books and cleverness
I read books of all sorts, but mostly kids' lit and young adult literature and speculative fiction for all ages—usually from a feminist perspective.
I've adopted a personalized version of the CHOICE reviews approach to recommendations/star ratings:
***** = Essential, a.k.a. truly love, absolute must-read, buy it now
**** = Highly Recommended, a.k.a. this is a really good book; I would buy it as a gift
*** = Recommended, a.k.a. pretty good; worth reading
** = Optional, a.k.a. meh
* = Not Recommended; a.k.a. this is not a good book
Code Name Verity
My goodness, this book has been on my to-read list for OVER A YEAR and I have just now gotten to it...what a fool I have been! Don't make my mistake; put down what you are doing right now--it's fine, you can finish that later--and read this instead. It's about young women, and friendship, and WWII, and women doing "men's jobs" in the war (like flying planes), and being heroic, and I can't say too much more about my feelings without giving away important plot points, so please just read it so we can talk about it together.
