Skip to content

Category: 2 Stars

Review: Rapture Ready, Daniel Radosh

You know what expression I love?  “All roads lead to Rome.”  You know what I love even more than that expression?  All roads actually leading to Rome.  Rome being, in this case, Christian culture.  The other day I followed a link (from where I can’t remember) that promised snarky remarks on Twilight, and as I was navigating through the linked blog trying to find such remarks, I stumbled upon a review of a book all about Christian pop culture.  This book in fact.  Oh, world, you are indeed full of a number of things, but I don’t necessarily think kings…

15 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

Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, Susan Jane Gilman

The word “grandiose”, in my family, is a loaded word.  When one of us uses the word “grandiose” to describe someone, we understand that we actually mean “might possibly benefit from medication; updates as warranted”.  I bring that up because if I had been traveling in Communist China with a girl I didn’t know very well, and she had started talking about the project she was working on that was going to be important to national security, I’d have called home and said, “Claire is waxing grandiose,” and my parents would have said, “You get her on a plane and…

41 Comments

Two books I didn’t like (sad, sad)

I put the words “sad, sad” in the title line here, but that was silly.  I am not sad at all.  I am still very happy, because as you may recall, THE SAINTS WON THE SUPER BOWL, causing me to tear up happily every time Drew Brees opens his mouth (he’s such a sweet dear) or every time I see a picture of all the confetti and rejoicing.  And everyone is all “If only my daddy were alive to see this day,” and New Orleans is throwing the biggest party possibly every thrown, like even bigger than that party in…

31 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

Review: Don’t Sleep There Are Snakes, Daniel Everett

Recommended by Annie the Superfast Reader.  Don’t Sleep There are Snakes chronicles missionary/anthropologist Daniel Everett’s time with the Pirahã tribe in Brazil.  As a young linguist, Everett moved to Brazil with his family to learn the Pirahã language and translate the Bible into Pirahã, thus to spread the Good News of the Lord.  In learning the language and spending time with the tribe, he found that the Pirahã are so focused on immediacy of experience that they were completely uninterested in the Bible.  They shook his faith. Going in, I thought this was going to be a personal memoir about Everett’s faith and…

14 Comments

Two more short reviews

Sheesh, I just can’t get it together to write proper reviews this month.  So here are two unproper ones. One Perfect Day, Rebecca Mead I love the title of this book, but it wasn’t as SHOCKING as I had hoped.  I was anticipating lots of SHOCKING anecdotes about the SHOCKING American tendency towards excess in weddings.  And there was a bit of that, sure, but the book is properly called One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding, and it is indeed mainly focused on the selling and marketing of weddings.  Mead talks about many aspects of the marketing…

10 Comments

Review: The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch and Ordinary Victories Part Deux

See me starting challenges all over the place?  It’s a new year and I am on the ball. The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch, Neil Gaiman and Michael Zulli I didn’t start out my Graphic Novels Challenge reading with quite the satisfactory bang that I was hoping for (probably because I didn’t start by doing the January mini-challenge but OH that is all about to change).  The Facts, etc., etc., disappointed me.  Illustrated by Michael Zulli, this graphic novel tells the tale of a strange night out, with a strange woman whose real name wasn’t…

10 Comments

Review: The Comedy of Errors, William Shakespeare

Here’s what you should understand before reading Comedy of Errors.  My boy Shakespeare, he’s funny.  He’s all about being funny; he’s got funny down pat.  If you don’t believe me, I can only assume that it’s because you have never seen one of Shakespeare’s plays performed by actors with any hint of comedic timing.  He can do it in many different ways – he can do slapsticky visual gags, he can do puns, he can do wry little digs and situational irony and gallows humor. And when he’s not being funny, he’s still being clever.  Nearly always!  He makes his…

14 Comments

Review: Henry VI, Part 3, William Shakespeare

Okay, I did actually forget all about my project to read all of Shakespeare’s plays, but DO NOT WORRY.  I have remembered it now and I shall carry right on with it.  I just finished reading Henry VI, Part 3, which is nice because I’m all done with Henry VI and can move along to my boy Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Remember how I said Part 2 was more like it than Part 1?  Not exactly like it, but more?  I regret to report that I can’t say the same thing of Part 3.  It’s all, Okay, now Edward is…

16 Comments