The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

Two women - each chafing against the limitations imposed upon her by others. One is a privileged young woman in a white Southern colonial family who wishes for a life of books, learning, and the law; the other is the young black woman given as her own personal slave.

It's a story novelists love to tell and it's been done a million times, but this one's not without its merits. Notably, this novel is spun from true historical figures Sarah and Angelina Grimke, sisters who became radical and much-publicized abolitionists in the early 1800s. While the book is fiction, much is based in truth.

Additionally, the contrast between the white and black women's struggles against her bonds is well-done and interesting. Each finds a way to free herself, however temporarily - one through activism, the other through quilt making (although that storyline's not terribly fresh, either).

It's a captivating story, and I did enjoy it. But if you're a Jennifer Chiaverini reader, this one's going to seem hauntingly familiar.

Wizard's Hall by Jane Yolen

So I picked up this book because it features a quilted monster. (How could that even be scary? Oh, maybe an ugly quilt? Just kidding. It's sewn up of people!)

And then when I finished the book, I wondered if this was part of a series. This can't be all, can it? It seems like just the start of a much bigger story. But it turns out that this is all in Yolen's series ... because eventually JK Rowling wrote the rest instead. Yolen published this book, about a reluctant boy wizard named Harry who's forced into wizarding school, in 1991. Rowling published the first Harry Potter book in 1997. 


Much, much too similar. And I just wasn't feeling the drama in Yolen's story like I was meant to. I wanted the original to be superior. But really, it just feels like it needs more (it's a pretty slim volume) - it feels like it should have been the first half of a longer book, or (I guess) the first book in a series. That never was.