Truth: Usually I'm running the other direction as soon as you say, "set in the 1600s" (I'M SORRY I DON'T LIKE YE OLDEN THYMES, OK) -- but this odd little book pulled me right in. Duchess Margaret Cavendish's struggle to find her voice and her place in the world feels totally contemporary. Just read that passage.

Oh, this beautiful, funny, heartbreaking, wise book. If you want to take a "sick day" off work to read it straight through, I won't judge. Just be prepared for certain scenes to play over and over in your mind after you're done. (If you're American, you're buying the one on the left. If you're British, you get the cover on the right, which Ann keeps telling people is a picture of me. It is not me. I can't do my hair and drive and text like that.)

Oh, this beautiful, funny, heartbreaking, wise book. If you want to take a "sick day" off work to read it straight through, I won't judge. Just be prepared for certain scenes to play over and over in your mind after you're done. (If you're American, you're buying the one on the left. If you're British, you get the cover on the right, which Ann keeps telling people is a picture of me. It is not me. I can't do my hair and drive and text like that.)

Imagine the sly, surreal, feminist bookbaby of two masterful short story writers -- say, Margaret Atwood and Megan Mayhew Bergman? Then imagine they let Stephen King babysit the bookbaby. (Not for long enough to really warp the bookbaby, just enough to fill the bookbaby's head with some crazy-dark ideas.) Beams' collection brings to mind some of the greatest and most imaginative contemporary literature yet is wholly original.

Loved it. And not just because it matched my dress. Also: am I nuts or did I spy lots of little allusions to Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye?

Holy moly. This is an *intense* read. It's life story of a girl named Josey, narrated by her mother Naomi... who is dead. Naomi was a slave in 1840s Alabama before she escaped and was later murdered. I don't think I took a breath for the first 30 pages.

OK, here we go: First Litsy post is the last book I finished, as of yesterday. Really enjoyed this contemporary, funny, touching rendition of the immigrant quest for the American Dream. (Eleanor Roosevelt the book-beagle was oddly riveted, too, although I'm not picking up whatever scent she's detecting.) This'll be a crowd-pleaser come October.