February Books of the Month

March 20, 2020 by Christina

February feels like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it? I know it was a busy month for me because my calendar is packed with book club meetings, dinner plans with friends, and an introduction to quilting class on Sundays. Yet, from the vantage point of mid-March, it feels unimaginably footloose and fancy free. What did I do when I could go and do whatever I wanted? Well, what I did was read an astonishing 17 books during this month thanks in […]

Categories: 2020 Reads, Amish, Animals, Audiobook, Awards and Prizes, Book Club, Canada, Caribbean, Classics, Classics Club, Crime, Europe, Feminism, Fiction, Food, Indigenious Peoples, Juvenile, LGBTQA+, Mountain West, Nonfiction, North America, Persephone Books, ReadDiverse, Religion, Travel, United Kingdom, United States, Women's Prize • Tags: A. J. Finn, Adam Darlin, Audre Lorde, Becky Ohlsen, Brendan Sainsbury, Catherine Bodry, Chris Chalk, Christopher Ketcham, Coco Morante, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Edwidge Danticat, Jesmyn Ward, Jia Tolentino, John Lee, Jon Krakauer, Kamila Shamsie, Kevin Harrison Jr, L. M. Montgomery, Linda Castillo, Marghanita Laski, Richard Thomas, Rutina Wesley, Shelly Frasier, Steven Higashide, Susan O'Malley, Sy Montgomery

The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett

December 20, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Project Gutenberg, 2012. Originally published 1906. 522 pgs. Free download. The book’s title refers to ships shuttling back and forth over the Atlantic, carrying wealthy Americans heiresses to England in search of titled husbands and impoverish, titled Englishmen in search of wealthy women. (Think Cora Crawley from “Downton Abbey” and her marriage to Lord Grantham.) According to Persephone Books, it would later be estimated that more than five hundred American women married titled foreigners and some […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Chunkster, Classics, Classics Club, Europe, Feminism, Fiction, New York, North America, Persephone Books, United States • Tags: Frances Hodgson Burnett

She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey

November 15, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Penguin Press, 2019. 310 pgs. Library copy. Subtitled “Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement”, Kantor and Twohey’s book recounts the events leading up to their October 5, 2017 publication of a piece in the New York Times outlining how Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein sexual harassed and abused women in his employment for decades. The two show how nondisclosure agreements silenced the women who did come forward, preventing them from sharing their stories or […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Book Club, Feminism, New York, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey

The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood

October 25, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Europa Editions, 2016. Originally published 2015. 208 pgs. Purchased. Yolanda and Verla awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves in an unfamiliar room wearing “stupid Amish clothes” and under guard by two men in boiler suits. Neither woman knows how or why she ended up here; neither woman feels like they can really trust the other enough to ask. Perhaps, after all, they are on a demented version of ‘Survivor’ or ‘Big Brother’ where they […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Dystopia, Feminism, Fiction, Oceania, Stella Prize • Tags: Charlotte Wood

Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center

October 7, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. St. Martin’s Press, 2019. 320 pgs. Purchased. As a firefighter in Austin, Texas, Cassie Hanwell is accustomed to running into emergencies when others are running away. As one of the few female firefighters, Cassie is accustomed to people questioning her fitness for service during those tense moments. But there are two situations Cassie has always run away from: her estranged mother’s desire to spend time with her after leaving Cassie and her father for another man on […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Feminism, Fiction, New England, North America, United States • Tags: Katherine Center

The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

August 19, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Persephone Books, 2011. Originally published 1924. 288 pgs. Purchased.  Evangeline Knapp threw herself into motherhood, obsessively monitoring the food her three children eat and keeping every spec of dirt out of the family’s home. Her eldest son, Henry, is unable to eat foods cooked by his aunt because they don’t match the delicate balance his mother has made to aid his delicate constitution. Her youngest son, Stephen, screams, hid, and is generally considered an unruly child. When […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Feminism, Fiction, North America, Persephone Books, United States • Tags: Dorothy Canfield Fisher

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