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Category: 4 Stars

Reading along

I just barely squeaked in under the wire with this one.  I finished The Two Towers at 11:30 on the night of the 31st.  IT WAS EXCITING.  When, you know, when the gates closed?  And Sam?  And Frodo?  You know what I’m talking about? Well, anyway.  Teresa is done hosting The Two Towers and Maree is taking over.  So here we go. The last half of The Two Towers covers fewer characters than the first half. For some, this makes Book 4 slower than the rest of the book; others love the intense focus on Frodo, Gollum, and Sam. Where…

35 Comments

Review: Enlightened Sexism, Susan Douglas

You know what I never do, that I should do?  I never write down call numbers for the books I want at the library.  I look them up on the computers and then just hope they stick in my memory long enough for me to find the books I’m after.  I make them into little songs and sing them under my breath as I wend my way through New Nonfiction, Film, and Young Adults back to the regular nonfiction section.  This is fine as long as there are no books with exciting titles in New Nonfiction; as long as I…

31 Comments

Reviews: Yes Means Yes & Female Chauvinist Pigs

At last!  It’s March and I’ve finally managed to read another of the books from my list for the Women Unbound Challenge!  I’m having to make substitutions to the list because my library does not have Bluestockings (which, oh, I really wanted! but never mind, life is pain), and although it claims to have Foreign Correspondence, it has not been shelved where they claim that it is shelved (in Biography). Yes Means Yes, ed. Jessica Valenti and Jaclyn Friedman The subtitle of this collection is Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape.  Wouldn’t that be nice?  It’s…

21 Comments

Review: The Unlikely Disciple, Kevin Roose

Kevin Roose, son of liberal Quakers, decided to leave Brown University and spend a semester at Jerry Falwell’s “Bible Boot Camp”, Liberty University.  There he attended classes on biblical history and evangelism, participated in a mission trip to Daytona Beach during spring break, and joined a support group for chronic masturbators.  When he announced his intention to spend a semester at Liberty, his family and friends expected him to find a group of intolerant arch-conservatives marching in lockstep, but the reality (of course) was far more complicated. I could not put this book down.  I must read thousands of books…

43 Comments

King of Shadows, Susan Cooper

I read this for the Time Travel Challenge.  Yeah, I’m not adhering to my list.  TOO BAD.  I’m making King of Shadows part of a time travel mini-challenge that I call the Books I Like Because They Contain Time Travel and in Spite of Having Been Written by Authors I Do Not Like as Much as My Big Sister Does Challenge.  I shall include Time Cat in this mini-challenge too, because I can do that. Nat Field, a twelve-year-old with a tragedy in his background, comes to London as part of a company of boys to perform at the newly…

33 Comments

Review: White is for Witching, Helen Oyeyemi

In White is for Witching, Helen Oyeyemi has done the thing I was afraid she wasn’t going to manage, which is to become EVEN BETTER YET in her third book than she was in her second.  She can’t keep this up much longer, right?  I mean she has to plateau at some point, right?  Helen Oyeyemi!  What will you do to stagger and amaze us next? White is for Witching is about a set of twins, Eliot and Miranda, who live in a haunted house.  Miranda has pica, and the house hates foreigners.  As the book goes on, we come…

32 Comments

Review: The Opposite House, Helen Oyeyemi

When I do not expect to enjoy a book all that much, but I need to get it read so I can return it to the library, I leave it in my loo and read it in tiny increments when I am cleaning my teeth and contact lenses, or waiting for the hot water to heat up (my hot water acts like it’s ready to go and then turns from a gush to a trickle; you have to wait SO LONG to get it going properly.  Many lukewarm showers before I figured it out).  If the book turns out better…

20 Comments

Review: Gunnerkrigg Court, Tom Siddell

Can this count as part of the mini-challenge where we read graphic novels with animals in?  Animals are not main characters exactly, but they are around, and rather important.  And I didn’t like the other graphic novel I read for the mini-challenge, so I hereby decree Gunnerkrigg Court counts.  So let it be written; so let it be done. Gunnerkrigg Court is about a girl called Antimony Carver, who goes to live at a boarding school called Gunnerkrigg Court, following the death of her mother.  (Her father is off somewhere doing some sort of we don’t know what he’s doing.) …

9 Comments

Writing swear words in the margins (Review: Deep Secret, Diana Wynne Jones)

I was trying to figure out, earlier today, what year it would have been that I started reading to my little sister.  I have read her scads of books over the years, but I’m pretty sure the first one was Half Magic, and I’m pretty sure that after finishing it, we went straight on to Magic by the Lake, which means I must have had them both at the time.  I have definite proof that I got Magic by the Lake for Christmas of 1995. Let’s say I started reading to Social Sister early in 1996.  That was fourteen years…

59 Comments

Reviews: Heaven and The First Part Last, Angela Johnson

I am having an absolute orgy of reading today.  So far today I have read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Committed, the book of this website, Peter and Max (well, I finished Peter and Max, I didn’t start it today), The First Part Last, and The Pinhoe Egg.  IT IS AMAZING.  I started around nine-forty this morning, and I just cannot believe how quickly these books are zipping by me.  I am taking a break now because I can’t decide which of my books to read next. When I went to the library for The First Part Last, which I’ve wanted to read…

21 Comments