Reading Envy 238: Inanimate Objects with Courtney

Courtney is back and before we jump into discussion of books we've read and liked recently, we discuss how our reading has changed over time. 

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Reading Envy 238: Inanimate Objects

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Books discussed:

The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean
The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
Apple Island: Or the Truth about Teachers by Douglas Evans

Other mentions: 

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
Picnic in the Ruins by Todd Robert Peterson
The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink
Ragnarok
Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman, read by Neil Gaiman
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
The Food Explorer by Daniel Stone
Seeds of Blood and Beauty by Ann Lindsay
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
Ariadne by Jennifer Saint
The Emotional Life of the Toddler by Alicia F. Lieberman
The Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons from Russian Literature by Viv Groskop

Related episodes: 

Episode 179 - Think of the Bees with Courtney Burson
Episode 222 - Minty Fresh with Courtney

Stalk us online:

Courtney at Goodreads
Courtney is @conservio on Litsy
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.

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: Laugh with the Moon

Laugh with the Moon by Shana Burg
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For the Read the World 21 challenge, this month focusing on South and East Africa, I have focused on countries I had not read books from yet. I came across this middle reader novel set in Malawi. It is more of an outsider view as the main character, Clare, is a white American who travels with her father who is in Malawi to work as a doctor for nine weeks. He has a history there and friends in the village. Clare has recently lost her mother and is struggling.

I prefer ownvoices reads but the benefit of an outsider view novel for kids can be the bridge between two cultures. The author had two readers in Malawi checking for cultural accuracy, and visited herself to study the education system, which figures pretty heavily into the novel.

It took me back to my childhood in a sideways way, when my mom coordinated missions at the church I grew up in and I had a very good friend and penpal who lived in Kenya with her missionary parents. Much of the day to day stuff including the food sounds similar to her experience, although she did attend a boarding school as she got older.

View all my reviews

Review: Pet

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

One of my shadow goals is to read more middle grade books because it's been 30 years since I left that category behind. Pet seems to be solidly on the border between middle grade and YA, with a memorable protagonist, a close friendship, and a town that claims they got rid of all the monsters....

I bought the hardcover last year in a bundle from Sistah Scifi but as I read this I discovered the paperback comes out on the 19th (of January 2021, not a paid advertisement.)

"It was no small thing to try to restructure a society, to find the pus boiling away under the scabs, to peel back the hardened flesh to let it out."

I found it a bit preachy and a bit heavy handed on metaphor but maybe that works for middle readers?

View all my reviews

Reading Envy 145: Things Get Dark

Bianca joins Jenny for a late-night chat about books, and we follow all tangents to the end. We cover cults, manga and comics, and middle-grade reads. Bianca talks about her monthly themed reads in 2018 and how that has inspired her focused reading in 2019. Jenny begs your forgiveness for a few coughing spells; allergies have hit early in the south. (She edited everything out that she could.)

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 145: Things Get Dark

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Books discussed:



Breaking Free by Rachel Jeffs
Serafina and the Black Cloak by Robert Beatty
Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn
My Brother's Husband Vol. 1 by Gengoroh Tagame
Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein

Other mentions:

I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara
Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry
Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick
A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole
Once Ghosted, Twice Shy by Alyssa Cole
Big Love (tv show)
Serafina and the Black Cloak book trailer
Biltmore Estate
Willa of the Wood by Robert Beatty
Over the Rainbow Booklist final bibliographies for 2018
Heavy Vinyl (comic series)
Backstagers (comic series)
Boom Studios
Just Kids by Patti Smith
Phoenix ComiCon (formerly known as)
The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

Related Episodes:

Episode 051 - Dreaming in Books with Karen
Episode 127 - The Sadness Between Books with Bianca Escalante

Stalk us online:
Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy
Bianca is @bianca on Litsy

Reading Envy 016: Was That Mansplaining?

This episode features a repeat guest from Episode 015: The Time for Exclaiming Over Costumes, Jean!  This time she drops by the Reading Envy pub to discuss a few books she has read lately.

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy Episode 16

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Books discussed:



The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
The Lover by Marguerite Duras
The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
The Emperor's Babe by Bernardine Evaristo
A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich

Other books or topics that came up:

Library of Water
Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
James Thurber - The Secret Life of Walter Mitty in The New Yorker, 1939
Newberry Award
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
"Cancer novels" by Lurlene McDaniel
Henri le chat noir