Author(s): Neal Stephenson
Title: The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
Series: none
Genre/subject: cyberpunk
Rating: 9

( Spoilers for the back cover )

Hi! I've been a member for a couple months, and finally have some stuff to post!

 

Author(s): William Makepeace Thackeray
Title:Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero
Series: none
Genre/subject: novel (Victorian); Regency England, in pretty much its entirety
Rating: 9



 

Translator: Diablo Cody.
Title: Candy Girl.
Genre/subject: Strippin'.
ISBN: 1863953426
Publisher: Schwartz.
Rating: 2.5/10

Notes: The book seems to have an interesting enough premise. Diablo Cody, a young university graduate gets tired of the nine-to-five doldrum she has only just entered and decides to take up stripping part time. 'Woo,' we cry. 'Titties.' Candy Girl follows her year on the seedy side of the tracks in sometimes excruciating detail, covering her new-found leg bruises, creepy Russian customers and Sudanese seekin' $100 outdoor sex.

For the rest o' my review, see my journal.

Translator: Jeffrey Gantz.
Title: The Mabinogion.
Genre/subject: Medieval Literature.
ISBN: 0140443223
Publisher/Edition: Penguin Classics.
Rating: For fun reading: 6. For medievalists: 8-9.
Notes:

The Mabinogion is a broad collection of medieval Welsh manuscripts, which were collected in the fourteenth century. The introduction to the Penguin contains a useful summary of the scholarly debate regarding the period of the texts, at least up until the 1970s when the edition was first published. As ever, Wikipedia has a pretty good summary of things; the scholarly consensus is for a period ranging betwixt 1066 and 1200.

For the rest of my review, head over to my journal.

Author: Charles de Lint.
Title: Waifs and Strays.
Genre/subject: (Urban) Fantasy/Anthology.
ISBN: 0142401587
Rating: 7-8? Ratings aren't for me.
Notes:

I liked the individual stories. "A Wish Named Arnold" is sweet and gentle. "Fairy Dust" contains an obvious moral, but is neat. "Sisters" is a lovely story, bittersweet and saddening. It and the prequel "There's No Such Thing" are probably my favourite pieces in the anthology. "The Graceless Child" features trolls that turn to stone in daylight. It is rare to see such things in modern fantasy!

For the rest of my review, head over to my journal.

Editors: Nancy Holder and Nancy Kilpatrick. Contributors include Neil Gaiman and Poppy Z. Brite.
Title: Outsiders.
Genre/subject: Horror/Anthology
Rating: The stories range from 4-8. As a whole, 7.
Publisher: ROC, a division of Penguin Books.
Extent: 336.
ISBN: 0451460448
Notes:

Outsiders is not actually all that bad, but I liked the terrible pun. The book is a collection of stories from the Edge, supposedly about people on the fringes of society. Goths, skinheads, outlaws and the like. No gays, though. We don't want none of them perverts in our book about society's ostracised. Only people who like black eyeliner too much are welcome.

For a full, detailed review, see my own journal. I do regular book reviews, and will try and remember to cross-post over here. Try being the operative term; I am lazy and forgetful which is why this is the first post I have brought.

And because I've been slow, you get ten books! Ten books!

(I'm a little uncertain about some genres but I'm a bit too busy to doublecheck...)

( Snip~ )

I'm in a young-adult literature class, so I have to read forty books for teens and review them. I posted mini-reviews for the first five at my journal, but active_apathy pointed out this community. So here they are again, in community format!

( Wee LJ cut )

Behold! The first post.

So, what happens now?

What happens now is that you, the community members, post reviews of books, and then others come along and use them for opinions, or recommendations, or entertaining reading, or whatever else they'd like to use them for.

Even though it doesn't really say much yet, I'd recommend reading the community info, just in case it's wildly different from every other comm on LJ.

(It's not, but still...)

Apart from that... post! Post early, post often. I'd especially like for there to be a bit of a flurry of posts to start with, so that (a) there's some content for new members to gaze upon with awe, and (b) laurenmitchell and I can get the community tags sorted out.

Post Template

When posting, we'd like for you to use this template before the body text of your review to help make your posts easy for other people to find, and easy for us to tag.

Compulsory information

Author(s): Just like it says.
Title: Title : subtitle. Written as on title page.
Series: The series, a subseries if there is one, and the number within the series (or subseries).
Genre/subject: The genre, or the subject, or the subjects. For some fiction, setting (Terre d'Ange, Middle-Earth, wherever) will count as a subject. Non-fiction about fiction has the fiction as a subject (ie, the Firefly Visual Companion is about Firefly). Biography has a person for a subject.
Rating: A number from 0-10.

Optional information

Publisher: Publisher, year. Usually on the back of the title page.
Extent: The number of volumes if there's more than one, and the number on the last page.
Illustration: Basic information: maps, diagrams, photos, portraits, etc. - specifics go in review text.
ISBN: ISBN-10, ISBN-13 if there is one (it's the 13-digit number under the barcode), because we love our bookseller friends.
Notes: Short, concise notes on important details not listed above - again, specifics in text.

You can copy the HTML code from here:
<b>Author(s):</b> <b>Title:</b> <b>Series:</b> <b>Genre/subject:</b> <b>Rating:</b> <b>Publisher:</b> <b>Extent:</b> <b>Illustration:</b> <b>ISBN:</b> <b>Notes:</b>