Bertrice Small's Skye O'Malley is really several books in one. This could easily have been a whole series of novels about Skye O’Malley-and it may have benefited from such a treatment. In light of the book’s multiplicity, then, my review will also be several reviews in one.

( They are all beneath the cut. )

Over Memorial Day weekend, while Cory went to visit friends and play games in Austin, I stayed home by myself and pretty much just read the whole time. It was great.

Here's what I read:

Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest -- This is the third and final book in Larsson's series about Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist and it ( Read more... )

The premise of Karen Marie Christa Minns' Calling Rain is intriguing enough: woman scientist discovers a species of North American great apes living in caves in the mountains, thereby solving the mystery of the Bigfoot/Sasquatch mythology; a young female college student is intrigued and joins her there to study them; then there's a lesbian romance ( Read more... )

There is so much interesting information about mountaineering and about Everest in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, but I could not get past the fundamental knowledge that, unlike the dangers that have long accompanied, say, whaling ships or scientific research in remote areas, the dangers accompanying Mount Everest are totally avoidable. Every step ( Read more... )

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick tells the story of the sinking of the Essex after it was attacked by a whale and of what happens to the survivors afterwards. This was a major story of the 19th century and is what inspired Melville's Moby DickI have to say, I hope they don't take away my American ( Read more... )

Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones is a book I picked up simply out of morbid curiousity. I was certain it was going to suck and I could then rip it to shreds. I have to admit, however, that though it was not a good book by any means, it didn't suck as badly as I expected ( Read more... )

I wanted to like New Eves: Science Fiction About the Extraordinary Women of Today and Tomorrow, edited by Janrae Frank, Jean Stine, and Forrest J. Ackerman. It's a collection of a bunch of science fiction stories by women that I haven't already read in every other such anthology. With the exception of three stories (one being "Speech Sounds" by ( Read more... )

Meh ( Read more... )

From Part 3 ("The Part About Fate"), I believe this sums up some crucial elements of the book:All of this is like somebody else's dream, thought Fate. Next to him, Rosa's head rested delicately on the seat and her big eyes were fixed on some point on the horizon. Fate looked at her knees, which struck him as perfect, and then her hips and then ( Read more... )

Roberto Bolaño's 2666 has been described as "the most electrifying literary event of the year" (Lev Grossman, Time), as "a landmark in what's possible for the novel as a form" (Jonathan Lethem, The New York Times Book Review), as "a work of devastating power and complexity" (Adam Mansbach, The Boston Globe), as "the work of a literary genius" ( ( Read more... )