By Elizabeth English (aka Elizabeth Minogue)
Read: June 2010
Rating: Sigh.
I have been waiting to read this book since I read The Prince (Jan ‘06). I loved that so much that I immediately set my sights on the only other book under this name.
Alas, The Linnet does not live up to The Prince’s standard.
Lady Maude is the [...]

By Clive Sinclaire
Read: May 2010
Ratings: Pleasurable
My senior thesis was a story rooted in Japanese mythology surrounding  sword smithing. I spent years working on this thing, and have done a lot of research. Of course, I wasn’t able to lay my hands on anything really useful in the months leading up to my due date. When [...]

By Kay McMahon
Not Read: April 2010
Rating: AUGH
Coming out of Beyond Heaving Bosoms, I naturally wanted to indulge in some of the best/worst of the genre. I swapped for this book a short while ago and figured it was as good a place to start as any. But the Smart Bitches have just given me a [...]

By Tracy Chevalier
Read: January ‘10
Rating: Illuminating
For the Feminist Review
I’m a huge fan of Tracy Chevalier. Like a lot of people, I began with Girl with a Pearl Earring, and have since made my way through all but one of her other books. So of course I leapt at the chance to sample her newest offering.
Like all [...]

By Johanna Lindsey
Read: Feb 2010
Rating: Convoluted
There’s a LOT of fun to poke at this thing. Before I have fun, let me say that it wasn’t awful. It wasn’t really good, either.
BOOK-IN-A-MINUTE, Git-style
(Yes, that means spoiler)
Roseleen: I am a history professor with a penchant for old weapons. Look at this fabulous old sword my brother [...]

By Barbara G. Walker
Not Read: Feb 2010
Rating: *zones out*
I’m trying to be good, really I am. But 50 pages out of 170 isn’t such a bad run…
The book is awkward and boring and it reads like what it is–a work of fiction by a feminist scholar that has been described (by The Northwest Gay and [...]

By Judith E French
Read: February 2010
Rating: A bit muddled
I bought this book because, well, it’s called The Barbarian and it has a laughably swoony cover. I mean, c’mon, what’s more classically romance novel than a dude’s face all up close and personal while he gaze intensely at you, all the while holding his very phallic [...]

By Margaret Sacks
Read: February 2010
Rating: Hmm
I want to talk about this book in two capacities–as a story, and as a representation of South Africa. My bestie gave it to me for Xmas, and it looks like a pretty rare find to me. I had no idea there were kids books about SA in 1989, when [...]

By Jude Deveraux
Attempted to Read: January 2010
Rating: AUGH
Wot the shit is this?! Today, RB stands for RIDICULOUSLY BAD.
Hey Jude don’t make it bad
Take a sad song and make it better
Remember to let her under your skin
Then you’ll begin to make it better
Better, better, better, better, better, Yeah,Yeah,YeahNa Na Na Na Na Na Na
Na Na Na [...]

By Alice Sebold
Read: January 2010
Rating: Lovely
The sort of book that stays with you for a long time.
Susie is fourteen when she is lured off by a neighbor, raped, and murdered. She watches from her heaven as her family struggles to cope with the aftermath. Her father is obsessed with finding her murderer. Her mother shuts [...]

By Victoria Holt
Read: January 2010
Rating: Not Bad
I don’t remember where it came from, but I wound up with a paperback of this out-of-print book. I can’t see a reason for it to be. It’s not a romance novel–it’s a novel with romance in it. So there.
Caroline Tressidor is the second daughter of a wealthy, upstanding [...]

By Kasey Michaels
Read: January 2010
Rating: Bit weak
I’m really not a fan of romances along these lines–they usually star a modest white woman being swept away be her “Savage” lover. Somehow the Native American man and his sheltered lover manage to bring peace and harmony to their peoples, blah, blah. Not too different from Sheikh books. [...]

By Susanna Clarke
Read: December 2009
Rating: Engrossing
For the record, I am including this in the 2009 50Book list, because I read the vast majority of it during December. So there.
Mein gott, this has been sitting on my shelf since FOREVER. And it is one daunting brick of a book, too. Over 1000 pages in the paperback. [...]

By Diane Gaston
Read: November 2009
Rating: Amusing
Not a lot to say about this one. It was definitely amusing.
Totally ludicrous set-up that the book made work:
Morgana Hart has a maid who thinks she’s only fit to work as a common whore. Desperate to keep her from such a life, Morgana promises to help her become a [...]

By Johanna Lindsey
Read: October/November 2009
Rating: Fun!
Do not be fooled by that innocuous cover in the Amazon preview. DO NOT, I SAY. That is a redesign, to appeal to modern readers. Why? Because this would never pass muster today:

I’m not sure it passed muster then, either. My edition is more orangey, but you get the point. [...]

By Sarah Dunant
Read: October 2009
Rating: Excellent
The Birth of Venus begins in the most intriguing way… It is the tail end of the Renaissance, in Florence, Italy. An elderly nun in a convent dies from a malignant breast tumor. The convent’s tradition is to wash and clothe the body, make it fresh for the soul’s meeting [...]

By Hergé
Read: September 2009
Rating:
This was the very first Tintin book I ever got my hands on. So there’s nostalgic attachment to it.
Published in 1936, the squabbling countries make speeches to… The League of Nations! Funnily enough, there’s not mention of communism, at all. But I suppose that wasn’t so much on the public radar until [...]

By Hergé
Read: September 2009
Rating: Transitional
One can definitely feel the transitional quality of this volume. It FEELS like a Tintin book, but the story is quite choppy, and for good reason–originally, it was running as a serial. There is a consistent story arc, but it’s not like later books where everything is geared toward that one [...]

By Hergé
Read: September 2009
Rating: Trippy
I now know why this volume confused the hell out of me as a kid.
Firstly, it’s the first in the series, as published widely, but it’s technically the third book. So there are references to Tintin’s past adventures, and he has a hell of a reputation. Such a strong reputation that [...]

aka The Julie/Julia Project
aka 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen
aka My Year of Cooking Dangerously
aka a movie with Meryl Streep and Amy Adams
By Julie Powell
Read: August 2009
Rating: Nifty
Yeah, this is one of those books that is suddenly on everyone’s mind–or just was, anyway. The movie version came out earlier this month, and I [...]

By Allan Appel
Read: August 2009
Rating: Disappointing
The back copy for The Hebrew Tutor paints a picture that is enticing:
Under threat of nuclear war and the gorgeous California sun, the two [Norman and Bayla] forge a tentative truce. They may not be learning Hebrew, but through the miracle of motorcycles and the epiphanies of the road, Bayla [...]

By Elizabeth Lowell
Read: June 2009
Rating: Cool?
Yeah, so, I’ve talked about how dangerous library book sales are, right? Right. I found me some romances. Proper swooning cover romances. I mean, check this inner cover out. Pink satin sheets, hair spread wantonly across pillows, limbs tangled and toes curling.

Oh yeah, and he’s got a mullet.
You might [...]

By Amy Mebberson
Status: On Hiatus, Storylines Complete
http://www.mimisgrotto.com/thorn
It took a little while for me to notice that my RSS feed had stopped updating… and that Thorn really had gone on hiatus/retired. Thorn was a labor of love for its artist, an attempt to get syndicated, and I really wish it had. Now that it’s over, I [...]

By Sarah Ellerton (art) and Bobby Crosby (writing)
Read: May 2009, ongoing
Rating: Wow
Read it at:  http://dreamless.keenspot.com/
Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother reviewing a comic that only has about a dozen pages, but my dearest Sreyaduck has been begging me to read this one. You should as well. 
The art is beyond fantastic. Each panel is like a full [...]

By Margaret George
Read: May 2009, approx. 240 pages.
Rating: Sigh.
I get very disappointed when books I want to be good… aren’t. It comes particularly hard on the heels of a riveting series, like the Black Dagger Brotherhood. And I just gave up on The Mermaid Chair, so it’s doubly depressing to give up on this as [...]

By Emily Bronte
Read: March 2009
Rating: Poison
I give up. I quit. I want nothing more to do with this torturous mess. I decided it was time to try Wuthering Heights because my TiVo had picked up a documentary on the Bronte sisters, which was of course full of people who think they’re the most brilliant [...]

By DH Lawrence
Read: Feb/Mar 2009
Rating:a Romp
I wish I’d read this sooner. It’s so wonderful to read a book by a man, written decades ago, that basically asks the question, “Why shouldn’t this woman be happy?” Feminist, ho!
Connie is a product of the brief wave of feminism in the second quarter-ish of the 20th century. She [...]