Anna M. Mazur's "Handbag Workshop" is full of great ideas for making bags. It's nearly impossible for me to find a bag to purchase in a store that has the storage and/or organization components that I need. Even though I haven't made a bag as described in the book, I've been able to take different ideas and components from multiple patterns to ( Read more... )

Lucky Spool's "Essential Guide to Modern Quilt Making" is comprised of ten workshops shared by well-known modern quiltmakers. This book is aimed at the intermediate quilter, not something I realized until after I began to read it. I am a very raw beginner, so I don't have the skillset for many of these workshops that are geared at teaching modern ( Read more... )

"What a Lady Requires" by Ashley Macnamara is a historical romance with a strong-willed, educated heroine whose father aims to use her as a bargaining tool to gain credibility in Ton through marriage. Little does Miss Emma Jennings know how difficult it will be to reform the man her father chooses as her husband: fabulously handsome (and quite ( Read more... )

The re-release of Lisa Goldstein's "The Red Magician" is a Young Adult story of magic, folklore, and the Holocaust. I didn't really know what to expect of this story at first - magic in a story about the Holocaust? - but after the first few pages I was hooked. I initially was worried that the fantasy elements would dominate the storyline, belitting ( Read more... )

"The Knights of the Round Table" by Daniel Mersey is (apparently) part of a series; I didn't know that this book was part of a series, but it was highly enjoyable nonetheless! This book gives a great introduction to the legends of many of the knights of the Round Table ( Read more... )

"Headstrong" by Rachel Swaby is my new favorite non-fiction book! In this book, the accomplishments of fifty-two women in science are described in detail, but not in the common textbook way. Swavy chose these fifty-two women because they are not typically the scientists students learn about in school; these woman comprise multiple nationalities, ( Read more... )

Cannonbridge, by Jonathan Barnes, is a story that combines English literature (the books and their authors), mystery, and science fiction. Matthew Cannonbridge is touted as one of the world's greatest authors, and yet no one questions his ridiculously long publication history over the majority of the 19th Century. The book jumps from the past to ( Read more... )