I started writing this in 2020, but all that matters is that I got it up, right?
Marsha, at 23, was among the vanguard during the Stonewall Riots. She’s often credited with throwing the “shot glass heard around the world,” but she said she didn’t even get to Stonewall until “the place was already on fire….The riots had already started.”
Continue reading “Marsha P. Johnson [1946–1992]”
Back cover text: Darrow would have lived in peace, but his enemies brought him war. So he fights back. To win, Darrow must inspire his people to break their chains and claim a destiny too long denied—and too glorious to surrender.
Continue reading “Morning Star—Pierce Brown”
Back cover text: When unattended environmental and economic crises lead to social chaos, not even gated communities are safe. In a night of fire and death, Lauren Olamina, a minister’s young daughter, loses her family and home and ventures out into the unprotected American landscape. But what begins as a flight for survival soon leads to something much more: a startling vision of human destiny…and the birth of a new faith.
Continue reading “Parable of the Sower—Octavia E. Butler”
Description from website: HUMANxNATURE is an anthology of writers reaching out from beyond the confines of their disciplines to engage the natural world. This anthology of essays is a recognition of the ways the world shapes us—and how increasingly, we leave our own inescapable print on the world. As our relationship to the nature world changes, we ask writers to explore what nature gives to us, and what we might owe in return.
Continue reading “human x nature [vol 1]—Haley E.D. Houseman & Missy J. Kennedy”
Synopsis: If you could re-create a day, what dark secrets would you uncover?
From New York Times #1 bestselling author Brandon Sanderson comes a detective thriller in a police beat like no other. Anthony Davis and his partner Chaz are the only real people in a city of 20 million, sent there by court order to find out what happened in the real world 10 days ago so that hidden evidence can be brought to light and located in the real city today.
Within the re-created Snapshot of May 1st, Davis and Chaz are the ultimate authorities. Flashing their badges will get them past any obstruction and overrule any civil right of the dupes around them. But the crimes the detectives are sent to investigate seem like drudgery—until they stumble upon the grisly results of a mass killing that the precinct headquarters orders them not to investigate. That’s one order they have to refuse.
The hunt is on. And though the dupes in the replica city have no future once the Snapshot is turned off, that doesn’t mean that both Davis and Chaz will walk out of it alive tonight.
Continue reading “Snapshot/Dreamer—Brandon Sanderson”Hookay, it’s been a while since I sat down and did this, but here we go! This might contain a little bit more profanity than usual because the further I got in writing this the more outraged I got.
Ya’ll have heard of the atomic bomb (I hope), and some of you have probably even hard of Otto Hahn—he won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1944 for the discovery of nuclear fission (but he didn’t get it until 1945). Does it surprise anyone that he should have shared that award with a woman, but her involvement in it was buried until years later? No? Good. You all know what this blog is about, then.
Back cover text: Sophie has the great misfortune of being the eldest of three daughters, destined to fail miserably should she ever leave home to seek her fate. But when she unwittingly attracts the ire of the Witch of the Waste, Sophie finds herself under a horrid spell that transforms her into an old lady. Her only chance at breaking it lies in the ever-moving castle in the hills: the Wizard Howl’s castle. To untangle the enchantment, Sophie must handle the heartless Howl, strike a bargain with a fire demon, and meet the Witch of the Waste head-on. Along the way, she discovers that there’s far more to Howl—and herself—than first meets the eye.
Continue reading “Howl’s Moving Castle—Diana Wynne Jones”
Back cover text: Long before American Indian women’s literature achieved its current popularity, the writings of E. Pauline Johnson (1861–1913) pioneered the field. A mixed-blood of Mohawk-English descent, Johnson gained renown for her literary recitals and theatrical performances in Canada, England, and the United States, being billed at the turn of the century as the “Mohawk Princess.” Many of Johnson’s stories in The Moccasin Maker depict nineteenth-century Indian women caught between the forces of cultural continuity and the pressures of assimilation.
Critics in Johnson’s own day praised her treatment of Indian themes and her descriptions of nature, but they ignored her vivid portrayals of women. In this edition of Johnson’s stories, A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff corrects this oversight and provides an extensive introduction and annotations to place Johnson and her work solidly within the genres of American Indian and women’s fiction.
Continue reading “The Moccasin Maker—E. Pauline Johnson”
Back cover text: Sent to a boarding school in Ancelstierre as a young child, Sabriel has had little experience with the random power of Free Magic or the Dead who refuse to stay dead in the Old Kingdom. But during her final semester, her father, the Abhorsen, goes missing, and Sabriel knows she must enter the Old Kingdom to find him. She soon finds companions in Mogget, a cat whose aloof manner barely conceals its malevolent spirit, and Touchstone, a young Charter Mage long imprisoned by magic, now free in body but still trapped by painful memories. As the three travel deep into the Old Kingdom, threats mount on all sides. And every step brings them closer to a battle that will pit them against the true forces of life and death—and bring Sabriel face-to-face with her own destiny.
With Sabriel, the first installment in the Abhorsen trilogy, Garth Nix exploded onto the fantasy scene as a rising star, in a novel that takes readers to a world where the line between the living and the dead isn’t always clear—and sometimes disappears altogether.
Continue reading “Sabriel—Garth Nix”Before we get into the nitty gritty (dirt band) of Tomoe Gozen, who will cut off your head, let’s all sit down for a very quick history lesson, delivered in my best impression of my high school history teacher. (Except probably not, because all of this knowledge comes from Google and hers came from actual study.)
The first thing you need to know is that Tomoe lived through a civil war in Japan that marked the end of the Heian period (794–1185) and ushered in the beginning of the age of the samurai. This civil war was basically a family feud in which the refined and Kyoto-based Taira clan faced off against the rough and provincial-based Minamoto clan (these guys probably unironically listened to country music).
Continue reading “Tomoe Gozen [c. 1157–1184/1247]”
midwest sensibility 