I like big books and I cannot lie.

     Also medium size ones and small ones. And anything in between. I LIKE BOOKS OK. I get a lot of my books in digital form on my tablet these days, but I still get a little crazy in the bookstore every now and again. Nothing will ever beat the smell of nice paper, or the sound a book makes when you crack the spine open for the first time. Or just being able to take a book and go sit somewhere to read without worrying about your battery dying on you. So! Let's take a gander at the books I've picked up recently. You will notice a theme of "stories about women being awesome."

     I picked this one up a few weeks ago at Target (obviously). In all honesty it was half that I thought it sounded really cool (Edgar Allen Poe + love triangle + dark creepy shit), half that the cover just feels really nice. Like this book is a delight to hold. Whoever advised them to splurge on the high quality cover material: good call. 

     Ok, I know at first you might think this doesn't look that exciting, but just WAIT FOR THE BACK, that's where they get you. 

     A world of Yes. I can't wait to find out more about this badass lady hiding messages in her hair so that she can be my newest life idol (it's Marthe McKenna, in case you wanted to check her Wikipedia or something). 

     I mean, obviously. OBVIOUSLY I had to get this book. I just can't resist stories of women doing kickass shit. Like "Catalina de Erauso, an ex-nun who dueled, drank, and cross-dressed her way through Spain and North America." Sign me up for that please. 

     I've had my eye on this one for a while now. Zelda Fitzgerald was such an interesting person. She got painted as this crazy over-dramatic caricature a lot, and she definitely had some serious problems, but she was also really smart and creative (did you know parts of some of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books are lifted straight out of her personal diary?) and tough and full of personality. I like that this book aims to mix some of the most interesting parts of her actual life with the easy reading of a novel, so we'll see how well it does that. 

     If you're wondering how this fits into the theme of awesome women, you need to learn more about Vikings. I mean, we could probably all stand to learn more about Vikings, because they were SO FREAKING COOL, but to the point, Viking women were pretty cool. They had the right to own property, run farms, even divorce their husbands if they did messed up stuff like make them invite the dude who killed her brother over for dinner. Scholarly types can't agree on whether or not Shieldmaidens were a real thing (although the Valkyries seem to be based on the idea, soooo....), but they were definitely real enough in legend, and women were praised for being strong-willed and brave, and they kind of ran everything behind the scenes, convincing the men in their lives when they needed to sit the hell down and when they needed to buck up and go revenge-stab somebody. All in all, pretty cool.