Category: Reading Challenge

• Women Writers Reading Challenge #66: Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

  December 28, 2015

  Reading Challenge

  circus, fiction, Geek Love, Katherine Dunn, reading challenge, women writers

  There are some books that leave an indelible mark by dint of their incredible strangeness–books that startle and make you wonder how an author ever could have come up with it. This is one of these books. But it’s brilliant. Geek Love follows the story of Oly, an albino hunchback who her parents deplore for…

• Women Writers Reading Challenge #65: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

  December 19, 2015

  Reading Challenge

  HeLa, medical ethics, medical history, nonfiction, reading challenge, Rebecca Skloot, science ethics, science history, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, women writers

  You may have noticed this book popped up on my favorites list for Top Ten Tuesday. There were actually a number of books on that list that I haven’t done a post about yet, but they will all be coming I promise. This book came out about five years ago, but it’s lost none of…

• Women Writers Reading Challenge #64: Cinder by Marissa Meyer

  December 15, 2015

  Reading Challenge

  Cinder, Marissa Meyer, reading challenge, The Lunar Chronicles, women writers, young adult

  It took me a while to finish this book because I accidentally left it at my parents’ house. And did I mention I only had 60 pages left? This is an interesting twist on a beloved fairy tale replete with cyborgs and inter-species love. As you know, I love a good fairy tale adaptation. The…

• Women Writers Reading Challenge #63: The Epicure’s Lament by Kate Christensen

  December 11, 2015

  Reading Challenge

  fiction, Kate Christensen, literary fiction, The Epicure’s Lament

  Kate Christensen’s novel is written in diary format, though the narrator would probably not like it being referred to that way. But it’s written as a series of notebooks he writes his private thoughts in and doesn’t let anyone read…so a diary. There’s nothing wrong with having a diary of course; I’ve had one for…

• Women Writers Reading Challenge #62: Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill

  December 8, 2015

  Reading Challenge

  Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill, reading challenge, short stories, women writers

  I read this book right on the heels of Lorrie Moore’s book Self-Help, which was unavoidable since it was due at the library, but was nevertheless a mistake. Where I felt that Moore showed compassion, Gaitskill seemed objective almost to the point of being clinical sometimes. Her stories are still very good and move nicely, and…

• Next Year’s Reading Challenge on Aliza Shandel

  December 7, 2015

  Reading Challenge

  2016 reading challenge, fiction, reading challenge

  We’re nearing the end of the year, and the end of my 75 books by female authors challenge is in sight (only nine left!), so it’s important to start thinking about what we’re going to read next year… At the beginning of the year, I naively assumed that after reading only women, the next year…

• Women Writers Reading Challenge #61: Self-Help by Lorrie Moore

  December 7, 2015

  Reading Challenge

  Lorrie Moore, reading challenge, Self-Help, short fiction, short stories, women writers

  Some books have a reputation that precedes them. People talk about them with reverence as if they are a gift given down from the writing gods. I’m usually a bit cautious about these books because there are quite a number of brilliant writers that I’m not all that enthusiastic about. Hemingway comes immediately  to mind.…

• Women Writers Reading Challenge #60: The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh

  December 4, 2015

  Reading Challenge

  I am a total and absolute sucker for anything and everything remotely related to the Thousand and One Nights. They are a group of stories that mean as much, or more, to me as the standard western fairy tales, which I also have a deep and abiding love for. The difference is, these are ones that…

• Women Writers Reading Challenge #59: Mermaids in Paradise by Lydia Millet

  December 3, 2015

  Reading Challenge

  fiction, Lydia Millet, mermaids, Mermaids in Paradise, reading challenge, women writers

  Lydia Millet’s novel considers the possibility of the supernatural intruding into harsh reality. Partially a story of what love and magic means to one woman and partially a satire about how humanity responds to the beautiful, the book is deceptively light. I  really enjoyed this book about a honeymoon going horribly and dramatically wrong and…

• Women Writer’s Reading Challenge #58: Abandon by Meg Cabot

  December 2, 2015

  Reading Challenge

  Abandon, Greek myth, Hades & Persephone, Meg Cabot, myth adaptation, reading challenge, women writers, YA, young adult

  I’ve probably mentioned before that I am a big Meg Cabot fan. In fact, I’m rereading all the Princess Diaries books now so that I can read the final book in the series (Royal Wedding), which just recently came out (this year? last year?). So when I found out that Cabot had written an adaptation of…