Reading Envy 218: Reading Gaps with Kendra

Jenny and Kendra catch up on books they've read and liked recently. Kendra also shares how the Reading Women Podcast has changed in the last two years, what her Read Appalachia project is all about, and how she organizes her books (it's unusual!)

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 218: Reading Gaps

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Books discussed: 

 

Same Sun Here by Silas House and Neela Vaswani
Gilgamesh by Joan London
F*ckface: And Other Stories by Leah Hampton
We Trade Our Night for Someone Else's Day by Ivana Bodrozic, translated by Ellen Elias-Bursac
Even as we Breathe by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle

Other mentions:

Read Appalachia
The Prettiest Star by Carter Sickels
Southernmost by Silas House
"Dear America" books
The Stella Prize
Tracker by Alexis Wright (link goes to Google since Bookshop didn't have it yet)
All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld
The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld
"Lost in a (Mis)Gendered Appalachia" by Leah Hampton, in Guernica
The Unquiet Dead by Ausma Zehanet Khan
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw
National Gingerbread House Competition at the Omni Grove Park Inn
University of Kentucky - Fireside Industries
Crystal Wilkinson, Kentucky Poet Laureate
Randall Kenan
The International Booker Prize
The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, translated by Michele Hutchison
Black Bone: 25 Years of the Affrilachian Poets edited by Bianca Lynne Spriggs et al
An Inventory of Losses by Judith Schalansky, translated by Jackie Smith

Related episodes:

Episode 102 - The Reading Women Reading Envy Crossover Episode
Episode 195 - Muchness with Nadine
Episode 199 - Awkward Melancholy with Karen
Episode 212 - Subtly Fascinating with Vinny
Episode 213 - Funicular Reads with Bianca

Stalk us online:

Reading Women Podcast
Kendra on Instagram,  Twitter, Goodreads, and YouTube
Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy

All links to books are through Bookshop.org, where I am an affiliate. I wanted more money to go to the actual publishers and authors. I link to Amazon when a book is not listed with Bookshop.

Review: The Survivors

The Survivors by Jane Harper
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A standalone from Australian crime writer Jane Harper, set in a coastal small town in Tasmania with a history of loss, and then a young woman dies mysteriously and old grudges come to the surface.

One thing I continue to appreciate and enjoy in Harper's writing is the importance of the landscape. Previously that has been the sparse, dry climates; this is a cold weather island, specifically on the coast where there are caves that are underwater only during high tide. What a perfect place to be full of danger and foreboding! I wish I could go there.

View all my reviews

Reading Envy 187: Sentient Snails and Spaceships

Paula joins Jenny from New Zealand, where everyone is getting a little antsy from having to stay home. Jenny chats poetry and non-fiction while Paula brings historical and science fiction, and one gritty regional novel winning all the awards in Australia. In fact, we talk about several book awards. One of these books doesn't come out in the USA until June, but that's publishing for you!

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 187: Sentient Snails and Spaceships

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Books discussed:



Shadowplay by Joseph O'Connor
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz
Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko


Other mentions:

Marriage Material by Sathnam Sanghera
@cathythoughts and @carolynm on Litsy
Costa Book Awards
Dracula by Bram Stroker
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Nebula Award
Hugo Award
Arthur C. Clarke Award
When My Brother was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz
See the poet read "Ode to the Beloved's Hips"
Miles Franklin Award
Mullumbimby by Melissa Lucashenko
Tim Winton
Books on the Go podcast
Stella Prize
Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb
Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi


Related episodes:

Episode 119 - Bread and Butter Writing with Paula
Episode 154 - Is If If with Paula
Episode 176 - Best of 2019
 

Stalk us online:
Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy
Paula is @centique on Litsy

Reading Envy 110: The Accidental Love Episode

Casey Stepaniuk, aka the Canadian Lesbrarian, makes her first official visit to the Reading Envy Pub, and brings books she's read and liked recently. Discussions include Vancouver Island, bisexual representation, and YA characters that we want to empathize with! We ended up talking about relationships and love a lot in many of our book picks, so happy valentines day, accidentally.

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 110: The Accidental Love Episode

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Listen via Stitcher

I am scheduling guests for the second half of 2018! If you are interested in appearing on the podcast: FAQ

Books Discussed:

 

Hate to Want You by Alisha Rai
Fire Sermon by Jamie Quatro
Republic of Dirt: A Return to Woefield Farm by Susan Juby
The Dry by Jane Harper
In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan
White Tears by Hari Kunzru


Other Mentions: 

Out On The Shelves on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr
Smart Bitches, Trashy Books blog
All I Did Was Shoot My Man by Walter Mosley
I Want to Show You More by Jamie Quatro
The Change Room by Karen Connolly
The Alice Series by Susan Juby - Alice, I Think is the first book
Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen
Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison
Home to Woefield by Susan Juby
Tournament of Books
Wrong to Need You by Alisha Rai
To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This by Mandy Len Catron
How to Fall in Love with Anyone: A Memoir in Essays by Mandy Len Catron
Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari
Idaho by Emily Ruskovich
The End of Eddy by Edouard Louis
 
Related Episodes:

Episode 107 - Reading Goals 2018

Stalk us online:

Casey's blog,  Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian
Casey's articles on Book Riot
Casey on Twitter
Casey at Goodreads 
Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy

Reading Envy 086: The Queen of Bailing

How often do you set a book aside before finishing? Shawn DNF Mooney knows a little something about bailing on books, and so we tackle that issue before chatting about recent reads and more.

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 086: The Queen of Bailing.
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If you are interested in appearing on the podcast: FAQ

The first Reading Envy Readalong is coming in May next started this week!

Books featured:



Idaho by Emily Ruskovich
The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain
O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker
Island Home: A Landscape Memoir by Tim Winton*
The Bookshop that Floated Away by Sarah Henshaw
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Other mentions:

Moonglow by Michael Chabon
Version Control by Dexter Palmer
Book Lust by Nancy Pearl
Music and Silence by Rose Tremain
By the Book Column in NYRB - Ali Smith
Breath by Tim Winton
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey
Sharon Butala
The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich
Soft Apocalypse by Will McIntosh
Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid's Tale on HULU (not a paid advertisement)
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
The Explosion Chronicles by Yan Lianke
Hard Light by Elizabeth Hand
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

Related episodes:

Episode 077 - No One Messes With a Wolf with Shawn Mooney
Episode 085 - An Acquired Taste with Thomas Otto 
 
Stalk us online:

Jenny at Goodreads
Shawn at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Shawn on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy  
Shawn is @shawnmooney on Litsy

And for something super-meta, here is Shawn's Goodreads shelf labeled Reading Envy Podcast Recommends. 

*Jenny discovered this book comes out a week AFTER the posting date for this episode. My apologies; I really thought I had it right!

A Year of Reading Oceania

It all started in 2012 with a small group in Goodreads, who wanted to read 52 books "Around the World." I started collecting books for that challenge in October 2011 and haven't looked back! I have yet to read a book from every country, and unlike Ann Morgan, the reader who got a lot of attention this year for a similar project she completed in a year, I am taking my sweet time about it. I'm not limiting myself to one title per country, just at least one. And if I get attached to a place, I stay there in my reading.

I have joined a few more groups in Goodreads that urge me forward in my reading. One of the most useful has been "The World's Literature," as it focuses on a new part of the continent every year. When I first joined we read Japan (2012), then Turkey (2013), then Iceland (2014). This year for the first time they chose to read a larger region - Oceania and Southeast Asia. I narrowed it farther to just Oceania (apart from one country that is arguably in both regions) because I felt like Southeast Asia could have its own year. I have grown to let their choices be a very vague guide to my reading. I don't necessarily read along with all the selections, but still discuss my reading with the group. Sometimes I join in with a group read when it fits my mood or a country I still need to cover.

This year, I read thirty-six books from Oceania. What an amazing time I've had. I have no idea how to put it into words so for now I will make a list by country (the image is organized by date finished, most recent upper left.) I plan to reflect more on it on the next Reading Envy podcast, posting the first Tuesday of January. I will say that when I set out to do this, I intentionally did not read much from Australia, feeling as if I had done quite a bit of this already from Booker Prize winners to silly Phryne Fisher mysteries. I wanted to dig into places I had never been in my reading. Other than the Theroux I still haven't read a book from every country in Oceania. I will return to those at some point, but next year finds me moving to a new region of the world!

I also spent the year experimenting with baked goods from Oceania. You can read about those projects over on JennyBakes. With no further delay, my Oceania list of books!

Australia
Sentenced to Life: Poems by Clive James (my review)
Lost & Found by Brooke Davis (my review)

Indonesia (part is in Oceania!)
Indonesian Cooking: Satays, Sambals and More by Dina Yuen (my review)
This Earth of Mankind by Pramoedya Ananta Toer (my review)

New Guinea (West Papua, part of Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea)
The Asmat of New Guinea: the journal of Michael Clark Rockefeller, with his ethnographic notes and photos made among the Asmat people during two expeditions in 1961 by Michael C. Rockefeller (my review)
Euphoria by Lily King (my review)
Four Corners: A Journey into the Heart of Papua New Guinea by Kira Salak (my review)
From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive: The Social World of Coffee from Papua New Guinea  by Paige West (my review)
Garden of War: Life and Death in The New Guinea Stone Age by Robert Gardner (my review)
Growing Up in New Guinea by Margaret Mead (my review)
Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff (my review)
Michael Rockefeller: New Guinea Photographs, 1961 by Kevin Brubriski (my review)
Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art by Carl Hoffman  (my review)
Secret Places: My Life in New York and New Guinea by Tobias Schneebaum (my review)
Where the Spirits Dwell: An Odyssey in the Jungle of New Guinea by Tobias Schneebaum (my review)
The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond (my review)

 New Zealand
The Aloe by Katherine Mansfield (my review)
An Angel at My Table by Janet Frame (autobiography #2) (my review)
Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century by Peter Graham (my review)
The Bone People by Keri Hulme (my review)
Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story by Christina Thomson (my review)
The Envoy from Mirror City by Janet Frame (autobiography #3) (my review)
Faces in the Water by Janet Frame (my review)
Hot October: An autobiographical story by Lauris Edmond (my review)
A Man Lay Dead: Inspector Roderick Alleyn #1 by Ngaio Marsh (my review)
New and Selected Poems by Lauris Dorothy Edmond (my review)
Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff (my review)
One Whale, Singing (Stories From New Zealand) by various (my review)
Potiki by Patricia Grace (my review)
To the Is-Land by Janet Frame (autobiography #1) (my review)
The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera (my review)
When Sun And Moon Collide by Briar Grace-Smith (my review)
Wulf by Hamish Clayton (my review)

Pitcairn Island
Serpent in Paradise by Dea Birkett (my review)

Samoa
The Adventures of Vela by Albert Wendt (my review)
Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation by Margaret Mead (my review)

Various
The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific by Paul Theroux (my review)