This summer has been one long lesson in disagreeing with people I agree with. As a liberal girl growing up in Louisiana, I have been far more accustomed to disagreeing with people I disagree with, but here in this liberal university town, I am surrounded by a whole bunch of people who agree with me. This is really nice in a way, as I can say things about gay rights to someone I hardly know without fearing that I have just inadvertently issued the opening salvo of a debate. But in another way, it is frustrating. When people who disagree…
43 CommentsTag: Women Unbound Challenge
Note: Edwidge Danticat has the best name in all the land. I shall say it as often as possible in this review because it is a superb name. Edwidge Danticat. Breath, Eyes, Memory is a goes-off-to-live-with book. (Written by Edwidge Danticat.) I love a goes-off-to-live-with book, although now that I am a grown-up, such books are increasingly likely to involve severe trauma at the original home or the place where the character goes off to live. Sophie (the protagonist invented by Edwidge Danticat) has spent all of her twelve years with her Tante Atie, but suddenly she must leave her…
27 CommentsYou know what I never do, that I should do? I never write down call numbers for the books I want at the library. I look them up on the computers and then just hope they stick in my memory long enough for me to find the books I’m after. I make them into little songs and sing them under my breath as I wend my way through New Nonfiction, Film, and Young Adults back to the regular nonfiction section. This is fine as long as there are no books with exciting titles in New Nonfiction; as long as I…
31 CommentsAt last! It’s March and I’ve finally managed to read another of the books from my list for the Women Unbound Challenge! I’m having to make substitutions to the list because my library does not have Bluestockings (which, oh, I really wanted! but never mind, life is pain), and although it claims to have Foreign Correspondence, it has not been shelved where they claim that it is shelved (in Biography). Yes Means Yes, ed. Jessica Valenti and Jaclyn Friedman The subtitle of this collection is Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape. Wouldn’t that be nice? It’s…
21 CommentsFor some reason I can’t seem to finish any books these days. There are a number of factors involved. I have a lot of good books right now. I am rereading Fables as well as several volumes of L.M. Montgomery’s generally-predictable-but-sweet-nevertheless short stories. I’m also reading The Two Towers, The Bell, Yes Means Yes, and more of Tom Stoppard’s plays. I have fallen back in love with a still-untitled (I’m crap at titles) story I’ve been working on for ages, so I’m working on rewriting that. Having scheduled a Lord of the Rings Extended Edition Marathon with my sister and…
22 CommentsVerdict: Upsetting. I’d never heard of The Group before Claire of Paperback Reader posted about it on her blog earlier this year, but I was immediately intrigued by her description of it (and not just because the phrase seminal feminist text is delightfully absurd). The Group follows a group of eight 1933 Vassar graduates, with each chapter focusing on one of the girls and a major event in her life: Dottie’s first experience of sex, Priss attempting to breast-feed her first son, Libby’s struggles with her career in literature, Polly’s involvement with a married man. It’s very frank and upfront…
39 CommentsWatching the English, Kate Fox I have a confession to make, y’all. I am a sucker for pop psychology, and also pop sociology and yes, pop anthropology. It’s all, you know, it’s all readable, and there are interview excerpts, and people talk about what they think and why they do the things they do. How could anyone not love that? I love that so much! I know that Kate Fox’s Watching the English is observational and subjective and thus Not Proper Science, and maybe it was a tiny smidge repetitive…and yet I do not care. Because it got me all…
43 CommentsAll these past weeks, when everyone has been deciding on their challenges for the New Year (is anyone else totally ready for 2010? This has never happened to me before, but I find myself wanting to write 2010 as the year for everything, and then when I have to write 2009 instead, I feel cranky and cheated), I’ve been saying, I am not joining any. No challenges for me, I have said. I’m not joining the Women Unbound Challenge; I’m not joining Haloes and Horns, or Alyce’s Time Travel one, or the Graphic Novel one that Chris and Nymeth are…
28 Comments