Have Your Heights Been Sufficeintly Wuthered?
An old book with an old cat. In her introduction to my 2004 Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Wuthering Heights, author and critic Daphne Merkin calls the...
Reading Roundup for February
On the menu this month: feminist horror and Taylor Swift. I’ve been reading quite a bit lately and got ahead of myself, so I’m trying a reading...
Not In the Mood For (Reading About) Love
Two perfectly decent romances, but I’m not quite in the mood these days! Ironically, it is Valentine’s Day, and here I am, at my saturation point for romance...
Does It Matter Why We Read?
I don’t have a book review today, rather some thoughts on trends I’ve noticed in book & reading culture. (If this sounds terribly dull, you won’t hurt my...
Review: The Life Before Us
My friend Lena loves The Life Before Us by Émile Ajar/Romain Gary so much that she bought me a copy of it. It’s always risky to recommend a book you love to...
Finding Something Old and Something New in Byatt's Possession
Sometimes it’s worth keeping a paperback for 20 years! I first read Possession by A. S. Byatt many years ago for my college Victorian Literature class. I...
Review: Brigands & Breadknives
I’m sad you can’t see the cover illustration! (My university library removes book jackets, and public library copies had quite the queue.) Humanoid rodents...
Life is What Happens When You Try to Tackle Your TBR
My current reading I’ve had a lot of life thrown at me lately: a new semester at work, our elderly cat experiencing severe health issues, and my birthday...
"Romance" in Boston
I confessed in a recent newsletter that I’m a literary fiction snob (true!) who reads romance (also true!). It’s rare the two genres intersect, but enter...
Review: My Death by Lisa Tuttle
I finished 2025 with Lisa Tuttle’s My Death, and, my god, what what a way to go out. This taut, uncanny novella is difficult to categorize, even more...
What Makes a Good Romance Novel Work?
Happy New Year, friends and readers! In 2025, I read or listened to 22 romance novels. It was a hard year. The happy endings felt more like a necessity than...
Welcome & Gina's Best of 2025
A few of my top books of 2025, with Stacks the cat. I have been toying with the idea of a newsletter for my book reviews for several months, and it feels...
