man, if it’s one thing I hate it’s over-rated poets who take themselves too seriously.

J’adore Nina Bouraoui. Avec chaque livre, je lui aime plus en plus. Elle ecrit avec une style si belle, si simple, si sensible, qu’elle me fait vouler pleurer. Garcon manque c’est une roman autobiographique, de son enfance en Algerie et donc sa vie en France plutard. Ses relations, ses amies, son tristesse, le racisme, l’amour, l’experience d’une fille d’un pere Algerien et une mere francaise, qui aime la mer a folie, qui est un garcon manque, une jeune lesbienne sans mots, sans langage pour ses emotions, ses pensees. Garcon manque est une bonne introduction a son autre roman magnifique, Mes mauvaises pensees.

Theodora Goss will haunt you. I stumbled across her chapbook “The Rose in Twelve Petals” at Small Beer Press and bought it on a whim and I’ve been in her thrall ever since. In the Forest of Forgetting is her first book published and includes stories from the chapbook (worth getting for the poetry alone, not included in the book); a gorgeous collection of intricate, subtle work. Goss is a precise and elegant writer, with a gothic sensibility. It’s not mere pretty fairy tales however; her stories trip you up when you least expect it, leave an impact that stays in your head for days and weeks afterward. Her reworking of Sleeping Beauty in “The Rose in Twelve Petals” is one of the best, imaginative retellings I’ve ever read. “Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold” and “In the Forest of Forgetting” have a surreal symetry; and her Hungarian roots lend a melancholic, mythic quality to her work in “Letters from Budapest” and “The Rapid Advance of Sorrow.” Miss Emily Gray is a deceptively genteel fairy godmother I look forward to seeing more of—Mary Poppins with a dangerous fae streak. Goss is going to be a major figure in the fantasy, interstitial field of literature and I can’t wait for more.

It’s Douglas Adams so it’s got its good moments, but it doesn’t achieve the same kind of highly implausible perfection that Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency does. But it’s still a good surreal carnival ride, if a little bumpy and uneven.

witty, elegant, sharp and bold, like a fine red wine…but strangely androcentric for a queer fantasy written by a lesbian author. The men all good for nothing, and hardly any women at all, as Austen once put it. Still, I’d consider the lack of significant female characters (with the possible exception of the Duchess Tremontaine) to be an odd choice on the author’s part, rather than a serious flaw in the work. I thoroughly reveled in it.

This is a sweet, subtle portrait of a young Irish girl finding herself in Dublin. It’s very much a first novel, but you can see the characteristics of Donoghue’s style that would deepen and grow in sophistication with her future work. As always, Donoghue knows how to depict the tumbled emotions and inner workings of a woman’s heart with a fresh, distinctive voice that’s somehow utterly familiar. I was this girl once, alone and confused and trying to figure it all out, and Donoghue captures her journey perfectly.

1602 is pure Gaiman genius. Thoroughly engrossing, even though I’m not really familiar with the Marvel universe. Loads of comic book fun, sure, but also deeper resonances with issues confronting us today: war and violence, persecution and bigotry, faith and science. Must read.

There’s less vagueness in the depiction of Maggie and Hopey’s relationship, and the storyline about Maggie’s divorce adds poignancy (and a little heart to Hopey’s sarcastic demeanor). Plus you find out how Penny Century met her billionaire sugar-daddy.

I was wandering around Dublin, in the rain, ducking in and out of shops mostly in an effort to keep dry, footsore and hungry, when I stumbled into a little bookshop hidden away down a narrow lane. I went in, checked out the LGBT section, and saw A Noise from the Woodshed sitting there on the shelf, a first edition, immaculate. I pulled it off the shelf and was entranced by the swirling blue and green cover. I’d read the title story in an anthology of lesbian fiction I had back home, far away, and figured I’d never get to read the rest of Dorcey’s work, since she’s so hard to find. But of course, here she was, home in Dublin. So I guess it was meant to be.
The stories in this collection are beautiful, full of rage and compassion, sensuality and pain. Dorcey writes of women’s truths with both humor and honesty. But my favorite is still “A Noise from the Woodshed,” a joyous, energetic tale of two women “making a living, making a loving” together in a crazy world; it makes you feel like even with all the fighting and struggle we have to do, sometimes it does work out in the end.

Carol P. Christ has been profoundly important to my spiritual journey. Her clear, direct prose is accessible to the non-academic, and her passionate commitment to nature and women’s spirituality is illuminating. These essays describe her transformation from theologian of Judiasm and Christianity to the Goddess movement, and she articulated things that I could only intuit. She covers ideas like the need for women to express anger at God, the power of symobls and the necessity to create new ones, the violence that patriarchal religion visits on women and nature. A beautiful and important book.