What Are You Reading August 2011

I started Bossypants last night and am enjoying it immensely. I'm glad Tina Fey has a daughter. What a great role model for an accomplished woman she is. She knows how to have fun and she knows how to get things done. I wonder if she'll talk about why she chose Tracy Morgan to be in 30 Rock, I guess that would fall into the get things done category. My nephew thinks he's the best thing about the show. I wouldn't mind if he were killed off in some humorous way (on the show).

I'm still enjoying listening to The Likeness. It's quite an examination of both the woman detective and the victim.

I'm trying to read The Well of Lonliness but finding it really dry. I keep reading a few chapters then going on to another book, just so I don't get too bored.

>2 lemontwist:: I found The Well of Loneliness profoundly sad. I can see needing a break for that reason alone!

I just finished Great House last night, when I next pick up a book it will be something lighter: Kate Atkinson's When Will There be Good News?

I just began reading The Paris Wife by Paula McLain. Interesting description (in 1st person) of Hadley Richardson's childhood. I like the writing style so far.

k4k

I'm still reading The Tiger's Wife. It's good, but I'm not feeling suckered into the plot like I really like.

I'm still in the middle of Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor.

Up next is Ammonite by Nicola Griffith.

And I hope I can afford to buy (and then immediately read) The Tempering of Men by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette and Heartless by Gail Carriger.

And in non-girly books this month I plan to read Geek Wisdom, The Steep Approach to Garbadale, and Ringworld.

I am reading a Saviour of Living Cargos which is a biography of Caroline Chisholm - a Australian pioneer who did a lot of philanthropic work with British emigrants to Australia and especially women and children, providing accommodation and finding employment for women.

Finished The Tenderness of Wolves which I enjoyed very much, and moved onto the lighter A Vintage Affair by Isabel Wolff.

I'm reading Inside Scientology by Janet Reitman. She's an editor for Rolling Stone magazine. This look at the religion/movement purports to be the first one that is objective. It is quite interesting if you are interested in alternate belief systems/cults/relgions their founders, belief systems and how people come to be swept up in them.

@3, Read "The Well of Loneliness" years ago; as I recall it was not only hopeless, depressing, but strangely emotionless. An interesting parallel read for an early modern take on homosexualty is Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar. I don't know how well that has aged

@7, I misread your title at first, though it said "Saviour of the Living Cardigans." I need a nap. Sounds like an interesting subject, but can't fine any reviews on here, amazon, or just browsing google.

Links?

>10 nohrt4me2:. Maybe the emotionlessness is why I'm finding it so dry and boring.

I'm having so much fun with So Much to be Done: Women Settlers on the Mining and Ranching Frontier that I have to share some of it. The book consists of edited parts of diaries, letters and manuscripts edited by women writing from the western US in the last half of the 18th century. This is from a Malinda Jenkins who went on to become very rich as a race horse breeder after marrying 3 times, losing her children in divorce and traveling and working in various jobs.

I didn't want no more children. I had my home, my work and everything that a woman raised like me could wish for. Two children was enough.
There wasn't no quarrel with Willie, no words. I was his good wife in every respect--but I wasn't going to have no more babies. And when I said that it meant something because I was posted. (?) The many times I lived with my sister Betty, the doctor (she was a midwife), I was poking my nose in medical books, I knowed more about how things was than the girls around me.
Then we went to visit Mary Lindren, my niece, over Saturday night. I didn't carry no paraphernalia (douching supplies?) because Willie promised to behave hisself. He didn't, and that's where our troubles commenced.
...It was nigh on four years after I had May that my second boy come. I named him William--not after my husband, but after my youngest brother that died. Will was as pretty and fat a little thing as I ever looked at but he didn't fill my heart like May done.
Carrying the child and working so hard, from the moment my health began to fail. Will was born the eleventh day of March,. In the fall and winter before, I spun and wove four blankets. And made up all the clothes, the jeans and flannels for the whole family, knitted all the stockings and everything.
I had been cutting rags for two or three years. I must have been a glutton for punishment. I set at the loom--just four weeks before my time--and wove a rag carpet. With the breastpiece of the loom rubbing against me, and a grease cloth tied around my stomach to keep it from hurting, I finished the carpet and tacked it down. Sunday I cleaned house and got ready. Monday, after dinner, I had an eleven pound baby...

Heh. "Monday, after dinner, I had an eleven pound baby". And then washed the dishes? Darned some socks? Chopped some fire wood? That made me laugh :)

@12 re "I didn't carry no paraphernalia ..."

Years ago, I read Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey. As I recall, women used an early type of diaphragm colloquially called a "pisser" (from "pessary") in order not to get pregnant on the trip. Fascinating book.

Editor Schlissel indicated that women didn't write about these things much in their diaries, but it was clear that they talked about it and told each other where they could get these devices.

There was a stigma on them, as these were things prostitutes used, and "nice" women weren't supposed to know how their bodies worked.

Possible interesting aside: My grandmother had all her babies at home (1920s). When she died, I found a much used homebirth manual that included how to clean the birthing room and sterilize newspapers, cloths, and bed pads for the delivery. This had to be done no more than a month in advance to maintain the best sanitation possible.

I imagined my 8-months-pregnant grandmother taking down her bedroom curtains, taking up the rugs and scrubbing floors and walls with a lye disinfectant, using a flat iron to sterilize newspapers and rags, and rolling them into bundles to put in the dresser drawer, which had also been emptied and scrubbed out. Some thngs also had to be sterilized by putting them on a rack them over the steam in a huge copper steamer boiling on the stove.

Her Aunt Mags probably helped, as she was the one who delivered the babies.

It was quite a production, and no wonder women started to prefer to go to hospitals.

My sense is that she had some knowledge of birth control, as she worked for six years before she started a family at age 32 and the kids then came exactly three years apart in the months of January-March.

The manual also included information on nutrition and exercise that really hasn't changed too much. The importance of iron was recognized even then. While vitamins weren't widely available, a list of iron-rich food was provided.

Thanks for the info about Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey. I've downloaded it to Nook. I love learning about early forms of birth control, but the info on cleaning for home delivery seems like over kill to me. I had my second baby at home and, believe me, if I'd had to do all that I just would have kept her in.

I'm reading Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist by Brooke Kroeger and enjoying it very, very much. Intrepid is often a word that the name Nellie Bly brings to mind, and I can see why, but she was so much more than that, from what I'm finding out. It's amazing to me that she did everything she did with no education at all past age 15.

I've read and reviewed two more novels by Hilary Mantel: A Change of Climate, which explores secrets and the meaning of evil and forgiveness, and An Experiment in Love, a somewhat harrowing coming-of-age story.

@15: And yet Gramma lived to be 96 ...

She used to think that Jack LaLane and the whole notion that women needed to do exercises was outlandish. But this was a woman who used a wringer washer and a mangle until she died, and who walked four miles to the post office and back every single day until she was 85.

I sometimes wonder if we women haven't lost touch with our physical selves (except maybe sexually) as we've left the farm and household and entered the workplace.

Right, nohrt4me2. We have the idea that we should "exercise" rather than just live an active life. I like your Gramma's way better.

I've been reading Viragos for August. First, The camomile by Catherine Carswell, a lovely novel written in journal form that follows a young woman in the early C20th as she seeks to find her role in life and ponders her need (or not) for marriage, a career and her desire to write. Her life is complicated by the fact that she has spent the last 3 years in Germany at music college and has become used to more liberal attitudes and ways of thinking than those of the Glasgow home she returns to. I found the narrative voice compelling and could hardly stop reading.

Then I read The return of the soldier, a classic short novel by Rebecca West. It is beautifully written and an exquisite study of characters faced with a dilemma. The titular solider returns to his home in 1916 suffering from shell-shock, which means he has lost all memory of the previous 15 years. His wife is a stranger to him; his cousin Jenny, who narrates the novel, he remembers only as a young girl. All his emotions are focused on his love from the past, now married herself and living a dull suburban lower-class life. Should the women seek treatment to bring back his memories - knowing that if he is "cured", he will have to go back to the Front? I've made it sound like a melodrama, but it is all beautifully drawn in a very English way.

Next was The passion of New Eve by Angela Carter, set in a post-Apocalyptic America. In places it reminded me of Elizabeth Hand's Winterlong trilogy, but I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as the characters were really there as archetypes to Make A Point or Represent Something, rather than having real motivations and personalities. Not my favourite Carter.

Finally I just finished Faces in the water by Janet Frame, based on her own years as a patient in various mental homes. This was especially interesting to read following Woman on the edge of time earlier this year, which also portrays life in mental institutions. On the whole, Frame draws a less brutal picture, but patients are still dehumanized and nurses are at worst actively sadistic, at best too emotionally exhausted to care.

Viragos, huh? Those sound like great books. I guess I just read a virago, Doc by Mary Doria Russell. Doc Holliday's long time companion Kate fits the bill just fine. Born into the aristocracy, well educated and full of the aristocrat's disdain for "lesser" folk, she fell on hard times when the Mexican aristocracy fell. She was certainly no prostitute with a heart of gold, nor were any of the other prostitutes in the book. She was out to get her own come hell or high water. She seemed to love Doc, but self preservation was the name of her game. This is a very interesting book, full of the history of the American West, it reads more like biography than historical fiction.

Okay, I finished The Tiger's Wife and I was disappointed. I never got into the swing of the story, the narrator didn't ring true (she just came across as one-dimensional), and while I may not always understand what's happening in a magical realism story, I do expect to *believe* what's happening. And, nope, I didn't. Especially towards the end, where characters just seemed to die randomly. And the jumping around in time didn't work for me, I couldn't keep it straight in my head (although that's usually not a problem).

I think maybe with a bit more understanding of Balkan history, it would have made a bit more sense. But I've read other books knowing nothing about the history of the region involved, and gone away knowing more, and enjoying that learning.

Plus, there were some sentences that I re-read and re-read and they never ever made sense. (And "kite" is not a verb. Hate being thrown out of a story so I can translate some wanky writing.)

Other people are raving, I'm not one of them. (Okay, I liked the story of the deathless man, that was pretty cool.)

Overall, just a sense of frustration with it all. First Orange Prize winner that's bombed for me!

I finished So Much to be Done: Women Settlers on the Mining and Ranching Frontier. What an inspirational book. Some women came from the East and South and maintained their stereotypical view of women's roles and the value of their own race; some took advantage of all the adventures and new people their new land had to offer. Some stayed poor their whole lives, some started it in riches and just continued, almost all expressed a love of the West in their letters, diaries and manuscripts.

Now I start Unlikely Friendships: 47 Remarkable Stories from the Animal Kingdom by Jennifer Holland. there are photographs of all sorts of unlikely animal pairings: monkeys and dogs with various birds; a gorilla with a kitten; a pit bull, a Siamese cat and some chicks; a lioness and a baby oryx. Like some of the women in the west, these animals learned to take their friendships where they found them.

I'm reading a debut international thriller The Informationist by Taylor Stevens. Stevens has a fascinating bio -- she was born into the Children of God cult, educated only to 6th-grade level, and broke free with her then-husband and two daughters when she was in her twenties. Her years spent living in East and West-Central Africa with the Children of God inform a lot of the book, as it's primarily set in those regions.

Query: Is anyone reading Scandinavian crime fiction? I heard about a Swedish husband and wife team writing crime novels. Apparently Scandinavia has become quite a hot bed for this genre. Any women novelists from there in this genre to recommend?

@23: Animal book is a great suggestion for a friend whose birthday is coming up!

I would like to read Irene Pepperberg's book, Alex and Me, about her life with Alex the parrot. But one of my kitty cats died last month, so this isn't the time for me to be reading sad animal stories.

There's a Nova clip you can watch featuring Irene and Alex here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/profile-irene-pepperberg-alex.html

@25: OK, the husband and wife team is Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, and here's a whole list of Swedish crime fiction. (God, I'm turning into one of those old ladies who gets on lists and starts rambling about stuff she can't remember; sorry, will get my ducks in a row BEFORE I post ...):

http://homepages.gac.edu/~fister/scandcrime/sweden.html

I'm on a fiction kick lately and just finished PopCo which was fun, and reading Maine now, which I'm enjoying. Still haven't finished Well of Loneliness yet.

27 - There was an excellent NPR Morning Edition interview with that couple last week or so.

The pictures in Unlikely Friendships are beautiful and awe inspiring, the prose, except for the introduction, leaves much to be desired.

#25: You might want to look into the novels of Karin Alvtegen. They're less police procedural and more psychological suspense than many of the more popular Scandinavian crime novels but a crime of some kind is almost always committed in Alvtegen's novels (although a "mystery" in the usual sense of the word is generally absent). Alvtegen is a good writer who specializes in evoking some remarkably uncomfortable and ethically ambiguous situations. She can push a theme a little too hard sometimes but I still find her an interesting voice and a skillful, intelligent author.

@31, thanks. Alvtegen isn't like Jodi Picoult, is she?

Before I take the copy of Bossypants back to the library, I thought I should copy out a couple of things. First of all, it was delightful to me how much Tina Fey loves and respects Amy Poehler. This is a book about growing up a whole person and using all ones abilities. Part of the ability to grow is naturally surpassing all the sexist ideas that have come before, such as the early Second City dictum that there's nothing funny about a sketch with 2 women in it. Fey thought of that when she had the first Sarah Palin-Hillary Clinton sketch on SNL. She mentions how women went, on that show, from being supporting comedians in the guys' sketches to becoming the driving force of the show.
we were all crowded into the seventeenth- floor writer' room...There were always a lot of noisy "comedy bits" going on in that room. Amy was in the middle of some such nonsense with Seth Meyers across the table, and she did something vulgar as a joke. I can't remember what it was exactly, except it was dirty and loud and "unladylike."
Jimmy Fallon, who was arguably the star of the show at the time, turned to her in a faux-squeamish voice said, "Stop that! It's not cute! I don't like it."
Amy dropped what she was doing, went black in the eyes for a second, and wheeled around on him. "I don't fucking care if you like it" Jimmy was visibly startled. Amy went right back to enjoying her ridiculous bit. (I should make it clear that Jimmy and Amy are very good friends and there never was any real beef between them)...
With that exchange, a cosmic shift took p0lace. Amy made it clear that she wasn't there to be cute. She wasn't there to play wives and girlfriends in the boys' scenes. She was there to do what she wanted to do and she did not fucking care if you like it.

Fey speaks with great respect of her (republican) parents and of the way she was raised with both freedom and love by them. Talking about bantering ideas for 30 Rock sketches someone says "What if we do a story about Liz being called a cunt?" Actually, that only happened to me once that I know about. A coworker at SNL dropped an angry C-bomb on me and I had the weirdest reaction. To my surprise, I blurted, "No. You don't get to call me that. My parents love me; I'm not some Adult Child of an Alcoholic that's going to thake that shit." And it never happened again...that I know of.

#33 I have Bossypants on hold at the library (behind 90 or so other people...), can't wait now to get it!

Yesterday started The Natural Laws of Good Luck, a marriage memoir by Ellen Graf. Graf was a divorced single mother who's friend, a woman originally from China, came to her one day and remarked that she was concerned that Ellen was lonely. The friend had a brother in China who was also lonely, and she suggested perhaps they'd like each other. Ellen went to China to meet Zhong-hua, and after a few weeks together, despite the language barrier (neither could speak the other's language), they decided to marry. The memoir mostly chronicles their life after Zhong-hua moved to the US and they began their life together.

33: I shared your enjoyment of Bossypants. I sent The Mother's Day Prayer for Its Daughter to my daughters, coworkers and friends in May. It may become an annual mailing.

For anyone who's interested, there's going to be a documentary on Gloria Steinem on HBO starting tomorrow, the 15th: http://news.yahoo.com/ever-activist-steinem-reflective-mode-161810781.html

Wow! Bossypants seems to have gained a real following here! I thought it was just another celeb auto.

I mean, I like 30 Rock and Parks and Rec and everything.

And maybe I'm just old and out of it. But I thought women were beyond the stage where telling dirty jokes and saying "fuck" to men (e.g., Amy Poehler story above) is a Big Step Forward for the Sisterhood.

I've been in a funk and find Henry James soothing. I have just finished listening to The Aspern Papers on audio book.

Just finished A Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart. It's in a dystopian vein and says some funny/scary things about citizen journalism and technology and aging.

# 38 I'm new here, so is this for books by women authors?

I promised myself before the end of the summer I was going to read

A Ticket to the Circus
By Norris Church Mailer

39 - It is and it isn't. The overall thread is a focus on female authors but on the 'what are you reading' threads, anything goes (although the main focus is still female stuff). We also sometimes chat about the treatment of female characters in books written by men.

Welcome BTW!

#40 Thank you and thanks for clearing that up!

I'm currently reading Edith Wharton's Summer. I've read a number of her books before, but they all seemed to be set in New York with the upper classes, so this book with its uneducated and willful heroine, who was brought down from The Mountain (peopled with criminals) as a baby is rather gothic in contrast. More about wild emotions than studies of class and society.

And I've got Bossypants to be picked up at the library this week. Fey isn't as well known in Australia so I got to jump right to the front of the queue when the book was added to the catalogue this week. Yay!

ETA: I listened to an interesting review of Bossypants which is what got me mostly interested in it, you can find the transcript here: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2011/3246306.htm but the really intestine bit for me was the reviewer quoted another reviewer: "One particularly snippy review argued that it failed to deliver because it was insufficiently 'memoir-ish.' Bossypants the review argued, failed to disclose enough of Fey's back-story and there was insufficient disclosure of her personal life."

Which made it much more interesting than a standard memoir would have been. :)

Why on Earth Fey would have to deliver personal detail to make a good book is beyond me.

>37 nohrt4me2: The idea isn't that Poehler said fuck to a man but that she plain didn't care whether or not he found her story interesting. SNL had long been a men's club and Fey was showing that women were no longer trying to fit in, they expected to be heard.
As far as delivering personal messages, Fey gets pretty personal when she wants, which again is the operative phrase when she wants. She doesn't go into detail about her scar, she knows people want to hear all the gory details, and she chooses to keep that to herself. She's a take charge woman, that's what the book shows.

Despite liking Tina Fey, I really wasn't interested in this book. But you've changed my mind! On to the wishlist it goes . . .

>42 wookiebender: If you're enjoying Summer, you should also read Ethan Frome. I think most Americans are forced to read it in high school even though it's also not typical Wharton. It's only about 100 pages long, and also features characters from a poor rural community.

>42 wookiebender:: I really liked Summer, but then I'm a Wharton fan and would read anything she wrote :)

I just finished and reviewed The Personal History of Rachel Dupree by Ann Weisgarber about an African American family settling a ranch in the Badlands of South Dakota in the early 1900's. This is a nearly perfect book, long listed for the Orange Prize, different from anything else I've read about pioneers. Now I start Death Comes For the Archbishop by Willa Cather.

#45> Oh, I've already read Ethan Frome, I did enjoy it, but I think for the wrong reasons. I was spending too much time giggling at the over-the-top Gothic-ness of the plot. :)

I do like Wharton, but I think I prefer her NY stories, Age of Innocence, House of Mirth.

Been a while since I popped in here! I've since read Jamrach's Menagerie (longlisted for both the Orange and Booker prizes) and I enjoyed it, but found the writing overly descriptive at times, and the plot lagging in places. Good, but not great.

And then, because of a nasty headcold and a requirement for comfort reads, I moved on to Georgette Heyer's Charity Girl. I love the attention to detail with all the Georgian slang (I wonder if there's a dictionary of Georgian slang out there; I can get the meaning from the context, but I'd love to know where it all comes from) and the fashions. And always slightly-unpredictable plots, which adds to the amusement value - I never quite get it right from the opening chapters, unlike other romances. But they're not really romances, are they?

>#48
I haven't gotten to Charity Girl yet. . . I just discovered Heyer this year and working my way through her catalog has done serious damage to my reading goals and my wallet! Where do you rank that title versus her others?

(I mostly think of Heyer as writing comedies of manners, rather than romances proper. A few of them are really romantic, but mostly I've found that they're just hilariously funny. :D)

Gosh, I haven't read that much Heyer as yet. :)

I really enjoyed Cotillion and have only been annoyed I haven't been able to drop "made a cake out of me!" into conversation yet; apart from that I've only read Faro's Daughter and Charity Girl, both of which I liked equally and very much. There was the occasional almost over-long dialogue in Charity Girl, but that was because she wrote a very nasty character and I wasn't happy to be spending time with him. But I had to, because he was driving the plot at one stage!

They've all been quite delightful, and yes, you're quite right, much more comedies of manner than romances proper.

I've still got Devil's Cub and Cousin Kate on the shelves.

I read all the Regency Heyers during my teenage years and now (nearly 40 years later) I'm working my way through them again. I think I'm getting more out of them but I can remember so little from my original readings. So far Black Moth, Cotillion, Friday's Child, Black Sheep, The Talisman Ring and Sylvester. I think Sprig Muslin might be the next.

I am almost done with False Colours, another Georgette Heyer's.
I have enjoyed all of her books I read, including the mysteries, which are pretty good.

Yesterday read Tiffany Baker's The Little Giant of Aberdeen County. Unfortunately it was one of those situations where the book just wasn't what I wanted it to be (which is obviously not the fault of the book). For some reason I thought it would be a bit more lighthearted, that more of the characters would seem admirable, and it might even have a sort of larger-than-life, mythic element about it (like Big Fish or The Monsters of Templeton or something). It was well enough done for what it was, but wasn't my cup of tea.

After a bunch of guy books, I'm reading Portrait in Sepia, by Isabel Allende. So far it's pretty okay and unchallenging. But not bad for a lazy summer read.

I finished and ended up rather disappointed in Native Star. It at first seemed to be kind of a Hogwarts of the American West in the 19th century with the pedant Hermione being replaced by the warlock Dreadnought Stanton whose appetite is as big as Ron's, and Harry replaced by Emily Edwards a camp witch. Hobson was able to create an alternate US west in which magic plays a great part, then she fully imports the custom of 2nd class women: wizards hold most of the power and respect, witches are rather disdained as dabblers, shrill, or whores. Why would she do that? Perhaps the follow up book The Hidden Goddess is less misogynistic since it's about a goddess, but what's the point of worshiping a goddess if regular women are still thought to be lesser beings than men?

OtherJoyce --interesting comments. Don't think I want to read that one.

Sometimes women amaze me. I do think I'll read the second one, one of these days in hopes she straightens things out. I guess I'm just an optimistic pessimist.

I'm reading Bossypants by Tina Fey. I think it is hysterically funny without being mean - a quality all too rare in comedy. I suspect it helps my enjoyment that we are close in age.

Just finished Jincy Willett's The Writing Class. It was a book club pick, and not something I'd read ordinarily.

Interesting mix of narrative--e-mails, and, of course, student writing (which wasn't as realistically awful as it could have been, but then, who wants to read that?).

The set-up was really imaginative, and I was able to trick out the gender and a lot of the personality of the perp from the linguistic clues, which were fun. I also sorta liked the anti-heroine/teacher.

But I began to weary of the red herring diet, and at some points, people did things that were just plain stupid (setting out in the middle of the night to look for a lost colleague near the ocean in the pitch dark and nobody thinks to bring a flashlight? geez).

I finally Moby Dick'ed through the last few chapters b/c I finally just didn't really care whodunnit. I was a little underwhelmed by the climax. It would have been more exciting had it been about 50 or 75 pages shorter.

I'm listening to an audiobook of The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier whose books I usually love. The 14 year old Claude Le Viste is in love with Nicolas des Innocents, the creator of the tapestries. She says, "I heard his voice and felt it in my maidenhead." Oh, Tracy, what have you done?

I'm just stgarting Night and Day by Virginia Woolf. I can pretty confidently predict that I'll love it, because I've loved almost all of her work that I've read.

>2 lemontwist:, 46, 42 I've got to add my voice to the chorus of Edith Wharton praises. I've read several of her works and loved them, but I still need to read Summer, The Buccaneers, and The Reef. Summer sounds terrific!

@60. Agree. "Lady & Unicorn" was the first Chevalier I ever read, and I didn't read another one.

I finished Ammonite, and it was wonderful. About half of the Amazon reviews call it essentially lesbian porn, which I find laughable (well, I'd laugh if I weren't screaming); there was ONE sex scene approximately a page long, and it's on entire PLANET of women, because there's an alien virus that killed all the male colonists. And besides that single sex scene, there's a whole slew of complex all-female societies explored, a fairly tense plot involving the conflicts between a shady corporation, their employees on the planet, and the planet's natives, and some really, really impressive lead character development. My full review is here if anyone wants to check it out.

I also did read The Tempering of Men which I haven't YET seen dismissed as simply slash fiction, but I'm sure that's coming. It wasn't as good as its predecessor, A Companion to Wolves, primarily because it suffers from the middle-book syndrome where all it's really doing is showing the outcome of the climax in book #1 and setting up the conflict in book #3. But again, the character development was quite good, and I found the world fairly nuanced.

Read Heartless too, but it was just more of the same; there is a beating heart at the core of this series, but Carriger insists on disguising it with enormous amounts of frivolity that I just don't find quite as funny as I think I'm meant to.

Now I'm reading Writing the Other, by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward.

>63 PhoenixFalls: Phoenix, how does that series work Sarah Monette wrote the first one and Elizabeth Bear wrote the second one? That's pretty unusual.

>64 Citizenjoyce: Citizenjoyce: It's an artifact of LibraryThing not allowing multiple authors in the primary author field; both books are written by both authors. ;)

I'm just starting Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme edited by Ivan E. Coyote I'm afraid it will pale in comparison to Joan Nestle's The Persistent Desire which is one of my favorite anthologies ever and came when we needed it at the height of the lesbian/feminist sex wars. I'm pleased that Nestle wrote a prologue and am getting excited to see what the 'youngster' queers have to say on a topic that is very near and dear to my heart.

@66, looked for LT reviews on the two books you mentioned, but found none. Are these essay or short fiction anthologies?

Yeah, I know I could go to Amazon and look, but I want a "real" person to give me the skinny.

Am always on the lookout for interesting material for my comp class. I'm pushing 60 and the students are as much as 40 years younger. Anything from either work you'd really recommend?

Thanks!

Oh, I didn't think much of The Lady and the Unicorn either, her other works are much better.

I just picked up a coming of age tale called Cargo, by new Australian author Jessica Au.

The Persistent Desire is largely comprised of essays and autobiographical narratives with some photography, poetry and archival materials/letters. I remember being so moved by the narratives of the lesbians included and especially a letter written by Una Troubridge to Radclyffe Hall. I have no idea how it has held up. I liked it so much because it was very, very non-theoretical or academic which was rare for its time. Looking at current reviews on Good Reads, I suspect it largely reads as history to young queers today.

I don't know about Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme yet because I'm just starting it. I suspect your students will relate more to the new one though. My experience with young GLBTQ kids is their lives are very, very different these days (for the better) than ours was 30 years ago and, therefore, their concerns are quite different.

If you are interested in a current FTM Trans narrative, I really, really like S. Bear Bergman's essays The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You. Bear explores gender identity as well as Jewish culture and basically being human in North America today. I know that Bear does a lot of speaking at colleges as well which leads me to believe students find him relevant. He also does joint performances with Ivan E. Coyote who edited Persistence. (Disclosure - Bear is an acquaintance of mine and the boyfriend of someone I'm very close with).

Edited to change US to North America.

I'm finding The Lady and the Unicorn much better now that we have put the girl's maidenhead behind us. I imagine her silliness will rise again in the future, but for now Chevalier is doing what she does best, describing the art of the tapestries. This part is very good.

Okay, I have to defend the Lady and the Unicorn. I went into it having loved A Girl with a Pearl Earring, which I admit I'm partial to due to my intense love of Vermeer. I was skeptical of the author's abilities with other artists, and heard sketchy things about her books. I didn't expect to like The Lady and the Unicorn. but thought overall it was a decent read. I appreciated that my edition included a detailed picture of the tapestry. I went on to read Remarkable Creatures, which I also thought was rather good too. So I know she's uneven, but I'm not going to just diss her writing even when others do.

And by the way, in addition to that . . . I'm reading The Testament of Jessie Lamb, by Jane Rogers, which has been long listed for the Booker, and (just a few pages in...) promises to be rather disturbing.

I think Chevalier is so excellent when she writes about art. I'm starting to think the silliness about the maidenhead was to show that the 14 year old Claude was trying to feel like a woman but was too immature to express herself even to herself. I'll have to see how she's treated later. I've looked up the tapestries on the internet and have just ordered a very cheap ($1.95) 2011 calendar with the pictures so I can examine them more closely. She does bring art to life. She was able to show Vermeer in a very sympathetic light as the dignified though struggling artist he was, Nicolas des Innocents is presented as just a hound dog. Then to do the scientists in Remarkable Creatures, again a big departure for her. She has a range, that's for sure.

Oh, thanks, Phoenix for the explanation about the authors.

69> I'm a huge fan of Bear's essays and would highly recommend them as well.

@69 and 75, thanks for that info. I'm in the Fran Lebowitz generation. Who, thank God, cigs have not yet killed.

I'm reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

77: I hope you enjoy The Immortal LIfe of Henrietta Lacks. It was one of my favorite books last year.

I have had a long dry spell with female authors! I am presently reading Baking Cakes in Kigali, which I am finding very interesting from a perspective of learning about Rwanda after the genocide and the position of expats from all over the world. The writing is nothing special, but the perspective seems quite unique.

Okay, I've looked over my Tracy Chevalier reviews. I did love Girl With a Pearl Earring; was less happy with The Lady and the Unicorn (my quibble wasn't the "maidenhead", but the male character talking about "ploughing" women, ick; and the fact that it seemed a bit "same old" after Girl with a Pearl Earring); and was even less happy with The Virgin Blue, which didn't work for me. (And I always get those last two muddled, which is why I was harsh about The Lady and the Unicorn above; I should have said it was good, but not as good as Girl With a Pearl Earring.)

I'm not writing her off as a writer, she's had more hits than misses IMO. And I *am* looking forward to Remarkable Creatures. But so far there's only one of her books that I'm likely to re-read, and that's Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Wookie, she does make you look at the art, though, doesn't she?

I've been reading westerns all month and finished my first Nevada Barr, Borderline. I very much like her Anna Pigeon park ranger character. She's tortured by thoughts of violence, of course, as all law officers are supposed to be, she's very physically confident, observant, articulate and no nonsense. It was a pleasure to meet her mixed with a less than pleasant birth scene, a suffering cow, whiny college students, humorous college students, Texas politicians, immigration policy and a great description of rafting and rivers. I won't make a steady diet of her, but I bet I'll visit her again once in a while.

I just finished the terrifically compelling Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers (long listed for this year's Booker prize). Now on to The Swimmer, by Roma Tearne.

I particularly liked Remarkable Creatures because, unlike some other Chevalier, of its focus on the relationship between the two women. And fossils -- I would never have learned anything about fossils but for that book.

After a long string of books by male authors I have now read two books by female authors.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett which I thought was good but, for me anyways, was missing some of the substance that I remember from reading Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. That is my personal take on it.

I finished Joyner's Dream by Sylvia Tyson this morning. Overall, I enjoyed this family saga historical piece and have posted a review on the book page.

Next up is a long over due re-read of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

#80> Yes, and I do like the art. :)

I've started Bossypants, which I'm enjoying immensely.

>63 PhoenixFalls:: Ammonite, lesbian porn?! That wasn't the book I read . . . how ridiculous. I'm currently reading Griffith's second (I think) novel, Slow river, and it is terrific so far. Excellent exploration of character, as in Ammonite.

Just finished Acceptable Loss by Anne Perry, the latest in the William Monk series.
I have read all the previous ones and quite enjoyed them.

Now I am on to a male author: Alexander McCall Smith and The Dog Who Came in from the Cold.

Did you read the first in the Corduroy Mansionsseries, Paola? I liked his 44 Scotland Street series but really not the snooty Professor Dr von Igelfeld series. In fact, that's his only series I didn't like. Sneak in a comment about how you like it. Of course he's not a woman, but he does fully flesh out his women characters.

Yes, Joyce, I read the first and loved it! I have only read 44 Scotland Street, even if I have all the others in the series as well. I will get to them as soon as I can locate where they are.
Since I have over 6,000 books, most of which are boxed, at times it is difficult to find what I am looking for.
I really like his prose, which cheers me up when I need it. It is comfort reading :-))

>85 Sakerfalcon: Sakerfalcon

I know!!! *headdesk* The sexism and homophobia exhibited by the reviewers just boggled my mind.

I actually read Slow River last year. . . it was incredible. Really intense (and I'm *not* triggered depictions of abuse) but so beautifully written and with such amazing control over narrative voice and structure that I had to put Griffith on my "To-buy immediately" list. Now if only she'd finish another book!

(I do know about her mysteries too, and plan to read them at some point, but I'm really excited about the historical fantasy novel she's working on revisions for, according to her blog.)

>89 PhoenixFalls: I saw similar reviews for some of David Sedaris's books - i.e., "only read this book if you want to read about homosexual sex" and I would sit there scratching my head going, huh? did I read the same book? I guess with some people if a homosexual person expresses even the *slightest* indication of attraction toward another person, the book is somehow just full of homosexual pornography. Sigh.

I am just finishing up Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert, which I enjoyed even more than her Eat, Pray, Love bestseller. There's a lot in there about the gender roles subscribed to married women and mothers.

>90 sweetiegherkin: Sweetiegherkin, there you have it. If a homosexual person has a picture of their partner on their desk, holds their partner's hand or, heaven forbid, gives them a quick kiss it's construed as shoving the homosexual agenda down the throats of everyone. If a heterosexual does the same thing it's either not noticed or thought of as a sign of healthy interpersonal relationships.

I finished Bossypants and thought it was a great read. I was rather taken aback by the sexist nature of the industry she's working in - I never would have thought that women were somehow less funny than men (Jeez, get a bunch of women around and we can crack each other up within seconds), or that being a woman meant that one should somehow be intimidated in managerial postitions, etc. I liked her forthright nature, I liked her sense of self-deprecating humour, I cracked up at the appalling photos of her as a child/young woman. (The 1980s were not kind to many of us.)

And I kept on thinking of her as Liz Lemon (if SNL is on Australian TV, it's nowhere I've seen), so it was a shock to see that she's not Liz Lemon (husband! child!). And there are many names I need to Google now, there was a lot of assumed knowledge about American comedy/pop culture.

And she has a facial scar? I've never noticed it! I think I can see it on the cover picture, but I'm not sure.

Have moved on to a completely different kettle of fish, Sadie Jones' Small Wars.

I'm about to start A Stolen Life: A Memoir by Jaycee Dugard. I didn't find Room too uncomfortable to read, but I'll see how I take the real thing.

>89 PhoenixFalls:: I'm not a big mystery reader, but that historical fantasy by Griffith sounds like one to watch out for. Thanks for the heads-up!

Alice Adams's Southern Exposure. So far, it seems to be a kind of updated riff on "Imitation of Life" (1934, Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers). It strikes me as kind of linguistically anachronistic. Did school children say something was "cool" in 1939?

It's a new month, the thread is here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/123029

>93 wookiebender: I didn't realize she had a scar until there was some hubbub about it being airbrushed away for the cover of Vogue magazine. Here's one of many stories about it: http://www.usmagazine.com/stylebeauty/news/tina-feys-scar-airbrushed-for-vogue-c...

I feel like this topic was actually mentioned on here? Or perhaps in the Feminist Theory group?