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Tag: Shirley Jackson

Reading the End Bookcast, Ep. 105 – Great American Novelists and Lily Anderson’s Undead Girl Gang

Published 18 Jul 2018 by Gin Jenny

Listeners, I got my first electricity bill since summer began in earnest, and I am delighted to report that it is NOT THAT BAD. My central air and heat has caused me some stress and dismay over the last year, but it’s all proving worth it. If you are in a place where central air comes standard, I congratulate you and rejoice in our shared happiness. If not, I hope that you are finding other ways to keep cool, and I commend to your ears this, our latest podcast. We read Lily Anderson’s YA horror novel Undead Girl Gang and suggest some candidates for Great American Authorship who aren’t white dudes. Plus, what we’re reading, what we’re listening to, and what we’ll be reading for next time. You can listen to the podcast using the embedded player below, or download the file directly to take with you on the go!

Episode 105

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

1:43 – What we’re reading
6:09 – What we’re listening to
8:17 – LOTR Reread: Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapters 6-10
23:44 – Great American Novelists (who aren’t white dudes)
38:17 – Undead Girl Gang, Lily Anderson
51:06 – What we’re reading next time

Here’s the Jonathan Franzen profile that Whiskey Jenny is talking about. It’s magical.

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!

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Not My Cheeriest Ever Links Round-Up

Published 13 Oct 2017 by Gin Jenny

Happy Friday the 13th, friends! Hopefully it brings you good luck, not bad. I’m having a strange, emotional week, but it includes a lot of wonderful friends whom I get to vigorously embrace, so that bit’s good. Have some links! “White men’s rage is burning down the world”: Sady Doyle on the profile of the mass shooter. Also, an older article but an evergreen reminder that a lot of these people do it for the glory. Use the shooter’s name sparingly, if at all, when discussing crimes like these. At a different point along the toxic masculinity spectrum, some thoughts…

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No Luke Cage Thinkpieces: A Links Round-Up

Published 7 Oct 2016 by Gin Jenny

Look, I know. I know. You want to read the hot takes on Luke Cage. I understand that’s where you’re at. I am RIGHT THERE WITH YOU. But I have only watched four episodes of the series, and thus I haven’t read that much criticism of it yet.1 You will have to wait for the next one for that sweet Luke Cage talk. Here’s what you can have: A complete history of Addy Walker, who I honestly still can’t deal with the fact that they retired her books and her doll. Hmph. Why clothes for women don’t have any goddamn…

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Ten (well, six) Books for Which My Feelings Have Changed

Published 24 May 2016 by Gin Jenny

Happy Tuesday, friends! The Broke and the Bookish are, as ever, hosting a Top Ten Tuesday, and I love the question for this week: Ten Books I Feel Differently About After Time Has Passed (less love, more love, complicated feelings, indifference, thought it was great in a genre until you became more well read in that genre etc.) I couldn’t think of ten — my initial responses to most of the books I read continue to hold true on rereads — but here are six, anyway! 1. Emma, by Jane Austen – I think the problem here is that I…

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Shirley Jackson Reading Week (13-18 July)

Published 10 Jun 2015 by Gin Jenny

Get pumped, you aficionados of the weird and creepy! This July 13th through 18th is going to be Shirley Jackson Reading Week, a time to revisit everyone’s favorite spooky-ass author or, if you’ve never read one of her books, meet her for the first time! Simon of Stuck in a Book, Ana of Things Mean a Lot, and I are the co-hosts for this event, and we hope you’ll join us! Lucky for you, the good folks at Penguin have put all of Jackson’s books back into print, so you’ll have the pick of the litter. If this is your first time out,…

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The Sundial, Shirley Jackson

Published 14 Nov 2010 by Gin Jenny

Thank y’all for Shirley Jackson. Really. I mean it. I wouldn’t have read We Have Always Lived in the Castle or The Haunting of Hill House without your recommendation, and I like those books a lot. Shirley Jackson and her atmosphere-creating ways. The woman has a gift. When I was at the library the other day, getting books about British colonial encounters, I paused in the fiction section to check on the Shirley Jackson situation, and I was delighted to find that another of her novels was in, The Sundial. The Sundial is about the Halloran family, three generations of…

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We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson

Published 20 Jul 2009 by Gin Jenny

Creeeepy.  I read The Haunting of Hill House and liked it a lot, but when I read We Have Always Lived in the Castle, I thought, “Oh, yes, there’s the lady who wrote ‘The Lottery’.”  There are some of the same themes here, particularly towards the end, that mob mentality and the fear of things being different.  My review’s going to contain spoilers, because I don’t know how to talk about the book without any spoilers at all. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is about two sisters, Merricat and Constance, who live with their uncle Julian, the three…

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The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson

Published 26 May 2009 by Gin Jenny

At last I have finished a novel by Shirley Jackson!  I liked the short stories I read of hers in eighth grade (“The Lottery”, predictably, and “The Possibility of Evil”), but ignored her novels for years, and then I tried to read We Have Always Lived in the Castle when I got it out of the library at my university in Colchester, and hated it.  I got about ten pages in and couldn’t imagine how it would be possible to go another page. I have to try it again, because I loved The Haunting of Hill House.  I reluctantly bought…

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