Reviews
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Jane Eyre is my absolute favorite book. I admire the work of all of the Brontes, and I often wonder what else they might have produced had they not died so young. This book is packed with information, some of it new to me and presented from a viewpoint I hadn’t considered previously. The only…
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Jen Schneider’s On (Pantry) Stock & (Kitchen) Timers is a unique collection of a stream-of-consciousness essays and poems that you wouldn’t think would work but does in an enchanting, eye-catching, made-you-look kind of way. Schneider’s words are a collage of thought that walks readers through a maze of sensation/emotion/confusion/questing. This collection deserves a re-read to…
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Foreign Fruit by Katie Goh is an outstanding book. I was expecting a microhistory about oranges, or citrus fruit as a whole; I was not expecting an incredibly well-researched social history about culture, society, belonging, searching for one’s place in the world, biases, acceptance, food cultivation, and environmentalism (among other topics). Goh’s book takes readers…
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Murder Ballads by Katy Horan is a treat for fans of Dark Folklore and Gothic themes (that’s a gruesome way to begin a review, isn’t it?). I was already familiar with “The Death of Queen Jane” and “The Twa Swans” thanks to Loreena McKennitt. Horan included a list of recordings, so readers can immerse themselves…
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Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder’s beautiful book Mother, Creature, Kin brings to mind the essays of Barbara Kingsolver and Rebecca Solnit, and Diane Ackerman’s A Natural History of the Senses. Steinauer-Scudder explores such topics as climate change, motherhood, seeking (and finding) one’s center as well as one’s place in the world. She asks her readers to consider their…
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“Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work” by Allison Tyra is an excellent book. She names and credits literally hundreds of women who were not recognized or rewarded for their achievements, from art to medicine to space exploration and beyond. As an amateur scholar of women’s history (i.e. I am not a student), I recognized…
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Celia Drill’s The Lost World is some of the best contemporary poetry I have ever read. Her work is enthralling; she plays with language, creating images in the mind that are a kaleidoscope of emotion and thought. I found myself highlighting entire poems instead of single lines. I read her poems two, three times over,…
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Slightly delayed, but we are still in January for about eight more hours, so…Goodreads Challenge update! Last year I managed to beat my goal of 145 books, finishing at 152. This year I have set a goal of 150 books. I have completed nine so far, seven of which were poetry eBooks with an average…
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This was an epic of an adventure taking readers to the days of Britain’s legends. The Wild Hunt rides, kings and princes jockey for power, and queens play politics like a chess game. Lucy Holland’s writing is fantastic; her world-building is authentic, it is clear that she conducted a great deal of research in order…
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This was an interesting book; I requested it out of curiosity as manifestation has been a pretty big topic of discussion on social media sites, so I figured I would take a look. While I enjoyed reading it, I don’t think the subject is anything I can quite relate to. This book is well-written and…