I started working at a local nature center about a year ago, and since then I’ve delighted in being more aware of the nature that inhabits my yard, fills apartment window boxes, and struggles through sidewalk cracks. Thrive Where You’re Planted: A Guided Journal to Help You Connect with the Natural Wonders in Your Neighborhood is a lovely exercise book for those of us who want to become more aware of the natural world around whether … Continue reading Thrive Where You’re Planted by Andrea Debbink →
Warrior Girl Unearthed is thrilling, upsetting, and edifying. There are some structural problems with this book, it still delivered the squee factor, in that I was totally absorbed and emotionally invested in this story. This is a stand-alone novel set in the same community as in the book The Firekeeper’s Daughter, another excellent read. Both books tackle difficult issues that face indigenous young women in America with empathy, perception, tenderness, and grit. Neither is a … Continue reading Warrior Girl Unearthed, by Angeline Boulley →
It’s a busy season, but let’s all take a minute to celebrate Daisy Bates, the kickass leader of the Little Rock Nine and a lifelong activist. We must also celebrate the Little Rock Nine, a group of kickass students who desegregated Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Daisy was born in 1914. When she was three, her mother was raped and murdered by three White men. As she grew up and learned more details … Continue reading Kickass Women in History: Daisy Bates and the Little Rock Nine →
How can I review a book that has a plot twist in the last chapter that changes the entire book? Lore of the Wilds is a fantasy that is enjoyable but…odd. The heroine is twenty-one but the book reads as very YA despite one graphic sex scene. There’s a love triangle, but it’s difficult to write about it without revealing a spoiler that comes out of nowhere at the very end of the book. There … Continue reading Lore of the Wilds by Analeigh Sbrana →
If you are a history buff, a food buff or (ideally) both, then you have to read A History of the World in Ten Dinners: 2000 Years, 100 Recipes. This book is so well-organized and natural that I’m not sure if I should say that it’s a food book with history or a history book with food. I was this many days old when I learned about Edible History. Victoria Flexner and Jay Reifel host … Continue reading A History of the World in Ten Dinners by Victoria Flexner and Jay Reifel →
Y’all know I love my Brontës and I get so annoyed when either adaptations of their work or stories based on their lives get EVERYTHING WRONG, DAMMIT. My Brother’s Keeper is an eerie story involving the Brontë family, werewolves, and warring cults, and, darn it, it gets everything just absolutely perfect. I was so impressed with this book even though the whole warring cults thing was the least interesting thing about it. I’m copying the … Continue reading My Brother’s Keeper by Tim Powers →
Brace yourselves, Bitches, for a very abbreviated description of the life of Margaret Beaufort, one of the most Kickass Women in Tudor history, a period of time during which Kickass Women rather abounded despite their lack of legal rights. Here’s the basics. Lady Margaret Beaufort was born on May 31,1443. She was a descendant of King Edward III. Margaret became the sole heir of her father’s fortune in infancy and survived all manner of complicated … Continue reading Kickass Women in History: Margaret Beaufort →
A Haunting in the Arctic is emphatically not a romance, but it has some elements that are relevant to our interests, specifically female rage and mermaids and selkie legends. It’s very atmospheric and creepy, but it forgets to make sense. The plot revolves around a LOT of rape, and also includes graphic violence, self-harm and gaslighting. If I had realized that the plot involved so much rape, much of it committed on page and the … Continue reading A Haunting in the Arctic by C.J. Cooke →
This was simply delightful. I’ve always wished for Lydia Bennet and Mary Crawford to run away together and be pirate queens. This is not that book – but it’s the next best thing. Told from Lydia’s point of view, the book posits that Lydia is a witch and that her sister, Kitty, is in fact a cat and Lydia’s familiar. In a world of secret magic where every spell has a cost, Lydia must figure … Continue reading The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch by Melinda Taub →
I enjoyed Bride so much that I might put it on the keeper shelf. It’s the first book I’ve read by Ali Hazelwood, so I can’t tell you how it compares to her other work. But I can tell you that while Bride isn’t perfect, it’s a fun, though violent, paranormal romance between a mysterious brooding werewolf leader and a deeply sarcastic vampyre. The narrator of the book is the sarcastic vampyre whose name, I … Continue reading Bride by Ali Hazelwood →
This month I’m doing something a little different. Instead of a long post about one person, I’m sharing a set of links about two different people. We don’t know how they would have identified themselves if they lived today. They might, if alive today, have thought of themselves as Kickass Women, or Kickass Men, or Kickass Nonbinary People, or, in Thomas(ine’s) case), a Kickass Intersex Person, or something different. What we do know is that … Continue reading Kickass People in History: Thomas(ine) Hall and Mary Jones →
