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 [...]

The field of comics, also sometimes known as graphic novels, is dominated by male creators and readers. However, there’s been increasing push in the last few decades by women to enter the field and make their mark. Though comics drawn by women are gaining popularity, most are classified as “indie,” distributed by small publishers that may not be able to advertise or place volumes in prominent bookstores. Naomi Nowak’s most recent graphic novel, Graylight, is designated indie, though it deserves to be appreciated by a wider audience.

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 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 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 [...]

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 Victoria Holt Read: January 2010 Rating: Not Bad I don’t remember where it came from, but I wound up with a paperback of this out-of-print book. I can’t see a reason for it to be. It’s not a romance novel–it’s a novel with romance in it. So there. Caroline Tressidor is the second daughter [...]

By Susanna Clarke Read: December 2009 Rating: Engrossing For the record, I am including this in the 2009 50Book list, because I read the vast majority of it during December. So there. Mein gott, this has been sitting on my shelf since FOREVER. And it is one daunting brick of a book, too. Over 1000 [...]

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 Diane Gaston Read: November 2009 Rating: Amusing Not a lot to say about this one. It was definitely amusing. Totally ludicrous set-up that the book made work: Morgana Hart has a maid who thinks she’s only fit to work as a common whore. Desperate to keep her from such a life, Morgana promises to [...]

By Johanna Lindsey Read: October/November 2009 Rating: Fun! Do not be fooled by that innocuous cover in the Amazon preview. DO NOT, I SAY. That is a redesign, to appeal to modern readers. Why? Because this would never pass muster today: I’m not sure it passed muster then, either. My edition is more orangey, but [...]

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 Elizabeth Lowell Read: June 2009 Rating: Cool? Yeah, so, I’ve talked about how dangerous library book sales are, right? Right. I found me some romances. Proper swooning cover romances. I mean, check this inner cover out. Pink satin sheets, hair spread wantonly across pillows, limbs tangled and toes curling. Oh yeah, and he’s got [...]

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 [...]

By Sue Margolis Read: Feb/Mar 2009 Rating: Mmm Something like 10 years ago, my mom found Neurotica in B&N. She loved it. My dad loved it. I loved it. Our friends love it. Our copy has been passed around so much, it’s a wonder it’s still in one piece. So I had high hopes for [...]

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 [...]

By Ariana Franklin Read: Feb 2009 Rating: AWESOME. I go down on bended knee to my friend V for recommending this. The cover and its text make this sound like a pretty dark murder mystery that happens to be set in medieval Europe. That was pretty cool, but I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it so [...]

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 [...]

by Judith Lindbergh Read: December 2008 Rating: Woah I mean, seriously, woah. I’m still trying to sort out what I really think about this. I mean, it was good. It was really, really good. I can totally appreciate this as a writer, and an experienced reader. I’m not sure if that means its a good [...]

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 [...]

By Diane Johnson Read: November 2008 Rating: Mmph. Right, so. I saw the movie ages back and don’t remember much about it except that I liked it more than my mother did, and she thought it was very disappointing. The book is… strange. I wish we’d read it in one of my writing classes because [...]

By Donna Jo Napoli Read: 1998, October 2008 Rating: Provocative I still remember seeing Sirena on display at our school library, when it first came out. I was perhaps in 6th grade. It was on a special shelf, for the library’s special reader program–those readers got first pick of the new titles and were supposed [...]

By Tracy Chevalier Read: October 2998 Rating: Victorian Can I rate something as being Victorian? It sums up quite a bit. Really, it’s on the cusp, beginning with the death of Queen Victoria. More Edwardian–plenty of cultural change going on. It’s hard not to love this one. Two little girls who both decided that they [...]

By Tracy Chevalier Read: October 2008 Rating: Enticing I hadn’t a clue what this one was about before I opened it. It’s tangentially inspired by the life and works of William Blake, a neighbor to the children around whom the story revolves. It’s a tale of country people moving to the big city, about plain [...]