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.

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

Episode 107

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

1:56 – What we’re reading
3:30 – What we’re cooking/eating
5:40 – LOTR Reread: The Two Towers, Book 3, Chapters 6-11
20:54 – Summer book preview check-in
22:23 – Fall book preview
31:22 – River of Stars, Vanessa Hua
42:09 – What we’re reading next time

Here are the books we mentioned.

A Duke by Default, Alyssa Cole
The Girl from Everywhere, Heidi Heilig
The Two Towers, Chapters 6-11 of Book 3
Armistice, Lara Elena Donnelly (fanfic post!)
Witchmark, CL Polk
The Poppy War, RF Kuang
Temper, Nicky Drayden
Undead Girl Gang, Lily Anderson (podcast!)
On the Come-Up, Angie Thomas
Number One Chinese Restaurant, Lillian Li
The Ensemble, Aja Gabel
Washington Black, Esi Edugyan
Half-Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan (podcast!)
Transcript, Kate Atkinson
Life after Life, Kate Atkinson
A God in Ruins, Kate Atkinson (podcast!)
The Best Bad Things, Katrina Carrasco
Zero Sum Game, SL Huang
“The Little Homo Sapiens Scientist,” SL Huang
Waiting for Eden, Elliot Ackerman
Hearts Unbroken, Cynthia Leitich Smith
Retablos: Stories From a Life Lived Along the Border, Octavio Solis
Exit Strategy, Martha Wells
All Systems Red, Martha Wells
The Royal Runaway, Lindsay Emory
Eternity Girl, Magdalene Visaggio
River of Stars, Vanessa Hua
One Red Paperclip blog
The Color Purple, Alice Walker
“The Kite Maker,” Brenda Peynado link

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

Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour
Transcripts by: Sharon of Library Hungry

Transcript is available under the jump!

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

WHISKEY JENNY: Hello, and welcome to the Reading the End bookcast with the demographically similar Jennys. I’m Whiskey Jenny.

GIN JENNY: And I’m Gin Jenny.

WHISKEY JENNY: And we’re back to talk about books and literary happenings. On today’s podcast, we’re going to talk about what we’re reading. We’re going to talk about what we are cooking slash eating. Mine’s a lot of eating in this hot, hot weather, I will admit.

GIN JENNY: Same.

WHISKEY JENNY: We read chapters 6 through 11 of book three of The Two Towers. We are going to check in on books we were excited to read about for this summer and also talk about what we’re excited that’s coming out in the fall. For this podcast we read A River of Stars by Vanessa Hua. And then Gin Jenny is going to begin the Forcening with her Forcening pick for me, which I will find out on air.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, you have no idea yet.

WHISKEY JENNY: So big surprise. [LAUGHTER] We sound sarcastic, I feel like, but we really don’t—I really don’t know.

GIN JENNY: Oh, well I feel like when I tell you you’re going to be like, oh yeah, I did know that.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, is it? Ugh, okay.

GIN JENNY: [LAUGHTER] That’s why I asked if you were up for it!

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I forgot that it was going to be that one, though. All right, well, too late now.

GIN JENNY: But I don’t want to—I mean, right, but I don’t want to force you into anything that—

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s literally called the Forcening. [LAUGHTER] Gentle herding, we should rename it. But before then, what are you reading right now?

GIN JENNY: I am reading A Duke by Default, by Alyssa Cole. I love Alyssa Cole, and I feel like she has become much more famous in the last maybe two years, which I’m really excited about. She’s a romance novelist, and this is a series she’s writing about black women who end up in relationships with royalty. It is so great. The first one was A Princess in Theory, which I loved. And A Duke by Default is equally great so far.

It’s about a girl who kind of has kind of made a mess of her life, and her parents are very disappointed in her. And she takes an apprenticeship—

WHISKEY JENNY: Aw.

GIN JENNY: I know. And she takes an apprenticeship with a swordmaker in Scotland.

WHISKEY JENNY: Ooh.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. And he’s very gruff.

WHISKEY JENNY: Aw, I bet he has a heart of gold, though.

GIN JENNY: He does have a heart of gold. He teaches little children how to do little fighting with the sword fighting.

WHISKEY JENNY: Aw, I knew it!

GIN JENNY: And spoilers I guess, but it’s kind of in the title. It turns out that he is secretly a duke. He doesn’t even know it. She finds out. So it’s pretty great. It’s pretty delightful.

WHISKEY JENNY: What year is it?

GIN JENNY: It is now year. Current year.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, it’s now year. Sorry, all the swordfightery.

GIN JENNY: Oh, right! Yeah, that was very misleading. Right. But think how charming it is now.

WHISKEY JENNY: Aw, it sounds even better. [LAUGHTER] And it’s living up to its delightful premise?

GIN JENNY: Oh my gosh, absolutely. I was trying to decide if I like it better than A Princess in Theory, and I don’t think I do, because A Princess in Theory features a fictionalized version of the African country of Lesotho, a country I really like. And this one’s set in Scotland, which is not my favorite romance novel location. But it’s still pretty good. What are you reading?

WHISKEY JENNY: I am reading The Girl from Everywhere, by Heidi Heilig.

GIN JENNY: [GASP] And how are you liking it?

WHISKEY JENNY: I’m really enjoying it so far.

GIN JENNY: Yay!

WHISKEY JENNY: What are you eating slash cooking right now?

GIN JENNY: Oh, right. Our lovely Patreon subscribers voted for us to talk about we’re something elseing this week, and they voted on cooking or eating. And I have not been cooking a whole lot lately. But I was recently in the Bay Area, and I ate as much Ethiopian food as I possibly could.

WHISKEY JENNY: Ooh.

GIN JENNY: In particular I got takeout from a place called Tadu, T-A-D-U, and it was so good. It was the best Ethiopian food I’ve ever had. Their kitfo was amazing—which, fine, kitfo is always good. But their sambusa were so good. I don’t even care about sambusa usually. They’re not high on my list of savory hand pies. But these were so good. We only ordered four, and I wish we had ordered infinity.

WHISKEY JENNY: That’s quite a recommendation.

GIN JENNY: Oh my gosh, it was so good. [SIGH] Ethiopian food. I love it so much.

WHISKEY JENNY: Hooray!

GIN JENNY: Hooray! What about you? What are you cooking or eating?

WHISKEY JENNY: Well as I mentioned, I’m not cooking very much, because it is quite warm. But I have been getting a lot of tomatoes from my CSA and just having giant tomato, mozzarella, basil salads for dinner.

GIN JENNY: Ooh.

WHISKEY JENNY: Which has been pretty great.

GIN JENNY: I love basil.

WHISKEY JENNY: And I fully stand by that as a complete dinner.

GIN JENNY: I mean, I’ve been eating a lot of breakfast tacos with just eggs and pesto and feta.

WHISKEY JENNY: There you go. So that’s been my cooking shining moments recently. And then eating-wise, I have been going a little bit too much, I would say, to a nearby Chinese noodle shop called Xi’an Famous Foods. And oh god, it’s so good. I had it for lunch today. I really have to stop. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: What’s your go-to order there?

WHISKEY JENNY: I like the spicy pork cumin noodles. But I request it to be—like, don’t add any more spice than is already there. Because standard is they add more spice, and I can’t do it. I’m too much of a spice baby. Because it’s already some spicy. So when I ask for it, don’t add any more. Just as spicy as it already is and nothing more. [LAUGHTER] It’s already at the upper limits of my spice tolerance.

But I ate it today at lunch while I was watching the hot wings YouTube show that I really enjoy, and I felt like I was going on this journey with them, almost. [LAUGHTER] And I’m sure it’s not even as hot as the early wings.

GIN JENNY: Well, good. Sounds delicious.

WHISKEY JENNY: So shall we talk about Two Towers?

GIN JENNY: Yeah, let’s talk about The Two Towers. I want to open with CSI: Two Towers. I’ve done some research into Gandalf’s potential horse theft.

WHISKEY JENNY: Okay. Noted horse rustler Gandalf. What’s his deal?

GIN JENNY: Okay, so in the last podcast you said that we should go back and have a look and see what Gandalf said about Shadowfax in Fellowship of the Ring.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, yes! I’m so glad that you did that, because I totally forgot.

GIN JENNY: I did that, and here’s what Gandalf says about Shadowfax in Fellowship of the Ring. He’s telling the story of his being captured by Saruman, et cetera, et cetera. “In Rohan I found evil already at work, the lies of Saruman. And the king of the land would not listen to my warnings. He bade me to take a horse and be gone, and I chose one much to my liking, but little to his. I took the best horse in the land, and I have never seen the like of him.”

WHISKEY JENNY: Okay, so he admits that it didn’t go great.

GIN JENNY: And also, in the previous section, Éomer says—Gandalf came to Rohan, he begged for help, and then Éomer says, “Speak not the name of Gandalf loudly in Theoden’s ears. He is wroth, for Gandalf took the horse that is called Shadowfax, the most precious of all the King’s steeds, chief of the Mearas, which only the Lords of the Mark may ride.” So this is basically like if Gandalf came to stay with the king, and the king was like, yeah, you can borrow some clothes. I see you don’t have any clothes. And Gandalf was like, cool, and just left with the guy’s crown. That’s what happened here.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. It’s the king’s horse, that only kings ride. [LAUGHTER] I’m like, well, I’ll just take this crown. Bye!

GIN JENNY: That’s what’s going on here. And I just want to be clear about that because, you know, I’m glad Gandalf has a good horse, but good heavens, Gandalf. Acquired by slightly shady methods.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, definitely shady methods. Although it does sort of all come out in the wash in this book, I suppose.

GIN JENNY: No, I mean, it does.

WHISKEY JENNY: It works out great for Gandalf in the end, but he definitely stole that horse to begin with.

Well, how did you enjoy this section?

GIN JENNY: I liked it a lot. It was very exciting.

WHISKEY JENNY: So much to cover! Yeah, same.

GIN JENNY: Well, it starts out with them going to Rohan like they promised Éomer, which is good.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah!

GIN JENNY: And it’s hilarious. Because at Rohan, the guards are like, oh, you can’t bring any weapons in, including your staff. And Aragorn’s like, well I don’t want to leave my sword behind. And Gandalf’s like, no, you should leave your sword behind. We’re guests here, we should follow the etiquette, or whatever. And then everyone tells Gandalf he has to leave his staff behind, and he’s like, oh no, I need it for stuff.

WHISKEY JENNY: Just a little old man. You’re gonna take a staff from a little old man? And even Aragorn’s like, you’re gonna take a staff from an old man? They’re all totally in on it.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, which I think is great. Aragorn is such a good bro. Even though Gandalf didn’t back him up, he’s still like, yeah, you should definitely let him have his staff.

WHISKEY JENNY: Before we talk about what happens after that, I want to talk more about Aragorn and his sword. I just like when he is all kingly. So far we don’t get to see super powerful King Aragorn very often.

GIN JENNY: That’s true.

WHISKEY JENNY: So it’s fun when he just busts that out randomly. But they’re like, give us your sword, give us your sword. It is the will of Theoden. And Aragorn says, “It is not clear to me that the will of Theoden—”

GIN JENNY: Oh my god, I love that so much! “It is not clear to me.” Sorry, continue. That was just so good!

WHISKEY JENNY: That was just passive aggressive work email stuff. [LAUGHTER] With like, you know exactly what’s happening, but you’re just like, hmm, I don’t actually fully understand why we would do it. [LAUGHTER]

Anyway, “It is not clear to me that the will of Theoden, son of Thengel, even though he be Lord of the Mark, should prevail over the will of Aragorn, son of Arathorn, Elendil’s heir of Gondor.” Boom! [LAUGHTER]

Oh, gosh. He eventually does leave the sword, which is nice. But I like that for a while he was very saucy about it.

GIN JENNY: He really was.

WHISKEY JENNY: And then we go in and defeat Wormtongue instantly. I was expecting way more of a build up with this dude.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, well, Gandalf is Gandalf the White now, so things are different.

WHISKEY JENNY: Things are so easy! [LAUGHTER] Let’s just bring this guy with us everywhere.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, and also, why didn’t he do it the first time he was in Rohan? Just a question.

WHISKEY JENNY: Uh, maybe he didn’t have time? There’s a lot of things that he doesn’t have time for that I’m like, well, maybe you should have made time for it, Gandalf.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, I mean, it took 30 seconds. [LAUGHTER]

WHISKEY JENNY: But yeah, I can’t answer that.

GIN JENNY: But then hilariously, they free Theoden from Wormtongue’s influence. And Theoden’s like, wow, how can I repay you? And Gandalf says, oh, give me Shadowfax. “He was the only lent before, if loan we may call it.”

WHISKEY JENNY: That’s not loans!

GIN JENNY: My dude! That’s not a loan!

WHISKEY JENNY: Gosh. Also, that was totally empty, Theoden being like, okay, cool, thanks, man. I owe you one. And Gandalf is like, all right, great. So that horse, then. We have our first meeting of Éowyn.

GIN JENNY: Éowyn!

WHISKEY JENNY: Who is a really important character later on.

GIN JENNY: And I love her. She’s a shieldmaiden.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. She doesn’t get a lot to do this time, though. Except she’s left in charge while they’re gone, which is great.

GIN JENNY: Which is so great. Because Theoden’s like, oh, there’s no one to leave in charge because Éomer is coming with us. Who actually is like, oh, you should leave Éowyn? Who actually says that?

WHISKEY JENNY: I think it is— Oh, Háma.

GIN JENNY: Aw, Háma.

WHISKEY JENNY: I know, Háma. The head of the guard or whatever.

GIN JENNY: Well, good for Háma. Man.

WHISKEY JENNY: I know.

GIN JENNY: Defeating the patriarchy, sort of.

WHISKEY JENNY: He calls her fearless and high-hearted.

GIN JENNY: True information.

WHISKEY JENNY: I also like that Theoden said—they’re going out to war, and he says, you know, I don’t have any children, so Éomer, my nephew, is next in line. And if neither of us return, then choose a new lord as you will. [LAUGHTER] Which really seems quite vague to me.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, it did not work out well for Alexander the Great.

WHISKEY JENNY: What method are they going to use?

GIN JENNY: Everyone knows, you’ve gotta make a will.

WHISKEY JENNY: A specific will. Am I reading this correctly that Éowyn’s developing a crush on Aragorn?

GIN JENNY: Yes.

WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, I feel you, Éowyn. But anyway, Aragorn and the rest of them leave Éowyn in charge and they go off riding towards Helms Deep.

GIN JENNY: For the Battle of Helms Deep.

WHISKEY JENNY: Indeed.

GIN JENNY: Which, I forgot how important Fangorn Forest is to this battle, by the way.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. They were about to lose the battle, and then—when are we calling those? Huorns?

GIN JENNY: Huorns, yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: Hoorns?

GIN JENNY: Like, sub-Ent Ents.

WHISKEY JENNY: And they rout the rest of the orcs and the men who were fighting on the orcs’ side.

GIN JENNY: They do.

WHISKEY JENNY: But at the beginning of the battle, Gandalf is like, I gotta run a quick errand, though. Bye, everyone. He doesn’t tell anyone where he’s going, when he’s going to be back, why he has to do it right now. [LAUGHTER] Again, it would have taken 20 seconds for him to be like, I’m going to go do X.

GIN JENNY: Again, Gandalf’s time management, I have notes.

WHISKEY JENNY: And then, he has the nerve, when Éomer says, “Once more you’ve come in the hour of need, unlooked for.” And Gandalf is all offended. He’s like, “Unlooked for? I said that I would return and meet you here.”

GIN JENNY: At some point!

WHISKEY JENNY: “But you did not name the hour, nor foretell the manner of your coming.” [LAUGHTER] Like, yeah, Éomer’s right. You can’t get mad at him for being like, well, we had no idea when you were coming back, so this is a nice surprise, thanks!

GIN JENNY: Especially because the battle wasn’t going to last forever. They needed him to come back within a certain time frame.

WHISKEY JENNY: And luckily he did. But he came back right as they were about to lose everything. But everyone fights really well in the battle. All of our fellowship members survive. Legolas and Gimli are competing over how many orcs they’ve killed.

GIN JENNY: Which is cute.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Our beloved Háma—

GIN JENNY: Crusader for gender equality, kind of.

WHISKEY JENNY: Háma dies, in battle, heroically. But he has a lovely grave all to himself.

GIN JENNY: Which is nice, I guess. Although everyone else had probably families, too, and it probably would have meant a lot to them to have fancy graves. But fine, whatever.

WHISKEY JENNY: Just one for Háma. And everyone else gets piled up in the same one.

GIN JENNY: And then everyone goes to Isengard.

WHISKEY JENNY: Forth to Isengard! And Gandalf again [LAUGHTER] doesn’t tell them what to expect to find there, even though we find out that he was there last night. Could have told the members of the fellowship to expect Merry and Pippin, and that Merry and Pippin are no longer presumed dead. But does he?

GIN JENNY: No, he does not.

WHISKEY JENNY: Like, if you’re worried about time management this time, they had an entire journey.

GIN JENNY: For him to mention that information.

WHISKEY JENNY: And he never does.

There’s also a line that I enjoyed where Theoden is talking about, even if they win all the battles from now going forward—“‘However the fortune of the war shall go, may it not so end that much that was fair and wonderful shall pass forever out of Middle Earth.’ ‘It may,’ said Gandalf. ‘The evil of Sauron cannot be wholly cured, nor made as if it had not been. But to such days we are doomed. Let us now go on with the journey we have begun.’“

I just really liked that that sentiment was expressed. Best case scenario from now on, Sauron is still evil, and what he has done they’re still going to have to clean up after. But all you can do is go on.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, I agree. That was really lovely.

WHISKEY JENNY: So then they get to Isengard. And what do they find at Isengard?

GIN JENNY: Pippin and Merry!

WHISKEY JENNY: Pippin and Merry! Smoking some smokes, eating some feasts.

GIN JENNY: Which, by the way—so Pippin and Merry tell him the whole story about the Ents storming Isengard, and defeating Saruman, and da da da. I really liked, there’s a small false note in this. Because everyone’s real happy, they’ve won the thing, they won Helms Deep, they defeated Isengard. And then Aragorn is like, well, where did he get the pipe-weed that you’re smoking? And Pippin and Merry are like, I dunno.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s probably fine. Don’t worry about it.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, and everyone’s like, no, it’s weird, though. And I don’t remember the book super well, but I’m assuming this is a foreshadowing of the Scouring of the Shire at the end of The Return of the King.

WHISKEY JENNY: I think so, too. I think it is.

GIN JENNY: That was neat. That was a little detail I didn’t remember.

WHISKEY JENNY: I do like that Theoden is nice to the hobbits when he first sees them. Which is not always the case. Sometimes people are really mean about them. He’s nice to them and starts asking them about tobacco and stuff. And then afterwards Pippin is like, man, that king was really good. I like him.

GIN JENNY: Which is good for Pippin, because he’s about to go hang out with a very uncool king.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I thought it was interesting, the structure that Tolkien has Merry and Pippin at this point recount the story, as you mentioned, rather than narrating it. And having them be a surprise, again, for Legolas and Gimli. I just thought that was interesting. Because we knew what happened to them, that they were with Ents and that they had gone to Isengard. But we didn’t know what happened once they got to Isengard. Those Ents really took care of business there.

GIN JENNY: Sure did. Which is a very satisfying thing to have happened.

WHISKEY JENNY: Also, it’s one more insult at Gandalf and his time management skills. [LAUGHTER] When Gandalf, the night before Helms Deep, comes sprinting to Isengard and sees Pippin, and Pippin’s like, oh hey, cool, you’re alive. Me too, in case you were worried. Gandalf doesn’t say anything about, like, hey, hello. He says, “Get up, you tomfool of a Took! Where in the name of wonder in all this ruin is Treebeard? I want him, quick.” And he could have—I just feel like he could have said hello.

GIN JENNY: Been a little cooler? Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: He couldn’t been a little nicer, a little more human if he said hello. But Pippin does say after he has his little confab with Treebeard, he tells them that at least Legolas and Aragorn and Gimli are alive.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, I guess.

WHISKEY JENNY: But he could have said it beforehand. I don’t know.

GIN JENNY: Okay, so then there’s a really, really, really cool scene where they all go to talk to Saruman, who’s on top of his tower. He tries to persuade them that he’s on the side of righteousness. And it is such a good scene.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s pretty great.

GIN JENNY: Especially because Saruman tries to convince Theoden, the cool king, to make a peace treaty with him. And he’s laying out his case, and he’s using his magic to persuade people. And Theoden finally says, we will have peace. And you think he’s fallen for it, but then he’s like, “We will have peace when you and all your works have perished.”

WHISKEY JENNY: Perished!

GIN JENNY: It’s so good!

WHISKEY JENNY: He did not fall for it. And then Saruman tries to convince everyone in turn, finds no one bending to his will.

GIN JENNY: Boggart rules kind of apply. It works less well because there’s all these different people, and he has to tailor his pitch to each one. And Gandalf even offers him the chance to surrender.

WHISKEY JENNY: He does.

GIN JENNY: He’s like, we’re not going to hurt you if you surrender. And Saruman’s like, no.

WHISKEY JENNY: And then you sort of see Saruman’s self, and they’re like, whoa. Ew. No. [LAUGHTER] And then Gandalf totally owns him.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: Gandalf is like, I’m Gandalf the White now. Your staff is broken. And then it breaks. And he’s like, go away, and Saruman crawls away.

GIN JENNY: And then, hilariously—hilariously, Wormtongue just throws a big ole heavy orb at them, which is so funny to me. [LAUGHTER] Like, I picture him in the back, he’s listening to all this, and he’s like, you guys are jerks! And he just throws something.

WHISKEY JENNY: I hate everyone right now!

GIN JENNY: But Pippin picks it up, and Gandalf’s like, hey, gimme that, and takes it away. For good reason, it turns out.

WHISKEY JENNY: What was it?

GIN JENNY: It’s a palantir, a communication stone. And we find out that that is what Sauron was using to contact and control Saruman.

WHISKEY JENNY: Before we find out what the palantir is, we say goodbye to the Ents. And it’s a really—

GIN JENNY: [SADLY] Oh, yeah. We leave the Ents behind.

WHISKEY JENNY: He says, “We have become friends in so short a while that I think I must be getting hasty.”

GIN JENNY: And then he resays the little verses—

WHISKEY JENNY: —that they had the meeting to officially put them in! It calls them, “Hungry as hunters, the Hobbit children, the laughing-folk, the little people.” So then, Pippin really wants to see the stone again, for some reason. No idea why.

GIN JENNY: Definitely not shady reasons.

WHISKEY JENNY: This doesn’t remind us of anything that’s happened with the ring before. So he does.

GIN JENNY: But it works out okay. It’s very scary.

WHISKEY JENNY: He kind of freezes up and drops it, and they find him. And it takes a while to rouse him out, and they don’t know what’s wrong. And then Gandalf is questioning him about what happened. And he got stuck in there, basically. As soon as he looked in there, Sauron was waiting and was like, aha, got you. And tortured him to tell him information. And he told him he was a hobbit. But that’s all he said, because then Sauron was immediately like, okay, great, you’re mine. I’m going to hang up now. [LAUGHTER] And didn’t ask any more questions. Which turns out was a good thing, because he would have forced Pippin to say a lot more.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: I was pretty mad at Gandalf beforehand, because one of the reasons—Pippin justifies it to himself by being like, well he wasn’t very nice when he took it from me. And I’m like, that’s true, he wasn’t very nice when he took it from you, Pippin! [LAUGHTER] But Pippin’s definitely in the wrong here. He totally steals the thing and replaces it with a rock.

But afterwards, Gandalf is really sweet about it. And he says, “Other men would not have done so well.” He calls Pippin “a fool, but an honest fool.” And he says he forgives him, and he says it could have been much worse, and it’s totally fine. And then carries him back to bed and was really, really sweet about it. And he made up a lot for me then.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: And later on he was like, he might’ve actually helped. Because if I had done that, who knows what would have happened?

GIN JENNY: That’s true. That’s a good point. The downside is, it kind of moves their timeline up, though. Because Sauron now thinks that Saruman has the ringbearer. So he’s going to come sooner than later to come looking for them. So Gandalf has to take Pippin ahead to Gondor, and the rest of them stay behind. They’re going to get the fighters for Rohan and the Westfold together to come to Gondor’s aid. It’ll be the last great battle of men against Mordor.

WHISKEY JENNY: Why did he take Pippin? I was unclear on that.

GIN JENNY: I don’t know.

WHISKEY JENNY: He just takes Pippin with him.

GIN JENNY: Who knows why?

WHISKEY JENNY: I missed it until he told Pippin. Pippin was like, so when are we going to get to Theoden’s house? And Gandalf is like, oh no, we’re not going there. We’re going to Minas Tirith.

GIN JENNY: A much worse place.

WHISKEY JENNY: A long ways away. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, so if he said that beforehand, I missed it. And I was like, oh, really? Oh, okay. But maybe tell your passenger early on. I don’t know.

GIN JENNY: Come on, like Gandalf would ever do that.

WHISKEY JENNY: He really withholds information, that one.

GIN JENNY: He really does.

WHISKEY JENNY: I’m not excited for the terrible king coming up.

GIN JENNY: Well, we’ve got some time.

WHISKEY JENNY: Do we?

GIN JENNY: Yeah. Up next we’re going to read chapters 1 through 5 of book four. The rest of The Two Towers is Sam and Frodo in Mordor.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, great! Well, shall we check in on what books we were excited for in the summer?

GIN JENNY: Yeah. So I read three of my five books.

WHISKEY JENNY: Woo hoo!

GIN JENNY: I read Armistice by Lara Elena Donnelly, which in fact I had already read when we did the book preview. Because we did our summer book preview kind of late. So I really liked the book, and also I had the author on my blog for an interview about her fanfic influences, which was super fun.

And I read Witchmark, by C.L. Polk. It was an alternate England with magic, and I really dug it. It was really, really delightful. And I read A Duke by Default, by Alyssa Cole. Well, I am in the process of reading it now, so I’ve read 2.5 of these books.

WHISKEY JENNY: Congratulations! That’s way better than me.

GIN JENNY: Thank you. I haven’t read The Poppy War, by R.F. Kuang yet, because frankly it looks pretty dark. And I’ve been reading a certain number of dark books lately, so now I’m kind of on a break and reading some romance novels.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yes.

GIN JENNY: And I haven’t yet read Temper, by Nicky Drayden just because my library hasn’t had it in yet.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, there you go.

GIN JENNY: What about you?

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, we read Undead Girl Gang for a podcast, by Lily Anderson.

GIN JENNY: We sure did.

WHISKEY JENNY: But that, unfortunately, is the only one that I’ve read.

GIN JENNY: Summer is a busy time.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, and it felt like a particularly busy summer. One of them, though, I couldn’t have read even if I’d wanted to, because it got pushed back. That is On the Come Up, by Angie Thomas, got pushed back to February.

GIN JENNY: That makes sense, because I haven’t seen anything about it.

WHISKEY JENNY: So not my fault. [LAUGHTER] But then the other three that I have not read, but I am still quite excited to, are Number One Chinese Restaurant, by Lillian Li, The Ensemble, by Aja Gabel, and Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik.

GIN JENNY: I also want to read that one, too. So what are you excited for in the fall, Whiskey Jenny?

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I will mention first the one that is sort of on both of our lists and that we might read for podcast.

GIN JENNY: Yes, I hope so.

WHISKEY JENNY: Which is Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan which comes out in September, which is now, by Knopf. It is set in olden days.

GIN JENNY: Barbados.

WHISKEY JENNY: Barbados.

GIN JENNY: Oh.

WHISKEY JENNY: Barbados in olden days. And an 11-year-old boy who is a slave becomes a manservant to his master’s brother.

GIN JENNY: Who is a scientist.

WHISKEY JENNY: Who is a scientist, a naturalist, an abolitionist. And a man is killed, and there’s like a bounty out on their heads, and they have to flee together all across the world. And they eventually end up in the Arctic.

GIN JENNY: So up our alley!

WHISKEY JENNY: It really does. We’ve previously read Half Blood Blues, also by this author, on a previous podcast. And I think we both overall enjoyed it.

GIN JENNY: And this one, I think, really jives with some of my historical interests, so I’m very curious to read it.

WHISKEY JENNY: And also, the Arctic.

GIN JENNY: The Arctic as well! I know, so many things! But also, the scientist in question is working on building a dirigible.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, I didn’t see that.

GIN JENNY: Well, an airship. But I’m choosing to call it a dirigible, because that is better.

WHISKEY JENNY: What is your first one besides this one that you’re excited about?

GIN JENNY: We finally remembered to coordinate our picks to make sure we weren’t accidentally overlapping. And I was so—I was trying not to be worried about it on chat, but I was so surprised that you didn’t choose this one on your list at all. Which is, there’s a new book by Kate Atkinson coming out from Little Brown in September called Transcription. And it’s about a woman called Juliet who works in an espionage department during World War II in London. And now it’s ten years later and the past is coming back to haunt her. And it just sounds like such a good Whiskey Jenny book, I was just really surprised that it wasn’t on your list. And you didn’t even have to think about it. You were like, nope, not on my list.

WHISKEY JENNY: I’m not not excited for it. It just make the—

GIN JENNY: Didn’t crack the top five.

WHISKEY JENNY: —top five cut here. No. Well if you recall, I was not that high on Life After Life. I just don’t think Kate Atkinson is my number one favorite writer. While the concept sounds amazing, I’m going to wait and see how this one is received and then play the long game on it, I guess.

GIN JENNY: [LAUGHTER] Yeah, Kate Atkinson—I really liked Life After Life. Kate Atkinson isn’t maybe my most favorite author ever, but I liked Life After Life, and I like the premise of this enough that I’m pretty excited for it.

WHISKEY JENNY: What was the sequel to that one?

GIN JENNY: A God in Ruins.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I enjoyed both of those, but I also didn’t adore either of them and had some issues with them. So let me know how it goes.

GIN JENNY: I will keep you posted. What’s your next one that you actually are the most excited about?

WHISKEY JENNY: My next one is The Best Bad Things, by Katrina Carrasco, which is set in also olden times, in the US. It is a time in which the Pinkerton Detective Agency is still a thing, so.

GIN JENNY: Ooh, fun.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s coming out in November by MCD. So our main character is a woman. Some drugs from her female employer, who’s also her former lover, go missing, and she goes on the hunt for them. But she goes undercover as a man and is like trying to play both sides, being a spy, which sounds very intense. But I really enjoyed the queer and gender exploratory aspects of it. So I’m looking forward to it.

GIN JENNY: Cool.

WHISKEY JENNY: Hopefully there’s not too much lying, but there might be a lot.

GIN JENNY: [LAUGHTER] Yeah, I think with a double agent, probably some lying is to be expected.

WHISKEY JENNY: But hopefully not too much. What’s your next one?

GIN JENNY: Okay, my next one is Zero Sum Game, by S.L. Huang, which is coming out from Tor in October. When I was at Worldcon I went to a Book Smugglers reading, which was great. And S.L. Huang was reading from her short story “The Little Homo Sapiens Scientist,” which is a queer retelling of The Little Mermaid. And A, it was good. But also B, she is such a good reader. She really put her whole heart into the reading. She was very expressive.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, those are very different skills.

GIN JENNY: Yes, exactly. Very different skills. And she was an amazing reader, and it just made me really want to go all in on S.L. Huang. So this book has been self-published in the past, but Tor is now releasing it in a traditional publication format, so it’ll be in print. And it’s about a lady with math superpowers who discovers that there’s this secret organization that’s planning to take over the whole world using mind control, and I guess she has to stop them. So it sounds really fun.

WHISKEY JENNY: It does, yes.

GIN JENNY: I love a lady math genius.

WHISKEY JENNY: Sure.

GIN JENNY: What’s your next one, Whiskey Jenny?

WHISKEY JENNY: I’m excited about Waiting for Eden, by Elliot Ackerman, which comes out in September from also Knopf. This is by a former soldier, and also a story about a soldier who is injured and lying unconscious in a hospital bed. And it’s narrated by the ghost of his friend, who I infer died in battle. And his wife is also by his side, and apparently things from the past get revealed? And it asks—I don’t know if it answers, but it asks the question, according to the book blurb, what makes a life worth living. So small things like that.

GIN JENNY: [LAUGHTER] Sure.

WHISKEY JENNY: What’s your next one?

GIN JENNY: My next one is a young adult book called Hearts Unbroken, by Cynthia Leitich Smith, which is coming from Candlewick in October. And this is a YA novel about a Muscogee teenager named Lou who works on her school paper. And the school play of The Wizard of Oz is trying to cast inclusively, and a bunch of parents in town are like, oh no, it’s reverse racism. So she’s trying to report on it, and her little brother’s playing the Tin Man, so she’s trying to protect him also. I love books about putting theatrical productions on, so I’m excited about that. The author is a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, so that’ll be cool. Candlewick in general publishes a lot of great stuff, and this looks really interesting and good.

WHISKEY JENNY: Cool.

GIN JENNY: What’s your next one?

WHISKEY JENNY: My next one is Retablos, by Octavio Solis, who is actually a playwright, and this is his first book? I say that hesitantly, because it’s billed as a memoir but told in a bunch of small little vignettes from his life growing up in El Paso along the border.

GIN JENNY: Cool.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I’m excited about the format. And as you know, I don’t delve often into nonfiction, so I thought this would be a good genre-crossing one for me. And I thought as a playwright he would have an interesting voice.

GIN JENNY: That sounds really good. And I, too, am excited about playwrights writing memoirs.

WHISKEY JENNY: Retablos is coming out in October from City Lights. I think it’s my only one that’s an indie publisher, so I should really be better about that. But that one is. Yay! What’s your next one?

GIN JENNY: My next one is Exit Strategy, by Martha Wells, coming from Tor in October.

WHISKEY JENNY: Woo!

GIN JENNY: I am so excited about this. It’s the final installment of the Murderbot novella series, which if you haven’t read the Murderbot books yet, I recommend getting right with your life, listeners.

WHISKEY JENNY: I do as well. They’re so great.

GIN JENNY: The first one is All Systems Red. Whiskey Jenny, remind me how many of them have you read?

WHISKEY JENNY: Just the first one.

GIN JENNY: Okay. So there’s three out now. The last one, Exit Strategy, is coming out in October, like I said. But, the joy is not over. Martha Wells has plans for a Murderbot novel after this.

WHISKEY JENNY: Ooh.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. So I think the arc is going to be wrapped up in Exit Strategy, but then there’s going to be like more to come. But they’re these stories about a security robot that has broken free of its control and is against its will kind of gotten sucked into trying to take down an evil corporation, even though what it actually wants to do is chill out alone by itself and watch TV.

WHISKEY JENNY: Just wants to watch its stories.

GIN JENNY: Oh, god, it’s the best. It’s the greatest. Okay, what’s your last one?

WHISKEY JENNY: So my last one is the fluffy one. It’s called The Royal Runaway, by Lindsay Emory. Comes out in October from Gallery Books. And it’s modern day. A princess gets left at the altar.

GIN JENNY: Great.

WHISKEY JENNY: She’s bummed. I think she sneaks out and goes to a bar. And who does she meet at a bar but a sexy Scottish man—

GIN JENNY: [GASP]

WHISKEY JENNY: Who turns out to be the brother of her I assume deadbeat fiance.

GIN JENNY: Oh my gosh. Oh my goodness.

WHISKEY JENNY: He is also a former soldier, super soldier, I don’t know.

GIN JENNY: Great, great.

WHISKEY JENNY: And they have to team up to figure out what happened to the deadbeat brother. I assume they also fall in love. If not, I want my money back. [LAUGHTER] I’m pretty sure they do.

GIN JENNY: I’m pretty sure they do, too.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. And so it’s got so many of the things I like, which are Scottish accents, royalty falling in love with non-royalty, and romance mixed with action. So I’m pretty excited.

GIN JENNY: Sounds great. That sounds perfect.

WHISKEY JENNY: What’s your last one?

GIN JENNY: My last one is kind of a downer. I’m sorry, I should have chosen a fluffy one for last. [LAUGHTER] No, your strategy was the better one. It’s Eternity Girl, by Magdalene Visaggio, coming out from D.C. in September. I’ve heard a lot of really great things about this author. She’s written a series called Kim and Kim that I’ve heard really wonderful things about, but my library doesn’t have it.

It’s about a superhero named Caroline Sharp who is depressed about having to live forever. And a foe, a nemesis of hers, offers her a deal where she can not live forever, but she just has to destroy the rest of the world first. Which doesn’t seem like a super tempting offer, so I’m kind of curious how it’s going to all play out.

WHISKEY JENNY: So wait, she lives forever, but to avoid that she can kill the rest of the world?

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: Huh.

GIN JENNY: Right? Yeah. I’m really excited to read something by this author because I’ve been wanting to for a while. I’m not totally sure I understand the premise.

WHISKEY JENNY: Hopefully it’ll all become clear.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, I think it’ll all become clear.

WHISKEY JENNY: Shall we move on to River of Stars?

GIN JENNY: Yes, tell us about it.

WHISKEY JENNY: It is by Vanessa Hua. It is her debut. It is about a woman in China who has an affair with her boss and gets pregnant, and gets sent to a maternity house in the US to have the baby. She escapes from that, goes on a road trip with another pregnancy house lady who is a teenager. And they have to build a new life for themselves as they are dealing with their pregnancy and their newborns, and being immigrants, and running from the people looking for them. What did you think about it?

GIN JENNY: I, uh, ah, I really enjoyed it.

WHISKEY JENNY: So 100% enjoyed it, right? Not conflicted at all. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: I know that sounded very equivocal, but I think I was a victim of my expectations at first. Because I read a book recently that dealt with, I want to say transnational surrogacy or something like that, and it was very serious and literary. And that’s kind of what I was expecting at first from River of Stars.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, so for the first quarter of the book I was like, that’s what this is trying to be. It’s trying to be very highbrow. And then I realized, no, it’s like more of a Horatio Alger story. It’s not exactly rags to riches, but kind of. Making it in America pluckily kind of story.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. A lot of pluck, I would say, yeah.

GIN JENNY: So once I made that adjustment, I was really into it. What did you think of it?

WHISKEY JENNY: I was also really into it overall. I think I have some quibbles that I will air shortly. [LAUGHTER] But yeah, overall I really enjoyed it. You know, I think it just had some debut issues that I’m sure with further books by this writer will get worked out.

GIN JENNY: Do you want to start by talking about what we didn’t like, and then we can go to the good stuff?

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. What did you not like about it?

GIN JENNY: I was not totally sure—so Scarlett is the main narrator. She’s the woman who gets pregnant and runs away from Perfume Bay, which is the pregnancy home. So she was the main narrator, but there were also sections that followed the father of the child, Boss Yeung, and also the director slash mastermind of the pregnancy center, Mama Fang. And the Boss Yeung stuff I could kind of understand, but the stuff with Mama Fang felt a little tacked onto the main story. She’s somewhat relevant, but her story just didn’t feel that relevant to the rest of the story. I just wasn’t sure about that as a decision.

WHISKEY JENNY: I would agree with that. I think the book does a great job, particularly with the boss’s narration and Scarlett’s mom’s perspective, of using it to deepen these characters that previously we’d only seen Scarlett’s perspective on. And we really come to be a lot more forgiving of them, I would say, and to see them in a different light.

But I didn’t feel the same way about Mama Fang. She did never get more or less complex, and I wanted her to. Particularly because one of my favorite lines was about Mama Fang. Scarlett says she reminded her of characters in fairy tales who were the go-betweens, who weren’t the villains or the heroes, but upon whom the plot hinged.

GIN JENNY: Ooh, yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: And I really liked that characterization of Mama Fang, and I was hoping that that was where it was going to go and we would get a little more in-depth into her. And we do, but it didn’t really help.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, she’s pretty unpleasant and unsympathetic, even after we learn more about her character.

WHISKEY JENNY: So we don’t ever shift our perspective on her. And I wanted a bit more shift.

GIN JENNY: Me too. She’s kind of a foil for Scarlett because they have a lot in common. But she—I think Mama Fang is kind of the darker timeline version of Scarlett. Which is fine as a literary device. It just kind of bummed me out.

WHISKEY JENNY: Mama Fang did not get a great deal either.

GIN JENNY: No, God. Not at all. So yeah, it didn’t add a ton to the story, and it made me sad, and also I didn’t enjoy spending time with her. So it was kind of a perfect storm of—

WHISKEY JENNY: Lose-lose-lose.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: I would agree. I thought the first thing you were going to say was that there was not nearly enough road trip.

GIN JENNY: No, it’s okay. I resigned myself to that early on. That was actually—that’s true, that was probably a thing I was a victim of expectations of early on, too. But I adjusted. I recalibrated for that pretty easily.

WHISKEY JENNY: Good. Because I think I said it was a road trip, but I was merely parroting previous blurbs of it, who really played up the road trip aspect. They drive for like a day. [LAUGHTER] It felt like.

GIN JENNY: It’s true. And then they end up in San Francisco.

WHISKEY JENNY: And they’re like, cool, we’re in San Francisco now. Let’s get rid of the van forever.

GIN JENNY: Yup. You said there were some hallmarks of this being a debut novel that weakened it for you.

WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t know if they’re hallmarks, but I’m just attributing them to that, I suppose. I shouldn’t call them hallmarks.

GIN JENNY: What were some more of those?

WHISKEY JENNY: I was surprised when suddenly she was a master chef, when previously she had said I don’t even know how to cook at all. That transition happened a little quickly for my taste, as it were. Heyo! [LAUGHTER] That pulled me out of it, and instead of going along with her cool new business and being excited about that, I was like, you learned how to run a super popular food truck, or cook for one, in a day, it feels like. So things like that, with the road trip thing as well, where the shifts in the plot are sudden and almost jarring.

And the other thing—I’m not going to say this is a negative, but I did not see at all coming—and I guess this is a spoiler.

GIN JENNY: Oh, Daisy’s—

WHISKEY JENNY: But I did not see it all that Daisy’s boyfriend had secretly become a pop star. [LAUGHTER] He was super famous. That really surprised me.

GIN JENNY: And he really just hadn’t received her calls, for real.

WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, I expected that. I thought that he was going to be just right next door in his dorm the whole time and had lost his phone, or his parents had taken it away. I didn’t think he was going to be the evil [INAUDIBLE] that Scarlett was worried about. But I did not expect him to become an international pop star in the meantime. [LAUGHTER] That was a bit of a shock. And it turns out he has been the singer of this song that Scarlett has been hearing everywhere, and that was a little—a little pat for me.

GIN JENNY: I agree with you about that, and also about Scarlett being suddenly an amazing and successful food truck chef.

WHISKEY JENNY: Not that I begrudge her it. I’m glad for her.

GIN JENNY: No, I understand. But for me this was kind of the adjustment that I made when I decided it was more like a Horatio Alger book. I was more able to roll with some unbelievable parts of the story.

WHISKEY JENNY: I suppose I didn’t adjust enough.

GIN JENNY: Because there were a lot of things about Scarlett’s ascent as a food truck person that weren’t necessarily super reasonable. But I was fine with that.

WHISKEY JENNY: There’s a lot I was fine with. I think she’s been—we have the background of her having business acumen.

GIN JENNY: Sure.

WHISKEY JENNY: And that’s not really on display for the food truck. Suddenly it’s all about her cooking. And it was an odd missed opportunity to have her take someone out—like, maybe she doesn’t have to be the cook, but she can be the business person behind it, because it’s already been established in the world that she came from.

But what I did love, and I think this is definitely in keeping with her character, is all the schemes and trades that she does. So when there’s some months where she can’t pay her rent, or she has problems that she needs to solve, and she always comes at them really creatively, and will have a five-chain-long trade beforehand in order to get the thing that the person that she needs to convince wants. And they were always really interesting, and I love them.

GIN JENNY: And I love that it worked. It was just so nice to read a book where someone is in a bad situation, and they come up with these schemes, and the schemes work, and things work out.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I’m very happy that things all worked out in the end. We had a very lovely happily ever after epilogue at the end.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, and I was fine with all of it. I was like, yup, yup. This is what would happen, 100%.

WHISKEY JENNY: No, that I was fine with. I was just like, but I don’t think she’s a master chef. I don’t know why that part bothered me.

GIN JENNY: The trades thing reminded me of this blog a while back called One Red Paperclip.

WHISKEY JENNY: Totally! I remember that, yeah.

GIN JENNY: Listeners, the guy starts out with just a regular red paper clip, and he starts making trades for it. And his goal is to trade up to get a house, which he eventually did do. Although I have follow up questions. But whatever, I don’t care, it’s a success story. He traded his paper clip for a house.

WHISKEY JENNY: He did, eventually. Yeah.

GIN JENNY: And that’s what Scarlett’s schemes reminded me of. So it was very pleasing to watch her do it.

WHISKEY JENNY: What did you think about not having Daisy, the teenager along with Scarlett, as a narrator?

GIN JENNY: Oh, I didn’t even think about that. I liked it. I think the relationship between Scarlett and Daisy was really lovely, and a version of building a family that I maybe haven’t seen before. I think I liked it. I liked seeing her through Scarlett’s eyes, because you get to see her love and also her frustration with Daisy, who is much younger, obviously. And also they’re just in a bad situation together, so at times, of course, they take their frustration out on each other. Did you wish she was a narrator?

WHISKEY JENNY: I kind of do. I appreciate what we got from Scarlett’s perspective. And I suppose it’s really more Scarlett’s book, because we get her lover who is the boss who is another narrator, and we have him visit her mom, so we get more information on her. So it’s really more Scarlett’s book. And I would have been interested to read more about Daisy’s experience of all this as well.

Especially because, while Scarlett is becoming a master food truck chef, Daisy is the one taking care of both of their babies. And I did not think that Scarlett was very nice about that. When Daisy was like, it’d be cool if I could come work at the food truck for a little bit and not have to take care of two newborns all the time. And—

GIN JENNY: Yeah, and she’s like, too bad!

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I would have been interested at least to hear what Daisy is doing at that time, and how she’s dealing with raising two newborns as a teenager herself.

GIN JENNY: That’s a great point. I didn’t think of it, but I totally agree now that you’ve raised this issue.

WHISKEY JENNY: I did love the story that the title draws from.

GIN JENNY: Yes!

WHISKEY JENNY: Which, as with the characters, also has a twist over how it gets interpreted right at the very end. And I thought it was really lovely and reminded me that I really enjoy folktales and I should just read more of them. I don’t know why I don’t.

GIN JENNY: Oh gosh, me too.

WHISKEY JENNY: Let’s read some folk tales for podcast.

GIN JENNY: Oh my gosh, that’s a great idea. Listeners, send us your recs. Especially if you have any that are beautifully illustrated, because I’d like to get some for my nephew.

WHISKEY JENNY: Great idea. And I also really liked—there was one comparison, I think Scarlett says about being a mother now that she used to love going for drives with Boss Yeung. But she says now that she’s a mother, it’ll be a long time before she was a passenger again. I thought that was a nice, like, you’re in charge now. You’re the one being the driver. You’re the one doing all the protecting of this tiny newborn. So I thought that was a nice image.

GIN JENNY: Really of the whole family. Because also she kind of has to provide for and protect Daisy and Didi.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, because Daisy’s so young. Absolutely. I got very emotional when me learned more about Scarlett’s mom, and when Scarlett changes her own perspective on the sacrifices that her mom had to make. And when Scarlett’s boss goes to visit the mom, she gives something to the boss that she’s kept for so long that’s really a beautiful token of her unspoken love for her daughter. And I just really enjoyed the depth that her character got.

GIN JENNY: Definitely. It was a good read. I was expecting it to be more literary and serious than it was. And it was kind of nice for it to be a little bit more of a fancy. A grounded fantasy.

WHISKEY JENNY: A grounded fantasy, for sure. But it all works out in the end, and that was very nice to see, for sure.

GIN JENNY: It really was. All right, you ready for the Forcening?

WHISKEY JENNY: Drumroll, please

GIN JENNY: Okay, this is another book where things work out fine in the end, basically. You may not believe me, but it’s true.

WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: Well, time will tell. [LAUGHTER] For this year’s Forcening, I’m finally getting Whiskey Jenny to read The Color Purple, by Alice Walker, which is one of my all time favorite books. It is so beautiful, and so wonderful, and really ultimately joyful and life affirming. And I know you don’t believe me, but I think that you’ll find in the end that it is. It’s about a girl named Celie who lives I think in Georgia in the early 1900s. And she really has a very difficult life. It is a difficult read, listeners, so be prepared for that. It’s epistolary, and I don’t know what to say about it. It is really one of the best books I’ve ever read, on so many different levels. And it just deals with a lot of, gosh, a lot of issues from American history. And it’s just a really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really great book. And I really think, Whiskey Jenny, that you’re going to like it. I really, really do. I wouldn’t Forcen you to read it if I didn’t truly think you were going to like it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, we will see.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, we’ll find out. [LAUGHTER] My last Forcening didn’t work out so good.

WHISKEY JENNY: What was the last Forcening?

GIN JENNY: It was The Secret History.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, that’s right. Yes, no, sorry.

GIN JENNY: No, that’s okay. You like what you like. But high hopes for The Color Purple. Gosh, it’s so—it’s just so good. I really think you’ll like it. It’s so good.

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, please do, at readingtheend@gmail.com. If you like what we do, please become a podcast patron at Patreon.com/readingtheend. And if you’re listening to us on iTunes, please leave us a review.

And until next time, a quote from Brenda Peynado’s story “The Kite Maker” on Tor.com, I read short fiction now. “I understood him wanting the biggest, best thing you couldn’t have. I wanted his unexhausted hope. That’s what I wanted. I wanted forgiveness without having to name my sins.” [GLASSES 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.

WHISKEY JENNY: And we’re back to talk about books and literary happenings. Of our own, though. Nothing to report. That’s weird. Why would I say that?

WHISKEY JENNY: I would want to talk more about Aragorn and his sword. And I don’t mean—anyway. [LAUGHTER] [BEEP]

WHISKEY JENNY: —of a de-boo. Day-boo. That’s not how you say it. [LAUGHTER] I swear I haven’t even finished this beer. [LAUGHTER] I’m not even one drink in.

GIN JENNY: Can I have your permission to put that in the outtakes? I don’t want you to feel awkward, because I know you know how to say the word debut.

WHISKEY JENNY: No, you can put it in. [BEEP]

The post Reading the End Bookcast, Ep. 107 – Fall Book Preview and Vanessa Hua’s A River of Stars appeared first on Reading the End.