England | Reading Backwards book reviews

Remarkable Creatures 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 [...] Full Story	Until Forever 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 [...] Full Story	A Knight in Shining Armor 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 [...] Full Story
The Landower Legacy 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 [...] Full Story	Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell 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 [...] Full Story	A Reputable Rake 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 [...] Full Story
Love Only Once 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 [...] Full Story	Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason 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 [...] Full Story	Bridget Jones’ Diary 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 [...] Full Story
Untamed 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 [...] Full Story	Wuthering Heights 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 [...] Full Story	Spin Cycle 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 [...] Full Story
Lady Chatterley’s Lover 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 [...] Full Story	Mistress of the Art of Death 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 [...] Full Story	Ballet Shoes 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 [...] Full Story
Falling Angels 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 [...] Full Story	Burning Bright 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 [...] Full Story	The Subtle Knife By Philip Pullman Read: August 2008 Rating: Disappointing Gentle readers, it is a sad day for my bookshelf. I am usually very good about finishing the books I pick up, I hate stopping partway, unless they’re really trash. Even when something becomes mediocre, I see it through, if only to see how bad it gets. [...] Full Story
Victory of Eagles By Naomi Novik Read: July 2008 Rating: Intense I got an email alert announcing the release of this book, and was able to attend Naomi Novik’s very first book signing EVARR. She was excited, we were excited, and the space at the Greenwich Village B&N was standing room only. How cool was that?! She read [...] Full Story	Empire of Ivory By Naomi Novik Read: June/July 2008 Rating: Fascinating I put off reading EoI for a long while because I just wasn’t in the mood. I read the first three Temeraire books back in ’06 and they have since been passed on to both my parents. All our paperbacks now have warped spines and white, messy [...] Full Story	Sex and Scandal in England (Guest Review) by Melody Thomas Guest Review by Sreya Read Shen’s review here. For the time being (the duration of this review) I’ll be taking over for Shen — no rotten tomatoes, please! — and I’ll be reviewing a novel that she lent me. She reviewed it herself, so I guess this is simultaneous. Shen and I [...] Full Story
Sin and Scandal in England By Melody Thomas Read: June/July 2008 Rating: Meh This book was guest reviewed by Sreya, here. Sometimes I have to buy a book for the title alone. Like The Barbarian. How could I NOT try that? Sin and Scandal is the look of a typical historical, half-naked men and woman standing in the snow. Though [...] Full Story	The Big Pink By Ann Pilling Out of print. Read: Initially, age 8/9. Reread Jan 2008. Rating: Humn. Once upon a time, when I was eight, we went on a trip to our homeland, South Africa. And there we went to a used bookstore (of course, this is MY family we’re talking about), and there I bought some [...] Full Story	A Journal of a Plague Year By Daniel Defore Read: January/February 2007 Rating: Not Unpleasant I try to use only one word in the ratings, but there isn’t really an equivalent for ‘not unpleasant’ without outright saying ‘pleasant’, which isn’t really the same thing. And then you get into all this double-plus-ungood stuff and Big Brother descends to take you away. [...] Full Story
Mini Reviews (2006, July-December) Welcome to another edition of “Mini-Reviews Clumped Together Because I Was Too Lazy To Dedicate a Full Page to Each One.” This one covers books read between July and December 2006. (#22-51 of the 50 Book Challenge) Included: The Invisible Ring (Anne Bishop, Black Jewels spin-off) The Seven Daughters of Eve (Non-Fiction) Rebel Angels (Libba [...] Full Story	Catherine, Called Birdy By Karen Cushman Read: September 2006 Rating: Wundebar! I haven’t reread this is years, but I’m so glad I did. Birdy is the most amazing heroine! She’s like Georgia Nicholson living in 1291! Because that’s what this is: it’s the diary of a fourteen year old girl living in the late 1200s. She is smart, [...] Full Story	The Temeraire Series (Books 1-3) By Naomi Novik Read: September 2006 Rating: Faboo!! Every so often, the grocery store rewards my endless browsing with a shiny pearl. This is some of the coolest stuff you could ever present to me: Historical novel. With dragons. !!!!! of JOY! Some of the only ”traveling” books I have ever liked! And you know [...] Full Story