Reviewed by L.D.Y. Hardcover, 218 pages, 2006 Rating: 9/10 Reason for Reading: I’ve seen, and loved, quite a few of Grant’s movies, such as To Catch a Thief and The Philadelphia Story, and Grant himself was usually the biggest draw. Synopsis: He made dozens of movies in thirty-plus years of acting, starring with some of […]

Reviewed by L.D.Y. Hardcover (available in mass market July 2007), 548 pages (plus an additional 24 pages of b&w photos), 2006 Rating: 10/10 Reason for Reading: A little Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, maybe? A little movie called Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, mm? I’m a big fan. Synopsis: She’s been called everything from […]

Reviewed by L.D.Y. Hardcover (available in trade), 341 pages, 2002 Rating: 9/10 Reason for Reading: I found a hardcover copy up for offer in the bargain section of an on-line site, and remembered how popular it had been when I worked at a bookstore, so I thought I’d see what the fuss was about. Better […]

Reviewed by L.D.Y. Trade, 239 pages, 2006 Rating: 9/10 Reason for Reading: From first-flip I could tell this book had a huge ‘wow’ factor. Synopsis: What do women in their 20s and 30s think about themselves? How do they view the world? How is life different for them than it was for their mothers and […]

Reviewed by L.D.Y. Hardcover (available in trade), 364 pages, 2005 Rating: 9/10 Reason for Reading: I had no idea until I saw this book that Carolyn Keene was a pseudonym, so curiosity made me pick up Girl Sleuth to see who was behind a series I often read when I was younger. Synopsis: While the […]

Reviewed by L.D.Y. Hardcover, 337 pages, 2005 Rating: 9/10 Reason for Reading: I have a weakness for biographies about authors. Synopsis: Mistress Bradstreet is a biography of Anne Bradstreet, a Puritan that moved to America with her family at the age of eighteen, just a decade after the Pilgrims first arrived in the early 17th […]

Reviewed by L.D.Y. Hardcover, 212 pages, 2002 Rating: 8/10 Reason for Reading: I’ve read a handful of Dickens’s novels, but I read them sheerly for enjoyment, without concern for his influence on the world of writing; and I knew next-to-nothing about him as a person. The Penguin Lives series is nice for brief and somewhat […]

Reviewed by L.D.Y. Trade, 304 pages, 2002 Rating: 7/10 Reason for Reading: The title of the book gave me a giggle a few years ago when I was working at a bookstore. It took the library a while to get a copy, however. Synopsis: Burroughs gives his readers an open view into his teenage years […]

Reviewed by L.D.Y. Hardcover (available in trade), 343 pages, 2003 Rating: 9/10 Reason for Reading: A buzz book. Synopsis: In Reading Lolita, Nafisi chronicles her life in Iran as a university professor during a time of war and repression. In order to have a chance to speak more freely about English literature, she starts up […]