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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]