Five stars, read in April 2019. There was a lot about this that was depressingly familiar to me. I grew up in the same religion as Tara, though her family believed in it much more literally than mine did. Relatedly, her childhood was more violent than mine was; my version of the story is mostly…
Category: Female Authors
Moranifesto, by Caitlin Moran
Five stars, read in April 2018. It is possible that, as an American under the age of 40, I have been so deprived of sensible and ethical political discussion that what seems like earth-shattering brilliance to me is just common sense to the rest of you. But as I read this book, Caitlin Moran officially…
Wrapping Up Summer Reading (Mini Reviews)
The Door, by Magda Szabó Three and a half stars, read in August 2018. The story of a strange, dysfunctional relationship between two strange women who are both uniquely intimate with and completely closed off to each other. I found it difficult at times, how deeply (and pretty frequently) they hurt each other, but the exploration…
Nine Rabbits, by Virginia Zaharieva
Four stars, read in August/September 2018. Practically incomprehensible at times, but at others, perfectly describes situations and emotions I’ve never seen articulated elsewhere. My perception of the protagonist kept changing in surprising ways, and I ended up making a lot of unexpected connections with her. I dream that I’m traveling to a seminar in Varna…
A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism, by Slavenka Drakulić
Three and a half stars, read in August 2018. Though I don’t know what the author’s intent was for her readers, I wish I’d had more background knowledge of how communism and socialism were implemented throughout Central Europe before reading this book. The format—eight fables, each told by an animal from a different country—makes for…
Accident: A Day’s News, by Christa Wolf
Four stars, read in July 2018. Second stop on my literary backpacking trip through Europe: East Germany in the 1980s, the day after the Chernobyl accident. I’ve been wanting to read Christa Wolf for a while now, more especially Cassandra and Medea, but—once again—my choice was made for me by the limited collection of my local libraries. (For…
The Storm, by Margriet de Moor
Four stars, read in July 2018. I picked up this book for my first stop on the Reader’s Room Backpacking Across Europe Summer Reading Challenge, as I flew into the Amsterdam airport. I don’t tend to read disaster stories, so I probably wouldn’t have chosen this book if Utah public libraries had a better selection…
Harmless Like You, by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
Four stars, read in May 2018. Good book, well-written, poignant, frustrating, a little heartbreaking, with a pretty satisfying conclusion. Emily Woo Zeller is an excellent narrator, but I didn’t care for P.J. Ochlan, who does irritating pseudo-falsetto for female characters’ voices. (Given that I already didn’t like Jay, the character he was narrating, I think…
Home, by Nnedi Okorafor
Three stars, read in June 2018. Good, but not as compelling as the first book was. I’d been thinking I might not read the third, but it turns out that this trilogy is more like one book split into three; since there was no conclusion here, I may end up finishing after all. Maybe. The world…
Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns, and One Intact Glass Ceiling, by Amy Chozick
Two stars, read in June 2018. Very mixed feelings. I’m giving it two stars for the interest factor, but writing this review made me angry enough at the book that I almost want to go down to one. Interesting though this inherently was, it became more and more frustrating as the book went on, and…
The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women, by Elisabeth Badinter
Three stars, read in September 2014. Now that I see how long ago I read this, I wonder if I might feel differently were I to read it again. I had left my church by then, but I don’t think I’d reached my current level of radicality—or realized that I actually don’t want to have…
Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee
Two and a half stars, read in March 2018. I found this book very stressful. Given how long and sprawling it is, following so many characters throughout four generations, it often seemed strange how long we lingered on specific, not particularly meaningful conversations before jumping through time and space to continue the story. It just…
Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear . . . and Why, by Sady Doyle
Five stars, read in January 2018. This book was like an electric jolt to me. I was genuinely frustrated every minute that I couldn’t be listening to it on Overdrive, and I wish it could’ve been twice as long. I don’t follow much pop culture, so although I’d heard of most of these stories in…
Boy, Snow, Bird, by Helen Oyeyemi
Five stars, read in February 2018. Nobody ever warned me about mirrors, so for many years I was fond of them, and believed them to be trustworthy. Despite one of the best first lines I’ve ever read, I’m certain I wouldn’t have finished this if I hadn’t read, and been so impressed by, What is Not…
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Americanah, read April 30 – May 1, 2014 I go back and forth between 4 and 5 stars, I think because the ending didn’t have as much of an impact as I was expecting. But then I remember how I basically devoured this book, loving every minute that I was reading, feeling completely absorbed and…
The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath
Four stars, read in January 2018. For most of the book I was going to give it five stars, but it seems to divide itself into two sections (before her suicide attempt and after), and I felt much more strongly about the first section. I loved it, I related closely to upsetting amounts of it, I…
New Volumes of My Favorite Comics
Saga, Vol. 8, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. Four stars. Excellent as always, less robot penis than usual, so plenty of good news. For the bad news, in chapter 47: oh my god, Brian K. Vaughan, no, absolutely fucking not. That is too far. Such excruciatingly graphic sexual violence against women is fetishistic, and…
The Glorious Heresies, by Lisa McInerney
Four stars, read in February 2018. I was drawn into this hard, once it got going. The audio narration is excellent, but gives no indications of the physical format—sections that are printed in italics, occasional illuminating “chapter” titles (they’re not really chapters but what do I call them?)—so the book wasn’t really working until I…
Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, by Nina Sankovitch
Two or three stars, read and reviewed in July 2014. This was not as exciting as I expected it to be, I think because I had a hard time connecting with the author. It may be obnoxious of me—and this wasn’t the only reason I didn’t connect with her—but I get impatient with women who…
The Origin of Others, by Toni Morrison
Four stars, read in December 2017. When I think back on this book, the anecdote I remember is the one Morrison shares about coming across a woman near the fence on her property. The scene of their meeting is peaceful and friendly (because fences are “where the most interesting things always happen”), and Morrison’s thoughts…
We Need—I Needed—N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy Right Now
Five stars each and for the series as a whole; read mostly in December 2017. I read this series for the past two weeks of 2017, and it is so annoyingly perfect that The Stone Sky was the first book I finished in 2018. My stony, cynical heart doesn’t want to feel as hopeful as this…
My Holiday in North Korea: The Funniest/Worst Place on Earth, by Wendy Simmons
Four stars, read in January 2018. I almost didn’t take this home, irritated with it for seeming flippant about a subject that is not in any way amusing (particularly after I’d just finished accounts by Jang Jin-sung and Suki Kim that were emotional and difficult to read). I flipped through to see the photos, of which there are many,…
Aerial Geology: A High-Altitude Tour of North America’s Spectacular Volcanoes, Canyons, Glaciers, Lakes, Craters, and Peaks, by Mary Caperton Morton
Five stars, read in December 2017. I took this book home intending to flip through its beautiful large pages, look at the photos, and return it in a day or two. I’ve ended up keeping it three weeks, reading a few pages a day, because there is so much interesting information presented in easily-navigable layers…
Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, by Cathy O’Neil
Five stars, read in December 2017. I’ve read a lot of nonfiction this year that I consider to be important, even essential to the goal of social justice. There was Bertrand Russell, Christopher Hitchens, Susan Jacoby, and Sam Harris on the damaging nature of religion and anti-intellectualism; Angela Davis, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison,…
Amazing Peace, by Maya Angelou
One star, read in December 2013. Of course this was gorgeous, and in general, I love Maya Angelou’s . . . everything. But I didn’t love this book’s illustrations, and frankly, if the poem weren’t written by Maya Angelou I would give it negative stars. Because as nice an idea as this “amazing peace” is,…
The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For, by Alison Bechdel
Five stars, read in July 2014. For the first 50 pages it seemed like I wasn’t making any progress—it’s one of those books that looks longer than it is, so you feel like it will never end. Once I got to the last hundred or so pages, I was hoping it never would. It’s funny, really, because several of…
The Bedlam Stacks, by Natasha Pulley
Five stars, read in September 2017. I’ve never read anyone who writes male characters the way Natasha Pulley does, and it’s irresistible to me. This book took longer to get going, but it’s also more polished than her first book; by the end, I’d fallen in love with Merrick and Raphael nearly as hard as…
The Bonesetter’s Daughter, by Amy Tan
Five stars, read in October/November 2017. It’s been several years since I last read Amy Tan and I was starting to wonder whether her books were a phase I’d grown out of. They are not. I deeply loved everything about this book, including (especially) the fact that in the audiobook, LuLing’s sections are beautifully narrated…
Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Four stars, read in November 2017. Excellent as always for Adichie, and pretty comprehensive. In her advice to her friend she covers the obvious things—never link your daughter’s appearance with morality, don’t teach her to aspire to marriage, don’t give her father a parade for doing his share of the parenting, give her a sense…
The Soul of an Octopus, by Sy Montgomery
Three and a half stars, read in November 2017. There is so much interesting information in this book, but it’s a very personal memoir, too; it’s almost more about the author than it is about octopuses. (First piece of interesting information: octopi is not the correct plural form! Because the word octopus comes from Greek, and you can’t put…
Meanwhile the World Goes On 