BBAW Interview with Jeanne at Necromancy Never Pays

Welcome to Tea Time with Marce

Today is the BBAW Interview day.  We get to learn a little more about the bloggers we love, network and interact with and get to meet new ones.

I would like to welcome Jeanne here today.  She blogs over at Necromancy Never Pays


Marce - Is Trivial Pursuit for Book Lovers a special feature you host on your blog? Tell us about it so we can participate in the future.

Jeanne - A friend sent me the game (Trivial Pursuit for Book Lovers), saying she thought I might know more people than she did who would have fun playing it. What I discovered, though, is that it’s more fun to play in the virtual world than in real life, because it’s hard to find a group of friends so literary they know enough of the answers to make playing the game fun. So I reveal one card each Friday morning, and my virtual literary friends show up to play.


Marce - On your About page you state - “necromancy never pays; literature shows us this over and over.” What book or 2 books do you think proves this and you would recommend to others?

I am so glad she corrected the definition........
Jeanne - The definition of “necromancy” I was thinking of when I used the word in the title of my blog is the second definition in the online urban dictionary: “necromancy” is “sorcery/shamanism style of raising the dead.”

I have a list of books in which necromancy never pays on my sidebar, most notably the story “The Monkey’s Paw,” which sort of started the whole thing (see my “About” page). I would also mention what happens with the figure Ged calls back from the dead in the first book of The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin, and the recurring theme in the Harry Potter books and movies. In Part One of the final two-part movie, there’s a shadow graphic for the story of the Three Brothers; the one who gets the ring becomes a necromancer. This story is an explicit statement of the theme Dumbledore keeps trying to help Harry understand, that he couldn’t bring his sister back, and that Harry can’t bring his parents back, at least not in any satisfying way. Dumbledore understands that necromancy never pays.


Marce - How did you get into poetry?  Share a poem with us that is special to you.

Jeanne - I’ve always had poetry read to me and read it to others; the more you read, the more you love it. So lots of poems are special to me, especially seasonally—last year, I went through a whole series of autumn poems. I always put different ones up next to my desk, and the one that’s there this week is “How to Like It,” by Stephen Dobyns. I reread this poem a lot when I’m trying to learn to like something new. Sometimes you’ve just got to grit your teeth and try really hard to like something.

Jeanne's favourite poem How I Like It by Stephen Dobyns


Marce - You stated in a post you like to molest your books “I like to molest my books, flipping backwards and forwards, underlining a word or putting an exclamation point in the margin, and turning down the corner of a page here and there.” Please explain how you got into this habit and if enjoy reading on your Kindle more yet?

Jeanne - I very carefully developed the habit of molesting my books when I got to college, where for the first time I couldn’t just remember everything I’d read. I had to learn to highlight sections, make notes in the margins, and note certain pages. I worked even harder at this in graduate school, sometimes using pencil to lightly underline and sticky notes to mark pages when it wasn’t my book. Writing in books, especially, didn’t come easily to me, but if you want to be a critical reader, you have to learn to write down your responses, especially if you don’t want to have to read everything twice before you can articulate a point of view on it.

For blogging I usually dog ear the pages I know I’ll want to quote later, and usually I can spot the bit that made me turn the page down pretty quickly. I still don’t like to read with a pen or pencil in my hand.

So no, I haven’t warmed to the Kindle for ordinary reading, although I do love having it for travel and I can now cope with the “bookmark” feature.


Marce - Do you enjoy Thrillers, Mystery, Suspense or Horror books? What is one of your favourites?

Jeanne - The Gone-Away World, by Nick Harkaway, is one of my all-time favorite books, and it has elements of all four. It has a really big secret, plus ghosts, ninjas and pirates. Here’s her review:



Jeanne, thank you so much for taking the time to interview with me.  I am sure your Trivial Pursuit for Book Lovers will gain even more weekly followers.  I still gasp a little over you molesting your books :-0 but I know it is done with love, lol

Thanks for reading, Jeanne interviewed me also, you can read it here.