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danielles_reads's review against another edition
DNF @ 57%
There are so many authors covered in this book that each one only gets 5-10 pages, with most of those pages summarizing their work and sometimes only a few paragraphs talking about the authors themselves. You could learn a lot more information by reading their Wikipedia pages. And with so many of the authors writing short stories with similar tropes (seriously how many times do I have to hear Arthur Conan Doyle and H.P. Lovecraft mentioned in a book focusing on women??), they all started blending together since there wasn’t much information about the authors that would differentiate them as actual people.
At first I thought it was because we just don’t know a lot about the female authors in the 17th to 19th centuries (and that does seem to be the case for some of them) so I figured I would at least read up to the chapters for the more recent authors that I’ve read before (Shirley Jackson and Toni Morrison). And yeah, I learned a few new things but the general style remained consistent throughout so I decided to cut my losses there and DNF.
I think this could be enjoyable if you go in expecting a very brief overview of each author and use it as just a starting point to learn more.
There are so many authors covered in this book that each one only gets 5-10 pages, with most of those pages summarizing their work and sometimes only a few paragraphs talking about the authors themselves. You could learn a lot more information by reading their Wikipedia pages. And with so many of the authors writing short stories with similar tropes (seriously how many times do I have to hear Arthur Conan Doyle and H.P. Lovecraft mentioned in a book focusing on women??), they all started blending together since there wasn’t much information about the authors that would differentiate them as actual people.
At first I thought it was because we just don’t know a lot about the female authors in the 17th to 19th centuries (and that does seem to be the case for some of them) so I figured I would at least read up to the chapters for the more recent authors that I’ve read before (Shirley Jackson and Toni Morrison). And yeah, I learned a few new things but the general style remained consistent throughout so I decided to cut my losses there and DNF.
I think this could be enjoyable if you go in expecting a very brief overview of each author and use it as just a starting point to learn more.
pbraue13's review against another edition
3.0
More of a spark-noted catalogue of fabulous women writers than a nonfiction biography or memoir. Lots of fun. I would have ranked it higher if it hadn't damaged my TBR so thoroughly!
musingswithmiranda's review against another edition
4.0
Monster, She Wrote by Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson is a nonfiction book that details the lives and works of women who have contributed to the growth of horror and speculative fiction. Many of these women have been overlooked or have not been given credit where credit was due. However, the authors of this book set out to show just how many women have helped and still help shape what we know and think about horror and speculative fiction today.
The book is broken up into eight different parts that are then broken down into sections about various authors. The main parts include things like the founding mothers, hauntings, the occult, pulps, etc. Each part is full of genuinely interesting information about writers you may know or ones you may have never even heard of. Kröger and Anderson do a great job at presenting this information with details about the authors, overviews of different works, quotes, and suggested reading lists. They don’t present an overwhelming amount of information, but they present enough to open you up to new ideas and spark your interest. Also, the cover and illustrations are gorgeous.
I learned a lot from this book, and I discovered a multitude of new authors and works to check out. It was impossible to read without making notes about cool new books to check out after. I highly recommend Monster, She Wrote to those who are curious about women in writing, horror, and speculative fiction.
The book is broken up into eight different parts that are then broken down into sections about various authors. The main parts include things like the founding mothers, hauntings, the occult, pulps, etc. Each part is full of genuinely interesting information about writers you may know or ones you may have never even heard of. Kröger and Anderson do a great job at presenting this information with details about the authors, overviews of different works, quotes, and suggested reading lists. They don’t present an overwhelming amount of information, but they present enough to open you up to new ideas and spark your interest. Also, the cover and illustrations are gorgeous.
I learned a lot from this book, and I discovered a multitude of new authors and works to check out. It was impossible to read without making notes about cool new books to check out after. I highly recommend Monster, She Wrote to those who are curious about women in writing, horror, and speculative fiction.