Reviews and Comments

I am bad at titling my reviews but “holy wowwww” seems to cover it. I loved this. The story of Marie, her efforts to turn the dismal abbey into a fortress, the struggle to defy patriarchy, the love for her sisters that turns into holy love, the carnal and secular love for her various lovers that also becomes holy, just the whole thing. Part way through I came across a review that was so dismissive and childish that it raised all my hackles and the ways in which that review has been bothering me helps me understand why I loved this book so much. If you can’t handle nuance, if you’re not open to the long history of women struggling against what they’re told to believe, then this book is definitely not for you. But it’s full of rage and anger and beauty and love.

This book pulled me into its world of trees and gutted me. I loved the richly drawn human characters and the stories they and the author tell about and learn from trees. I didn’t love the whiteness of the book, but also the relationship Powers describes between people and trees is a particularly white western one—some sense of indigenous stewardship before the end would have made that less irksome. But the book is beautiful and devastating to read, and I can’t stop thinking about trees.

I didn’t love this the way I did Diaz’s first book—this one felt a bit more obvious in how it was going to go about telling the story I could feel it wanted to tell about money. But it was also a good story, so I forgave some of its faults

I loved this! I did want to shake just about every single character for one thing or another but also I couldn’t stop reading it. This is much like how I feel about every Barbara Pym I’ve read, and I’m clearly going to need to read more. Extra points for being about indexers and writers.

Cat Sebastian can generally do no wrong by me, and this is just as delightful as the Kitt Webb one, and is especially good for acknowledging that sex in the period carried a crazy high risk of pregnancy and therefore of medical calamity.

Obviously had to read this after I read Jenn Shapland’s memoir, since I’d never read any McCullers, and holy hell is it good. Took me forever because it was so intense that I could only read it in bits.

This hit almost all of my sweet spots and I really enjoyed it. It's hard to find romances that stick with a nobles-are-bad perspective, but this one did.

My BookishBookClub chose this as one of our fiction reads and wow we did not like it, and wow do I feel badly for my Fisher Library friends. Just not how libraries work and even worse, really bad about depression, and everyone is mean. Also, did I mention that libraries don't work this way and her account of the key Plantin polyglot is just weird? two stars because there's some nuggets in there but ymmv

This was delightful, hits all the spots, if those spots are wanting to read a fun and sex-positive romance. One of the leads runs an art gallery and those details seem patently ridiculous, but the more important thing is that the other lead is a sex educator and they jointly inherit a failing sex toy shop. Will they fall in love? Will art gallery woman learn to enjoy sex? Will sex educator accept herself and her artistic talents? Of course!! And that’s one of the joys of reading this.

rereading Jane Austen, as one does, and I just adore this one. Choose your Jane fighter and I will always choose Anne Elliott.

This was good! I'm generally a fan of Hand. Loved the atmosphere--just gorgeous lush descriptions of Hawai'i's culture and wildlife--and enjoyed a protagonist who wants to be doing good but always feels like he's messing up. There's a Cass Neary-ish-ness to this, but a lot less gore. Also, a lot less mysticism than I usually expect from her

Queer woman realizes and accepts her queerness while uncovering the traces of McCullers’s long-denied queerness during her work on McC’s archives. It’s just great. Beautiful reflections on being queer, on queer legibility, on what archives are and how they work, and what being a writer in the world means.

I love Sara Gran and I work with rare books and know people in the book trades and also, as it turns out, I can achieve the key goal the lead character is trying to achieve for her spell casting. Do I believe in sex magic? not really. Do I think this is accurate about the book trade? not at all. Do I think it’s a good escape book? Yes, I do.

I’m pretty taken with these women, important rare book dealers and a tightly bound pair of friends. They’re the ones who dug about Louisa Alcott’s sensational pieces! Leona traveled to Strasberg by herself in 1936 to study books after Columbia refused to grant her a PhD! Their accounts of book rummaging and feminist takes on history are fun. Their family stories and their devoted friendship are delightful. Apparently they have a number of other co-written books that cover similar terrain. Good for book nerds and for asexual (and maybe aro?) companionship.

Ok I made fun of the glitches but also I had fun reading the book, and that’s the big thing. Details into conservation work! A faux Huntington Library! A commune that sells wine! Ridiculously handsome and gorgeous people! Next up she goes to Scotland so I am of course reading that.