How to Suppress Women's Writing by Joanna Russ
Silver on the Road by Laura Anne Gilman
The last two-book review I wrote was compare and contrast, because the material in each book related to the other book. This time, not so much: one is non-fiction, and one is fiction, and without performing some mental calisthenics at a level I’m not willing to do right now I don’t think I could write a unified review.
Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children) by Seanan McGuire
Coming off the heels of the stupendous Dread Nation, I was pumped for this YA novel. The setup: children travel through magical portals to alternate worlds, only to become distraught upon their return to their tedious old lives. (Postmodern Wonderland or Narnia!) Though this book won all the awards—Hugo, Alex, Locus Nebula—it utterly failed to enchant me. I suppose my heart is a closed door. Or maybe an inky void. Nancy (the sixth most interesting character, maybe) lands at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children […]
Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater
In 2018 I went on a bucket-list trip to Antarctica and saw penguins. Always a fan of the adorable little birds (I mean, come on, that waddle!), I’ve become sort of obsessed. This new-found penguin mania resulted in a Sphenisciformes-themed Christmas, including a hard copy of the delightful 1938 children’s tale, Mr. Popper’s Penguins. I say delightful, but I might have easily said batshit crazy. I want whatever the Atwater couple was smoking when they wrote this. For context, Mr. Atwater died before publishing Mr. […]
Valiant by Sarah McGuire
If you just search for the title on Amazon, you don’t get this book until somewhere after the 10th page of results, and it’s on the 4th page if you search just books. That’s just sad, because it’s really a good book. Well this one starts off sad, doesn’t it? We start with a young woman, Saville, traveling with her father to a new city away from her mother’s grave. And her father is an ass. He is a tailor who somehow sews things differently? […]
Three Dates with Mr. Darcy by Elizabeth Ann West
This is a book of Pride and Prejudice variations by Elizabeth Ann West. I am not particularly pleased with any of them, although the first at least has an ending of sorts. (And there are no actual ‘dates’ like we think of today. Title fail.) Hopefully my journey through P&P variations gets better from here. “Much to Conceal” In this story, Elizabeth reveals to Jane in London what happened with the disastrous proposal in Hunsford a week prior. Jane and their Aunt Gardiner plot to […]
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Although probably best known for travel writing, Bill Bryson has written a number of science-based nonfiction books, and in 2003 he published a book that pondered the scientific questions and attempted to answer, well, nearly everything. The jump from travel writing to his Short History of Nearly Everything is not such a tremendous leap, however, if you think about it like a travelogue, starting with the beginning of the solar system and ending with life as we know it. In the introduction, Bryson describes how […]
