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 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 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 [...]

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 [...]

By George W. M. Reynolds
Attempted Read: Feb 2009
Rating: Goddamn.
Just… goddamn.  I saw this at Strand Books and spent MONTHS hemming and hawing over whether or not I should put my money toward it.
Pro: It’s a book from the 1800s about a werewolf in the 1500s. HOT DAMN it’s historical fiction^2 with a shot of supernatural!
Con: [...]

by Noel Streatfield
Read: Eons ago, December 2008
Rating: Sweet
You may know of Ballet Shoes because the BBC has turned it into a movie with Emma Watson (aka Hermione). Like Harry Potter, that movie is based on a book. Unlike Potter, Ballet Shoes is OLD. It dates back to the 1930s. My copy is from 1958.
This is [...]

Translated by Ivan Morris
Read: November 2008
Rating: Most delightful.
I think I like Sei Shonagon herself more than I like her writing. She’s a fantastic character in and of herself–willful, witty, clever, eager to entertain, proud, and quick to judge. All of this comes across through her own recounts of her days, which are honest in that [...]

By Philip Pullman
Read: August 2008
Rating: Intense
I totally missed the boat on this one. It’s a real shame, because I think I would have quite liked it at the time it was published, and I was just ten years old. At 22, I’m much more critical of some things, and less easy to impress in other [...]

by Robert C. O’Brien
Read: Middle school?, July 2008
Rating: J’adore
If you have never read about Mrs. Frisby, you are missing are a wonderful, crucial piece of childhood. I was given the movie, The Secret of NIMH (also reviewed below, when I was really, really young. Both my parents enjoyed watching it with me, and it was [...]

By St. Augustine
Read: Jan/Feb 2008
Rating: MAKE IT STOP.
Every time a new semester starts, I try to be really on the ball and keep up with everything. Take lots of notes, etc. This slowly falls away as things progress and I get comfortable. Unfortunately, this was the first book assigned to my memoir class.
Is it sinful [...]

By Arthur Golden
Read: high school, January 2008
Rating: Lovely
A lot has been said about MoaG, so I’m not going to give it a huge, thorough review. What I am going to say is that it is wonderful.
The settings are thorough. The culture feels alive and natural. You sympathize with the characters and want so much for [...]

By Betty Friedan
Getcher own @Amazon.com
Read: May/June 2008
Rating: Phwoar
I consider myself a feminist, am part of my school’s feminist group, and yet I’ve never taken the Feminism 101 class. Which leaves me to educate myself. I have a copy of Wollstonecraft that a class in political theory never got around to. There’s a lot of ’someday’ing [...]

By Kurt Vonnegut.
Available @Amazon.com (but I’m too lazy to link right now)
Read: September 2007
Rating: PHWOAR.
See the cat, see the cradle?
Book is farking brilliant. My apologies that I’m not more coherent about it, but I thought it was brilliant.
Vonnegut is my new personal hero. In the course of Cat’s Cradle he needles modern science, scientists, and [...]

By Charlotte Lennox
Go, go! Get it! @Amazon.com
Read: February 2007
Rating: Treasured
I truly don’t know how this book fell so completely out of favor. The Female Quixote was written in mid 1700s, about a young woman who, like Don Quixote, lives in her fantasies. Arabella reads romances, all of which are set in the ancient Greco-Roman [...]

By Daniel Defore
Read: January/February 2007
Rating: Not Unpleasant
I try to use only one word in the ratings, but there isn’t really an equivalent for ‘not unpleasant’ without outright saying ‘pleasant’, which isn’t really the same thing. And then you get into all this double-plus-ungood stuff and Big Brother descends to take you away. So, 2 words. [...]

By Jane Austen
Read: January 2007
Rating: Loverly
When I told people I was reading P&P their reactions were universal–”You haven’t read it yet?!” Even I’m surprised that it’s taken me this long. It stems from my eternal wariness of ‘classics,’ which are rarely as enjoyable as they are notable. This, however, deserves the term ‘classic.’
I first fell [...]

By Euripides. Translated by W. S. Merwin & George E. Dimock.
Read: October 2006
Rating: Mixed.
This is the Oxford University Press edition, with both a scholar and a poet working on the translation. The play itself is only, say, 1/3 of the book itself. (Brings back memories of Ayn Rand’s Anthem.) This was a blessing, as I’m [...]

Since time and interest don’t allow for every book to get its own lengthy review, I’m going to do some mini-reviews. Clod save us all.
This install comes from the 2006 50 Book Challenge, which is going great guns, thanks. Books 1-20 were read during this time period. This mini review includes:

Yentl’s Revenge (Essays on Judaism [...]

By George Orwell
Rating: Phwoar
Read: April 2006
I read this once before, in junior year of high school. I didn’t like it so much then. But now I’m in awe, sort of like the JK Rowling phenomenon. I really like it this time. And I’m amazed by the theory and complexity. It is so COOL.
I still hate [...]

By Ray Bradbury
Rating: Hmm
Read: May 2006
In the last month I’ve upped by reading significantly. School put a severe dent in things, but I’m going to play catch up this summer. One of the things I’ve been meaning to do is actually read some of the classics. This is one of them. It’s part of the [...]

By Jack Kerouac
I’m not going to tempt you with a link. It’s too awful.

Rating: ERLACK.
Read: March 2006
It’s not really true to say that I’ve read this… I stopped after 40-some pages because it was just too awful. It’s Fitzgeraldian–and that is not a compliment when coming from me.

By Margaret Mitchell
Rating: BRILLIANT
Read: Fall Semester 05 (October… December)
I started college in New York City this semester, which is the reason for the MASSIVE delay in reviews. I’ve come to both love and fear street vendors; I never have cash for gorgeous jewelry, which is ultimately much safer… but then there are the book vendors. [...]

By J.K. Rowling
You don’t have your very own copy by now, WHY!? Amazon.com
Rating: Excellence
Read: July 2005

It’s here! It’s here! At very long last, it’s here! The penultimate! The one that’ll REALLY have us all on the edge of our seats-!
I cried at the end.
If you haven’t read it by now, you’re an even slower reader [...]

By Vladimir Nabokov
Rating: Odd
Read: June 2005

I felt compelled to read Lolita this summer, and I followed it immediately with Reading Lolita in Tehran, which was an excellent idea. But, both books will have their own reviews, so lets carry on.