WomanBingoPUP --- April Reads

What are you reading this month? For the female critter square, I just finished reading Saving Sadie and Sasha by Laura S. Jones, a book by an acquaintance of mine. SAdie and Sasha are two female pit bulls whom Laura and her husband fostered from the local SPCA. In order to finally get them ready for adoption, Laura and a friend drove them from Central Virginia to Colorado to a behavior and rehabilitation center from which the dogs were adopted.

I have several going right now that I should complete in April.

For the short stories, I'm reading A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin which I'm absolutely loving. There's a small group read over on the 75 Book Challenge if anyone is interested in joining in.

I'm reading a Pulitzer Prize winning book of poetry by Claudia Emerson called Late Wife: Poems about divorce and remarriage.

And finally I'm reading all about love: new visions by bell hooks which I'll use for the African American woman square.

These are all the type of book that I like to dip in and out of, so they are working well together.

I've just finished As Red as Blood by Salla Simukka, a Finnish YA thriller which I'm using for the New to You Author square.

I've just finished As Red as Blood by Salla Simukka, a Finnish YA thriller which I'm using for the New to You Author square.

Competed another square last night, About a Spy, with The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman. This was a fun read.

I've completed two squares so far this month. For "Short Stories" I read It Falls Into Place by Phyllis Shand Allfrey. And for "About a Woman Spy" I have just finished The Orchid Affair, part of the Pink Carnation series by Lauren Willig.

So far I've read The Book of Phoenix, which I'm using for the "African-American Author" square. It's a sort of... magical realism bio-thriller? idk, genres are hard. Anyway, it's a really cool book. I'd recommend it.

I finished Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear. The title character is a "Psychologist and Investigator", which seem to fit the category of non-traditional roles for a woman in 1929.

My first BingoPUP read of the month is for the Middle Eastern author square: I Want to Get Married!: One Wannabe Bride's Misadventures with Handsome Houdinis, Technicolor Grooms, Morality Police, and Other Mr. Not Quite Rights by Ghada Abdel Aal. Based on the author's blog, it's a satire of kinds of situations single women in Egypt find themselves in as they search for a husband.

I'm currently reading Pomegranate Soup a story about three Iranian sisters operating a restaurant in Ireland, by Marsha Mehran for the "author from Middle East" square.

I read The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize for Literature winner for the Award winner square.

I just filled in the Woman Author Using a Male Pseudonym" square with The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling).

I finished an interesting book about raising chickens as part of the locovore movement. It was an ER book called Locally Laid by Lucie B. Amundsen. I was surprised how entertaining and well told the story was. I just put it in the "about a female critter" (hens) square.

The "new-to-you author" turned out to be Victorian, but it was my first taste of Margaret Oliphant: The duke's daughter. I liked it enough to continue with the other novel contained in my digital copy.

I used Moon Called to fill in the "female critter" square as the main character is a shape shifter who turns into a coyote.

Meg Rosoff has just been awarded the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Prize, so I read How I live now for the award winner square.

Danke für meine Aufmerksamkeit fits for the "about a female critter" square, it is a first-person narrative from a female mouse, Britta. And it was hilarious.
Britta has separated from her partner and taken up residence with Polly and her parents. They live in a well-to-do quarter of Cologne and Britta observes from the privileged position of a pet (she can talk) how Polly and her friends cope with their incompetent parents. Some very biting comments on modern child-rearing, but family therapy gets off lightly, since it actually works in this case.

I just realized that The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, which I finished last week, fits the "about female critter" square. :)

I read Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay and am counting it for the African-American author square.

For the "Woman In Combat" square, I just read Daughter of Xanadu by Dori Jones Yang.

For the "Woman Scientist" square, I read a book by a woman scientist, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. The edition I read (c.2002)
included an introduction about Rachel Carson by Linda Lear plus a brief afterword discussing the importance of the book by Edward O. Wilson. Carson demonstrated her knowledge as a scientist in this influential book.

For the Written under a Male Pseudonym square, I'm using High Life in Verdopolis which Charlotte Bronte wrote under a very early pseudonym, Lord C. A. F. Wellesley. In the edition I read, the title page from the original manuscript with the pseudonym as the author immediately precedes the text. Longer description on my thread, https://www.librarything.com/topic/204808#5556749

I finished Ammonite by Nicola Griffith, which has been on my virtual "to be read" pile for a long time. Recommended.