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
Fire
Again, I love the strong feminist vein in both Cashore's books, but the cult of beauty as the central device of this book doesn't seem very interestingly explored--and the mechanism does smack a bit of the Cullens. Beyond that, the plot is fairly forgettable and the main character is virtually indistinguishable from the main character in Graceling.
