Reading Envy 194: Squirreling Books Away with Andrew

Jenny welcomes Andrew to discuss books, and we discuss myth and folk tale retellings, classics, and reading around the world. Andrew finishes every book he starts and has been in the same book group for 20 years.

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 194: Squirreling Books Away

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Books discussed:



Middlemarch by George Eliot
These Ghosts are Family by Maisy Card
Old School by Tobias Wolff
The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd
Swansong by Kerry Andrew


Other mentions:

The Corpse Washer by Sinan Antoon
Thomas Hardy
D.H. Lawrence
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
Jane Austen
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time podcast
Literary Disco Podcast
Silas Marner by George Eliot
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Ulysses by James Joyce
Ulysses dramatisation

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Eighth Life by Nino Harataschwili
Solar Bones by Mike McCormack
Milkman by Anna Burns
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Age 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend
Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn
The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste
An Untamed State by Roxane Gay
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Robert Frost
Ayn Rand
Ernest Hemingway
New Yorker Podcast - Tobias Wolff
The other Tobias Wolfe
Marian Keyes
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Molly Brown
Folk on Foot Podcast
Everything Under by Daisy Johnson (and it's Oedipus, not Hansel and Gretel!)
Country by Michael Hughes
The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
The Prince of West End Avenue by Alan Isler (not available in USA)
IraqiGirl: the Diary of a Teenage Girl in Iraq


Related episodes:

Episode 099 - Readalong: The Secret History
Episode 176 - Best of 2019
Episode 182 - Reading Slump with Eleanor Thoele
Episode 192 - Sly Milieu with Thomas

Stalk us online:

Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy
Andrew at Goodreads
Andrew is @andrew61 on Litsy

Review: The Eighth Life

The Eighth Life by Nino Haratischwili
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book has had my complete attention every spare minute of the last week, and I was absorbed from page 1 to page 944. A family saga that starts with the four daughters of a Georgian chocolatier, through wars and revolutions and generations. That's the country of Georgia, which I knew almost nothing about.

I always say I find my best reads on the long but not shortlists of awards and this is no exception (longlisted for the International Booker) - any other books I've picked up while reading this have paled in comparison.

I had copy from the publisher through Edelweiss but it took me a while to get to it. It came out April 14, 2020.

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I'll Have What You're Reading

The 200th episode of the Reading Envy Podcast is fast approaching. Since my tagline has always been "I'll have what you're reading," I'd like to give you the opportunity to share where you get ideas of books to read, or what bookish content you produce that readers might be interested in. I am hoping for audio submissions from regular readers, but I am also inviting podcasters, Booktubers, independent bookstores, and small press representatives to plug what they think readers might want to hear about. I do not have advertising on my show so consider this an invitation!

To contribute:

1. Record an audio file, MP3 is fine. It should be no longer than 2 minutes (2 minutes is longer than you think.)
2. Send it to me at the name of my podcast, all one word, at gmail.com. Hint: the podcast name is "Reading Envy."
3. Deadline is September 1.

Reading Envy 193: And I Feel Fine (Ducks, Newburyport Readalong)

In the midst of protests and a pandemic, Jenny hosts a bonus readalong discussion of Ducks, Newburyport. What seems like the random thoughts of a pie-making Midwestern woman turn out to be so much more, and we untangle only a few of the threads in this complex tome. Spoilers Inside.

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 193: And I Feel Fine

Subscribe to the podcast via this link: Feedburner
Or subscribe via Apple Podcasts by clicking: Subscribe
Or listen through TuneIn
Or listen on Google Play
Or listen via Stitcher
Or listen through Spotify 
New! Listen through Google Podcasts


Books discussed:



Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann


Other mentions:

Pioneer Girl: the Annotated Bibliography by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
JennyBakes - lemon drizzle cake disaster
JennyBakes - tarte tatin
Reading Envy Readers (Goodreads group)
After the Cuyahoga River Fire - Great Lakes Now (video)
Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko
Martian Time-Slip by Philip K. Dick
Galactic Pot-Healer by Philip K. Dick
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
Apocalypse Whenever (Goodreads group)
The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin
The City and the City by China Mieville
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin
Marchpane review of Ducks, Newburyport
It's the End of the World by R.E.M.


Related episodes:

Episode 090 - Reading Envy Readalong: East of Eden with Ellie and Jeff
Episode 093 - Spewing Science with Jeff Koeppen
Episode 099 - Readalong: The Secret History
Episode 116 - Make Margaret Atwood Fiction Again with Jeff Koeppen
Episode 118 - Reading Envy Readalong: To the Bright Edge of the World
Episode 137 - Reading Envy Readalong: The Golden Notebook
Episode 148 - Multiple Lives with Jeff 
Episode 157 - Joint Readalong of Gone with the Wind with Book Cougars
Episode 185 - The Loyal Swineherd (Odyssey readalong)
Book Cougars - Joint Readalong of Sapphira and the Slave Girl
 

Stalk us online:

Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy
Jeff at Goodreads
Jeff on Twitter
Jeff is @BestDogDad on Litsy  

Review: Take a Hint, Dani Brown

Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the second book in The Brown Sisters by Talia Hibbett, and I might have enjoyed this one even more than the first (Get a Life, Chloe Brown.) Danika is a somewhat witchy academic who is NOT a relationship person, until she meets Zafir, who rescues her from a building and they become a hashtag. He is a romance fan in more ways than one. If you are a fan of people speaking frankly and directly (even in steamy situations) this is for you.

It looks like there will be a third book in this series, but I'd also like the stories of some of these side characters - Scorcha, Fatima, etc.

What I'm not expressing well is how much this made me laugh, sometimes cackle. If this wasn't a review copy I would be quoting some MAJOR HILARIOUS PASSAGES.

I had a copy from the publisher through Edelweiss but it comes out Tuesday the 23rd! You don't need to have read the Chloe Brown book to enjoy this one.

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Review: IraqiGirl: Diary of a Teenage Girl in Iraq

IraqiGirl: Diary of a Teenage Girl in Iraq by IraqiGirl
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"My mother told me not to write about politics. She said write about normal life. But I don't have a normal life so how can I follow her advice?" 3 August 2005

Hadiya wrote a blog about her life from 2004-2018. This book covers 2004-2007 (what we would call high school) with a brief note about 2008-09 but I went to her blog to see what happened later. It ends up being about life under military occupation by the United States. She lives in Mosul, with family in Lebanon, Syria, Baghdad, and Kurdistan. She also provides a glimpse into the Syria of fifteen years ago, one that was a refuge for so many people, a city that epitomizes peace and "real life" to Hadiya during this time period, since her family retreats to Aleppo on multiple occasions when their home is damaged by bombs, gunfire, or someone they know is killed. All along Hadiya is trying to be a good student so she can go to pharmacy school.

The way the book is presented I believe it is targeted at middle to high schoolers as a way to develop empathy for Hadiya and others like her, similar to how The Diary of Anne Frank is used in classrooms. There is an extra Q&A from students her age at the end.

I bought this from Haymarket books as part of my reading goals for the year. It doesn't escape me that the two books I've read from Iraq so far have been from the voices of children who have had to leave the country. I was brought to tears more than one time, so had to take a bit longer to read this one.

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Review: You Exist Too Much

You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The background of the novel is a woman born to Palestinian parents, who were forced to relocate in 1967. They have family in Lebanon, West Bank, and Jordan, but live in America. Her parents had a volatile relationship and her mother has often treated her like competition or an inconvenience, telling her "You exist too much" when she responds emotionally, especially when she starts trying to come out to her. The refusal to understand her daughter as anything but straight is one backbone to the novel.

But this is not a family saga. It's more like a recovery novel. At the start of the novel, a relationship between the MC and her girlfriend Anna has just ended and it's definitely her fault. She's been sleeping with randos at the bar where she DJs and carrying on with a married professor while claiming to be monogamous; she decides to check in to a facility for addiction...love addiction. I was a bit surprised at this as the majority of the story, because the very first scene of the novel, where she gets in trouble for exposing her ankles in Bethlehem, made me think it would be a different type of story.

I was more interested in the parts about her mother, honestly, what her life started as and what happened in the war, the distributed nature of her family, the strangeness of her parents' marriage and how violence was the only form of attention - the author was making the connection between that upbringing and the MC's behavior but I think the piece that was missing is that I'm not sure the MC ever does. This makes it feel like the novel is a snapshot of the story but not the entire story, and I think that's okay, but somehow not as satisfying as I would have liked.

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