By Judith E French
Read: February 2010
Rating: A bit muddled
I bought this book because, well, it’s called The Barbarian and it has a laughably swoony cover. I mean, c’mon, what’s more classically romance novel than a dude’s face all up close and personal while he gaze intensely at you, all the while holding his very phallic [...]

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, to document their journey [...]

By Alexandra Sellers
Read: November 2006
Rating: BLECH.
(This one has some bad language. Sorry.)
Remember that school project about Christian Romance Novels? Well, I got an A on it. But my punishment was having to read this garbage.
I’m not a stranger to fantasies that involve the dangerous, the forbidden, submission, and the otherwise impossible. Hell, that’s what [...]

By Euripides. Translated by W. S. Merwin & George E. Dimock.
Read: October 2006
Rating: Mixed.
This is the Oxford University Press edition, with both a scholar and a poet working on the translation. The play itself is only, say, 1/3 of the book itself. (Brings back memories of Ayn Rand’s Anthem.) This was a blessing, as I’m [...]

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 it’s good, [...]

By Donna Jo Napoli
Read: August 2006
Rating: Charming
I love retellings of fairy tales. My mother built me a collection of really gorgeously illustrated books when I was very young, and my edition of Beauty and the Beast is one of my favorites. Of course I had to read this rendition by Donna Jo Napoli, which begins [...]

By Judith Tarr
Rating: Ixcelsiooor!
Read: June 2006
This one came from Strand Books, my beloved second-hand goldmine. The description was interesting, the cover art is gorgeous (her neck piece looks like mother of pearl) and the story is well-told and thoroughly unusual. Very good.

By Anne Rice
Rating: Enjoyable.
Read: June 2005

I am not a fan of Anne Rice. I tried to read Interview With the Vampire years ago and failed miserably. There is nothing in her writing that goes unsaid- everything is laid out on the table. Sorry, but that’s boring, and makes for lousy prose. Pandora was a birthday [...]