What books by and/or about women are you reading May-August 08? (PART 2)

This is a continuation of this thread which was getting long. (We must be reading a lot from women writers!)

I just finished Provincial Daughter by R. M. Dashwood.

Continuing on my quest for Edith Pope, I just finished Old Lady Esteroy published under her maiden name of Edith Everett Taylor.

I am about halfway through Darkmans - not my favourite read of the year but I shall finish it - it's certainly a long one. Her style is refreshing if a little confusing to start with.
In fact while reading this I have interspersed it with Bridget Jones's Diary and Bridget Jones:The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding for a light, fun read.

>1 christiguc: what did you think of Provincial Daughter? I was a little disappointed by it... but then what could come up to the standard of her mother's books?

My sister (finally) returned some of my books to me, so I'm pausing from my stack of non-fiction to reread the Blood books by Tanya Huff. It'll just take a few days to read all five, they're quick reads, but they're a lot of fun and Vicki is a great main character.

>4 LyzzyBee: I enjoyed it. However, I didn't go in expecting the book to live up to the standard of her mother's. Being the daughter of E. M. Delafield, she had a lot to live up to, and I respect the fact that she approached those expectations face-on by writing a book in a style that paid tribute to her mother. I thought it was fun, and there were some very amusing segments. But I am glad I didn't start the book thinking it would be like another installment of the Provincial Lady as that might have influenced my opinion negatively.

There's a chance I'll finish The Waves tonight. It's taken me since the beginning of summer, but it is indeed lovely.

Finished Darkmans - once I got into it confusion cleared somewhat, but I'm not entirely satisfied that I understood the story. Think I need a reading guide for this one!

Reading Bridget Jones's Diary and Bridget Jones:The Edge of Reason for a light fun read before I go on to Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker

Read my friends the Miss Boyds by Jane Duncan who is sort of a Scottish Margery Sharp, but more realistic and less imaginative.

Her books are a sort of long autobiography of her life in Scotland, on a farm called Reachfar. The books are charming and light, and a good antidote to tragic east european historical stuff that I am currently crawling through.

Most recently Like the Red Panda by Andrea Seigel and My Latest Grievance by Elinor Lipman.

They made interesting companion reads, but I decided to consign both to the BookMooch inventory.

"Panda" has some sharp moments, but is a cipher of a book, about a very emotionally detached teenager whom I ultimately failed to understand or care much about.

"Grievance" reminds me that I keep meaning to send out a general reader's advisory to all chicklit editors to hold writers to a strict 200-page limit. A tighter book would make the funny stuff pop more.

I've filed reviews on both if you're interested.

Have also been on an Amy Ephron jag, One Sunday Morning and A Cup of Tea. Nice little novella you can consume in an afternoon, and which I've been cogitating on since.

Critics keep comparing her to Wharton, but I think Muriel Spark is really her muse.

Read the Regeneration trilogy - very interesting and very moving.

Now reading A Very Great Profession by Nicola Beauman.

I just finished Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. It was a real treat - I gave it five stars!

Olive Kitteridge is on my pile. I plan to read it as soon as I finish the new Joan Silber. (OK, and maybe a mystery in between . . .)

Finished A Very Great Profession by Nicola Beauman last night. Enjoyed this and will be referring to it again in the future. Good overview of women authors 1914-39.

Next 2 reads are by Barbara Trapido Frankie and Stankie and The Travelling Hornplayer.

Finished Frankie and Stankie by Barbara Trapido. I thought it was really good.

Am reading Yiddish poetry in the dual language book Paper Bridges by Kadya Molodowsky who won the Itzik Manger prize in Israel for Jewish literature.

I just read The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek and absolutely hated it, even though the writing was brilliant. Horrible characters, horrible subject matter, yuk yuk yuk.

Can't remember when I last posted here. Still on holiday/vacation but what I've read since boarding the first plane that falls into this category:
Olive kitteridge - very good.
Buxton Spice by Oonya Kempadoo. Good - about growing up in 1970s Guyana.
Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Very good. dual storylines between the 1920s and 1970s Englishwomen in India.
Snakes and Earrings, a short novel about a young woman caught up in the punk culture in Japan. Short, but fairly graphic.
Now reading Angela Carter's The Magic Toyshop - I will read and reread Carter endlessly. I love her playful prose, her sly observations...etc.

I am currently reading 2 books by women. One is Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood for the Atwoodians group read. Loving it so far & only have about 100 pages left.
I am also reading Pornified by Pamela Paul. I am liking it, kind of, I just wish it weren't so anecdotal. It's not the most scientific read.

I'm currently reading In Honor of Fadime a University of Chicago Press book about honor killings. Unni Wikan works hard to help the reader understand the dynamics of honor killings without condoning those actions. Thus far, I've found the book quite interesting. Wikan argues that honor killings should be decoupled from religion per se. I was surprised to learn that honor killings cut across so many contemporary cultures and religions, for example Christianity and Judaism. I have a few questions about the internal logic Wikan, a Norwegian scholar, sees as operative in these cases. Fadime, for those of you who aren't familiar with the case, was a young Swedish woman, the daughter of Kurdish immigrants, who was killed in her early twenties. In addition to In Honor of Fadime, I'm also reading Miranda Seymour's Thrumpton Hall: A Memoir of Life in My Father's House.

I'm now reading Mosquito, by Sri Lankan author Roma Tearne. Both avaland and juliette07 recommended this to me on my Reading Globally thread, and I'm really enjoying it.

I am finishing A Cup of tea by Amy Ephron, a pleasant and very quick read, and I also still am in Bleak House.

Urania1, I have the Miranda Seymour's on my Amazon wishlist.

Read The Travelling Hornplayer v. good.
and Worst Fears by Fay Weldon, also very good.

Finished Rhode Island Blues by Fay Weldon. Not as good as Worst Fears but an interesting look at growing old and how our past affects our present thoughts and actions.

aluvalibri,

I had not hitherto run across Miranda Seymour. How this omission occurred, I don't know. However, I took a look at her bio and bibliography. She's certainly prolific. I saw quite a few novels on the Seymour list that I've added to my wish list.

My wishlist is, by now, miles long.......

Finished Female Friends by Fay Weldon. Lives of three women 'friends' from childhood. Husbands, lovers, parents and children come and go. Their friendship survives.

Next to read is Wilderness Tips by Margaret Atwwod.

Along with Bleak House, which I am savouring very slowly, I am reading Friday's Child by Georgette Heyer.
I have never read any of her books, and I must confess I am amazed at and quite enjoy the style and the language she uses.

I can't seem to settle anywhere. I keep flitting from book to book. I can't seem to settle anywhere. I think this action counts as not reading.

I often have periods like that, beginning one book and then dropping it to begin another and so on.....right now I need 'light' reading, and that is what I am getting!

I need for somebody to find a missing novel by Jane Austen or Barbara Pym.

mmmmm....let's go search for one......

Or write one?

That sounds like a great idea! Perhaps we should start a joint collaboration among those of us who want to try.
Not, however, like it happened already here on LT, with the collective writing of "The Haunted Soda". It was meant to be funny, and it actually was for a while, but eventually floundered miserably.
What do you think?
I recently became aware that there are a lot of Margery Sharp's books I do not have, and that dampened my spirit a bit, since many are difficult to find and/or costly WHEN one finds them.

I'm just about to dip into Alfred and Emily, Doris Lessing's new book about her parents.

janeajones, let me know what you think of the new Lessing book. I almost bought it last week; however, on reflection I decided to wait. In six months, I'll be able to find multiple used copies for a couple of dollars.

Someone passed along a copy of Loving Frank to me while I was on vacation. It is not a book I would have chosen, but hey, it was free. It was much better than I expected. I've read about Frank Lloyd Wright before and knew that he was an egomaniacal jerk, so I couldn't imagine him as the subject of a love story. Somehow the author manages to acknowledge that FLW was an egomaniacal jerk, give depth to his real-life lover, and make it all work.

I'm reading The Wedding Group. I started last night at 12:30. I wanted to stay up and finish it, but I was too tired.

Finished Wilderness Tips by Margaret Atwood this morning. I prefer her novels to this collection of short stories.

Another Margaret Atwood book The Edible Woman. This was a reread for me and I enjoyed it very much.

Forget to say that I am about to read Harbor by Lorraine Adams. This is a first novel.

The biography of Martha Gellhorn by Caroline Moorehead.

Aluvalibri: I was a Georgette Heyer fanatic for years. When my job was horrible, as it usually was, (politics, male chauvinism, stupidity, cupidity, back stabbing, etc) the retreat into regency romance saved my life. And she (and Mary Wesley) were really good writers. Their heroines had spunk. I have or had all their books. They worked for me more than P.G. Wodehouse.

Miriam, I am really enjoying Friday's Child. It is so full of wit, and the characters are so credible and alive!
I will read more by Georgette Heyer, she does cheer me up so!

#41 And I thought my job was bad? Have you read Fear and Trembling by Amélie Nothomb? It's a satirical roman a clef about Nothomb's year working for a large Japanese corporation. I wasn't too keen to read it until I found a nearly new hardback edition for a dollar. I was amused. Nothomb (and her translator) use words economically, but quite pointedly. Misery in the workplace, it seems, is perhaps universal :-)

Put Harbor back on tbr pile. Just not in mood for it. Decided on another Atwood. Surfacing.

Enjoyed Surfacing. Starting Lady Oracle.

Finished Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood. Next is Life Before Man She goes from strength to strength IMO.

I'm reading Olive Kitteridge and very much liking it. Will probably zip through the second Persepolis after this, and then who knows?

I'm still planning to read Olive Kitteridge as soon as finish Arlington Park, which I'm enjoying--if only I would stop having houseguests! Fingers are crossed--I think I just waved goodbye to the last ones for awhile. I love having friends to stay, but it does cut in terribly on my reading time!!

I started Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks last night, the first Brooks novel I've read.

Has anyone read the feminist philosopher Annette Baier? or Phillipa Foote? I was reading a collection of essays on Ethics while waiting in the doctor's office. The conflict in feminism was discussed as the division between wanting equality which translates into living like men, and wanting recognition for the things that are typically feminine - maternal, marital, caring, etc. I never
thought about that clearly but it struck me as awfully important.

#50, almigwin, This has been one of the big debates in feminist studies. In some ways it touches upon what is probably the biggest contested area in feminism: the debate over essentialism versus cultural construction. Essentialists maintain (or so their critics argue) that essential differences exist between the sexes. Many feminists of this ilk either overtly or covertly privilege feminine ways of being in the world. The cultural constructionists, on the other hand argue, that the seemingly essential differences are actually social constructs. Judith Butler is one of the leading feminist philosophers in this camp. For cultural constructionists, the essentialist path leads to big trouble in River City. That is, putting women on a moral pedestal was one of the ways used to justify denying them the vote in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Because women were superior to men, the argument went, they were the keepers of the moral hearth. That moral hearth must not be sullied by intercourse with the public world or else family, country, God, and apple pie would all go down the tubes.

How does this argument touch on the distinction you raise? For one thing, cultural constructionists are extremely wary when people start associating the feminine with care and nurture. They argue that this kind of thinking locks women in a box - always stuck doing the caretaking and nurturing. Carol Gilligan, whose work In a Different Voice has been characterized by some as essentialist feminism, argues that women are caught in a double bind because the official ideology privileges male ways of being in the world. (Just a note, in her later work, she did take into account the charge of essentialism and began to talk about a continium to describe gender differences.)

To understand whence Gilligan comes, we have to backtrack to Lawrence Kohlberg whose lab assistant she was. Kohlberg developed a method of tracking moral development – modeled on Piaget’s thinking about development from concret to abstract thinking skills. Using this method Kohlberg found that compared to men, women were “moral enfants.” Men were far more likely to reach the highest stage of moral development than were men (according to Kohlberg).

Here we need to segue to Freud for a moment to place this line of thinking in an intellectual and historical context because it does seem to run counter to the notion that women occupy the moral high ground. Here I think I’ll simply splice in some old lecture notes of mine rather than recreate the wheel.

Recap of Freud
For Freud, moral development follows a different path for males than for females.
1. Boys between the ages of 4 and 6 undergo an extremely traumatic "Oedipal period", when their most passionate desire is to have sex with their mothers and kill their rival fathers.
2. In order to successfully negotiate this stage, the boy have to give up the desire for his mother and submit to his powerful father.
3. Boy experiences this submission to the all-powerful father as extremely humiliating.
4. To "save face" psychologically, he repudiates his incestuous desire altogether and identifies with his father.
5. The identification with the powerful father cements the internalization of the boy’s Super-Ego, or conscience.
6. Boy learns that some things are absolutely forbidden. In order to be psychologically at ease, he must think of these prohibitions as rules of his own making.
7. Et voila! Morality!!! This process is what enables the boy subsequently to live a moral, rule-following life.
8. Successful passage through the Oedipal period also cements the appropriate sex-role identification for the boy. Failure to identify completely with Dad results in sociopathy, excessive attachment to Mother, and/or homosexuality later in life.

B. So what about the girls? A big problem. Freud posits an Electra complex (analogous to the Oedipal complex) but comes to realize this analogy isn’t completely parallel.
1. For one thing, this phase in little girls is not nearly as intense or dramatic as in boys.
a. While little girls do want to have sex with their fathers and get rid of their rival mothers, the consequences aren’t as severe. When a little girl flirts with Dad, there are usually no strong objections from either Mom or Dad, because the girl is displaying appropriate sex-role behavior, and besides, it’s cute.
b. Furthermore, girls can on being Daddy’s girls for the rest of their days without society disapproving or thinking anything about it. BUT, the same is not true for mama’s boys. He’d better stop it or become the object of ridicule
2. So what are the consequences for little girls?
a. Alas, they fail to become as completely moral as men.
b. Why? Since the little girl never gets the message very strongly that Dad is unavailable to her, she never learns even the most primal taboo (incest).
c. Consequently, she remains morally infantile throughout her life. Her Super-Ego never really develops. Absolute, rigid rules of morality never mean much to her.
3. And this says Freud is the natural order of things-- not only "how things are" but how they must be.

II. Freud’s influence on other developmental psychologists, who incorporated this gender stereotype into their own thinking without even questioning it.
A. One notable example is Kohlberg (for whom Gilligan at one time worked) who was interested in moral development of children and adults (playing off of Piaget’s theory of stages.
B. Lawrence Kohlberg identifies three stages of moral development: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional.
1. Preconventional: moral reasoning tied to feelings of pleasure and avoidance of pain.
2. Conventional: specific cultural norms dominate moral reasoning.
3. Post-conventional: more abstract ethical principles are involved.
C. K. studied the moral development of children with an obviously Freudian bias.
2. He concluded that females were "stuck" in "lower" levels of moral development, because in experiments they consistently refused to apply the most general moral rules, favoring analyses that highlighted the specific situations and personalities and relationships.

III. Gilligan’s response to Freud and K (which she first fully elaborated in her book In a Different Voice. She finds several problems with the Freudian trajectory.
A. Casts the male as the norm. The female as the abnormality
B. Says that a problem in Freud’s theory was turned into a problem in women’s development.
C. She says we need to look at the issue in another way, and instead ask “does the fact that women solve moral problems in a different way necessarily establish women’s moral inferiority?”
D. Gilligan's research initially focused on a systematic comparison of moral development for females and males.
1. Her early conclusions indicated that the moral reasoning of girls and boys is different. Girls tend to use a care and responsibility perspective (relational), while boys tend to use a justice perspective (rule-based). An important question is whether the differences are the result of nature or nurture. Here she’s covering the same ground Annette Baier covered only from the viewpoint of a psychologist. She’s trying to back up these claims with data.
2. Subsequently, Gilligan’s has revised her thesis somewhat. Additional research indicates that both men and women used mixed modes to make ethical

IV. In “Remapping the Moral Domain,” Gilligan once again takes on Freud, particularly his notions about the importance of detachment.
A. Freud sees detachment as necessary and good. Attachment as neurotic.
We have to grow up. Detachment is necessary for the development of an individual , autonomous self. Mourning an example of excessive attachment.
1. Attachment associated with inequality.
2. Detachment associated with authority and power. Love loses in this narrative.
B. Detachment isn’t necessarily the good that Freud believes it to be.
1. Freud discounts love. Affectional relationships
2. G. says this theory poses problem for girls particularly (but really for all adolescents).
3. G. believes that redefining attachment, transforming it into a positive may help to define an new image of d\self in relationship that leads to a different vision of progress and civilization.
a. G argues independence as relational instead of in binary opposition to independence.
b. So says G., dependence rather than signifying failure enotes a decision on part of individual to enact a vision of love.
c. Ability to respond to love, to perceive people in their own terms.
d. Dialogue is important. Mirroring rejected.

I think Gilligan makes a lot of sense. However, even she has said that women shouldn’t be trapped in the nurturing, care-taking mold. Further, she acknowledges that not all women feel are react this way. Further, she notes that men shouldn’t be trapped in certain narrow models either.

Here we can perhaps segue to Philippa Foote. As noted, a lot of cultural constructionists argue that women would be trapped by certain kinds of “feminine” duties (i.e., childbearing, care-taking, nurturing etc.). Implicitly, they are calling Kant into question, particularly his claims about morality and duty. Foote was more influenced by Hume, but she did critique Kant’s stance on the nature of morality and its relationship to disinterested duty. But that’s a whole other lecture, so I’ll save it and shut up

P.S. You probably already know all of the above, so forgive me for covering territory you know. I find this an exciting topic and can't shut up about it.

Please don't shut up about it. This is the most fun I've had in Library Thing. My interest has been in ethics and moral philosophy, and I hadn't really related the subjects to feminism, although I did read Gilligan years ago. I would love to hear your thoughts on Kant and Hume, and justice as fairness (Rawls) or the greatest good for the greatest number (Mill).

If you think the others are bored, feel free to post on my profile, or in my email. I appreciate your response enormously. I was educated at a time that Freud was in the ascendant and women's studies didn't exist. ( I graduated from the University of Chicago in 1952!, and was often accused of penis envy by unrepentant male chauvinist pigs).

We're not bored!!! (At least I'm not). Forgive my fly-on-the-wall status, but I do find your postings interesting.

Another observer says thanks, urania1--most interesting. Keep the dialog open for us flies-on-the-wall.

I heartlily second all of the above. Definitely NOT bored!!!!
Please add more.
:-))

Yeah, this is incredible. Do you teach this stuff, urania?

I just accepted a job in a feminist bookstore, and this is better than the training I'm getting at the store. Cheers! And thanks!

What an interesting job, TerrierGirl! Best wishes!!
:-))

wow, urania. Thanks so much.

Talbin--I've Year of Wonders high on the tbr stack to read as part of this group's historical fiction theme read. I'm hoping you'll be posting your thoughts there.

Life Before Man very good.
Bodily Harm next and then {Dancing Girls.

Need to find The Robber Bride and The Penelopiad on BookMooch.

>60 streamsong: streamsong - I should finish Year of Wonders today, so I'll be back tonight or tomorrow to give you my impressions.

I've been lurking here for a while but have decided to join in! Am I the only New Zealander in the group?

I've just finished Nickled and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich and really enjoyed it. I'd like to think living on a low wage in New Zealand is slightly less horrible, but I'm probably deluded. I teach economics (please don't shoot me) and will be recommending it to my first years next trimester.

If my husband hadn't cleaned up the stack of books next to the bed, I'd be reading Snow Flower and the Secret Fan but I can't find it on the bookshelves...

#60 - snap - I've just mooched Year of Wonders but can't get to it yet, so I'm curious to see what you think of it too Talbin.

#41 almigwin - I have the Martha Gellhorn biography in the TBR mountain (the mountain keeps getting bigger because of LT and bookmooch).

>60 streamsong:/63 streamsong/cmt: I finished Year of Wonders last night. Here's my review. Overall, I enjoyed the book. I thought it was interesting, well-plotted, and the characters were nicely fleshed out. The main character, Anna, may have been a little too "21st century" for my tastes (it takes place in 1666 in England), but otherwise it was a good story. However, the ending - which I won't divulge here - really didn't sit well with me. There were a series of events that just didn't ring true to me, and the very ending seemed quite far-fetched. However, reading the other reviews, I found that I am probably in the minority on my feelings about the ending, so don't take this as the final word on the book! And in any case, I found the history fascinating, and I believe it was very well-researched. Also, the theme of science vs. superstition vs. religion - what, exactly, is the difference between them? - was an interesting one.

I'll be interested to hear what you both think when you read it.

Oh, and next up will probably be Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, which I'm really looking forward to. (Unless I decide to slip in the shorter An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro to get one more book into August.)

Finished Dancing Girls Enjoyed this collection of short stories more than Welderness Tips.

Finishing off Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding.

It looks like Year of Wonders needs to come to the top of the pile. Thanks, Talbin--esp. for pointing out the science/religion/superstition angle.

BTW, I just joined BookMooch, too, but am having trouble finding books I want to part with!!! Shame on me!

Talbin, Fingersmith is soooo yummy (but I wouldn't discourage any Ishiguro book!).

I'm reading a very very boyish book right now written by a man, so different for me! Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. It's great, but I'm ready to return to the world of women!

Have just finished a delightful book by Monica Dickens: Mariana.

I'm reading Somebody Else's Daughter by Elizabeth Brundage. Beautiful so far.

And I'm giving away a free copy of a wonderful girly book, Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper, on my blog. Harriet Chessman, the author, wrote a wonderful guest blog for me about how she got started writing, and has promised to personally autograph the book for the winner. It's a wonderful read, and a great book club book. And I'm throwing in a copy of The Wednesday Sisters for anyone who helps spread the word. Details at 1st Books: Stories of How Writers Get Started

I can recommend Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper. My copy contains pictures of the paintings Mary Cassatt painted of her sister. A beautiful book, beautifully written.

I have finished Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple. I enjoyed this book and shall definitely read more by this author.

Just started Cecilia by Fanny Burney. As it is so big, 919 pages, I am reading a chapter a day. Read first chapter this morning - looks like it will be an entertaining story.

I'm reading an advance copy of Poppy Adams's The Sister. I've just started, and it is already quite creepy.

Read Fidelity by Susan Glaspell - very good story of Ruth who returns to the small town which she had left 11 years ago with a married man.

I'm finally reading Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters. Loving it!

I'm about 100 pages into Fingersmith by Sarah Waters and am completely engrossed.

Talbin, it just gets better and better!

>75 Talbin: It gets better!

>76 teelgee:/77 :-) Don't you love it when a book is just that good? I haven't had one of these for awhile.

I'm reading All Passion Spent and am completely impressed and enthralled. What a wonderful piece of feminist literature, and so before its time ... !

Finally finished Alfred and Emily -- my reading time has been curtailed by the demands of teaching. Urania (#36) and others who might be interested:

This is a curious book -- part-invention, part memoir. In the first part of the book, Lessing imagines lives for her parents that might have materialized had World War I not affected them. Alfred would have become a properous, happily-married farmer beloved by his children and the town. Emily would have married a prominent doctor, made her way in London society, and widowed young, would have founded a chain of progressive elementary schools. In real life, Alfred lost a leg in the trenches and was nursed to health by Emily, whom he married. They ended up on a farm in Rhodesia -- he suffered from diabetes and died young, and she struggled to maintain an English bourgeois life in Africa.

The imagined lives are interesting if a bit flat as concerns character development. The second part is really a series of memoir essays on Lessing's childhood with chapters about, not only her parents' struggles, but about an old Mwanga tree, insects, the cooking and eating habits of the colonials and her brother. It's an interesting peek into Lessing's life and her musings as an old woman remembering her childhood.

Thanks for the evaluation janeajones. I think I'll put Alfred and Emily on the list of books to purchase at a used bookstore later when the book is cheaper.