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 Joan Johnston
Not Read: May 2010
Rating: Ungh
Truly disappointing. I wanted to flesh out my Men In Kilts category, and I just couldn’t bring myself to finish this.
Scotland, approximately Regency-era-ish? Hard to know.
I wasn’t too keen on the opening chapter, but, hey, openers are hard. Kitt’s father, the head of Clan McKlintock, is dying, and he [...]

By Gail Carson Levine
Read: Repeatedly since 1997. Most recently, April 2010
Rating: J’adore
Some books are like old friends. It doesn’t matter where you left off, or how long it’s been, you fall right back into friendship as soon as you meet up. Ella Enchanted is one of my favorite books. I can still remember sighting it [...]

By Sharon Shinn
Read: Again and again, starting in 2002, now April 2010
Rating: LOVE
I love, love, love this book. It is one of the first Shinn books I ever read, and it was serendipitous the way I found it. We were on vacation in California, and the only redeeming quality of the crappy little town we [...]

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 Candy Tan and Sarah Wendell
Read: April 2010
Rating: BWAHA!
By god, I love the Smart Bitches! Their fabulously hilarious blog, SmartBitchesTrashyBooks.com was the perfect platform for their snarkage, but it couldn’t really contain everything about the genre. Blogs are topical, this book is more an overview of the genre as a whole, while reiterating the Smart [...]

By Shannon Hale
Read: April 2010
Rating: Really sweet
I’ve been wanting to read this for a long while, but never enough to get around to buying it. Luckily, my bestie had a copy she let me borrow. Very, very glad I got to read it at last.
Miri lives with her family on top of a mountain, where [...]

By Laurell K Hamiltom
Read: April 2010
Rating: Phwoar
I tried really hard not to let them all run together, but they did. Rather than try to pull the last three books apart, I’m just going to shove ‘em in one post and mention what lasting impressions I have.
A Lick of Frost
I was all ready for this [...]

By Ryan Sohmer & Lar deSouza
Read: March 2010
Rating: W00T!!
http://leasticoulddo.com/
Absolutely love this one. A webcomic that revolves around a manslut named Rayne, the kind of guy you should hate… but I think I have a little crush on him instead.
Rayne is a guy in his mid 20s, and he is a manslut. He likes sex. He [...]

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 J.R. Ward
Read: Feb 2010
Rating: Devoured
I don’t know what it is about JR Ward, but her books are amazing. Once begun, it is impossible to stop. Everything else gets put on hold. And that took a serious chunk out of my work this week, as this beautiful, beautiful volume is over 600 pages. Yes, [...]

Once upon a time, I discovered a wonderful, wonderful book. Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted is immerses you in Ella’s world, giving you a best friend as well as an adventure.
Then Hollywood got their hands on it. And THEY RAPED IT.
Below is an off-the-cuff rant I wrote in 2004, before the movie was even released. [...]

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 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 Joanne Harris
Read: December 2009
Rating: Delicious
I saw the movie ages ago, but I don’t remember it very well. A good deal of the book felt familiar, which means the movie did bear some similarity to it. Not that anyone would really care when they could gaze on a GORGEOUS Johnny Depp.
The book is lovely. Intriguing, [...]

By Sarah Ellerton
Read: 2009
Rating: Lovely
http://requiem.seraph-inn.com/
Considering the OMGHUGE plot turn that happened this October, I figured I should get around to reviewing this.
Sarah Ellerton made her name in webcomics with Inverloch. That series has ended, and now she has two projects running simultaneously, both exquisite.

By Kate Forsyth
Read: ~2002, November 2009
Rating: Gripping
Hoo-! I was up MUCH later than intended last night, polishing off the last of book 6, which I read right on the heels of #5. Good reading, there. When I say gripping, I mean it. The last third especially…
The Skull of the World follows Isabeau’s ultimate quest in [...]

by Helen Fielding
Read: 2003-ish, October 2009
Rating: Even better.
I’ve fallen behind in my reviews, so this will have to be a bit quick.
Edge of Reason is even better than the original Bridget Jones. It’s longer, and more involved. It also has much more of her excellent friends.
And, yes, this is the one where she goes on [...]

By Helen Fielding
Read: October 2009, repeatedly since ~2002
Rating: v.v.v.v.g.
Bridget Jones is a classic of our time. She can’t be anything but. Plenty of people have gone on and on about how this book changed womens’ literature to chick lit (for better or worse). When I first read it, I was sixteen and trapped on a [...]

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 Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefèvre, Frédéric Lemercier
Read: October 2009
Rating: Wow
There’s no other word for it than, “Wow.” Every few pages, there it is again–Wow.
Didier Lefèvre was a photographer, who became involved with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). In 1986, he accepted an assignment to enter Afghanistan with an MSF mission, to document their journey [...]

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 Danielle Corsetto
Read: July 2009
Rating: Squee!
http://www.girlswithslingshots.com
GWS is one of those comics that’s been around for years and often pops up when you’re reading other comics. It took me a long time to get around to it for some reason. Something Positive is doing a crossover, though, so I gave it a shot. And omigod perfect [...]

By Lauren Lipton
Read: June 2009
Rating: Urgh?
For the Feminist Review
At its core, Mating Rituals of the North American WASP is wholly typical. Girl goes to Vegas. Girl gets drunk. Girl wakes up to find she married some stranger. Girl flees back to New York. Boy calls her up to tell her that, yes, they’re legally married. [...]

By Kate Forsyth
Read: Way Back When, July 2009
Rating: Bonny
Book Two in the Witches of Eileannan is a big ‘un. It covers TWO mega-battles/wars, and a giantass cast of characters. I love it.
And plenty of men in kilts. Not much fetishizing of the kilts, but plenty of kilts. And women kilting their skirts up because skirts [...]

By Kate Forsyth
Read: Early 2000s?, June 2009
Rating: Love
I owe one of my good friends a debt of thanks for turning me onto these. At the time it was just the first two on the shelf and we all thought it would be a trilogy. Imagine our delight when it turned into SIX books!
Eileannan is a [...]

By Sharon Shinn
Read : June 2009
Rating: Ho hum?
Well, it wasn’t terrible. There were some good points, but it certainly wasn’t Shinn’s best. (It’s feeling a little redundant saying that…)
Essentially, it’s a story of imperialism, told for a young adult audience with a penchant for romance. Averie’s father is a general in what is a (thinly [...]