This book was incredible. Each story spoke of the writers' strength and endurance through supremely difficult times, and I ate it up. These women conquered poverty, hunger, censorship, and patriarchy to write beautiful, destructive, and soul-punching words. Simply put: these ladies are SO FREAKING HARDCORE, DUDE.

I read this book to research for a short story, and I wasn't disappointed. Each short story is preceded with a mini-biography of the author, so now I have pages of notes in my notebook about Japanese women writers during the period. I admire them so much, and I scribbled down titles of their full works to read later. Awesome read!

This book was a challenge for me. On the one hand, it'a well-written dystopia with humor as dry as a desert afternoon. On the other hand, it uses the tropes A Man who is Just Trying To Get By and Loves His Children and has Martial Problems and Everyone Around Him Is A Jerk so much that I wanted to gag. Human compassion not only thrown out the window in this book, but it might have never existed in the first place. Saunders' brutal, bleak, and borderline sociopathic future is one I never, ever want to see.

This book is a journey. It's a walk backstage to see who Neil Gaiman is and what he does, from writing to touring to marketing. After reading, I feel like I know Gaiman as a person more, which is nice, though it came as a surprise since I thought this would haver more fiction in it. The book actually contains only a few poems and prose, and the bulk of it is intros Gaiman wrote for various publications and the American God's weblog. The weblog was my favorite since it's from a time that the publishing industry was more in between digital and paper, and I would recommend it to any would-be authors wanting to know what the publishing/marketing process is like. All and all, a solid read.

My feelings on this book are...complicated. On the one hand, like other reviewers, I thought Amber, the main plot mover, stretched belief: what family is so uncommunicative that they let a complete stranger into their homes and lives so easily? Amber is so rude that I was left wondering why on earth she is so important to the family members, because I would kick her out on her blonde butt. Not to mention the cliches. SO MANY cliches. The family is a plethora: the adulterous professor who finds poetic inspiration through sex; the irreverent teenager whose irreverence hides insecurities enough to fill Fort Knox; the boy with a dark secret; the novelist out of ideas. On the craftsmanship side of things, the prose is very poetic, which sometimes hits my exact "oh this is beautiful" sweet spot and other times is over the top and eyeroll-worthy. Existence is hard. We get it.

ON THE OTHER HAND, I had a good think about this book involving a white board and multi-colored dry erase markers. And I realized all the cliches and Amber's rudeness is the point of the novel. I know, hear me out. In the beginning, the family is living their cliche lives. We, the readers, are bored and wish the family would get over themselves. Amber does just that. Really. She is our savior. See, Amber smashes. Amber is like the Hulk. Amber smashes and shakes and finger points and talks and sexytimes the family out of their funk. She is the Destroyer, who destroys typical modes of being and the boxes people put themselves in. She shocks people into talking and speaking authentically with her, and then in turn speaking authentically with each other. In a book obsessed with visuals (see: the cover), Amber deposits the thesis that it is through words that we confront reality and connect to others. That's why The Accidental is a novel, full of words, and not a photo book or a movie.

Now, getting people to talk to one another is a worthy, important message. It's Man Booker Prize worthy, which is the prize The Accidental was nominated for. Ali Smith obviously worked very hard on this book and probably obsessed over each word and indent. However, I had to get through a lot of crap and use up some perfectly good dry erase markers to get to her message. That's a pretty high barrier and explains to me why The Accidental doesn't have higher ratings.

So how to fix this? Add reader group discussion questions? Change the marketing to a poetic novel so people are warned ahead of time that extra thinking is required? I honestly don't know. Reading The Accidental was a journey I ended up enjoying, but emphasis on "ended."

Fun story: I heard about this book because I watched The Descendants. Yep. Haha, well, actually, the trailer for the movie appeared on The Descendants DVD, and the story seemed right up my alley, so I checked the book out at library. And I have no regrets.

SNOW FLOWER AND THE SECRET FAN is engaging, engrossing, lyrical, and heart-wrenching. With a wave of a fan and a snap of bound feet, the reader is hooked. See keeps up a steady, period-specific voice throughout the novel, and I ate it up like caramelized taro. It was fascinating to step into the closed Confucian inner realm of women and the home. It was beautiful and comforting to see how, even though women nominally are a "useless branch" of families, they still have power, voice, desire, and choice. It was an inspiration how the women of the novel band together to survive the grief of their lives, to sing and create and be despite all the misogynistic rhetoric. Like...wow. Talk about resilience.

There are some first(ish) novel mistakes, such as tendency to show off historical research, but they were few and far between. I was too in love with the nu shu secret writing and the female friendships to really care. Speaking of the friendships, there are some shades of LGBTQIA to the narrative. Lily, the narrator, can be read as homoromantic asexual, as she has a very deep and explicitly loving bond with Snow Flower, but zero interest in "bed business" as she likes to call it. Snow Flower is harder to pinpoint, but she does love Lily and her husband, so a case can be made for pan or bi. I'd also like to add a trigger warning for body horror and domestic violence.

Overall, though, such an amazing and beautiful read. I'm excited to check out See's other books.

Whooo-boooy. I listened to the audiobook of THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET while driving from 8pm to 2am, across California, and none of what I say is influenced by caffeine overdose or hyper sleep deprivation. If I'd been stone cold sober, well-rested, and not driving 75mph on the I-5, my opinion would be the same. I love this book. I love the characters: the way they break and the way they love. I love the delicate vignette style. I love Cisneros' voice, both literary and verbal, and how much she succeeded in bringing it out and writing not only her story but many people's stories. This book deserves every star, every award, and everyone to read it.

Much like the movie ENCHANTED, JAM is both a love letter and a parody of the apocalypse genre. And it is outrageously funny. Like, I got stares, both from animals and humans, because I was laughing so hard and so much while reading. The characters were realistic and true, just regular people muddling through their (jammed) day. The tone, atmosphere, and mood of the book was helped by so many on point metaphors that I'm counting JAM as reading for my Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing. It's a brilliant book and absolutely a must-read for anyone who likes Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett's GOOD OMENS and Douglas Adams' HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY series.

Humor notwithstanding, what's keeping me from giving the novel a full five stars is the ending. It was super brutal and unexpected for an essentially comic story. I won't spoil anything, but peanut butter and toast fails to be applied.

Where do I even begin with this book?

THE MAGICIANS was recommended to me by a very excited friend. And, after reading, I can tell why he was excited. While other novels try to re-create Hogwarts, THE MAGICIANS goes beyond. The brilliant magic system is a cross between archaic languages, geometry, and finger gymnastics. Right off the bat, international schools are mentioned, and characters make fun and are aware of how absurdly obsessed with English boarding school tradition their school is. The school, Brakebills, has a forced study abroad in Antarctica, which is my favorite plot sequence of the entire book. There are a frickton of diverse characters and diverse magic. There's a morally ambivalent Narnia. The summary-esque prose makes for easy, quick reading, to the point where it's nothing to start reading at 12pm and be surprised it's 12am when you stop.

It's just the characters that gum up the works.

Imagine Severus Snape. Imagine a seventeen year old Severus Snape. Now, take his emotional intelligence, and drain it to the size of half a teaspoon. THAT's how dumb Q , our main character, is. Color me frustrated. Instead of priorities, Q has THE GRADUATE movie level lost-ness, boredom, superiority complex, and Alice. Alice is his partner. Alice is supreme in every way. I love Alice. I'm super sad about what happens to Alice. Take three guesses what happens to Alice. Yes, it's that sort of book.

So, I'm divided on whether to read the rest of the series. On the one hand, what if Alice? On the other hand, how many pages until Q grows up?

Now, THIS is a book worth getting lost in. A rollicking, thrilling read with more plots than you can shake a stick at, and a leading lady that takes no gruff and I want to nominate for President. I highly, highly recommend all the Thursday Next books to readers and English lit fans everywhere. I'm definitely picking up the next Next soon.

While I love all of my clients' books equally, I could not be more proud of Samantha and REAPING ANGEL. Saboviec envisioned a story that spanned continents, centuries, and peoples, and she exceeded all goals and expectations with this thrilling sequel to her previous novel.

This story has a dash of everything I love: adventure, romance, horror, spirituality, authentic characters, gender fluidity, diversity, and historical shenanigans that tickle me pink. To add to this excellence, the writing style is so engaging that it's dangerous. Seriously. When I read GUARDING ANGEL, the world-building sucked me in so far that it took /days/ to convince myself I didn't have my own guardian angel and reincarnation plan. With REAPING ANGEL, I had all those feelings again plus vivid Jack the Ripper nightmares. You know it's a good book when it makes you feel something: you know it's a great book when it infests your very dreams.

In sum, I highly, highly recommend both GUARDING ANGEL and REAPING ANGEL to any and all adult readers. I dare you to take Enael's hand, go on a journey with her, and not come back a little bit changed.