I have this theory that there are people who are particularly well-suited to particular moments in history. Like, they could have lived in whatever time, but they were damn good at living when they did live. Charles Dickens was a flawless Victorian. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a flawless Lost Generation person. You know what I mean? I was not good at the zeitgeist of the 1990s. This whole thing of like, ironic detachment, and not being enthusiastic about things, and the point of television shows being that they’re all horrible people and that’s why it’s funny? That thing was not…
Leave a CommentTag: good people trying their best
Review: Thorn, Intisar Khanani
Published 17 Jul 2017
by
Gin Jenny
“I don’t know what justice is,” I tell him. “But I am trying to get what I can right.” The above paragraph is a perfect summation of why I loved Thorn, and of why I love Intisar Khanani so much as an author. In Thorn, as in all her books, she writes about characters who may be in bad situations but who are trying their best. Characters who are trying their best are balm to my frazzled soul in these difficult times, so I am pushing Intisar Khanani’s books on people like they are ebags dot com packing cubes. Consider…
24 CommentsTell the Wind and Fire, Sarah Rees Brennan
Published 18 Jul 2016
by
Gin Jenny
Note: I received Tell the Wind and Fire from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration. Okay, despite having shared that article about how people should stop hating so much on YA love triangles, I am slightly over YA love triangles, not because there aren’t authors who can write them well, but because YA authors who can’t write them well insist on writing them anyway. So to read a book like Tell the Wind and Fire, which is about a girl and two physically identical dudes, and which specifically and deliberately steers away from love triangling, made a refreshing change.…
20 CommentsThe Book of Memory, Petina Gappah
Published 20 Jun 2016
by
Gin Jenny
Remember before, when I was reading Anthony Schneider’s Repercussions and talking all about how I wished I read more books about good people who are trying their best? Guess what happened! I read The Book of Memory, which is about an albino woman in Zimbabwe who’s in jail for murdering the white man to whom her parents sold her when she was nine years old. Guess what it is about! Contrary to expectation, it’s totally about good people trying their best! I know, I know, I know what you are thinking. You’re thinking: But, murder? But, selling a child to…
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