I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.

Like, how dare Muriel Rukeyser? You can read the full poem here (link). “Most mornings I would be more or less insane” is the most accurate description I have ever heard of my current mindset and that of everyone I know.

All of this to say, I hope that our podcast brought you some joy this year, and I hope this podcast in particular brings you joy. We read Brit Bennett’s sophomore novel The Vanishing Half (spoilers, we loved it), and we also produced a list of excellent gifts we think you should buy for all your loved ones this year. And aside from that, be kind to yourself and remember that you are not alone. We all feel more or less insane right now. HANG IN THERE.

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

Episode 140

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

1:37 – What we’re reading
3:53 – What we’re something elsing
6:14 – Holiday gift guide!
22:27 – The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett
41:48 – What we’re reading for next time

Stuff we talked about:

Hench, Natalie Zina Walschots
Powerless (TV show)
The Camelot Caper, Elizabeth Peters
Ted Lasso (TV show)

Whiskey Jenny’s Gift Guide

Read, Romance, Repeat subscription box from The Ripped Bodice

blank books from Vintage Paper Co (or just lovely papers)

copper cup from Made Trade

yarn from Third Vault Yarns

a donation to the food bank or racial justice organization of your choice, like Emancipate NC!

Gin Jenny’s Gift Guide

a reading Bean from Book Beau

stationery from Pigeon Posted

Real Simple subscription

Atlas of Adventures series (like this!)

Artiphany playing cards

And here’s the link about Delia Owens’s husband maybe killing a man in Zambia! (link)

You can get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. As a brand new feature, you can also follow me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Storygraph! 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

Transcript

Whiskey Jenny  0:00

Oh, oh. Oh, and can we use the holiday theme song this time?

Gin Jenny  0:03

Oh, yes! Oh my God! Thank you for reminding me. I completely forgot.

Whiskey Jenny  0:05

I just thought of it. YAY!

Gin Jenny  0:06

I totally forgot it existed. Yes.

Whiskey Jenny  0:08

Jingle bells!

Gin Jenny  0:09

Yes. I love the jingle bells one. Yes.

Whiskey Jenny  0:46

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

Gin Jenny  0:51

And I’m Gin Jenny!

Whiskey Jenny  0:52

And we’re back to talk about books and literary happenings with a holiday twist this time! First up, we’re going to talk about what we’re reading, and we’re each going to talk about what we’re something else-ing, but it’s gonna be chaos because we’re something else-ing different elses. We’re then gonna do our annual holiday gift guide with some literary and maybe not-so-literary gifts. Who can say? The book that we read this time is The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. And then we’ll find out from fearless leader Gin Jenny– what? What? And then we’ll find out what we’re reading next time from Gin Jenny.

Gin Jenny  1:32

Hooray!

Whiskey Jenny  1:32

So first up, what are you reading right now?

Gin Jenny  1:35

I am reading this book called Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots, which is about a henchperson named Anna who gets– She’s temping for a supervillain, and a superhero slams into her while foiling her employer’s plan and shatters her femur. While she’s recovering from this injury, she starts cataloging the financial damage that superheroes do in the course of foiling villains. And that brings her to the attention of a very super super villain. So she goes to work for him, puts a team together, and starts figuring out ways to screw up the lives of superheroes, to try and stop them from doing so much property and human damage. It’s definitely scratching at least some of that itch that I perpetually have to read about the like bureaucratic side of superhero stories.

Whiskey Jenny  2:11

I love that it’s a henchperson. That that’s her job. That was my favorite part about– Do you remember that short-lived TV show that Vanessa Hudgens was in?

Gin Jenny  2:20

Yes, I did. I forgot about that! But yes!

Whiskey Jenny  2:22

Yeah, she dated, I think for like an episode, Major Lilywhite. She had a crush on him. But actually, he was a henchperson. So.

Gin Jenny  2:30

Yeah, so it’s, it’s fun. Um, as the story goes on, she’s dealing less with bureaucracy and more with like, bigger plots and stories, you know, which I think makes sense. I get that the plot has to have a plot.

Whiskey Jenny  2:42

Sure.

Gin Jenny  2:42

But I do like it when she’s just with her team being like, and now these spreadsheets.

Whiskey Jenny  2:46

Yeah, like the paperwork behind the villainous or hero plots. I want more of, just more filing.

Gin Jenny  2:55

Yeah, more filing! Totally agree. I just read a very delightful Magnus Archives fic where they have to hire a GDPR compliance officer at the Magnus Archives. And it was great. It was terrific.

Whiskey Jenny  3:05

Sounds great.

Gin Jenny  3:06

What are you reading?

Whiskey Jenny  3:07

I am reading, well, I guess I just finished rereading The Camelot Caper again.

Gin Jenny  3:11

Awwww!

Gin Jenny  3:12

By Elizabeth Peters. I believe I read it first at your place because you left it on a bedside table.

Gin Jenny  3:17

Sounds like me.

Whiskey Jenny  3:18

Yeah, I mean, story checks out. And it’s a delight. It’s such a silly little caper in, I think it’s like 1960s England, and sort of spoofing on gothic horror a little bit, but in the just like the lightest, nicest way possible. There’s a convertible, they’re just always cruising around to different cathedrals and a convertible. It’s great. It’s great.

Gin Jenny  3:41

I love that book.

Whiskey Jenny  3:42

There’s a plot but like, eh! For me, it’s really all about the convertible and the cathedrals. So yeah. What are you something else-ing? Well, what is your something else? And what are you elsing it with?

Gin Jenny  3:55

So I am watching, and I am watching an Apple TV show (I know) called Ted Lasso. I cannot shut up about it. It’s the greatest show. I just I feel so confident every time I recommend it that the person that I’m recommending it to is going to love it. But because it’s on Apple TV, it’s kind of a hard sell. It’s a Jason Sudeikis show. It’s about a college football coach who gets hired to coach an English football, i.e., soccer, league. He doesn’t know anything about football. He doesn’t know anything about England. He’s really sunshiny and optimistic, and everyone in England kind of doesn’t know what to make of him. There’s like a hotshot Mancunian fuckboy on the team, there’s a like older grizzled soccer veteran who’s kind of reaching the end of his career. The team’s owner is a very hot woman who I think is like from the West End, so her posture is beautiful. And she’s just an ice Queen, a la kind of Gillian Anderson type character, and everyone just becomes really great friends and builds grudging respect. And there’s lots of jokes, and it’s the greatest show that I have watched in a really long time.

Whiskey Jenny  4:03

I cannot wait to see this. I have heard from multiple sources an equally ringing endorsement, and I’m so excited to watch it.

Gin Jenny  4:40

It’s great for everyone, but it’s especially great for you, I think.

Whiskey Jenny  4:55

I can’t wait. I can’t wait! Every single word you said was like, Yeah, I like that.

Gin Jenny  5:10

What are you something else-ing?

Whiskey Jenny  5:11

I am painting! I’m very excited to — I’ve been getting into the holiday spirit because we’ve been decorating the house, and my newest project that I’ve suddenly become very attached to is I cut out (and this was inspired by something my friend and my mom said a while ago), but I cut out pieces of cardboard in the shape of a light bulb.

Gin Jenny  5:32

Uh huh.

Gin Jenny  5:32

But like a Christmas light bulb, you know, like a string. Then I’m going to paint those like glitter and stripes and pretty colors, and string them on like fishing wire and hang them.

Gin Jenny  5:42

Oh, that sounds wonderful. That sounds so Christmassy and lovely.

Whiskey Jenny  5:45

Very excited about it. Like I came up with this plan to do this, and then immediately it was like, I will die trying to do this, and my mom was like, Okay? All right? I’m very attached to it, and I will send photos when they’re done.

Gin Jenny  6:00

Yes. Oh my gosh, please. I was just about to ask for that. I just put up my very tiny fake Christmas tree and put my Christmas ornaments on it. And even though it’s so tiny and fake, it’s still making me happy.

Whiskey Jenny  6:10

Yay!

Gin Jenny  6:11

Yeah. So on today’s podcast we did– We’re not able to this year, due to COVID and other complications, we were not able to do our thing that we love to do, which is help you pick out presents, listeners, for your loved ones. But we still did want to do our holiday gift guide where we’d pick out some things, some gifts that you could get for your people. A generic you. I love my choices so much. Whiskey Jenny, do you want to go first?

Whiskey Jenny  6:34

Ah, sure! So my first thing is The Ripped Bodice, which is a romance-only bookstore in LA, I think. They have a subscription service. Did you know about this? I just found out about it.

Gin Jenny  6:47

I didn’t know about that, but I love subscription services, so.

Whiskey Jenny  6:49

I know! So it’s called Read Romance Repeat. And they send you romances. They just send you romances in the mail or your person. I think it’s monthly.

Gin Jenny  7:01

Uh-huh. To what extent are you able to customize it? Like can you say, I just want historicals? Or I just want contemporaries? Or do they send you an assortment and expand your boundaries?

Whiskey Jenny  7:07

I think it’s an assortment.

Gin Jenny  7:09

Okay, cool.

Whiskey Jenny  7:10

So it’s two a month. And you get — they say it’s a mix, but that they do tend to favor contemporary of it. And it’s new stuff.

Gin Jenny  7:18

Well, it sounds great. That sounds like a perfect subscription.

Whiskey Jenny  7:20

Doesn’t that sound delightful? Just romance in the box every month! Two romances in the mail every month! Yeah. So that’s my first one.

Gin Jenny  7:28

That’s really good. Especially because I know that The Ripped Bodice really cares about diversity in the romance industry. So I bet that they’re picking out like really great, marginalized authors to promote, which is awesome.

Whiskey Jenny  7:37

Yeah, I agree.

Gin Jenny  7:37

Yeah, they do the diversity report every year to show how bad romance publishing is at diversity.

Whiskey Jenny  7:42

Still bad!

Gin Jenny  7:43

Still bad, yeah.

Whiskey Jenny  7:45

So what’s your first thing?

Gin Jenny  7:46

Okay, so my first one is a little weird, but I am gonna stand by it. So my friend Alice, who’s one of the two hosts of the For Real podcast, told me about this product called the Book Beau bean. And I was like, oh, does anyone in the whole world need that? But she was correct. She was the visionary. It’s a little pillow that’s shaped like a little bean. It’s about the size of a travel pillow. And you use it to put your book on. I know this sounds insane and like, you don’t need it at all, but I bought one for someone in my life this year for Christmas. And before I wrapped it up for them, I tried it because I wanted to see, you know, is this a cool thing? You can put it in your lap or if you’re lying on your back, you can put it on your chest. Or if you’re curled up you can use it like a travel pillow. And it just really improves the reading experience in a like minor but noticeable way. It’s just a better way of life.

Whiskey Jenny  8:30

Boy, that’s a great sell, because I’ve also like– but I mean, it’s just a pillow, right?

Gin Jenny  8:33

Yeah!

Gin Jenny  8:34

But it sounds like it’s more than a pillow.

Gin Jenny  8:37

Have you ever had a baby small enough that you’ve had like a Boppy that you see when you’re holding the baby? You have something to rest the baby on?

Whiskey Jenny  8:43

No.

Gin Jenny  8:44

Okay, well, listeners if you’ve ever had one of these, the book bean is like that, but it’s smaller. It’s like a Boppy for your books.

Whiskey Jenny  8:50

Now I need to know what a Boppy is. You put the baby on the Boppy?

Gin Jenny  8:53

Yeah, it’s like a larger bean-shaped pillow, it kind of wraps around your waist. So when you’re holding the baby, it’s not just your arms holding up the baby forever because you’ll get really tired. You can kind of rest a bit. The baby’s still in your arms, but your arms are resting and the baby’s like butt is resting on the pillow. Anyone who’s like breastfed is definitely aware of this. My sister has several of them for my my baby niece. And they’re great for a baby, and the Book Beau Bean is great for a book. I just, I can’t account for it! I got it in the mail. I was like I’m gonna try this. I’m worried it’s not going to be any good. And it it just was like a little bit better.

Whiskey Jenny  9:29

Wow, amazing.

Gin Jenny  9:30

So that is the Book Beau Bean.

Whiskey Jenny  9:32

My next one, I was going to try and do a transition, to be like, you could rest it on the Book Bean, and I guess you could!

Gin Jenny  9:40

This has been: A segue!

Gin Jenny  9:45

The next one is this company called Vintage Paper Co, in the Orkney Islands in Scotland. They do have a lot of vintage paper, which is awesome, from like really old like 17th century stuff all the way up to, I got my mom some 1950s watercolor paper? Ooh, and they also, so that’s really cool. But they also have newly made stuff. They have a lot of really beautiful blank books.

Gin Jenny  10:11

Oh my gosh.

Whiskey Jenny  10:12

They describe like the artisan and the process and it’s really cool. They are kind of expensive, but there is other stuff on there. You don’t just have to get the blank books. They also like reprint a lot of vintage paper patterns. So they have like really beautiful like, end papers and things like that. A lot of gorgeous stuff that I am obsessed with recently. So vintage paper.

Gin Jenny  10:36

That sounds great. So do you have, have you purchased one of their blank books? Like have you touched the paper in them?

Whiskey Jenny  10:41

No.

Gin Jenny  10:42

Okay, I was just curious how the paper feels.

Whiskey Jenny  10:44

It’ll say. It’ll be all different. But whichever one you buy, they’ll say like, this is the pound and the texture and things like that.

Gin Jenny  10:51

Oh, cool. Okay. All right. Good to know, because what I want in my notebooks is like very smooth paper.

Whiskey Jenny  10:56

They might not have that, but they might have some different smooth plain paper. I don’t know. Check it out.

Gin Jenny  11:00

I will check it out. That sounds amazing.

Whiskey Jenny  11:02

Yeah, they’re great.

Gin Jenny  11:02

Well, I actually also have a British stationery recommendation. Yeah, I guess I’ll do it here. And then you know, it’s on a theme. It’s a stationery from a company called Pigeon Posted. Yeah, I can’t say enough about Pigeon Posted stationery. I learned about it this year from someone I follow on Twitter. It’s a British stationery company that sells six-packs of stationery. The patterns on them are so cute. But the killer is the stationery is all one single piece. So you write the letter on the inside part, and then it folds up into its own envelope, and you seal it closed with a stamp.

Whiskey Jenny  11:31

It’s just so cool.

Gin Jenny  11:33

It’s so cool. It’s so cute. They just came out with new patterns. I’m obsessed with them. They’re also like very affordable. If you’re in the US you probably want to buy a bunch at once to make the international shipping worth it. Which is what I did. I honestly like I bought, I think, seven, and I could have bought 20. I love them so much.

Whiskey Jenny  11:50

They are so pretty. I got a packet from Gin Jenny, and I am so excited about it. They’re like so nice too! They’re like really heavy textured. It’s great.

Gin Jenny  11:58

Yeah, they’re great. One of my quarantine things is that I try to send one lovely note per day. And mostly I do postcards, but now that I have the Pigeon Posted stationery, I’m trying to do some like more longer letters.

Whiskey Jenny  12:08

Plus it feels very old timey because didn’t they used to fold up stuff?

Gin Jenny  12:10

Yeah, it feels very Jane Austen-y. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it definitely does. I love it. So yeah, Pigeon Posted stationery. If there’s anyone in your life who loves stationery, I’m always trying to tell this to non-stationery people, because they’ll be like, “well, I can’t get them stationery, they already have a lot,” and I always want to be like, You don’t understand.

Whiskey Jenny  12:26

If you like stationery, it’s never enough.

Gin Jenny  12:29

If you like stationery, you literally can’t have enough.

Whiskey Jenny  12:32

You cannot! It’s never enough.

Gin Jenny  12:34

It’s like quilting. You just want more and more forever.

Whiskey Jenny  12:36

Is that like quilting?

Gin Jenny  12:38

To my understanding, having spoken to some quilting people. So there you go: Pigeon Posted stationery, you won’t be sorry.

Whiskey Jenny  12:45

So my next thing is not at all literary. But I’ve just been really into copper lately. And there are some really beautiful copper cups, like hammered copper cups.

Gin Jenny  12:57

Like Moscow Mule cups?

Whiskey Jenny  12:58

Yeah! They don’t have a handle. But, but yeah, you could put, you know, I don’t know what you’re gonna put in it. But they’re on MadeTrade, which also is a nice kind of marketplace for different makers of like eco-conscious and ethically made and sourced goods, I suppose. Goods? Stuff? That’s the fancy word for stuff. So I enjoy, I enjoy browsing their stuff. But in particular, these copper cups have been calling my name. And sometimes I just put stuff that I want on this gift guide because–

Gin Jenny  13:30

Oh God, me too.

Whiskey Jenny  13:31

That’s how my brain works!

Gin Jenny  13:33

Well, I love putting stuff that I’ve personally enjoyed. Because I think it’s always more fun to give a gift that you also like.

Whiskey Jenny  13:39

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Gin Jenny  13:40

It’s not always possible. Like sometimes you have to get something that you would not care about at all. But ideally–

Whiskey Jenny  13:45

Takes a village. Yeah.

Gin Jenny  13:46

Um, that’s great. That’s a great, that’s a great, great choice. I, you sent me a gin advent calendar this year.

Whiskey Jenny  13:53

I did.

Gin Jenny  13:54

And it’s, it’s been terrific, a of all.

Whiskey Jenny  13:56

Yay! I am so glad.

Gin Jenny  13:58

And b of all it’s a fun way to like use different glasses because, like what I did this past Friday, my sister came over for sister night, and we did a little tasting menu of the most recent three gins. We made three gins and tonics and sampled each. And it was really fun. It was a really pleasant experience.

Whiskey Jenny  14:15

All right, were they all different? Because you’d be like, Oh, yes, this one does have notes of Acacia flower.

Gin Jenny  14:20

I’m not able to do that. But yes, they were definitely all different. What we did was she picked her favorite one. And that was her– Because I was the DD. So she picked the first one and that was her drink, and then I picked my favorite And that was my drink, and then she got to choose the last one. But they were all delicious. And they were definitely all different. And I told you this, but I will tell the listeners too: The one that I opened yesterday was blood red and it’s called like Bloody Shiraz gin. Yeah, it’s very exciting. I’m planning to make a gin and tonic of it in today’s one.

Whiskey Jenny  14:51

Oh, I can’t wait.

Gin Jenny  14:52

I know. I’m really looking forward to it.

Whiskey Jenny  14:53

I bet it’ll be so pretty.

Gin Jenny  14:54

Yeah, it’ll be really pretty and I looked online and it seems like they’re good to put a lot of lemon versus lime. Yeah, so I’m gonna try it out, see how it goes. I have a lemon fortunately.

Whiskey Jenny  15:03

Keep me posted.

Gin Jenny  15:04

I will keep you posted.

Whiskey Jenny  15:06

I have to tell you I stole the– I mean, I didn’t steal it, it’s from my life, but the Acacia flower reference in pretentious wine tasting comes from when I was in France. And kind of towards the beginning of my study abroad program in college, we went to a vineyard, and our kind of program leader– It was early on in the program; we had, like, just gotten there. So our program leader was sort of like helping translate a little bit if we needed to. And the French for Acacia flower is like a really easy cognate like it, it’s like acace or something. It’s pretty, it’s pretty similar. And she made this big show of like, what’s it, what is the English word? What is it? Oh right, Acacia flower! Yeah, it was just the strangest, just, it’s acacia flower.

Gin Jenny  15:56

I now have conceived a great desire to go to a vineyard with you and taste all the wines. I’ve never done that before. But it sounds really fun.

Whiskey Jenny  16:04

I mean, yeah, I hope if you’re prepared for me to be just making jokes about notes of wine.

Gin Jenny  16:09

Oh, God, no.

Whiskey Jenny  16:09

I don’t, I can’t actually taste wine.

Gin Jenny  16:13

I think there have been studies that prove that wine people can’t either. It’s all just nonsense.

Whiskey Jenny  16:17

My dad, whenever I’m like, Oh, what’s this one like? He says, ah! it’s an unpretentious little wine from Argentina or whatever, wherever it’s from. Like, every time his joke is its unpretentious. It’s an unpretentious little red from Chile. Wine: What a joke.

Gin Jenny  16:33

Well, speaking of nonsense, my next choice is a subscription to Real Simple magazine, or as I call it, Basic Bitch Monthly.

Whiskey Jenny  16:42

Yes, great, go on.

Gin Jenny  16:44

I love this magazine so much. It’s like a, I don’t know, it’s like a lifestyle slash cozy house having magazine. And every issue they have like recipes, recommendations for makeup and storage solutions, people talking about things they did to improve their lives in minor ways. And I find it very peaceful and soothing. It has a lot of suggestions that are nonsense, but it also has some things where I’m like, Yeah, I could throw a party like that. I’m not gonna but I could. Yeah, and they have I mean, they have a lot of good little storage solutions. Like I have definitely bought stuff that I saw on the pages of Real Simple and been very happy with them. So yeah, it’s not too expensive. It’s a really nice thing to get in the mail every month. It’s so silly. It’s full of nonsense. And we need that in our lives, I think.

Whiskey Jenny  17:28

I can’t stress enough how nice it is, as a gift receiver, to get something monthly. Like subscriptions are just so great. They last all year long.

Gin Jenny  17:35

Yeah! Real Simple, the subscription I currently have was a gift. And it’s I mean, every time it shows up in my mailbox, I’m so excited.

Whiskey Jenny  17:41

Like, oh, yeah, this! Well, my next one is not a subscription, but it’s still exciting. There’s a place called Third Vault Yarns, also in England. So sorry, if you’re not in England and have to pay extra for shipping, but it’s really cool. It’s this beautiful hand-dyed yarn for the fiber or knitting fan in your life. But all of her colorways are inspired by science fiction or fantasy stories. So there’s like a, there’s like, you know, different characters that have their colors and different properties. It is just, it’s such a delight.

Gin Jenny  18:17

Oh my gosh, that’s amazing. Like, what’s an example of a character or property that is featured?

Whiskey Jenny  18:22

Yes. Stand by. Stand by. Okay, Transform is inspired by Molly, the Transworm from season three episode one of Discovery. So I guess, Star Trek Discovery?

Gin Jenny  18:33

Oh, I know what that is.

Whiskey Jenny  18:34

Do you know what that is?

Gin Jenny  18:35

Yeah. Yeah, that’s the that’s the really hot guy who turns out to be– He’s like, he appears to be a mercenary, but he’s basically a Sierra Club volunteer. Yeah, he’s taking care of these endangered species called transworms.

Whiskey Jenny  18:48

Ah, okay. His yarn, or the transworm yarn, is beautiful. It’s sort of like mauvey purple and teal and a little rose in there.

Gin Jenny  18:57

Nice. Man, I’m so excited I knew that reference.

Whiskey Jenny  19:00

Great job. She has all these knitting patterns as well. They’re inspired from board games. I don’t know the references, but somebody might. Someone who’s really into like Cataan or something, right?

Gin Jenny  19:15

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So tell me the name of it again?

Whiskey Jenny  19:17

It’s called Third Vault Yarns.

Gin Jenny  19:19

Terrific. That’s a really good choice. Yeah. My next one is for if you have a child in your life, I want to recommend the Atlas of Adventure series. It’s the series of oversized books that are so cool. I got the Atlas of Animal Adventures at the library. And it starts with a map of the world, and a bunch of countries are labeled with specific animals that live there. And then the book is a series of two page spreads, each of them about a different animal migration. So for instance, there’s two pages about the migration of fruit bats in Zambia. And it tells facts about the bats. It tells facts about other animals in Zambia, and it shows where Zambia is in Africa. So it’s really cool. It reminds me a little bit of those amazing Animal Facts binders that we had when we were kids. Did you have them?

Whiskey Jenny  19:59

Yes. Those were great. Those were so cool.

Gin Jenny  20:02

They were really cool. And this kind of reminds me of that. The one that I have seen is the Atlas of Animal Adventures. But there’s also like, Wonders of the World and Ocean Adventures and different stuff like that. So depending on what the child in your life is interested in, you can pick one that caters to their interests, and they’re really, really, really cool.

Whiskey Jenny  20:19

And then you can get your child into the sea! Which is the correct thing to do.

Gin Jenny  20:23

Exactly. And also you can learn something! Like I did not know a lot of these things about fruit bats and Zambia, but thanks to the Atlas of Animal Adventures, now I’m wiser.

Whiskey Jenny  20:30

Yeah, I don’t think I know anything about fruit bats in Zambia. All right. Well, my last one is a donation.

Gin Jenny  20:36

Yay.

Gin Jenny  20:38

You could do the food bank, a local food bank of whoever you’re doing a donation in memory of. God, not in memory of. In honor of! Or in memory of but that’s a little darker. Or like a racial justice initiative local to them as well. I’m going to be doing Emancipate NC, which is a North Carolina racial justice organization.

Gin Jenny  20:59

Nice.

Whiskey Jenny  21:00

So let’s let’s hope they don’t listen before Christmas to this.

Gin Jenny  21:04

Well, my aunt, I know does not listen to this podcast, I’m getting her a donation to Doctors Without Borders. So hopefully she’ll like that.

Whiskey Jenny  21:10

Yay, lovely!

Gin Jenny  21:11

Yeah. Okay, my last one is something, it’s a little goofy. It’s a set of Artiphany playing cards. These are very cool playing cards in various patterns. So there’s like a dog one, there’s a cat one, there’s a bird one, there’s a mermaid one. And the illustrations on the face cards are really pretty. But also each run of a suit tells a little story. So in the hearts thing on the cat deck, the ace is a little cat knitting a blanket with one little heart on it, and as you get to higher numbers, the blanket grows and grows. It’s adorable. And they all have stuff like that. So you can choose, you know, what kind of creatures you like the best. I have been wanting to — yeah, it’s so cute. I’ve been wanting to get a pack for someone in my life for the longest time. But I like haven’t. I haven’t found the right recipient yet. So hopefully some listener will be able to profit by this.

Whiskey Jenny  21:57

Boy, I hope so because that sounds adorable.

Gin Jenny  21:59

Oh my God. It’s so cute. I cannot recommend– Even if you don’t want to buy them, I do recommend going to look at them because they’re damn cute. Yeah, so that’s the end of our gift guide. I love presents.

Whiskey Jenny  22:07

Yay, presents!

Gin Jenny  22:08

I have gone a little crazy with presents this year.

Whiskey Jenny  22:11

Presents are fun!

Gin Jenny  22:11

They are fun! And so little things are fun right now. So like I need this.

Whiskey Jenny  22:15

Yeah, I think we all do.

Gin Jenny  22:16

Give a present. You’ll feel so nice! It’s so lovely to give a present.And it’s lovely to get presents. I loved my gin– I have currently loved and loved when it arrived my gin Advent calendar. It’s just really doing me right.

Whiskey Jenny  22:27

Hooray. I’m so pleased! I’m glad that they’re actually good. Because sometimes you never know.

Gin Jenny  22:31

Yeah, you do never know. Robyn didn’t like one of the three that we tried. But I did. I thought it was a, it was like an unusual flavor, but I found it pleasant. So what did we read for this podcast, Whiskey Jenny?

Whiskey Jenny  22:41

We read The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, who also wrote The Mothers, so this is one of our rare repeat authors on podcast, I think. But we love Britt Bennett. It is about twin sisters growing up in a small town in Louisiana, and then they sort of run away from that small town and then begin living their separate lives, because one of them returns to the town with her daughter. And they’re Black. And they are living as Black back in the small town. But the other twin passes for white and then lives that life separately. Their two daughters meet. Yeah, that’s in the marketing stuff. I mean, they do meet I just didn’t know if that was a spoiler or not. But it’s in the marketing stuff. Their two daughters meet. So it’s also kind of a multigenerational family saga, if you will. What did you think about it?

Gin Jenny  23:30

I liked it a lot. I don’t know if we discussed this when you were choosing it for podcast, but it’s not really my type of book, in the sense that it is kind of a multigenerational family saga, but I was just really blown away by it. I got caught up in the story. I thought the writing was really beautiful. It left me with so many thoughts to think about. I had some questions, but like yeah, overall, I thought it was really wonderful. How about you?

Whiskey Jenny  23:48

Yeah, same. I loved it. I loved it. I didn’t even like it. I loved it.

Gin Jenny  23:53

I found it really– I was not expecting this. I found it really– The plot became really engaging. Like I hit a point where I really couldn’t put it down. I was like, Oh, I have to find out what happens, which is not what I was expecting.

Whiskey Jenny  24:03

I thought so too! I thought so too. And one of the, I think it’s interesting because one of the quotes in the back mentions “breathtaking plot twists.” I sort of like both disagree and agree with that. It’s breathtaking in that it’s incredibly engaging. It’s a page turner and you just have to– But it’s not like–

Gin Jenny  24:20

Yeah, there’s no twists!

Whiskey Jenny  24:21

Soap opera twists. Yeah. So I thought I was just like a funny way– It feels like there are twists, but it’s not twists.

Gin Jenny  24:27

Yeah, it’s plot events. I was just really, really interested to… I just never knew what’s coming next. It was really exciting.

Whiskey Jenny  24:32

I agree. And I think that that sort of originality where you can’t guess sort of the conflicts that are about to happen is really refreshing. There were, I mean obviously there’s sort of a big– Can I call it a lie? There’s a big lie. Yeah, there’s a big lie in that Stella, the twin was passing for white, you know, her husband does not know, her daughter does not know. But in other cases, I found myself anticipating the conflict and being like, Oh no, now here we go. Now he’s not gonna, you know, Early is not going to tell Desiree that he was sent there by her abusive ex-husband, but it’s gonna be a whole thing. And then like the next page, he would tell her, and then we got to go somewhere, like more new and interesting. And I, yeah, I agree. I think the originality of the storytelling was really what was grabbed me, I guess?

Gin Jenny  25:16

Yeah, no, totally. How did you feel about the time jumps?

Whiskey Jenny  25:19

A little confusing? I’ll be honest. I was a little confused sometimes. Because I think that, you know, it’s divided into parts. And there are time jumps, and it gives you the year, and it skips around, like, third person– not omniscient, but third person personal, what do you call that?

Gin Jenny  25:38

Third person limited?

Whiskey Jenny  25:40

Is it limited?

Gin Jenny  25:40

Whiskey Jenny  25:41

Anyway, it skips around, it skips around different viewpoints, and sometimes the part would be like, Pacific Cove, 1986 or whatever. And then it would be a person in 1986, reminiscing about 1982. And it was just a little– I did get a little confused. I’ll be honest. I still loved it. I still love the book. But there are a couple of times that he’d be like, Wait, who? Who are you? Not who are you? But where are you?

Gin Jenny  26:07

Yes, totally, totally.

Whiskey Jenny  26:08

Where in time are you? What did you think about them?

Gin Jenny  26:11

I really liked them. I think partly it was because I don’t tend to love books set in small southern towns. So when I started the book, it’s set in St. Landry Parish, which is a place where a bunch of my kin are from. But nevertheless, I was like, I felt so claustrophobic and so anxious about the characters experiencing like additional, like even more racialized violence than they already had. So I was excited about the time jump, and it gave the book, to me, like a really propulsive feeling. And yeah, I was all about it.

Whiskey Jenny  26:35

Yeah, I agree. It’s not gimmicky in any way. Like it’s really serving the story, I thought as well.

Gin Jenny  26:41

Yes. Agreed. Agreed. Whose point of view section was your favorite?

Whiskey Jenny  26:44

Early.

Gin Jenny  26:47

I don’t know why I bothered asking that question!

Whiskey Jenny  26:51

That’s a– No, I’ll pick a really answer because that’s not a very good-faith answer in that we get like two pages from his perspective.

Gin Jenny  26:57

I knew you would love him, though. I also loved him. I thought he was great.

Whiskey Jenny  27:00

Like Early Jones, first of all, is an amazing name.

Gin Jenny  27:03

And he’s a PI. You love a PI.

Whiskey Jenny  27:05

I love a PI! Early Jones shows up, and he and Desiree, one of the twins, fall in love. The twin that returns to the city, or the small town, they fall in love. I would love to read Brit Bennett to write just their romance novel. as well. Like I as soon as he showed up, I love that man. And then they fall in love it. It’s really great. And then at the very end, there’s like one of the most beautiful passages I think I’ve read in like, not ever, but just one of the most beautiful, most human passages about Early caring for Desiree’s mother, who has Alzheimer’s. He’s just being so kind and sweet and loving to her as her. I think Desiree calls it, “her memory is unraveling,” which I thought was also was a beautiful, heartbreaking way of talking about Alzheimer’s. Anyway, this is a woman who sort of chased him away from her daughter, because his skin was darker than theirs. And even when they were together, she didn’t ever really talk to him, and it said just like shouted out lists of things for him to do around the house. But he would always do them, and now that she’s so much more vulnerable, he’s just being so kind to her, and they went fishing and she’s asking if they have to go to work. And it was just, it’s gonna make me cry again! It sounds so stupid! She asked if she had to go to work, and he said, No, you have the day off. Because that was just like the easiest way to be in that moment with her, but to explain to her why she didn’t have to go to work even though she hasn’t gone in a year, I think. And she was just like, so thrilled to have the day off with him. And they went fishing, and he’s just really beautiful to her. It was so sweet. So anyway, Early. I could read about Early forever.

Gin Jenny  28:51

Okay. But supposing that was not a good faith answer, what was your other? I actually, to be clear, I don’t think it’s a bad faith answer. But I am curious about like, which of the more substantive chapters…

Whiskey Jenny  28:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so I think the Desiree sections, I connected the most with, and I sort of– Yeah! Yeah, I would say connected the most with and always wanted more of, I always wanted more of her story.

Gin Jenny  29:13

Yeah, I did. Actually, I’d love to see more Desiree, in fact.

Whiskey Jenny  29:17

Yeah, I think it was Desiree. What about you?

Gin Jenny  29:19

I had a hard time choosing between Stella and Jude. I liked both their sections a lot. I think with Stella, I mean, she does some really unforgiveable things in this book.

Whiskey Jenny  29:29

She does, yeah!

Gin Jenny  29:31

But what kind of kept me on board with her is how– or, kept me on board with her as a narrator is how desperately she wants to be able to control what people see and know about her, but in trying to exert that control and open up more choices for herself, she ends up so trapped and stuck. And I thought that, as a as a piece of writing, it was really impressive that Brit Bennett managed to pull off the trick of showing that, even though Stella doesn’t quite acknowledge it in that way to herself.

Whiskey Jenny  29:57

Not always, yeah.

Gin Jenny  29:58

Yeah. So I think she did a really great job of not excusing the things that Stella does that are really horrible, but also making you viscerally feel the terror that Stella has about losing this life that she’s made for herself.

Whiskey Jenny  30:09

I agree. Yeah. And just sort of how, how shaped by trauma she is.

Gin Jenny  30:13

Yeah, absolutely. And then with Jude, I just, man, I just wanted the best for her. I thought she was, I thought she was really great. I thought she– I was happy she had a good relationship. I was happy she pursued her dreams of going to medical school and had a good life. And the scenes where she’s making friends with Kennedy, with her cousin, and not letting on who she is, I was like, oh, man, respect to you!

Whiskey Jenny  30:33

So yeah, so Jude, sorry. Jude is Desiree’s daughter, and Kennedy is Stella’s daughter. So yeah, Jude is black, and Kennedy is white.

Gin Jenny  30:44

As far as she knows. Yeah.

Whiskey Jenny  30:45

As far as she knows. Yeah. Thank you. And, I mean, yeah, all props to Jude. Like she is very much in control of her own story. And I respect that a lot. Those scenes though, where she’s– I don’t know, Kennedy just kept ordering around and having her bring her like hot water with lemon in it. And I was getting really annoyed at Kennedy. Being a real white girl, you know?

Gin Jenny  31:08

No, Kennedy was very annoying. And I think again, though, I think Brit Bennett did such a good job of like, portraying this entitlement and annoyingness. while also having compassion for the character. Like that was just, man, such good writing here. But yeah, Kennedy sucks.

Gin Jenny  31:22

Also great job naming the white girl. You mentioned Jude goes to medical school. I thought that was so interesting. Cuz I think in general, this book is so– I feel like whenever people are like “oh, the physicality of the performances,” it bothers me. But I feel like this book is is very physical, and all the characters are very aware of their own bodies. It’s obviously it’s about race and how being black, you don’t have the liberty of not being aware of your own skin color. But I just thought it was really connected to our flesh, and like the flesh that we have in this world, and how how much it impacts the way we move through the world. And then I thought Jude sort of cued into medical school because she takes an anatomy class. And I just really liked that kind of undercurrent of Jude also being fascinated with bodies and what secrets they hold and what they contain and what you can never know about them and what you want to know about them. Yeah, I just I was like, Cool! Bodies! Great!

Gin Jenny  32:25

Well, since we’re on the subject, can we talk about Reese, because I had some follow up questions about Reese?

Gin Jenny  32:30

Yeah, I think that’s a great segue. Yes, please.

Gin Jenny  32:32

Okay, so Jude’s boyfriend, Reese is a trans guy. And I had complicated feelings about how he was portrayed for a couple of reasons. So he’s portrayed very positively, I would say. He’s a trans character who really doesn’t struggle with his identity, and neither just Jude. He’s saving up for top surgery, he eventually gets top surgery, he doesn’t encounter too much bigotry in the narrative of the book, although he has in his past. And on one hand, it was really great to see a trans character whose main story isn’t like trans suffering. He’s a sweet guy, he’s a good boyfriend to Jude. And so to an extent, it was great to see a trans character portrayed in this very unfussy, loving way. Um, but I also kind of felt like his character lacked specificity. And it felt really weird in a book that’s primarily about people grappling with their identities and their past traumas. I wasn’t sure what to make of Reese. It’s not like he doesn’t have trauma. His family threw him out and disowned him, and that’s not really explored emotionally, in terms of how it impacts his life. So it felt more like he was there to make a point versus to be a character a little bit. Even though I liked him a lot. I was like, so happy Jude had this good relationship, I was like, oh, they’re solid as a rock. But yeah, I felt complicated about it.

Whiskey Jenny  33:42

I felt complicated about as well. And I like that, as you said, it’s not like an issue for Jude when she finds out about his past. But on the other hand, I agree, I think you– It also seems like you got even fewer moments from his perspective, even than, Early. Yeah. I think a bit more from his perspective would have helped, but on the whole, I thought it was, I did think it was still a respectful portrayal, I guess.

Gin Jenny  34:05

Yeah, I did, too. And I, you know, I’m a soft person. So like, in many ways, so I saw this like, loving solid relationship, and I was like, Yay! I’m a simple woman of simple pleasures.

Whiskey Jenny  34:15

I think the, I mean, the propelling relationship of the book is Stella and Desiree, the twins, and the separate paths that their lives take. I think that we kind of only get Jude’s story like in relation to that, and her relationship with Reese is separate from that. Not separate, but not tied to the relationship with her mother. So we just don’t see as much of it. Just their relationship in general, I’m not– I’m invested in them because I like them together., but like, I don’t know what they do in their free time. You know what I mean? I just never really–

Gin Jenny  34:48

Yeah, I agree.

Whiskey Jenny  34:49

You said specificity and I think that that translates to the relationship as well. I don’t see them together.

Gin Jenny  34:54

Agreed. I agree with all of that. The one thing I did want to say, I got a little nervous when Reese showed up. I got a little nervous that the author was going to compare being trans to racial passing.

Whiskey Jenny  35:04

I thought so too. I don’t think it happens, though.

Gin Jenny  35:07

I don’t think that’s what she was doing. Like, I would say that if trans readers read this and don’t feel comfortable with where she landed, I totally get that. It seems pretty clear to me that her intention was not to say that they’re the same. I think the comfort that Reese feels about his identity and the honesty and beauty of his relationship with Jude, I think is pretty clearly set in opposition to the relationship Stella has with her husband, who she’s never not been lying to.

Whiskey Jenny  35:30

Agreed.

Gin Jenny  35:31

Yeah. So in some ways, the relationships, you know, Stella is has the secret that is eating her alive and making it impossible for her to be truly known. And that’s just not happening at all with Jude and Reese. So I think Brit Bennett is clearly saying these two things are not the same. Nevertheless, it was a tricky, it was a tricky portrayal, and I’m just not sure how I feel about it. If anyone who’s listening to this has read any reviews by black trans readers, I would love you to send them my way so I could link them, because they’re obviously a lot more qualified than me to speak about this.

Whiskey Jenny  35:56

Yes, please. Agreed.

Gin Jenny  35:57

So yeah, in sum: complicated!

Whiskey Jenny  36:00

Yeah. And I also thought that, I think in my copy, the blurb calls this book “a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of race, gender, and identity.” And as I read that, after I read the book, I’m like, IS IT an exploration of gender?

Gin Jenny  36:14

I don’t think so! To me, no.

Whiskey Jenny  36:16

To me, it was more race and identity. Of those three things, I didn’t find it an expression of gender.

Gin Jenny  36:23

And I don’t think it’s necessarily trying to be!

Whiskey Jenny  36:26

Yeah, exactly. No, and that’s not a– Not all books need to be an exploration of gender. That is absolutely not a knock. I just thought it was kind of like marketing speak for Reese’s character.

Gin Jenny  36:37

There’s a trans character in here?

Whiskey Jenny  36:41

And yeah, complicated.

Gin Jenny  36:42

Since we’re talking about marketing, I have to say The Vanishing Half is like such a good title for this book, and how many things it applied to.

Whiskey Jenny  36:49

So many things! Yeah.

Gin Jenny  36:52

When I finished it, I finished it and I put it down, and I was looking at the title and I started thinking of all the things: like half of Desiree and Stella’s parents vanish when they’re children. Half the set of twins vanishes from the family still tries to vanish half of her identity, or well, Kennedy’s, I guess, half of her identity. Their mom gets Alzheimer’s and half her memory’s circling. The town they grew up in like vanishes, it gets subsumed into Palmetto. I respected the hell out of it. It was such a good job.

Whiskey Jenny  37:16

Yeah, I completely agree. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Great title. And the cover is really beautiful as well.

Gin Jenny  37:23

I was just so impressed. And just so impressed with Brit Bennett as a writer, especially because I know sophomore novels are very hard.

Whiskey Jenny  37:28

They’re difficult, yeah. And I think, as soon as this book started, I was like, Oh, I’m in good hands. Like, it’s just it’s very confident and assured, and I think it really respects the reader. And she made it look easy, I feel like. And it’s, it’s obviously not, but it’s just got that sort of casual conversational tone. It’s very relaxed, I guess it feels it feels very relaxed and assured. And I was just like, the, like the first paragraph in, I was like, Oh, I can, like I can trust this person about where we’re going.

Gin Jenny  37:59

Yeah. And I also love that I think in a lot of ways, it was a very merciful book. Like there’s a lot of pain and trauma in it; there’s also just so much kindness and mercy. Even Kennedy and Jude eventually have this relationship where like, they talk on the phone, sometimes. They’re a little bit snippy with each other, but they do feel this bond. And I just thought it was really like fascinating, and I felt like she mostly avoided easy answers and like really focused in on emotional specificity in these relationships in a way that I just really loved. I was really impressed.

Whiskey Jenny  38:28

Specificity is such a good word, and I think that’s what really makes those relationships ring true. There was one moment where Desiree says her mother blamed her because Stella was no longer there to blame. Right, what you said about trauma. Obviously, there is a lot in this book, but I didn’t ever feel like it was trauma for trauma’s sake. It just felt like this is a realistic portrayal of what their lives would have been like.

Gin Jenny  38:51

Yeah, I think that’s why I found the Stella chapters so captivating, because I’ve said this before on the podcast that when– Something I find almost unbearably suspenseful is the kind of thing where someone has done something, and they’re waiting to find out if the thing is going to be uncovered. So I found that chapter really suspenseful in that way. But also, it just got really into like, the complicated emotions that Stella has about her racial identity and how terrible she is about dealing with that in a like, productive, non-horrible way. Yeah, yeah. Great book.

Whiskey Jenny  39:23

Great book! Yeah.

Gin Jenny  39:25

I have a question for you.

Whiskey Jenny  39:26

Go.

Gin Jenny  39:27

I feel like Brit Bennett is the kind of author that everyone’s very excited for her first book, and maybe her second book, and then time goes on and people are like, wow, we can’t believe we let ourselves care about a book that’s mostly about feelings. It’s obviously a mom book for mom book clubs, and kind of shuffles the author into that category. And it’s such a gendered thing. I’m just very worried that’s what’s gonna happen to Brit Bennett. What do you think? I want her to have a long and thriving career with all the accolades. Thoughts?

Whiskey Jenny  39:49

I do to– Awww. Oh, that’s so true. Oh, dear. Yeah, I’m so sorry. I wish I could reassure you, but that is an extremely true and real thing that happens all the time to female writers. Yeah, you’re right, I’m worried it’s gonna happen to her. But I hope not! Not that being a writer for moms and book clubs is bad, also! It’s just, you shouldn’t have to get pigeonholed.

Gin Jenny  40:11

Yeah. And I think books for moms and book clubs, like, they’re the kind of books that people like, Oh, we liked that, you know, last year, and now it’s done. But I mean, I hope that doesn’t– I just don’t want her to be in the same category as Where the Crawdads Sing, you know.

Whiskey Jenny  40:23

I’ve not read that. But sure.

Gin Jenny  40:24

I haven’t read it either. But it’s by a white lady. It’s about like, racism in the South, I guess. And she and her husband are not welcome in, I want to say, Zambia, because he killed a man there.

Whiskey Jenny  40:34

Jesus.

Gin Jenny  40:34

Yeah.

Whiskey Jenny  40:35

Wow.

Gin Jenny  40:36

Yeah

Whiskey Jenny  40:36

Boy! All right, yeah.

Gin Jenny  40:37

I think of it every time I see that book,. It didn’t look good. I was never gonna read it, it looked terrible. But also now I’m like, oh, you’re husband has killed a man and just got away with it.

Whiskey Jenny  40:46

Boy, did not know that. I don’t want her to get categorized with that person, for sure.

Gin Jenny  40:51

Yeah, I just want her to keep getting accolades and everyone being impressed by her, because writing about feelings is not easy. It’s very hard, and she does it amazing.

Whiskey Jenny  40:59

Yeah, yeah, I want her to keep getting accolades, but I don’t– Like I want to bring down the system as well. I don’t think anyone–

Gin Jenny  41:05

Yeah, same. Same.

Whiskey Jenny  41:06

It’s not that I just want to save certain people from that fate. I just don’t want that fate to exist at all.

Gin Jenny  41:10

Okay, I agree with that. You’re completely right. I should have said it that way.

Whiskey Jenny  41:14

No, I don’t mean that you are banishing people to– Off with their heads! To book club.

Gin Jenny  41:22

I do, by the way, think this would be an excellent book club book.

Whiskey Jenny  41:25

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Brit Bennett, man! Just killing it!

Gin Jenny  41:31

I can’t emphasize enough how much I don’t like this type of book usually. I’m just so impressed that she got me so good.

Whiskey Jenny  41:37

Yay! In all honesty, I did not realize it was quite so multigenerational when I picked it.

Gin Jenny  41:43

Oh, sure. No, I know. You would have said.

Whiskey Jenny  41:45

I would have! I would have said!

Gin Jenny  41:46

As I recall, you said “let’s read this for podcast” on podcast. I was like, Cool! What is it about? And you were like, [noncommittal noise]?

Whiskey Jenny  41:51

Dunno! Brit Bennett! Yep.

Gin Jenny  41:56

So yeah, Brit Bennett, autoread for this podcast, I think.

Whiskey Jenny  41:58

Yeah, I think it is now!

Gin Jenny  42:00

Yeah. Okay. Do you want to hear what we are reading for next time?

Whiskey Jenny  42:02

I do. Tell me.

Gin Jenny  42:03

So our book for next time is Plain Bad Heroines by Emily Danforth. It is a big chunky book, so we are being ambitious here. But the interior design is very beautiful. So I’m excited about it. It’s about a film that’s being made about a creepy old boarding school where a bunch of girls died in mysterious circumstances in the, I don’t know, 20s? 1910s? The olden days. So it goes back and forth between the olden days when the girls were dying, and the present day when the movies being made. It seems like everyone’s gay in it. And it sounds spooky. So I love all those things.

Whiskey Jenny  42:37

Spooky boarding school, meta.

Gin Jenny  42:40

Meta, exactly. Yeah. And it’s got, it’s got not a lot of footnotes, but it has some footnotes, which I always think is fun.

Whiskey Jenny  42:45

And illustrated, right?

Gin Jenny  42:46

Yeah. And it has some illustrations as well.

Whiskey Jenny  42:48

I’m very excited.

Gin Jenny  42:49

Yeah, I’m excited too. It’s gonna be really fun, I think! It looks like just a really fun winter read. It feels great to like cuddle up with a blanket and read it. Well, thank you so much for listening. Happy Holidays. If you have any amazing gift ideas, please drop them in the comments, because I am always on the hunt for good gifts. And until next time, a sad quote from The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, and I’m sorry it’s sad, but her writing about death was really beautiful. “Her grandmother’s death hit in waves, not a flood but water lapping steadily at her ankles. You could drown in two inches of water. Maybe grief was the same.”

Whiskey Jenny  43:22

I wrote that one down. When you were like “it’s about death,” I was like, it’s either the water one or the other one.

Gin Jenny  43:27

Well the other one I wrote down– I put two because in case you used one in the course of the pod. The other one was “that was the thing about death–”

Whiskey Jenny  43:36

“Only the specifics of it hurt.” I was like, Aaaaa!

Gin Jenny  43:40

Oh my gosh, it’s really like very resonant now, eh?

Whiskey Jenny  43:45

Yeah. Oh my God, and the last line?

Gin Jenny  43:47

Oh, it was so good!

Whiskey Jenny  43:48

“This river, like all rivers, remembered its course. They floated under the leafy canopy of trees begging to forget.” Oh my God.

Gin Jenny  43:56

She’s such a good writer. Way to GO, Brit Bennett!

Whiskey Jenny  43:57

We love you, Brit Bennett!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

The post Episode 140 – Holiday Gift Guide 2020 and Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half appeared first on Reading the End.

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Episode 110

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

1:04 – What we’re reading
2:40 – Jennys’ Holiday Gift Guide
3:30 – Gifts for listeners’ loved ones

What We’re Reading

World War Z, Max Brooks
Wives of the Leopard: Gender, Politics, and Culture in the Kingdom of Dahomey, Edna Bay

Whiskey Jenny’s Gift Ideas

A subscription to The Second Shelf

Prints from The Great British Baking Show (by Tom Hovey)

Literary Classics Calendar

Gmorning, Gnight: Little Pep Talks for Me & You, by Lin-Manuel Miranda

the cast recordings of Hadestown and Six: The Musical

Gin Jenny’s Gift Ideas

postcards by Paul Lewin and the Public Domain Review

Giant Microbes

Castle Hangnail, by Ursula Vernon

a mulled wine kit!

book embossers from The Print Mint

Book Gifts for Listeners

Ellen’s 11-year-old:

Escape to Witch Mountain, Alexander Key
Dactyl Hill Squad, Daniel Jose Older
Larklight, Philip Reeve
Book of Enchantments, Patricia C. Wrede

Ellen’s older kid:

Archer’s Goon or The Dark Lord of Derkholm, Diana Wynne Jones
The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy, Mackenzi Lee
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (novel), Shannon Hale and Dean Hale
Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple (with the spoiler that Whiskey Jenny recommends)

Ellen’s mom:

A Curious Beginning, Deanna Raybourn
Vanessa and Her Sister, Priya Parmar
The Sirens Sang of Murder, Sarah Caudwell
Magpie Murders, Anthony Horowitz

Chelsea:

Amberlough, Lara Elena Donnelly
Lonely Werewolf Girl, Martin Millar
The Ensemble, Aja Gabel
I’ll Give You the Sun, Jandy Nelson
Good and Mad, Rebecca Traister

Renay’s mom:

The Convenient Marriage, Georgette Heyer
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Helen Simonson
Overturned, Lamar Giles
Six Wakes, Mur Lafferty

Renay’s partner:

The Liminal People, Ayize Jama-Everett
The Rook, Daniel O’Malley
(The Hot Ones on YouTube)
Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey
Endurance, Alfred Lansing
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt

Renay’s friend:

Fingersmith, Sarah Waters
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt
White Tears, Hari Kunzru
Confessions of the Fox, Jordy Rosenberg
Jane Doe, Victoria Helen Stone
I Can’t Date Jesus, Michael Arceneaux

Glynis’s husband:

Karen Memory, Elizabeth Bear
Patsy Walker, AKA Hellcat
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (comics)
The Vela, Yoon-Ha Lee, Rivers Solomon, S. L. Huang, and Becky Chambers
Endurance, Alfred Lansing
Mars Evacuees, Sophia MacDougall

Glynis:

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, Holly Black
Pyromantic, Lish McBride
Zero Sun Game, S. L. Huang
Borderline, Mishell Baker

Maureen’s mom:

Love Walked In, Marisa de los Santos
The Beautiful Ones, Silvia Moreno-Garcia
A Curious Beginning, Deanna Raybourn
All Creatures Great and Small, James Herriot
The Camelot Caper, Elizabeth Peters

David’s wife:

The Spellman Files, Lisa Lutz
The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, Hannah Tinti
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler
Fangirl, Rainbow Rowell

Free-floating recs from Whiskey Jenny:

The Mothers, Brit Bennett
The Color Purple, Alice Walker

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

GIN JENNY: Welcome to a special holiday edition of the Reading the End Bookcast with the demographically similar Jennys. I’m Gin Jenny.

WHISKEY JENNY: And I’m Whiskey Jenny.

GIN JENNY: And we are here with one of our favorite episodes of every year, our holiday gift guide episode!

WHISKEY JENNY: Hooray!

GIN JENNY: We are going to give some general suggestions of gifts to buy your loved ones this holiday season, and then we have some targeted book gift suggestions for listeners who submitted to our holiday gift guide submission form. So we’re really excited to do that. But before we get into all that, Whiskey Jenny, what are you reading?

WHISKEY JENNY: I just started World War Z, by Max Brooks.

GIN JENNY: [GASP] Fun!

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s one of the ones—yeah—that was on our lovely starter pack that Renay made for us. Very, very much just started, so we shall see.

GIN JENNY: Cool.

WHISKEY JENNY: I’m enjoying the format, which is sort of historical documents.

GIN JENNY: Yes. I love that.

WHISKEY JENNY: So that’s cool, but I feel like I haven’t gotten to “and here’s the story” part, so I’m sort of waiting for what the story is going to be. So far it’s just like, cool, there’s zombies.

GIN JENNY: There’s not exactly one overarching story. It’s more testimonies from individual people about different elements of the zombie war.

WHISKEY JENNY: Do people come back?

GIN JENNY: Maybe. I’m not sure. Not necessarily. It’s almost more like a novel in stories, which I don’t typically like, but I enjoyed this one a lot.

WHISKEY JENNY: Interesting. Well, great.

GIN JENNY: Just so you know what to expect. Like you, I suspect, I’m trying to finish some of—or at least make some progress on—some of my reading resolutions that I didn’t do this year.

WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t know what you’re talking about. I always finish mine. In June. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, I’m doing the same thing, yes.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, so I did not do my African history reading goal this year. So I just started Wives of the Leopard, by Edna Bay, which is a history of women in the Dahomey Kingdom, which is now Benin. And it’s really good so far. It’s really interesting. And I’m not even to—this is all pre-1700s that I’m in, which typically in histories of African countries are the parts that we have the least historical records of, written historical records. So a lot of it’s from oral history and archaeological findings. So it can be a little more general. And already, even with that, it’s already super, super interesting.

WHISKEY JENNY: Wow. Cool.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. Well, do you want to get into our holiday gift guide for all listeners?

WHISKEY JENNY: I do, I do.

GIN JENNY: I’m super excited for my choices.

WHISKEY JENNY: Me, too. At first I was like, I don’t have anything. And then I had a bunch, and I had to cut it down.

GIN JENNY: Well, do you want to go first?

WHISKEY JENNY: Sure. So my first recommendation is The Second Shelf, the quarterly, which I just discovered.

GIN JENNY: Ooh.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. So a bookstore was opened in London called The Second Shelf. And it is to solely promote rare and first editions and collectible books and such by women authors.

GIN JENNY: Neat.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. So that’s cool. I think the name comes from a Meg Wolitzer essay that I did not read, but apparently was interesting. And the bookstore in general is sort of trying to correct the fact that a lot of old first edition copies by female authors are traditionally undervalued in the book collecting world, which is not a world I know a lot about.

GIN JENNY: Gosh, me neither.

WHISKEY JENNY: So I’m excited for that. And then they’re putting out a quarterly, which I have asked for myself for Christmas.

GIN JENNY: Ooh.

WHISKEY JENNY: Also because I feel like getting subscriptions to things is really fun because you get the gift all throughout the year.

GIN JENNY: Yes.

WHISKEY JENNY: Their literary quarterly is sort of half catalog and half literary quarterly. So I think that’s an interesting format that I’m excited to read about. It’ll be authors writing about books you can buy in the bookstore.

GIN JENNY: Cool. Oh, that’s really neat.

WHISKEY JENNY: From what I understand. And the copy that I flipped through—I found a copy—looks very interestingly designed, too.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, awesome. I love it. OK, since you started with a bookish one, I will start with one of my bookish ones, too. One of my resolutions for this past year, which I did really well at until about October, was to send five lovely notes each month. So I’m always on the lookout for beautiful stationery. And one of my favorite book covers for 2019 features art by Paul Lewin. And I liked the cover so much I went to his website, and he sells a set of postcards, different ones of his paintings. And they’re beautiful. I feel like everyone has a stationery lover on their gift list.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Maybe it’s you. But who’s to say?

GIN JENNY: And then the other postcard source that I was going to recommend is the Public Domain Review which is this really great online review that looks through old books and finds really beautiful art in them. And it’s really cool, and you can get postcard packs for that, as well. And yeah, I recommend it very much.

WHISKEY JENNY: Those both sound really interesting. My next one, this is for all of the fans of The Great British Baking Show.

GIN JENNY: Nice.

WHISKEY JENNY: You can buy prints of the beautiful illustrations of everyone’s baked goods.

GIN JENNY: What!

WHISKEY JENNY: Which I just discovered. I know, I know! Isn’t that so cool?

GIN JENNY: Yes!

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s been the same Illustrator throughout the whole show, and you can buy prints.

GIN JENNY: How cool.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I found that out was like, what? This is great.

GIN JENNY: Oh, that’s wonderful. OK, so my next one—this is probably my silliest one—is Giant Microbes, which is this company that sells soft, plush versions of microbes. So there’s plush versions of all kinds of nasty things. Like my aunt had cancer, so I got her a stuffed cancer cell that turned inside out into a healthy cell.

WHISKEY JENNY: Aw, that’s lovely.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. So you can get all kinds of different germs in stuffed format. And they’re all modeled on what the actual germ or creature looks like. Or you can also get types of cells, like a red blood cell or a platelet. They’re super cute. I really, really like them a lot.

WHISKEY JENNY: How cute. For all the science lovers.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: So my next one is a calendar poster that I found.

GIN JENNY: Ooh.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s by someone who does a lot of fan art. So it is a poster with all 12 months on it, and each month is a classic book cover, but it’s punned with the name of the month. So for example, it’s February 451 instead of Fahrenheit 451. So and they’re all very fun puns. The only downside I find to it is that it’s a poster and not a calendar that you flip. Because I love flipping a calendar and getting to the next one. It’s such a fun surprise. But you could always hack it, and just literally hack into it and cut it up. [LAUGHTER] And then, you know, just have one up at a time.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, for sure. I am next recommending Castle Hangnail, by Ursula Vernon. Last year I was buying Mars Evacuees, by Sophia MacDougall, for everyone in sight. And this year it is the exact same with Ursula Vernon’s Castle Hangnail, and for the same reasons. It’s a really sweet middle grade book about a little girl who’s trying to be the official wicked witch at Castle Hangnail. And all the minions are trying to help her and they form a wonderful bond, but then a real, proper wicked witch shows up to claim the castle.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh no.

GIN JENNY: Oh no! It’s so sweet. And it has really delightful illustrations, too, so these illustrations of all the little minions. It’s just unbelievably charming. I want everyone to read it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Aw. It sounds adorable.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: OK, well my book that I’m recommending is Good Morning, Good Night, by Lin-Manuel Miranda, which is a collection of his inspirational tweets that he does at morning and at night. It’s got cute little illustrations, and I feel like it would be good for someone A, who loves Hamilton and Lin-Manuel Miranda, but also maybe someone that you don’t know that well. It’s a good sort of general, like, here’s a nice thing present, I think.

GIN JENNY: I have a good gift for someone you don’t know that well, too, so I’ll do that one next.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, great. OK.

GIN JENNY: So my next one is a mulled wine kit that you make yourself. And I love this idea, because I love kits of things. So you can typically go to a spice store and buy mulled wine spices, but alternately, you can look up a recipe online and get the spices yourself. So all you do is just wrap up a dose of the spices in cheesecloth, tie it off with string, and attach it to a bottle of red wine. And then you give that to someone, and all they have to do is add apple cider and heat the whole thing up. And it’s very easy to do. It’s warm, and comforting, and seasonal. I love mulled wine. I’m so excited it’s mulled wine season.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s mulled wine season. Hooray!

GIN JENNY: Hooray! And it’s a good hostess gift, too, if you’re going to parties.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, yeah, what a good idea. So my last one is musicals. They’re both musicals. It’s two musicals.

GIN JENNY: Wonderful.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s two cast recordings that I just discovered and that I am really into. One of them is the cast recording of Six, the Musical, which is the six wives of Henry VIII as if they’re in a girl pop band. So those are all really fun jams singing about English history, and definitely in the vein of Spice Girls. And then also, there is a cast recording of Hadestown, which is a sort of folk Americana musical about the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.

GIN JENNY: I did not realize that Hadestown was folk Americana. That makes me 10,000 percent more interested in it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. So isn’t that cool?

GIN JENNY: Yes.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s sort of a Great Depression era-inspired post-apocalyptic setting, according to the Wikipedia page. So yeah, that was in London. It’s coming to Broadway soon, so I’m very excited about that. But yeah, those are both sort of literary stories, and depending on what kind of music people like, perhaps you could buy them the album.

GIN JENNY: Sounds great.

WHISKEY JENNY: So it’s actually—Hadestown, the music and lyrics are by Anaïs Mitchell, who, if you are a Whiskey Jenny-stan, you will know from her album of Child ballads, which are old English folk songs. Her and Jefferson Hamer so it’s all just beautiful duets between them, and it’s very acoustic and lovely. So check that out, as well.

GIN JENNY: Man, good for her.

WHISKEY JENNY: I know, right? She’s killing it. Yeah. OK, what’s your last one?

GIN JENNY: OK, my last one is the nerdiest one on my list, but I stand by it. Picture this.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, it’s such a journey. I’m ready.

GIN JENNY: All your books that you own are embossed on the title page with your very name.

WHISKEY JENNY: Whoa.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, so Etsy has a lot of custom book embossers available. It’s a real rabbit hole, but the store that I picked out selling book embossers is The Print Mint, which is based in Utah. They have really cute, simple designs for embossers. And I just really love the idea—I mean, I love book plates, obviously, but I love this, too. It would be really hard for me to choose between book plates and embossers. But yeah, it’s way to personalize your books that does maybe feel as intrusive as a book plate, and it would just make me feel really fancy.

WHISKEY JENNY: Same.

GIN JENNY: And it’s a good thing for the extremely nerdy book lover in your life. [LAUGHTER] All right. So do you want to get to our listener submissions?

WHISKEY JENNY: I do.

GIN JENNY: I’m so excited.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yay. So our first one is from Ellen, and we have several people that we’re recommending for Ellen. So first up is, she says, “My 11-year-old is making the transition to ze/zir pronouns. Ze says gender roles are stupid, and we all need to use the letter Z more.” Cosign. “Ze loves an adventure with a dragon. Space is also good. Ze has read so many dragon adventures that space is probably safer in terms of finding books ze hasn’t read yet. Ze also loves Ursula Vernon,” which Gin Jenny just mentioned. “As do we all, because we’re rational people,” says Ellen. So what do you have for Ellen’s 11-year-old.

GIN JENNY: OK, so Ellen, A of all, your kid sounds great. And Ursula Vernon does indeed rock. Has ze ever read Escape to Witch Mountain, by Alexander Key? It’s not exactly a space book, but it’s a fun middle grade slash young adult book about these two kids with special powers who don’t exactly remember where they came from, but it’s possible they came from another planet. And they’re kind of on the run from people who want to use them. There’s two books in the series. I loved them when I was younger, I read them infinity times, so maybe your kid would, too But they don’t have space.

And then my second—also non-space, I’m so sorry, but nearly dragons—recommendation, has ze read Dactyl Hill Squad, by Daniel Jose Older? Because that book sounds really good. It’s about dinosaurs in the Civil War era. And I think these kids are kind of foundlings, and they settle in an independent community of black and brown folks who are keeping each other safe in the turbulent times. And there are dinosaurs, which are very much like dragons.

WHISKEY JENNY: They’re so close, yeah. They’re basically dragons.

GIN JENNY: That’s what I got.

WHISKEY JENNY: OK. Those both sound really interesting. I’ve never read either one. My first one is Larklight, by Phillip Reeve, which is set in space, and it also is very steampunky, in that it’s space, but set in the 1800s, I think, so it feels like maybe there could also be dragons. [LAUGHTER] There are not. It’s just space. But yeah, I just wanted a lovely story that we read recently, but I think it would be very good for that age.

And then my other one is, I think last year we recommended the Dealing with Dragons series by Patricia Wrede, which I stand by that recommendation.

GIN JENNY: Oh god, so same.

WHISKEY JENNY: But I thought a slightly more obscure book by Patricia Wrede that also has some dragons is The Book of Enchantments, which is a collection of short stories by Patricia Wrede all involving different kinds of magic or different magical creatures. And I remember really loving this book when I was younger. And I also feel like short fiction for younger readers just isn’t really a thing, so I appreciated that it was a new kind of format.

GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah, I super agree with that one. I really loved that book, too, when I was a kid. OK, awesome. So the next one from Ellen. “My older daughter is applying to colleges and is feeling really stressed out and run down. She needs a super fun, funny read. I promise to combine it with some of her favorite tea and chocolate and several dozen pats on the head, and maybe a weighted blanket. She’s ace and aro and does not like romance in her stories at all.” Oh my gosh, I am so sorry that she’s applying for colleges. That is the hardest time.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yes. Good luck.

GIN JENNY: I wish her the best of luck. I think this is the perfect time for some Diana Wynne Jones, even though they’re for probably slightly younger readers than she is, but I have really found that Diana Wynne Jones’s books age well. So the two that I picked out are Archer’s Goon and Dark Lord of Derkholm. Archer’s Goon is really strange and hard to describe, but you’ll just have to take my word for it that it’s very fun. And Dark Lord of Derkholm is kind of a send up of high fantasy novels and their tropes.

And then also, I’m reading The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy, by Mackenzi Lee, which is about an ace girl in the Victorian, I want to say, age? The 1800s. And she’s going on all these adventures, trying to become a doctor, but also hanging out with pirates. Maybe there’s dragons. Who knows? So yeah, those are my choices.

WHISKEY JENNY: Gosh, I remember reading the first book in that series. So I’m really excited to hear that second one [INAUDIBLE]

GIN JENNY: I like this one better.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, great. I can’t wait. I had a couple of issues with that first one, but that character was really interesting.

GIN JENNY: I feel like the first one had some tonal strangeness, and this one, to me, just had a more consistent tone and feel throughout.

WHISKEY JENNY: OK, so I think for the older daughter—and again, good luck applying for colleges—

GIN JENNY: Oh my gosh.

WHISKEY JENNY: —is The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, by—

GIN JENNY: Nice!

WHISKEY JENNY: —Shannon Hale and Dean Hale, which I think also skews a bit younger than a teen, but I read it this year as an adult and loved it.

GIN JENNY: And I think times of stress are a good time to age down your reading.

WHISKEY JENNY: Agreed, yeah. And it’s just so lovely and comforting and sweet and cute and funny. So I think that and a cup of tea is just what the doctor ordered.

And then I would also say with, a couple of caveats, Where’d You Go, Bernadette. And I would say only if your daughter is fine with emotional spoilers, in which case I would recommend this with the spoiler that the mother is fine and the mother did not mean to leave her daughter. But I think if you know that, it is sort of a fun epistolary style funny book.

GIN JENNY: Agreed. Great choices.

WHISKEY JENNY: So last up from Ellen, she says, “I’d also love your recommendations for my mom. She’s 72 and slowly starting to retire and travel more. She loves the British royal family and mysteries. She’s an avid reader.” So my first one for her is A Curious Beginning, by Deanna Raybourn, which is—

GIN JENNY: You know, I almost picked that, and I was like, nah, Whiskey Jenny’s got this.

WHISKEY JENNY: I got it. I got it, yeah. Well, thank you. It’s both a mystery and the British royal family is involved. And I just found it very, very charming and sort of comforting in the way that that sort of period of book can be.

And then my second one is Vanessa and Her Sister, by Priya Parmar. And I think the Britishness and the avid reader part of the recommendation is what is making me lean towards this. We read this for the podcast. And it’s also sort of a journal, epistolary style novel about Vanessa Bell and her sister, who is Virginia Woolf. And Gin Jenny, I think you didn’t think there was a lot of there there. But I found it enjoyable and a good look inside that period and intellectual group, and a fairly quick read, too.

GIN JENNY: OK, I’m picking out—I’m constantly recommending Sarah Caudwell’s mystery series, because I feel like I never hear of it anywhere. But it’s this very funny series. It’s only four mysteries and then she died, unfortunately, before writing any more. But they’re about these English lawyers who solve mysteries, and they’re very snarky and British and delightful.

And then my second recommendation was Magpie Murders, by Anthony Horowitz, which is about an editor of mystery novels who get the latest book from one of her authors. So you have the mystery that the author is writing, but the editor also begins to suspect that there’s a real life mystery involved in the manuscript.

WHISKEY JENNY: Is that Anthony Horowitz of Foyle’s War and New Blood?

GIN JENNY: Yes, Foyle’s War. Yes, yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, man. What a great content producer that person is. [LAUGHTER] Well, great. I had no idea, and I can’t wait to read that myself.

GIN JENNY: Yay! OK, our next one is from Chelsea. “These books are for me.” That is totally fine, Chelsea. “And I have to say, after the year 2018 has been, my brain is ready to do just about anything but reading. So I’m looking for a book that will spark my brain, give me happy sighs, and all the lines to highlight. Recent faves include In Other Lands, by Sarah Rees Brennan, A Duke by Default by Alyssa Cole, and Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward, by Gemma Hartley. Thank you so much for your help, Jennys, and thank you for being such intelligent, hilarious, kind, and generous ladies in this garbage year. I always look forward to listening.” That is so sweet that I almost didn’t read it, Chelsea, because I was too embarrassed.

WHISKEY JENNY: Aw, thanks, Chelsea. I did too, I was like, oh, she’s reading it!

GIN JENNY: I don’t know, should I edit it out?

WHISKEY JENNY: No, you should leave it! She did say it.

GIN JENNY: I know.

WHISKEY JENNY: And it was very nice of her to do so.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, it was super sweet. OK, so Chelsea, I’m going to recommend Amberlough, by Lara Elena Donnelly, which is a queer cabaret alternative history spy adventure. And then I’d also secondly recommend Lonely Werewolf Girl, by Martin Millar. He writes these very odd sci-fi fantasy books in London, set in London. And Lonely Werewolf Girl is very funny and charming, and, as is characteristic of Martin Millar’s writing, it’s very frank about the subject of anxiety and mental illness in general. So it is a fun read; there’s some dark subject matter, but treated relatively lightly. However a character in this book does do self-harm if that’s a trigger for anyone listening. Yeah, so those are my choices.

WHISKEY JENNY: Great. So mine are The Ensemble, by Aja Gabel, which I think we’ve talked about recently. And it’s about a string quartet and their relationship throughout the years. And I did have a moment of doubt, sort of in the middle, towards the end, that I wasn’t going to like it. But then I did. It really pulled through for me, and I should have remained hopeful. And I think we both thought it was very beautifully written and a lot of good emotional relationships between people.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. It felt kind of fanfic-ish.

WHISKEY JENNY: And in a similar vein of just good emotion writing is I’ll Give You the Sun, by Jandy Nelson.

GIN JENNY: Aw, yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: Which we read a while ago for a podcast, but we haven’t brought up in a while, so I just wanted to—

GIN JENNY: Refresh everyone’s memory. Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. And I will say, I am also in the middle of reading Good and Mad, by Rebecca Traister, and that seems sort of along similar lines of Fed Up, so I would check that out if you’re feeling up for it.

GIN JENNY: Perfect.

WHISKEY JENNY: So next up, from Renay. She would like a book for Julia, her mom. “76 years old, likes gambling—sigh—cooking, and racist memes about the pyramids being built by aliens. Has watched the entirety of Stargate SG-1 Scandal, and The Great British Bake-Off, gets confused by complicated SFF—” Me too. [LAUGHTER] “Liked Imperial Radch?”

GIN JENNY: Yeah. It’s the Nicefox Gambit series.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, Nicefox. OK, great. “But had approximately—” Gosh. 9 billion—nope, that would be—yeah, 9 billion—

GIN JENNY: I think you can just say 9 billion.

WHISKEY JENNY: “Nine billion and some other numbers questions [LAUGHTER] about it. And [INAUDIBLE] to guess who answered them.” My guess is Renay, because Renay has also answered some questions for me.

So my recommendations are The Convenient Marriage, by Georgette Heyer, which I am currently relistening to on audiobook, read by Richard Armitage, because I love it a lot. And there’s some gameplay and gambling in it, so that might be enjoyable.

And then I would also say Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, because I think it’s just a sweet British romance. It’s sort of a second romance for people in their middle age, and it gives me the same sort of feelings as The Great British Bake-Off.

GIN JENNY: OK, so for my picks, I don’t know she ever reads YA, but one book that I really liked was Overturned, by Lamar Giles, which is about a teenage gambler and poker genius who’s trying to find out who framed her dad for murder. It’s fast paced, and it’s really fun, but just if your mom ever likes YA, which I don’t know if she does.

And then, if she likes science fiction but not complicated science fiction, I thought Mur Lafferty’s Six Wakes might be a good choice. I really enjoyed it. It’s a good mystery, but I don’t think it’s too hard to follow. So that would be my second recommendation.

WHISKEY JENNY: I like that we both picked up on the gambling. We’re like, oh, gambling, let’s do something with gambling!

GIN JENNY: I know. [LAUGHTER] The next one is for Renay’s partner, 36 years old, who “likes napping, junk baking, and multiplayer games like World of Warcraft, MapleStory, or League of Legends; plans to make viewing all 10 main-ish Star Wars films a family tradition; likes gardening and grows Carolina Reapers—1,569,300 on the Scoville—scale for fun; will not let me get him a new set of Wheel of Time books because his current set is falling to bits because, quote, ‘it shows his history of buying and reading them,’ end quote.” I disagree, but fine. This one’s kind of hard for me, because I don’t read a lot of Wheel of Time type epic fantasy, so I’m doing my best.

I wanted to suggest The Liminal People by Ayize Jama-Everett, which the elevator pitch for it is its African X-Men. It’s dark and pretty good. I had some quibbles with the end, but overall I thought it was really interesting world building. And then also The Rook, by Daniel O’Malley, which as I’m thinking about it is not un-X-Men-y. It’s about this woman who wakes up, she has no memory of her past life, but she has letters from herself that it’s like, you’re in danger, people are trying to kill you. And she has some magical powers, and she works for an agency where lots of people have lots of different magical powers, and they try to control supernatural happenings in England. And she’s thrown into the job with no memory and just her letters from herself to guide her.

WHISKEY JENNY: Ooh, interesting. So first up I would recommend to Zachariah, if he has not already seen the Hot Ones YouTube show, that he check that out. Because it is all about people eating increasingly spicy hot wings. Celebrities getting interviewed while they eat increasingly spicy hot wings, and it tells you what the hot sauces are on the Scoville scale. So that’s my hot sauce recommendation.

So I also had a really hard time with this, because I am 9 billion percent sure that any sci-fi book that I have heard of, that Renay has heard of, plus everything that it inspired. But I will say, I did ask my friend from work who I know likes Star Wars and multiplayer games specifically psycho OK I know somebody likes both of those things, and what she would recommend. And she said the Leviathan Wakes series—or the Expanse series, which starts with Leviathan Wakes. But I did look it up and I know that Renay has already reviewed this book, so it’s not new information to her. But perhaps it will reawaken it, not sure.

But then I was trying to think of sort of epic books that aren’t sci-fi that we’ve read. And I would say Endurance.

GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah! That one’s so good.

WHISKEY JENNY: Which is the Shackleton story, by Alfred Lansing. And then I would also say The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt, is a pretty epic, a bunch of stuff happens book.

GIN JENNY: Nice.

WHISKEY JENNY: So the last person that Renay wanted books for is Keena. “Black man who is competent enough to wear a picture of himself printed onto a t-shirt with no shame. Improv master. Into reality shows like most people are into Marvel movies. Loves Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder.” Gosh, I had a bunch of books for this. I’m so sorry. Because it sounds like Keena is really into sort of bonkers plot and a lot of drama, and I had a lot of recommendations for that. So I will try to run through them very quickly.

First of all, Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters, which we’ve read before, but it’s very plotty. I recently read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which is non-fiction but reads like a fiction book, I found.

GIN JENNY: It does, it does. It was all over the place. It’s pretty solidly about white Savannah, though, I would say as a caveat. White Tears, by Hari Kunzru, again, really bonkers. There’s a ghost who kills people. I guess that’s a spoiler, but there’s a ghost who kills people, which is pretty bananas. And then Confessions of the Fox, which we read this year, I found to be very—almost too much so for me, as I discovered. I was like, what is happening? [LAUGHTER] But it is very—like, a lot, a lot, a lot happens.

GIN JENNY: So my first one is also along the bonkers plot theme, and that’s Jane Doe, by Victoria Helen Stone, which reminds me of Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder, in the sense that it has this crazy plot and a pretty ruthless heroine. And my second idea was this book of comedic essays I just read called I Can’t Date Jesus, by Michael Arceneaux, which is about a black, queer, southern Catholic man and his coming of age, and coming to terms himself and his family and his faith and all these other things. I thought was really funny and very heartfelt.

WHISKEY JENNY: Great.

GIN JENNY: OK, so next up is Glynis. Glynis says, “I asked for recs last year for my husband and they were hits—” Yay! “—so I’m back again. He likes science fiction, people trying their best, problem solving, and stories where people are generally good and kind.”

WHISKEY JENNY: Me too, Glynis’s husband. [LAUGHTER] We should swap recs. [LAUGHTER]

GIN JENNY: “Recently we’ve been listening to the Murderbot books and he loves them, and he liked The Martian and The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. I feel like some Earth-based sci-fi could be fun.”

OK Glynis, my first thought was if he would be into some American history based steampunk, because Whiskey Jenny and I both, I think, really liked Karen Memory, by Elizabeth Bear, which is kind of like an episode of Firefly in some ways. And I like it because all the characters are great, and they all work hard and pull together to defeat the bad guys.

And then, you don’t say what his position on comics is, but I really love some of the all ages Marvel lines right now, so maybe that would be something to try. I’m super enjoying Patsy Walker a.k.a. Hellcat and The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. And essentially everyone in them is very good and kind, and they’re just a delight to read.

WHISKEY JENNY: Gosh, yes. I loved Patsy Walker, and have previously recommended the YA book of Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, and I’m so looking forward to reading that comic.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, it’s great. My final recommendation is a little riskier in terms of people being nice. But Serial Box has a new series coming out in, I think, January called The Vela. And it’s written by Becky Chambers, along with Yoon Ha Lee, who I love—Yoon Ha Lee wrote the Nicefox Gambit books—Rivers Solomon, who wrote a pretty dark sci-fi book called An Unkindness of Ghosts, and S.L. Huang, who wrote Zero Sum Game, which I also really enjoyed I would say Rivers Solomon’s works skews darker, so I don’t know how much this will be tonally similar to A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. But it might be a fun thing to get him, because you can get him a subscription, and then each chapter will come to his inbox as it comes out, which is kind of fun.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yes! Subscriptions, they’re so fun. My first one for Glynis’s husband is—and this is my first repeat of the recommendations section, but not the last one—is again, Endurance. If he likes problem solving, there are a lot of problems that have to get solved. But if you listen to our podcast, you know that they all do get solved, and everyone’s fine in the end.

And then my second one is—and I hesitated to recommend this because I thought Gin Jenny might recommend it—but I found Mars Evacuees to be full of sweet muffins of people.

GIN JENNY: So true.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s a middle great, but your husband sounds like he would not be a snob about that. I’m sorry, that’s by Sophia MacDougall.

Glynis also asked—which is totally fine, we encourage this—”If you’d like to recommend something for me that’s like a midpoint between Murderbot and Sunshine by Robin McKinley, that would be great.” So my two for this are The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, by Holly Black.

GIN JENNY: Oh, great choice.

WHISKEY JENNY: Which is another vampire story, but I would say not quite as intense feelings-wise as Sunshine. And then my other one is Pyromantic, by Lish McBride, which is the second in the series, but I would honestly recommend just starting with Pyromantic. It’s a group of different people with supernatural abilities, and they’re trying to solve a mystery of why certain creatures with supernatural abilities are kind of going a little nuts right now at the moment. And they have to solve that mystery and all work together. And our main girl has fire as an ability, and she’s working for this corporation or organization that she doesn’t totally trust, but might be OK, actually. The organization was super evil in the first book. And I just didn’t love the first book as much, and I don’t really think you need it as a baseline. So I would say just go ahead and start with Pyromantic. If you can do that and get past the icky feeling that that might give you, then I would say just look up what happens in the first one, or email us and I’ll be happy to write you a little summary for it. And then read Pyromaniac.

GIN JENNY: Awesome, and that is a princely offer. Glynis, I wish I could find a book that’s a midpoint between Murderbot and Sunshine, because that sounds perfect. I don’t know that either of my recommendations can come to that level, but these are two books I really liked. I’m going to recommend Zero Sum Game by S.L. Huang, which I just talked about a second ago. But it’s about a low-level criminal who’s a math genius, and she gets caught up in a big corporate conspiracy. It’s wonderful. I loved all the characters. I was super excited to keep reading and find out what was going to happen next. There was grudging respect, there’s mind control, it’s just really, really fun. And the sequel’s coming out next year, so there’s something to look forward to.

And the other recommendation was Borderline by Mishell Baker, which is an urban fantasy book about a woman with Borderline Personality Disorder who joins this organization to work with the fairy world. It’s not that much like Murderbot or Sunshine, but it gives me the same sense of interior satisfaction, so I think that’s a good choice, hopefully.

OK, our next request is for Maureen. She says, “My mom! She’s 68, crafty, likes to knit and sew especially. Fairly conservative when it comes to reading tastes. She enjoys the Queen’s Thief series and Lord of the Rings, but isn’t a fantasy fan per se, and she wouldn’t like anything very violent or sexual. She also doesn’t have a lot of time for reading, so something she could pick up and set down might be good.”

I am very, very fond of Marisa de los Santos, who writes women’s fiction, and her book Love Walked In is, to me, quite easy to pick up and put down, because it’s kind of episodic. And it’s just this very dear, very emotional book about a woman finding love, not necessarily in the ways you might expect. And I just think it describes feelings in a really lovely way and is one of my favorite comfort books.

And then my other recommendation is The Beautiful Ones, by Sylvia Moreno Garcia, which is like a slightly darker Georgette Heyer novel if there had been a very small degree of magic in Georgette Heyer’s Regency novels.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, that sounds great.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: So mine, I will mention again A Curious Beginning, by Deanna Raybourn, which I mentioned before, which is a mystery, Regency era, with a very independent lady main character, and they have to solve a mystery. I would also recommend the James Herriot books if she hasn’t read them already.

GIN JENNY: Oh, yes.

WHISKEY JENNY: Because they are also very episodic and just really sweet and lovely. And if you’re not familiar, they’re about a vet in Yorkshire in England, kind of around the—

GIN JENNY: 1940s.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. And they’re just very sweet and very episodic, because it’s sort of each case that he has, and each client, he goes through their stories.

And then also Elizabeth Peters, I think, would be a great author for Maureen’s mom. And if she’s already read the Amelia Peabody series, then perhaps she has not already read A Camelot Caper, which was once put on my bedside by Gin Jenny, and I really loved.

GIN JENNY: And the first—just in case you want to get it, the first James Herriot book is All Creatures Great and Small.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yes.

GIN JENNY: But it doesn’t really matter. You don’t need to read them in an order. It makes no difference really.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. They’re extremely episodic. OK, so lastly we heard from David, who says, “My wife Jackie can be tricky to select for. She reads four or five books per year but likes to have a good book on the nightstand and occasionally get sucked in. She most recently completed Manhattan Beach, by Jennifer Egan, although she did not like it as much as Welcome to the Goon Squad.” Me neither. “Her primary critique was that it did not have enough compelling characters, whereas she felt the fleshed out side characters were the best part about Goon Squad. Books that did not work out in the past year include The Power, by Naomi Alderman, and Less, by Andrew Sean Greer. That said, she likes well-developed characters with interesting plots. Female characters and authors are preferred. Her favorite author is David Sedaris and her favorite person is probably Amy Sedaris.” A lot of love for the Sedaris family, I love it.

GIN JENNY: I love it, too.

WHISKEY JENNY: “Where’d You Go, Bernadette, by Maria Semple, is another favorite.” So for Jackie, I would say first up, the Spellman Files series, by Lisa Lutz, which I had mentioned before. But I think the sense of humor of these books sounds like it might appeal to Jackie. The daughter, Izzy, is sort of the main character, but her whole family is involved. And they sort of do private investigations, but that’s not the main point of it. The main point of it is the slightly messed up family relationships that they have. And I think the first one is just called the Spellman Files, which is also the name of the series.

And then the next one I would say is The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley, by Hannah Tinti, which I really enjoyed and is told in a really interesting structure. It’s a single father and his daughter, and He’s sort of had a criminal past and is recounting the twelve times that he’s been shot. But he’s really trying to do right by his daughter now and put his at times violent past behind him. And it alternates between him retelling his past and the daughter in the present day, and it’s very much a coming of age story for her. And I think if she enjoyed the kind of crazy structure of Goon Squad then she might enjoy the interesting structure of this book.

GIN JENNY: Nice. My first recommendation is We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler, which is a book about—

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, great idea. Sorry.

GIN JENNY: Thank you. I don’t want to spoil it. It’s about—let’s say it’s about an unusual family. I love the characters, but I think also the plot is really compelling. And then I was—maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but I really love Fangirl, by Rainbow Rowell. And although it’s classified as YA, to me it reads older than YA and I think is a good comp to Where’d You Go, Bernadette. And I think the characters are really, really great and well-drawn.

WHISKEY JENNY: Can I have two bonus recommendations to throw in?

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: Is that allowed?

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: So my method when we do these is, I read what people told us, and see what first occurs to me, do a little research, what have I read, look at my bookshelf, ask around, et cetera, et cetera. And then I kind of try and go in the opposite direction, too, to see if I’ve missed anything, and just go through my bookshelf and see, are there any things that I have read recently that I just really loved and would love to be able to recommend to someone, and then see if they fit into any of the people. And there were two that I couldn’t fit in that I just really wanted to mention.

GIN JENNY: Oh, so these are bonus generic recs.

WHISKEY JENNY: They’re just bonus generic recs, yeah.

GIN JENNY: I love it. Go, go.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Well so, we read The Mothers, by Brit Bennett last year, and I think we mentioned it in our year-end round up, too. And I still am just really impressed and blown away by that debut and really loved it. It’s got some fairly heavy topics in it, but I found it just really beautifully written. And gosh, I just loved it. Yeah, so The Mothers by Brit Bennett.

And then this year, Gin Jenny Forcened me to read The Color Purple, and I was extremely hesitant about it, but I did love it. And if you have someone in your life that has read it yet and has been worried about how horrifying the subject matter seems, then I would say maybe give it a try, because I ended up finding it very optimistic and beautiful.

GIN JENNY: Yay! That makes me so happy.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah.

GIN JENNY: Well, wonderful. Well, this has been an excellent gift guide episode.

WHISKEY JENNY: I agree.

GIN JENNY: I always love doing these.

WHISKEY JENNY: Me, too. I love doing them. I mean, I hope it is a successful one for people that are hearing from us.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, and thank you, listeners, for sending in your requests. We love thinking about them and trying to choose books for you.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yes, totally, as always. This has been the Reading the End bookcast with the demographically similar Jennys, special holiday edition. You can visit the blog at readingtheend.com. You can follow us on Twitter @readingtheend. We’re both on Goodreads as Whiskey Jenny and Gin Jenny. And you can email us, please do, at readingtheend@gmail.com. If you like what we do, you can become a podcast patron at patreon.com/readingtheend. And if you’re listening to us on iTunes, please leave us a review. And until next time, happy holidays.

GIN JENNY: Happy holidays!

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

The post Reading the End Bookcast, Ep.110 – Holiday Gift Guide 2018 appeared first on Reading the End.

Episode 93

Our Own Personal Gift Guides

Gin Jenny: Eyeglasses chain from Leslie’s Lanyards on Etsy

Whiskey Jenny: Litographs temporary tattoos

Gin Jenny: Black Sails on DVD (greatest show of our time)

Whiskey Jenny: P. much anything from Out of Print

Gin Jenny: Milk Makeup Ubame mascara

Whiskey Jenny: some kind of local CSA!

Gin Jenny: About: Blanks notebooks

Whiskey Jenny: Adorable salt and pepper shakers like these boat ones

Gin Jenny: Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey

Whiskey Jenny: Tombow markers

Holiday Gift Guide Recs

Claire’s dad

In the Woods (first in Dublin Murder Squad series), by Tana French
Fearless Jones series by Walter Mosley
The Bat (first in Harry Hole series), by Jo Nesbo
Sea of Poppies (first in Ibis Trilogy), by Amitav Ghosh
Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi

Ellen’s older daughter

The Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey
The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
Ray Bradbury short stories
The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins

Ellen’s younger daughter

Mars Evacuees, Sophia MacDougall
Dealing with Dragons, Patricia C. Wrede
Greenglass House, Kate Milford
Danny the Champion of the World, Roald Dahl
Cinder, Marissa Meyer

Ellen herself!

Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
Six Wakes, Mur Lafferty
The Passage, Justin Cronin
Sorcery and Cecelia, Caroline Stevermer and Patricia Wrede

Glynis’s husband

A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, Becky Chambers
“Fandom for Robots,” A GIFT BUT NOT THE KIND YOU CAN WRAP by Vina Jie-Min Prasad
The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach
Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt

Chelsea!

Karen Memory, Elizabeth Bear
You’re Welcome, Universe, Whitney Gardner
The Inexplicable Logic of My Life, Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Sunbolt and Memories of Ash Intisar Khanani
A Hundred Thousand Worlds by Bob Proehl

Caroline’s mum

The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (first of the Mary Russell mysteries), Laurie King
Lost Among the Living, Simone St. James
Crocodile on the Sandbank (first of the Amelia Peabody series), Elizabeth Peters
The Strangler Vine, M.J. Carter
The Shape of Water, Andrea Camilleri
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, John le Carré

Erica’s partner’s mother

Fingersmith, Sarah Waters
Life After Life, Kate Atkinson
The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Helen Simonson
Vanessa and Her Sister, Priya Parmar

Our transcript for this episode is 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 very special holiday edition of 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 really excited to have a special book recommendation and gift guide episode today.

GIN JENNY: The most exciting of all the episodes.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yes, it’s our third annual?

GIN JENNY: Yeah. That sounds right, yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: Probably the third annual.

GIN JENNY: Do not fact check.

WHISKEY JENNY: But before we get into gift guide and then recommendations, I just want to point out, I hope everyone enjoyed the special holiday theme song that we have this year.

GIN JENNY: This is not our idea, although I would love it if it had been. Jessie Barbour contacted us out of the blue and asked if she could do a holiday themed version of our theme song. And we were so excited, as you can imagine.

WHISKEY JENNY: Obviously we said yes immediately. And now we have this beautiful piece of music for everyone to enjoy. So thank you very much, Jessie!

GIN JENNY: As always, for being a brilliant musician and person.

WHISKEY JENNY: Indeed. Well, before we get started, what are you reading right now, Gin Jenny?

GIN JENNY: I actually am reading nothing right now. Right before this podcast, I finished this book called Charlotte Sometimes, by Penelope Farmer, which is a time slip novel from 1969, that has been sitting beside my bed pretty much since I moved into my new place. And it was a book. I really had nothing to say about it. It was fine. I don’t know how it came to be by my bedside, but I do know that it was very medium, as a book goes. It was not worth the months that it’s been sitting there.

WHISKEY JENNY: That’s always disappointing.

GIN JENNY: It was, but that’s how life goes sometimes. I have a bunch of really great books awaiting me, so I’m excited about those. What are you reading?

WHISKEY JENNY: I just started The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley.

GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah!

WHISKEY JENNY: Which I’ve heard a lot of good things about. People really seem to enjoy it. It’s the Flavia De Luche series? Or DeLuce? I don’t know how you say it. Sorry, Flavia. But she’s a wee slip of a lass, and she really likes science. I really just started it.

And I thought it was going to be super fluffy and a comfort read. But she is a wee thing, and she has a 13-year-old sister and a 16-year-old sister, I want to say, and they’re super mean to her! And she’s like concocting her revenge right now back against them. And they’re really mean to each other. I don’t like these sibling fights.

GIN JENNY: I prefer nice siblings.

WHISKEY JENNY: Me too. And it was totally unexpected.

GIN JENNY: Aw.

WHISKEY JENNY: So, I don’t know. We’ll see.

OK, well, we’re now really excited to share with you our little gift round up of things that we are perhaps excited to give or receive ourselves, or that we think people would enjoy. And I will just preface this by saying, Gin Jenny is always much better than me at making these literary themed. I have the best of intentions to begin with, and then I totally go off the rails.

GIN JENNY: That’s great, because mine is much less literary themed this year than in the past.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, great!

GIN JENNY: Well, because yours were often not, and I was like, you know what? Who cares? We don’t need everything to be literary themed. It could just be– honestly, my gift guide is just stuff I super enjoyed in 2017.

WHISKEY JENNY: So is mine.

GIN JENNY: Great.

WHISKEY JENNY: OK, terrific. What’s your first thing?

GIN JENNY: OK, so my first thing. One thing that I bought this year that has been absolutely terrific, y’all are going to laugh at me, is a chain for my reading glasses. I have glasses that I’m supposed to use when I’m using the computer, with blue blocker lenses, which you guys should all get, because computers are really bad for your eyes.

But I love this glasses chain. It has shifted my aesthetic in the curmudgeonly old lady direction, which is exactly what I want. I got a very cute chain for my glasses from Leslie’s Lanyards on Etsy, and she was super nice, and I’m very satisfied.

So if you know someone who wants to look 75% more likely to say shush in a stern voice, I recommend this as an aesthetic choice.

WHISKEY JENNY: I can confirm that they’re very attractive glasses chains.

GIN JENNY: Right? They’re pretty.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, they’re interesting.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. What’s your first one, Whiskey Jenny?

WHISKEY JENNY: So my first one is sort of actually literary related.

GIN JENNY: Oh, nice. Well done.

WHISKEY JENNY: Thank you. It is– well, temporary tattoos.

GIN JENNY: Oh, nice.

WHISKEY JENNY: I would just like everyone to know, if you haven’t done a temporary tattoo since you were a child, and you’re not a child now, the technology has really advanced. They’re really cool looking now. They can go really detailed, and they stay on for a long time, and they look pretty good when they’re on.

So I love Rifle Paper Co. temporary tattoos, obviously, because I love Rifle Paper Co. everything. But specifically for literary ones, I found this company called Litographs. And they make some with quotes from different books. So I got Friend of the Podcast Ashley some Sherlock Holmes ones.

GIN JENNY: Oh, nice.

WHISKEY JENNY: I also got some Pride and Prejudice ones for me.

GIN JENNY: Nice, nice.

WHISKEY JENNY: And I’m just pretty excited about them. They’re lovely designs, and temporary tattoos in general– a fun stocking stuffer.

GIN JENNY: They are a fun stocking stuffer. My little sister really likes temporary tattoos, so any time I’m somewhere with a temporary tattoo vending machine and I happen to have change, I’ll get her a couple.

WHISKEY JENNY: They’re just fun. What’s your next thing?

GIN JENNY: OK, so my next thing– sort of predictable– is Black Sails on DVD!

WHISKEY JENNY: Woo!

GIN JENNY: Yay! Black Sails is a show I watched this year. You may have heard me talk about it. It gave me so much joy, I cannot describe my joy to you. It’s a good gift to get someone who likes television and doesn’t mind it being somewhat grim. So maybe Game of Thrones fans.

WHISKEY JENNY: Aw, come on.

GIN JENNY: No?

WHISKEY JENNY: I would say more than somewhat.

GIN JENNY: Whiskey Jenny watched one episode and was so dismayed that when I was watching another episode, she walked away and turned her back so she couldn’t even see the TV. That’s how grim it is. That’s the level of grimness.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s pretty grim. I just want people to be aware.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, prepared. No, you’re right. It’s quite grim. Whiskey Jenny was seeing bits of the third season, which is quite grim, and then the fourth season is even grimmer than that.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, goodness.

GIN JENNY: The third season kind of ends on a high note, and then the fourth season is pretty nonstop dark. So here’s the thing. The first three seasons of Black Sails are available on Hulu, but be kind to the person you’re telling Black Sails about and get them the fourth season on DVD, because it is– I mean, if you understood my suffering waiting to watch season 4 of Black Sails. It was a long week that I had to wait.

It’s a really excellent show. It’s about pirates in the historical Caribbean, starring Toby Stephens, who’s just tremendous in it. And if you have someone you’re buying for who doesn’t mind a very dark television show, this one’s a really, really, really good one.

WHISKEY JENNY: I would also like to point out that this show gave Gin Jenny, and thus me, another way to say how much you love someone, which is that you would go to war with the British Empire for them.

GIN JENNY: Yes, definitely. And it’s useful. It’s a useful metric.

WHISKEY JENNY: It really is, yeah.

GIN JENNY: What’s your next one?

WHISKEY JENNY: My next one is also kind of literary.

GIN JENNY: Man, Whiskey Jenny, you are crushing it.

WHISKEY JENNY: OK. This is the last one, though.

GIN JENNY: My last two are literary. I reversed it, so I think that works out really well.

WHISKEY JENNY: Balance. Yeah. OK, so this year for the first time I got a shirt from Out of Print. I got the Watership Down shirt, obviously.

GIN JENNY: Aw!

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s a really cool design. It’s super soft. The shirt is a nice cut. I love it. I’ve worn it a whole bunch already.

They also have some very interesting designs with regards to library cards and library check out, old-timey systems, where you would stamp the date. And they have some really cute scarves and little pouches that, if you’re not sure specifically what kind of book someone would like, but you know that they like books, would be a cute gift.

GIN JENNY: I love Out of Print.

WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t know if they do this often, but they previously had days where they donated proceeds to charity.

GIN JENNY: Yes, sign up for their email list. Because they’ll often have fun deals, and they’ll let when they have new books that show up. I’m on their email list and I don’t regret it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Cool.

GIN JENNY: OK, my next one is not at all literary. But if you’re shopping for someone who wears mascara, I have acquired a really nice mascara this year. I am so satisfied with it. I subscribe to Birchbox, which is one of those makeup sample subscription services.

WHISKEY JENNY: So great.

GIN JENNY: So great. I’ve really enjoyed it this year. I’m not doing it next year, because I don’t want too much of a good thing. So I’m going to take a year off and then come back in 2019. But of the many excellent samples they sent me this year, there was a mascara from Milk Makeup that I just can’t recommend enough. The brush is a little weird, but the mascara goes on very smoothly. It doesn’t clump at all. It’s been just perfect.

Also, 2017 has been a rough year, and I have on several occasions been at events that have made me cry heavily, not in a fun way. And Milk mascara has totally held up through all of that.

WHISKEY JENNY: Wow. It is 2017 tested. That’s huge.

GIN JENNY: I mean, it’s a big deal. So Milk Makeup mascara. What’s your next one?

WHISKEY JENNY: So my next one was, I was trying to think about what were the things that I just couldn’t shut up about this year.

GIN JENNY: Me too!

WHISKEY JENNY: That’s how I was trying to find things. So this year I became that annoying person who talked about her CSA all the time. [LAUGHTER] But I loved it.

GIN JENNY: It was not annoying. It was very charming. Also, I have to say– I’m sorry to interrupt you, Whiskey Jenny– but I’ve been so impressed with your ability to use the items from your CSA.

WHISKEY JENNY: Thank you so much! It was sometimes a race against time, because I am but one woman. But I think I always wound up doing a pretty good job. And I really enjoyed– I get stressed out when it’s like, what am I going to cook tonight? I could make literally anything in the world! But if I have a CSA, I have a framework that I have to work within, and I found that incredibly helpful.

So I know in New York there’s a lot of different ones that do deliveries, or you can do like monthly subscription packs. So I think if you know someone who likes delicious fresh food and enjoys cooking it, they might be interested in something CSA related.

GIN JENNY: Nice. That’s a really good one.

WHISKEY JENNY: Thanks. I got my first winter CSA box recently.

GIN JENNY: Oh, what’s in it?

WHISKEY JENNY: Squash. It had one butternut squash, which I’d never made before. And I roasted it whole in the oven and then made a soup from it, and it was really good. And it had a thing of apple cider from upstate New York, and some potatoes and onions, and two giant bags of greens. It was great. It was just great.

GIN JENNY: Apple cider is awesome. That’s a really exciting thing to find in your CSA.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it was delicious.

GIN JENNY: Cool.

WHISKEY JENNY: CSA!

GIN JENNY: OK, my next one– this is for people who live in Europe.

WHISKEY JENNY: Great.

GIN JENNY: About: Blanks notebooks are absolutely aces. My mother and I went to London this year for a vacation, and she bought me an About: Blanks notebook. I love it so much. They’re these blank or lined notebooks– the blank ones are better– whose covers used to be actual real books. And it’s so charming! So you write in them and it looks like you’re making margin notes inside your shabby copy of Proust.

WHISKEY JENNY: Aw!

GIN JENNY: I know. They’re not available in the US, which is so sad. I really regret that I didn’t buy 12. I didn’t even buy one! My mom bought it for me, because I was like, oh, I don’t need any more notebooks. But it’s such a good notebook, I just couldn’t be happier with it. And they sell them at a bunch of locations in Europe. And presumably I could order one and have it shipped to me, but it’s hard to justify the expense. I own a lot of notebooks.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, that sounds great.

GIN JENNY: So if you have someone who uses notebooks ever and/or likes books, these are terrific ones. I went one for my next commonplace book.

WHISKEY JENNY: So, on theme. OK, so my next one is cute salt shakers.

GIN JENNY: Oh nice, nice.

WHISKEY JENNY: I feel like this is a kitcheny thing that everyone needs, so it’s also a good housewarming thing.

GIN JENNY: Oh, great point. Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: But I don’t often think about it when I’m brainstorming housewarming gifts. I’ve gotten my parents several cute sets of salt shakers. If you go looking, there’s some out there. I’ve gotten my parents some that were sort of painted ceramic circles. And then there were some that they looked like old timey faucets on the top. I am giving someone some cute salt shakers this year, so if you’re my brother, skip ahead 10 seconds. But I’m getting them some that look like a little sailboat! They’re so cute.

GIN JENNY: Aw, that’s adorable. That is a good housewarming gift. I like that.

WHISKEY JENNY: So yeah, cute salt shakers.

GIN JENNY: Great one.

WHISKEY JENNY: Thanks. Salt and pepper. Salt and pepper set. I don’t know what we’re calling that.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, salt and pepper. Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: Right, cool. Great. Not just salt. And pepper.

GIN JENNY: OK, my last one is an actual book.

WHISKEY JENNY: Woo!

GIN JENNY: It’s The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson. This is a brand new translation of The Odyssey. It is the first ever translation of The Odyssey to be published by a woman, in the year of our Lord 2017, if you can believe that. It’s a really nice translation. I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but I really like it so far. It’s kind of elegant and simple. And the book itself is also very physically beautiful. The paper is really soft, and the cover is really nice. So that’s my last gift idea.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yay!

GIN JENNY: What’s your last gift idea, Whiskey Jenny?

WHISKEY JENNY: My last one is Tombow markers. They are– I don’t know what kind of markers they are, but they’re cool markers. And they do cool things with blending with each other. And you can kind of use them with watercolor brushes and water. So puts some marker on a paper, and then play around feeding it out with water.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: And I did this cool thing where you kind of scribble over a baggie with a color or different colors, and put a light wash of water over your watercolor paper, like all over it. And then you kind of print the baggie onto the watercolor paper, and maybe give it a little wiggle. And it makes this really cool print, that you don’t really know what it’s going to look like when it comes out.

GIN JENNY: Oh yeah, that’s amazing.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. So Tombow markers. They’re really fun.

GIN JENNY: That sounds really fun, especially the blending thing. If you know people who do adult coloring books, that sounds like a great thing to have.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. I like it. Yay, holidays!

GIN JENNY: Hopefully y’all are finding all good gifts for your people. And hopefully I am, too. I did all my Christmas shopping early.

WHISKEY JENNY: You’re totally done?

GIN JENNY: Yeah, pretty much yes.

WHISKEY JENNY: I am so impressed. Way to go, you.

GIN JENNY: Well, Whiskey Jenny, you shouldn’t be impressed. This is the opposite of my goal for this year. Because what always happens is, I do all my Christmas shopping early, and then the month of December is quite long. And as the month wears on, I get more and more ideas. So I just buy them, and then I have spent too much money, and I have too many gifts.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I don’t know how to fix that.

GIN JENNY: Me neither, except to wait to buy my presents. And I was going to do it this year, but instead of doing it, I didn’t do it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, have you had ideas so far? Like, are you itching to buy more things?

GIN JENNY: I’ve had some ideas, but I’ve been able to pawn them off on other people.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, good.

GIN JENNY: But there’s still, what, 15 days left to Christmas as we record this. So there’s a lot of time for me to screw things up still.

WHISKEY JENNY: Well, I like this idea of pawning them onto someone else, because then they still get the thing.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, exactly.

WHISKEY JENNY: And then, worst case scenario, you can save them for next Christmas.

GIN JENNY: But will I?

Well, shall we get on to telling people what to buy for their specific humans?

WHISKEY JENNY: Yes!

GIN JENNY: I am so excited. I loved doing this last year. And we got terrific feedback last year, which was so awesome. It was so nice of people who wrote in and told us that our gifts were successful. It was much appreciated.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it’s really lovely to hear.

GIN JENNY: So our first one is from Claire. Claire says, “I’d love some book recommendations for my dad. He’s a voracious reader, but reads mostly crime fiction, as well as historical and literary fiction. Those are not really my genres, so it makes it difficult to shop for him. The trickiest aspect is, he doesn’t read English, which rules out newly released books or titles from small houses, because they’re less likely to have a French translation.” She does note that she doesn’t expect us to go looking for French translations. She just wants ideas so that she can look for French translations.

“My dad especially loves historical or foreign settings, anything that can make him learn about something new. His hobbies include making things– he’s into DIY and makes food preserves– and keeping up with current events. He also enjoys nature, mostly gardening and hiking, and being thrifty– so, flea markets.” All right, Whiskey Jenny, what did you come up with for Claire?

WHISKEY JENNY: OK. And I did double check that all of these were available in French, so that’s exciting.

GIN JENNY: You’re great. You’re better about it than me. I didn’t do that.

WHISKEY JENNY: I have several mystery recommendations. I leaned into the crime fiction side of it.

GIN JENNY: Oh, nice.

WHISKEY JENNY: So I super enjoyed recently the Robert Galbraith mysteries, which are JK Rowling’s pen name. Though they’re not historical. They’re set in present day UK. But they were just good mysteries.

I enjoy a Walter Mosley mystery, which I think are set in the ’50s in Los Angeles. And Fearless Jones is black, and navigating the 1950s in Los Angeles as a black man, which is tricky.

GIN JENNY: Sounds good.

WHISKEY JENNY: So I know a lot of people enjoyed the Tana French mysteries. I’ve only read the first one, and I found the ending a little dissatisfying. That first one is In the Woods. But I know a ton of people who love them, and I think it’s a cool idea for a series. The detective changes every time. The Dublin Murder Squad is the name of the series, so it’s different people in that squad. So the first one, I think it’s our main dude’s partner, then, is the main person in the next one.

And then lastly, Jo Nesbo. His detective is Harry Hole. He wrote The Snowman, that the recent movie was based on. I heard the movie got terrible reviews, so don’t blame him for the movie. But I enjoyed those mysteries. They’re set in Norway, and sort of in that genre of dark Scandinavian mysteries. So not on the delightful spectrum of mysteries, I would say.

GIN JENNY: So for Claire’s dad, I went in the historical fiction direction. I think our answers are complementary.

WHISKEY JENNY: Great.

GIN JENNY: I thought of Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy, which is a set of three books that center on the 19th century opium trade between China and India. They’re really terrific books. They’re a lot of fun, and I learned a lot about that period, and also discovered a bunch of things that I wanted to learn more about separately by myself, which maybe your dad would enjoy, as well.

The second thing I’m recommending is Yaa Gyasi’s book Homegoing.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, good call.

GIN JENNY: Which is a wonderful historical novel that offers lots of space to learn more about African and American history. And it’s just a really, really good book.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, totally.

GIN JENNY: What’s up next, Whiskey Jenny?

WHISKEY JENNY: Next– I have Ellen next, who actually has three requests. So should we just go through them in order?

GIN JENNY: Yes!

WHISKEY JENNY: All right. So Ellen asked for something for her 16-year-old daughter, who likes animation, Team Fortress 2– which I had to Google. It’s a video game.

GIN JENNY: Same.

WHISKEY JENNY: –and old timey mysteries. Asexual, aromantic, and really doesn’t like romance. When she chooses to read, often chooses classics. She’s working her way through– wait for it– [LAUGHTER] Goethe’s Faust.

GIN JENNY: Way to go, Ellen’s daughter. Way to be.

WHISKEY JENNY: I saw that, and I was like, wow. I don’t know that I could offer this person anything, because she’s already–

GIN JENNY: So far ahead.

WHISKEY JENNY: So far ahead of me. I’ve never read that.

GIN JENNY: No, me neither.

WHISKEY JENNY: But the couple I thought of were The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey. We read a Josephine Tey book for this podcast and didn’t super love it, but we both did really enjoy this book. And it’s about present day historical research into Richard III, so it’s got classic mystery vibes to it.

GIN JENNY: It does.

WHISKEY JENNY: And then The Three Musketeers is one of my favorite classics.

GIN JENNY: Oh that’s such a good one! That’s such a good one.

WHISKEY JENNY: I think there is some romance in there, and there’s this mesmerizing woman that people get entranced by, I would say. But it’s not a super huge part of the book. I mean, I barely even remember it. That’s not why I love the book. I don’t think it’s intrinsic to the story or anything. So I think it would still be enjoyable.

GIN JENNY: Oh, those are good.

WHISKEY JENNY: What do you have for Ellen’s daughter?

GIN JENNY: OK, so my first instinct– and she has probably already read some Ray Bradbury. But if you got her some collections of Ray Bradbury stories, I think that would be great. He’s a classic– I’m sure you know– he’s a classic science fiction author. And his short stories are just really, really good I always really love them. And I do not tend to like classic science fiction. I tend to find it way too sexist for me to enjoy. But I like Ray Bradbury. I like his short stories.

WHISKEY JENNY: Cool.

GIN JENNY: And then, for something that’s a little more classicsy and mysterysy, tell her for me that the internet says Wilkie Collins rules and Dickens drools. And she should check out the classic mystery novel The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins. It is slow to start, but it turned out to be awesome and funny, and less racist than you might fear. And I really loved it when I was your daughter’s age, so hopefully she’ll like it too.

WHISKEY JENNY: That’s a good one. I really love that one, too. I couldn’t remember if it was super romancey or not, so I shied away from it.

GIN JENNY: I think not.

WHISKEY JENNY: I totally cosign it. I loved it as well.

GIN JENNY: As with The Three Musketeers, there’s a romance in it, but I don’t know. It’s not very romantic, is what I would say. [LAUGHTER] The object of the guy’s affections is suspected of doing a crime. And he’s not really convinced she didn’t do it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Fun!

GIN JENNY: It’s not the most romantic. Our next one from Ellen is for her 10-year-old daughter. “My 10-year-old daughter likes to read, and I would like to encourage her to read more. She loves Wings of Fire, Ursula Vernon, and Harry Potter. We’ve already preordered Sarah Cannon’s Oddity. She likes writing fanfic–” Good for her! What a cool kid.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah!

GIN JENNY: She sounds great. “She likes writing fanfic, climbing trees, adventure stories, cute animals, and YouTube videos. She not like things that appear to represent a moral or educational message from her mother.”

WHISKEY JENNY: Listen, I feel you.

GIN JENNY: Ellen, your kids sound great.

WHISKEY JENNY: They both sound super great.

GIN JENNY: All right, Whiskey Jenny, what did you choose for Ellen’s younger girl?

WHISKEY JENNY: I want you to go first, because I have one on here that’s in case Gin Jenny doesn’t say it, but I’m pretty sure you’re going to say it. So you go first.

GIN JENNY: OK. I will recommend the book that I’m giving to my 11-year-old cousin, which is Mars Evacuees by Sophia McDougall.

WHISKEY JENNY: Nailed it!

GIN JENNY: To be fair, I’m giving this book to several people for Christmas this year. It’s an adventure story about kids solving problems in space. It’s so delightful. It’s one of my favorite books that I have read this year at all.

Beyond that, I always recommend Diana Wynne Jones. Diana Wynne Jones, I think, would be perfect for a kid of your daughter’s age. And also, has she read Patricia C. Wrede’s book Dealing with Dragons?

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, great call.

GIN JENNY: So good. It’s about a princess who goes live with a dragon because she doesn’t want to live that princess life. And it’s great, and I think your daughter’s just the right age for it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Both great recs. And I think– so Ellen also asked for something for herself, and I think she would really enjoy Mars Evacuees as well, based on what she said she wanted, which we’ll hear from shortly. But it might be a fun thing that you could read together.

GIN JENNY: Yeah. You can buy it for your daughter, read it yourself real quick. So what did you pick out for Ellen’s younger girl?

WHISKEY JENNY: OK, so first of all I think she would like Danny the Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl.

GIN JENNY: Oh, nice. Nice.

WHISKEY JENNY: I think Kate Milford would be a good author to look into. I like the Greenglass House by her, which is two kids snowed in in an inn, and they are investigating all the different people staying at the inn, and finding old stuff in the attic, and stuff. It’s a very cozy adventure story, I would say.

And then, this might be a little old. I wasn’t sure. I was going to check with Gin Jenny. But what do you think about Cinder?

GIN JENNY: I think Cinder would be good. Cinder‘s got adventures.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, so Cinder. Then I would say Cinder, by Marissa Meyer. It’s a series, but you could also definitely just stop at the first one. It is about– it’s sort of a Cinderella story retelling involving science fiction and androids, and people having to revolt against evil governments, and evil stepmothers. Cinder’s a cyborg. She has the most delightful robot sidekick ever. And, yeah, it’s very adventurey.

GIN JENNY: Excellent choices. Do you want to read Ellen’s request for herself?

WHISKEY JENNY: Yes! So for Ellen– and of course we’re going to do it, Ellen. She said she’s “two years into a three year blog project rereading a massive space opera. The thing will be 150 to 200,000 words long by the time she’s done.” So phew. Good luck, Ellen.

GIN JENNY: Really.

WHISKEY JENNY: “It’s a thrilling project, but also exhausting. So she needs something to read on the side that’s light, fun, and hopeful. Probably not another epic space opera.” Understandable! “I would love to be able to say I’m keeping up with some current science fiction/fantasy, although not with anything that might make me annoyed or depressed. I will read anything. Not poetry, and serious nonfiction would be a hard sell unless it had a cool disease outbreak. But almost anything else.” She loved All Systems Red, bounced off of Moxie, “because it bothered me that the protagonist was so into ’70s rock.” She says “I’m loving the Temeraire series. My mom sent me an article about anthrax risks associated with artisanal shaving accoutrements last year and it was amazing. I once met Seanan McGuire, and we geeked out about the MMWR for like 20 minutes, which is a long time at a con when you don’t know someone. I have already read all her Mira Grant stuff. I get books for Christmas. Which ones should I get?” So, which books do you have Ellen receiving?

GIN JENNY: OK, so I have two. One is very predictable. I’m sure you’ve already read it, Ellen, but if not, I think you should read Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel. It includes a disease outbreak, and it’s very hopeful for a book about the apocalypse.

And then my second choice is a really super fun SF book that I read this year– so it’s current, came out this year– which is Mur Lafferty’s Six Wakes. It’s a locked door mystery in space with lots of fun stuff about clones and ethics, but it’s basically just a mystery novel. And it’s a delight. I really liked it.

WHISKEY JENNY: Cool.

GIN JENNY: All right, what about you?

WHISKEY JENNY: I said The Passage, by Justin Cronin. It’s technically a vampire story, but it feels very disease outbreaky. And it’s a super engrossing, quick read. So I wouldn’t call it on the fluffy, light side. But you just fly through it, because you have to know what happens. I had a blast reading it, although I got a little scared and had to read it not at night time.

GIN JENNY: Aw!

WHISKEY JENNY: And the other one– and this might be too fluffy. But you did say, Ellen– she said accusingly– light and fun and hopeful. And I think Sorcery and Cecelia is all of those things.

GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: And it has some magic in it. And Ashley’s alternate title for this Magic and Scones, which is extremely accurate. It’s an epistolary novel about two girls of coming out age in regency England. And they both have magical adventures that they tell each other about that are very fun.

GIN JENNY: Good one.

WHISKEY JENNY: All right. Who’s next?

GIN JENNY: OK, so now next we have Glynis. And Glynis says, “Hi, Jennys! My husband–” Your husband sounds great. “My husband likes books where he can identify with characters who are essentially redeemable and goodhearted. I’m not always the best at finding books he’ll like, as I’ve been known to say things like, ‘oh, this is my favorite movie. It’s about people ruining each other’s lives.’ I’d like to find him a book he can enjoy, as he is currently partway through East of Eden, and almost everyone being awful in it kind of makes him sad. We’ve started reading Watership Down together, and I think he’ll love Bigwig, if it gives you an idea of what kind of character he likes. He didn’t super love The Sisters Brothers, mostly because of all the remorseless killing. He usually reads science fiction and likes sciencey things in general.”

Whiskey Jenny, what did you pick out for Glynis’s husband?

WHISKEY JENNY: First of all, love the Bigwig shout out.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, sounds like Whiskey Jenny and your husband are really on a similar wavelength in a lot of ways.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, so I was really excited to do this one, because I also love things where everyone is nice, I guess.

GIN JENNY: Yeah, yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: But as we talked also before, I don’t read a ton of science fiction, so I was not able to hit both of those things at once very often. But– and Gin Jenny just recommended this earlier– but I think Station Eleven, if he hasn’t read it, would also be good for him. Because it’s very– as you said, it’s sort of outbreak, and feels science fictiony, because it’s sort of future dystopia. But ultimately– not even ultimately, even during– is very hopeful about the human condition, I would say, and humanity in general.

I feel like someone could have played bingo on my picks and gotten three in a row on this one. But The Art of Fielding is just full of characters that I just really enjoyed spending time with, and seeing how they try to be good people in the world. Because I think most everyone in that book is just trying to do the right thing, even though they all have some stumbles along the way. So The Art of Fielding is great.

And then lastly, The Goldfinch. Might be a little too stressful, because not everyone is always doing the right thing in this book. But it does have one amazing goodhearted character, who’s so goodhearted that– honestly, when you said someone redeemable and goodhearted, I was like, oh, Hobie from The Goldfinch. Because he is so great. Spoilers for The Goldfinch, but things do work out in the end, if that helps sway you about The Goldfinch. And Hobie, while not one of the main characters, is just such a glorious, shining example of a person.

GIN JENNY: And it sounds like your husband does read epic literary stuff, given that he’s reading East of Eden. So I think it’s a good pick.

WHISKEY JENNY: What did you pick for Glynis’s husband?

GIN JENNY: This may be kind of an obvious recommendation, but has he read Becky Chambers’s SF novel The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet? It’s sort of like Firefly, except for nicer, and everyone in it is fundamentally good-hearted. It was maybe a little too conflict-free for my tastes, but maybe your husband wouldn’t care. So that’s my main recommendation.

I also recommend– I guess not as a gift, but just as something he should read– the short story “Fandom for Robots,” which I will link in the show notes. It is the most delightful short story imaginable. And Whiskey Jenny and I both want more people to read it, so I’m just advancing that agenda.

WHISKEY JENNY: It’s so great. Please read it, everyone.

GIN JENNY: Onward. Chelsea.

WHISKEY JENNY: Chelsea says, “It’s for me!” Also OK. That’s totally fine, Chelsea. “2017 has been complete trash for me.” so sorry, Chelsea. “So I’d love to have some feel-better books, preferably with queer, nonwhite characters. I love fandom, books set in academia, and I’ve been lovingly called an angst monster, so I’m here for a good dose of drama, as long as there is a happy ending place. There are very few things I dislike, but please, no white guy literary novels and no violence against kids.” So what you have for Chelsea?

GIN JENNY: Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. [LAUGHTER] Just kidding. OK, so my first recommendation is anything by Intisar Khanani. She’s a fantasy writer who I just love. Her books can be a little angsty, but the main thing about them is that they’re always about people who are trying their best. Sunbolt and its sequel, Memories of Ash, are just terrific. And Memories of Ash is set partly in a place that’s kind of a university, so sort of academia-ish.

And then my other recommendation, it’s A Hundred Thousand Worlds, by Bob Proehl. It’s about an X-Files like show where the two leads have a child together, but are broken up. And the Gillian Anderson person is taking her kid across the country on the con circuit. It’s not perfect, but it’s very fannish and very sweet, so that’s my second one. What about you, Whiskey Jenny?

WHISKEY JENNY: Nice. Well OK, again, I couldn’t edit this down. I had a hard time, because I have a ton. Sorry.

I really enjoyed Karen Memory, by Elizabeth Bear, this year. It was on the scifi starter pack that we got from Renay, and it includes both nonwhite and queer characters. And I found it to be just a total delight. It’s set in, I guess sort of steampunky the Old West.

GIN JENNY: Nice.

WHISKEY JENNY: There are some not great people running the town, and our heroes think that they shouldn’t be running the town anymore, so they work on that. You’re Welcome, Universe, is something that I read also this year, by Whitney Gardner. The main character gets kicked out of her deaf school for graffiti-ing and goes to a mainstream school, and has to adjust to that, and still try and sneak around and do her graffiti art. And I would say it’s pretty feelings-heavy, which sounds like something that Chelsea would enjoy.

GIN JENNY: And also plenty of female friendship.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it’s ultimately really about female friendship.

GIN JENNY: It is.

WHISKEY JENNY: So yeah, that was fun. And then also this year, I read The Inexplicable Logic of My Life, by Benjamin Alire Sáenz. So the main character’s a dude in high school. He’s really just trying to navigate his way in the world. It’s a lot of regular life problems. And his family is Mexican, and his dad is gay, and so it’s layering that with him trying to find his way in the world. And I love this writer and think he’s a beautiful writer.

GIN JENNY: Well, those are great choices. So next up is Caroline. Caroline says, “The recipient is my mother, and she loves historical mystery books– Iain Pears, Andrea Japp, Peter Ellis.” Caroline, thank you for emailing. I had to do a consult on this one, because I don’t read mysteries very often. So I cheated and consulted Friend of the Podcast Ashley. And her recs for you are as follows.

Laurie King writes a series about a woman called Mary Russell who teams up with Sherlock Holmes. And Lost Among the Living, by Simone St. James, is a book about a widow who works as a paid companion for her late husband’s jerk of an aunt. And she begins to discover dark secrets about her husband.

WHISKEY JENNY: [GASP] Bum bum bum!

GIN JENNY: I know. It sounds so fun! So those are my two recommendations from Ashley. And if they don’t work out, blame me, not Ashley. It’s my fault for not knowing historical mysteries.

WHISKEY JENNY: So my first one for this is Elizabeth Peters, in particular the Amelia Peabody series. They’re totally delightful. They jump between Egypt and England in– I don’t know what year, but olden times.

GIN JENNY: Turn of the century, I would say.

WHISKEY JENNY: There you go. And super delightful.

GIN JENNY: They’re are about archaeologists.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. Also, this isn’t historical, but I think this series sort of scratches the same itch for me, even though it’s not historical. It’s the Inspector Montalbano series, by Andrea Camilleri. The first one is The Shape of Water. Wait, isn’t that a movie right now?

GIN JENNY: Yeah, but I think a different one.

WHISKEY JENNY: Different one? Is it? OK, I don’t know what it’s about.

GIN JENNY: It’s about a lady who falls in love with a fish man.

WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, that’s different.

GIN JENNY: Yeah.

WHISKEY JENNY: Cool. All right, well. So the first one is The Shape of Water, not the current movie. And it’s really set in Italy, and you get a lot of information about Italian life, and where he goes for lunch, and what he orders for lunch. And the translations often will leave the idioms in Italian and then have translation notes in the back about what it means, and why that became a saying in Sicily, and it’s fascinating to me. And I the same sort of seeing a whole other side of the world, not from a different time but from a different place.

And then we also read for podcast, The Strangler Vine.

GIN JENNY: Oh, right, right.

WHISKEY JENNY: By MJ Carter. And it’s set in Calcutta in 1837. And I think we both had some notes on it, but ultimately enjoyed it.

GIN JENNY: And it’s the first in a series. So if your mom enjoys it, there’s several more for her to read.

WHISKEY JENNY: There you go. Oh, you know what, she’s probably already read this. But the beginning John le Carré ones feel historical because they–

GIN JENNY: Are old.

WHISKEY JENNY: –came out a while ago. So she might enjoy those if she hasn’t given them a try already.

GIN JENNY: Cool.

WHISKEY JENNY: Last but not least, we have Erica looking for recommendations for her partner’s mother. Erica says, “She is a lovely Minnesotan for whom I requested help last year.” And Erica mentions that our help last year was successful.

GIN JENNY: Yay!

WHISKEY JENNY: Very exciting, and we’ll try and do good also this year. “She really enjoys the following authors– Thrity Umrigar, Sue Monk Kidd, Joanne Harris, Alexander McCall Smith–” oh, me too– “Fredrik Backman, and John Steinbeck. She doesn’t shy away from long reads like The Goldfinch–” woo!– “which she loved, and a little magical realism works for her, but high fantasy is a no go. She does not like graphic violence, incest, or abortion, as far as content notes go.” What did you have for Erica?

GIN JENNY: I also had to say, Erica said a bunch of nice things in her request.

WHISKEY JENNY: They were really lovely.

GIN JENNY: And they were so nice. And Erika, I just want you to know, you’re a treasure. When people tell me that they feel like we’re their real life friends, it makes me want to come find you and be your real life friend.

WHISKEY JENNY: Totally. It was very sweet. Thank you so much.

GIN JENNY: It was really sweet. OK so, this is probably too obvious, but if your mother-in-law has not read Sarah Waters yet, she really should. You mentioning The Goldfinch and Joanne Harris made me think of it. She probably has, because Sarah Waters is tremendous. But in case not, Fingersmith is a twisty, turny, plotty story about a con girl in Victorian London, and I would recommend it so much.

My second recommendation is Kate Atkinson’s book Life After Life, which is about a girl who keeps being reborn every time she dies. And she has a go at assassinating Hitler.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I wrote that one down as well, so double rec on that one.

GIN JENNY: Nice! I’m sorry I stole yours.

WHISKEY JENNY: No, you didn’t steal it. That means I will not sound as insane for all these.

GIN JENNY: But the writing is terrific and the book is really enjoyable. I liked it a lot. All right, Whiskey Jenny. What is your totally normal number of recommendations for Erica?

WHISKEY JENNY: So in keeping with Alexander McCall Smith, I love Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, by Helen Simonson. It’s just really sweet. It’s about a widow and a widower falling in love late in life and how that goes. And they’re in England, and it’s just really sweet.

I think that The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger, is about a woman falls in love with someone who can time travel, but it’s really sad time travel? He doesn’t want to time travel. He just keeps having to time travel. It’s just a really cool idea, and I think that it’s got that one bit of magic in it that would appeal to your mother-in-law. It’s just a really beautiful book. I love the writing, and the how that story plays out and is handled, and the structure of it. And I just really like it.

GIN JENNY: Like you said, I like it that he doesn’t choose to time travel. He has it as a condition that he has to figure out how to live with. And she gets really into the details of how that works, which is always fun.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, it’s very well done. And then lastly, we read Vanessa and her Sister on podcast, by Priya Parmar. And that is set in London turn of the century. And Vanessa is the sister of Virginia Woolf, so it’s about their relationship with each other and the rest of the artistic world in London at that time, and the salon that they have, and their relationships. And I think we both overall enjoyed it.

GIN JENNY: Mhm, we did.

WHISKEY JENNY: And it was really interesting. It’s a good historical one.

GIN JENNY: It is.

WHISKEY JENNY: So I think that’s it.

GIN JENNY: Those are all great. Thank you so much to everyone who wrote in.

WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, thank you.

GIN JENNY: We loved getting your submissions and we love– I always love picking out books. Obviously, we both do. That’s kind of the point of us.

WHISKEY JENNY: We should get temporary tattoos of, “Ask me about book recs.”

GIN JENNY: That would be amazing. We also want to mention, we got the nicest listener email. All listener mail we get is incredible, and this one particularly touched our hearts. Niamh wrote in to say that her father, who is not a fan of podcasts or radio listening, will get in the car with her and immediately be like, “Can we have the Jennys on now?” That’s us! We are the Jennys!

And Niamh also says that her father is a Franciscan monk who spends his days tending his garden and doing experiments from science kids advertised for children. We’re just– this is just delightful. Hi, Niamh! Hi, Niamh’s dad! We’re so glad you’re listeners of the podcast. We hope you’re having a good December.

WHISKEY JENNY: You sound great.

GIN JENNY: You sound terrific. And I hope your gardening is going well in this cold season. I don’t really understand gardening. Maybe you don’t do any of that? I don’t really know how it works during the winter.

WHISKEY JENNY: I think you still have to maintain stuff, right?

GIN JENNY: You have to put sheets over things?

WHISKEY JENNY: Like, I don’t know. There’s some–

GIN JENNY: Niamh’s dad is like, I withdraw my fandom of these girls.

WHISKEY JENNY: Never mind. They don’t know anything about gardening.

GIN JENNY: But anyway, we’re delighted that you’re fans of the podcast. We are fans of you.

WHISKEY JENNY: Totally.

GIN JENNY: Well, this has been the Reading the End bookcast with the demographically similar Jennys. You can visit the blog at readingtheend.com. The You can follow me on Twitter @readingtheend. We are both on Goodreads as Whiskey Jenny and Gin Jenny. And you can email us– please do! We love listener mail so much– at readingtheend@gmail.com. If you’re listening to us on iTunes, please leave us a review. It helps other people find the podcast. And until next time, very happy holidays to all of you.

WHISKEY JENNY: Happy holidays!

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.

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

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

The post Reading the End Bookcast, Ep. 93: 2017 Holiday Gift Guide appeared first on Reading the End.

Episode 72

Our Own Personal Gift Guides

Whiskey Jenny: Classy af laundry products from The Laundress

Gin Jenny: The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl in trade paperback

(You can read Ryan North’s Dinosaur Comics here.)

Whiskey Jenny: Adorable bathroom accoutrements. This Umbra Kleenex holder:

And this Melon Boat Q-tip holder:

Gin Jenny: This Kikkerland bed caddy, made of felt:

Whiskey Jenny: Kinetic sand. Here’s a video!

Gin Jenny: Johanna Basford’s Christmas coloring book.

Whiskey Jenny: Commission some fan art! The person she commissioned for her new apartment with Snapple Alex can be found here.

Gin Jenny: Coryographies bookshelf necklaces (on Etsy!).

Whiskey Jenny: Perfumes from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

Gin Jenny: A cooler bag. Also, packing cubes. EBAGS DOT COM!

And then we had some v. good recommendations for individuals who asked for help via our holiday gift guide form. WE HOPE THESE HELP YOU but if not please email us for additional assistance.

Tracy

Every Boy’s Got One, Meg Cabot
The Royal We, Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
Eat Cake, Jeanne Ray
The Tapestry of Love, Rosy Thornton

Natalia

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault, illustrated by Lois Ehlert
Happy Hippo, Angry Duck, Sandra Boynton
This Is Not My Hat, Jon Klasson
Wild, Emily Hughes

Erica

Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
Mr. Fox, Helen Oyeyemi
The Kings and Queens of Roam, Daniel Wallace
A General Theory of Oblivion, Jose Eduardo Agualusa, translated by Daniel Hahn

Lindsey

The Possessed, Elif Batuman
Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me, Steven Hyden
Juliet Naked, Nick Hornby
Star Island, Carl Hiaasen

Chelsea

The Dresden Files, Jim Butcher
The Lives of Tao (et seq.), Wesley Chu
The Quantum Thief (et seq.), Hannu Rajaniemi

Jessica

The Secret Life of the American Musical, Jack Viertel
HHhH, Laurent Binet, translated by Sam Taylor
The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach
Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel

Diana

Boy, Roald Dahl
(also kind of Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel)
(he’s probably already read Nation, by Terry Pratchett but just in case)
To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis
Lock In or Old Man’s War or Redshirts, John Scalzi

Elizabeth

Riveted or The Kraken King, Meljean Brook
An Inheritance of Ashes, Leah Bobet
The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler
Richard Armitage reading the audiobooks of Georgette Heyer

Snapple Alex

Alex’s Father

The Only Rule Is It Has to Work, Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller
Big Trouble, Dave Barry
Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen (which I assume your dad already has!)
something by Stephen Fry, perhaps The Hippopotamus

Alex’s Mother

Tarcutta Wake, Josephine Rowe
The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
Hand-Drawn Jokes for Smart Attractive People, Matthew Diffee
2016 Best American Magazine Writing

Angelique

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt
Agent Garbo, Stephen Talty
American Revolutions, Alan Taylor
The Lost City of Z, David Grann
Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer

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

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

The post Reading the End Bookcast, Ep.72: 2016 Holiday Gift Guide! appeared first on Reading the End.

Episode 71

Ask us for our gift book recommendations over at the Holiday Gift Guide! We’ll be giving out recs on the podcast that airs on December 14th, so hurry and get your requests in!

Here’s my tweetstorm about how to be a good ally.

What We’re Reading

Tarcutta Wake, Josephine Rowe
City on Fire, Garth Risk Hallberg
Crooked Kingdom, Leigh Bardugo
The Wangs vs. the World, Jade Chang
Multiple Choice, Alejandro Zambra

(but not The Revolutionaries Try Again)

What We’re Thankful For

My Dad Wrote a Porno podcast
“Seriously,” by Sara Bareilles; performed by Leslie Odom, Jr.
the NBC show The Good Place
Writers I’m grateful for: Ijeoma Iluo, Ann Friedman, Gene Demby, Kat Chow, Wesley Morris, Wesley Lowery, Mychal Denzel Smith, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Alexandra Petri (“Five Stages of Trump Grief”)

They Can’t Kill Us All, Wesley Lowery
The Reactionary Mind, Corey Robin
The Power Broker, Robert Caro
13th, dir. Ava DuVernay
The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander

Trump 2.0 Syllabus and Rape Culture Syllabus from Public Books

Watership Down, Richard Adams
Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
Gifted, dir. Marc Webb (heartwarming trailer here)
Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel

The Mothers, Brit Bennett

After recording the podcast, I found this article where Brit Bennett says she doesn’t want her writing career to be about translating black pain to white audiences. So hey, the thing I liked about this book was a thing she specifically set out to do. Yay!

Additional podcast note: Whiskey Jenny has told me several times that even if she’s dead for five years, it’s not okay by her for me to get with her grieving boyfriend/fiance/husband. We had this discussion when we were watching Arrow together, because I felt that Oliver was being totally unreasonable to object to Laurel dating Tommy. I told Whiskey Jenny she can feel free to get with my person if I have been dead for five years. We differ on this point.

ETA: Mallory Ortberg kind of ruled on this in a recent Dear Prudence column.

(If it helps, I once had a weeks-long, only-sort-of-joking quarrel with a partner about how long each of us should wait for the other if we were lost at sea, so I know the pain of getting suckered into an argument about something that will probably never happen but feels deathly important. The correct answer, by the way, is a baseline six months out of respect/odds of a miraculous ocean rescue, plus one additional week of waiting for every month of the relationship’s duration.)

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

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

The post Reading the End Bookcast, Ep.71: What We’re Thankful For, and Brit Bennett’s The Mothers appeared first on Reading the End.

Episode 70

Ask us for our gift book recommendations over at the Holiday Gift Guide! Fill out the form by November 30th, and we’ll be giving out recs on the podcast that airs on December 14th.

What We’re Reading

Do You Want to Start a Scandal, Tessa Dare
Acute Reactions, Ruby Lang
The Secret Heart, Erin Satie
Integrity, Willow Scarlett
Crooked Kingdom, Leigh Bardugo (both of us!)
Gotham Academy, vol.2

Funny Books

Big Trouble, Dave Barry
Island of the Sequined Love Nun, Christopher Moore
The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, Christopher Moore
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Roald Dahl
My Man Jeeves, P. G. Wodehouse
Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon
One Plus One, Jojo Moyes
Where’d You Go Bernadette, Maria Semple

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams

For Next Time

The Mothers, Brit Bennett

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

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

The post Reading the End Bookcast, Ep. 70: Funny Books and Dirk Gently appeared first on Reading the End.

Here’s how it works: Swing by our holiday gift guide page and fill out the form there. All we need is your name and email and a little information about who you’re buying for,¹ just so we don’t tell you to buy dolphin erotica for your boss. That would be inappropriate.

We’ll be recording a holiday gift guide podcast a little later this month, at which time both Whiskey Jenny and I will offer you some recommendations for the folks on your shopping list. We love telling people what to read, so you can count on us to choose only the best books for all your loved ones.²

The post Let us help you buy holiday gifts! appeared first on Reading the End.

Episode 50

You can access our holiday gift guide form here. Be sure to get your entries in soon! We’ll be recording in early December with some gift ideas for you

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

Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Song is by Jeff MacDougall

The post Reading the End Bookcast, Ep.50: Formative Reading, plus Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew appeared first on Reading the End.