Welcome to November! A brand new month of reading! Here’s how we’re kicking things off: Lara: I just finished the utterly delightful Alis Hawkins book, A Bitter Remedy. Historical mystery with a fearsome female protagonist. Yes please! Tara: I’m reading Tempted by the Bollywood Star by Sophia Singh Sasson and I’m really enjoying it! It’s a second-chance f/f romance between a closeted Bollywood star and a Hollywood producer, a decade after their initial kick at … Continue reading Whatcha Reading? November 2023, Part One →
Bridgerton Collection Volume 2 by Julia Quinn is $4.99! The first collection has been on sale before and if you’re looking to slowly accrue these books on your e-reader, this is good deal. Do you have a favorite Bridgerton novel?
Continue reading →
Sarah Weinman joins me to talk about true crime, a genre which I absolutely cannot read! We talk about how true crime “can be a catalyst for social change” and why people, especially White women, obsessed with true crime. Plus we talk about Sarah’s latest books, Scoundrel, which has a surprising (to me) literary angle for true crime, and the anthology, Evidence of Things Seen. We discuss at length looking at the true crime genre … Continue reading 588. True Crime as Social Change with Sarah Weinman →
Update: Paste Magazine acquired Jez and it’s back! THANK GOODNESS. … Wow, this one hits in the gut: G/O Media has effective immediately suspended publication of Jezebel, one of the oldest sites looking at “popular culture through a feminist lens,” to quote their masthead. Per Ben Mullin on Twitter, G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller announced to the entire staff that they’re suspending publication in the fourth paragraph of a company-wide email. While there are a … Continue reading Jezebel is Done, Layoffs Abound, This Sucks →
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie is $2.99! know Carrie really loves this book (and the entire series, I believe). It’s also a Hugo Award winner! Readers really loved the scifi world building, though some admitted wanting more action in the first book of the Imperial Radch series.
Continue reading →
Man, I should have known better. Venus Merriwell was annoying as hell in the first book, but she was less annoying in the second, so I did hold out hope that she would be an interesting protagonist in her book. Alas! Alack! Woe! She was not. I still read the whole thing, though. Venus Merriwell’s great passion in life is the orphanage that she runs with her partners. They need to expand and with a … Continue reading Never Wager with a Wallflower by Virginia Heath →
Welcome back to Wednesday Links! My brother is currently visiting and has been in town since Saturday. It’s been a pretty casual visit so far, but it’s great to see him. I last saw him when I visited him in Germany over two years ago and the last time he visited me in the Boston area was back in 2016 for the Fourth of July. He lives in Korea and his one request here was … Continue reading Links: Kickstarters, Bookstores, & More →
John Eyre by Mimi Matthews is $2.99! This is a retelling of the Bronte classic and has similar elements of a Gothic historical romance. Have you read this one? Carrie read it and gave it a C+ in a Lightning Review.
Continue reading →
by SB Sarah · Nov 8, 2023 at 2:00 am · Comments Off on Gift Guide 2023: Bookish Personalized Gifts!
It’s time for our annual tradition: the Smart Bitches 2023 Gift Guides! It’s early enough that there should still be time to order personalized gifts for your favorite bookish people – so let’s take a look to see what beautiful options are available! Want to see? Just click that image above or click right here, and come shop with us! And if you’d like to browse some more, we have a complete Stuff We Like archive, … Continue reading Gift Guide 2023: Bookish Personalized Gifts! →
RECOMMENDED: The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows by Olivia Waite is $1.99! Carrie and Tara wrote a joint review and gave this one a B+:
This book does a lot of things right. The character work is deep and brilliant, the historical context is plentiful and guides readers along even if they know nothing, and the writing is so beautifully done. Like I mentioned above, the overall pace of the story didn’t bother me, just the pace of the romance. If that would have been sped up, this would be a near perfect book for me. I still recommend it, but you need to go into this expecting the slowest of slow burns.
Continue reading →
