What are we reading in April?

I'm about to start Little Men in my Library of America edition. It's a carry-over from the March Reading Through Time group's theme-read on education, where I reread Little Women in the Harvard-Belknap annotated edition and then did a thorough read of the supplementary materials in Little Women (Norton Critical Edition). Little Men and Jo's Boys fit in with the RTT's second-quarter read of 19th-century North America and it gives me an excuse to get completely through one of my LoA volumes.

I'm still reading Nickeled and Dimed but I happened to see this today, and wondered how you all would fare?

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ariannarebolini/how-many-of-the-greatest-books-by-women-...

I did miserably, only 37 books in all, but I take issue with the list as being "the greatest books by women."

>2 vwinsloe: I only got 18, but I dislike Victorian-era literature which pretty much chopped the list in half. And in my defense I've read a lot of books by the authors mentioned there that weren't, apparently, their "greatest" efforts.

>2 vwinsloe: I managed a paltry 16 out of the 102, but like >3 lemontwist: I've read some by the authors that weren't the ones listed, have a half dozen more in the TBR pile, but will also admit to not having even heard of some of the authors! There were others that I would have said were missing from the list too, but then I suppose that's also to be expected.

Whew, >3 lemontwist: & >4 Peace2:. I feel better now. I consider myself fairly well read, and was surprised at my score. Thanks.

48, but i agree about the choices on the list... and i'm sad to say i hadn't heard of many of these books or their authors.

My score was 17, not including the books I didn't finish because I didn't like them. Also I agree, some of my favorites were not on there.

So there! ;-)

My score was 48. But I'm old and went to graduate school.

However, any "great books" list that includes "Bel Canto" but nothing by Karen Joy Fowler is, IMO, suspect. Also, two Whartons and Woolfs, but only one Austen? And nothing by Anais Nin or Colette?

I now anticipate getting bombarded with ads for the books I have not read.

>8 nohrt4me2:

wait, i don't dispute the misrepresentation of the list, but are you saying that you didn't like bel canto??????

No, sorry, I didn't.

Forty-eight, but it's a miserable, Anglo-biased list.

>10 nohrt4me2:

it's probably in my top 10. curious what you didn't like?

I scored 40, but considering the flubbiness of the list, it's not something to write home about. I prefer Feminista's alternate to Modern Library's 20th century 100 to this.

Outside of that, I'm currently reading The Woman in Black, which is going quite well.

> 2: And Tina Fey's Bossypants on the list of "greatest books by women" -- I don't think so. Cute book; I enjoyed it, but a "greatest" -- not so much.

>14 shearon: I thought the same thing myself. Bossypants isn't even the best memoir I've read by a long shot.

>12 overlycriticalelisa:: Elisa, I just didn't see much depth in "Bel Canto," which is not to say that those who like it are shallow, of course. I reviewed it here:

http://thegrimreader.blogspot.com/2009/07/its-all-over-before-fat-lady-sings.htm...

Feel free to refute!

>16 nohrt4me2:
lol. i didn't think you were calling me shallow. i looked for a review in your library here, but didn't see one. thanks for this. i'll get back to you!

I got about 29 or so, but a few of them were so many years ago that I don't remember them very well. And a couple were ones that I've just never been able to get through – notably, Octavia Butler's Kindred (and I love Butler but would have preferred to have seen Fledgling on the list). But I may give Kindred another attempt in the near future.

As others have already noted, this list is way too disproportionately Anglophone.

And Little Women included but Anne of Green Gables omitted? Awrrr. (But that's just me.)

And I've got a big problem with any list that includes Atlas Shrugged!

>18 CurrerBell: Ditto on the Atlas Shrugged! Am I ashamed to admit that was one of my 18?? Maybe, but I guess everybody is 17 once... Fortunately that phase of my life quickly passed. :)

>18 CurrerBell:, >19 lemontwist:

i feel no shame in saying that the fountainhead is one of my favorite books of all time. top 2, vacillating between that and the handmaid's tale; usually whichever i've read more recently is the one i say is my favorite but really they're tied. anyway, was true when i first read it when i was something like 20 and has been true through every rereading since (probably about 5 of them) through a couple of years ago when i was 35.

(fyi i don't agree with her philosophy, don't think i'm an objectivist .)

And furthermore, I can't understand the inclusion of something like The Hunger Games (really just a current flash-in-the-pan that wouldn't even be thought of if it weren't for Hollywood) while at the same time a real classic like Lois Lowry's The Giver is omitted.

I've read 46, and have to agree that some of those titles are not what I'd call "great". Also, I didn't notice any poetry or plays on the list, so their definition of "book" is rather narrow too.

It is a bit difficult to see what the CRITERIA were for saying that these were the GREATEST books by women. Best selling? Most highly acclaimed?? Or???

Toni Morrison was the only Nobel Prize winner on the list. What about Alice Munro, Doris Lessing, & Nadine Gordimer?

I really wish that lists like this would specify what the criteria were for making the list--otherwise, it is just some random person's personal list of favorites, I think.

OK, the list IS Buzzfeed, so maybe we shouldn't get too exercised about what's on a site that also offers a quiz about what your eyebrows say about you ...

I think the books on the list (and those mentioned here) are all more or less worthy, and any young person who takes the quiz and picks out one or two of those books will be enriched, no? Even Rand (if not for enjoyment, for the influence her minions have had on libertarian ideology here in the States).

>23 vwinsloe:, Good point about Nobel prize winners. Where are Lagerlof, Deladda, Undset, et al?

>11 LolaWalser: Forty-eight, but it's a miserable, Anglo-biased list.

Forty. And I agree.

I agree with everyone that the list could be more global.

But perspective helps here. When I took the brand spankin' new Women's Literature class (designed by women faculty and students) in college in the early 1970s, we read:

The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Tell Me a Riddle by Tillie Oleson
Small Changes by Marge Piercy
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Diary of Anais Nin by Anais Nin

Buzzfeed's list is an improvement over those early syllabi, no?

>25 southernbooklady:

Glad you agree. But, as >24 nohrt4me2: notes, consider the source, and--likely--the audience.

>26 nohrt4me2:

Well, one hundred is heap more big than seven, so, as Marx almost says somewhere, here we see quantity working up to quality.

Adjusted for size (also, I'm not familiar with Tillie Oleson), I'd say that syllabus compares well--IMO, tops out anything that includes Rand, disposable bestsellers, and glossy mag journalism.

Lola, yes, I think the books we read in that long-ago class were good ones. But many of the Buzzfeed selections hadn't even been written in the early 1970s ("The Handmaid's Tale," for example, was some years off).

So a syllabus of English-language women's lit now would have many more representatives from Africa the Middle East and southeast Asia. You'd also have more diversity in the selections from the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain.

I don't have a problem including what you journalists and bestsellers on the list, even if they seem not to have a lot of lasting power now. If we reject journalists and best sellers, we rule out voices of women from our past like Ida B. Wells and Pearl S. Buck.

So, not arguing with you, just trying to help myself think through to a "big picture" about the list.

Oh, off to look at that list--it sounds awful! But perhaps fun to bash?

Anyway, in other reading: I'm still rereading Sense and Sensibility with a bunch of LTers over at the 75 books group. This time around I'm finding it a bit of a slog.

On audiobook I'm enjoying Fingersmith.

I got 37, and I own another 13 that are waiting in my TBR pile. There are a bunch on that list that I don't ever expect to read!

>28 nohrt4me2:

Presumably, this type of list has a different purpose than a university syllabus. Catch the eye of the young 'uns by including The hunger games or whatever is le dernier cri, hope they'll pick up at least a notion of some of the dusty classics alongside, that sort of thing...

But if we're talking serious education, I'd hope for a different approach.

By the way, I can't believe I've read more titles by Anglo women (but from that list) than southernbooklady. Can't decide whether that means I need to get a life or better taste, or both. :)

>31 LolaWalser: I've managed to somehow go through life without ever reading a book by Joyce Carol Oates or Muriel Spark. How that can be, I'm not sure. But neither have I ever watched an episode of "Friends" -- which seems equally implausible for a person who has owned a television set for the last twenty years.

>32 southernbooklady: I've never watched Friends either, but I haven't owned a TV for the past 10 so... From what I hear we're not missing out on much.

Unfortunately, my higher education consisted of mostly dry engineering textbooks written by, I am guesstimating here, 100% men. I don't think my undergrad school even had a women's studies course that I could have taken if I had wanted to. (My feminism came around the time I graduated, so I wouldn't have been interested in that point anyway.) By the time I was in grad school I couldn't take classes out of my department. So I've had to discover good women-authored books through websites such as this one.

>32 southernbooklady:

Ha! Well, I've seen one episode of Friends (I think. Hated it.), but I never owned a teevee. Never read Oates (I have one in reserve, though), but did read two Sparks.

Never climbed the Himalayas but I kissed a girl! Or twenty-three!

This could be a nifty party game...

>33 lemontwist:

I managed to go through high school never noticing we basically never read ANY women authors. Maybe 2% were women. That's what one gets sticking to the dead white male canon, chronologically at that. A degree in biochem didn't do much to break the pattern. It took someone's gift of Virginia Woolf's shorter fiction when I was in grad school for me to start consciously thinking about my own misogynistic prejudices.

I still don't deliberately pursue reading women, but at least I'm not actively avoiding them anymore (although, there are large swathes of popular women's fiction I can't abide--most romances, hetero erotica and anything smacking of "family sagas", matriarchs, earth mothers and suchlike...)

>34 LolaWalser: I wouldn't say that I necessarily seek out books written by women, but after a time I just get so bored of reading the same old coming-of-age all-American novel written by some dude. I think most of the memoirs I've read are written by women; maybe I just find more common ground and interest there. Plus, the best lesbian fiction is written by women so... that heavily skews my reading. :)

In high school I can remember reading The Giver and To Kill a Mockingbird, and all the other books we read, and of course Shakespeare (gag me), were written by men. I don't even think I noticed it at the time; I was just happy to be reading. But this was also the time when I'd go into a bookstore and buy the biggest book I could find just to give me something that would take more than a day to read. Which is probably the only reason I'd ever read Les Miserables (once) and Atlas Shrugged (three times). Also because I'd already read almost every single work of sci-fi on the bookstore's shelves.

Incidentally I'm not reading anything written by a woman at the moment, because I'm reading some old Italian literature (unfortunately not in the original language, but some day I will). One of these days I'll find a great Italian authoress. :)

>34 LolaWalser:

i think i might love the "family saga" stuff but would need a few examples to be sure.

the only female author i remember reading in high school was allende - the house of the spirits. i think everything else was men. dead white men.

i read a lot of women on my own, but don't think many were assigned to me until i took a women's literature class in college, and then later one of the best classes i took in my 5 years in college (yep it took me that long) called "jewish women in international perspective" but which should have been called "lesbian jewish women and their writing through history" but which could have been called "hey, wait a second, is elisa queer?"

>29 Nickelini: I'm sort of disappointed that I dislike Victorian-style literature so much... I tried and really wanted to read Fingersmith, but I gave up after about 10 pages. Just couldn't stomach it.

>34 LolaWalser: anything smacking of "family sagas", matriarchs, earth mothers and suchlike

I find myself allergic to what the book industry calls "women's fiction" -- gang of female friends meeting up after years apart and rehashing old arguments while finding new romances and resolving secret hurts and insecurities. Usually at a beach house weekend together. Or doing a wine tour. Yaaaawwwwwnnnnnn......

I'm sort of disappointed that I dislike Victorian-style literature so much... I tried and really wanted to read Fingersmith, but I gave up after about 10 pages. Just couldn't stomach it.

I don't think of myself as a huge Victorian lit fan, but I read a few books a year and they are usually among my favourites. Not sure what it is that I like, so considering that, can I ask if you know what it is you DON'T like?

I find myself allergic to what the book industry calls "women's fiction" -- gang of female friends meeting up after years apart and rehashing old arguments while finding new romances and resolving secret hurts and insecurities. Usually at a beach house weekend together. Or doing a wine tour. Yaaaawwwwwnnnnnn......

That's a genre? I've completely missed that one! Although I did read a book back in the early 90s that had something to do with a group of old friends getting together around one of them diagnosed with terminal cancer to -- nurse? party? --not sure. I remember very little about the book now, but I think I'd forgotten it within a week of reading it so I can't blame old age or the passing years.

My husband and I were just talking last night about what women writers we read in college, because I was surprised that even though I was English major, I never read any Sylvia Plath. I do remember reading Austen, Eliot, and Wharton, maybe Zora Neale Hurston, but I think my education in women's writing was sorely lacking. This year I have the goal of reading a lot of new to me women, particularly science fiction. At the bookstore last night, I picked up Beloved and a new writer whose name I can't recall at this early hour.

I think there is a brand of women's fiction that usually has flowery covers and gilt script for the titles. Anne Rivers Siddons is the only example I can think of. I usually avoid such books, but you never know if a very good novel may be marketed as 'chick lit'. Even Siddons wrote a good haunted house story, The House Next Door.

Currently reading The Bell Jar.

>38 southernbooklady: >39 Nickelini: I've read maybe one or two books like that by J. Courtney Sullivan, which were like beach reads. I figured as the author's about my age that I'd connect more with the characters. I see books of that type as sort of like a candy bar. They're good occasionally and go down easy, but you don't want a lot of them or you'll feel sick.

>39 Nickelini: I think what I don't like about Victorian style literature is all the beating around the bush. I can take dry British humor any day... but just all the meandering around what is happening without actually talking about what is happening just makes my brain explode.

"I think what I don't like about Victorian style literature is all the beating around the bush."

Really? I can't think of any Victorian novel by a woman that beats around the bush. Gaskell, Eliot, the Brontes--they all talked about premarital sex, adultery, illegitimacy, infanticide, sexual incompatibility, and prostitution in pretty direct terms and sympathetic terms. (And so did many male novelists)

Perhaps what today's readers find themselves at odds with is the fact that a couple of hundred years ago, these matters affected the whole course of a woman's life.

> 42 - Hmmm, "beating around the bush" made me think of the Victorian style of using lots and lots of words to say something. They certainly like to layer on the language.

Anyway, thanks for your answer, Lemon--I feel a little bad about asking since I can't seem to articulate why I like Victorian lit.

Nicki, is the style really verbose? Or are Victorian writers parsing things into finer nuances than we're used to today?

In joining you in defense of Victorian lit, I would say that the style forces the reader to slow down (even look up some words), and that in doing so, the reader is allowed to see how characters face a dilemma or problem with a range of emotions and actions. How about those long passages when Jane Eyre explores her feelings about her social place in the world (at one point, she tries to resign herself to it by drawing two sketches, one of herself and one of Blanche)? Or the passages in Middlemarch in which Dorothea tries to do her duty to the passionless marriage with Casaubon?

>44 nohrt4me2: is the style really verbose? To a degree, I think absolutely so, and that had to do with the economics of publishing. One of the reasons that The Professor was rejected by so many publishers (and, in the end, only published posthumously, when the public had a morbid curiosity as to anything Brontëan) was that it was too short. It only came to two volumes, and the lending libraries wanted three-volume novels.

The Victorian middle class, at least the early-Victorian middle class, didn't have the money to buy books. They used (at a price) to lending libraries, and the libraries wanted books in multi-volume formats that they could get readers "hooked" on to come back and borrow the subsequent volumes. It's similar to YA book series and movie serializations today.

And then, when it came to publishing by serialization in the periodical press — which was where a lot of the money was to be made, Dickens and Gaskell and Thackeray (and of course, later in the era, dear old Henry James) being just some of the more famous examples — there was really a fairly fixed format to the number of pages in each installment and the author had to adhere to it pretty strictly for practical publishing reasons. Thackeray was a particular master at fitting his novels to this length-of-installment journalistic practice. I imagine filler (and sometimes, conversely, truncation) were practices serializers had to be adept at.

>35 lemontwist:

Have you tried Elena Ferrante? Good luck with learning Italian, I hope you persevere. If at any time you need encouragement, feel free to contact me. (I'm still sad over a friend's defeat at the hurdle of gendered articles...)

>36 overlycriticalelisa:

i think i might love the "family saga" stuff but would need a few examples to be sure.

I've failed in the past to formulate what it is exactly that puts me off, perhaps the best I can do is say that it's usually a combination of theme, language, level, tone, message... I could say I'm not interested in reading about or through characters who are circumscribed by "domesticity", exhausted by a concern for mate, progeny, family, but that is not to say that such characters can't be interesting, in good hands. Only, in the main they seem to be taken up by mediocre writers, in a deadly predictable and conventional fashion.

>38 southernbooklady:

I find myself allergic to what the book industry calls "women's fiction"

Somehow it still reflects--often aggressively--the notion that women as main characters can only be interesting to women, goes without saying.

Reminds me of--I think it happened to Eileen Power--when she was getting her degree a male examiner or don or professor, big name of course, remarked to her, half-pityingly, what on earth could women ever understand about the true nature and machinations of politics and history when they were fatally and inexorably barred from the centres of power.

>40 sturlington:

Oh, I forgot about "chick lit". I'd read that sooner than a self-published memoir about finding Jesus with no chapters or paragraph breaks. I think... possibly...

>42 nohrt4me2:

Gaskell, Eliot, the Brontes--they all talked about premarital sex, adultery, illegitimacy, infanticide, sexual incompatibility, and prostitution in pretty direct terms

I read most of these way too early, missing more than I got out of them. I am, however, surprised that you think they are ever "direct" about these themes! I wish I had had guidance by someone like you, north4me2, back then... While I don't dislike this literature, I sort of understand lemontwist's impatience with relentless... what to call it, concealing, circumlocution, deception; the air of skirts on piano legs in spirit if not fact.

There's also (to me) something exhausting about the need for constant translation, not of language, but meaning, of concepts--oh, the guy and the girl took a walk alone on the balcony--heavens! now she's compromised for life and as good as a) engaged b) slut; oh, she danced the waltz with that guy but only the polka with this guy etc.

P.S.

Which, in my case at least, has no bearing on what I think of their style as such, verbosity, length, complexity etc.--I love that aspect of the old literature.

is the style really verbose? Or are Victorian writers parsing things into finer nuances than we're used to today?


Interesting question

>45 CurrerBell: Interesting points, though I think sub-plots used as cliffhangers in serialized novels were often a way to drag out the word/page count, no? You leave Miss A and Mr. B on the precipice of temptation and move to an affecting scene between Miss A and her charity case, Poor C, who's got terminal lung disease from working in the mine or the cotton mill (see Mrs. Gaskell's North and South).

>46 LolaWalser: Yes, I suppose Victorian literature can be exhausting. It was exhausting to be a Victorian woman. You had to live in a corset and tight shoes with your hair piled on your head until your scalp hurt and worry about who was on your dance card.

I'm in no way saying that repression is good for anyone. But I'm not sure that social strictures, which forced Victorian women to focus on and navigate the minutiae of social convention, didn't give some of them a heightened powers of observation and detail.

Just want to add what an interesting thread this is! I'm teaching Mass Communication this spring term (begins next week), and I will approach our unit on print/publishing media with some new insights!

>48 nohrt4me2:

But I'm not sure that social strictures, which forced Victorian women to focus on and navigate the minutiae of social convention, didn't give some of them a heightened powers of observation and detail.

Eh, I don't know, going by my own grandparents' generation and their experiences, repression breeds ignorance more often than superpowers of observation.

>155 & 157. I finished Nickeled and Dimed this morning, and I am very glad that I read it. It was just as flawed as Scratch Beginnings although in different ways and with different biases in each one's point of view.

Barbara Ehrenreich set out to learn what the hidden obstacles are to getting by on minimum wage, and most of it was pretty obvious. She seemed surprised to learn that when you have a sh*tty job, you get treated like sh*t, a fact that most high school and college kids of my day learned right out of the hole. I loved her sarcastic wit though, and some of her insights were fascinating. Particularly her discussion of why female minimum wage workers care so much about their male superiors' opinion of them, and how these workers are so very conscientious about their jobs for almost no reward.

My very favorite quote though was about the homeowner whose house Barbara was cleaning who asked that increased attention be given to the grout in the bathroom because the marble seemed to be bleeding into it. "That's not your marble bleeding, I want to tell her, it's the world wide working class--the people who quarried the marble, wove your Persian rugs until they went blind, harvested the apples in your lovely fall-themed dining room centerpiece, smelted the steel for the nails, drove the trucks, put up this building, and now bend and squat and sweat to clean it."

I'm not a socialist, but in my job I do come into frequent contact with those of "very low income" as well as the working poor, and I think that this is an important book that should be read by everyone who does not have any meaningful contact with low income people. True, Ehrenreich glosses over the social problems that are obstacles to getting by as much as Adam Shepard blames people's choices for their lack of success, but there is much to appreciate in both books.

Yes, I suppose Victorian literature can be exhausting. It was exhausting to be a Victorian woman. You had to live in a corset and tight shoes with your hair piled on your head until your scalp hurt and worry about who was on your dance card.

I'm in no way saying that repression is good for anyone. But I'm not sure that social strictures, which forced Victorian women to focus on and navigate the minutiae of social convention, didn't give some of them a heightened powers of observation and detail.

Ha ha. Interesting point. I sometimes wonder-- now that divorce, premarital sex, and gay relationships have lost their scandalous elements, what is there left for novelists to write about?

>52 Nickelini: Sexual assault. The scandal would be to write about the topic in a respectful, courageous, and empathetic manner, of course.

>50 LolaWalser:, I wasn't making any blanket statements about all Victorians in general or your grandparents in particular, just musing about women novelists of the period.

>51 vwinsloe:, Glad you liked Ehrenreich's book. She was featured in "Pink Ribbons, Inc." a Canadian Film Board documentary about the breast cancer fund-raising biz.

Her remarks sometimes suffer from stridency, IMO. She spoke with vehemence about the language of breast cancer (a "war" which one "wins" or "survives," the implication being that those who die are losers or aren't fighting hard enough). I agree completely with her views there.

But she sounded kind of petty when she spoke with the same vehemence about how offended the pink chemo teddies were.

>54 nohrt4me2: Have you read the book Pink Ribbons Inc? It was very interesting.

>46 LolaWalser: Thanks for the author recommendation. I love the difficult grammar in Italian, for me it's like a big puzzle. The grammar is the pieces on the edge, which are necessary for all the pieces in the middle (the vocabulary) to come together and make a picture. And with enough practice, the fact that Italian has so many definite articles doesn't feel like a hassle anymore.

To all of the comments about Victorian literature, it's not that they don't touch on sensitive topics, it's that it seems to take chapters upon chapters to find out what is going on. I like to have some descriptive adjectives in the books I read, but I don't like to spend so much time confused about what the point of the book is. Maybe I'm just impatient?

>54 nohrt4me2:. "But she sounded kind of petty when she spoke with the same vehemence about how offended the pink chemo teddies were."

Yes, I saw some of that overstatement in Nickeled and Dimed, too, but not enough that it bothered me.

I will recommend it to others.

lemontwist, thanks. I didn't know there was a Pink Ribbons, Inc. book.

While I was away, I finished the delightfully creepy The Sundial by Shirley Jackson and the romantic and mythical The Saga of Gosta Berling by Selma Lagerlof.

>2 vwinsloe: Well, I've only read 32, but as with all of you I've read lots of other wonderful books by women that didn't make the list.

>46 LolaWalser:

i think i might have a different understanding of "family saga" stuff - i've been thinking about this for the couple of days that it's been...

i was thinking more of say isabel allende, or amy tan, or one hundred years of solitude. but i think that's different than what you meant. in relation to the rest of this conversation, i think even austen and the brontes write about characters who are circumscribed by "domesticity", exhausted by a concern for mate, progeny, family and i do enjoy them, usually. but in general, if they're not struggling with that circumscription, i'm far less interested...

I've read 61 of the 102 and thought it would be more because I do make a concerted effort to read women writers. I like all genres, even Victioran, depending on the book. Loved Middlemarch though, as you know, Other Joyce, Sense and Sensibility is not going to make my top 200 anything. I also loved Bel Canto as much as I did Patchett's very different other books.
>51 vwinsloe: I'm glad you liked Nickle and Dimed, Ehrenreich's stridency doesn't bother me one bit. I was all for her denigration of using the color pink and teddy bears and new make-up tricks to promote cancer awareness and treatment. I'll always be on the side of anyone who refuses to engage in promote "fighting" cancer. I can't see it as a fight.

I'm about halfway through an audiobook of Beauty Queens written and read by Libba Bray. What a delight. It's Lord of the Flies but with teenage high achieving girls, so - civilized. There's also a Sarah Palinesque villain, clones of GW and Kim Jong-il, and some lively characterizations of christian right-wingers, the NRA, and global corporations. I'm liking it as much as I did her Going Bovine.

>61 Citizenjoyce: I love just all of Libba Bray's novels except for Going Bovine, which I really couldn't make much sense out of. And I'm anxious for the new book in The Diviners series, Lair of Dreams, which is scheduled for August release.

Sense and Sensibility is not going to make my top 200 anything.

Agreed! Have I mentioned what a slog I'm finding it this time around? I think in future I will just stick to the Emma Thompson film--way less of a time investment.

Finished The Bell Jar. I thought it was just an amazing book. "To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream."

Next I am reading The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud.

Just decided to crack open The Hunger Games... so we'll see!

The Hypnotist's Love Story. About half way through. Interesting premise (hypnotherapist falls in love with widower whose ex-girlfriend is stalking him, but not sure where it might be going.

Re: Hunger Games... I'm about 2/3 through and it's getting hard to read, knowing that most of these characters are going to have a pretty poor fate lined up for them. Is there a way to write a spoiler alert into a talk thread? I feel like I've seen it done before but I don't know how to do it.

I feel like I'm going to make it through this book, but I doubt I'll pick up the other two in the trilogy. I've read enough dystopias to last a lifetime, and I don't like the really sad, depressing ones.

However, I do like the character of Katniss. It's always great to have a strong female protagonist. She sets her own terms and doesn't let anybody push her around. She's not perfect but not unlike-ably flawed.

lemontwist, I really liked the fact that Katniss was flawed. I didn't think the other books in the series were as good as the first, but it was worth reading them to see how her character developed.

#67 I completely agree with all your thoughts on The Hunger Games. I think it was well done and I see the appeal, but personally children slaughtering other children does not sit well with me. Hence, I did not continue with the series. Both my teenagers though loved it.

>67 lemontwist:. I liked Catching Fire the best of the trilogy, but the whole thing really is worth reading.

>70 vwinsloe: My sister said the same, after I told her I finished the first book. I'll give it some time, read some other books, and see how I feel about reading more.

>71 lemontwist:

if nothing else it sounds like they're quick reads, so not much of a time commitment/waste if you don't like them.

I had to make sure I was doing it right

To include a spoiler use the arrow shaped brackets around the word spoiler . to end the spoiler use them around /spoiler

>72 overlycriticalelisa:, agreed... I read Hunger Games mostly while waiting for my outpatient surgery yesterday, and I could see reading another in an airport or on a beach.

>73 Citizenjoyce: Thanks!

>74 lemontwist: Hope all went well.
Isn't it fun to learn new LT things?

>75 Citizenjoyce: It's all good, just had to get some screws taken out of my ankle, put in 7 months ago when I broke it. I'm enjoying all my downtime, because I finally have the time to really sit down and read!

I just read and enjoyed Burial rites by Hannah Kent, which is on the shortlist for the Orange prize. It's a historical novel set in 1820s Iceland, about the last months in the life of a woman who is condemned to death for murder. It's beautifully written and powerfully evokes the hardship of scratching a living from the harsh land.

>77 Sakerfalcon:, that one's been on my TBR wish list for awhile. Hoping to get to it soon!

I've just started Nothing To Envy which is excellent. As much as I loved The Orphan Master's Son, I would have found it even better if I'd read Barbara Demick's book first and so had a better understanding of North Korea.
On audio I'm listening to Broken Harbor which I'm surprised to like so much. After Faithful Place I'd about given up on Tana French because the characters were so off putting. It's OK if the murderers are screwed up, but I do like the detectives to have a little bit more humanity.
I've also just started a fun time-traveling historian novel Just One Damned Thing After Another on kindle after hearing so many good things about it.
I'm also listening to Pure on my ipad. It's a post apocalyptic novel about a people who live a perfectly ordered life under a totalitarian regime in the Dome surrounded by wrecks of people in the outlying areas who have been subjected to the Detonations so are fused (because of nanotechnology) to animate and inanimate objects. Pressia, whose right hand is fused to a doll's head, just turned 16 and needs to escape from the OSR. She envisions living the good life in the Dome, though no one can go in. Bradwell, who has been fused with birds, is a leader of the underground fighting the OSR. Partridge wants to escape from the Dome to find his mother on the outside. It's drawing me into that world very easily.

Just wanted to add that season 2 of The Bletchley Circle started on PBS last night. It's about a group of friends who had done the exciting, exacting, very important work at Bletchley Park then at the end of the war were thrown into the mundane world of second class woman-hood so use their talents to solve crimes. This time there's a real bombe machine featured in the flash back scenes. It's very good.

I listened to Broken Harbour too and really enjoyed it. It was my first Tana French and I certainly plan to read more.

>80 Citizenjoyce: Thoroughly recommend this - highly entertaining. It not only shows the women as having the ability to do the complex cerebral
work of code-breaking, but also having the mechanical ability to tinker with the machines!

For anyone who's interested in cryptography, WWII or early computing Bletchley is a fascinating place to visit.

Just finished Drinking: A Love Story, a memoir of a woman's journey with alcoholism and subsequent recovery. I usually am ambivalent about addiction memoirs (although I do read them by the armful) but I really couldn't put this one down. Maybe because the author is a woman with so many familiar (to me) struggles, it seems more relevant to my life; she's also so much more self-aware and unflinchingly honest than many other addiction memoir authors.

Now I'm reading If You Could Be Mine which is a fictional account of a young lesbian couple in Iran. So far I'm enjoying it but I'm only a few pages in.

I read Drinking: A Love Story after I read Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs because I read Let's Take the Long Way Home, Gail Caldwell's account of her friendship with Caroline Knapp, their dogs and exercising and how she survived Caroline's death. I love it when one great book leads you to another so that you see a whole relationship. Not a trilogy, but so good when read together. I agree >83 lemontwist:, I've read my share of addiction memoirs, and this is a winner.

>83 lemontwist: & >84 Citizenjoyce:. I liked Let's Take the Long Way Home even more than I expected. I briefly thought about reading the other two books, now I'll put them on my list. Thanks.

By the way all, did you see that The Goldfinch won the Pulitzer today? I haven't read it yet, but bravo for Donna Tartt.

Yea for Donna Tartt, well deserved. I think it should win everything.

>84 Citizenjoyce: Didn't realize that Caroline Knapp died... I pretty much know nothing about her outside of reading this book. Apparently she died of lung cancer from smoking... another reason I'm glad I've quit. Honestly I found it interesting to read her thoughts about alcoholism and only giving about one sentence worth of insight into how smoking is also another way to basically smother your emotions behind a cloud of smoke and chemicals. The weird thing about being a nicotine addict is that you can be an extremely highly functional addict *and* the drug is legal and ubiquitous, *and* it takes much longer to kill you than other drugs. But quitting smoking is just as eye-opening when you realize that you've learned to reach for a cigarette instead of confront emotions and conflict. I guess it was a missed opportunity for her.

I'm actually really interested to read the columns she wrote for the Boston Phoenix. Apparently there is a published compilation I should pick up. I used to read the Phoenix when I lived in Boston... not my favorite alt. newspaper but not bad either.

& >85 vwinsloe: Thanks for the suggestion on Let's Take the Long Way Home... I'll add it to my list and read it when I don't mind going through some serious boxes of kleenex. Reading about death always makes me horrifically sad.

36, but I read a lot of genre books and non-fiction, which never seem to get included in "best" book lists.

finally reading women again: women & fiction (no touchstone); short stories by and about women. i'm especially excited to read katherine anne porter for the first time, and i've never read shorts by carson mccullers, flattery o'connor, joyce carol oates, virginia woolf, willa cather, or edith wharton. there are others in the collection, but those are some of the ones i'm most looking forward to. also one of my favorite short stories ever is in this collection so it'll be nice to revisit that as well. (the story of an hour by kate chopin.)

Finished Liane Moriarty's The Hypnotist's Love Story, an interesting premise, but still uncomfortable with what her implications about women and love/obsession might be.

Also finished the last part of Frances Trollope's Domestic Manners of Americans.

Have never read any memoirs of alcoholics/addicts except Orange Is the New Black, which was tangential to the prison story. Nuala O'Faolain only touched on her own alcoholism in Are You Somebody. She did write about her mother's drinking, and said in an interview she felt her gene pool was so toxic, she never wanted to have children.

Those who have read many of these memoirs: Are they manifestations of the self-involvement addicts often engage in or do they offer real insights? The idea of making money off the misery one has created for oneself and others by writing books about it puts me off. But I confess that personal experience makes me unsympathetic to addicts.

>90 nohrt4me2:. I haven't read many "recovery" memoirs, but what I have read were, for the most part, really self-indulgent. Wild: From Lost and Found on the Pacific Crest Trail is a prime example. A notable exception was Mary Karr's Lit, but she's much more than that, you know what I mean?

Those who have read many of these memoirs: Are they manifestations of the self-involvement addicts often engage in or do they offer real insights? The idea of making money off the misery one has created for oneself and others by writing books about it puts me off. But I confess that personal experience makes me unsympathetic to addicts.

Engaging questions. A few years ago I listened to Beautiful Boy: a Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction, by David Sheff, and it was fascinating and gripping. I was so curious to know what the son was off doing all those times the father knew he was in trouble but didn't know where he was, so I tracked down the son's autobiography, Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines, by Nic Sheff. It wasn't nearly as good, and that's when I realized that no matter what sort of shenanigans they get into, addicts are ultimately boring people. They tend to self-indulgence, and no, not a lot of insight. In my opinion, for an addiction memoir to be worth reading, it has to have something else going on for it. For example, Postcards from the Edge, by Carrie Fisher had some original humour (although I read it a million years ago--it might not hold up as well).

>90 nohrt4me2: They vary wildly. Some of them are very self-indulgent, or you feel that the memoirist doesn't learn anything between repeated relapses. In general, addiction memoirs written by famous celebrities tend to be the worst offenders.

My favorites are the above-mentioned Drinking: A Love Story; Lighting Up: How I Stopped Smoking, Drinking, and Everything Else I Loved in Life Except Sex A Memoir; and Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction which is actually written by the father of Nic Sheff who has written two (very self-indulgent and, in my opinion, rather obnoxious and juvenile) memoirs about his addiction to pretty much every substance under the sun. I feel that these three tend to have a fair amount of personal insight and growth included, as well as a lot of honesty.

Substance abuse and addiction is a strange thing to read, or I imagine, write about. The only way to really understand it is to be caught in its trap... And if you don't really understand it, it can be incredibly difficult to relate to the struggles of people who write about it.

>92 Nickelini: Yes!!! I was thinking of Wishful Drinking as being one of the better ones I've read (especially by a celebrity), but I wasn't sure if it held up well over time. It's been a while. And I totally agree about the Sheffs. See my above comment.

But what's the payoff for the reader in these types of memoirs?

I'd just as soon have the hours of my life back that I've spent listening to alcoholics "make amends" (often thinly veiled "forgive me because I'm fragile, and if you don't, I might start drinking again").

So why pay cash money to read books by someone who is making a profit from making him/herself look brave, funny, or otherwise sympathetic by talking about how much they've screwed up themselves and others?

I think one of the reasons I loved the character Bubbles, the addict informant in "The Wire," was because he ultimately understood that words were worthless. He tried to stop trying to demand forgiveness from his sister with words; he understood the only real amends was long-term sobriety and time.

>95 nohrt4me2:. Very well put. I think that the only payoff for the reader is solidarity with the writer when the reader has the same problems. I imagine that someone else's story can be inspirational if you are in the same position. A support group--an AA chapter-- of readers and authors, as it were.

But for other readers, these books should come with a warning label.

>95 nohrt4me2: I would say for me, reading self-indulgent celebrity memoirs (plus or minus anything about an addiction) is my version of reading a crappy tabloid or watching bad TV. Probably half voyeurism and half entertainment. Plus, they go down like candy. I can't say I'm really wasting too much of my life reading them, considering the amount of time I spend on Facebook and Pinterest and Instagram...

I mostly read addiction memoirs in hopes that they aren't self-indulgent and crappy, and in many cases I see a lot of myself in the authors (assuming they're not celebrities). I've flirted with many an addiction, and it's just helpful to be reminded of what's at stake. Usually I can find a little nugget of wisdom to take out of each book I read. Then it's not a complete waste of time.

(ETA: I don't spend cash money to read. I go to the library. Otherwise, no way I'd read all the books I read.)

Yes, I suppose these books might help those in the same boat, though most addicts and alcoholics I know wouldn't read a memoir like that. Maybe it is helpful to groups like AA.

I'll try to be more charitable.

Lemontwist noted that celeb tell-alls go down like candy. That reminded me that there was an interesting segment on NPR the other day about ghost-writers, who are usually the ones who put these things together.

http://www.npr.org/2014/04/12/292382481/so-you-need-a-celebrity-book-who-ya-gonn...

I don't think addiction memoirs are beneficial only to members of AA. I read them as I read memoirs of transexuals, gays, people with disabilities, people with remarkable abilities, feminists, slaves, anyone who grapples with the dichotomy of being both unique and a representative of humanity - to find out how someone else has figured out how to live in the world.
Here's a quote from Helen Boyd's My Husband Betty: Love, Sex, and Life with a Crossdresser:
Crossdressers--like gay men--have been through a personal trial and have asked difficult questions of themselves. I admire the courage of people who have to define and respect themselves in a culture that doesn't like them. I like people who have come up against adversity and won... People who know themselves. Socrates believed the unexamined life is not worth living. Most (people) are never forced to do that examining, but out crossdressers have no choice in the matter.

>99 Citizenjoyce:, some have great value. The Basketball Diaries is my personal favorite. But many more are just pity parties. Here's a list. The ones that I have read on this list, I agree are worth reading for everyone.

http://www.thefix.com/content/10-best-addiction-memoirs

>98 nohrt4me2: Very interesting article about ghostwriters, thanks for sharing it.

>100 vwinsloe: Thanks for the list! I've only read one or two of those so now I've got some more to add to my TBR list. :-D

>100 vwinsloe: I liked the description of Parched: A taste of the alcoholic mind for the non-alcoholic reader. Sounds good. I'm afraid that many of the ones mentioned by men would make me so angry I wouldn't get anything out of them. To me angry men's memoirs use testosterone to mask their humanity.

>102 Citizenjoyce:. I have a read two of the addiction memoirs by men on the list (such as The Basketball Diaries mentioned above and Permanent Midnight) and neither had any anger in them. These addicts were pathetic, feckless and wasted, but not angry.

On a completely different note entirely, I finished listening to I Am Malala today. The fact that it took me so long was only due to the fact that I was listening to it in the car, and didn't have any road trips for a while. I liked the book, and I was impressed by the truth and simplicity in her message: If we educated all children, they would not be ignorant and superstitious and so easily fall for the conspiracy theories spread by religious fanatics. Listening to her tell how the Taliban's influence grew in the Swat Valley was worse than any YA fictional dystopian vision out there today. And, of course, it is real, still out there, and still spreading.

>103 vwinsloe: good to know about the men's books. I still don't know if I could make myself read them, but I'll keep them in mind.
Speaking of men's books, >82 SChant: I recently read The Secret Lives of the Codebreakers: the Men and Women Who Cracked the Enigma Code at Bletchley Park which is what made me watch The Bletchley Circle in the first place. It was so good to see a book that recognized the contributions of women to national security.

>104 Citizenjoyce: Sounds like a pretty cool book. I feel like I have a book about women's contributions to the Manhattan Project "sitting around" (digitally) someplace... I always hate to see women's contributions to science ignored. I work at the first national lab in the US, and there was a photo display somewhere with photos of Enrico Fermi and all of the scientists (male of course) working on the first nuclear chain reaction. Drove me up the wall. I'm know there were plenty of women working on that whose contributions were completely ignored.

--
Reading-wise I just started Jane's World by Paige Braddock which a graphic novel compilation that I hadn't heard about until I read No Straight Lines. It follows general curmudgeon Jane (who is actually an awful lot like Bechdel's Mo) and her gay (and some straight) friends. It's very rare for me to find a lesbian graphic novel that I haven't read! So I'm very excited, even though it's not really the best I've read.

>105 lemontwist: Wow, on the cover she even looks like Mo. I'm going to have to check that out. How I miss that group of friends.
ETA the only books in my library connected with Paige Braddock are those Peanuts books she contributed to. So alas, I had to order the volume 1 compilation from Barnes and Noble, cause the idea of revisiting a world like Bechdel's was just too tempting.

>106 Citizenjoyce: I don't love them as much as the women in DTWOF, but I enjoyed Jane's World... I really ought to get copies of all of the DTWOF books, I've only read The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For and when it ended, I am not ashamed to say I cried, because I never wanted it to end.

>106 Citizenjoyce: Also, if you haven't seen any of Kris Dresden's comics, check out her website, where they're all available online. http://www.krisdresencomics.com/ I am in love with her drawing style and just want to curl up in a corner in one of her comic panels, plus the women she draws are completely adorable...

>108 lemontwist: Thanks, I love these, but now I want pie.

>103 vwinsloe: "I recently read The Secret Lives of the Codebreakers: the Men and Women Who Cracked the Enigma Code at Bletchley Park .." will have to look out for that one. I'm a huge Bletchley geek and hope to visit again next month on the way down to the south coast.

>110 SChant:. I think your comment should be directed >104 Citizenjoyce:. :>)

>108 lemontwist:: I think it's fun to watch what the cats are doing in the various panels.

I just finished Nothing to Envy and have to breathe a sigh of relief to be out of North Korea. What a well researched and well written account. I'm always amazed at the resourcefulness of people. Mrs. Song should be head of an international corporation.
Now on to Frog Music. I'm sure murder and gender inequality has to make me feel better than totalitarianism did.

Currently reading Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline, a book club selection..

>113 Citizenjoyce: I loved Nothing to Envy -- I thought it was an amazing book (both for the research and for the ingenuity and determination of the people who escaped).

I've dived into Margaret Fuller: A New American Life and ooommph! I may have to blow off work for the next couple weeks so I can give it the attention it deserves.

Silly me thinking there had to be more joy in Emma Donoghue's Frog Music than there was in the North Korea of Nothing to Envy. I have to take a break now because my stomach is lurching from 19th Century baby farms in San Francisco.
And then there's stupid Fuse. I read that a Twilight producer is going to be putting out a Pure movie. That's fitting, because this is another purity ring of a story as much as Twilight was. Which rather surprises me. I remember how much I liked The Anybodies which was Julianna Baggott writing as N. E. Bode. I wonder why she's writing this, it seems like a christian spiel to me, which is not what I'd think about her.
At least it's Sunday which means good TV tonight. Something to wash my brain out.

I finished Fuse and won't be going on to the final book in the trilogy. Such talent wasted on hackneyed characters.
Now on to The Silent Wife because it was recommended by my book club.

Does anybody else have this "problem"?

I have to bring a small bag with me when I go to the library (where I can be found at least once a week), otherwise I'll take out 10-15 books. My deal with myself is that I can only check out as many books as fit in the bag (with an exception for oversized books). Usually it comes out to about 6 books.

The good thing is that I get so excited to read all my new books that it really encourages me to finish up what I'm reading.

The bad thing is that I already have a ton of books (paper and ebooks) that I already own that get pushed to the bottom of the stack, because I don't have to return them anywhere and they're not as "urgent" to be read... My frequent library trips leave me little time to read them.

117> Pure was completely off my radar.I can't tell from the reviews over there whether it has chastity ring overtones or not.

With all due caveats about the self-righteous hokum of the chastity ring and the skewed preoccupation of some practicing Christians with "pelvic issues" (as if Jesus was the virginity police), I wonder if a book could be written about voluntary chastity by someone (not a nun) from a non-smarmy point of view.

I was intrigued by and put The Art of Sleeping Alone by Sophie Fontanel on my wish list. Anyone read that?

>119 lemontwist:. Ha! I have restricted myself to library sales, library sales carts, and occasionally a used book store. Even then my TBR piles (one at work, one at home) are at least a meter high.

Good to know that I am not the only one who has rules curtailing book acquisitions.

>121 vwinsloe:

a meter high? that's peanuts! ;) i haven't counted lately but i think at last count it was over 500 books at home that i still haven't read. i sort of have rules curtailing book acquisition because otherwise my partner would probably leave me. i've been restricted on any more bookshelves in the house so i maneuver with what i've got. (luckily i own a used bookshop so even if i can't technically keep all the books i want, i can see them at work until they sell.)

I just started Alison Weir's Elizabeth of York for the "Reading Through Time" group's 15th-century read for April.

>122 overlycriticalelisa:. Whew. Thank goodness, there is someone worse than I am when it comes to book acquisitions.

But I don't bother with bookshelves for the new acquisitions, they just go in a stack. Only keepers get a shelf.

What is really scary to me is the urge to buy a book that I already own when I see it on a library cart. My thought process is like: "Oh, wow, there's such and such book. That's a really good book. I should buy it." The angel on the other shoulder says, "You already own that book." The inner voice says, "maybe I could buy it for someone? Or maybe donate it somewhere?"

It's a sickness, I tell you. LOL!

>124 vwinsloe:

you already own it, but is it the same edition??? i have so many doubles because of new editions...

A little over 600 unread books floating around at home, and I'm still visiting multiple book sales a month. Not good, especially when I decide to reread things.

>125 overlycriticalelisa:, a new excuse to buy books that I already own. Thanks, Elisa!

>125 overlycriticalelisa: And as to duplicates of the same edition....

You might already have a used, out-of-print book in very fine condition but the dust jacket is missing or it's quite a bit tatty or worse, then you find another copy that has a dust jacket in near-fine condition so you can swap the dust jacket from it to your copy that's in very fine condition. (Actually, I have three copies of a 1926 movie tie-in edition of The Scarlet Letter, but how I came up with three instead of just two is a little complicated, so let's leave it at that. ETA: That's the Lillian Gish production. Further ETA: I forgot, I just got a second copy of Mary Ellen Chase's The Edge of Darkness for the same reason, a very nice dust jacket.)

Or you have an illustrated used, out-of-print book in very fine condition but you come across another copy that's quite tatty but the illustrations are still bright and undamaged, so you buy that one to have on hand in case you ever want to cannibalize the illustrations. (One of my editions of Jane Eyre is an example.)

Though I do have a Heritage Society or somesuch edition of Wide Sargasso Sea that I really don't need any more, considering I subsequently got an omnibus set of Jean Rhys's complete novels as well as a Norton Critical Edition of Wide Sargasso Sea. (Well, actually, I already had that omnibus edition of the complete novels, except it was in paperback, and then I stumbled across a really nice copy in hardcover w/dj, so now I guess I really don't need my paperback copy any more.... Let's not get this any more confusing than it is already.)

Yet another ETA: Don't any Virago-ites have multiple copies of greenies? Or even of blackies? I mean, isn't it heartbreaking to see some poor little orphaned Rebecca West sitting around in a used book store?

And still one more ETA: I assume we're only talking treeware. Does it matter that you've also got Kindle editions?

>128 CurrerBell:

such good reasons for multiple copies! my reasons are generally more parochial - just different covers usually. i think i have maybe 5 or 6 copies of jane eyre and roughing it each. i read the new york public library copy of jane eyre probably last year for the first and only time. it's one to display, not read, but i couldn't resist.

anyway, just started hood yesterday. been mostly reading men lately (and after this one) so am glad to be getting not just my lady fix but also a lesbian fix too. it's my first emma donoghue. so far so good.

Not a book, but I read "The Man in the Woods," one of the recently discovered unpublished Shirley Jackson stories in this week's The New Yorker (available I think to nonsubscribers as well as subscribers here). It is weird and creepy, with echos of Greek mythology and medieval sorcery.

I finished and reviewed the intense Frog Music by Emma Donoghue, who is not an author one reads exactly for enjoyment, more for revelation. This is historical fiction based on the unsolved murder of Jennie Bonnett, a cross dressing woman who in more recent years seems to have undergone a revival as a heroine dedicated to rescuing prostitutes from that profession. Donoghue shows many sides of her and of her beautifully dressed and emotionally downtrodden friend Blanche Bounot. Very worth reading, but as upsetting as Slammerkin, some truths are hard to discuss.

Just discovered another good deterrent against taking too many books at once out from the library: biking. I'm not likely to take out too many at a time if I have to haul them back on my own muscle-power. :)

Just finished Madness by Marya Hornbacher which I had a hard time putting down. I think it lacks a bit of introspection, but the unflinching honesty was absolutely compelling.

Then I tore through How to Stop Time, which I found to be good in some ways and infuriating in others. It's not a typical drug memoir, and the author certainly wasn't a typical drug user, even though her drug of choice was heroin. I found her to have a TON of unexamined privilege, which always drives me up the wall when I read memoirs. She seemed to be rather judgmental of junkies, which strikes me as odd. Maybe only wealthy white women get to be drug users? However I really liked the somewhat arbitrary, loose, somewhat essay-like format of the book. Honestly I think if it had been chronological it wouldn't have been any good.

Right now I'm reading Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants which has been on my to-read list for probably almost 10 years. It's been on that list for so long that I can't remember who recommended it or why, and I couldn't even remember what it was about until I cracked it open. It's driving me up the wall and reminding me why I don't read funny-essay-as-memoir books anymore. I also dislike the "my kind of feminism is right and kids these days all dress like sluts" attitude she takes. I can't tell if it's tongue-in-cheek, and honestly it doesn't matter if it's satire or not, it wouldn't be funny even if it were.

Just finishing Frangipani by Celestine Hitiura Vaite-- a Tahitian novelist writing about life in Tahiti. I've enjoyed it very much.

Great Granny Webster was mentioned in passing in a NYT book review I read today. Sounds like a very funny read, so I've put it on my list. Anyone else familiar with Blackwood?

134> I own GGW and have been meaning to read it for ages. I should go ahead with it now so I can report back.

I found this NPR interview with Emma Donoghue in a review of Frog Music. It's worth a listen:
http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&...

I'm reading Adam Bede at the moment. Oh, it's wonderful!

Yes, Adam Bede is one of my favorites. I always appreciated Eliot's sympathy for the Methodists.

I just started The Valley of Amazement because I am seeing the friend who lent it to me soon, and I will need to return it. I hate to start such a long book with such low expectations.

>139 vwinsloe:

why such low expectations for this one? i find that the lower my expectations, the better chance i have to really like the book. =) i try to temper my high expectations going in because it usually leads me to being disappointed...

>140 overlycriticalelisa:. The reader reviews seem less than enthusiastic, and someone here whose taste often coincides with mine (Citizenjoyce, I believe?), apparently didn't think much of it. But you are absolutely right that having lower expectations often results in a more satisfactory reading experience!

>141 vwinsloe:

i haven't read tan in a while and was excited to see this when it came out. i haven't heard anything about it at all (that i can remember) which is my preferred way to go into a book. by the time i get to it, though, i'm sure i'll have heard plenty!

I love Amy Tan. Perhaps I would have liked the book more had I gone in with significantly lowered expectations. There's much about it to like, it just didn't fit together as a whole in my opinion.

>143 Citizenjoyce: & >142 overlycriticalelisa:. This book does seem longer than the usual Amy Tan. I am hoping that at least I find some humor it it. I thought that her last one, Saving Fish From Drowning, was very funny.

I just finished Alison Weir's Elizabeth of York and posted a 3*** review. Not bad, but Elizabeth of York (aside from her enormous dynastic importance) just wasn't that significant a figure to warrant such full-length treatment and Weir has to engage in too much padding to come up with a book of this length.

I'm about to start China Dolls, my first ER win in a long time. I've loved everything I've read by Lisa See, though none as much as Snowflower and the Secret Fan. I always hope she'll write one to equal it.

deleted because posted in the wrong group

Thanks for the reminders about the latest Amy Tan. I haven't read the two most recent. I like her, too.

Tangential, but I recently showed my students Karen Lin's short film, "Perfection," which is available on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paVED2TFvEk (It's about six minutes.)

I initially showed the film to a colleague whose parents immigrated from the Philippines, and we had a very lively discussion about how much the film addresses the Asian-American female experience, but agreed that the general message is accessible to American women generally.

I know this isn't Film Club, but I thought of Tan when I watched this little movie.