Epinions Recent Reviews for murasaki

At the Synagogue

Thu, 9 Oct 2003 20:38:37 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - I don’t review many children’s books, mostly because I don’t have children. However, here I am, doing my first review of a book for children younger than twelve. First, I must note that I really like the concept behind the Look what I see! Where...

The Samurai's Daughter

Thu, 10 Jul 2003 15:55:19 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - The Samurai’s Daughter is Sujata Massey’s sixth Rei Shimura mystery. Throughout the series,...

Wintering: What You Don't Know About Plath and Should

Thu, 19 Jun 2003 08:23:00 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath holds a certain sense of immediacy for me. I am about to...

The Loser's Club

Thu, 22 May 2003 09:47:56 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - I am of two minds about Richard Perez’s The Loser’s Club, recently published by the small but spunky Ludlow Press. Part of me wonders if this novel is just thinly veiled dreck, while the other part of me thinks I’ve been reading...

Eva Moves the Furniture: Strangely Compelling

Mon, 5 May 2003 08:58:36 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - The cover of Eva Moves the Furniture features a woman in a red party dress floating in a body of water. The trees reflect in the water and the skirt of the red dress bells around the floating woman, eyes closed, her feet together and perfectly...

Shatter the Mirror and Start Over

Sat, 8 Mar 2003 09:04:41 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - With the exception of Edna, Rainer, Maya and Sylvia, I don’t read that much poetry outside of my classes, but I was game to give Into a Mirror and Through a Lens: Forty Poems on the Mother/Child Relationship from Conception to Marriage a try...

The Return of the Native: Books My High School English Teacher...

Fri, 28 Feb 2003 09:16:02 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - ...Could Never Make Me Read, But I'll Read it for a Write-Off!

My Confession

The second semester of my sophomore year in college, I found myself utterly overwhelmed with English papers, history papers, and my weekly...

Sports Night

Mon, 3 Feb 2003 09:32:02 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - The summer I spent in Indianapolis, I went shopping during the Indy 500. Instead of watching the Super Bowl every year, I go shopping or catch a movie. During the Olympics, the events I like to watch all entail subjective judgments and therefore, in...

The Master of All Desires

Wed, 22 Jan 2003 17:07:12 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - Although my to-be-read stack seems to increase exponentially, no matter how many volumes I consume, I finally got around to Judith Merkle Riley’s The Master of All Desires. I’ve been an avid fan of Riley’s historical novels for...

Avoid Ugly American Abroad Syndrome: Don't Be an Emily

Fri, 6 Dec 2002 23:07:05 GMT

rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - Just before I started this review, my cat knocked The Diaries of Emily Saidouili off my desk, right into the trash. I almost left it there. Let me note that I love books; I love reading them; I love having them; I would go crazy on a desert...

Nursery Crimes...

Fri, 22 Nov 2002 20:04:52 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - I was in the mood for something light after some of the weightier topics I’ve been reading lately for my classes. I had heard of Ayelet (pronounced I-yell-it) Waldman, mostly because of her husband, but did not decide to check out her books until I...

Enoch's Portal: Step Through the Door

Mon, 28 Oct 2002 07:56:55 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - Enoch’s Portal is not an easy book to categorize. The front cover calls the novel “A Stephan Raszer Investigation,” and I suppose I could call it a mystery. Like most mysteries, the plot has elements of action and adventure, some...

Guardian Angel: Get Thee Hence!

Wed, 16 Oct 2002 18:20:57 GMT

rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - Thanks to our wonderful category leads, I received Guardian Angel, a novel by first-time author Jim Chriss, as an advance copy from the publisher. I’ve never been one to turn down a free book (or any book, as my budget can attest), but maybe...

The Tale of Murasaki

Wed, 25 Sep 2002 07:30:41 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - A friend who knows my epinions ID recently sent me The Tale of Murasaki by Liz Dalby. I’d had this novel on my list to buy for a while, but other books took precedence. Once I received the book, it sat on my nightstand in “the stack” for a few...

Herland and Life without Men

Sat, 21 Sep 2002 08:18:52 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - During a semester on American Realism, one of my classmates introduced Herland, a novel by Charlotte Perkins Gilman who also wrote The Yellow Wallpaper. Now that I’m engaged in my thesis work on feminist dystopias, I decided to expand my...

The Nine Tailors: The Bell Tolls for Thee

Tue, 17 Sep 2002 07:17:15 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - So I thought The Nine Tailors would be about sewing or some such. Instead, with Dorothy Sayers’ inimitable penchant for the obscure, she researched and wrote a mystery about bells. Like many hobbies, bell-ringing has its own culture, vocabulary,...

American Local Color Writing

Fri, 13 Sep 2002 11:48:51 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - I’ll have to confess up front that I have not read all of the short stories in American Local Color Writing, 1890-1920, and I don’t want to right away, just for the sake of this review. I have a policy of always having something on my bookshelf...

Stay: An Authentic Lesbian Heroine

Mon, 9 Sep 2002 07:06:38 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - I became aware of Nicola Griffith when I read her first book, Ammonite, a feminist separatist dystopia. I moved on to Slow River, her second book also in the science-fiction genre. I expected The Blue Place and its sequel,...

The Awakening: It's About Time

Thu, 5 Sep 2002 07:42:24 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - Unlike other writers from the Realism period, including Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin did not shy away from female sexuality. Her novel, The Awakening, published in 1899, shocked the reading public of the time with its frank depiction of an...

Soul Music

Sun, 1 Sep 2002 08:39:42 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - I am hopelessly going out of order in my reading of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. I’ve already reviewed Hogfather, which was my first introduction to Susan Sto-Helit, but not to Death, as recurring characters. In Soul Music,...

Living Dead in Dallas

Wed, 28 Aug 2002 07:55:25 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - My husband bought me Living Dead in Dallas a few weeks ago since I had liked Charlaine Harris’ first book in her series, Dead Until Dark. I quickly read Ms. Harris’ sophomore offering, but it could have waited. I don’t mean to say that...

The Riverside Chaucer: The Only Chaucer You Will Ever Need

Thu, 22 Aug 2002 07:30:40 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - For my Canterbury Tales seminar, the professor had us purchase only one textbook (almost unheard of in graduate literature courses): The Riverside Chaucer. Even at $68.75 for one book, this was still the cheapest amount spent on any one of my...

The Mount: The Mount: Edith Wharton's American Home

Sun, 18 Aug 2002 19:21:53 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - I recently had the pleasure of visiting the former country home of Edith Wharton, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and early 19th century innovator in interior design.

History

Edith Wharton and her husband, Teddy, built The Mount...

When Someone You Love Is Depressed

Wed, 14 Aug 2002 08:48:13 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - Having experience mild depression (dysthymia) myself and gone through some therapy, one would think I could empathize with other people in my life who happen to be depressed. Unfortunately, for me at least, that is not the case. Recently, when someone...

Swift as Desire

Sat, 10 Aug 2002 07:29:39 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author murasaki - I absolutely adored Like Water for Chocolate, but I’ve been rather leery of Laura Esquivel’s work since then. I read (and listened) to The Law of Love, but the futuristic plot elements were a tremendous detriment, in my mind, though I like...