This isn’t a full review, mostly because I JUST finished this as an audiobook, and am still overwhelmed by the sheer level of awesomeness contained within.

PLOT! Okay, basically some peace-lovin’ hippies from San Francisco decide to take some monkeys from a mysterious “Mountain of Peace” nebulously near Kathmundu to SF and other major cities across the world. The monkeys are a SYMBOL, get it, because them leaving the Mountain of Peace brings peace to the rest of world… EXCEPT BY ...Read More

This week’s flashback book is Daughter of the Bright Moon, featuring Rifkind, a warrior-healer whose character inspired Xena, the warrior princess herself!

This was such a fun book. Rifkind’s one of the few lady sword-slingers coming out of this sword and sorcery genre who doesn’t have sexual assault as a part of her origin story. She’s brash, bold, and completely cool with how totally awesome she is. It’d be easy to tip this into Mary Sue territory, since she’s basically ...Read More

Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca is not an obvious choice for feminist critique. First, there’s the nameless female narrator searching for an identity and finding it only as “Mrs. De Winter.” Then there’s Rebecca, the obligatory dead woman who launches the whole tale. And then there’s Mrs. Danvers, the manipulative old bat. But Rebecca interests me as a feminist because it’s about three well-drawn, fleshed out women characters trying to carve out lives and identities for themselves despite gender and class ...Read More

Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin has been herald as one of the finest novels of the 21st century. And it is. Yet, it is perhaps a novel that often gets overlooked because of it’s “sci-fi” billing. Don’t’ get me wrong, I ADORE sci-fi/fantasy novels. In fact, at least eight out of ten trips to my local Borders Superstore will find me ensconced amidst the aisles, books in hands and no decision in sight. And perhaps, ...Read More

In my first year of teaching Freshman Comp at a local Boston college, I taught a class that I designed myself called “Virtual Realities, Virtual Bodies: Technology and Identity.” Students were asked to examine the evolving role of technology vis-à-vis human and gendered identity. Truth be told, I molded this entire class around one book: William Gibson’s Neuromancer.

Neuromancer is the story of Case, a cyber “cowboy” who, at the beginning of the novel, has been robbed ...Read More