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Carlo Ginzburg's The Cheese and the Worms offers the story of the miller Menocchio and an interpretation of the popular culture of the sixteenth century. Menocchio was the focus of a church inquisition because of his own views on God and faith – he was a reader and a thinker, and believed that his view of Christianity was better than that of the church. He had a unique view of the world colored by the unique way he read texts, which Ginzburg supposes is the juxtaposition of Menocchio's surrounding oral culture and the written word. Because of the abundance of documented material about Menocchio's trial, however, we have a uniquely wider view of Menocchio's life and beliefs than we do of almost any other individual of his time, and thus he gives us a valuable insight into the popular culture of the time, which of course was greatly controlled by the Church – as is evident in the ultimate silencing of Menocchio for his beliefs, which were seen as a denial of Catholicism and therefore an ultimate crime against God.

By Ginzburg's estimation, Church and religion, seen as superstitious and based outside of practical reality, hold back a civilization. There is a distinct sense in the Cheese and the Worms that pulling away from the fantastic and moving into the world of science and free thought outside of a religious construct is what it means to advance civilization.

Beginning with the origins of psychiatry as a field of study, this book focuses on the language and ideology behind mental health and its management as well as the inherent racism found in the example of French North Africa.

Keller asks how an advanced, sophisticated medical field, at the cutting edge of technology and science, can also be inherently racist. He puts forward the idea of “colonial dehumanization,” the tendency of psychiatrists from mainland France to treat citizens of its colonies as less than human and as test subjects, and the implications that the psychiatric field not only worked within the confines of a racist cultural definition but simultaneously perpetuated and legitimized this racial construct by encoding the psychiatric field of study with these preexisting social norms. By looking at psychiatry in a wider historical context, he attempts to come to a clear understanding of the psychological field of study.

Keller delves into the origins of psychological reform in French colonies in the 20th century, looking at the state of psychological institutions and patients in the Maghreb – Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria. Because the system in Europe was in decline and near crisis, the colonies seemed like the perfect place to institute sweeping reforms, almost a blank slate on which to avoid the flaws of the existing system. Keller then tracks the way these new institutions worked, the studies done on patients, and the knowledge that was produced from the institutions, after which he moves on to a look at Frantz Fanon and the resistance to the institution of psychological study.

From there, Keller widens his scope to look at psychiatry in relation to France and North Africa, rounding off his study with a conclusion that looks at the move from asylums and institutional psychiatry to a chemical-based community psychiatry.

Overall, a thorough study of colonial psychiatric development and institutional racism.

It's emotionally manipulative bathtub reading. I enjoyed it as I read, but I didn't take anything away from it when I was finished, except that I didn't think I'd be buying another Ahern book. Even the movie adaptation was so-so, but at least it had Gerard Butler. The book didn't even have that.

I get that Holly was grieving, and that she was upset – but a book this thick with this many self-pitying crying jags and this much selfish behavior out of the main character just doesn't do it for me. I didn't like Holly at all; nor did I like many of the supporting characters.

My first Vonnegut – and most definitely not my last!

This book is, in a word, incredible. Ian McEwan has a writing style that pulls you in with rich description and compelling plot. The book is also a good example of a story with an untrustworthy narrator.

Briony Tallis is quite possibly one of the most self-involved characters I have ever read a book about. The whole book is about her coming to terms with a horrible thing she did as a child and the consequences of her actions. She drove me insane at times, but I couldn't stop reading.

Part one is by far my favorite part. The dinner party setting, the plot is dynamic and continuous, and the developing love story between Cecilia and Robbie thoroughly captured me – which turned out to be an incredibly important part of really connecting with the rest of the book. Part two is an amazing description of war from a soldier's perspective; Robbie's description not only of what was happening around him but why he wanted to survive it all was brilliant. Part three was good as well, though my feelings for Briony probably colored my opinion of it... and part four incensed me like very few books ever have. Compelling, aggravating, and absolutely stunning work.

I would recommend this to anyone and everyone who enjoys good literature. This one I am sure will stand the test of time.

I fear that perhaps Pratchett's fans have overhyped him to the point that someone like me, who had never read a book by him before, is going to be underwhelmed when they finally pick something of his up.

Going Postal was my first Pratchett (excluding Good Omens, as it was a collaborative and thoroughly enjoyable endeavor). Going Postal was amusing; I snickered a few times and enjoyed the exploits of Moist von Lipwig. But upon finishing it I didn't really retain any impression after it. It was like watching a Disney Made-for-TV movie.

It was a nice way to take a break, though.

I used to read King all the time, anticipating his new releases like J.K. Rowling's fans did with the Harry Potter novels. But I burned out on him right about when The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon came out. In any case, when I picked this up it had been a very long time since I'd read a Stephen King novel, and I was a bit wary going in.

I was floored. This is not just a Stephen King scary-thriller book. This is a love story. One that is particularly compelling, considering that one half of the couple is dead from the very get-go.

I laughed, I worried, I devoured these pages like a kid who just got her braces off devours bubblegum and popcorn... and when I got to the last page I burst into tears. Big, sloppy, tears. I wasn't even expecting them; they just happened. Stephen King won me back with this book, and I think that says everything that needs to be said.

The only thing that keeps me from giving this book a full five stars is the rushed nature of the ending; I felt almost as though Blum was racing for a looming deadline. The pacing definitely changed in the last few chapters.

Overall, the book is compelling and hard to put down. I definitely enjoyed it, and it offers a different perspective on the events in Nazi Germany than most historical fiction thus far has offered.

This is the only Virginia Woolf piece that I have read and not loathed entirely, which says something by itself. However, I still find myself almost entirely unmoved by Virginia Woolf and her rambling, ridiculously long sentences. She is lauded for her skill at crafting sentences and describing things and yet I think it's ridiculous that someone who insists on saying an entire paragraph's worth of thought without once using a period is considered brilliant for it rather than... well, ridiculous. It gets to the point sometimes in Woolf's writing where I am jolted entirely from her prose because the beginning of a sentence and the end of it are on separate pages and the original thought is lost among the rambling, forcing me to go back and reread.

I cannot stand that.

Again, I liked this better than all the other Woolf I've read, but I can't say I'm a fan. I would never have read this had it not been required for class and I have to say I resented the teacher a bit for assigning it after I finished trudging through the mess of it all.

This is one of maybe three books in my entire life that I have had to put down because I was laughing so hard that I couldn't continue reading. It is also one of the only books that I have ever read in my life that I started over upon finishing the last page and immediately re-read.

It was just as funny the second time. And the third, and the fourth...

I love this book. Pratchett and Gaiman have incredible writing skills, and bringing the two together was like destiny. I hope the two of them continue to collaborate, because the world needs more of what they have to offer!

Elizabeth Wurtzel's writing style is nice and easy to read, though she tends to get a bit ranty from time to time. I flew through this book when I first read it, and like many kids just entering college, I was like “duuuude, this is soooooo insightful.”

I read it again just after I graduated and found it to be ridiculously self-involved. Wurtzel basically wrote a really, really long blog entry about how down and out she is and how nobody truly understands her. You can read the same stuff all over the blogosphere these days; she just happened to get paid for it.

Upon first read I would have given this book five stars. Now I give it two. This book isn't all it was hyped up to be.

I have read this book four times and I maintain that the only good thing about this book is chapter 7.

I will admit that my judgement of this book is probably colored by the teachers who forced me year after year to nitpick this text and pull all the joy right out of it; the book is technically well-written but it is intensely difficult to connect to the characters, who seem bored with their fabulous, decadent lifestyles. Am I meant to sympathize with these rich people, throwing party after party in fancy clothes with fancy cars? It's alienating just reading about it.

If you're going to pick up something by Dan Brown – I don't think I'd recommend it, but if you really must – pick this up and not The Da Vinci Code. Aside from BEGGING you to suspend disbelief at and around the climax of this novel, this is the better of the two European Adventures with Robert Langdon books.

Salinger's Nine Stories were a little hit-or-miss for me; I absolutely loved “Perfect Day for Bananafish” and “For Esme” but a few of the others fell flat for me. All in all, though, the book is an incredible read. I couldn't put it down.

For some reason, I'd never managed to get my hands on this book and really read it until I was 24 years old and well past the age that I probably should have read it the first time – undoubtedly I'd have identified even more with Francie Nolan as a young adult. A bookish, clever girl in a poor family in Brooklyn, growing up as best she can with what she's got. It's a story about family, about love and loss, about triumph and heartache. It broke my heart more than once and actually reduced me to tears more than once.

I'm pretty sure it clawed its way into the ranks of my Favorite Books of All Time. I can't believe it took me this long to read it. I'm so glad I did.

Paige again! This one didn't quite get me the same way the first three novels in the series did, but it was still a great read. I adore Paige and Lucas, as well as Savannah – but the plot of this one was a little less exciting than the others have been, for some reason.

All in all I still enjoyed it greatly, and devoured it once I got my hands on it. Armstrong definitely knows how to keep my attention!

Not my favorite, but damn, it's Clay and Elena, my favorites among Armstrong's characters. The book started off a little slower than I expected, and it was weird to see Elena and the pack focusing on something outside of the pack, considering how insular they've been in the past – but it was a great story once it got going, and I won't lie – any excuse to read more about Clay and Elena and I am there. I pretty much dance with joy whenever I hear Armstrong's chosen to give us more of these two.

A stunning return-to-form by Armstrong after what I felt to be a bit of a sag in Industrial Magic (and trust me, a sag for Armstrong is like a filler episode of Battlestar Galactica; it may not be the best of the series, but it's still better than 99% of everything else out there!). I was skeptical about reading an entire book from the POV of a dead woman, but she went and got me!

Armstrong's version of the afterlife is incredible. It's something I could have only dreamed of, and now is pretty much what I hope the afterlife actually is. Hell, themed cities? Come on! It's incredible!

She also introduced one of my new favorite characters in the entire series – Trsiel! He caught my attention like a character hasn't done since Clayton way back in the first book (those who have heard me discuss this book in any length know – Clay is my favorite character by a long shot!). To be honest, I almost expected Eve to end up with him!

I adored this book. Five stars!

I was wary at first, since Armstrong switched narrators for this installment of the Women of the Otherworld series, but Paige Winterbourne turned out to be just as compelling as Elena, the narrator of the first two novels. With this one, Armstrong introduces witches and sorcerers, delving into the differences between their individual types of magic while introducing and developing a whole new group of characters, some who had been secondary or tertiary to the plot thus far in the series, and some that are new altogether – and of course, as Armstrong has proven herself to do, she does it all with a kickass plot and a great sense of style. She is quickly becoming one of my very favorite authors.

This book has a heaping dose of unapologetic lady rage in it but it's also poorly paced and on a few occasions the author is unnecessarily vague for reasons that don't seem to pay off. I found the ending a little disappointing, but the unapologetic lady rage saved it from being a total loss.

It was a really quick read, I'll give it that.

If I could, I think this review would be a 3.5-4ish, and not a full four stars, but I wouldn't knock it down to three, so four it is. Richard Mayhew himself isn't terribly memorable – it's the characters he becomes surrounded by, purely by chance. Neverwhere is kind of a warped Alice style story, in that Mayhew goes from regular old London to the crazy fantasy London Below, where angels and demons and women named after doorways take him on an adventure he never could have dreamed in a million years.

Gaiman's got a great style, and a wicked sense of humor, so all in all I had a great time reading this novel, and I'd definitely loan it to a friend (so long as they promised to give it back when they were done).

I have a love/hate relationship with this book. One the one hand, it's an easy and engaging read. It is very easy to fall in love with Edward Cullen just as Bella does, and it is very easy to speed-read through this book only to start it all over.

But on the other hand, Bella Swan drives me insane. She has a bizarre inferiority complex when it comes to Edward, and a determined death wish. She's completely obtuse and at the same time, strangely endearing. I don't quite know how to describe it.

Stephenie Meyer's writing isn't top-notch by any means, and she often falls to repetition of descriptive phrases – Edward's “liquid topaz” eyes, anyone? – but she knows how to weave a story, and she sure as hell knows how to keep your attention. I'll be the first to admit her book just about ate my brain for a good few weeks after I finished reading.

I was surprised at the age of this book, as it's lasted this long and still remains wildly relevant to what's going on in the world today. The issue of women's rights is still a very big debate, and it was more than a little chilling to read this book, knowing that if things really do go south, this isn't an entirely unbelievable situation.

I thought that perhaps the epilogue was too much – I liked the way it ended without it – but it doesn't diminish the book by any means. Definitely worth a re-read!

The prose isn't just purple, it's that jewel-toned oversaturated royal purple you only find in satins and velvets. I cannot read a whole novel of this. That and the amount of “telling, not showing” infodump dialogue in the pages that I did attempt to read told me this book is not for me.

Jodi Picoult definitely knows how to manipulate emotions. When I picked this book up, I was immediately dragged into the storyline by the plot devices Picoult chose – terminal illnesses, family dynamics, legal proceedings – but as I read it became increasingly clear to me that Picoult chose these things specifically because she knew they'd keep people reading. It was manipulative! I didn't care about these characters because she wrote them well, I cared about them because you're supposed to care when a kid has cancer. If you don't care, you're heartless.

So it wasn't Picoult's writing that did it, because she certainly isn't the best writer in the world – sure, she knows how to zing you with a heartwrenching one-liner, and she knows how to place the cliches and “meaningful” statements at the ends of chapters and paragraphs to really get the tearjerking hook into you – but it's all manipulation, and it's all pretty cheap. Once I realized what I was reading I almost felt dirty, like I'd been tricked.

And one other quibble I have with this book – changing fonts between narrators is jarring. Your eyes get used to reading in arial and the next chapter's in times new roman? That's not cool. I had to put the book down and take a break between each chapter because of it. I didn't like that at all.