The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty

May 8, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Riverhead Books, 2013. Originally published 2012. 402 pgs. Purchased.  In the 1920s and 1930s, Louise Brooks became a famous silent film actress and dancer and was noted for her bob hairstyle, a unique take on the poplar flapper persona of the time. In Moriarty’s fictional account, Louise is a fifteen-year-old girl leaving Kansas for the first time to study with the prestigious Denishawn School of Dancing in New York. Louise’s parents insist she be accompanied by a […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Book Club, Feminism, Fiction, New York, North America, United States • Tags: Laura Moriarty

The Power by Naomi Alderman

April 26, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Little, Brown and Company, 2017. Originally published 2016. 387 pgs. Purchased. Teenage girls across the globe now hold a tremendous amount of power – electric currents flowing through their bodies can be harnessed to hurt, maim, and even kill. As these young women learn how to harness and transfer their powers, they topple male-dominated power structures around the globe, including the Saudi Arabian government, the United States military, and the religious authority of the Pope. The collapse […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Dystopia, Europe, Feminism, Fiction, Women's Prize • Tags: Naomi Alderman

Becoming by Michelle Obama

April 17, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – audiobook. Read by the author. Random House Audio, 2018. 19 hours, 1 minutes. Purchased.  In 2009, Michelle Obama became the first African-American First Lady of the United States after her husband, Barack Obama, was elected President. Prior to that, Michelle attended Princeton and Harvard Law and worked as both a partner-tracked lawyer for a prestigious firm in Chicago and as an administrator in the University of Chicago medical system. These impressive achievements were – and continue to be […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Audiobook, Book Club, Feminism, Nonfiction, North America, ReadDiverse, United States • Tags: Michelle Obama

Thoughts on Three Book of the Month Selections

April 3, 2019 by Christina

About four years ago, a number of the members of my book club in Boston joined Book of the Month, a subscription service that mails you a newly published book out of five options once a month. I passed on subscribing for two reasons: I was able to pick up a number of these titles as read (and unread) castoffs at book club meetings I figured a new book would arrive each month and promptly be added to my bookshelves […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Asia, Europe, Feminism, Fiction, New York, North America, ReadDiverse, United Kingdom, United States • Tags: Candice Carty-Williams, Etaf Rum, Yangsze Choo

A Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult

December 30, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Ballantine Books, 2018. 352 pgs. Library copy. A man enters the premise at a women’s health clinic in Jackson, Mississippi and opens fire killing both the clinic’s owner and a nurse and wounding a doctor and a woman accompanying a minor. When the hostage negotiator, Hugh McElroy, arrives on scene, he learns the injured woman is his sister and the minor is his teenage daughter. Assuming his daughter, Wren, has an appointment at the clinic for […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Feminism, Fiction, North America, United States • Tags: Jodi Picoult

Fidelity by Susan Glaspell

December 26, 2018 by Christina

Fiction – print. Persephone Books, 1999. Originally published 1913. 358 pgs. Purchased. In 1900, Ruth Holland made the decision to leave her hometown of Freeport to be with the man she was in love with. Her lover, Stuart Williams, was married, and the scandal of Ruth’s actions — because women always carry the blame — divided the small Iowa town and the Holland family. “That part of her life had been cut away from her. With most lives the past […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Feminism, Fiction, Mountain West, North America, Persephone Books, United States • Tags: Susan Glaspell

The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer

December 2, 2018 by Christina

Fiction – print. Riverhead Books, 2018. 454 pgs. Library Copy. College freshman Greer Kadestsky is set adrift. Disappointed with where she has ended up for college, Greer struggles to connect with her classmates and plans to structure her life around visits to her high school boyfriend, Cory, at Princeton. As time passes (but the pain of losing out on Yale fails to fade), Greer is dragged to parties and lectures by her dorm-mate, Zee. At a party, Greer has an […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Book Club, Chunkster, Feminism, Fiction, New England, New York, North America, United States • Tags: Meg Wolitzer

Under the Tripoli Sky by Kamal Ben Hameda

July 8, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Translated from the French by Adriana Hunter. Peirene Press, 2014. Originally published 2011. 128 pgs. Purchased.i In the 1960s, a young boy named Hadachinou moves between the public streets of Tripoli and the private spaces inhabited by his mother, her best friend, and other women of his acquaintance. His age and size means he isn’t viewed as a threat in Libya’s patriarchal society, allowing him to blend in and go unnoticed in female spaces. It also […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Africa, Feminism, Fiction, French, Peirene Press, ReadDiverse, Translated • Tags: Adriana Hunter, Kamal Ben Hameda

What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton

July 1, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — Kindle edition. Simon & Schuster, 2017. 512 pgs. Library copy. Hillary Clinton received three million more votes than her opponent — a man who was vulgar, violent, and unqualified to be President of the United States — in the 2016 Presidential Election. Yet he won the 70,000 or so votes in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois needed to win the Electoral College, and Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States. So what happened? At this point […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Chunkster, Feminism, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Hillary Rodham Clinton

All About Love by bell hooks

March 29, 2016 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. William Morrow, 1999. 240 pgs. Library copy. This collection of essays by bell hooks analyzes the many facets of love — self-love, romantic love, parental love, greedy love — and how the lack of love (or, too much of “bad” love) can spread from the public sphere to the private sphere. She defines love as “as the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth”. And hooks’ central thesis is that […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Book Club, Feminism, Nonfiction, ReadDiverse • Tags: bell hooks

My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem

January 22, 2016 by Christina

Nonfiction — Kindle edition. Random House, 2015. 304 pgs. Purchased. In this collection of anecdotes from the road, Steinem’s premise is that the only way to understand one’s fellow citizens and, therefore, enact change is to hit the road and engage in face-to-face conversations. Which makes the book a rather ironic choice for Emma Watson’s online, feminist book club, Our Shared Shelf. The book begins with Steinem sharing about her own childhood — the father who never settled and the […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Book Club, Feminism, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Gloria Steinem