Book/Author Highlight

  • Book Club: Shutter Island

    Originally this was going to be the book club pick of the month, buuuut we finished it in six days. It was gripping! So here are my thoughts: You may recognize the title because it spawned a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, so you may already have an idea that Teddy Edwards, the protagonist, is an…

  • Book Highlight: The Missing Sword

    With spoilers because the ending really changes the game. So you’ve been warned!

  • Howl’s Moving Castle

    After reading Howl’s Moving Castle last month, I finally got around to watching the Ghibli movie. Of course, it’s not totally accurate but damn that studio is amazing in creating such a beautiful world that is inspiring and magical and whimsical. I mean that opening scene where Howl suavely steps up to those guards bothering…

  • Book Highlight: Rapunzel’s Revenge & Calamity jack

    If you like Westerns and if you like fairytales, these are for you! Really, they should be everyone cuz comics are cool but that’d be too after-school special. However, I just found it amazing because the fairytale genre just doesn’t have a lot of western AUs. School or towns full of fairytale characters, yes. Erotic…

  • Author Highlight: Michelle Moran

    I have already extolled Moran’s virtues in historical writing in previous posts but after several more books in her catalogue, I have to expound on how deftly she immerses the reader into the ancient world. It probably helps that she had previously majored in archeology and has travelled extensively on dig sites so she has…

  • Nancy Drew ReRead P4

    The final seven wrap up the Nancy Drew series in a . . . well t didn’t really wrap it up as Nancy Drew lives on forever and the series followed that cue without any sappy goodbyes or retrospectives but act like its just another day in her life. So let’s get to the final…

  • Author Highlight: Gloria Chao

    So I decided to spend the week reading Gloria Chao’s catalogue of books. Which okay that was easy since there’s only four and she’s addictively readable. While each premise seems light, she also deals with the more difficult frustrations of coming of age as a Taiwanese American daughter of immigrants and the difficulties of communication…

  • Author Highlight: Neil Gainman

    Initially I was going to stop at Gainman’s classic child horror tale, Coraline, but I saw that he has several fairytale adaptations in his repatoire so I felt I had to read them to complete my fairytale TBR pile. Let’s get to it! The Sleeper and the Spindle was the only “high school” level book…

  • The Bloody Chamber (and Other Stories)

    You know how darker, sexier retellings of fairytales are all the rage? Well you have Angela Carter to thank for that subgenre in fairytale retellings with her collection of short stories that subvert and invert these popular tales to pay homage to their darker origins while making it slyly progressive. Putting the females in peril…

  • Fullmetal Alchemist Vol 11-17

    Even though the library didn’t have vol 9 or 10, I had to know what happened next and went straight for 11. Thankfully, it was easy to sum up what had happened in between though I was shocked. Armstrong has a sister!! Prince Ling’s body was taking over by Greed! May has joined up with…