Sheila's Guests and Reviews

Sometimes I feel like a bit-player in my life, as events outside my control rock the boat and threaten to engulf me. Maybe that's why I like to read at least a few novels with powerful female protagonists, just to remind myself I can steer the ship. (In fact, the protagonist in one of these novels is a pirate captain, more surely steering her own vessel!) And maybe it's why, as a child, I despaired of "girl's books" and devoured all my brothers' books instead, all the while telling myself stories where girls had just the same adventures as all those heroic guys. Anyway, here are some reviews of books I've read recently with female protagonists. If nothing else, posting the reviews is something under my control--it will distract me from the many things that aren't. First is Stranger in Town by Cheryl Bradshaw . Fourth in a mystery series, it reads well as a standalone novel about a private investigator in Utah/Wyoming, chasing after the case of a miss...

When I was ten, fourteen seemed like the perfect age. I started writing stories whose protagonists were always female, of course, and always fourteen... and most probably always me. When I was fourteen, I decided it really was the perfect age so... when I was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, I continued writing stories whose protagonists were fourteen-year-old females. I really wanted to stop the clock, but life moved on. There's a limit, of course, to how many life experiences a fourteen-year-old protagonist can encompass, and I learned, in time, to enjoy being older, and to write about guys, dogs, cats, babies, middle-aged grandparents, or even "old people" (but help, how old do I think I am!) I spread my metaphorical wings to encompass a worlds of many protagonists, and I tried to remind myself, once in a while, they shouldn't all be men. Huh? How did all my protagonists get to be male? Perhaps it was something to do with the books I read--certainly as a kid I much...