Fiction

Radiant Daughter

1 Comment / 2011, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Women /

Early in the month, TW read a bunch of depressing books all in a row. I told myself that I was not going to do that. I was going to be smarter. I was going to read a depressing, difficult book – then a light fluffy book – then a depressing difficult book. Hahaha.

I read Radiant Daughter yesterday and talk about a difficult, depressing book. A beautifully written, difficult, depressing book but still – oy.

Mother/Daughter relationships are difficult enough as it is without bipolar with rapid cycling tossed in. It’s hard to call a story like this a “favorite” but I think I have to.

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How to Bake a Perfect Life

2011, Books in Bed, Chick Lit, Fiction, Women /

I don’t normally read two books at once (not counting listening to an audio book in the car while reading other books in print) but when I picked up Girl Wide Web, I just knew I couldn’t read it straight through all by itself. It was too dry and I’ve read an awful lot of non-fiction lately – so, I read a couple of chapters of Girl Wide Web and picked up the fluffy How to Bake a Perfect Life and read a few chapters of that. I alternated between them both and that was a good plan. Nice mix of the real and the not so real.  

I liked it more than I thought I would. I liked Ramona – as pregnant teen and as single mom, small business owner. I liked Sophia. I liked Poppy and Nancy and Lily. I liked Katie a lot. I even liked Jonas, the only guy in the book (besides the dog and the cat) who gets any serious lines or character development.

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Anna and the French Kiss

2011, Books in Bed, Fiction, Young Adult /

This was something I picked up after seeing it on a book blog – I just wish I remembered which book blog.  I almost didn’t read Anna and the French Kiss because of the damn cover. It looks a little to YA pretty girl romance-y for me. I decided I’d give it a try after reading the first couple of chapters over TW’s shoulder one night – I got sucked into the idea of a story about a girl whose parents send her to Paris to attend the School of Americas in Paris for her senior year. She doesn’t want to go. She wants to stay home. In Atlanta. With her friends. Doing normal things. Watching her brother.

Once she arrives, she starts out a little too timid for me. She doesn’t leave the school for a week. She doesn’t order hot food at the cafeteria for ages because she doesn’t speak French. Wah. Poor thing. Your situation is what you make of it.

Good thing she found nice people who forced her to go out, I guess. I’d have liked it better if she’d have grown her own backbone and made her way like a strong young woman but whatevs.

It’s not that I didn’t like her friends – I did. It’s not that I didn’t like the guy she falls for – I did. All of those things could have happened with Anna being just a wee bit stronger and a wee bit more self-sufficient. I’d like to think young women who read this are going to read Anna’s character and roll their damn eyes at her wimpyness – while still enjoying the cute love story.

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Wildthorn

2011, Books in Bed, Favorites, Feminism, Fiction, Queer, Women /

This is another one of those books, reserved at my library when I was on a search for lesbian fiction. I was very pleased that my library had Wildthorn – I don’t read much historical romance-y lesbian fiction, which is too bad. I should see if I can scare up some more!

Louisa is her father’s daughter – she’d like to be a boy, because boys have toy trains and get to play marbles and they go to school and learn real things as opposed to the things girls go to school to learn. Her father, a doctor, indulges her and keeps her home, hires a tutor and even takes her on rounds with him after she’s old enough to handle such things. Louisa wants nothing more than to be a doctor. She’s also in love with her cousin – Grace.

Which is all well and good until her father dies, leaving her brother head of the household. And her brother has issues. Issues with Louisa – a young woman who “apes men” – and personal issues that drive him to… well I won’t spoil it for you.

Before she knows it, Louisa is in an asylum and the staff is calling her Lucy. There are some nice twists at the end and an ending that I didn’t love because it was a little big predictable and too close to happily ever after for my tastes. Even though it wasn’t happily ever after in the same way it would have been if Louisa wasn’t a lesbian.

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The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove

2011, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction /

I never expected to read The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove in one sitting but it was a super fast read. No idea why since I think it was just as long (page-wise) as Packing for Mars. It just flowed nicely so even when I thought I’d put it down and go to bed – I didn’t, I just kept on reading and before I knew it… done!

I also didn’t expect to enjoy it quite as much as I did. It looked like a fluffy story about a girl growing up privileged in Nashville in the 60s-70s with all of the typical race issues you’d expect. But I did enjoy it, a lot. And the ending wasn’t one of those happily ever after endings. The ending made sense. I like that.

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The Girl with the Mermaid Hair

2010, Books in Bed, Fiction, Young Adult /

I’m not sure this was the best book to finish up the 2010 reading year. It was… kind of depressing. The Girl with the Mermaid Hair was about a screwed up family – a “perfect daughter” who wasn’t starving but she was seriously sabotaging herself. And, there was an evil magic mirror involved too. It all ended well. Or pretty well. But it was rough going for awhile.

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The Beef Princess of Practical County

2010, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Fiction, Young Adult /

I think I picked up The Beef Princess of Practical County because I liked the title and the cover. I can’t remember seeing it blogged anywhere or recommended by anyone. It’s a nice little book about a girl whose family has a cattle ranch in Indiana. She’s 12 and this will be the first year she raises her own calves and takes one to the fair – which means the heartbreak of sending her calves to slaughter… sniff, sniff.

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The Neighbors are Watching

1 Comment / 2010, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction /

Thank you @Firemom for posting about Debra Ginsberg’s newest book, The Neighbors are Watching. I’m a big fan of Ginsberg but had completely missed the launch of this one. After reading it – I’m still a Ginsberg fan.

This is what happens when you don’t know your neighbors. Or your own kids. Or your spouse or partner. This is what happens when you aren’t paying attention.

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The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay

2010, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Women /

I was worried about The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay – too many glowing reviews, too many big authors praising the book, the author died before it was published – I was afraid it wasn’t going to live up to its hype, ya know?

Thank goodness, it wasn’t a letdown. I really liked Idella and Avis. I think I’d have probably liked Emma, too, if I’d gotten to know her. And Maddie, what happened to Maddie? That’s a story all in itself and I’m sad that we’ll not find out what happened.

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Front and Center

2010, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Fiction, Young Adult /

When my library re-opened, I spent awhile reserving books that were on my Amazon wishlist – books that were coming out but not available for reserve and sequels to series we’ve started but fallen behind on. Front and Center was from the series we’d fallen behind on – and I remember why we fell behind, I don’t really love DJ. I really liked her in the first book and liked her very little in book two. In book three… I barely liked her at all.  I am glad she made the decision that she did (finally) make about where to go to college.  I liked that storyline – I just wished I liked DJ better. 😉

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