What Are We Reading, Page 13

I'm scanning my TBR stacks and wondering what book by a woman author I will read next. Nonfiction is up in my rotation, but I think fantasy is in order. Piranesi, perhaps.

What's everyone else reading?

I finished Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age by Debby Applegate and have to say she was a mighty impressive woman. She started out in a Russian shtetl and ended up being hostess to American politicians, including FDR, gangsters, police, artists, and top businessmen. She got knocked around physically and legally for decades and managed to stay on top. All kinds of deals were made in her homes because men knew they could plot and plan and neither she nor her "girls" would spread their secrets. So, respect for Polly Adler, not much for her Johns.
Now I've started a re-read of The Searcher for my RL book club. I do love Tana French though this is a stand-alone novel not part of her Dublin Murder Squad series, which is my favorite.

Started a science-fiction, Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty - clones on a space ship, sounds fun!

>3 SChant:. Yes, I read that one. It was fun.

I finished Piranesi, and I think that my expectations were too high. Or perhaps I didn't realize that it was more magical realism than fantasy, and, for some reason, I just don't get on with magical realism.

The book was clever though. Although it had aspects of a locked room mystery, it's actually the opposite. Although it seems like magical realism, instead of being a realistic story interrupted by fantastical elements like magical realism, it is more like a fantasy story interrupted by realism.

>5 vwinsloe: Hmm, it doesn't sound very appealing. I like magic and fantastical things but don't like stories about attaing power, so this should be good. I don't know why it doesn't call to me.

>6 Citizenjoyce:. The thing that most people have found to be appealing is the setting: a fantastical, multi-storied labyrinth filled with marble statues that is open to the sky and the sea. I admired that creation as well, but the book was not a top read for me.

I've just started The Dictionary of Lost Words. The writing seems to be a bit simplistic in the beginning, but since it is supposed to be in the voice of a child, I'm putting up with it. I hope that it will improve as the child narrator ages. I loved the premise of this book, so I hope that it will live up to it.

My next fiction read is Firefly - Carnival by Una McCormack.
My non-fiction is a biography - The Life of Una Marson, poet, feminist, activist and the first Black woman to be employed by the BBC.

>8 SChant: I did not know that those Firefly books existed. I assume that they are fan fiction written by different authors. Have you read any of the others?

>10 vwinsloe: They are officially canon books written by people like James Lovegrove (3 x good books, felt quite in-universe), Tim Lebbon ( 1 book I thought was quite poor and generic), and this one. I've also looked at some of the comic books but don't really care for them - stories are OK-ish but the drawings of the characters are poor except for one or 2 specific "portraits".

>11 SChant:. Thanks. I'll keep my eyes open for the Lovegrove books.

I'm about 1/4 of the way through Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark. I didn't realize it was 1184 pages when I started or I wouldn't have taken it on, but it's too good to stop now. The damage that was done to this girl by Smith College then by the psychiatric profession was criminal. And there's way too much dating and socializing - at least from the perspective of this introvert. Things could have been so different had she had some reasonable guidance and a little more money. She was told on all sides that her main role in life was to be pretty, get a good husband and be a good helpmeet to him. At the same time, she had to be better than anyone else academically. Some people could put up with that nonsense, but she sure couldn't.

>12 vwinsloe: I'm about half-way through the Firefly - Carnival book now and can recommend that too. The crew's voices are recognizable, the whole setup feels very much in the 'verse, and crucially, the women have stuff to do!

>13 Citizenjoyce: I have several non-fiction tomes that have been sitting on my TBR shelves absolutely forever. I want to read them, but I just don't want to commit to something that long. I am contemplating reading them in chunks, like maybe 100 pages at a time. I wonder how that would work.

>14 SChant: Cool.

I finished The Dictionary of Lost Words, and, despite my misgivings in the beginning, I really enjoyed it. It's not a perfect book by any means, but turned out to be a good solid read. The novel was set in London, in the period that the Oxford English Dictionary was written, and the women's suffrage movement was active, shortly before and during WWI. The main premise was that a young woman, whose father was an OED editor, decided to collect words that were not included in the OED or that were limited in the meanings ascribed to them. It explored the fact that words might not be considered "proper" if used by women and the under-educated lower classes no matter how commonly they were used, and that the language of such people was, in effect, disappeared.

>15 vwinsloe: I've been tempted by The Dictionary of Lost Words for a while. Sounts like I need to give it a try.

>16 Citizenjoyce: oh, yes, definitely.

I've just started The FeMale Man which I missed, probably because I was living abroad for a few years, when it was published.

I'm halfway throughRed Comet to Plath's marriage to Ted Hughes. Almost anyone could have seen that he was the kind of red hot guy she should have an affair with, not the supportive partner an ambitious woman would need. Funny, she was choosing between two completely inappropriate, sexist, violent, manly men when picking a husband. Rebellion against the constraints of society doesn't always work well for women. I think it's the rebellious part that doesn't work. Had she rationally thought about her needs, she wouldn't have linked herself to either of these guys, but the excitement of crashing through society's expectations seems to have doomed her because once she made the thrilling choice, she then had to make a marriage and later a family work in real life. Granted, finding a husband to support an ambitious woman in the 1950s was a near-impossible task.

Soon to read: Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner. Also in middle of graphic novel Flying Couch: A Graphic Memoir by Amy Kurzweil. (one friend thought Kurzweil was same person as Kurt Weill -- two very different people).

>19 Whitecat82: Let us know what you think of Hotel du Lac. It looks good.

I've just started Celestial bodies, a novel about three sisters in Oman as it transitions from a tradition country to an oil-rich state.

I just read a female-authored fantasy novel, Mapping winter, which was superb. I found myself totally immersed in the world and with the main character Kieve, a Rider (sort of combined herald, law enforcement and mapmaker) as she becomes reluctantly involved in court politics. Kieve is a great character, not always likeable but competent and morally conflicted. If you like fantasy I highly recommend this.

>21 Sakerfalcon:. Mapping Winter looks interesting but it appears to be only available on Kindle? Is that right?

>22 vwinsloe: It looks that way. I certainly read it on kindle. It's a book that I would love to have a print copy of some day if one ever appears.

Forgot to mention that I finally finished The letters of Shirley Jackson. This was a great read, giving vivid vignettes of Jackson's life - as a writer, parent, teacher, daughter and friend. Having read the brilliant biography by Ruth Franklin though, it was sad to realise how much of a cheerful front she was putting on, especially in the letters to her hypercritical mother. But her humour is irrepressible and bubbles up all through this volume. If only she had enjoyed better health and lived to write more.

I finished Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark and think the title completely appropriate. Plath did indeed blaze through her thirty years of life. I think I'll be reading a book of her short stories, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose, and Diary Excerpts and rereading The Bell Jar this month. I've checked out Ariel because there are a few of her poems I want to read, but I'm not much of a poetry person. She was quite a complex person full of opposites. As a feminist icon, she much preferred the company of men seeing women as rivals. She fully committed to the idea that a true woman bore children, disparaging the childless women she knew, yet had she not had two children to care for perhaps she would have been better able to face life. One thinks of a poet as a person with deep, even spiritual recesses yet all her relationships seemed transactional. Her mother was her biggest supporter yet she gladly accepted the "permission" her psychiatrist gave her to hate her mother. Psychiatry in general seems to have failed both her a most women of her time. The misogyny in America was bad but seemed to be worse in England, yet she vowed not to return to America (and planned frequently to do so). She used holocaust imagery in her poetry and tried to claim a bit of Jewishness for herself yet used antisemitic slurs against her inlaws. Maybe all those contradictions gave her the fuel her comet used to blaze her through 30 years of accomplishments.

>24 Citizenjoyce:. Sounds like a lot of cognitive dissonance there. I'm sure that a lot of feminists in earlier times dealt with that because they tried to fight misogyny when they had internalized patriarchal attitudes themselves.

I'm still reading The FeMale Man and Russ handled it by creating 4 characters in parallel worlds. It's intentionally obtuse, and I have to keep reminding myself that it was published in 1975, and there was much that had not yet been discussed out loud in mainstream society.

>25 vwinsloe: It's been so long since I read Female Man, but I remember its being complex and enlightening. I should think about a revisit.

I'm reading One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston due to its mention here. My heart needed this fun book about friends helping each other out after just finishing Femlandia by Christina Dalcher. Remember the discussion we had about The Power and how much I disliked it because I don't believe that women, even if they had unlimited power, would revel in rape as men do? Well, Femlandia combines all the same horrible assessments of the proclivities of women with the dreadful judgment of people as a whole in The Road. It left a terrible taste in my mouth that One Last Stop is helping to remove.

>27 Citizenjoyce:. I will probably read Femlandia, but I get what you are saying. That's why I think that Joanna Russ made a really interesting choice in The FeMale Man by presenting 4 alternate universes to explore the feminine and/or masculine characteristics that were present in her 4 protagonists. But in order to achieve the semi-utopian all-female society of one of the protagonists, first all of the men had to be eliminated by the society in which there was a civil war between men and women.

Reading Feminism for Women by Julie Bindel. She is considered a controversial writer, but her newspaper articles contain some good sense, so I thought I'd give this a try.

I just finished The Vanishing Half and found it to be very engaging. Although primarily about a a very light skinned African-American woman running away and passing as white, the story also included other main characters who were, in one way or another, passing as something else: a transgendered man and an actress. I thought the book was seriously flawed by some unrealistic elements and coincidences in the plot and by its somewhat heavy handed judgmentalism, but on the whole, I enjoyed reading it.

>30 vwinsloe: "heavy handed judgmentalism." Ha, that does apply to me. I too liked the book.
I've been reading a few of Sylvia Plath's poems from Ariel, which has a forward by her daughter. Wow, this woman could hit hard. I'd read so much about "Daddy" that I had to read the poem. Her father, Red Comet makes a point of explaining, was politically not a Nazi, but he was certainly a fascist as far as his dominance of the family was concerned. Since it was mid-20th century, Plath had psychological "permission" to hate her mother and adore her father, which she frequently did, but the poem shows she saw his tyrrany. I'll be reading The Bell Jar this month. I'm sure that will show me all the ways she thought her mother ruined her life.

>31 Citizenjoyce:. I know that I read The Bell Jar many years ago and it did not make much of an impression on me then. I'm sure that reading her biography enhanced your enjoyment of her work.

Reading 2 non-fiction books by female scholars and writers:
God: An Anatomy, a study of how the Bronze Age religions of the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle-East developed into monotheistic Biblical religious practices. Very interesting, and with a wry sense of humour;

Islands of Abandonment, a somestimes lyrical, sometimes despairing look at how nature can recolonize spaces that were once occupied by humans.

>33 SChant: God: An Anatomy looks good. I've put it on hold.

>20 Citizenjoyce: Enjoyed Hotel du Lac very much. one of those books where the reader takes a journey along with the character, to another time and another place.

>35 Whitecat82: It looks interesting but I'll bet there's lots of romance.

>36 Citizenjoyce: not that much, some! it is more an introspective deep dive into the main character's feelings, observations, thoughts, etc, as she stays in a Swiss hotel at the end of the season (late Sept). kind of a how she is grappling with her life book. A friend sent me Julia Quinn's The Duke and I, it's nothing like that. I still read some romance at times, but I am not into reading about the English aristocracy in the early 1800s much anymore, I know it's still very popular and that is cool too.

>37 Whitecat82: That's good to know.

I pulled Gather the Daughters off the TBR shelves after reading several articles recently that connect Evangelical churches and the parental rights movement in schools to child marriage and child abuse. I think that I initially read about that book on here.

>39 vwinsloe: I hope you love it, or rather not love it but see how it fits as civilization continues to crumble.

>40 Citizenjoyce:. I think that I will. But damn, why did she name two of her main characters so similarly? (Vanessa, Amanda) I had to go back to the beginning when I realized that they were not the same person in different time periods.

>41 vwinsloe: I feel your pain.
Right now I'm about halfway through The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood; Youth; Dependency by Tove Ditlevsen. It's autobiographical by a mid-20th-century Danish author who compares with Sylvia Plath. I'd never heard of her before but it was a NY Times best book of 2021, so I gave it a try. What a find. She had much in common with Plath, but so far, much better taste in men, or at least, a much better ability to deal with their frailties. She picked men who were not as talented or famous as she, fidelity was not that big a deal with her so she could deal with the constraints of marriage and motherhood as she wrote. She also was far more realistic about her capacities for motherhood. I'm going to see if I can find more of her work. I'm saying this while I'm in the middle of the book. Maybe when I get to the Dependency part I'm going to be disappointed.

I finishedThe Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood; Youth; Dependency and, as I feared it might, the third part, Dependency showed a different part of her life as she became drug dependent. It's a very honest look at what a talented, independent woman will do to get drugs. She did become Denmark's best selling author in her day and did live to be in her 50s, but she and Sylvia Plath did have a common bond of strong demons.

>41 vwinsloe: I liked Gather the Daughters quite a lot once I got by the character mix up. It seems very close to where much of the Republican party would like to be. (Legislation has been filed in TN to remove the age requirement for marriage.) I was glad that it had an optimistic ending.

I don't think that I will slog through The Copenhagen Trilogy, although I would like to read more by Scandinavian women.

>44 vwinsloe: All the warning literature gives us and the GOP keeps stomping on women and women keep voting to let them do it.

So I finished the 400 plus page book that I was reading, and picked up The Mirror and the Light which was the last of the books that I got at the library sale after it reopened. It looked a little bigger than the last book, but when I turned to the last page I saw that it is 700 plus pages long. Trickery! Oh, well, I guess you won't see me for a while.

>46 vwinsloe: It's been so long since I read the first 2 parts of the trilogy that I fear I'd have to go back and read them before I took on the surprise 700-page third one. Whew. I'm not up for it. One benefit of reading such a famous author is that I can just check Wikipedia for a synopsis. Maybe I should try it. That's lots of reading.

>47 Citizenjoyce: I didn't go back to read the first two books first. I know the bare bones of the history, and I think that is enough. Mantel includes a dramatis personae and a royal family tree. For a more in depth synopsis, Wikipedia would probably work just fine. 700 pages is daunting, but I like her writing style.

>48 vwinsloe: My bare bones understanding of the history of the period is missing more bones every day.

>49 Citizenjoyce: Lol.

I started The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah, really it was the audiofile, but I didn't finish it. The descriptions of the area were a strong pull into the story, but the characters' motivations just didn't sit well with me. Especially Ernt, the father, and Cora, the mother. Now I am listening to The Art Forger by BA Shapiro.

>51 Whitecat82:. I've had The Great Alone sitting on my TBR shelf for a while. This is the second time that I've been warned off it. I guess I will put my copy in my Little Free Library since my TBR bookcases are overflowing. Thanks.

Was it in this group or elsewhere that we discussed the fact that more books by men are published than those by women? It might have been Facebook because I remember getting lots of feedback to those stats saying more women publish romances, so it comes out even. I wonder what the response will be to this - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/apr/27/four-times-more-male-characters-in...

>53 Citizenjoyce:. I have always assumed that, because even women authors tend to use male protagonists more frequently. Of course, back in the day, men were the doers who went out in the world and had adventures, and women stayed at home as support staff. That goes all the way back to the Iliad and the Odyssey. Obviously, it was never the entire truth about women's lives and is certainly not true now. So why do most books (and films) have male protagonists now? I think that it is assumed by publishers that women will consume books about men, but that men will not consume books about women. I'm not sure that they are wrong.

>54 vwinsloe: Recently my son, who is pretty macho, recommended a science fiction show to me that has a female protagonist. I was so pleased, but I haven't been able to find the show.

>55 Citizenjoyce:. Good for him. I think that the times they are a changin'.

>55 Citizenjoyce: What was the show?

Reprisal. I've found it. It's on Hulu. It does have a powerful female lead but there's lots of violence.

>58 Citizenjoyce: Hadn't heard of that one. Have you watched Orphan Black? It also has a few moments of violence but features quite the tour de force performance by the lead actor, Tatiana Maslany. Available for streaming on Amazon Prime, I believe.

>59 ScoLgo: I've heard so much about it but never watched. I'll have to give it a try. There are two Reprisals, one is a guy movie, but the one my son referred to is a series with more violence than I care for. I don't mind violence, but I don't like when it's the focus of the book or movie.

>59 ScoLgo: & >60 Citizenjoyce: I'm a huge Orphan Black fan. Highly recommend it.

>53 Citizenjoyce: I read many romances when I was younger, and I still can recall some of the male and female characters (like in Kathleen Woodiwiss books). and yet the Greek gods have as many female as male, and often complementary. Hestia can easily be paired with Hermes. Apollo and Artemis are twins.

>62 Whitecat82: Among the Greek god pairs, were the males always the boss?

Good old boring patriarchy, at your service! Can we describe a majority of tv and movies and books as male fantasy? for the most part, men have made the decisions on writing, publishing, filming, funding, etc.

I did enjoy The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro. The only thing missing was more of a sense of what it is actually like to be a real painter / portrait / artist who can make a living from such, but it was a lovely dive into the art world, collectors, museums, history. Now reading Dune. I had read it eons ago, and really liked it. Also The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, Pedro and Me, a graphic novel by Judd Winick.

>65 Whitecat82: I'm not an art connoisseur so I have difficulty with artists who are able to forge other people's art but can't make a living making their own art. I don't get it, why not?

Over the past month, I've read some real duds but also some good ones. My duds come from people who buy into Southern chauvinism. First among these is South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry. It's bad enough when white people lionize their southern heritage, but when black people do it, I'm befuddled. The south, the country of trump, has worked to undermine democracy since before the beginning of our government. I guess we'll see in the next few years if they really are the soul of the nation.
Another dud, The Actual Star by Monica Byrne had some very interesting gender ideas, in the future people are born with both sets of sexual organs. Most go through life using both at different times, some choose to lean more one way than the other. All are referred to as she. There, I've said every good thing about it, except that it has some interesting information about Mayan culture. The book has three time lines: 1012, 2012 and 3012 - all dominated by religious delusions. I can forgive the 12th-century folk, the rest of it is just ridiculous. We have the usual stupid teenage girl, you know the type - the tour guide says you can go anywhere you want, but whatever you do, don't go to x.
Now for good ones. Whose Names Are Unknown by Sanora Babb, written in the 1930s is the story of a family during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. It was submitted to Random House, Bennet Cerf was going to publish it in 1939 but John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath was published first and was such a big hit that Cerf didn't think Babb's book could compete. Turns out it seems Babb's notes were submitted to Steinbeck who may have used them as the basis of his book. It was finally published in 2004. It's a 5 star read for me.
Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder uses magical realism to look at the dark side of motherhood.
Frontier Grit: The Unlikely True Stories of Daring Pioneer Women by Marianne Monson mini-biographies of frontier women, some we knew about, some we didn't.
Karen Joy Fowler can do no wrong and has another winner with Booth telling us everything about the famous assassin and his family.
Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World by Laura Spinney should be required reading for anyone voting on whether or not we need to keep funding to fight pandemics. We have good vaccines now but seem to be just as stupid as we were then. By the way, my (unvaccinated, religious) sister just got Covid for the third time.
The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi is about a woman trying to survive in India's class system after the partition. This is not my favorite geographical area to read about, but the book is great. Of course, we have to deal with yet another horrible teenage girl, but I think it's handled very well.
And lastly A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School - Carlotta Walls LaNier by a woman who has escaped the family's Southern chauvinism and tells the story that we all knew about but didn't know this much about. Her Black family actually voted for Governor Faubus because they thought he worked well for people. How well they, and we, learned their lesson. By the way, this was one smart teen-aged girl. She valued her education, she had the opportunity to go to the 40th best ranked high school in the nation, so she took it. In this case, it was her society that was off the rail

I've just finished reading Swan song, a novel about Truman Capote and the women with whom he surrounded himself. Most of the book is from their point of view, either collectively or singly as their individual stories are told. The narrative is non-linear, jumping back and forth between present and past and using a variety of narrative styles. As the book opens it's easy to label the "swans" as unpleasant, overprivileged, selfish rich bitches, but the narrative reveals each of them to be far more complex. We may not like them or their lifestyles but they are more than the lazy stereotype. Capote too is a difficult character, shown with all his faults yet we can clearly see the charm which drew these women to treat him as a trusted confidante. I really enjoyed this read; I hadn't really known much about Capote's life and learning about it through the eyes of these women made it come alive for me.

I was drawn to Swan Song having just read Plain bad heroines, in which one of the characters is obsessed with Capote's unfinished novel Answered prayers, in which he betrayed his "swans" by telling their deepest secrets only thinly disguised as fiction. Plain bad heroines is another novel that jumps around in time, with interwoven stories set in the early C20th and the present day. It's a queer gothic novel set at a girls' school in Rhode Island, by the author of The miseducation of Cameron Post. A book that causes girls to become obsessed with it leads to mysterious happenings and student deaths at Brookhants School, causing it to close down. A century later, Merritt writes a book based on these events, and it's being made into a film. Merritt joins actresses Audrey and Harper on the set, where history seems to be repeating itself. Is there a curse, or is the director playing games? This was a great read, but I felt that the postmodern, very self-aware narrative could put some readers off. I enjoyed it, but I know people who will find it annoying. The narrative jumps between the past of the school's founder and her partner, the past of the schoolgirls, and the present of the film production, weaving a web in which some, but not all, things are explained. Yellow jackets (wasps) abound, as do rotten apples, creepy dolls, sinister servants, snow out of season and other disturbing happenings. I really enjoyed seeing the pieces come together and the relationships between Merritt, Audrey and Harper develop. I'll definitely read more by the author.

I'm currently reading the Tin toys trilogy for this month's Virago challenge (read a book that tells the story of a life). It's narrated by Ula, the youngest of three sisters, living in a chaotic household in the early C20th. The innocent view of horrific people and events reminds me of Barbara Comyn's work.

I'm also reading The galaxy and the ground within which is the last of Becky Chamber's Wayfarers series. I'd class these as cozy SF - diverse ordinary characters learning to get along and work together. And in harder SF I'm reading Cyteen by C. J. Cherryh which has decided less nice characters.

>68 Sakerfalcon: I read Answered Prayers and gave it only 2/5 stars because of the unpleasantness of the characters. I wonder if Swan Song would be more appealing. You'd think by my age I would have learned to be more forgiving of people's foibles, but I seem to be less so.
I did love The Galaxy and the Ground Within. It's funny how science fiction characters can seem more realistic than real rich people.

>67 Citizenjoyce: & >68 Sakerfalcon: Some of the books that you mentioned sound great, but I am afraid to add them to my wish list because my TBR shelves are overflowing, and I have stacks of unread books next to the bookcases. I read so slowly now that I don't commute anymore that I just can't keep up.

I finally finished The Mirror & The Light which took me a solid month. It was worth it though. Mantel is a master craftsman, and I felt steeped in the 16th Century as I read. Even though I knew how it had to end, I was engaged for the entire almost 800 pages, and the sense of dread toward the end was overpowering. The prose was almost, but not quite, stream of consciousness. My first 5 star read this year.

Now I need something totally different (and short!) so I am starting Autonomous.

>70 vwinsloe: The Mirror & The Light sounds great. I'll have to read it. I'm always amazed by books where I know the necessary ending but keep somehow hoping things will turn out differently.
I read so many books because I listen to them on audio while I'm doing everything else. Unfortunately, if I sit down to read, I fall asleep, so I'm sticking with audio. I keep thinking I'll get my sleep problems under control. Maybe one of these days.
I liked Autonomous very much, she has such interesting ideas. You'll breeze through it after your tome.

>71 Citizenjoyce:. My husband is the same way about falling asleep, so he listens to tons of audiobooks. I've been mostly listening to podcasts when doing things around the house or driving, because they are shorter and are mostly stand alone episodes. I've heard of apps like "Blinkist" which give audio summaries of books, and I haven't gone there yet, but it sounds like an interesting thing for non-fiction books where you just want to grasp the central thesis.

>72 vwinsloe: I hadn't heard of Blinkist. It would be helpful for some long books or some books that you never want to read, like the one by John Bolton. I just finished The Age of the Strongman: How the Cult of the Leader Threatens Democracy Around the World by Gideon Rachman which could be summarized pretty easily, but it's only 288 pages. I'll keep it in mind. My daughter listens to podcasts, mostly about true crime. We recently went on a little trip to Oatman, Arizona to see the burros (they are wonderful, though much of the town is crazily pro-trump) and I was subjected to her podcasts for much of the time. I think I've heard as much about murder and mayhem as I'll ever need.

>73 Citizenjoyce:. I think that there are quite a few free apps that do non-fiction books summaries now, and even one or two that summarize fiction. I heard about Blinkist from an ad on the Politics Girl podcast. And I agree, it probably works best when the author has a central point or theme that can be quickly summarized. I like to read non-fiction, but some of these writers (often professional journalists) seem to have a very repetitive writing style, and even something interesting can be a slog. I prefer the narrative non-fiction structure.

Going to see the burros! How cool is that. I don't think that I could listen to too many true crime podcasts, although I hear that there are some outstanding ones. I mostly listen to political and historical podcasts. I recently listened to a short series called "Because of Anita," that probed the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings and the advancement of women that resulted, and then compared the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. One episode had an actual conversation between Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford. Worth a listen!

>74 vwinsloe: Because of Anita sounds great. I'll have to find it.

I just finished The School For Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan and am very pleased I didn't have a stroke while reading it. I just kept repeating OMG and Jesus Christ. If you read it, substitute your own swear words. With the coming end of legal abortion in the US some conservative politicians are finally admitting that maybe mothers will need some kind of aid with all the babies that are going to be produced. This book tells about the kind of aid the GOP think unworthy mothers deserve - a forced education which leads to the internalization of guilt, despair, and a feeling of inadequacy. I can't say I was pleased with the ending, but I don't really know how a book like this should end

>76 Citizenjoyce: That one is on my wish list. Thanks for confirming; it sounds like a must read.

>76 Citizenjoyce: >77 vwinsloe: Mine too. I'll be moving it up.

>77 vwinsloe:>78 Let us know what you think. I find myself growing angry again just mentioning it.

I saw this article today, and thought that it might interest readers here. Ian McEwan really is a dinosaur. New respect for Howard Jacobson.
Interesting statistics about reading books by women.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/may/28/books-by-women-that-every-man-shou...

Picked up a good haul from the library on Saturday - Animal, Vegetable, Criminal by the wonderful Mary Roach; the latest V.I. Warshawski, Overboard; and Lessons In Chemistry, which was reviewed enthusiastically on Sarah Cox's Between the Covers book programme last week.

>81 SChant: I love Mary Roach, alas that one isn't on Libby yet.

>80 vwinsloe: Good article, I got some new books from it. I have to disagree with Howard Jacobson, I don't have much interest in women writing about love, but they do write about all aspects of life often concentrating on relationships. I love that.

>83 Citizenjoyce:. The Guardian posted this article on Facebook, and got some really interesting comments. Of course, many of them were like "I never look at the gender of the author when I buy books" and "why does everything have to be about gender" even though they context was a women's prize for fiction. But some of the comments from women talked about the issue of reading books by and about men for so long that women learn to empathize with them, whereas men who don't read books by women don't learn to put themselves in women's shoes. Many also commented that a few of these men haven't read a book authored by a woman since high school, lol.

The thing that impressed me about Jacobson though was when he said that he WAS Jane Eyre when he read that book. I thought, "YES! Exactly!" That's why men need to get over the stereotyping and read books by women. They are NOT all romance or even about relationships, although perhaps more often women authors include descriptions of their character's emotions. And, newsflash, everybody has them, even if toxic masculinity requires that they be suppressed.

I have a book by Jacobson on my TBR pile J: A Novel. I may actually read it.

>84 vwinsloe: Good analysis. To see yourself as a character of another gender, race, religion, or political stance is the best, and most mind-expanding, thing about reading.

>81 SChant: & >82 Citizenjoyce: Animal Vegetable Criminal is apparently another title for her book Fuzz.

After spending a month reading The Mirror & the Light, I am trying to knock off some shorter books in my TBR pile. It was a good idea because I blew the dust off The Friend and it is my second favorite read so far this year. For some reason, I thought that the book was going to be some sort of light, literary Marley & Me. I had no idea that it would be so poignant and deeply moving.

This discussion of female authors and perspective makes me wonder which male authors have had the best portrayals of female characters, and why? And which male authors have pushed up against the embedded patriarchy in many cultures? I want to celebrate and read and enjoy The Feminine, which each one of us has within her / himself, of whatever gender(s). after all, we all had a mother who gave birth to us, and 1/2 of our DNA comes from that person.

I am going to start off with Shakespeare, whose female characters can be problematic, from Katherine in Taming of the Shrew to Ophelia and Gertrude in Hamlet. Yet they are strong, well-written characters, even tho they were played by boys and young men who passed for women back in the day.

I read Escape to the Forest: Based on a True Story of the Holocaust by Ruth Radin. It is a perfect example of a book written for kids about a kid who went through a really bad experience, and survived. The writing is relatable and engaging, and we experience the girl's Holocaust experience with her. It shows horrible parts of our history. Children need and want to learn and know about the world. Isn't it much better to read a book, if a kid is interested, than to rely on (sometimes questionable) Internet sources?

>86 vwinsloe: Thanks for the info.
>88 vwinsloe: I was very impressed by The Friend.
>89 Whitecat82: I've read some commentary on Taming of the Shrew that shows that Katerine was not the "tamed" female we all thought her to be. I don't see it. That play gives me the creeps to know that it's such a famous slapping down of a woman who speaks up for herself.
>90 Whitecat82: Fortunately Escape to the Forest isn't on Libby. If it were, I'd have to read it, and I don't know how I could take it.

>89 Whitecat82:. Interesting question, although I'm not sure that this is the place to discuss it, since this space is reserved for talking about books with women authors. That being said, I took a look at my library list on LT and saw that I read very little fiction written by men anymore. I think that part of the reason is that I like to come here to discuss books, and the other reason is that I have found that fiction written by women resonates with me better.

Of the few male authors of fiction on my list that I have read, many are SFF which often simply substitute a woman protagonist for a man (probably because the publisher told them that it would increase their readership.) Not too far off the mark sometimes, but not really relatable because the daily struggle of what it is to be a woman in the world is completely ignored. If I had to pick one that I read fairly recently, it would be Nothing to See Here. That's written in the first person with a female voice, and it's pretty well done. I know nothing about Kevin Wilson but good on him.

I just finished The Writer's Library: The Authors You Love on the Books That Changed Their Lives by Nancy Pearl on audio which is my preferred method these days, but then I had to buy it on Kindle. I don't buy many books these days, but I had to have this one because it's interviews with authors who discuss books that have influenced them. I needed those book lists though God knows I don't really need to add to my TBR pile. Anyway, in one of the interviews, the author was bemoaning the fact that we don't learn from each other anymore. "Men read men, women read women, Blacks read Blacks, queers read queers." It's yet another example of our growing polarization. I am invested in that political polarization and in what I read. I purposly read mostly books by women, but I find it comes out to 58.4% women, 31.4% men, and 9.7% not set according to LT statistics. To me, that's quite balanced enough. If almost 1/3 of the books men read were by women, I think that would be a big improvement. If 1/3 of the books Whites read were by POC, we might learn something. If 1/3 of the book straight binary people read were by queer or nonbinary people maybe we could stop hating each other quite so much. But I have to say, I'm pretty sure 1/3 of the books I read are not by conservatives or religious fundamentalists. A person can go just so far in the name of understanding.

>93 Citizenjoyce: The Writer's Library looks like the sort of book that I would have loved to listen to on audiobook back when I was driving for work. I'll put it on my wish list anyway.

As it turns out, about 58.8% of the books that I read are written by women and 38.4% are written by men. .04% are non-binary and 2.4% were not set. I don't accept as fact the critique that we only read authors who are demographically "like" us without statistics. For most of history, the majority of books that were published were authored by white men, not at least because they were the only ones being educated. And, of course, there is the bias that drove, and still drives, women to publish under male pseudonyms or using their initials. There is no way that books by people of color, immigrants and LGBT folks could be getting on the best sellers lists unless readers outside those groups are buying them. I believe that, among readers, there are a lot of people, like you and I, who seek out diverse voices and points of view, to learn something new or just to read something different. It may be true among cishet white men readers who carefully guard their identities. I don't think that there is any benefit to reading religious fundamentalists or conservatives, because I think that we've had quite enough of them already, and we aren't going to learn anything from them as this point.

>94 vwinsloe: The problem with listening to The Writer's Library on audio is that I didn't not the name of the author who made the statement about polarization. I thought I remembered who it was, a Black man, but when I went back to the man I thought it was, the quote isn't there. I know the author was male, and I'm pretty sure he was of a minority group, but I just can't remember which he was. We do seem to have similar stats, don't we?

I just finished Phallacy: Life Lessons from the Animal Penis by Emily Willingham. As a retired nurse, I love anything to do with biology, and as a retired labor and delivery nurse, I love anything to do with reproduction and if these books are delivered with wit, I find them irresistible. Willingham gives examples of many kinds of penises or "intromittum, ... organs that transmit gametes from one partner to the other'' because the scientific world is full of research about penises. Strangely, there is comparably little research into the vagina except for how it accommodates the penis. Anyway, as penises go, the human variety is pretty mediocre in both size and accomplishments. It doesn't sing, grasp or reach way over to another partner (as do Darwin's beloved barnacles). It does exist while in many species, most birds, evolution has erased it. The ancient Greeks preferred small ones, but she conjectures that's because they also preferred young boys as sexual partners. It also is not the epitome of a man. It's just another nice, functional organ, not essentially frightening or aggressive. If you like Mary Roach, I think you'll like Emily Willingham.

>95 Citizenjoyce:. Yes, I was surprised at how similar the stats were. I do wish that LT would graph more demographics on authors since I think that it is not a bad idea to check oneself. They do include the author's countries of origin under nationalities, but not race or ethnicity, let alone sexual orientation.

>96 Citizenjoyce:. I'll have to look for Emily Willingham. Thanks!

Read Gloria Steinem's The Truth Will Set You Free. What a strange and pointless book. It contains a few rambling essays about her life as an activist, and the rest is filled with inspirational feminist quotes and slogans, some of them "illustrated" in big, swirly writing. Disappointing.

>98 SChant:. That's disappointing. I read her My Life on the Road and thought that it was okay, but haven't sought out any of her other books.

I'm not a Royal watcher by any means, but in honor of the Queen's jubilee, I picked Riding Through My Life off the TBR pile. Princess Anne is not an ordinary person, but she almost comes off as one, and she has a dry wit. I don't recommend this book to non-equestrians.

I also finished A Children's Bible, which I do recommend. It is an odd little parable, about the apocalypse brought on by climate change, through the eyes of young people, who will bear the brunt. The adults were depicted as absolutely feckless, which makes for uncomfortable reading.

>99 vwinsloe: I agree that A children's bible was a very uncomfortable read. It was powerful though, and has stayed with me months later.

I'm currently reading quite a variety of books by women. House of earth and blood by Sarah J. Maas is secondary-world urban fantasy with a lot of eye-rolling sexual tension between the leads. Defender is another excellent instalment in C. J. Cherryh's long-running SF series. I just finished The rich house by Stella Gibbons, set in a British seaside town in the late 1930s and exploring the lives and loves of a group of young people. And I also finished Blonde by JCO which took ages to read but which I found to be worthwhile. I knew very little about Marilyn Monroe's life before reading this, and I know that Oates fictionalised much of it, but the emotional truth she portrays is convincing.

Started Rediscovery Volume 2, forgotten science fiction short stories by women from the 1950s. The first volume had some great stuff, and this one is starting out pretty well too!

>98 SChant: I checked out the Gloria Steinham book and a little blurb says something about her gift for making quotes. It sounds like that's all the book was about.
>99 vwinsloe: A Children's Bible sounds pretty good.
I just finished Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America by Nicole Eustace.
It's a history of early interactions between American colonists and Native Americans in the 18th century. A semi-important Native American is murdered by two semi-important colonists. Because the colonists value the copper on the land they feel they have to pretend that their idea of justice applies equally to both colonists and natives. They arrest the 2 perpetrators, throw them in jail, put them in irons, and plan to execute them. The Native Americans don't agree with the idea of jailing people and definitely don't agree with killing them in the name of justice. Their idea of justice is to support the community by keeping important members within the community, requiring them to voice their remorse over their actions, supporting the grief of the rest of the community, and providing financial compensation. Over and over, the colonists fail to comprehend or even consider that there is an idea of justice that differs from their own.
When I say history, I mean history. There's no fiction here, so my lazy brain found it difficult but worthwhile.

I've raced through Rediscovery Volume 2 - another excellent collection of SF&F stories by women from the 1950's pulps.
As a complete contrast to that, am about to start Zora Neale Hurston's collection of essays You Don't Know Us Negroes.

I just finished A Woman of No Importance which is the biography of a wooden-legged American woman who became a spy for the Allies during WWII. Although her shadowy work was not widely known, it astonishes me that it took until 2019 for any filmmaker to memorialize this story of someone who made a major contribution to the liberation of France. The narrative of her later career in the CIA was anti-climatic, as the role of women in the 1950s became highly circumscribed, and she was not allowed to fully utilize her experience and talent.

I just started The Travelling Cat Chronicles, translated from the original Japanese, which I expect will be a cozy read. But I thought that about The Friend, too!

> I loved The Traveling Cat Chronicles, I hope you do too.
I am in such a murderously bad mood due to the official non-personhood of half the USA that it's kind of hard for me to like anything I read right now.
Case in point Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy. Of course whenever you talk about environmentalism or releasing wolves into the wild there are going to be ugly people. The book has them in spades. It also has stupid women doing stupid things in situations that are bound to end in disaster. Why? Why? I know the way to prevent rape is to convince men not to rape. The burden shouldn't constantly be on women to protect themselves but, come on. But come on, use your noodle. Women both mentally ill and sane making one bad decision after another. I didn't need this right now.
I did read a little charmer, The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick which is full of nice people being nice to each other. It's kind of like a soothing poultice.
The Immortal King Rao: A Novel by Vauhini Vara is kind of a speculative retelling of the founding of Apple where the author throws in Bill and Melinda Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk for spice. It has only a 2.5 rating on LT. I gave it a 4 and it's being talked about all over, so I'm not sure why poor ratings, but I found it interesting and somewhat possible.
Next month I'll be reading about abortion, contraception, and women's health because I guess reading is a more productive way to spend my time than becoming a terrorist. So far, these are the planned reads:
The Audacity of Inez Burns: Dreams, Desire, Treachery & Ruin in the City of Gold - Stephen G. Bloom
Belabored: A Vindication of the Rights of Pregnant Women - Lyz Lenz
Everything Below the Waist: Why Health Care Needs a Feminist Revolution - Jennifer Block
The Farm - Joanne Ramos
Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty - Dorothy E. Roberts
Loved and Wanted: A Memoir of Choice, Children, and Womanhood - Christa Parravani
Mercy Street - Jennifer Haigh - Citizenjoyce
You're the Only One I've Told: The Stories Behind Abortion - Meera Shah

>104 vwinsloe: Loved A Woman of No Importance when I listened to the audio last fall. Amazing woman, who had huge effect on WWII, yet has been left to dusty history. I liked that more than The Alice Network.

As for the awful things happening to our country these days, it can be comforting to read the age-old recipes for women's reproductive health needs like Culpepper, (including abortifacents).

About to embark on a history book discovering some of the under-represented working-class and middle-class women activists in late 18th and early 19th century Britain, Uncontrollable Women: Radicals, Reformers and Revolutionaries by Nan Sloane.

>107 SChant:, that looks good.

On a similar but tamer note, I've started Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie, a combined biography about the beginnings of National Public Radio in the US.

>105 Citizenjoyce:. I did enjoy The Travelling Cat Chronicles. I don't know why but it was the first book since Life After Life that made me cry. I can't say whether it was just a mood/stress release at the time of reading, or whether the book was just that good.

I had favorite books for the reproductive challenge this month. Mercy Street by Jennifer Haigh which follows many people connected with a woman's health care clinic, some of them very anti-choice. It's a good story, especially from the worker's standpoint, but I'm not all that fond of reading about the inner thoughts of anti-choicers. However, connecting them with white supremacy seems pretty accurate.
My favorite was The Farm by Joanne Ramos which is speculative fiction about a company that organizes a surrogacy business for the richest women in the world. Some of the "hosts," surrogates, are well-meaning, well-educated white women (premium hosts), but the majority are women of color and/or immigrants who need the money. The hosts' lives are managed completely, for the sake of their rich babies. This is the best book I've read about Filipinas. Having worked with Filipina nurses for 20 years I've seen their strong work ethic, their dedication to family, their respect for rules, and sometimes their willingness to subject everything to their ability to earn. I didn't understand how the author could have so accurately depicted them until I realized that she herself is Filipina. One thing we've all learned in the past 7 years or so is that respectful rule followers will be exploited by those who think rules are for the weak. It fits very well with recent attitudes.

I finished Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie and learned quite a bit from it.

Now I've started The Four Winds which seems to have been universally highly regarded. I can't say that I have ready anything about the dust bowl since The Grapes of Wrath.

Huh, it's been almost a month since I've checked in. Since that time, I read the entire Shades of Magic trilogy which was a long, but entertaining, read. Each book in the series was better than the last.

I have started Half Broke which is the memoir of a horse trainer who goes to a prison farm to train the horses that the residents have allowed to go feral. So far, it's quite good.

>110 Citizenjoyce:, those titles look interesting. I'm adding them to my wishlist.

>112 vwinsloe: Well shoot, I see I read A Darker Shade of Magic in 2016. I guess I'll have to start all over so I'll know what's going on.
Libby has Half Broke but not on audio, darn.

>113 Citizenjoyce:. I'd find a summary for A Darker Shade of Magic rather than read it again. If I hadn't been loaned the whole series, I would have stopped after reading it, as the plot was a little derivative and the writing too YA for me. As I said, the series got better for me as it went along, and I gave A Conjuring of Light 4 stars, which only a handful of books get from me every year.

>114 vwinsloe: good advice

Last month I read an article about best science fiction books. The Grace Year by Kim Liggett was mentioned. I put it on hold, and after a few weeks it came in. When I started it I was pretty disappointed. It seemed like an overwrought novel written after inspiration from The Handmaid's Tale. I thought its lack of subtlety detracted greatly from the message; however, after the big beginning, it settled into a more believable middle with a great ending. These days I don't give a book that doesn't appeal much time to grab my attention. I'm glad I stuck with this one.

>116 Citizenjoyce:. I hadn't heard of that one, and I am putting it on my wish list. Thanks.

I just read Earthlings, Murata's follow-up to Convenience store woman. Earthlings is really disturbing, an extreme portrayal of dissociation caused by abuse. It's a great commentary on the way society tries to force people, especially women, into procreation, but if you were expecting something as heartwarming as CSW ends up, you've come to the wrong place. It's very worth reading, but eesh.

>118 Sakerfalcon: I loved Convenience Store Woman but I don't know if I'm up to eesh. I'll consider it.

I finished two good memoirs: One Life by Megan Rapinoe and I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy. If you're only going to read one, go with Rapinoe. She loves her sport, she loves her body, she loves her family, she loves her love and she works for equality. McCurdy hated acting, love-hated her mother, hates-tolerates her body and I doubt can have an equal romantic relationship. I heard her talk about the book and she simplifies her feelings about her mother who sexually abused her and lead her into anorexia at the age of 11 so she could stay a child and keep getting child actor jobs. She's had plenty of therapy and seems to have worked through many of her problems and she can't forgive her mother who also suffered from mental illness but refused any treatment for it. She's a good writer, so has finally found the right profession. She makes you wonder about all those "happy" child actors on tv.

>118 Sakerfalcon: I haven't read Convenience Store Woman, I'll put it on my wish list.

>120 Citizenjoyce:. I've always admired Megan Rapinoe. If I come across her memoir, I'll read it.

I follow Wil Wheaton on his FB page, and he's another child actor with toxic parents. I'll bet that it is not uncommon.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin - Wow, what a book, and I'm not even a gamer. If I were I don't know that I'd be able to go on to another book for a while until I'd digested this one. As it is, I'm just thankful that I found this wonderful story that both uplifted me and drove me crazy. There's a reason I went into labor and delivery instead of psychiatric nursing. Depression is too frustrating. I admire people who can deal with it both from the aspect of the depressed person and from the viewpoint of her friends. I won't name all the facets of life Zevin covers here. I've enjoyed her other books but this one is everything. I've done almost nothing for the past 2 days but read it. I can't remember the last time that happened.

>122 Citizenjoyce:. That's on my wish list, and now I may have to make a more concerted effort to get it.

Right now I'm reading a man, Salman Rushdie. I felt compelled after he was so brutally assaulted. The book I chose is well over 500 pages, and I'm only 200 pages in, so I may not post here for a while.

>123 vwinsloe: I've only read The Satanic Verses long ago. I remember that I liked it pretty well but had no desire to continue with any of his other work. It makes no sense that people could believe he deserved to die for writing it. I wonder if the fatwa is more for his publicly leaving his religion than for the actual words he wrote.

>124 Citizenjoyce:. After the Charlie Hebdo incident, I came to believe that it doesn't take much. A fatwa seems to be a form of stochastic terrorism, a term that I've only recently become familiar with.

In any event, I'm reading Midnight's Children which was the Best of Booker in 2008 (Best of the Booker winners for 40 years.) I'm 200 pages in and feel like I am just getting interested. I hope that this book will have some return on my reading investment, but I doubt that I will read more of his work.

>125 vwinsloe: Terrorism makes no sense. It's just an attempt to gain power for the sake of gaining power. I wish the world, and our country would finally tire of it.

>126 Citizenjoyce:. Amen

Hi,
I have been away from this thread for a long time. Far too long!
I just finished reading Moses, Man of the Mountain by Zora Neale Hurston.
Fantastic book in so many ways.

I just finished Nevada by Imogen Binnie. It was written in 2013 so has had plenty of time to circulate.
There's an interview with the author afterward who talks about the wonderful effect the book had on many trans people and how she's had many people tell her it gave them hope. That amazes me because the main character is a complete narcissist and a bad friend, lover and employee. She steals her ex-girlfriend's car and offers heroin to a young, underage man she has just met. The book does make some interesting observations which I guess is what people identify with; however, think the character gives trans people a bad name. Perhaps they're just happy to have a character whose gender and struggles they can identify with.
So while I'm complaining I'll mention why I hated The Life She was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman. I was looking forward to it since I'd heard it was about a young girl who spent her childhood locked in her parents' attack because she had some kind of deformity that would make people afraid to look at her. Never did I expect the severe and horrendous animal abuse that took up almost a whole chapter. I tried to skip it but later in the book when I thought I was safe the author threw in a one-liner that gave me a picture I couldn't get out of my head. Add to that the horrible characters make this a book I'm very sad to have read.
On a brighter note, The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline is a very interesting historical fiction about women prisoners who were transported from England to Tasmania in the 1800s. Poor England, what could she do? There was a glut of male prisoners who had been transported and not enough women to make new little citizens, so women had to be supplied, and slavery is such an efficient way to help a population grow.

>129 Citizenjoyce:. I think that you've got the wrong link up for Nevada.

I've finally finished my last book, and fair to say that I am done with literature for a while. Whew. Perhaps some more knowledge of history and culture of India and Pakistan would have helped me, but much went over my head, I'm afraid.

So now the doctor has ordered a good space opera, and I've started Ancestral Night.

>130 vwinsloe: Hah, right. Nevada is not a Zane Gray kind of book.
I think you deserve to sink into a nice space opera after Salmon Rushdie.

Well, Ancestral Night was fun, and I look forward to reading Machine, which I understand is set in the same universe, but is not a sequel.

I've started Caste, and I can't help but hear Robin Miles's voice in my head. She was the narrator of the audiobook The Warmth of Other Suns (among other things), and she has such a wonderful voice. I don't listen to books much any more since I don't have long drives for work, and I miss it.

>132 vwinsloe: Does anybody else, when they are nearing the end of their current read, cast around to see what book they will read next, choose one, and then read something different at the last minute?

Happens to me all the time, and that's how I happen to be reading Perestroika in Paris right now, which is pretty sweet so far.

>133 vwinsloe: I usually have my next read planned, and I frequently get distracted by something new. I never have the problem of not having any idea what to read next.
I think my favorite book this month was The Girls in the Stilt House by Kelly Mustian which is a little surprising because I no longer have much interest in books set in the South or books that show irrational sexism and misogyny. However, the two main characters in this book act like real people and have real and unexpected things happen to them as they have to figure out what to do next. It's a well-thought-out book with a reasonable ending. Well, that sounds boring, but it's full of excitement too.
Electable: Why America Hasn't Put a Woman in the White House . . . Yet by Ali Vitali is a pretty good analysis of the "there's just something about her I don't like crowd", including journalists.
Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses by Sarah Fay is a very interesting criticism of psychiatry, psychiatric meds, and the DSM written by a pretty unappealing woman. After all the pain she goes through I'm left thinking that, rather than psychiatry, what she needed was a good grandma or life coach or best friend who could have guided her toward some reasonable goals in life and told her to stop thinking only about herself all the time. But I know, that's what people without major psychiatric disorders usually think about those with them.
Front Desk by Kelly Yang is a semi-autobiographical novel about a little Chinese-American girl who is given way too much responsibility at a young age working the front desk in a motel her parents manage. It covers racism and poverty and ends up being quite a lovely little story that I'm glad Kelly Yang managed to live through.
In He Wanted the Moon: The Madness and Medical Genius of Dr. Perry Baird, and His Daughter's Quest to Know Him Mimi Baird writes about her brilliant father who had some revolutionary insights into bipolar disorder long before anyone else did. He was involuntarily committed over and over to mental institutions, and she was kept from knowing much about him until she was an adult. In fact, I think she didn't write this book until she was in her 60s or 70s. I just found out Brad Pitt has optioned it for a movie. How's that for continuing to grow even in older age?
I found Women Talking by Miriam Toews has also been made into a movie. It's about a group of Mennonite women in Bolivia who, for years, have been drugged and sexually abused as they sleep at night. One of them finally wakes up during the assault so she realizes the pain and damage they have all felt are not from psychosomatic reasons or visits from the devil but from abuse by the honored husbands and sons of the community. When all the women realize this they are reasonably outraged and are told by the head of the community that they must forgive the men or they won't be able to go to heaven. They are mostly illiterate, they don't even speak the language of their country (as Mennonites they speak a kind of old German). They've never left their community or made decisions on their own, and they have to decide whether to forgive the men or leave the community. This is a novel based on real-life occurrences.
And finally, several decades too late, I read Sexual Politics: A Surprising Examination of Society's Most Arbitrary Folly by Kate Millett. I loved her political analysis. It was especially interesting to me that she thought early feminists harmed themselves by focusing on getting the vote instead of establishing equality. The focus caused white feminists to align themselves with racists and to distance themselves from poor women and people of color. Unfortunately much of the book is literary criticism, and I learned way more about Henry Miller, Norman Mailer and Jean Genet than I could stomach.

>134 Citizenjoyce: I own Women Talking, which I picked up on your recommendation. I haven't heard of The Girls in the Stilt House but I will put it on my wishlist.

I finished Perestroika in Paris which was pleasant (not to damn with faint praise, but the book really paled in comparison to The Traveling Cat Chronicles).

Now I'm deciding on my next read, which I think will be science fiction if I keep to my usual rotation.

I also want to note here the passing of Hilary Mantel whose death is a huge loss to the literary community. She died of a stroke at 70 years of age.

>135 vwinsloe: oh, it was a stroke. I keep reading that she had severe endometriosis and that didn’t make sense to me. What a shock.

Started a re-read (after many years) of Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber. I'd forgotten how lush and disturbing the stories are.

>137 SChant: It must be pretty important, I see 3 books talking about it on Libby, but The Bloody Chamber itself isn't there.

I read Intimations, which was a bit of a cheat for my nonfiction rotation, since it is only about 100 pages long. The essays were part philosophical and part observational. The standout for me was an essay entitled, "Suffering like Mel Gibson," which was an examination of how suffering is unaffected by privilege. The takeaway was that we should never be dismissive of someone else's pain.

I had then planned to read Women Talking, but I totally forgot about that after reading an article about the life of Sinead O'Connor (there's a new documentary about her coming out), which drove me toward The Pull of the Stars which examined some of the same themes regarding the Roman Catholic church. I always seem to like historical fiction when I read it, but I find that it is often just a thinly veiled romance. The Pull of the Stars was the same for me. A good read, but I could see the romance coming from a mile away, and remained emotionally unaffected as a result.

So now I've finally picked up Women Talking and it seems short enough that it will allow me to get to my planned Halloween read, Mexican Gothic. But I'm well aware of the best laid plans of mice and men...

Just picked up 2 Margaret Atwood books from the library - though I won't get round to reading them for a couple of weeks. The Penelopiad - which I was prompted to pick up by the "Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics" podcast on The Odyssey; and Burning Questions, a collection of essays.

>139 vwinsloe: The Pull of the Stars was a 5 star read for me. I just read my little review of it and noticed I didn't mention anything about romance. I guess I'm so used to it being a part of almost every other genre that I ignore it as much as possible.
I just finished the last of Hilary Mantel's Cromwell trilogy, The Mirror and the Light. Wow, is it depressing. I could see trump in every action of Henry VIII. This is all he wants out of life, to be as powerful as a king, and I guess we'll see within the next 2 years if people agree with him. My trump supporting grandson has transferred his allegiance to Ron DeSantis. Where have I gone wrong?
>140 SChant: I hope you like The Penelopiad as much as I did.

>141 Citizenjoyce:. Regarding The Pull of the Stars, when something is predictable for me, it kind of loses it's emotional impact.

But, wow, yeah, The Mirror & the Light, I guess was predictable, if you knew what happened to Cromwell historically. But just so, so, devastatingly well done.

And regarding your grandson, no you haven't gone wrong. Every family has them, it seems, mostly male. I'm sure that it is tied into feelings of inferiority and toxic masculinity- hierarchical beliefs. Our society is steeped in it.

>142 vwinsloe: Both my son and my grandson. They're such good people I have a hard time believing they mean it. I can't help but think their ridiculous statements are just jokes, but they assure me they mean them. Neither of them reads anything other than what is needed for their jobs. I have to think that's a big part of the problem.

Last month I read Messy Lives of Book People by Phaedra Patrick. It's a fun but not really deep book about a housekeeper who is picked to finish the last novel of the famous author she works for. Now, there's wish fulfillment for you.
I loved Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner about women in a bookstore. It was a very fulfilling read and I think this is where I heard of The Doll a short story by Daphne du Maurier that was too scandalous to be published. Well, I had to search it out and found The Doll: The Lost Short Stories. According to Bloomsbury Girls, The Doll is about a woman who finds a doll that fulfills all her sexual needs. (If you want to read just this story it's here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/apr/30/the-doll-daphne-du-maurier). Pretty risque for the 1920s, though that was a time of sexual freedom. Maybe taken alone, this is what it's about, but as it is combined with the rest of the stories (and it's seldom I like almost every short story in an anthology as I did in this one) it seems to me to be about a woman who is smart enough not to get sucked in by a man's romantic notions so she creates her own fantasy that satisfies her more. I didn't see anything particularly sexual in it, but it's possible these things have to be spelled out for me. The stories are about obsessive love, waning love, the love of the chase, and the boredom of the relationship. They're also about men and women who use and are used by each other. They don't seem to have been written by a woman who had a very favorable view of marriage.

>144 Citizenjoyce: Thanks for posting that story. I really liked it, and will have to think about it some more. I think that I read The House on the Strand decades ago, but I don't remember anything about it. I know that she was a favorite author of my mother's.

I've added Annie Ernaux to my wishlist. I'm embarrassed to say that I had never heard of her until she won the Nobel prize for literature this week. Her book Happening was made into a film in 2021, and drew some critical acclaim. It is about a college student's attempt to have an abortion when it was illegal in France. I do not know if the film is subtitled or in English, but many of her books have been translated.

>145 vwinsloe: Thanks, I haven't read anything by Annie Ernaux. I've put I Remain in Darkness and Happening on hold, but there's quite a waitlist.

>146 Citizenjoyce:. I think that we both got the wrong link for Happening. I've found the right one now.

>147 vwinsloe: Right, not quite an M. Night Shyamalan movie.

I finished Mexican Gothic, and didn't like it as much as others have. I guess that I didn't care too much about any of the characters. Then again, it could be that I've gotten too old for horror novels. Reality is even more frightening.

Now I'm just starting Our Missing Hearts. I never really ever read new books, especially this close to their publication dates. But I entered my Little Free Library into a Penguin Press give-a-way, and they sent me two copies: one to put out in my LFL and one for me to read. The genre of this one is different from Celeste Ng's previous books, as it is apparently dystopian. What attracted me to it right away is that its theme is similar to a recent article that I read about Franco's Spain where Roman Catholic nuns cooperated with the regime by stealing children from mothers deemed unworthy, many of whom were dissidents. This dovetails nicely with The Pull of the Stars on the same theme. I'll let you know what I think about Our Missing Hearts when I'm done.

>149 vwinsloe: It sounds good but we keep finding that there are scarier things about nuns than their use of a ruler.

>130 vwinsloe: I've started Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear. So far, so good. It's the month for long books, I guess. First Fairy Tale and now Ancestral Night. I guess October is the month for fun books.

>151 Citizenjoyce: Ancestral Night goes quickly. It's not particularly deep, but I must say that I really enjoy Elizabeth Bear's characters and dialog. The next book set in her white space world, entitled Machine, has gotten an equally good, if not better, reception, so I'm looking forward to that, too. It's apparently not a sequel.

I'm a little over one third of the way into Our Missing Hearts, and, so far, it's positively transporting. Of course, Celeste Ng's previous two books really resonated with me as well, so I shouldn't be surprised. But I think that the publisher really could have done a better job with the title and the cover art, as neither do justice to the story.

>152 vwinsloe:. I take it back. It could only ever have been entitled, Our Missing Hearts. I finished it now, and it is haunting me. 5 stars... and a review!

I've taken up Secondhand Time, already it amazes me how people can look back fondly on pogroms and political violence when it reinforces their cultural identity. It's a long book, and I'm interested to see where it goes, particularly now against a backdrop of Putin's Russia.

>153 vwinsloe: I was so surprised in all of Svetlana Alexievich books to find how much the Russian people still love Stalin. That amazes probably the whole western world who think of him as a monster murderer of his own people.
I'm sorry that Libby says it will be 4 months until I can read Our Missing Hearts}.

Secondhand time is on my TBR pile, I must try to get to it soon. I remember when I went to Russia for the first time we were warned not to assume that people looked back on Communism as a bad thing. For the herders we met it had meant a guaranteed market for their animals and free university education for their children. And the coming of the oligarchs in the 2000s meant strangers laying claim to lands they had wandered for generations. It was eye-opening.

I've been reading Miss Marjoribanks with the Virago group, which was an entertaining instalment in Margaret Oliphant's Chronicles of Carlingford. This is the first to have a female protagonist, and I think that's why I enjoyed it a bit more than the previous volumes. I've also read A compass error by Sybille Bedford which was a powerful take on innocence and betrayal in inter-war France, and have just started Winter sonata by Dorothy Edwards.

>155 Sakerfalcon:. When did you go to Russia? I was there in 2006, right after Russia became part of the G8, and it looked like Russia was going to join the western world. Several things struck me then, one being that everyone used the same terminology "the old days" to refer to the Soviet era, and then quickly changed the subject. Another was the acceptance of official untruths: such as, "it was a beautiful day for the parade with sunny skies," when in fact it rained; I know, I was there.

I'm not sure that we will ever understand them, but Secondhand Time is enlightening.

>156 vwinsloe: 2008, 2009 and 2010. I was in the Altai Republic.

>157 Sakerfalcon: Wow, it must have been amazing. Did you see lots of deprivation and shortages?

>157 Sakerfalcon:. Oh, wow. Very rural, and non-Slavic. I'm sure that they had an interesting perspective.

>158 Citizenjoyce:, >159 vwinsloe: It's certainly a poor region and the people we met live hard lives. Grandparents and grandchildren spend the summer living in gers on the steppes with their flocks/herds, and moving into town in the winter to join the parents who were working in other jobs. They ate well - plenty of meat and dairy from their herds - but the women especially looked far older than their years. We met people well into their 70s and still active, so I guess whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger ... It is a stunningly beautiful region, but at risk of development (which will enrich oligarchs back in Moscow without benefitting local people).

>160 Sakerfalcon:. Thank you. I'm really ignorant about this region.

>160 Sakerfalcon: " It is a stunningly beautiful region, but at risk of development" The world over this seems to be the case. People who manage to eek out a living through their hard work over generations in beautiful areas are displaced by the rich who can enjoy the beauty without working. The workers then have to work hard wherever else they can find to do so without the comfort of their home lands. I used to live 40 miles from Aspen. Housecleaners would drive those 40 miles over twisty, slick roads in the winter to earn their living. Now even that little town is too expensive and those who aren't mega rich have to travel even farther.

Finished Atwood's The Penelopiad and found it disappointingly light compared to some other recent re-envisioning of Greek myths. However, I've got Natalie Haynes' Medusa story Stone Blind and Nicola Griffith's Spear waiting for pickup at the library tomorrow.

>163 SChant:, I hadn't heard about Spear. I'm really interested in reading that. Please let us know what you think when you've read it.

>163 SChant: >164 vwinsloe: I second this request as Spear is on my Overdrive wish list. Have liked everything else I've read by Griffith, (six novels and a couple of short stories).

>163 SChant: I put Spear on hold but had to recommend Stone Blind to Libby since they don't have it yet. Speaking of myths retold from a female perspective, my book club just read and discussed The Book of Longings about the wife of Jesus, Anna. I loved everything about Anna and her life, but these days any mention of Jesus feels like nails on a blackboard. The librarian asked how Christianity would be different if Jesus had had or had been reported to have a wife. I think we wouldn't have any more of that Virgin Mary nonsense. Mary would have been a good wife who'd born a remarkable son. She also would have been a woman who had had sex in the normal course of her life, as had Jesus. Sex wouldn't have been made into the dirty, obligatory secret activity it has become in the religion. It would simply be an enjoyable part of life like eating. Sometimes you get what you love, and sometimes you only get enough to let you live, but the act of eating itself is not a sin or a secret.

I just finished The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward. After the initial scenes, I would have stopped reading if it weren't October and I needed a scary book. Well, more creepy than scary, but pretty darn creepy. I'm glad I read it, but it was just maybe a tad too long.

Finished Spear, a short novel inspired by Arthurian legends. It's an easy read and has some lovely passages but it didn't quite work for me. The first part where the protagonist is a wild girl living in a hidden cave with her mother, and roaming the Welsh hills and valleys evokes a wonderful sense of time and place, but the majority of the book, where she sets off to become a Companion of King Arthur is less successful. She becomes a bit of a Mary Sue doing everything brilliantly - fighting brigands, sparring with the King's Companions, falling into affairs with local girls - everyone loves her, and of course she has a magical heritage! She spends the rest of the book meandering about doing good deeds and being rather dull.

>168 SChant:. It sounds as though Nicola Griffith took the criticisms of Hild to heart. I confess that Hild is still sitting on my TBR shelf because it is so long, and, I've heard, dull. But I may still get to Spear before Hild though. I was a big fan of Arthurian legends growing up.

>169 vwinsloe: I loved Hild, it honestly didn't seem long to me. It has such a profound sense of place and the story is engrossing. I can't wait for the sequel Menewood.

>170 SChant:. I will give it a try at some point. It just seems that if I read too many books that are 400 plus pages, then I fall behind with all the other books that I want to read. I did not know that there will be a sequel to Hild, so, thanks, I will make a note of it.

>169 vwinsloe: I also have avoided Hild because of the length. This was a month of long books for me, so maybe sometime soon I'll take the plunge.
>168 SChant: I don't know, with the possible disastrous effects of the midterm elections, maybe I need a nice Mary Sue book.

More Halloween reading, The Lighthouse Witches by C. J. Cooke convoluted and interesting with the obligatory horrible daughter.

I finished When No One Is Watching by Alyssa Cole which is described as a cross between Rear Window and Get Out. Not so much Rear Window, but the Get Out vibes are very strong. It was rather strange to read this view of gentrification from the perspective of Black people whose homes are being snapped up after reading The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu from the perspective of a White woman who is shown just how unwelcome she is in a gentrifying neighborhood.

I finished Secondhand Time, and it was really depressing, particularly in the context of current day politics and political violence. Cynicism is difficult to avoid, but it plays into the hands of the oppressors.

Now I'm going to knock off a couple of short fiction books, I think. I've started The Boy in the Field which seems, so far, to be different anyway.

I finished Now In November by Josephine W. Johnson a pretty depressing look at economic and sexist tragedy during the Great Depression, so I'm going to lift up my mood a little with the second in the White Space series, Machine by Elizabeth Bear.
I did lift up my mood by voting today, now I just have to wait in trepidation for the results.

I read The Boy in the Field and The Incendiaries for my two short novels. I enjoyed them both. Coincidentally, the stories were each narrated alternately from the points of view of the various characters, although they were both very different in tone and subject matter. The Boy in the Field explored Livesey's frequent trope of the differing perception of different characters of the same events, often missing the actual fact. The Incendiaries considered how a person might get involved with a cult, and how far a person may go in pursuit of the cult's purposes once ensnared. Both are worth reading.

Now like >176 Citizenjoyce:, I'm headed off to space for the next few days. I'm reading The Stars are Legion, which I hope will be cathartic.

>177 vwinsloe: I just read my review of The Stars Are Legion. I loved it in spite of the oozy smelliness.
I finished Machine. It's set in the same universe as Ancestral Nights with different characters though the ship and Singer have brief parts. The new characters, some humanoid, the rest sentient bugs and plants have sufficient interaction to help me wade through the hard sci-fi parts.
I also finished Our Missing Hearts It was rather optimistic of Ng to show this oppressive racism against Chinese and Chinese Americans taking place only after years of a devastating recession. I think one more round of a GOP president, and we could be there.

>178 Citizenjoyce: Machine is on my wish list. I really like Bear as a person. She lives in my state, and I accidently followed her on Instagram because she has horses. I did not know at the time that she was the SF writer.

Ng is another author who lives in my state. I remember multiple random physical assaults on elderly Asian people reported on my local news. Apparently, it had to do with blame for the "China virus." So it was already here, and probably anywhere else with a significant Asian population. What blew me away with Our Missing Hearts was how stealthily Ng gave me real strong emotions about these things. And then she looped in art as protest-- making the art observer feel something instead of being preached at. So meta.

I'm having fun reading The Stars are Legion; I won't look for your review until I'm done.

We've gotten some spam at the bottom of this topic, so I am going to avail myself of the option of continuing this topic on a new page.

See you on page 14.