Jenny Sorts Things Out (Jenny at Riverside Book 2)

Each day we unveil a new book deal at a specially discounted price - for that day only. See today's deal or sign up for the newsletter. Product description Product Description Jenny has settled in at Riverside. Kindle Edition File Size: Amazon Australia Services, Inc. Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. Get to Know Us. Amazon Web Services Goodreads Shopbop. Not Enabled Word Wise: The fact that they use that setting as both the scene and even the point of the games adds yet another dimension. Games are work for two of the characters, and that inherent tension sets up a lot of what happens in the end: I found the material on games fascinating, and there I knew almost nothing to start with.

Though the characters clearly think like the academics they are, Lucy is an effective stand in for the reader in knowing little about games and having a bracingly skeptical reaction to the more pretentious flights of her friends. I found Lucy to be an especially present character. The effect with Ruth is very similar. But we are mostly given tantalizing hints and few facts about her story— the gaps in knowledge there are realistic, but also frustrating.

Anders is too shadowy for the impact he has, and the ending felt very rushed. They force the reader to do a lot more work than usual to figure out what happens and why. Still, it did not spoil my enjoyment of the book at all. Jul 13, Kiran rated it did not like it. Steer clear of this novel.

I don't even know what kind of genre novel this is, other than terrible. It's certainly not a thriller and not psychological in any meaningful sense to the reader. An incomplete plot, badly executed. Has the feeling of an English Lit student, wanna-be author trying desperately too hard but without the talent to back it up.

Tortuous to read with ridiculous self-indulgent over-intellectualised language, irritating and one-dimensional characters who proclaimed to be so mu Steer clear of this novel. Tortuous to read with ridiculous self-indulgent over-intellectualised language, irritating and one-dimensional characters who proclaimed to be so much more complex - and what's with the over-use of footnotes?!

Just doesn't work in this age of e-readers. Had to force myself to read through to the end - an ending that was anti-climatic, highly predictable and probably thrown together; the author probably had no clue how to finish this book that she'd attempted to build up dramatically. Would not recommend this and will not read another of her books. Aug 18, Korey rated it liked it. This book was clumsily written in some respects but I still liked it.

The author hasn't found a way to integrate exposition into the narrative unobtrusively and parts of the text and character dialogue have this awkward, overly formalized quality to them that doesn't feel authentic. I also thought there were a few pacing issues. The story itself was pretty cool though, and while their integration into the story was hardly seamless I found the info dumps pretty interesting.

I am a former role pla This book was clumsily written in some respects but I still liked it. I am a former role player and a current graduate student so I am pretty familiar with and interested in the dynamics of both worlds. There is real creativity here and the book is a super page turner despite the problems in the execution.

Sep 21, Al rated it liked it. An ambitious but very flawed novel that deserves a fairer shake than the aggregate goodreads rating suggests.

Jenny Graham, Dave Wilson in tight race for 6th District House seat | The Spokesman-Review

More theory oriented than plot driven, as story elements are either predictable or clumsily handled. Rewards picking apart rather than just reading and enjoying the ride. May 20, Chris rated it it was ok Shelves: The plot description for The Magic Circle sounded right up my alley. The story centers around the academic and social world of Columbia University, specifically Morningside Heights. We are introduced to graduate student Ruth whose realm of studies are specifically focused to the science and nature of play and the design of games on a scale that goes beyond the kitchen table.

At the start of the book, Ruth is finalizing her design of an immersive interactive gameplay experience around New York Ci The plot description for The Magic Circle sounded right up my alley. At the start of the book, Ruth is finalizing her design of an immersive interactive gameplay experience around New York City centered on the history and intrigue of an insane asylum.

The book extends from this initial premise and has Ruth team up with her roommate Lucy also a graduate student at Columbia and their "exotic" and "provocative" neighbor Anna a wild and eccentric foreigner living in New York. Together the group plans to create a new fully immersive live-action-role-play game based on an ancient Greek play.

The synopsis continues by alluding to dangerous and reckless raising of the stakes that will bring the tragedy from role-play to reality. All in all, this definitely sounded like something I would enjoy. I have participated fairly minimally in a few "alternate reality games. I enjoy games and game theory as a whole and I really love it when things get more immersive. I was really looking forward to this book. The book starts out with numerous interactions between the characters focused on the development and delivery of Ruth's game.

There are a lot of discussions around game theory, game design and what makes for a good game experience. The three main characters Ruth, Lucy and Anna each have their own general opinions and make valid points. This first section of the book is fairly low on any real action but serves to present a framework about the concepts of gaming in the real world. I found the discussions rather interesting but felt like they were somewhat oddly placed especially when things became overly academic or very detailed. I personally enjoy reading and studying game theory but to a reader looking for intriguing plot, I fear that these first few chapters would have been a bit boring at times.

A lot of the information presented does help flesh out the characters and it definitely gives the reader a sense about the world of real-world role-playing but a lot of the details could likely have been saved for a thesis on game design rather than a fictional narrative. What felt even more strange to me was that there was so much focus on building up this particular game and then the rest of the book had very little mention of this game at all.

I guess it shows that time marches on, but after all the build up I really wanted to see some people play Ruth's game. I was initially confused since I knew from the synopsis that "the game" in the book plot was based on a Greek Tragedy and this game was not. I thought perhaps they would modify this existing game.

But instead, this game is almost wholly abandoned and forgotten as the book progresses. About a third of the way into the book, we have a rather unexpected shift. Lucy receives a phone call about a family issue that requires her attention. As she receives the news and prepares to go, we learn a little bit about both Lucy and Ruth who helps Lucy prep to leave and helps square away her classes for while she's gone. At this point, the book suddenly transitioned from third person to first person. I found this very disorienting especially since I didn't feel a distinctive change in narrative voice and as such it took a little digging for me to figure out exactly who the narrator was.

I knew or assumed it had to be Lucy, Ruth or Anna and I quickly ruled out Anna but it really wasn't clear initially who was narrating. And honestly, it didn't make a huge difference who was narrating except to try and determine who "I" was. Even when I did figure out who was speaking, I couldn't fathom the justification for moving to first person. This further confused me many chapters later when the book transitioned yet again. It stayed in first person but moved to yet another narrator.

The multiple transitions were definitely disorienting and I really felt like they were unnecessary. The one aspect that the first person does provide is that the first person narrator is speaking in retrospect. She has already seen the events of the novel play out and as such, she occasionally makes comments that directly foreshadow the tragedy to com.

I don't think the transition to first person hurts the plot but I also don't think added enough substance to the story to make it worth the jarring change.

Once we are in first person mode, we learn that Anna's brother Anders has arrived in New York and that he and Ruth are now romantically involved. Coincidentally, Anders is also very interested in live-action-role-playing and Lucy returns to the scene to find that Ruth, Anna and Anders are working on a large scale live-action-role-play based on a Greek tragedy. Lucy is reluctantly drawn into planning the game and she quickly comes on board and becomes a very enthusiastic participant.

Very basically, the Greek play they are basing their game on involves the conflict between the "eat, drink and be merry" crowd and the "sober, chaste and righteous" crowd. We hear and see most of the narrative through the view of the riotous partiers and end up in a den of drunken orgies and craziness fortunately without any real descriptive segments…though there was one scene that, while not graphic, was more shocking than I expected.

The game involves the tension between these two groups and the inevitable clash that's going to happen.

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Throughout the game there were hints of things being taken too far and stakes going too high as promised in the synopsis but most of these events happen "off stage" and have only peripheral impact on the plot. Even though I liked the game theory segments, I felt like they were far too academic for a fictional narrative, especially one that was trying to be an action thriller of sorts. The discussions were interesting to me but I felt like they got too detailed and would come off as long-winded to a reader less interested in the subject.

While I enjoyed the smattering of details and descriptions throughout the book, I felt like there were many cases where there was a lot of description or detail just for the sake of trying to flesh things out. The details were good and well described. The characteristics were interesting. But they felt out of place and didn't add anything substantial to the story. For example, we have great detail about one of the character's dealing with an eating disorder. This goes on for multiple pages in great depth. But the eating disorder has no impact on the story and, while interesting, doesn't effect the character of this person in a way that suggests it's important to the plot other than to suggest that she's had to work through some personal demons.

We have other scenes which similarly describe random objects, areas or characteristics. While the language of these descriptions is fluid and very nice, these additions didn't seem to add to the story and in some ways felt out of place. In a similar vein, I felt like the dialog was sometimes very stilted. I will grant that Ruth and Lucy are graduate students and are very academically minded. But a lot of their conversations felt overly academic and formal. As a result, they didn't often feel very natural.

They maintained the heightened language even when just lounging around their apartment or at a bar and not specifically talking about the science of games or some historical lesson.

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I wasn't hoping for a lot of slang or anything, just for conversation that sounded more like people talking naturally to each other rather than trying to write a proposal. I have known some graduate students who can get into the "stilted" conversational style when they are talking about a subject they're passionate about. But their language doesn't remain academically stilted once they return to "normal" conversations where to eat or exercise or other mundane things. Also related to the characters, I found their behavior and attitudes to be a little juvenile in contrast to their academic attitudes and vocabulary.

I suppose these characters are plausible but they felt like a paradox of traits. On the one hand they seemed very smart and thoughtful. They were creative and adventurous but also had the careful and meticulous nature of thinking things through. On the flip side, these same characters seemed to really "let their hair down" though not their conversational vocal and act like a bunch of immature college freshmen.

I had a hard time putting my finger on their true nature. The book seems to place them in their early to mid thirties but I had a hard time even seeing them as being in their 20s at some points. They just seemed to have not learned any good life lessons that would have matured them…which seems paradoxical for graduate students in New York City.

Lastly in my "bad" critiques, I have some problems with the overall plot and story arc of the book. I felt like there was a lot of promise and some good intrigue being built up. I think part of the problem came from the issue I mentioned above with all the extra detail that didn't add to the plot. There were so many superfluous details floating around that it wasn't clear what the real conflict was going to be. These details didn't act like red herring "clues" in a mystery novel. Rather they were presented in a way that made them feel vitally important to the story.

This would be fine if they continued to be present to suggest they might have importance even though they were red herrings. Instead, these various elements such as the eating disorder make a very prevalent appearance and then vanish completely. While the game provided an interesting surrounding for the events of the story, the promise of the synopsis was that the game would provide the motivation and action for the events of the story and this was not the case.

The climax of the book is only related to the game in that it took place at a game setting. But the details of the climax could have happened outside of the game world. I think there was the potential for the climactic conflict to have been more related to the gameplay and perhaps that is the intent. But for me as a reader, the connection was a weak one and fairly unclear.

Being a fan of games and game theory, I really enjoyed the discussions around gaming, play and entertainment. The information seemed to be well researched and very informative. I enjoyed the descriptions of New York and Morningside Heights. I appreciate the literary experimentation of changing points of view from third person to first person to yet another third person I enjoyed the experiment…I don't think it ended up working out as well as hoped.

I enjoyed learning about the games that were developed and seeing the fun details that were played out. I especially enjoyed seeing the various character reactions to the crazy aspects of live-action-role-play.

I thought the story had a lot of promise and was pretty interesting. I feel like I've talked this book down quite a bit and I feel a little bad about that. I went in expecting a fun and exciting bit of tragedy within a live-action-role-play and ended up with a lot of confusing extraneous details, some wild and crazy gameplay and a lot of action that happened outside of the game.

I kept seeing glimpses of in-game activities that would have fulfilled the promise and I kept hoping they would take center stage and then explode into conflict. Instead, we ended up with a strange soap opera with some smart self-involved people. I feel like the story was alright generally but I had hoped for more and felt like it needed to be tightened up a bit to fulfill on my expectations. They are quite addicted to games and the theories of games and enjoy spending long hours talking about various aspects of game-making.

At the beginning of this book, they are working on a game that's Ruth's brainchild. The idea of the game is to provide a virtual experience of a mental institution that used to be located exactly where one of the current Columbia University buildings is situated. While that's happening, Anna comes up with her own idea of a game which involves some occult-like rituals in front of several supporters.

But when Anna's brother Anders becomes involved, things begin to go wrong terribly. I gave up on this book. I don't typically review DNF books unless I have something to say, which in this case is a lot. I actually gave this book a lot more tries than I usually would with a book that's not piquing my interest. At many points during my reading experience, I wanted to put it down but since I was reading it for the tour, I kept going back to it.

The Magic Circle has quite a few elements I like - gaming, a university setting, women characters, nerdiness and psychological issues. It starts off demonstrating the women's strong interest in games and their plans for Ruth's gaming project. Unfortunately, that's all I enjoyed about this book.

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The characters didn't feel well-built to me. And that's sad because there was so much potential here. I found the three protagonists acting out of character too often. They are portrayed as very good friends and then suddenly, they act way too formal in their conversations.

I didn't feel there was a proper build-up of essential plot points. For instance, one character has been suffering from eating disorders for a good part of her life but that isn't mentioned until page After that though, it is brought up in every other paragraph - almost as if all the relevant facts need to be revealed. There was also a very weird ritual described in the book - too weird it made it very implausible. I got bugged by the long trivial conversations and the descriptions of several minor events in the book. Maybe they were all meant to be significant later in the book and if I had been more patient, I may have discovered them but the build-up wasn't great and I couldn't quite understand why a character often made a mountain out of a molehill.

It made me wonder too much about whether I was missing the overall picture. The author definitely writes beautiful sentences but the sentences didn't gel well when put together. I found the whole narration very dry - with its long-winded sentences and heavy usage of uncommonly used English words. I almost got the impression that a lot of the big words were used more for impressing the reader than to impart any purpose.

Maybe I wasn't the right audience though from the synopsis, I would have jumped for this kind of book any number of times. The whole execution of it just was too poor and even though The Magic Circle is under pages, I couldn't quite put myself through the second half of the book.

Nothing of any significance had happened when I put the book down, which made me not miss it. I wish I could say something more redeeming about this book and since I'm the first reader on the tour to review this book and there doesn't seem to be anyone in bloglandia who have read this book , I'm not able to point you towards other reviews.

Hopefully, others would have enjoyed it more than me. Apr 21, Samantha rated it liked it. The Magic Circle was one of those books that is hard to define for me. It started off slowly for me in the beginning because I didn't really connect with any of the characters. But by the second part of the book I was truly hooked and had to see how everything was going to end.

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The author focused much of this book around gaming and all different kinds of aspects related to gaming. I just had a really hard time connecting to the characters. I liked Lucy the most and I thought that the author did a really good job of making her come across realistically. But I didn't care for Ruth at all for various different reasons and I especially didn't care for her after reading the portion that was narrated by her.

She just seemed to rub me the wrong way. Anna on the other hand was a constant mystery to me which was intriguing I never ever knew what to expect from her. I liked that and I wanted to learn more about her. I also liked the fact that we never quite knew if we could trust Anna and her motivations. Was she telling the truth?

Or was she the person that her brother painted her out to be? The book does start off slowly but it picks up steam after Anna's brother Anders comes into the picture. I could just tell that there wasn't going to be a happy ending by then, but even I was surprised at the end. The author left a lot to question and think about when the book was finished but she did it in a way that I was actually okay with. I wanted more but I wasn't disappointed that it wasn't there. This was a haunting read that left me thinking about it long after I finished. Overall, it was an okay read for me bordering on good.

There were things I enjoyed and there were things I didn't like. But sometimes you are going to have that and I don't know that the author meant for us to really connect with any of them. I liked the mysterious ending that gave closure without tying everything up. It left me wondering and wanting more. I think that I would read more books by this author in the future based purely on the second half of the book which was quite gripping. Recommended but with a few hesitations. A good read but one that never fully captured me. I received a copy of this book from the publisher as part of a TLC book tour.

The thoughts are my own. Apr 27, Marlene rated it really liked it. Originally published at Reading Reality Live action role-playing, otherwise known as LARPing, is normally the sort of geeky fun that adults, or quasi-adults, play at science fiction conventions. Another frame of reference for the average person might be teenage boys playing Dungeons and Dragons and going several stages too far. In Jenny Davidson's The Magic Circle the only part of either of those frames of reference that remotely applies is the bit about going several stages too far.

That certainl Originally published at Reading Reality Live action role-playing, otherwise known as LARPing, is normally the sort of geeky fun that adults, or quasi-adults, play at science fiction conventions. Most of us don't even know that game-playing is an academic field of study. Getting a degree in "ludology" seems vaguely ludicrous to most people, no matter how much we might enjoy playing games ourselves. They live in the "magic circle" of academic life, and Ruth and Anna create other "magic circles" in their games.

A "magic circle" in this instance is a game environment. The board a game is played on, the table around which the players play a card game, or the place where LARPers live out their fantasy game. Academia definitely has aspects of a game environment. The difference is that the stakes in the academic game of degrees, jobs, committees, publishing and tenure are real.

In a LARP, the game blends into the real. It is, after all, a LIVE-action role-playing game. Anna and Ruth are playing a game with each other, only Ruth doesn't know it's a game, a competition to see who can create the more immersive game. When Anna's brother Anders sweeps in and upsets all the players on the board, the stakes become very real, and permanently life-altering. The Magic Circle reminds me of the phrase about the riddle wrapped in the enigma.

It's wild and liberating and incredibly immersive, until the game becomes all too real. It's a bad idea to base a game on a tragedy. The gods still do not like to be mocked. But there are also games within games, like wheels within wheels, and those are what keep the story moving forward.

Who are Anna and Anders? What game are they playing with each other, and with Ruth and Lucy? Is any of what Anna and Ruth and Lucy have experienced together real? Or was it a game all along? I still have unanswered questions about this story. But that's the way this one is supposed to end. It's not a neat and tidy book. It's not meant to have a happy ending. This one is meant to shake you up, and haunt you. It definitely did its job on me. May 05, Jessica rated it liked it. The Magic Circle It's difficult for me to pinpoint exactly how I feel about The Magic Circle, but I can absolutely tell you that this is a very different kind of read.

Meshing together history and gaming with the concept of human nature, I was definitely not expecting what I found between these pages. This might sound like your normal mystery or thriller book. I can assure you, however, that it is not. The Magic Circle starts out very deliberately by explaining to readers, through dialogue mostl The Magic Circle It's difficult for me to pinpoint exactly how I feel about The Magic Circle, but I can absolutely tell you that this is a very different kind of read. The Magic Circle starts out very deliberately by explaining to readers, through dialogue mostly, what it means to "game" and how this will affect the characters in the writing to come.

It was a little tough for me to push through the first fifty pages or so. Jenny Davidson does a nice job of introducing the main players in this story, but it is almost buried under the amount on information that is offered up at the same time. I didn't really feel that I was able to meet Ruth, Lucy and Anna until much later. Which brings me to my biggest issue with these women, actually. I understood that they were graduate students. I understood that they were intellectuals.

However the dialogue and the way that they interact all seemed so stilted to me. I'm a well read person. I enjoy deep and thought provoking reads. Yet I had no idea that there would be such a dense amount of vocabulary in their conversations. It was almost as if their copious drinking was thrown in just to show they were college students. Once the book does take off, essentially once Anders enters the scene, it becomes much easier to follow along with Davidson's characters.

The mystery aspect is there, mixed in with the concept of showing dark desires we all possess. By the time I was at the end, I was much more invested in the book. I raged when I realized that the book was nearing its end, and I likely wouldn't have all of my questions answered. The Magic Circle was a bit of a roller coaster ride for this reader. There were parts I pushed through, others I devoured, and at the end I couldn't quite decide how I felt.

I honestly still can't. What I can say is that this is a different read, and worth a read if for no other reason than that. Go into this with an open mind and you might just find a new read to love. Aug 29, Katherine Miller rated it it was ok. This book is an interesting one.

The language is pretentious and at some times haughty but then the main characters are all college students pursuing their master degrees so some of that is to be expected. The book has three segments whereas the middle bit is told by a different character which at first is distracting. Though I think the story is interesting it is also disjointed. The author puts out a lot of hints and tidbits that make you want to know more but never follows up on them.