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Tag: fairy tales

Reading the End Bookcast, Ep.22: Books for Travel and Marissa Meyer’s Cinder and Scarlet

Published 21 May 2014 by Gin Jenny

We couldn’t think of a good game for this episode, but we think you’ll enjoy it anyway. As we head into summer, the Jennys take some time to discuss the types of books you want to read when you’re traveling, and we review the fun and silly books Cinder and Scarlet, the first two in a planned quartet of fairy tale retellings by Marissa Meyer (not to be confused with Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo). You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go. Episode 22…

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The Crane Wife, Patrick Ness

Published 22 Jan 2014 by Gin Jenny

The beginning: A man wakes up in the middle of the night and finds a wounded crane on his front lawn. Carefully, he extracts an arrow from its wing so that it can fly away. He tells it his name, George. The next day a woman called Kumiko enters his life, and everything changes. The end (spoilers in this section only; highlight ’em if you want ’em): I predicted this correctly in my brain. I am not familiar with the story of the Crane Wife, but I feel like anyone who has ever read a fairy tale knew what was…

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Review: Some Kind of Fairy Tale, Graham Joyce

Published 2 Oct 2012 by Gin Jenny

I have a strong but mostly theoretical affection for stories about fairies. I say “mostly theoretical” because I do not often find myself pleased by books that deal with these topics. Of books that bother about The Faerie Realm, the reigning champion is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which manages the necessary but apparently really difficult task of making the world of faerie interesting, creepy, and specific. Other books I have loved that have Faerie Realms in them (like Fire & Hemlock) tend to shunt the faerie realms off to the side and just hint at what’s going on in…

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Review: A Long, Long Sleep, Anna Sheehan

Published 19 Sep 2012 by Gin Jenny

In a way, I did this to myself. I should know by now that I do not like, and have never liked, science fictiony retellings of fairy tales. There’s just something about it that feels very deeply weird. Magic is magic and science is science, and — and — you know? It feels jarring. So I was setting myself up for disappointment in this, my first attempt to discern whether all Candlewick authors are as good as Patrick Ness and Melina Marchetta. (Also because Patrick Ness and Melina Marchetta are really awesome.) Rose Fitzroy wakes up after sixty years in…

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Habibi, Craig Thompson

Published 27 Dec 2011 by Gin Jenny

Nyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyynnnnnnnnggggg. Come on, dude. Is what I was saying throughout most of Habibi. I wanted to be saying what I was saying throughout most of Thompson’s previous book, Blankets, which was nothing actually because I was so breathless from the beauty of the story and the illustrations. I wanted that to be the case with Habibi, and occasionally it was, like when the characters were telling each other stories from Muslim traditions. Craig Thompson never didn’t succeed at making his stories beautiful. If he had stuck to this, we’d be having a very different review right now. Let me back…

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The Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim

Published 19 Jun 2010 by Gin Jenny

Oh Bruno Bettelheim, you silly bunny.  So many things about your book annoyed me until I flipped to your about-the-author and looked at your dates.  Turns out, there is some excuse for your dated Freudian psychology: you were born in 1903!  After I knew that, so many things about you still annoyed me.  I like for writers to use the phrases “oedipal conflict” and “oral incorporative stage” sparingly, if at all.  Your dates are no excuse!  I would have found it even more annoying if I had not suddenly remembered this (warning for language); and then every time Bettelheim said…

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Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales, Max Luthi

Published 11 Jun 2010 by Gin Jenny

By astonishing coincidence, I find myself needing to research fairy tales right in the middle of the Once Upon a Time Challenge (about which, if anyone is wondering, I have never forgotten at all but have kept it uppermost in my mind at all times).  Max Lüthi has written a book that provides an insightful and very readable overview of the conventions of the European fairy tale.  As a starting place for my research into fairy tales (I am going to research the crap out of fairy tales, y’all), I could hardly have picked a better book. Lüthi talks about…

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Review: Peter and Max, Bill Willingham

Published 8 Feb 2010 by Gin Jenny

I won Peter and Max from Cecelia of adventures of cecelia bedelia – thank you!  I was having a terrible day, and when I got home I had not one, BUT TWO packages on my doorstep.  One was Peter and Max, and the other was a package of two books and a bookmark from Jeane.  It was amazing.  It caused my day to stop being terrible, and be awesome instead.  (True story.) If you haven’t read Fables, you should really do that.  In fact, go do that now, and when you have finished, you may come back and we can…

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The Coachman Rat, David Henry Wilson

Published 2 Aug 2009 by Gin Jenny

Ah, yes, it’s time for another twisted and disturbing retelling of the Pied Piper, courtesy of the animal-loving Jeane.  I can’t decide whether this is more disturbing or What Happened in Hamelin – I feel like the latter, because of all the little children – but this is still fairly disturbing.  In a good way!  I liked it! The Coachman Rat is all about Cinderella’s rat.  On the night of Cinderella’s ball (she’s called Amadea here), an ordinary rat is transformed into a coachman; and at midnight, as she runs away, he is turned back into a rat.  Now, however,…

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THE SEVENTH FABLES BOOK MWAHAHAHAHAHA

Published 7 Jul 2009 by Gin Jenny

I mean, not really mwahahahahaha.  I didn’t particularly need an evil laugh there, just because I finally read the seventh volume of Fables; though it was nice to read it, and it reminded me how cool and fun the Fables books are.  I stayed up last night to read it, which I thought would be okay, and I’d still get eight hours of sleep, but I wasn’t counting on a) the fact that I was going to start, and then insist on finishing, Ordinary Victories, and b) how much there were going to be wild dogs fighting furiously outside the…

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