What book by and/or about women are you reading Sept-Dec 07

Thought I'd start a new thread for this.

I'm back to the Djebar novel (posted on the last thread) after a weekend excursion into Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's new nonfiction, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History. (touchstone has yet to work with this book!).

I just started my first Rachel Carson book, The Sea Around Us. Can't believe I've never read anything by her. I'm interested in a good biography about her - any recommendations?

Already in the middle of The nutmeg tree by Margery Sharp, which I started this morning and ONLY read on the train! I love it!!

Just finished Eva Moves the Furniture for my book club discussion tomorrow, and really enjoyed it!

Jane Eyre!

Bonjour Tristesse

dancesong_97, I'm so glad to see that Margot Livesey is being read! I very much enjoy her work and I have her listed as one of my favorites.

Catering to Nobody by Diane Mott Davidson - just finished it. Not sure if I liked it - anyone else read it? Trying to decide if it gets better as the series goes on.

Just finished Possession by A.S. Byatt. Excellent! Before that, Uncommon Arrangements by Katie Roiphe. A little drier than I expected but a fascinating look into both an era and the relationships involved.

Just finished Elegy for Iris by her husband, John Bayley. Iris Murdoch is an important writer of the 20th. century. Her novels & critiques are still widely read, especially in Britain. Iris & John were married for over 40 years & the book is a gentle tribute to those 40 years. The last chapters deal with Iris's decline into Alzheimer's disease but it is a positive book & I plan to check out some of Iris Murdoch's work which I haven't read yet.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. A little slow going for my linear literal brain but I'm enjoying it.

Re my own post #2 above -- Bill Moyers had an excellent show this week (US television) about Rachel Carson. It centered around a stage play about her called A Sense of Wonder written and acted by Kaiulani Lee. Carson played such a pivotal role in the environmental movement - such a strong role model. If you get a chance to see or hear the show and/or the play, I strongly encourage it. You can get Bill Moyers' Journal shows on podcast.

>9 MarianV: MarianV -- have you seen the movie Iris yet? It's quite well done (Judi Dench, always a winner!); focuses mostly on her decline and the difficulties surrounding that, but some good bits about her life and writing. I haven't read anything by her yet either, but intend to soon. Anyone have a suggestion where to start?

I was away from the internet over the weekend but I'd like to recommend The Joys of Motherhood by Nigerian author Buchi Emecheta. Excellent, just excellent.

Just received in the mail an anthology of German Women Poets called After Every War which contains poems by Rose Auslander, Ilse lasker-schuler, Nelly Sachs and ingeborg bachmann among others. i have a book by Auslander called mother tongue but it doesn't contain any of the original german, so i was thrilled to get this anthology, even though there are fewer than 10 poems per poet. The translations were done by Eavan Boland the Irish poet. I have dual language books by Nelly Sachs and Ingeborg Bachmann, luckily.

teelgee, it's been so long since I read Murdoch that I'm due to give her a reread, I think. Love Judy Dench to bits.

I just finished Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale, the story of two different women's lives and the way in which they intertwine through biography and literature. Its funny - even though I thought it was in some ways really unoriginal (the plot was like a combination of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and an incest obsession to rival V.C. Andrews...) and some of the plot "twists" were visible miles away - I couldn't put it down!

Now I am reading The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls' memoir of her completely f*cked up childhood. I am only about halfway through and I am experiencing serious doubt and fatigue. How could anyone remember their life at such a young age in such great detail? And how could one person's life be so crazy - like made-for-tv movie crazy...? How could her parents be so awful? How can she possibly have one MORE story that's even worse than the last one she just told...? Interested to see what will happen next and how it all ends.

I understand the incredulity. But remember that Walls' talked with her older sister and sibs.

Moreover, when you grow up in a family where these kinds of traumas occur, your memories are, often startlingly (and cruelly) vivid.

I've asked my mother about some much pleasanter things I thought I remembered from age 2 1/2 (just before my brother was born) and having my adenoids out at age 3. She verified that what I remembered was correct.

SPOILER:
I think a father taking you out of a hospital or a mother callously leaving your cat behind would make an impression on a child that would last quite a long time.

I'm just beginning Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See (no touchstones this morning). Very interesting and appalling to read about girls' roles in China ca 1820s - their submissive role in the family, the foot binding, how invisible they were. Not easy reading.

Just left renaissance italy with Leonardo's Judas by Leo Perutz and am on the Beagle with Darwin in a biography by Irving Stone' called The origin.

SPOILER*******************************

The Perutz book is about a merchant who was in love with the daughter of a man who owed him money, and Leonardo used his face as a model for Judas. She stole the money from her father to repay her lover, and her lover promptly rejected her. Very weird story.

# 11 and the previous one - re Iris Murdoch

It's really interesting to start with the first one and go on. Easy to find the chronology. The first are very accessible and exciting.

Otherwise, I would recommend:

Under the Net
The Sea, The Sea
A Severed Head
The Philosopher's Pupil

Is there a Murdoch Appreciation group on here? Maybe I should start one!

#19. Please do start a Murdoch thread. I would also suggest The Book and the Brotherhood
and The Black Prince.

As another Murdoch fan can I throw in a couple? The Bell was the first of hers I read and still one of my favourites; A Word Child was also a good read.

The only Iris Murdoch I've read is The Italian Girl which I remember enjoying but very little about. It was quite short, as I recall. Don't seem to have my copy anymore, either, so I'll have to remedy that.

I'm currently reading The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields which I'm very much enjoying so far. (I've just finished the first chapter which covers Daisy's birth.)

I should thank someone, somewhere here on LT for mentioning The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy. The title alone made me look it up, and it sounded so great I waited months for it to come back into print in a new edition. Completely worth it. Dundy's Sally Jay Gorce is a riot.

I have fallen in love with an author my grandmother loved, EM Hull. I always thought the famous Sheik stories as silly, but I have read more about the times they were written and who Edith Maude Hull was and I plan on reading all of them.

Here is something I found on the net:
E.M. (Edith Maude) Hull, was so shy and retiring that no picture exists of her. Historians are not even sure of her date of birth or when she died.

Considering myself painfully shy, she sounds like my soulmate.

#23, Xiguli, I might have been the one who recommended The Dud Avocado -- I bought it when I saw it while browsing in a bookstore because of the title (who could resist?) and loved it. Glad you did too.

#23 and #25 -- I loved The Dud Avocado too! Such a great book!

#3 - aluvalibri - Did you finish The Nutmeg Tree? Was it good? I have Margery Sharp's The Foolish Gentlewoman on my TBR pile, but need a good excuse to move it up!

I'm currently reading Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary by Ruby Ferguson. Before that, I read The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney and The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.

Yes, miss_read, The Nutmeg Tree is a very good book, which I enjoyed quite a lot. I also liked Britannia Mews quite a lot, you might wish to look into that as well.
Isn't The Dud Avocado great?

Anne Cassidy's Looking for JJ, which I just started and finished in pretty much one sitting.

And I'm currently reading Elizabeth Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte

HI CurrerBell

Looking for JJ sounds interesting. I may try this. It seems controversial as to whether it should be YA or adult.

What do you think about the biography of Charlotte you are currently reading? It seems to be the most talked about because she was a friend, but I have been told of a couple of others for the truly diehard fans , which I have become one of...

Lyndall Gordon's biography of Charlotte and Stevie Davies' 'Emily Bronte: Heretic' if you want to deepen your knowledge of the Brontes.

SPOILER
I do believe in the story that Charlottle starved herself to death because she was married to a man she despised and pregnant with his child. It is so like something straight out of her books. I guess the official line is she developed pneumonia and became dehydrated and died. I think that is just how it looked at the conscience level.

I started reading Skylark farm by Antonia Arslan, an Italian-Armenian author who talks about her family and the genocide of the Armenians perpetrated by the Turks.
I am reading the book in Italian, but posted the English title as it appears on LT.

#28 and #29 : SPOILER

I understand that she died from dehydration caused by the "morning sickness" of pregnancy, and that she was fond of her clergyman husband who got along well with her father. I thought she wanted to have the child. She never struck me as the suicidal type, even after her unfulfilled love for "the professor".

Dear Message 31

So "they" say she was happily married. But they did not live together for even a year. He moved away. I am not sure if she was suicidal, but I believe she had a breakdown before she was married. Maybe it was from the failure to get a school developed or from the grief of all the loss in her life. She definitely was not afraid of death.

Re C. Bronte'sl death: I suppose I had a romanticised view of her, and thought she was happier than she really was. The only biography I read was the one by Mrs. Gaskell.

On another note, I am reading the Cape of Storms by Nina Berberova recently translated by Marion Schwartz about a family of white russian emigres in Paris after the revolution, and their three daughters.

Message 33

I'm not saying that I know if she was happy or not. I still have much to read myself. There are writers that have followed in Charlotte's footsteps through Brussels where she taught at a school and was miserable. Villette in her fiction. In the last few decades some people have found streets and buildings she had described and her passages of A Long Journey (a chapter within Villette) are discussed more and more.

I think it fits her just fine if you have a romanticised view of her. She was passionate and romantic. And I think she took what happiness came her way.

She just seemed to really like to kill off love interests alot. The ones that lived have her editor to thank. Even the unknown demise of M. Paul in Villette. Charlotte wondered aloud in a letter which fate was worse to befall Lucy's love, Paul? Is it drowning to death or a life of marriage to Lucy. So she left it as an unknown. lol

How do you like Cape of Storms?

I am currently reading about one of my favorite eras, the 1940's, narrated by a 12 year old street-wise boy.

I'm about 100 pages into Mrs. Woolf & the Servants by Alison Light. Very interesting, so far.

I reread To The Lighthouse by V. Woolf because I never get tired of trying to understand why it made her feel so content. She found peace by writing this book. It helped her understand her own mother's death.

I guess you have to take her words of that period with a grain of "salt" or "sand" considering how her life ended.

Reading Burger's Daughter by Nadine Gordimer. Don't know why, but it's rather slow-going.

Gonna start Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull by Barbara Goldsmith in a few minutes. I played her a long time ago in a high school play and have been interested ever since. I'm really hoping it is a good biography.

I did not know where to post so I thought I would start here.

It involves a book with a female author. It is a classic, but it is not important what it is, and it is well over one-hundred years old. I am not reading with the aid of a class, but I picked up a Borders reccommended version. It is from a well known publisher and is full of notes and explanations and timeline.

I learned alot and thought I was on my way to understand the author and the time she lived, but then I posted something about her and people started questioning what I was saying. Then I reference where I read the facts. People said it was wrong. I have lost faith in the consistancy.

Even if I took a class, how do I know what I am being told is true?

I feel like I am starting all the way back to the bottom. How will I ever learn if false information is given?

Just finished Nisa and Return to Nisa by Marjorie Shostack about an !kung woman of a Bushman tribe in Botswana, in the Kalahari desert across the border from Namibia. Shostack was an anthropologist who lived with them twenty years before returning, and saw the encroachment of "civilization". Nisa was a feisty, strong, and very overtly sexual being who withstood many tragedies with great strength of spirit. Shostack died at 42 of breast cancer, and her second book was finished by a friend. Fascinating stories, and brave anthropologist!.

Just finished Dream Catcher by margaret Salinger, daughter of JD. It's supposed to be a biography of her father, but It's a lot more about her & her life. She really "Tells it like it is". Also she puts a very human face on Salinger & also his characters -She refers to the Glass family as her "brothers & sisters". An interesting read, but also very sad.

I'm currently reading Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford and just startd Bitter Sweets by Roopa Falooki.

I've just finished my first novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, after being constantly intrigued by the mentions of her on LT as a "feminist sci-fi" writer. I read The Dispossessed, since I am also a fan of those utopia/dystopia novels. I enjoyed it and thought there were some thought-provoking ideas in it. I also liked how, unlike a lot of dystopia novels that present one society as totally bad and another as totally good, this novel featured a number of different cultures and societies, all with their own positives and negatives.

Just finished Women of Algiers in Their Apartment by Assia Djebar which was an excellent collection of short fiction - vignettes really - that capture the voices of a diverse group of Algerian women during colonial times, the war of independence, and post-colonial. The book has a terrific 'postface' by the author which could've been a preface. There is also a short glossary and long afterword by another author.

>43 fannyprice: fannyprice, I don't think Le Guin writes with a distinct feminist agenda so much that feminism is part of the wider net she casts. Another great dystopia would be Suzy McGee Charnas's Walk to the End of the World and Octavia Butler's dystopia Parable of the Sower is also excellent. Charnas's is blatantly feminist, published in the 70's (set post-apocalyptic earth). Butler's is set in the near future (near now!) and casts a wider net which explores the 'what if' to some of the trends in the late 80s and early 90s (published in '93) - also climate change if I remember correctly.

Could not get through His Dark Materials trilogy, which I found THE MOST BORING read this side of LOTR.

Have thrown it aside not caring whether Mrs. Coulter turns Lyra's daemon into back bacon sandwiches and cuts off the rest of Will's fingers. How that mess won awards is beyond me. The jibes at the Church were the least offensive thing about it.

End of rant.

Have now moved on to a book for grownups, "Lost and Found" (it's touchstoning as a book by Jayne Ann Krentz, but it's by Carolyn Parkhurst.

Whether it's a great book, I don't know, but it's told from the POVs of several people participating in a reality/game show.

I'm a couple chapters into Piaf: A Biography by Simone Berteaut, and it is absolutely fascinating. On the other hand, I don't know if it is the fault of the translation or not, but Berteaut's writing could use a bit more polish. But the material more than makes up for the writing.

chacun à son goût, nohrt4me. I'm just reading and thoroughly enjoying His Dark Materials. Pullman knows his Milton and plays with Paradise Lost quite enchantingly in this story.

ETA Fannyprice, you might like some of the Sherri Tepper books such as The Gate to Women's Country, Beauty, etc. She moved from feminism through ecofeminism to what, for lack of a better term, I'd dub ecohumanism in her writing. Not heavyweight but thought-provoking.

I am currently reading Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. I am enjoying it and I reccommend reading the notes at the back of the book first to understand where this comes from.

>43 fannyprice:, 47 yes, fannyprice, I concur with Tiffin about Tepper...

Not to derail the thread on His Dark Materials, but the clever Miltonian allusions aside, the book just strikes me as totally humorless and rambling. But, then, I hated LOTR for the same reason.

Plus I detest "Paradise Lost."

As a Catholic, I have to say I think the way Pullman's depiction of how the institutional Church has worked in the past has some truth to it. But I think he's dredging up horrors that the Church has already acknowledged (the Inquisition, Galileo's house arrest) and tried to correct, which is a bit unfair.

Incidentally, nohrt4me, in Lyra's alternate universe, the Magisterium was largely the creation of Pope John Calvin, who several centuries earlier had moved the papacy from Rome to Geneva.

Yes, CurrerBell, I did read the books, and caught that tidbit.

Clearly Pullman thinks that institutional religion will act pretty much the same no matter what universe it inhabits, i.e., will form vast conspiracies to maintain its power over people by terrorizing them in various ways.