We first meet Crystal Spangler when she’s a dreamy twelve-year-old Virginia mountain girl, in the summer before she begins high school. We follow her as her dreaminess leads her to look for meaning, or for herself, in all the wrong places. I adore Lee Smith’s work. She writes about the mountains of Virginia. I’m in […]
This week’s question at Booking Through Thursday is Given the choice, which do you prefer? Real history? Or historical fiction? (Assume, for the purposes of this discussion that they are equally well-written and engaging.) I’m a dedicated fiction reader, so it’s almost impossible for me to get past my belief that non-fiction is dry and […]
Strange things start happening around best friends Zanna and Deeba. A fox appears on the edge of the playground, watching Zanna. They come across graffiti saying “Zanna For Ever!” A woman they don’t know approaches Zanna in a café and tells her what an honor it is to meet her. It all culminates one night […]
I know all of you who live farther north than I do are going to laugh at this, but I AM SICK OF SNOW. We had 14 inches dropped on us over Friday and Saturday and we were all but shut down. We used to get decent 3-4″ snows pretty regularly here in the mountains […]
I can’t even really say what this is about without giving anything away. Let’s just say that the stupidest angel’s mission to create a Christmas miracle goes horribly, hilariously awry in ways that only Christopher Moore could write about. This wasn’t quite as funny as I expected it to be, but I think since reading […]
Well, meeting the artist/illustrator. Close enough, right? If you read any of the big names in fantasy, chances are you’ve come across some of Charles Vess’s artwork. Listening to him talk last night was like listening to a who’s who in the world of fantasy publishing. Names like Neil Gaiman, Charles de Lint, George R.R. […]
4 Stars. It’s been several years since I read this, so I can’t say much about it except that I liked it. And I saved this quote from the book: “There are two kinds of women: those who marry princes and those who marry frogs. The frogs never become princes, but it is an acknowledged fact that a prince may very well, in the […]
3.5 Stars. Charlotte just isn’t quite Henrietta, Letty, or even Mary. She spent much of the book just fantasizing about Robert. While interesting enough, I kept waiting for the comedy of misunderstandings and the adventure of French spies pitted against our faithful British crew to get started. About halfway through, things […]
Sarah Addison Allen, author of Garden Spells and The Sugar Queen, had a signing at a local bookstore today, so my mom and I braved the cold and the flurries to go see her. We both just love her books, and our reading tastes rarely overlap. She was very sweet, even when we approached her […]
4 Stars. You should see my copy of this book. One of my co-workers, who, for various reasons, has only recently seen how much I read, saw all the neon post-it flags sticking out of the side of my book and asked me what on earth I was doing. I blushed and tried to explain how the people in Bailey White’s humorous little […]
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