I need to be pickier in the books I get from Netgalley; I've hit a whole string of duds in a row. The latest one is Debra A. Shattuck's Bloomer Girls: Women Baseball Pioneers, which is both boring and unconvincing. How do you write a boring book about early women baseball players ( Read more... )

I finished Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance, which disappointed me twice, although the first time was not its fault. I decided to read the book because histories of the utopian experiment at Brook Farm always mention it, and I was therefore hoping for lots of thinly veiled memoir about life at Brook Farm, but that’s not what the book is ( Read more... )

I read Barbara Michael’s Houses of Stone because of Sarah Rees Brennan’s review. It always feels kind of pointless reviewing something that Brennan has already reviewed, because what could I say that she has not? But I will say a bit more, because I loved this book and I think some of you might enjoy it too ( Read more... )

I’ve been thinking more about Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child, specifically about the ending. What makes the first two-thirds of the book so interesting is Ivey’s ability to hold possibilities in suspension. Is Faina a snow child, magically born out of the snowgirl Mabel and her husband Jack made? Or is she just a normal girl, living alone in the ( Read more... )

I have finally seen Avengers! I was worried that I would feel as lukewarmly positive about it as I did about most of the other Marvel movies - I felt many of them were a little too aware of their status as prequels, which made their plots unsatisfying - but I can conclusively say that Avengers is still pretty awesome even if you've been spoiled for ( Read more... )

Via goldenusagi: The Bechdel test, and why passing it isn’t as crucial as you may believeI always find posts like this one so frustrating. Because, on the one hand, I do agree with the points that the essay makes. The Bechdel test wasn't designed to test individual works for feminism. There are works that are feminist that don't pass it. And there’s ( Read more... )

One of the glorious things about Yuletide is that it shows me entertaining things I have not seen before, such as this: The Lizzie Borden Diaries!

Click to view

I guess that should really be Diary, singular, because it’s just one video. It’s kind of hilarious, in a dark and slightly gory sort of way ( Read more... )

As I watched the pilot episode of The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries, articles that I’ve read about Sherlock floated through my mind. Specifically, the articles where people argue that the audience would roundly reject a female character as snarky, immune to social convention, and borderline sociopathic as Sherlock ( Read more... )

More Newbery statistics! This time, I’ve broken down the books by gender of author and gender of protagonist ( Read more... )

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Will James’ Smoky the Cowhorse, the only Western ever to win a Newbery Medal. I now have just three books left for the Newbery project, and all of them are on CD!

What I’m Reading Now

Clare Vanderpool’s Moon over Manifest, which is ostensibly the story of Abilene, but in fact is mostly the story of Jinx and Ned ( Read more... )