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The Seduction of the Crimson Rose

1 Comment / 2008, Books in Bed, Chick Lit, Favorites, Fiction, Women /

Finally! The only problem with Willig is that I never get to read her books immediately after they come out. First, my library never had them and I had to wait months before I could request them via ILL. Then, when I bought one, I had to get through some of my “challenge books” before I could pick it up.

But finally, I finished Seduction of the Crimson Rose this morning. Excellent, as expected.

One interesting thing to note, when TW read it she complained that she didn’t remember what had happened in the other books or who the characters were. I assumed this was just a TW thing but I struggled to remember who was who and where we were in the storyline for the first 50 or so pages of the book. Why is that? This is not usually a problem for me, particularly in a series I really like.

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Hood

1 Comment / 2008, Books in Bed, Favorites, Feminism, Fiction, From the Stacks Challenge, Queer, Women /

When I started reading Hood I felt like I’d read it before but quickly realized that all of Emma Donoghue’s books feel that way to me. Her characters seem familiar, like I’ve read more of their stories in some other book. I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or if it means she’s recycling characters and I should be annoyed.

I lean toward not being annoyed but that might be due to my willingness to give authors who write good lesbian fiction a break – there are so few good lesbian fiction writers, Donoghue is one of them.

Seems sort of kharmic or something that I finished Hood on the day Del Martin died, doesn’t it?

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Dancing with Elvis

3 Comments / 2008, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Favorites, Fiction, From the Stacks Challenge, Women, Young Adult /

We bought Dancing with Elvis ages ago, maybe years ago, at the Gainesville FOLS. (sniff, I miss the Gainesville FOLS. It’s coming again. Soon. In October. sniff. ) TW read it ages ago, maybe years ago, and I never did.

Turns out, it’s a YA book and if I had known that, I might have read it earlier. I thought it was just some fluffy southern chick lit and I am pretty anti-Elvis. (don’t hate me, oh go ahead, hate me – I don’t care.)

It’s a great YA book, only a wee bit of Elvis and an awful lot of good stuff about race and family relationships and, well, just go read it.

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The Flame Trees of Thikka

2 Comments / 2008, Books in Bed, Favorites, From the Stacks Challenge, Non-Fiction /

This is another book in my From the Stacks challenge and when TW saw me reading The Flame Trees of Thikka she said – “Didn’t you read that in middle school?” Err no. I cannot imagine such thing even being in my middle school library in Charleston, SC. It certainly wouldn’t have been on the required reading list for either middle or high school. So no. I hadn’t read it or anything else by Huxley. I should read more though. Old, dated, African non-fiction – awesome. Loved it.

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Sleep is for the Weak

3 Comments / 2008, Books in Bed, Favorites, Non-Fiction, Women /

Yay! The first BlogHer book, Sleep is for the Weak, is awesome. It’s also difficult to review properly but I’m going to give it a try.

I picked up my copy (and my sister’s copy), at the Macy’s party, and walked through the line to have it signed (that’s me in the weird brown jacket) by a bunch of the brilliant bloggers in the compilation. Lisa said, “have you read my essay?” When I said I hadn’t, she gave me THAT look and laughed. I looked at what she wrote in my copy and it made me very very nervous…

Fast forward to later that evening, back in my hotel room, I picked up my copy and read the acknowledegement and flipped through the index thinking about which bloggers I’ve been reading for years, which I used to read but stopped reading, which I read from time to time, which I’ve never read at all and which I have tried to read but just never felt a connection to. And then, I put the book down and went to sleep.

I picked it up again when I got home and immediately flipped to Lisa’s essay, nervously. And then I laughed. She’s such a TEASE. (TW read the book last night and her response to Lisa’s essay was “THAT is Lisa Stone. That’s who she is, that’s what she sounds like all of the time.” Heh. So true, but she’s also a TEASE.)

I flipped back to the beginning and read Stacy Morrison’s forward and it was awesome. Really awesome. Who knew the EIC of Redbook could use the word FUCK so often? Not me. (TW’s response to the forward was “The book is worth buying just for the forward.” – she’s right, it is.)

Then, on to the rest of the essays – and I loved it. Some of them I had read on the writer’s blog – Three Kid Circus, Fussy, Mir, Mom 101, Not Calm Dot Calm – all bloggers I read every single day. When I read an essay that I remembered from the blog, I immediately thought “oh I wish Rita had included this and that and that other post too!” Blogging is like that – one post sparks a memory of another one and I think it’s good that the book sparks the same thoughts.

There are bloggers who I’ve never read and will now start reading because I loved their essays.

There are bloggers who I have never read, though have tried to read them because everyone loves them – but they didn’t grab me on their blogs. They still didn’t grab me in the book. And again, I think this is good. We don’t all love the same bloggers. We don’t all love the same voices or stories or experiences or ideas. That’s what blogging is and that’s what a book written by bloggers should feel like.

Rita – you did a great job with this book. Congratulations. Seriously.

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Off the Beaten (Subway) Track

2 Comments / 2008, Books in Bed, Favorites, Non-Fiction, Travel Log, Women /

I have been looking forward to BlogHer Contributing Editor Suzanne Reisman’s book, Off the Beaten (Subway) Track, for ages. It sat in my wishlist folder for a long time. It sat in my shopping cart for an even longer time. I finally took it out of my shopping cart and decided I’d just buy a copy while at BlogHer ’08 and have Suzanne sign it since she’d be there too.

TW bought it, while I was in a session, and it was already signed. But, I wanted a PERSONAL note and Suzanne graciously complied and I love it.

I started reading it on the trip home from the conference and didn’t stop laughing until I finished it last night. I should point out that I find it a lot more amusing than TW does because I have spent a lot more time reading Suzanne’s writing, listening to her talk, interacting with her via email and on the phone. The book sounds like Suzanne so it’s more personal for me than it will be for someone who just picks it up from the shelf (or orders it online) without knowing Suzanne. Even someone with only a passing relationship with her may not find it as amusing as I do. Or maybe I find it amusing because Suzanne and I share the same type of sense of humor?

The penis jokes in the book – awesome.

Her review of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors had me laughing so incredibly hard, I could barely breathe (and this is probably related as much to my children’s worship of Alex Grey as it is to Suzanne’s irreverent writing – my kids, they are insane about A.G. and his sacred mirror-ness.)

Also, Suzanne is not aware of this, but TW was supposed to take me to the NYC Police Museum many years ago and didn’t come through – so any book with a review of that museum within the first 50 pages has me sold.

I want to book a trip to NYC right this second and visit every spot highlighted by Suzanne – that’s my kind of sightseeing! Now if I could just convince her to write the same type of book for Chicago…

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The Gathering

5 Comments / 2008, Books in Bed, Don't Read This, Favorites /

I have decided a couple of things, now that I’ve finished The Gathering.

First, I rarely like Irish novels. In fact I like them so rarely that I think I should stop reading them.

Second, Booker Prize winners are highly over-rated and I should stop reading those, too.

I didn’t care about any of these characters. At. All. I didn’t understand any of these characters. At. All.

Boring, boring, boring. A lot of pretty words combined in such a way as to bore me to tears for a full week.

Someone please remind me of this next year when I’m reading the Booker short list.

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