Margaret Hale, the heroine in Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South is not a typical Victorian lady. Continue reading Woman as Una Duessa: Revisiting Gaskell’s Beloved Classic North and South: Margaret Hale’s Duality
This post is technically not a review. Rather it’s a rant about the typical novels in the romance genre. I nearly zapped a historical romance out of my iPad while reading it one evening. It wasn’t badly written. It wasn’t boring. But it annoyed me that for the umpteenth time, the author says her hero has “wide/broad shoulders.” Now, how often must she remind of … Continue reading No Broad Shoulders. No Romance.
I just read an article published early this year (February) that had me thinking again about book reviews. I was led to the article by a more recent one written three months later by the same author, Lev Grossman, in which he weighs in on the debate in certain circles between literary fiction and genre fiction. In both this debate and Grossman’s musings on book … Continue reading Who’s To Say: Subverting the Tyranny in Book Reviews
Don’t you just love, get exasperated, sometimes get thrilled, even occasionally feel depressed at, the reviews you get for your beloved creation? You pause, take it in, and then, you tell yourself it is as much about the readers as it is about you. Or better yet, it is more about the readers than it is about you. At which point, you ought to relax … Continue reading What Some People Are Saying: Book Reviews
Escape Into Reality 