Entirely fun and funny. A series of e-mails and texts between eight NYC women in their 20s. Felt like satire of e-mails my friends and I wrote when we were in our 20s and I cringe remembering, but we were not this awful (I don't think?). Made me laugh out loud at times. There were moments that I got a bit weary near the end, but light enough to keep me going.

Recommend if you need a funny and very quick palate cleanser between heavy books.

Having gotten into audiobooks only in the last couple of years, I came to realize that a skilled narrator makes a giant difference in the experience of a novel. Before choosing my next audiobook I did some google searching for audiobook awards and apparently this audiobok's narrator, Juliet Stevenson, won some sort of best narration of 2014 award for this novel. And it SHOWS. She was wonderful, and I do think that this book is a bit long if I had read it on paper, but with the narration it was marvelous and I didn't want it to end.

The story about a woman and her mother in post WWI London who need to take on boarders in their house due to circumstances after said war, the guests turn out to be quite a twosome. There's so much at play in these pages, I feel I could parse so many parts. I will say the cynic in me was revealed by the end; I almost shamed myself when it arrived thinking I knew exactly what would happen. Waters certainly surprised me in how her characters' story closed. I thoroughly enjoyed this literary thriller, and do look forward to reading more Waters (I also liked her horror novel The Little Stranger).

Well now I must read everything Babitz has written. What fun; what a proto-type for women's writing today (i.e., bloggers). What a woman's voice that took decades to be re-published probably because her point of view was so distinctly female as to be passed over.

What an odyssey. The premise and Morvern's actions are fascinating. It took me only a few pages to get into the rhythm of the Scottish lingo, and the way that he writes Morvern from third person but then slips into second person occasionally. This latter device at times made the reader feel one with Morvern, which was a strange feeling because we are not at all alike. It did make me empathize with her. Though after watching the film upon completion, I did feel as though the director of the movie had much more empathy for Morvern and her decisions than the book's author did. I can't help but this it's because the director is a woman, and the writer here is a man. Still, a truly fascinating (and f*ck*d up) book and one I won't soon forget.

I liked this novel a lot, but I have a feeling that I would have enjoyed it more in print form rather than audiobook. There was great writing and research on display here, and a few techniques that did not serve audio well. For example, sometimes I thought I missed an entire event or plot point only for it to be revealed a little later and I felt less lost but it was frustrating in that in-between time to feel like I missed something important when I really didn't.

This story is truly a great learning-through-fiction experience. I've read things about North Korea in terms of articles over the years, but Johnson does something quite incredible in creating characters who are living in that dictatorship. Thankfully Johnson also injects humor throughout, and I found myself smiling occasionally, though it never quite lets you forget how awful it all must be.

A collection of essays about women in literature, whether they are writing the novels (Plath, Woolf, the Brontes, Zelda Fitzgerald), women characters of male writers (Ibsen's plays), or they were women in the shadow of great writers (Jane Carlyle, Dorothy Wordsworth, also Zelda...). Hardwick is able to capture almost mini-biographies of these people and characters, and their relation to history and men and readers. Whenever I find myself reading classics, I often have a thought in the back of my mind about how women were written in that point in time... and Hardwick wrote these essays in the '70s, and even so much has changed since then. There are moments that I didn't agree with, but perhaps that's because I'm a woman reading this in 2018.

I was most taken by the essays on the Brontes, Zelda Fitzgerald, and surprisingly, the essay on Hedda Gabler. I remember just absolutely loving the play when I read it in college, and dissected it, too. And now I feel like I need to re-read... because it may seem different now.

Will definitely be reading more Hardwick...

I liked Fates & Furies but I didn't LOVE it. I wasn't sure if I would like this book, either, given that I haven't read a truly amazing short story collection in some time. But all of these stories are artful and have great impact.

I think Groff understands something about women that is hard to translate, to describe, to find in novels or books. But many of the women in these stories felt almost a little too close to home; their anxieties about the present and the future and their children just jarring at times because I felt these things sometimes, too.

Each story with something to behold, usually the prose and the way Groff swiftly weaves her tale. So much Florida and description and humidity and palmetto bugs and swamps and atmosphere.

Warning - there are some stories with children in harrowing situations. I highly recommend this, but I might shy a little bit from recommending to new moms or soon-to-be moms.

An impressive debut from Ritter, with a sardonic and likable protagonist and a whole lot of moody atmosphere. I got goosebumps occasionally, making realizations along with Abby Williams (a name that must have been intentionally chosen, given the storyline about high school girls with a hysterical/fake illness) . There's lots of layers to the novel, that left me thinking for some time afterwards about it. But, it's also enjoyable and page-turner on the surface. The end left me a little cool; there was resolution but maybe I was just disappointed to say goodbye to Abby.