By Laurell K. Hamilton
Read: March 2010
Rating: Engrossing
First, let me just say that that cover is a total plot-tease. It shows a woman’s belly, with a nice little round to it, and her hand just so… The series is about a woman trying to get pregnant. You are plot-teasing me, you stupid cover art! Bonus, nothing [...]

By Laurell K. Hamilton
Read: March 2010
Rating: Wham
My mummy picked up one of the books in this series, and must have liked what she saw. She didn’t read it, she went and ordered all eight books. Mummy hates starting a series that she can’t finish, or at least be able to read a big ol’ chunk [...]

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 Holly Black
Read: February 2010
Rating: REAL
As someone who tends toward fantasy, I’ve heard over and over again that in order to make the fantastic seem believable, you have to ground it in the real. I never expected to find a book, any book, that would seem to mimic my own life so closely.
Kaye is a [...]

By Johanna Lindsey
Read: Feb 2010
Rating: Convoluted
There’s a LOT of fun to poke at this thing. Before I have fun, let me say that it wasn’t awful. It wasn’t really good, either.
BOOK-IN-A-MINUTE, Git-style
(Yes, that means spoiler)
Roseleen: I am a history professor with a penchant for old weapons. Look at this fabulous old sword my brother [...]

By Emily Giffin
Read: January 2010
Rating: Better than expected
I wasn’t expecting anything fantastic. I believe I bought it as part of a B1G1F sale, mostly because I wanted another book. The table was full of copies of the same 5 books–never a good sign, it implies they can’t sell them. But I took it home anyway, [...]

By Alice Sebold
Read: January 2010
Rating: Lovely
The sort of book that stays with you for a long time.
Susie is fourteen when she is lured off by a neighbor, raped, and murdered. She watches from her heaven as her family struggles to cope with the aftermath. Her father is obsessed with finding her murderer. Her mother shuts [...]

By Kasey Michaels
Read: January 2010
Rating: Bit weak
I’m really not a fan of romances along these lines–they usually star a modest white woman being swept away be her “Savage” lover. Somehow the Native American man and his sheltered lover manage to bring peace and harmony to their peoples, blah, blah. Not too different from Sheikh books. [...]

By Marni Bates
HCI Teens
Louder Than Words is a series aimed at teenagers about teenage experiences. Atypically, the volumes are also written by teenagers. It may seem bizarre to ask teenagers to write memoirs—as Marni says, her siblings laughed—but Louder Than Words is dedicated to “reinforce[ing] the message that the experiences of teenagers and their perceptions [...]

By Commander Pants
Read: October 2009
Rating: Fun
What could be more appropriate than to talk about god and mental illness? Even better, how about people who aren’t as ill as they seem?
Commander Pants (yes, that’s his nom de plume) has written a novel that cleverly forces one to question human nature while making us laugh. Reminiscent of [...]

By Will Hartzell-Baird
Read: September 2009
Rating: Clever
Do you see that adorable little pyramid thing dusting the title on the book cover? You see that? That’s the most adorable killer robot you will ever see.  Its name is XR-36, but it secretly thinks of itself as Octavius. It can’t announce this because XR-36 is a highly desirable [...]

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 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 [...]

The Extortion of Sex for Salvation in Contemporary Mormon and Christian Fundamentalist Polygamy and the Stories of 18 Women Who Escaped
By Andrea Moore-Emmett
Read: August 2009
Rating: Hard-hitting
My bestie has often lamented that I do not read enough nonfiction. So naturally the last time I was at her place and saw some nonfiction I liked, I borrowed [...]

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 Megan Rose Gedris (art and words)
Read: July 2009
Rating: Coolness

I wound up at YU+ME after Megan’s brilliant guest comic for Jeph Jacque’s award-winning Questionable Content. Me and everyone else. It took me about one day to read the 600+ page archive.
YU+ME: dream is an interesting comic. It’s a story of true love, something [...]

By E.L. Konigsburg
Read: July 2009
Rating: Excelsior
Ok, this was bloody good. There’s only one thing that bothered me at all, and the rest was really good.
Our narrator’s best friend, Branwell, is witness to–or perpetrator of–a horrible crime. He is so deeply affected by it that he cannot speak. The crime is the near-killing of his baby [...]

By Mame Farrell
Read: A long time ago?, June/July 2009
Rating: Good
A really adorable book. Do not write it off because of the cutesy word, adorable. It’s a very serious book. I think I read it onceuponatimeago because it seemed quite familiar, but I think I was too young for it at the time. It didn’t all [...]

By Nancy Werlin
Read: June 2009
Rating: Excellent
There must have been some great turnover in the AuthorSphere. Newer YA writers–ie., books published after I stopped reading them (around age… 13?)–are clearly onto something. I mean, really, really onto something. It’s not just The Disreputable History. It’s How I Live Now and Libba Bray and Impossible. Cuz this [...]

By E. Lockhart
Read: May 2009
Rating: Brilliant
Wow. This is one of the coolest books I’ve picked up in quite a while. Somehow a hardcover wound up on the Bargain table at Borders, and when I learned that A) Frankie was a girl, B) She was leading the Loyal Order of Basset Hounds, and C) She was [...]

By Amy Mebberson
Status: On Hiatus, Storylines Complete
http://www.mimisgrotto.com/thorn
It took a little while for me to notice that my RSS feed had stopped updating… and that Thorn really had gone on hiatus/retired. Thorn was a labor of love for its artist, an attempt to get syndicated, and I really wish it had. Now that it’s over, I [...]

By Sarah Ellerton (art) and Bobby Crosby (writing)
Read: May 2009, ongoing
Rating: Wow
Read it at:  http://dreamless.keenspot.com/
Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother reviewing a comic that only has about a dozen pages, but my dearest Sreyaduck has been begging me to read this one. You should as well. 
The art is beyond fantastic. Each panel is like a full [...]

By Sue Monk Kidd
Read: Attempted May 2009
Rating: Disappointing.
I really, really liked The Secret Life of Bees. I was happy to see Kidd had another book, but I held off on getting it. My mom and I watched the Lifetime version of Mermaid Chair a while back and it didn’t strike me as particularly good–but that [...]

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 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 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 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 [...]