ago. 10 years ago, 15 years ago. So I don’t remember it super well. And you’ve never read it, right?

WHISKEY JENNY: False. I have also read it before.

GIN JENNY: Oh, we’ve both read it before? We’re just doing this because we like it?

WHISKEY JENNY: I love this book. Yeah, we’re just doing this because we like it.

GIN JENNY: Great.

WHISKEY JENNY: This is a book that I brought to India, one of my five, because I love it so much.

GIN JENNY: Oh man, so you’re much more familiar than me then.

WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t think I read it while I was there, but I did bring it. I think it’s also been a couple of years for me, too.

GIN JENNY: OK. Well, it promises to be very exciting. OK, so Three Musketeers, starting either next time or the time after that, because I’m not sure how long it will take me to sort out chapter breakdowns.

So we are going to talk about the books we’re excited for in summer 2019. But first I’m going to have a really fast update on our spring book preview.

WHISKEY JENNY: Hey, me too!

GIN JENNY: Do you want to go first, or do you want me to?

WHISKEY JENNY: I’ll go first. I haven’t read any of mine. I will rattle them off. I think one of them we might have an update at the end from Gin Jenny, but I won’t tell you which one.

GIN JENNY: Yes, stand by to find out.

WHISKEY JENNY: My five were Black Leopard, Red Wolf, by Marlon James, which, I guess I’m glad it exists, but I haven’t totally decided if I’m going to actually read it now that full reviews have come out and it sounds really pretty rapey, I guess, and violent.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, pretty violent. Yeah, I don’t think I’m going to read it probably.

WHISKEY JENNY: The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders. The Night Tiger, by Yangsze Choo.

GIN JENNY: I read that!

WHISKEY JENNY: Hey! What did you think?

GIN JENNY: I liked it a lot.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, great.

GIN JENNY: And I think you will, too. Just the right amount of bougainvillea.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, great. But not a non-zero amount of bougainvillea?

GIN JENNY: I actually don’t remember. But it just seems like the kind of book that would. But it was totally fine. It was one coherent story. It wasn’t with a saga, you know.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, great. OK. American Spy, by Lauren Wilkinson, and Walking on the Ceiling by Aysegul Savas.

GIN JENNY: So for mine, Return of the Thief got pushed back to 2020, so I couldn’t read that one. Out of my control. I have not read The Kingdom of Copper, by S.A. Chakraborty, or The True Queen, by Zen Cho, or The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, by David Treuer, despite owning two of them and having ready borrowing access to the third. We read Gingerbread for a podcast, way to go us. And I began reading The People’s Future of the United States, which is a short story collection, but some of the stories were really sad and I had to take a break. Yeah, so that’s what I got.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s been a spring. I think we’re fine.

GIN JENNY: It sure has. Do you want to kick us off?

WHISKEY JENNY: Sure, I will kick us off. I’m going in publication order, but all mine come out in June, so that’s still a pretty tight publication window. [LAUGHTER] The first one is a book by Ben Lindbergh, who we had on previously and is the husband of our theme song composer Jessie. So he has written a book with Travis Sawchik called The MVP Machine, How Baseball’s New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players.

And I think I’ve mentioned this on here before. But my understanding is that, whereas Moneyball was about how teams were using sabermetrics to find market inefficiencies and draft players that were better than people thought they were, they are now using sabermetrics to improve the players that they have. So yeah, we read his previous, The Only Rule is It Has to Work for podcast. I really liked it, and I’m really looking forward to this one.

GIN JENNY: Cool. My first one is There’s Something about Sweetie, by Sandhya Menon, which is coming out in May from Simon Pulse. So this author has made a real name for herself in last few years writing teen rom coms about Indian-American kids, and I’ve just been so into it.

This one is about a fat girl called Sweetie who decides she doesn’t need to slim herself down to society’s expectations in order to be worthwhile. And I’m sure it’s another rom com. It’s hard to describe the feeling of well-being and delight that I experienced when I read books by this author, because they’re very sweet and bantering and fun, but they also have real emotional heft to them. And I just love her. I’m glad she exists. I’m so glad she’s writing books. And There’s Something About Sweetie, I’m sure, is going to be amazing.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yay!

GIN JENNY: Yay!

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, my next one is The Rest of The Story, by Sarah Dessen. My beloved Sarah Dessen.

GIN JENNY: Aw, yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: She has a new book out. I’m so excited.

GIN JENNY: That’s exciting. Oh, I’m so happy for you.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. And I’m very excited to have it. It’s coming out in the summer, which for me is the ideal time to, on a beach, read Sarah Dessen. That’s my ideal state of being, I think. [LAUGHTER]

I think it’s a classic young girl story, as is her wont. And in this one her mom died when she was young, and she’s going back to visit her mom’s family. I think her dad is from the rich side of this lake town, or resort town, and her mom’s family is from the working class area. And so she rediscovers the other half of her roots. And it sounds really cool.

And there’s a boy. There’s always a boy.

GIN JENNY: Sounds great. Yes, of course, have to have that.

WHISKEY JENNY: I’m hoping that he is also from the wrong side of the tracks and maybe has some gruffness with a heart of gold. We’ll see.

GIN JENNY: I’m keeping my fingers crossed for you.

WHISKEY JENNY: That is also in June from Balzer and Bray.

GIN JENNY: Great. OK, my next one is Magic for Liars, by Sarah Gailey. Sarah Gailey is one of these authors I’ve really come to love based on my short fiction reading, which is exciting. They wrote a story called “Stet” had a really unusual narrative format that I won’t spoil for you.

But they also wrote two novellas about an alternate version of 1890s Louisiana that’s overrun by feral hippos. And I don’t love American historical fiction, so I did enjoy those books, but they weren’t the books of my heart. But I think Magic for Liars is going to be. It’s about a woman named Ivy who has left the world of magic completely behind, but then she’s called in to—I think she may be a private detective, and she’s called in to investigate a murder that’s happened at the magic academy where her estranged twin sister teaches.

WHISKEY JENNY: What!

GIN JENNY: Yeah. I hope you heard all the elements that are perfect Gin Jenny bait in that description.

WHISKEY JENNY: Wow. Yeah.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, I’m super excited.

WHISKEY JENNY: I’m so happy for you.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. So it’s coming out in June from Tor, and again, that’s Magic for Liars, by Sarah Gailey.

WHISKEY JENNY: So my next one is In West Mills, by De’Shawn Charles Winslow. It’s coming out in June from Bloomsbury. And it’s set in a small town in North Carolina in—what is it, like the ‘60s? The ‘40s to the ‘80s. The main woman is a black woman who just wants to live her own life, and she’s in a small town and it’s hard to do that.

And I really liked—what she wants to do, from the description is, “what she loves best is cheap moonshine, 19th century literature, and the company of men.” And I was like, all right, this is a woman that I want to read about.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: And then she has a neighbor, Otis Lee Loving, that she’s like, hey, help me do my own thing in this town. And he is referred to as a fixer, and so he does. And then I think it’s just a real ensemble story.

GIN JENNY: I almost put that on my list. And I took it off because there’s a lot of elements that aren’t really my thing, including being set in the American past. And being one of those small town books, I wasn’t so sure. But it was compared to The Turner House which I really loved. So I am still excited to read it. It just missed my list by this much.

OK, my next one is Null Set by S.L. Huang. I started out with a really big list for this batch of preview books, and I was trying to narrow it down, and I kept being like, OK, you don’t have to include Null Set. It’s a sequel, and you’ve already talked a LOT about the first book in the series. But I’m just so excited for Null Set. Zero Sum Game is the first book in the series that came out last year, and it’s about a petty criminal lady whose genius for math essentially gives her superpowers. And it’s just a really fun adventure novel with exactly the right amount of darkness.

So Null Set is the sequel. It’s coming out from Tor in July, and it’s about the fallout from the main character destroying the evil corporation in the last book. So yeah, I’m just really, really excited for it. Sometimes sequels are all I want.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, there’s several on here that I was like, I already mentioned this, but this is legitimately what I’m most—these are my top five for the summer.

So OK, my next one is Hot Comb, by Ebony Flowers, which is graphic short stories, and all set around black women and their coming of age, within a structure of their relationship with their hair. And it just sounds really interesting. And I like the idea of that structure. And I think I probably haven’t read it yet, but in one of my previous previews, I think I had a book of graphic short stories. I just think that that is playing with the form in a way that I haven’t experienced very much, so I’m excited to get into that.

And that is coming out also in June. I don’t know why everything I’m excited about is coming out in June. July and August I’m just going to be like, womp womp. [LAUGHTER] But that’s in June from Drawn and Quarterly.

GIN JENNY: OK, my next one is The Right Swipe, by Alisha Rai. She is one of my favorite contemporary romance authors, and her last series concluded recently. The Right Swipe is coming out in July from Avon. It’s a second chance romance, which I love. It’s about a former NFL player and a woman who runs a dating app. Those are two great, great professions for a romance novel. And I really like Alisha Rai because she writes very spiky, defended women characters, which I love. And because a lot of my romance reading has been historical romance in the past, it’s always fun to have a contemporary romance author that I’m really into. So yeah, that’s The Right Swipe, by Alisha Rai.

WHISKEY JENNY: Remind me what a second chance romance is?

GIN JENNY: They had dated before, or I think in this case they had hooked up one time before, a while ago. And then it didn’t work out.

WHISKEY JENNY: A second chance for them. Got it, got it.

GIN JENNY: Second chance for them, yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: OK. So my last one is Evvie Drake Starts Over, by Linda Holmes.

GIN JENNY: [GASP] Yeah!

WHISKEY JENNY: Yay! Which I think we’ve mentioned before, but it finally comes out in June, so I can officially preview it. It’s Linda Holmes of NPR fame. I believe there’s a baseball player involved. I think it’s a rom com. I think there’s some getting past grief in a small town. And I’m really excited.

GIN JENNY: I think it’s going to be great. I’m really looking forward to reading it. Charlotte was on the podcast a few episodes ago and was saying that she really liked it, so that was great to hear.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah it was a rave review that I was happy about, yeah. What’s your last one?

GIN JENNY: So my last one is When the Plums Are Ripe, by Patrice Nganang, translated by Amy B. Reid. This author, wrote a historical novel set in colonial Cameroon a few years ago, which I was really pleased to get to read. It wasn’t perfect for me, but it was exciting to read a historical fiction novel set in Cameroon by a Cameroonian author.

And this one is another historical fiction book, and it’s about the Cameroonian role in World War II. Because during World War II, Cameroon was a French colony, which left them in a bit of a pickle after France was conquered and occupied by the Germans, because there were essentially two French governments. And I’m just very interested in how colonized nations participated in global conflicts while under European rule, so this just sounds right up my alley. I’m so excited that this guy has another book, and that it’s coming out in English.

WHISKEY JENNY: I’ll be honest, that title does not sound up your alley, but I’m glad that the book sounds up your alley.

GIN JENNY: I know, right? I know. I thought that too. So this is coming from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in August.

WHISKEY JENNY: Great. So I had a book in mind that I was like—but I can’t remember what it was. But anyway, my prediction was wrong. But there was something—I’m just so surprised. It was an author that you’ve talked about before, really liking her work.

Oh, oh, what is the—Her Body and Other—Carmen Maria Machado.

GIN JENNY: Carmen Maria Machado? Oh, she has a new book coming out?

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.

GIN JENNY: Oh, cool. I would not have still put her on this list, because I think that I respect her work more than I love her work. I think she’s doing awesome stuff.

WHISKEY JENNY: Ah. OK.

GIN JENNY: But I shouldn’t say I don’t like it. But yeah, it’s not right in my heart, you know?

WHISKEY JENNY: I thought you loved Her Body and Other Parties.

GIN JENNY: There was a story—sometimes I love her stories, but I don’t love them so consistently that like—

WHISKEY JENNY: I misremembered. So sorry.

GIN JENNY: No, I probably—I don’t know. Maybe I made it sound like I liked her more than I do. Yeah, so those are our summer books.

WHISKEY JENNY: Woo hoo! I hope to read them on a beach.

GIN JENNY: So many good things.

WHISKEY JENNY: I can’t wait.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, I’m actually going to the beach this year. So yeah, me too.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yay! Are you?

GIN JENNY: I am.

WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t have any set plans, but I hope to go to the beach.

So for this podcast we read Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley, which is certainly one of his earlier books. I don’t know if it is his very first, but it might be. It’s his first of Easy Rawlins, and he wrote several other books in that series. And it is and noir mystery set in post-World War II LA. And Easy Rawlins is a black man coming back from the war and dealing with racism all over again. And he’s given the task of finding a white woman. And noir things happen.

GIN JENNY: They sure do.

WHISKEY JENNY: [LAUGHTER] So what did you think overall, Gin Jenny?

GIN JENNY: I think that I in general enjoyed it. I would conceivably read a second book in the series. I would say that my problems with it were mostly the same problems I always have with noir, which we can get into. But no, I mean, overall I think it was a generally positive experience. What about you?

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I liked it. In reading it, I’m not sure that I did a good job of picking this one as a mystery for you to read. But you know, such is life. Here we are. I could’ve done better. I’ll do better in the future.

GIN JENNY: [LAUGHTER] Well, you know what I was going to say is, I think that—because I found this when I was trying to make myself read more books in translation. I think that the more of them you read, the more your brain gets accustomed to that kind of thing. So I don’t think there’s a bad—I mean, well, there are bad mysteries. But I mean, even a book that’s not the perfect mystery for me is still good at getting my brain acclimatized to the genre.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, there you go. But just the mystery itself of this one is not very mystery-ish. But anyway, we’ll get into it.

GIN JENNY: My main non-noir problem—no, actually this is a noir problem, too. I kept losing track of who everyone was and where their loyalties lay. Because—this is just me being an inattentive reader probably—but very often Easy would think, oh, this guy is in cahoots with this guy. And then it would turn out they were in different cahoots, and I had just had a hard time keeping up with who was in cahoots with whom to do what.

WHISKEY JENNY: That’s true, yeah. Yeah, I guess that is a noir thing, where what you know and allegiances are constantly shifting. My problem with the mystery was that there were no big reveals at the end. It was just like, a bunch of deaths were committed, and sort of all of those people killed themselves. Like this guy killed that guy, and then that guy killed this guy, and then that guy killed that guy. And was no new information at the end. It was just—

GIN JENNY: Yeah, all the bad guys offed each other.

WHISKEY JENNY: And we knew the reasons pretty early on. We knew about this money, and we knew about all the dating relationships really early on that would have caused these things. So there were no big revelations. But for me that wasn’t a huge problem, because as always in noirs, I just really enjoy the atmosphere, and hanging out at the underground bars, and going to all the different places. But this one really does, I think, rely on the noir atmosphere more than the mystery itself.

GIN JENNY: Yes, I agree. And I did in fact like the atmosphere more than I think I did with other noir things I’ve tried to consume in the past. So I think it helped to have it be set in black LA, and because Easy’s a veteran. That stuff just made it interesting to me, because that is interesting historical content.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh good. That’s good, because the atmosphere is one of the reasons I was like, maybe this one for Gin Jenny.

GIN JENNY: Thank you. Yeah, that was successful.

WHISKEY JENNY: I always enjoy seeing the seedy underbelly of things.

GIN JENNY: Me too.

WHISKEY JENNY: As much as I would love to be a part of it, I also don’t want to be a part of it. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: Same.

WHISKEY JENNY: So I’m excited to read about it. I do want to be a part of it, but I don’t. I’m happy that I have health insurance. [LAUGHTER] But also, imagine if I could do heists. Wouldn’t that be great?

GIN JENNY: Yeah. Yeah. No, though. I don’t want you to do heists.

WHISKEY JENNY: No. But right? So I feel like these scratch an itch. Like, I’ll never have this, but I can read about it. That’s the magic of books!

GIN JENNY: So what we’ve learned here today—this podcast, still pro-books.

WHISKEY JENNY: Amazingly. Well I will say, I enjoyed the hat tip to—I assume this is a hat tip to The Maltese Falcon, because when he’s visiting a company, the company’s symbol is a gold falcon. And I enjoyed that little Easter egg.

So this is a book where our detective dude has not previously been a detective, and he’s hired for a job. And then by the end of the book, he’s decided to become a private investigator. And I think later on in the series, obviously, that’s his official job. So what did you think about reading a book about someone learning to be a detective?

GIN JENNY: Oh, I really liked it. I really, really liked it.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s kind of fun, right?

GIN JENNY: Yeah, it’s really fun. We’ve talked about, with Veronica Mars, how much fun it is to see logistics of the private detective biz. Yeah, I loved it. That is actually the main reason that I’m interested in reading the second one, because I want to see what’s it like when he’s an established private detective?

WHISKEY JENNY: Totally. I wish you got more of his thought processes. You see a little bit of like, well, this guy might know something. I’ll go talk to him. And you’re like, yeah, I guess that’s what you would do. [LAUGHTER] So that was interesting. And I think there’s not a lot where—

GIN JENNY: They’re learning. Where the curtain is lifted.

WHISKEY JENNY: They’re learning, yeah. They’re already established. Like Sherlock Holmes is already pretty established, or if it’s their first case, they sort of remain dilettantes. And they just happen to keep doing it for funsies or something.

GIN JENNY: Right, totally.

WHISKEY JENNY: But this guy does the one and is like, oh, no, I’m actually really good at that, and then it becomes his job. So that’s fun.

GIN JENNY: The other thing that made me really identify with Easy very early on is there’s a passage pretty early in the book where he’s so into his house. He’s like, man, I love my house. And that was a sentiment I could get behind. I love my little house. It is so cozy and nice. Everything is how I want it. Nobody can come in unless I let them. And it’s just a really nice feeling to have. And I was like, you’re right, Easy Rawlins. You should protect that with everything. It is the best.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. You should fight for it. It’s a very hobbity feeling, as well, I think. [LAUGHTER] Absolutely. And it’s even more poignant, because he has collected enough money at one point where he’s like, well, I could run. I would be fine. But I’m not going to let these mostly white men run me, a black man, off of my hard-earned land. So there’s an extra level there where you’re like, yeah, stay and fight! That’s your house!

Yeah. I, uh—there was a lot more pedophilia in this book than I was expecting.

GIN JENNY: Yep, there was. There was pedophilia in this book.

WHISKEY JENNY: Just a lot more. I guess everyone who does that gets what’s coming to them. They all die, so that’s good.

GIN JENNY: Sure. I feel like it signaled its turns, so I wasn’t shocked when that stuff came out.

WHISKEY JENNY: Sure. No, totally. But just the amount of it, I was like, God. All right, here we go again.

GIN JENNY: Not to be this person, but child sex abuse is really, really common.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, no. It’s just—especially the portrayal in this book, too, where you actually have to witness someone assaulting a child. You’re like, oh, Jesus, we’re just watching it happen right now in front of us. So it was pretty awful.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, it was grim.

WHISKEY JENNY: And I do like—and I think this is another thing that I really like in noir books—is there’s secretly a pretty rigid moral code, that’s maybe different from the non-underbelly moral code, but the underbelly moral code is for sure there. Like, you can steal booze, but you can’t molest a child. And I think I really enjoy that, that there’s still absolutely a line in these books.

GIN JENNY: Speaking of moral codes, I think this was probably my biggest noir problem. As always, I was frustrated with how the main guy interacts with women.

WHISKEY JENNY: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

GIN JENNY: Especially, one of his friends gets murdered over the course of the book, Coretta. And she gets murdered right after they bang. And I just feel like, if a someone that I had ever banged got murdered—even if it was a long time ago, even if it was quite casual—I’d be pretty upset about it, let alone if I banged them and left the house and then they immediately got murdered. But mostly where he lands on it it’s like, it’s OK that his friend kills Joppy because Joppy killed Coretta. And Easy’s like, yeah, that’s fine, because I’m still upset about Coretta. But he’s not the most upset. He’s just a little put out.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well—yeah. I mean, you’re not wrong.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, he just did not seem upset enough. And I feel like he in general viewed women in a kind of instrumental way. Which again is very common in noir, which is a reason that I find it difficult.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, no, you’re not wrong. I think that his being a veteran, and he talks a lot about his relationship with death is a lot closer with mine, I was able to forgive him for more of that lack of outward feeling towards the murder of Coretta.

GIN JENNY: Sure.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, this book has the same lady problem, I think, I agree, as many noir books. I do think that—I forget the girl’s name who is the titular devil in a blue dress, she didn’t have a lot of agency. And I think they often have a lot of agency in noir books. But you’re right, the main characters still use them as women first and foremost.

When you were like, it’s fine that Junior someone, right? Killed—I don’t even know who killed who. They all killed each other and it sorted itself out. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: I wasn’t even sure. I said that and I was like, ah, but did he? He did something. He was responsible in some kind of way.

WHISKEY JENNY: And then there’s a separate fake story that he tells to the cops and the assistant mayor or something, to make sure that he doesn’t get brought in for the crimes. That fake story also really confused me, so I don’t—not confused me in the reading of it, but afterwards trying to remember who did what, again? I don’t know. They all killed each other. It worked itself out. It’s fine. So do you think you would read more in the series?

GIN JENNY: I think yes, I would read least one more to just see where it goes and see how the private detective business is going for Easy Rawlins.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.

GIN JENNY: And also to see if the lady stuff improves at all. Be nice if it did.

WHISKEY JENNY: Who knows? I’ll try and find a better for ladies noir book next time.

GIN JENNY: OK. [LAUGHTER] Well, I’m rewatching Veronica Mars, which is a noiry show that I just really love. We watched the pilot last night, and it’s just—God, it’s so good. It really holds up. It’s so good.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I haven’t seen the older seasons of the TV show in forever. So I’m happy to hear that. Yeah.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. I’m so excited to rewatch it. It’s amazing so far.

WHISKEY JENNY: Great. Anything else?

GIN JENNY: No, that’s all I had on this one.

WHISKEY JENNY: I feel like I did like that as soon as he mentions his scary friend Mouse, you’re like, oh, we’re going to meet Mouse for sure. [LAUGHTER] Mouse is definitely going to show up. And then he did. We got to meet Mouse.

GIN JENNY: We did. And I really enjoyed it. Mouse was a very enjoyable—

WHISKEY JENNY: Terrifying but enjoyable.

GIN JENNY: Just really interesting to spend time with.

WHISKEY JENNY: I agree. And there was one point where Mouse and some other guy passed out—I guess they were drinking and they passed out. And Easy is going to go do some stuff for the case. And he takes one of Mouse’s spare guns but leaves a note and says, as the narrator tells the reader, he would have been mad and killed me if I hadn’t left a note, but if I left a note, it’s fine. [LAUGHTER] In case we wanted to know more about Mouse’s moral code about notes and whatnot.

GIN JENNY: Why you always leave a note.

WHISKEY JENNY: Exactly I really like that. Like if you were underhanded towards him and betrayed him, he was mad at you. But if you, as a friend, just borrowed his gun and told him, he’s chill with it. I talked it through. It made sense. [LAUGHTER] I agree with Mouse.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. You just gotta keep people posted on where you’re at, gun-stealing-wise.

WHISKEY JENNY: Just be honest. Don’t lie.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. Yeah, that’s all I have.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s pretty short. I think it’s a pretty quick read, too.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, it was. I went right through it. Well, do you want to hear what we’re reading for next time?

WHISKEY JENNY: I sure do. And I’m sure after the exciting cliffhanger that I left our listeners on earlier, that everyone else will be excited, too. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: OK, so we’re going to read American Spy, by Lauren Wilkinson, which was on your spring 2019 anticipated list? Yes.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yay!

GIN JENNY: OK, so it’s about a young black woman who works for the FBI. She’s an intelligence agent. And she’s getting shunted around into boring jobs, but then she gets tapped to join a task force to undermine the president of Burkina Faso, who is a communist. So of course, America wants to topple him whether he’s democratically elected or not. Full offense intended, America.

So yeah, it’s about a real president of Burkina Faso. It’s a real person, so I’m very curious to see how that gets handled. Because I can’t imagine she won’t interact with him a bunch. I think she maybe seduces him. I think that’s part of the task.

WHISKEY JENNY: I feel like I remember reading that she has to seduce someone, but I didn’t know it was the president.

GIN JENNY: I think so, which is an interesting tack to take. It sounds great. People have been comparing it to John le Carré which I haven’t read anything by him, but that just sounds like a really fun book for summer.

WHISKEY JENNY: Agreed.

GIN JENNY: Fun/dark. Because, yeah, the Cold War.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. So that’s what it’s going to be.

WHISKEY JENNY: I can’t wait.

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, Gin Jenny, on Twitter @readingttheend. We’re both on Goodreads as Whiskey Jenny and Gin Jenny. And you can email us 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, you can leave a review, which we would so much appreciate.

Until next time, a quote from Before She Sleeps, by Bina Shah. “Men aren’t doors to escape through, or even mirrors to find ourselves in. We’re fooling ourselves if we think they can help us.”

The post PODCAST, Ep. 119 – Summer Book Preview and Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress appeared first on Reading the End.

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

Episode 96

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

1:44 – What we’re reading
5:26 – Polar explorer update #1
6:21 – Polar explorer update #2
8:41 – Update on our fall 2017 book preview
14:16– Spring 2018 Book Preview
26:17 – Exit West, Mohsin Hamid
41:55 – Our first Hatening read

Learn more about teenage explorer Jade Hameister here. You can watch Ernest Shackleton Loves Me at Broadway HD if you are curious!

Get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much).

Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour

Transcript is coming soon and will be 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 excited— again, as always— to talk about books and literary happenings. On today’s podcast, we’re going to talk about what we’re reading right now. We have a double polar explorer update that I’m excited to hear about, because one of them, the article wouldn’t work for me, so I get to hear it on air with everyone else. We’re going to do our spring 2018 book preview and talk about not all, but some of the books that we are excited about that will be coming out soon or have come out recently. For this episode we read Exit West by Mohsin Hamid. And lastly, we have the third annual edition of the Hatening coming up soon, and so we get to hear what Gin Jenny has picked up for me to hate.

GIN JENNY: And you know, I can’t be as successful as last year, but.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, yeah, last year was really flames on the side of my face hatred. So raging success. But I think all the Hatenings have gone pretty well, I think, right?

GIN JENNY: Oh yeah, no, definitely. There’s been no Hatening that I felt unhappy about in any way.

WHISKEY JENNY: Same. So I’m excited to hear what we’re reading. But first up, what are you reading right now?

GIN JENNY: So I actually just finished having two totally opposite reading experiences. So one of my resolutions for 2018 was that I was going to reread some books that I haven’t read in many years, that I read for the first time when I was in a different life stage. So I did my first one. I re-read Eleanor Rigby, by Douglas Coupland, which blew me away when I was 22.

WHISKEY JENNY: Uh-huh?

GIN JENNY: And it was just fine. I reread it and I was like, huh. Well, this is a book.

WHISKEY JENNY: So what does that mean for its future on your shelves?

GIN JENNY: I’m probably going to get rid of it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Wow.

GIN JENNY: I know. Well, that was kind of the point of the exercise. I have two others of his books, and I’ll probably reread at least one of them also, to see how that one holds up. But likely scenario is I’m going to get rid of all three of them.

WHISKEY JENNY: Wow. Goodness. OK.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, the stakes are high.

WHISKEY JENNY: The stakes are high. And—it wasn’t bad, was it?

GIN JENNY: It was just fine.

WHISKEY JENNY: It was fine? Yeah, OK.

GIN JENNY: I like to keep books if I plan to reread them or consult them. And I don’t really see myself rereading this. But it’s good. I like getting rid of stuff. It’s very cleansing. So I would have been happy with either outcome.

And then I also just finished reading Turtles All the Way Down, by John Green.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, how was that?

GIN JENNY: Yeah, so, weird thing; I think over the past few years, John Green has not been releasing books. So my only exposure to him has been to the legend of John Green, white guy savior of YA.

WHISKEY JENNY: Right.

GIN JENNY: Which obviously is very annoying. And reading Turtles All the Way Down I was like, oh hey, John Green, pretty good writer.

WHISKEY JENNY: Pretty good. Yeah, yeah.

GIN JENNY: I enjoyed it. Paper Towns is still my favorite of his books. But no, this one was good. The dialogue was snappy, it went along really well. There was an issue about friends sharing money that Whiskey Jenny and I were pretty outraged about. But aside from that, everything was pretty good.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, was that from that book?

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh my goodness. John Green, what are your friends doing to you?

GIN JENNY: But is it was pretty good. John Green is a good writer, and I feel a little bad that I forgot that. What are you reading?

WHISKEY JENNY: I just finished something this morning, so I’m currently in between books. But previously, before finishing Exit West, I finished Wise Blood, by Flannery O’Connor.

GIN JENNY: Oh, how was it?

WHISKEY JENNY: It was good.

GIN JENNY: Yeah?

WHISKEY JENNY: It was my first novel by her.

GIN JENNY: I didn’t even know that she had written any novels.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I think she has one other one. Not a whole lot, but I think she has one other one. Because she died so young, there’s just not a whole lot of—

GIN JENNY: Time.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. But I enjoyed it. We read it for work book club. In particular, her writing— I said at book club that I just wanted a book of her similes. Just explain things to me, Flannery O’Connor. Because she is so good at describing things in unique and unusual ways. Really big fan of her similes. She describes someone, I think it was “having the fragile look of a gun that no one knows is loaded.”

GIN JENNY: Ooooh.

WHISKEY JENNY: It was just, oh my god.

GIN JENNY: That’s really good.

WHISKEY JENNY: But it’s a comic novel about a guy who basically has a lot of faith, but is sort of in denial of the fact that he has faith. And so he tries to tell everyone that he doesn’t believe, and that they shouldn’t believe either, and the only truth is blasphemy, but that’s its own other truth. And he sort of starts to make his own church. It’s like very dreamlike and weird.

GIN JENNY: Sounds monumentally Flannery O’Connor-ish.

WHISKEY JENNY: Anyway, it was good. It was good. I now really want to go check out more of her short stories, because I also haven’t explored very many of her short stories.

GIN JENNY: I haven’t in a while, either. So that’s a good idea.

WHISKEY JENNY: Someone had not read “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and was like, what’s it about? And everyone was like, uuuuuuhhh—

GIN JENNY: Umm.

WHISKEY JENNY: Uhh— well— [LAUGHTER] Someone who is spoiler-averse, so there’s no way to describe that story without—

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: So we were like, maybe you should just read it.

GIN JENNY: Well, are you ready for some polar explorer updates?

WHISKEY JENNY: I am. I’m so ready. Can you give me the one that I don’t know yet first, because the link wouldn’t work for me?

GIN JENNY: Yes, that’s what I was planning to do, actually.

WHISKEY JENNY: OK, great.

GIN JENNY: I do want to thank friend of the podcast Renay for alerting me to this story. So, delighted to report, a 16-year-old Australian girl named Jade Hameister had given an internet talk about how girls should go out and have adventures. And a bunch of internet assholes told her to make them a sandwich. And she subsequently—

WHISKEY JENNY: WHAT!?

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well this is— all right.

GIN JENNY: It turns out OK.

WHISKEY JENNY: OK, sorry. Go on.

GIN JENNY: So she skied to the— and I really like this distinction— to the ceremonial South Pole and the geographic South Pole.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, nice.

GIN JENNY: And she took a picture of herself with a sandwich that was like, I made you a sandwich. Come get it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Hey-o! That’s great.

GIN JENNY: So I mean, way to go, kid.

WHISKEY JENNY: Seriously. Also I love sandwiches, so this just seems like the best of all kinds of worlds.

GIN JENNY: So that’s one polar explorer update. The other isn’t exactly a polar explorer update.

WHISKEY JENNY: I think it counts.

GIN JENNY: But we decided that it counts.

WHISKEY JENNY: We allow it.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. Beautiful genius Whiskey Jenny sent me the gift of a three month subscription to Broadway HD, which currently includes the musical Ernest Shackleton Loves Me.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yay!

GIN JENNY: So obviously I watched it right away, and it was amazing. The lady who wrote the show and also starred in it, Val Vigoda, is a really talented musician. And in addition to how great all the Ernest Shackleton stuff was, it was really cool to see Val Vigoda just doing her thing.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. She does a lot of live looping stuff, which is basically magic to me. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: Me too. She talks at the beginning of the show. The conceit is that she’s setting up this online dating profile. And she talks about how she creates her music, and it’s just really cool from a process standpoint, how she does it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Let me ask you this. Did I describe it accurately? Because it’s kind of a hard show to nail down, I would say.

GIN JENNY: No, you described it exactly. It was exactly what I was expecting based on your description.

WHISKEY JENNY: Great.

GIN JENNY: And the part at the end where all the 22 men survived was—

WHISKEY JENNY: All 22!

GIN JENNY: It was amazing.

WHISKEY JENNY: [LAUGHTER] It’s so good.

GIN JENNY: It’s really good.

WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, I knew that that was coming when I was watching the show, but I was still like, this is the coolest thing of all time. [LAUGHTER] How many men?

GIN JENNY: It was so good. It was really good.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s just really well done, with the picture in the background.

GIN JENNY: It was. The whole thing was really well-produced, and I liked it a lot. One thing you didn’t tell me that I thought was really funny— and listeners, if you’re going to get a subscription to Broadway HD, skip this part, because you may want to discover the show on your own. But I loved it when all the different explorers are contacting her on the dating app.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, yeah.

GIN JENNY: That was really funny.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yay! You can also just get, if you don’t want a subscription to a Broadway HD, you can just get a single watch of the show.

GIN JENNY: Oh, neat. I didn’t know that. That’s also cool.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s like the rentals on Amazon or iTunes or things like that, where you have 48 hours to watch it once you start it or something.

GIN JENNY: Cool. There’s also several other things on there that I’m excited to watch. She Loves Me is on there, which is a musical that is basically You’ve Got Mail starring Laura Benanti, who I love. And there’s a concert production of Jesus Christ Superstar, my favorite musical of all time. And that play Indecent that was getting so much attention last year or the year before is on there, which I totally would have gone to see if I’d been in New York. So all in all, really great gift.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yay! I’m so glad you’re enjoying it.

GIN JENNY: I really am. So those are our polar explorer updates.

WHISKEY JENNY: Excellent. Well, let’s move on from cold polar exploring into warm spring 2018 book preview. But actually I lied. Before we do that, let’s do a fall 2017 check in with the books that we were excited about and see if they held up, or if we read them.

So do you want to just run down your fall ones first?

GIN JENNY: Yes. So I actually read all of my fall ones.

WHISKEY JENNY: Whoa! Check you out!

GIN JENNY: Thank you.

WHISKEY JENNY: Way to go.

GIN JENNY: Thank you. They were mostly YA books, so they were short. They were easy to get through. So I read Jane Unlimited by Kristin Cashore. And I loved it. It’s by the author of Bitterblue, which we both really enjoyed. And I’ve been telling everyone that it’s Rebecca by way of Diana Wynne Jones. So that one was great. That one was probably the best of my fall books. It was a really, really good. I recommend it so highly.

And then I read An Unkindness of Magicians, by Kat Howard.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh!

GIN JENNY: It was just OK.

WHISKEY JENNY: Really? Because the cover is so good.

GIN JENNY: The cover is so good. It’s about secret magicians doing awesome duels. But really, there wasn’t much conflict. Lady who comes to topple the way things are done by these magicians really doesn’t encounter any difficulty at all. She just skates on through.

WHISKEY JENNY: The whole house of cards goes falling. It was atmospheric, though. If you liked The Night Circus, I think this is a good readalike. So I think partly a function of expectations. I think if you went into it expecting something slightly Night Circusy and you knew there wasn’t going to be much conflict, then you could definitely still enjoy it.

WHISKEY JENNY: That sounds great.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. And then A Moonless, Starless Sky, by Alexis Okeowo, which was about people facing political extremism in Africa. And it was really good. She writes with a great deal of clarity and empathy for people who are facing really impossible choices, and I just thought it was really strong journalism throughout.

And then A Skinful of Shadows, by Frances Hardinge, which is the one about the girl during the English Civil War, whose family keeps her around so she can give her body to them, so that she can be possessed by the ghosts of her ancestors.

WHISKEY JENNY: Eugh.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. It was great. It was so creepy, it was so weird. Frances Hardinge’s books are all real weird, and this one was no exception. I loved it. I think it would be a good introduction to Francis Hardinge, if you haven’t read anything by her before.

WHISKEY JENNY: Ooh, I have not.

GIN JENNY: And then finally I read Beasts Made of Night, by Tochi Onyebuchi, which is about the boy in a fictional fantasy Nigeria, who is a sin eater. And he consumes the sins of wealthy people. The worldbuilding was really cool. It was a debut YA novel, and you can kind of tell. There’s some parts that are a little awkward and a little clunky. But overall I really liked it, and I would definitely be on board to read a sequel or two.

WHISKEY JENNY: Cool. Really great title roundup for you, I think.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. You know, I hadn’t thought of it, but yeah. It super is. All right, what were your fall books?

WHISKEY JENNY: Let’s see. First up is Bluebird, Bluebird, by Attica Locke, which I think was also on your list. You let me say it. [LAUGHTER] So we both read that one. And I think we both really enjoyed it and had a couple of notes. But overall really enjoyed it and are excited to see what more she does, hopefully in that series.

So also on my list was The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott, which I really enjoyed. Still really love Alice McDermott as a writer. It is very Alice McDermotty, I would say. [LAUGHTER] I love her, so I love that book, so keep up the great work, Alice. [LAUGHTER]

And then I also read Manhattan Beach, by Jennifer Egan, which I think I mentioned.

GIN JENNY: You did awesome!

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, thanks. Well, I’m doing the good ones first. Which I think I mentioned in our 2017 year in review I did not love, so I will not spend any more time on that. But the other two that I have not read yet are the Star Wars, From a Certain Point of View book of short stories. That’s the side characters in the Star Wars stories telling their story. So I got it from the library, started it, opened it up, and one of the stories had a— or maybe it was even on the front flap. Something mentioned that it was carrying on a story from Rogue One, which I had not seen yet. And then I got really worried that I was going to spoil stuff for me. So I didn’t finish it. So I have to watch Rogue One, and then probably also Last Jedi before I can read Star Wars From a Certain Point of View. But then I’m going to read it, and it’s going to be great.

GIN JENNY: I’m still really excited for you to see Last Jedi so we can talk about it.

WHISKEY JENNY: I am too! I super am. I’m excited to talk about it with the world.

GIN JENNY: All right. Just, time keeps passing, and I— you know.

WHISKEY JENNY: It is. Time is a river. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: That’s so true.

WHISKEY JENNY: No one can resist it.

And then lastly I had a graphic novel, Savage Town by— I don’t know who’s who, but Philip Barrett, Declan Shalvey, Jordie Bellaire, and Clayton Cowles. That’s the one set in Ireland with a small time crook doing small time crookery. And I could never get it from the library. It’s finally in at the library— they own it now— but I tried to go put it on hold, and they said something’s wrong with my library account and I have to go see a librarian. So I’m really anxious about that.

GIN JENNY: I’m sure it’s fine. I’m sure you just have to renew your account.

WHISKEY JENNY: But wha— why can’t I do that online?

GIN JENNY: I don’t—

WHISKEY JENNY: [LAUGHTER] Said the millennial.

GIN JENNY: You probably have fines you have to pay.

WHISKEY JENNY: No, I paid the fines. Because I was like, oh, it’s probably the fines. And first of all, they were below the limit. And second of all, I paid them, and then it still said it.

GIN JENNY: Oh, I don’t know. I’m so sorry. That sounds really annoying.

WHISKEY JENNY: I’m really stressed out about it.

GIN JENNY: I’m sure it’s fine, Whiskey Jenny. I don’t think they’re going to be like, get out of the library. You’re done.

WHISKEY JENNY: We’ve been reviewing the list of the books that you checked out. [LAUGHTER] And we know that sometimes you return them before reading them.

GIN JENNY: That’s funny.

WHISKEY JENNY: So, yeah.

GIN JENNY: Well, that’s pretty good.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I feel like that’s a great batch of stuff for fall.

GIN JENNY: And you would have read five of them, but library foiled you, and the spoilers thing.

WHISKEY JENNY: That’s true. That’s true. Thanks. Thanks for that very generous assessment.

GIN JENNY: You’re welcome.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, what are you excited for for spring?

GIN JENNY: Well, OK, so my first one is the one that I’m a little concerned we might have overlap, because we do not discuss these at great length.

WHISKEY JENNY: No, we did not.

GIN JENNY: So there’s a concern. It’s The Widows of Malabar Hill, by Sujata Massey.

WHISKEY JENNY: Love the title, but it’s not on my list. Tell me more.

GIN JENNY: Great. OK, so it’s coming out in— well, I guess it has come out in January from Soho Press. And it is a mystery starring a woman lawyer in Bombay in the 1920s.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oooh!

GIN JENNY: I know! Yeah, she’s the first female lawyer in Bombay, and I think she’s based on a real historical figure.

WHISKEY JENNY: Wow, that sounds awesome.

GIN JENNY: I know! And she’s investigating the murders of three widows of a wealthy mill owner. I love everything in the description. It’s from Soho Press, which I know you’re very high on.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I love them.

GIN JENNY: As a mystery outlet. So I don’t know, it sounds like it will be really cool. Like, sad but good.

WHISKEY JENNY: You don’t think it’s Miss Fisher vibes? It looks sadder than that?

GIN JENNY: I think so, partly because it’s based on a real person, and my guess is life was difficult for the first female lawyer in the 1920s in Bombay.

WHISKEY JENNY: Seems like a reasonable guess, yeah.

GIN JENNY: So I don’t know, it could be more Miss Fishery than I’m anticipating. But I think it’s going to be more serious than that in tone.

WHISKEY JENNY: Cool.

GIN JENNY: And I’m hoping it’ll be the beginning of a series, and maybe she’ll form a team or something. I don’t know.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh my god. Hadn’t even occurred to me, but that sounds great.

GIN JENNY: What’s your first one?

WHISKEY JENNY: So I’m going to do the first one also that I thought maybe you might put on yours. Although all of these I don’t think you would hate. Anyway, I’m going to start with The Merry Spinster, by Mallory Ortberg.

GIN JENNY: Not on my list.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, great. This is coming out in March from Holt, and it’s Mallory Ortberg of The Toast fame doing her signature creepy retellings of fairy tales.

GIN JENNY: And I love fairy tales, so. And creepy things.

WHISKEY JENNY: And Mallory Ortberg. Basically all I saw was that Mallory Ortberg had a book coming out and I was like OK, great, it’s on my list. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: So I was as much of a fan— because she used to do those such-and-such made horrifying on The Toast, and they weren’t my favorite of The Toast posts. But I’m hoping that in book format I’ll be more into them. Oh, oh, Whiskey Jenny, do you know if it has illustrations?

WHISKEY JENNY: I do not know. I’m so sorry, I don’t know.

GIN JENNY: OK, that’s OK.

WHISKEY JENNY: They were also not my favorite format. But now there’s no new Toast stuff for me to take in, so.

GIN JENNY: That’s true. Beggars can’t be choosers, is what you’re saying.

WHISKEY JENNY: Exactly.

GIN JENNY: Next up for me is Tess of the Road, by Rachel Hartman. So it’s coming out in February from Random House. I keep a spreadsheet of upcoming releases, among other things, and I have a section in my spreadsheet for describing what the book is about. And in the section for Tess of the Road I just wrote WHO CARES, in all caps. Because Rachel Hartman wrote this really strange but great YA book called Serafina, about a girl who is part—

WHISKEY JENNY: I didn’t know that was her. Great.

GIN JENNY: She’s part dragon. Did you read it?

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.

GIN JENNY: Yeah! So she’s part dragon. She has to conceal her heritage. And she kind of gets a crush on the prince of the kingdom. And the prince is engaged to this royal lady at the court, and the royal lady is also super fun and sweet and nice, so that was cool. And I was really happy with how they resolved that situation in the second book.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. And that’s the one where dragons are super good at math and science, right?

GIN JENNY: Yes.

WHISKEY JENNY: Which I thought was just such a cool detail.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, me too. And Tess of the Road is set in the same world. I don’t know if it’s going to be a one-and-done or if it’s the start of a new series, but it does sound like it will contain a lot of road tripping.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oooh. Oh, boy.

GIN JENNY: That’s good for me. So yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: Cool. My next one is The Wedding Date, by Jasmine Guillory.

GIN JENNY: Yeah!

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, have you read it already?

GIN JENNY: No, I haven’t. But I’m excited to.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, so it came out already in January, by Berkley. I think that there is a fake wedding date between a man and a woman. And then maybe they have some feelings. And it looks like a really fun rom com. Also the Fug Girls, from Go Fug Yourself, have been talking about this book a lot. And I really trust their opinion, and I love them. So I’m just really excited to read it.

GIN JENNY: And Roxane Gay, also—

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh! Yeah.

GIN JENNY: —has been talking about it.

WHISKEY JENNY: That’s a real seal of approval, to get those two. I mean, come on.

GIN JENNY: Right? I think I saw Roxanne Gay talking about it first and I was like, well, of course I’m adding this to my list. And then when the Fug girls talked about it, I was like, I’ve made a great decision.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, great! So I’m excited. I don’t think I’ve read nearly enough romance by black authors, so I’m excited to start remedying that.

GIN JENNY: Well, there is not a lot. The romance genre has a real problem with diversity. So my next one is The Prince and the Dressmaker, by Jen Wang.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh!

GIN JENNY: Is that on your list?

WHISKEY JENNY: It is.

GIN JENNY: Dammit! I’m so sorry.

WHISKEY JENNY: We should really start comparing these. Yeah, so sorry. But that’s OK. We’re both excited about it.

GIN JENNY: OK, I’m so sorry.

WHISKEY JENNY: No, I didn’t— no. Yeah. It looks great, right? sorry, go on. Tell everyone what it’s about.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, so The Prince and the Dressmaker, by Jen Wang, is coming out in February from First Second. Well, Whiskey Jenny, since it’s on both of our lists, do you want to say what it’s about?

WHISKEY JENNY: No, no, you tell the people. I’ve squealed enough about it, I think. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: OK, so this is a graphic novel. It’s about a prince whose parents are looking for a wife for him, and he’s unenthusiastic about that. And at night, he goes out into Paris wearing these fantastic dresses that his best friend Frances designs and makes for him. And this is all in secret. So he’s keeping this big secret. Frances is helping him to keep the secret. But she also has dreams of her own about what her career is going to be, and she can’t really talk about the dresses she’s designing without drawing attention to the fact that this is the prince out wearing them secretly.

And when I looked at some of the art online, it looked so sweet and dear. It looks like the dearest book of all time.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s beautiful.

GIN JENNY: What drew you to it, Whiskey Jenny?

WHISKEY JENNY: All of those things. Those things that you just said. But also, it’s set in turn of the century Paris, I think.

GIN JENNY: Ooh! I didn’t know that.

WHISKEY JENNY: I liked the setting of it, as well.

GIN JENNY: I also haven’t seen any of the actual dresses. When I’ve looked at the art online, it’s just been him and Frances wearing regular street clothes. So I’m super excited to see the different dress designs.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I think it will be really gorgeous to behold, as well as sweet to read.

GIN JENNY: Agree. Well, since I did that one that was both of ours, do you want to do the next one that was both of ours?

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh. OK, sure, that works.

GIN JENNY: Whiskey Jenny asked me before podcast if this was on my list, and I said no, very confidently.

WHISKEY JENNY: And I was like, great. I’m going to do it. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: Yeah, I googled it, and I was like, oh no, it super is.

WHISKEY JENNY: It was a real emotional roller coaster. See we do try to confer beforehand. And I was correct in that this one was on her list. But sometimes I am not correct. But anyway, I would have put it on my list had it not already been on Gin Jenny’s list, but Gin Jenny is kindly going to let me read it. It is The House of the— Sorry, not read it. She’s going to let me read the announcement.

WHISKEY JENNY: She doesn’t control what I read. [LAUGHTER] Although I would trust you. I would put myself in your hands. Should I need to make that choice, I would do it.

So it’s The House of Broken Angels, by about Luis Alberto Urrea. And it’s coming from Little Brown in March. All I was reading about it is, it’s a multigenerational saga of a Mexican-American family in California. And I know that Gin Jenny was really high on Into the Beautiful North. And it just sounds really lovely. And I love a good family novel.

GIN JENNY: I actually was going to ask you, I realized I don’t— because as I was trying to pick your Hatening book, I realized I didn’t know what your position was on the genre “family reconvenes for funeral.”

WHISKEY JENNY: For a funeral? I don’t love it for a funeral. This is for someone’s birthday. So this is more exciting to me.

GIN JENNY: It’s for someone’s final birthday. So the thing is, I don’t think I’ve ever read a book in this genre that I’ve actually enjoyed. But somehow I can’t stop trying them.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. What else is in this genre?

GIN JENNY: Oh gosh.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, I like convening for a wedding, too.

GIN JENNY: Sure, sure. Yeah, I think so. You know what? I should rename the genre to “family reconvenes for event.”

WHISKEY JENNY: For an event. Yeah, there’s many of those that I enjoy.

GIN JENNY: There’s some that I’ve enjoyed. I don’t think there’s any that I wanted to keep forever. But I think this one could be the one, because I really, really liked Into the Beautiful North. And also, the plot description reminds me of A Tangled Web, by LM Montgomery. Did you ever read that?

WHISKEY JENNY: No.

GIN JENNY: Well, it’s similar. The matriarch of the family calls her whole enormous family together for her last birthday party.

WHISKEY JENNY: How does she know it’s her last?

GIN JENNY: You know, it’s an LM Montgomery book. She’s just like, I’ve decided I will die soon.

WHISKEY JENNY: OK, cool. Yeah, one of those.

GIN JENNY: It’s not the best of the lesser LM Montgomery books, and it’s shockingly racist at the end, so I have to stop reading it early. But still, I’m quite fond of parts of it, and this kind of reminded me of that.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, no, it sounds really cool.

GIN JENNY: Well, what’s your next actual one?

WHISKEY JENNY: My next actual one— and thank you again— my next actual one is Happiness, by Aminatta Forna

GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah. That was almost on my list.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, sweet. So it comes out in March from Atlantic Monthly. It is a novel of a chance encounter— this is all— I wrote my notes, and I’m realizing that they are kind of jibberish. So this is me trying to decipher my notes. It is a story where an American fox expert in London has a chance encounter with, I think, a Ghanian doctor who’s a trauma expert. And he’s in town to do a big fancy talk, but he’s also in town to look for his missing niece. And I think they become friends, and I think that the fox expert uses her fox network of the people that she uses previously to help her find foxes to help find the niece. And the niece has emigrated to London from somewhere else. So it also talks a lot about the immigrant experience, I think.

And it just sounds really fascinating. I’ve never read anything by this writer, but in reading this description, I’m very excited about it. It reminded me also some of— did you ever read Prodigal Summer?

GIN JENNY: No.

WHISKEY JENNY: So that’s Barbara Kingsolver. I think it’s three interwoven tales. It talks a lot about nature, but one of the people is a coyote expert. So A, felt that I learned a whole bunch about coyote behavior during that book, and was super high on coyotes, and angry at everyone who thought they were vermin for a while. And it also lends itself— I think that sort of style lends itself to making comparisons between coyote behavior and human behavior. So I hope there’s also a lot of fox-human comparisons. And it just sounded really cool,

GIN JENNY: Well, that sounds really good. And it is on my list, too. I read her two previous books and I quite liked them. I’m also hoping for some really good fox information.

WHISKEY JENNY: I’m not sure that that is what she wrote this book for, but that was definitely the thing that drew me to the book. I was like, oh, cool, a fox expert.

GIN JENNY: Foxes!

WHISKEY JENNY: Foxes are the best. Definitely want to read that. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, yeah, yeah, groundbreaking novel about the human experience. Tell me more about these foxes. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: So my last one is Imposter Syndrome, by Mishell Baker, coming out in March from Saga. So I’ve talked a lot about Mishell Baker’s books. The first one was Borderline, and they’re the urban fantasy novels about movie stars and creepy fairies. And our protagonist is a filmmaker and double amputee with borderline personality disorder.

And in the last book, I don’t want to spoil it, but there’s a major schism in the last book that has some pretty enormous consequences. And I wasn’t even sure there were going to be more in the series. But I’m excited that there are, and I think in this one, Millie’s going to really be dealing with the fallout of what happened last time. So it’ll be a pretty big change. And I’m really looking forward to more building, and more creepy fairies, and more adventures.

WHISKEY JENNY: Schism, Schisms are always fun.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. Well, yeah. [LAUGHTER] What about you?

WHISKEY JENNY: My last one is Disoriental, coming out in April from Europa, one of our go-tos.

GIN JENNY: French flaps Europa.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah! French flaps. So it’s by Négar Djavadi and translated by Tina Kover. It is set in Paris about a young woman of Iranian origin.

GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah, yeah! I heard about this.

WHISKEY JENNY: And she’s sitting in a doctor’s office and kind of— not hallucinates, but starts getting waves of her family’s stories. But she can’t stop them. Like, OK cool, I don’t want to hear these stories anymore while I’m waiting in this doctor’s office. So it’s a cool storytelling conceit, I think.

And this is the first novel by Négar Djavadi, and she’s a screenwriter, though. So I feel like that kind of story lends itself— I’m excited to see a screenwriter’s take on this sort of classic Sheherazade sort of thing.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. Well, that’s a good crowd of books, I feel like.

WHISKEY JENNY: I’m pretty excited, yeah.

GIN JENNY: Well, do you want to tell the people about what we read for this podcast?

WHISKEY JENNY: I do. So we read Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid which was a love story, to begin with, of two people in a city that is unnamed, but has Middle East signifiers, I would say. And their city starts having unrest, and they eventually want to try to leave. And in this world, there are mysterious doors that just pop up and lead you to other places in the world, and they take one. And then it is the tale of how they continue to build their lives after leaving their home. Yeah, what did you think overall?

GIN JENNY: I thought it was pretty good. I thought the writing was really great. There were several quotes that I wrote down. I thought it was an interesting premise that the author dealt with in a lot of really interesting ways. But at the same time, I know this is kind of predictable, but I could envision a less literary fiction and more science fiction version of this book that I probably would have liked better.

WHISKEY JENNY: I can see that, absolutely.

GIN JENNY: What did you think?

WHISKEY JENNY: I really liked it. I really liked it a lot.

GIN JENNY: Oh, excellent.

WHISKEY JENNY: I absolutely see your point. One of my notes was that I kind of wanted it to keep going, and I wanted to know more about how the world is now, now that all these doors exist.

GIN JENNY: Have been around for a while now.

WHISKEY JENNY: Like, the world has come to terms with the fact of their existence, and now you can just pop off to— they make some casual mention, I think, of popping off to Chile to see the stars in one afternoon. And I just really wanted— and I think that desire of mine is similar to yours, to have a more sci-fi telling of this story, and to really focus on the magic of the doors, and how that magic affects people’s day to day lives. So I would like another sci-fi book that’s this book retold, but I don’t want to replace this book. I just want both. I’m very greedy. I want both. But I really liked it.

GIN JENNY: So you said that you liked all the details of the magic doors. I also did, whereas everything that dealt with Nadia and Saeed’s relationship, I was less interested. What did you feel about that?

WHISKEY JENNY: I liked the beginning of their story, and their courtship, I was interested in. As they become more established and then start falling apart, I just didn’t buy it. It was like it was the most polite breakup of all time. But I was like, there’s no way that these two humans are this nice to each other as this, their one love for their entire lives, and this person they’ve gone through all of this stuff together with— there’s no way that it’s this, I don’t know—

GIN JENNY: Amicable?

WHISKEY JENNY: —casual and amicable. I just didn’t believe it. So, yeah, I agree.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. I was also annoyed throughout the book— and the book does rectify this later— but they keep talking about how Saeed and Nadia aren’t having sex because they aren’t—

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh my god, yes! Yes. I wrote that down, too, and then I had to go back and put in parentheses, “later sort of remedied.”

GIN JENNY: Yeah. So it talks a lot about how they’re not having sex, because Saeed doesn’t want to have sex until they’re married. And what they mean is that they’re not having intercourse. And it made me really annoyed, because other things are sex that they’re clearly engaged in.

WHISKEY JENNY: Like, explicitly.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. And it bugged me all throughout the book, and then at the very end of the book Nadia’s like, I mean, we were having sex. And Saeed it like, ha ha, yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: Right.

GIN JENNY: But it was too late. I had already been annoyed throughout the whole book.

WHISKEY JENNY: And I would have been like, OK, fine, had you been saying “oh, but we’re not having sex” from the perspective of Saeed that whole time. But it’s the third person narrator who’s like, but they stopped just short of sex. And it’s like, well, no, the omniscient book can’t be calling it not sex and then be like, ha ha at the end. So no, I would have forgiven it had it been from the character’s perspective, but it wasn’t.

GIN JENNY: You’re right. That’s true. That’s a good point.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, that was really annoying. I was surprised at the depth of my feeling to be like, come on. It’s sex.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, that’s a real pet peeve of mine. That really, really, really, really bugs me. But everything with the ramifications of the magic doors, I was so into. And I loved the details of all the different places where Nadia and Saeed end up, because they end up going to several different homes over the course of the book.

So first they go to this Greek island. And I loved how it talked about the refugee camps that get set up and the systems of barter that work there, and how rumors are always flying that these doors are opening to wealthy places. I loved all that stuff, all that world building.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. My favorite little detail of that was— first of all, I think in general the book had for me a very fairy tale, fable feeling to it, which I loved. And then they end up in London, basically it seemed like a palace, essentially. This enormous house in the middle of London that’s super nice and has fancy bathtubs, and just this super, super opulent house with multiple rooms, and different families claimed different rooms. And just the fact that basically there is a palace in this story, I was like, OK cool, so it’s still a fairy tale.

That house, a council is formed. And when London is particularly hostile and they can’t get food, the council distributes rations to everyone, gathers everyone’s food and then rations it back out. Just the workings of that council, I thought, were fascinating.

GIN JENNY: Me too. And especially because you get to see how Nadia and Saeed deal very differently with the community that’s set up there. I loved that detail. To me, it didn’t actually feel super fairytaley. Because I was thinking of it like, there’s all these unoccupied houses in Kensington and Chelsea where super wealthy people just buy them and maintain them as assets but don’t live there. So I was imagining it like those houses.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yes. I think there is a very valid real world explanation. Everything in this book feels very real to me, except for the doors, you know?

GIN JENNY: Right.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s just like, in the telling of it, there was also this giant, palatial home. I felt it really fit in the way that this book straddles the fairytale and the real.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. That’s a great way of putting it. And I just thought that the author had put his finger on something really interesting. Because reading that, what they were describing felt a lot more like London than just empty houses— you know what I mean? —in a posh neighborhood. And so I just thought it was an interesting— he was saying something really interesting about the way we conceptualize spaces, and who owns them, and who belongs in them.

Especially because, in the area where Nadia and Saeed are, it ends up being— they talk about that a lot of Nigerians end up there. And Nadia makes friends with everyone, and Saeed is more like, well, I want to hang out with people from our country instead. And Nadiya’s like, who cares? It was just really interesting, the way they form community or decline to form community, I thought, was so cool.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I really enjoyed seeing both of their different— particularly at that point, but just throughout the entire book— their different approaches to what kind of life they want to build now that everything is destroyed. How do they rebuild, what do they want to hold on to? And they both have pretty radically different approaches to that, I would say. And yeah, I thought that was really well handled. I wouldn’t say that the book condemns either one of their approaches. I think it allows them both to do what they want.

GIN JENNY: Yes, exactly. One of my notes is that I think Mohsin Hamid steers away from moral judgment throughout the book. He’s just basically saying, this is what these people did, and this is what these people did. And at times I might have liked him to take more of a stand.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.

GIN JENNY: But I think there’s something good and interesting about the way that he does handle it. And particularly what really struck me, there’s a point in the book where the migrants in London are considering armed defense against the native military and police forces. And one faction says they should be nonviolent, because they have no hope of winning. So their only hope is to not provoke them, basically. And one faction says, we have to defend ourselves, because if we don’t, we’ll be eliminated. And Nadia is hearing both of these arguments, and she’s not sure. And I liked it that the author left that space for her not to be sure. Because I’m also not sure.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. It’s a terrible choice to have to make.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. It’s a terrible choice, and it feels like there’s no good or right choice.

WHISKEY JENNY: I think, to your point that sometimes I wish there was some moral judgment— he would just sum up in one sentence, something like a beheading, or the fire assassination of 200 children or something. And I would wish that sometimes his detachment came off more as callousness.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: But then I started thinking, but really aren’t we all callous when we read the news? Perhaps he’s saying something about whose lives we value and whose lives we don’t. So maybe it was on purpose.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, but I agree. I mean, at times it did feel a little bit cold.

WHISKEY JENNY: What did you think about— so mostly we follow Saeed and Nadia. But there’s a couple cut scenes— I don’t know, flashes of other people in other places and their experiences with the doors. And we never hear anything more from them. It’s just these one little scenes once in a while. What did you think of those?

GIN JENNY: I didn’t really get why they were in there. But I tended to enjoy them, and they tended to have interesting details about how the world is working for the rest of the people. And plus, I thought there were just some really lovely lines in those sections. What did you think?

WHISKEY JENNY: Same. I wasn’t mad at them, but I kind of either wanted more from them, or them to not be there at all. Because I think it’s a very hard line to straddle the very personal stories that we’re getting of Saeed and Nadia versus the very universal, general experience that I think this book is trying to also capture.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, and I think it does capture it pretty well in a lot of ways.

WHISKEY JENNY: So to me, that was just another way it was trying to be like, but don’t forget, even though we’re following Nadia and Saeed, this is happening millions and millions and millions of times over and over again throughout the world. So I guess in that way it was successful.

GIN JENNY: As you’re talking about it, you’re kind of talking me into them. Listening to you, I kind of like them as scene setting and as reminding the reader that there’s more than just these two people.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Particularly, there’s some where I was like, but wait, I really like those two people! No, don’t take me away! Like the two old men that fall love. I was so charmed by them.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, and I think it’s the last one in the book, where it’s an old woman who’s lived in the same place her whole life, just I thought was a really lovely little vignette. And our outro quote— spoilers— our outro quote is going to be from that section.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, I totally know it. I was just about to be like, if you don’t mention it— but OK, I totally know what it is. It’s the greatest quote. It’s a really good one.

GIN JENNY: It’s pretty good. Did you write down a bunch of quotes? Did you like the writing as much as I did?

WHISKEY JENNY: I did. I really liked the writing. I wrote down a whole bunch of quotes. Well actually, I didn’t write them down. I was taking photos of the page. Because I didn’t feel like stopping my flow, and so I was just taking photos of the page. But my phone was slightly far away to begin with. And I would be like, oh OK, and I would get up and then leave the phone far away, and then the next page I would be like, ugh, there’s another one. [LAUGHTER] So eventually I kept my phone close to me.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, you learned a lesson.

WHISKEY JENNY: I sure did.

GIN JENNY: I will say, as much as I did enjoy the writing, I was glad the book was the length that it was. It’s a relatively short book. Because there are things about the way that Hamid writes that I think would have felt mannered if it had been longer. His sentences are very run-on at times.

WHISKEY JENNY: That’s true. Did it drive you crazy?

GIN JENNY: No, no, no, it didn’t. I just noticed it, and I think if there had been more of the book, it would have started bugging me.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. But I thought always followable.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, definitely. Did not sacrifice coherence at all.

WHISKEY JENNY: [LAUGHTER] Which sounds like a very negative thing to say about a book. Wow, it was coherent. But we really liked it, actually. That’s a compliment.

GIN JENNY: Damn it with faint praise.

WHISKEY JENNY: It is a book that made grammatical sense.

GIN JENNY: The subject-verb agreement was just fine.

WHISKEY JENNY: What did you think about the fact that their place of origin is unnamed?

GIN JENNY: I liked it. I think it contributed to what you were talking about, the fairytale feeling of the book. And I think also, if they had named the country they had come from, I would have gotten hung up on details and thinking about what I know about that country. I think it was a good move. I’m in favor. What did you think?

WHISKEY JENNY: I thought it was good, too. I thought it was interesting that all the other places in the world are real places. Like, they go to Greece, they go to London, they go to California. I thought that was just a really interesting choice that made me think about why you decided to do that as a writer, which is a line of inquiry that I always really enjoy. I agree.

I think it also has Middle East signifiers, but then it also makes you question, why do I think that this place is the Middle East? And that was a very interesting conversation, I felt, that the book was having.

GIN JENNY: OK, so I had one tiny gripe.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Gripe away.

GIN JENNY: It’s just a small one, about the migrant native categories thing that he does, which I in general really like. The last place that Nadia and Saeed wash up together is in California. And Hamid makes reference to American Indians, and he says this. “In Marin—” which is where they are in California— “in Marin there were almost no natives, these people having died out or been exterminated long ago. At the trading posts, the elder among them seemed not infrequently to be possessed of a limitless patience that was matched by a limitless sorrow. Tales were told at these places that people from all over now gathered to hear.” And, gosh. I appreciate Hamid correctly identifying Indians as the natives of America. And at the same time, I felt like this passage stumbled into some cliches about indigenous Americans that are not great.

WHISKEY JENNY: Absolutely.

GIN JENNY: Like the idea that there’s almost none left, and the kind of mysticisization that’s on display here is cliche. And since we don’t meet any other indigenous American characters at all, this feels perfunctory.

WHISKEY JENNY: No, definitely. I have no argument against that. Is that the same sentence that mentions what they’re selling?

GIN JENNY: Yes, probably. I have an ellipsis in the middle because I was trying to highlight the specific parts that bugged me the most.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, yeah, sure. Sure. I think that whole sentence in general is problematic. And you’re absolutely right. It really plays into the strong but silent Native American stereotype.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. And I get that the author is not from America, and so maybe hasn’t encountered it as much. But still, it was kind of a bummer to read. I would say that the sex thing were my two big gripes, and those are pretty small gripes.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, yeah. I don’t know. They’re medium-sized gripes.

GIN JENNY: Well, I guess the space they occupy is relatively small.

WHISKEY JENNY: Sure. I see. I think your gripe of sci-fi is not a gripe, but is also a very valid criticism.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. And I think that I would give this book to someone who wants to get into sci-fi.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, really?

GIN JENNY: I think if I were making a list of literary sci-fi-ish books, I would put this on it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Sure, yeah. It’s like the gateway. It’s the door!

GIN JENNY: Oh, man. If I were there, I would give you a high five right now.

WHISKEY JENNY: Thank you. Thank you so much. What did you think about the cover?

GIN JENNY: Oh, I completely forgot what the cover looked like.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s blue with more blue writing and little silver sparkles.

GIN JENNY: I would’ve liked the cover— maybe this is too on the nose, but I would have liked the cover to have a door.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Yeah, same.

GIN JENNY: It’s a nice cover. I mean, it’s an attractive cover, but I don’t know how much it gets into what the book is about.

WHISKEY JENNY: And as you recall when we were talking about, on last podcast, reading this, I had a really hard time summarizing the book. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: You sure did.

WHISKEY JENNY: It was pretty unclear to me what this book was about, and I think part of that is the cover. Have you read anything else by Mohsen Hamid?

GIN JENNY: I didn’t, and I was actually going to ask you if you, having liked this so much, if you are planning to read more by him. I am certainly planning on investigating more by him. I don’t know anything else about any of the other books. And I really liked a lot of things that I think might be specific to this book, but might not. Like the fairy tale, fable feel, and the presence of the magic. I’m interested in seeing, if those things are not present in his other books, do I still like him as a writer? So we will see.

GIN JENNY: I would actually like to read at least one of his other books. The one that I was familiar with, or had heard of, was The Reluctant Fundamentalist. And that’s not really a type of book that I’m super interested in— why men do very violent things is not my genre.

WHISKEY JENNY: I think I’d also heard of How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia.

GIN JENNY: I don’t know anything about it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, me neither.

GIN JENNY: His marketing team needs to work better.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s probably on me and not his making team.

GIN JENNY: Who can say? It’s someone’s fault! I do like the title, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, Exit West is also a really good title, I think.

GIN JENNY: It is. And he has a book of essays called Discontent and Its Civilizations, and I’m 100% gonna read that. That is an amazing title. So I’m definitely going to read that. I may or may not read more of his existing fiction.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, let me know.

GIN JENNY: I will.

WHISKEY JENNY: I will also be looking into what else of his I want to read.

GIN JENNY: Cool. Well, a great success. A great start to 2018, Whiskey Jenny.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yay! Yeah, hooray. I’m glad it was such a success.

GIN JENNY: It was. So turning from success to—

WHISKEY JENNY: —to a different kind of success.

GIN JENNY: To a joy to hate.

GIN JENNY: So we’re beginning the third annual Hatening, which is very exciting. But I have to tell you something about the Hatening. I was trying to pick a Hatening book for you, and I was talking to my friend Claire Rousseau, who podcasts at Radio Free Fandom and listens to our podcast. And she said that she found the Hatening slightly befuddling, because she said that it seems like something two people as nice as us wouldn’t be excited to do.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh. That is an interesting take, yes.

GIN JENNY: So I wanted to take your temperature, make sure you’re still into the Hatening.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, I am. I am.

GIN JENNY: OK, cool. Because I love the Hatening.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.

GIN JENNY: I don’t really know why. I just really enjoy it.

WHISKEY JENNY: I enjoy it as well. I think in most things, I don’t hate watch or hate read a lot of times.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, same.

WHISKEY JENNY: This is the one time of the year where I relish in that, I suppose. And sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised.

GIN JENNY: And I like stepping out of my comfort zone a little bit.

WHISKEY JENNY: Exactly, yeah. And I think that the restrictions we have put upon it are very interesting. Like, we have to think that we will like it and the other person won’t, I think, is a very interesting thing always to discover. And then our specific triggers that we have eliminated, so it’s not cruelly things that we would hate.

GIN JENNY: Right, yes.

WHISKEY JENNY: And also, we agree a lot. So it’s sometimes fun to feel like we are injecting the slightest bit of very polite conflict into this podcast. [LAUGHTER] Conflict that we have to each check beforehand to be like, do you still want to—? [LAUGHTER] So yeah. Do you still want to do it?

GIN JENNY: Yes, no, I love the Hatening.

WHISKEY JENNY: Great.

GIN JENNY: OK. So for this year’s first round of polite discord, [LAUGHTER] I have selected A Kind of Intimacy, by Jenn Ashworth.

WHISKEY JENNY: I’ve never heard of this. What is this?

GIN JENNY: So my lovely friend Proper Jenny, who blogs at Shelf Love, recommended it a while ago, and I added it to my list straightaway, because it sounds very fun for me. Not for you. It is about a woman named Annie, who moves into an apartment. And she immediately meets her neighbor, Neil, and tells him she has a husband and daughter, but we never see them. And she becomes convinced that Neil’s super into her, even though he has a girlfriend. And she starts like getting more and more involved in his life. And she is a very unreliable narrator.

WHISKEY JENNY: No!

GIN JENNY: Maybe a sociopath. And I don’t know if they’re actually in the suburbs, but it sounds like a pretty suburby setup.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I think you’ve done it again.

GIN JENNY: I mean, it can’t be as bad as The Easter Parade. I’m so confident.

WHISKEY JENNY: No, I think that is definitely Hall of Fame, hating-wise.

GIN JENNY: It’s really hard to choose for you, so I hope I’ve done an OK job.

WHISKEY JENNY: I’m not excited to read this, so I think that’s the signifier that yes, you have.

GIN JENNY: Hooray!

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh boy. She’s going to lie her little butt off to me, isn’t she?

GIN JENNY: She is, yes. Yes, very much.

WHISKEY JENNY: I guess stalking is a kind of intimacy.

GIN JENNY: Oh, man. Your palpable disapproval.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, here we go again. Third annual.

GIN JENNY: We’ll see how it goes.

WHISKEY JENNY: Looking forward. I genuinely am looking forward to talking about it with you.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, me too. I’m really looking forward to it. 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 at readingtheend. We are both on Goodreads as Whiskey Jenny and Gin Jenny. And you can email us— please do— at readingtheend@gmail.com. And if you’re listening to us on iTunes, please leave us a review and help someone else find our podcast.

Until next time, a quote from Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid. “When she went out, it seemed to her that she, too, had migrated, that everyone migrates, even if we stay in the same houses our whole lives. Because we can’t help it. We are all migrants through time.”

WHISKEY JENNY: [DELIGHTED] We are all migrants through time. [LAUGHTER] Clink!

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. 96: Spring 2018 Book Preview and Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West appeared first on Reading the End.