The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart

★★★

"I hate those endless descriptions of a heroine's physical attributes...it really bothers me how in books it seems like the only two choices are perfection of self-hatred.  As if readers will only like a character who's ideal - or completely shattered."

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie

★★★★★

"I was carried away, swept along by the mighty stream of words pouring from the hundreds of pages.  To me it was the ultimate book: once you had read it, neither your own life nor the world you lived in would ever look the same."

"In the end we had changed the position of the hands so many times that we had no idea what the time really was."

The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler

★★★

"I once broke up with a boy because he wrote me an awful poem."

Broken Chords by Barbara Snow Gilbert

★★★★