It's more like 3.5 for me. While cute, part of it suffers from just being outdated since it was published in 2001 (for example, there are a lot of outdated websites... the entry on JK Rowling is outdated, etc.)

I know I enjoyed this book but read it too long ago to rate.

When I started reading this book I realized by page 7 that I would need to take notes, adding to my forever expanding wish list of books I would like to read some day, but by the end of the first chapter I gave up, too many authors! My solution, I photo-copied the index for future reference. There are many authors mentioned in this book that I have never heard of and many I have heard of, but whose work I've never read. I must remedy that! Some believe that this book is US-centric. I disagree. Many authors from different parts of the world are mentioned in this book, but I won't argue that many parts of the world are left out. This is a good book overall and I would recommend it to anyone looking to add new authors to their libraries. I especially enjoyed the chapters entitled 'Ink in Their Veins,' and 'Banned, Blacklisted, and Arrested,' interesting.

Lovely book. I am going to advise my two daughters read this book. Informative and inspirational.

I found this on my travels and thought it would be a natural for me (though I don't accept that there's such a thing as loving books "too much." That smacks of "get your nose out of that book" from when I was a kid).

The premise is a pretty simple one - shine a light on women of letters ranging from the very obscure (Mary Manley) to the much beloved (Maya Angelou, Margaret Mitchell) and tell us a bit about their lives and styles. Throw in some excellent quotes from them and other literary women, and you've got yourselves quite a little book. The bios are separated into different sequences such as banned authors and prolific authors, etc. At the end there is a guide for setting up one's own book group.

I ended up with some great quotes for my commonplace book, and some titles to add to my TBR.