By Kristin Cashore
Read: Feb/Mar 2010
Rating: Worthy
Graceling was a gift, from someone who swore it was excellent. It should be, it has the endorsement of Tamora Pierce. It is a good book, with a good world, and enough momentum to keep one reading. I won’t say I adored it, but it was very enjoyable.
In the world [...]

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, [...]

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 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 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 J.R. Ward
Read: April-May 2009
Rating: Cool
My mom got me hooked on these. She bought the whole Black Dagger Brotherhood series (1-6) and she immersed herself in them for about a week. Then she passed them on to me.
Good, solid books. Not perfect, but few things are. As a whole, the series is delicious. It’s smart, [...]

by Fred Gallagher
Read: Continuously, reread May 2009
Rating: Brills
Get sucked in: http://www.megatokyo.com/
If you’ve been reading webcomics for any period of time and haven’t come across Megatokyo you’re not surfing the right comics. Ever seen the Sad Girl In Snow trope? This is where it was born.
Megatokyo is a lot of things, on a lot [...]

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 P.C. Cast
Read: First half of 2008.
Rating: Um?
The Smart Bitches have raved about two of PC Cast’s books so I figured she was a pretty safe bet. And it was really just… so-so. Entertaining, but not madly so. I don’t know what was wrong, per se, they just weren’t as good as they could’ve been. [...]

By Faith Erin Hicks
URL: http://faith.rydia.net
Read: December ‘06-January ‘07
Rating: Spellbinding.
Genre: Supernatural, Supreme Good vs. Supreme Evil.
Format: Full page.
Style: Black, white, and watercolor grays for shading.
Published: Not yet, but I would buy it ASAP. (Hear that, Faith!?)
Bonus: It’s COMPLETE!!! No waiting! Wait–it’s over?!
It took me a while to get through this one [...]

By Meg Rosoff
Read: August 2006, December 2009 (review stands)
Rating: Awesome
I loved this book. I finished it within a day because it was so good. It was recommended to me by my good friend Sreya and she was so right.
The novel is narrated by Daisy, a girl who grew up in New York under inauspicious circumstances. [...]

By Piers Anthony
Rating: Frabjous
Read: approx. 1998 (age 12), reread August 2005.

I first read the Incarnations of Immortality when I was about 12, and I remember enough to know that I didn’t comprehend nearly as much as I will now, some 7 years later. (Yosh, has it really been that long?) I’ve reread this particular book [...]