Why is Amy Tan’s writing so great? Tan is one of my very favorite contemporary writers, and so this was a question I kept posing to myself as I read this collection of autobiographical essays on topics varying from Tan’s childhood to the time she was almost swept away in a flash flood while vacationing […]
Read more "“The Opposite of Fate” by Amy Tan"In “The H Spot,” Jill Filipovic focuses on the (not very) complex problem of “What do women want?” Combining personal anecdotes with a review of the available research and interviews with a diverse group of women on their lives and what would make them better, Filipovic provides an engaging and compelling examination of the feminist […]
Read more "“The H Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness” by Jill Filipovic"“All Over the Place” is a travel book, except that the travel is at least as much internal as it is external. Geraldine DeRuiter has transformed her popular blog, The Everywhereist, into a book that chronicles her trajectory from unemployment to travel blogger to brain-tumor-survivor to someone who’s come to understand her family, her marriage, […]
Read more "“All Over the Place” by Geraldine DeRuiter"The problem with writing woman-centered, feminist, or matriarchal texts is that we don’t actually have a lot of good examples to pull from. Our art and archetypes have been filtered through millennia of misogyny, so that all the storylines, tropes, topoi, cliches, and everything else that goes into making a novel have a base setting […]
Read more "“Ahe’ey” by Jamie Le Fay"In “A Small Corner of Hell,” Anna Politkovskaya continues her reportage of the Second Chechen War. While “A Dirty War,” the first collection of her articles, conveys them in more or less their original form, “A Small Corner of Hell,” while still divided into individual reports, is a more coherent, book-like narrative, with large sections […]
Read more "“A Small Corner of Hell” by Anna Politkovskaya"The Idea of You Lucy is a single and successful glass-ceiling-shatterer. Only it’s not by choice. As glad as she is to have risen high in her profession, and as committed as she feels to helping other women achieve the same thing, what she wants more than anything is a baby. When she meets Jonah […]
Read more "“The Idea of You” by Amanda Prowse"A Woman of Integrity In “A Woman of Integrity,” fifty-something fading actress Laura is faced with the loss of her agent, her career, her flat, and possibly her self-respect. Invited to participate in a documentary about her youthful idol, silent cinema actress and acclaimed photographer Georgie Hepburn, she jumps at the chance, only to discover […]
Read more "“A Woman of Integrity” by J. David Simms"Beyond Sanctuary (Sacred Band of Stepsons: Beyond Trilogy Book 1) “Beyond Sanctuary” is a fascinating, powerful, infuriating, intoxicating, confusing mess. Or something like that. A week after reading it I still can’t decide whether I loved it or hated it. Probably both. It’s certainly sui generis and a fascinating entry into the genre of sword […]
Read more "“Beyond Sanctuary” by Janet Morris"X Wembley Edition (CD+DVD) In “X,” Ed Sheeran’s follow-up to his stunning debut “+”(read my review here) he continues to dazzle with a wide variety of musical styles, all tied together with his trademark combination of rapid-fire rapping and mellow singing. In the “Wembley” deluxe edition, listeners are treated to some extra studio tracks, including the […]
Read more "“X–Wembley Edition” by Ed Sheeran"This is something I just found out about, started by Tynga’s Reviews. You get to list books you’ve acquired with the intention of reading. Gulp! I try not to think too hard about my TBR list, but actually at the moment it’s not too bad. So here are some books I’m planning to read soon, or […]
Read more "Stacking the Shelves!"
E. P. Clark: Author, Book Reviewer, and All-Around Literary Handiwoman 