mental powers | Reading Backwards book reviews

Graceling 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 [...] Full Story	Lover Avenged 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 [...] Full Story	Amazon 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 [...] Full Story
Chocolat 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 [...] Full Story	The Pool of Two Moons 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 [...] Full Story	Witches of Eileannan 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 [...] Full Story
Black Dagger Brotherhood 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 [...] Full Story	Megatokyo 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, [...] Full Story	Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH 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, [...] Full Story
Divine by… Mistake, Choice, and Blood 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 [...] Full Story	Demonology 101 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 [...] Full Story	How I Live Now 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 [...] Full Story
With a Tangled Skein 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 [...] Full Story