When it comes, it comes.

I found out earlier today about the passing of librarian and podcaster Jenny Colvin. She passed away last week at 43. Jenny was the host of the popular Reading Envy Podcast. She was a librarian at Furman University in South Carolina. Jenny had a large online presence in the reading community from Litsy, Goodreads, Instagram, and the Sword & Laser Podcast (where I first heard her).

Jenny and I connected in 2019 when she invited me onto the podcast.  I was getting ready to attend the Frankfurt Book Fair in Frankfurt, Germany, that October and she wanted to know all about it when I returned home to San Antonio.  Also, she was looking forward to discussing my book choices: Memory & Dream by Charles de Lint, Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck, & The Chef’s Secret by Crystal King. An urban fantasy novel, a realistic novel set in Berlin, and a historical fiction novel set during the Italian Renaissance about a famed chef intrigued her. Jenny read as widely as I did, and we had an excellent discussion about those novels.

She invited me back a year later to discuss two of my three choices in detail: Albuquerque by Rudolfo Anaya and Face of an Angel by Denise Chavez.  I lived in New Mexico for a decade (Santa Fe & Albuquerque) and Jenny wanted to know about my time there and some of the fiction it had produced.

She planned for my third visit to the podcast in early August.  I was supposed to record earlier this month, but I had to reschedule to August because I wanted to discuss Guy Gavriel Kay’s latest novel, All The Seas of the World, just released last week. I’m halfway through that novel and had taken notes for that upcoming podcast.  She had not read much of Kay’s work and was eager to hear my perspective on it.  Unfortunately, it will not happen.

Jenny was a voracious and curious reader.  She read both genre and literary fiction and felt equally at home in both camps.  I truly appreciated that about her and felt like I had met a reading kindred spirit.  Jenny understood good fiction can come from any genre, and reading widely is essential to becoming a serious and lifelong reader.  She will be missed dearly and I would like to extend my deepest condolences to her husband, family, friends, work colleagues, and the online reading community that listened to her podcast and read her reviews.  Rest In Love, Jenny Colvin.