Books I've read recently:
The Red Tent
The Bonesetter's Daughter
Janet Frame's autobiography

Books I have waiting to be read:
The Nanny Diaries
A Moveable Feast
When We Were the Mulvaneys
The Hours
Backlash
Susan Brownmiller's book on rape
Death Comes for the Archbishop
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You

(From Limpet.)

1. John Cameron Mitchell in Hedwig
2. John Turturro as Barton Fink
3. Alison Janney as C.J. in The West Wing
4. Lucy Liu's character in Kill Bill, Vol. 1
5. Any of the characters Tony Bordain bases on himself (that gets me around the "is Tony Bordain a fictional character?" problem)
6. Johnny Depp as Edward Scissorhands (very, very carefully!)
7. Angelina Jolie as Laura Croft.
8. Angelina Jolie as Gigi.
9. Angelina Jolie as Lisa in Girl, Interrupted.
10. Mercutio.

It has come to my attention that my blogging lately sucks. It sucks a lot. I only post memes or short, stupid rambles about my personal mental state. I can't remember the last time I wrote something interesting.

Truth be told, I am suffering from blog impotence, triggered by my inadequacy complex. Over there on the left you will see a list of blogs that are nearly all better than mine. Some of them are miles and miles better than mine. The more I read them, the more I wonder why anyone would bother to read this, the less interesting stuff I can think of to write.

So yeah. That's the big reason for my prolonged (well, prolonged for me, anyway) silence.

In an effort to update--I read Joseph Stiglitz's Globalization and its Discontents this weekend. It's worth reading. Yesterday, when I was home feverish and throwing up, I watched The Life of David Gale. It is worth watching, and it gave me an inexplicable crush on Kevin Spacey. One of my senior year prospies at Reed had a producer daddy and was a family friend of Spacey's, or so she claimed (and I vaguely remember checking out her story and having it stack up--her dad worked on Swimming with Sharks, I think). Anyway, she told me Kevin Spacey is definitely gay. Makes me sad that he's not out. But he was hot in David Gale anyway, in a philosophy professor kind of way.

What else...? Saw Kill Bill Vol. 2 over the weekend. Actually, S. and T. and I went with some of their friends, to a double-feature of the first and second volumes. It was a good time. I love the Alamo Drafthouse.

Do you ever think that maybe I put in lots of links in a effort to hide my lack of content? I do.

by Gini Sikes
Doubleday, December 1, 1996

Last night, I finished reading Gini Sikes' 8 Ball Chicks. The book is a study of female gang members in Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, circa the mid-late 1990s. Sikes did a year of research, traveling around and talking to the girls themselves, their families, police, social workers, etc. Her level of involvement is amazing. She obviously cares about her "subjects" and her willingness to go into depth with them, and to examine herself as much as she is examining them, is truly inspirational. I will definitely look for other work she's done (I think she's a journalist and this is her only book, but I'm not certain).

As anyone who has been anywhere near me recently is undoubtably sick of hearing, I just read this really great book. It's called Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls. Basically, a writer took the time to talk to a bunch of groups of elementary-to-high school aged girls about how and why they are mean to each other. Teaching girls not to be aggressive, the author postulates (and I think she's right), backfires into girls putting their aggressions into all of this underhanded, backbiting meanness. Rather than just getting in an argument or a even a fight and getting it over with, girls spread rumors, exclude, keep secrets, use particular kinds of body language, "kill with kindness," etc. And it causes psychological damage that haunts us for the rest of our lives, sometimes sutble ways, sometimes in clear-cut ones, like abusive romantic relationships, self injury, and eating disorders.

So I'm reading Janet Luhrs' The Simple Living Guide. Well, not so much reading it as being consumed by it, actually. I have hardly put it down all day. With every passing chapter I am more and more sure that my life needs major changes, and that parts of what Ms. Luhrs writes about should be speaking to me very directly.

So, I'm probably about to embark on a whole bunch of navel-gazing entries. Don't say I didn't warn you.

So last night I'm on the Stair Stepper, listening to an audiobook I just downloaded. It's Confessions Of A Reformed Dieter: How I Dropped Eight Dress Sizes and Took My Life Back (perfect for the Stair Stepper, don't you think?). So I am listening and huffing and puffing along, and then she says it. Something that has been in the back of my mind since Tracey Gold was on the cover of People in 1992. Something that other people have thought and said as well, but never so clearly, at least not within my hearing.

Sad story articles about anorexic celebrities are not meant to be warnings, or just tear-jerkers. They are instruction manuals. The pictures they print of the "deathly skinny" celebrity aren't for shock value, they are something to aspire to.

I've stolen this from an entry a few days back on Bitch, Ph.D..

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

We actually had a long midnight discussion about this once when I was in college. I can't remember what I said then, but now I think I'd go with People's History of the United States. Not fiction, I know, and quite a lot to memorize, but it's the first thing that came to mind. The Beauty Myth would be another contender.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Hasn't everyone? The first one I remember having was on Sodapop Curtis from The Outsiders. Honestly, though, even before that, it was probably Harriet the Spy. Most recently I crushed on both of the main characters from The Time Traveller's Wife.

The last book you bought is:
Hrm...I'm not sure. The last book I remember buying was Temptress: From Original Bad Girls to Women on Top.

The last book you read:
Consumed: Why Americans Love, Hate, and Fear Food

What are you currently reading?
When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies: Freeing Yourself from Food and Weight Obsession. Sensing a pattern?

Five books you would take to a deserted island:
The Clown of God
Hayden Herrera's biography of Frida Kahlo (this is obviously the only way I would ever get through it)
Anything by Andrea Dworkin (see above)
Some complete works of the Bronte sisters collection
A really great art book

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons)? And Why?
Honestly, I probably won't pass it on, but I'd like it if Frog, Melinda, and Emilin to do it. I'd also be curious to see what G. has to say.

As I have spoken to some of you about and written about elsewhere (and even written about here, but written about so badly I had to delete it), I am lately finding myself in a bit of an existential crisis. Being 25, I am told it's called a"quarterlife crisis." I think there is some credence to that. Anyway, one of the big hallmarks of this crisis is my continued discouragement with having a job that is not a career path, and having no fricking clue what career path I should be on, if I should be on one at all.

So, being me, I picked up a book. The book is called I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was: How to Discover What You Really Want and How to Get It, and it is by Barbara Sher. I have no idea if it's a good book or not--I picked it up for $1.99 at the Goodwill-but anything is worth a try.

I'll come right out and admit it: I'm a fan of Oprah's book club. Not only do I think it's a good idea in theory, and not only do I think it has been a help to a number of virtually unknown female authors, but I have also really liked quite a few of the books I've read (yeah, most weren't great literature, but a couple were, and most weren't crap). Anyway. A few weeks ago, I heard quite a bit of hoopla about Oprah's Summer of Faulkner. The upshot of her plan, if you don't feel like bothering with the link, is that she has picked three William Faulkner books for the club's summer month selections: As I Lay Dying for June, The Sound and the Fury for July, and Light in August for August. At first, my reaction was simply continued dismay that she is now highlighting dead white male authors who are already famous, rather than current female authors, as she was doing in the first few years. Then I considered that my exposure to Faulkner has been limited to three books, two of which were for school (Absalom, Absalom and As I Lay Dying) and one of which I tried to read on my own and got frustrated with and didn't finish (The Sound and the Fury). This fact, in combination with the fact that I have a Faulkner-obsessed Masters-in-Literature office mate, as well as my general brain atrophy, led me to decide that I was going to enroll in Oprah's Summer of Faulkner.

I am a Harry Potter-phile. Certainly not to the extent of some people (today has been my first troll around the fansites, for instance), but I'm a fan. I pre-ordered the book, I read it in two nights, etc. I've only read each book in the series once (though I have seen the first and third movies twice each, but that's more circumstance than anything else), but I have a pretty good idea of the general mythology. I think these books are Lord of the Rings for our generation, and they thrill me.

Which is why, now that I've gulped down book six, the second-to-last book, by most accounts, I am suffering from some post-Potter depression. I want more! I don't want to wait two years for it! I don't want just one more book! Wah!

Thinking about this last night, and about how lame it is that my joy at having just read book six and how good it was is overshadowed by what basically comes down to greed. Wanting more. I didn't take time to savor what I had, but rushed through it to get to the end, and now I'm sad to be done. It's one of those things I was supposed to learn better about when I was 5, you know?

And that got me thinking about Chance, and about how grief is, at least in part, about wanting more. It's about focusing on not having more time, rather than focusing on the time you had.

Twisty has a brilliant review of Margaret Cho's new book-and-DVD combo on her site, and that is what got me thinking about writing this, though it has been in my head for some time. While I haven't read the book, I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight, I did see a live performance of Cho's Assasin tour (which is what the DVD is), so I am pretty familiar with what Twisty's talking about. And my reaction was very much like her's.

I am finally seeing the light at the end of the semester tunnel, and I am getting all excited about reading for pleaure again. And reading real books, not the light stuff I've been reading in between school books. So I need recommendations! Specifically, I am interested in:

1. Really good biographies. Doesn't matter who the subject is, I love a good biography.
2. Face-paced non-U.S. history books. In specific, I'd like to read something comprehensive about the Russian Revolution. French and Chinese Revolutions would be interesting as well.
3. Really spectacular fiction. I'm not much for fiction in general these days, so it has to be really excellent fiction for me to be willing to devote much time to it.

by Koren Zailckas
Viking Adult, February 7, 2005
368 pages

This is another one I didn't read, but listened to. And there was a big gap in my listening, as I didn't make it to the gym for the whole month of December, for various and sundry reasons.

During the time when I wasn't listening to it, though, I was still thinking about it. And when I put my iPod headphones back on during my flight to Oregon for Christmas, it took only a minute for me to be right back in Zailckas' story.

by Carol Shields
Penguin (Non-Classics), April 1, 1995

This book won a Pulitizer Prize in 1995, and it was an honor well deserved. I'd never even heard of it, I just picked up up at the Goodwill because the description on the back cover intrigued me, but once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down.

The story is a fictionalized autobiography of one Daisy Goodwill Flett. Born around the turn of the 20th century and living until the 1980s, Shield's Flett reflects simultaneously on her own tragic life and the life of a North American century. The mix and overlap between these two subjects is fascinating, and Shields' writing is first rate, making this a pleasure to read.

by Billie Letts
Warner Books, July 1, 2005

Billie Letts' newest book, Shoot the Moon, is a lot better than her first, the saccharine Where the Heart Is. Though the characters Letts follows through Shoot the Moon are from similar geographic and socioeconomic situations as those in Where the Heart Is, they are much better fleshed out and much easier to identify with, even if the plotline is similarly unusual. Whereas I spent most of Where the Heart Is irritated with the characters' and plotline's sillyness, I was cautiously enamored with both in Shoot the Moon.

The basic premise of the novel is the return of a man, Nicky Jack Harjo, to the small Oklahoma town of his birth. The twist is that Harjo has no idea he was born there, and knows nothing about the circumstances of his disappearance from the town at the age of 10 months. What unfolds is the reopening of the nearly 30 year-old murder case of Harjo's mother. While unravelling the mystery, Harjo befriends several townspeople, including some of his long-lost family.

This is not great literature. It's a sweet and strange story, kept exciting by the element of mystery. It's a good airplane read, which is where I read it. Go into it with those expectations, and you shouldn't be disappointed.

by James Frey
Anchor, September 22, 2005

I really wish I'd gotten my shit together to review this before all of the news about how much of it might be fiction started swirling around. But since I didn't, I feel some responsibility to talk about that, as well as about the book itself. Oh well.

The drama, in case you live under a rock, is that the truth of a number of the claims Frey makes in this book, a memoir, is being contested. You can take a look at this article if you'd like more information. My thoughts are that Frey probably did exaggerate or simply make up some of the things he writes in A Million Little Pieces. Mostly, though, I don't care.

by Ernest Hemingway
Scribner; Reprint edition, June 1, 1995
336 pages

For those who, like me, are new to the audiobook world, I have a tip to share: skip the classics. If you are going to read classic literature, pick it up and read it. Listening to it is no good.

At least that was the case with me and Farewell to Arms. I like Ernest Hemingway a lot, perhaps more as a character than as a writer, but as a writer as well. I've read most of his other work, and am a particular fan of The Sun Also Rises. So I was happy when, upon finding myself with several hours alone in a car over my Christmas break, I thought of taking along the old CDs of Farewell to Arms I've been hanging on to since we made the Portland-Austin trip.

by Suze Orman
Random House, Inc., December 2000

While I was feeling sick and depressed last week, I decided thinking about finances probably wouldn't make things any worse, so I picked up this book. Suze Orman has been recommended to me before, though I think the book I was actually supposed to read was The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous, and Broke. However, that one was not available at the Goodwill for $1.99, and this one was, so this is the one I picked up.

And, freakish pictures of the author aside, I'm not sorry I picked it up. As far as financial books go, this is about the best one I've read. The first 3/4 of it are basic financial advice: investing, wills and trusts, credit cards, etc. A lot of it was review, some of it was new, and all of it is useful. It gave me a much needed butt kicking as far as putting steps in place to work towards my 2006 financial goals, and it wasn't nearly so preachy and holier-than-thou as it could have been. I felt like the audience Orman was speaking to was a bit older and a bit wealthier than I am, but it was still helpful.

by Chris Willman
New Press, November 17, 2005

This book is a fascinating look at the political makeup of the stars and establishment of country music. Working both forward and backward from the Dixie Chicks' scandal, Willman interviews a whole host of musicians, songwriters, and other country music types to get their takes on where the country music establishment falls on the political spectrum.

Unsurprisingly, most everyone agrees that the majority of mainstream country acts are conservative, while the majority of alt-country/Americana acts are liberal. What's interesting, though, are the nuances to these positions that the interviewees themselves articulate, as well as the ways they have found to put their political differences aside and work and play together, as shown in the cover photo of the very liberal Willie Nelson and the conservative (and, IMO, war-mongering and obnoxious) Toby Keith.

My friend T. recently asked me for a list of my favorite feminist books, to use for a book review website project he's putting together. Unable to contain myself with the joy of this task, I put together a fairly comprehensive list (though I edited it down quite a bit). It was so much fun, I thought I'd share it here. Disagree with my picks? Think I left something essential out? Comment--I'd love to hear what you think!

Foundations

1. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft (W.W. Norton and Company, 1987)
2. The Second Sex by Simone DeBeauvoir (Everyman's Library, 1993)
3. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (W.W. Norton and Company, 1963)

It's tempting to me to skip these books altogether, because I don't like any of them, but I think they are necessary as foundation if you really want to get into this stuff.

Histories

4. The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America by Ruth Rosen (Penguin, 2001)
5. Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement & the New Left by Sara Evans (Vintage, 1980)
6. Tidal Wave: How Women Changed at Century's End by Sara Evans (Free Press, 2003)
7. No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women by Estelle Freidman (Ballantine Books, 2003).

If you only read one book about feminism, the Ruth Rosen book gets my vote. It's very comprehensive, yet easy to read, and it has an amazing bibliography, sorted by subject. It's a great place to start. Personal Politics is also important, as it situates 2nd wave feminism in the other social movements of the time, which is something people are likely to miss. I haven't read Tidal Wave, but given what a good historian Sara Evans is, I can't imagine it's anything but good. Freedman is also a top-notch historian, and her book is excellent. It does a better job than the others with feminism before the 1960s.

2nd Wave
8. Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement edited by Robin Morgan (Random House, 1970)
9. Dear Sisters: Dispatches from the Women's Liberation Movement edited by Rosalyn Baxandall and Linda Gordon (Basic Books, 2001)
10. Sexual Politics by Kate Millett (Doubleday, 1970)
11. The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution by Shulamith Firestone (Vintage, 1971)
12. The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (McGraw Hill, 1971).

Of the first two, which are both document/essay collections, I'd say Sisterhood is Powerful is probably the better book, but Dear Sisters is a lot easier on the eyes and more reader-friendly. Both are definitely worth reading. The other three are all books written by activist women during the late 60s and early 70s. Kate Millett's has to do with sexism in literature, while Greer's and Firestone's are more broad-reaching.

3rd Wave

13. To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism by Rebecca Edby Walker (Anchor, 1995)
14. Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000)
15. Listen Up! Voices from the Next Feminist Generation edited by Barbara Findlen (Seal Press, 1995)
16. Cunt: A Declaration of Independence by Inga Muscio (Seal Press, 2002)

I'm not a huge fan of most of the 3rd wave writing, but I think Manifesta gives a nice overview, and I am a big fan of nearly everything Rebecca Walker has written. Listen Up! is also a primer of sorts--short, easy-read essays. There is actually a newer version of it as well, Listen Up 2 Edition, which was published in 2001, but I haven't read it. Cunt is a must-read.

Radical Feminism

17. Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism by Mary Daly (Beacon Press, 1990)
18. Pornography: Men Possessing Women by Andrea Dworkin (E.P. Dutton, 1989)
19. Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law by Catharine A. MacKinnon (Harvard University Press, 1988)

This is a category I am not all that well-versed in, but I've read Pornography, and got quite a lot out of it, and the other two books seem to be standards.

Women of Color

20. Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics by bell hooks (South End Press, 2000)
21. Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks (South End Press, 1981)
22. Women, Race, and Class by Angela Y. Davis (Vintage, 1983)
23. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lord (Crossing Press, 1984)
24. Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism edited by Daisy Hernandez and Bushra Rehman (Seal Press, 2002)

I am ashamed to say that I don't know nearly as much as I should about this category. However, I can vouch for both the Davis book and Feminism is for Everybody, and I have heard nothing but good things about Ain't I a Woman. Sister Outsider is mostly short stuff, and I have read most of it and loved all I've read. Colonize This! is anther one I haven't read, but since the rest of these are older writings/writings by older women, I think it's good to include a younger perspective as well.

Sexual Minority Feminism

25. Tales of the Lavender Menace: A Memoir of Liberation by Karla Jay (Basic Books, 1999)
26. Stone Butch Blues: A Novel by Leslie Feinberg (Firebrand Books, 1993)
27. Female Masculinity by Judith Halberstam (Duke University Press, 1998)
28. Amazon to Zami: Towards a Global Lesbian Feminism edited by Monika Reinfelder (Continuum International Publishing Group, 1996)

Again I haven't read all of these, but have heard good things about all of them. I can personally vouch for Tales of the Lavender Menace and Stone Butch Blues, and neither should be missed, in my opinion.

Beauty/Body Image

29. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women by Naomi Wolf (Anchor, 1992)
30. Body Outlaws: Rewriting the Rules of Beauty and Body Image edited by Ophira Edut (Seal Press, 2003) (Formerly Adios, Barbie! Young Women Write About Body Image and Identity, Seal Press, 1998)
31. Girl Culture by Lauren Greenfield and Joan Jacobs Brumberg (Chronicle Books, 2002)

The Beauty Myth is an all-time favorite of mine, and I think it holds up well over time. Body Outlaws is more fun to read, however, and is also quite good. Girl Culture is a photo essay book, and it's amazing.

Memoirs/Autobiographies

32. In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution by Susan Brownmiller (Delta, 2000)
33. Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant by Andrea Dworkin (Basic Books, 2002)
34. Saturday's Child: A Memoir by Robin Morgan (W.W. Norton and Company, 2000)
35. Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions by Gloria Steinem (New American Library, 1992)

For my money, memoirs are the best way to get into reading feminist writers, especially someone like Andrea Dworkin. The Brownmiller and Morgan memoirs are both excellent, and Steinem's is a bit too wishy-washy for my taste, but you can't argue with her selling power or her staying power.

Misc

36. Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape by Susan Brownmiller (Ballantine Books, 1993)
37. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi (Crown, 1991)
38. Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood by Naomi Wolf (Random House, 1997)
39. Femininity by Susan Brownmiller (Ballantine Books, 1985)

These are about a variety of topics, obviously, but they are books I think are important and beneficial that don't fit in elsewhere.

by Cecilia Konchar Farr
State University of New York Press, November 4, 2004

This is an interesting little book. Even though it's written by a full professor (at St. Catherine's College in St. Paul, Minnesota), it seems almost like a dissertation. A really good dissertation, but a dissertation. I think the short length is part of the reason, but part of it is also Farr's willingness to take up a topic that, as she admits, more "serious" scholars have avoided.

And, she thinks (and so do I), avoided to their detriment. Oprah's Book Club has been an amazing force, and one worth studying. Farr does a great job of it, too, associating the Book Club not only within contemporary American consumer and talk show culture, but within the history of the novel and the book group as well. She's obviously done her homework, making insightful comments both on the books that have been chosen and on the shows that were dedicated to them, and I agree with 99% of the insights she provides.

(Cross-posted at Avast! Feminist Conspiracy!)

by Liza Featherstone
Basic Books, November 30, 2004

This excellent, interview-based book follows the case of Dukes v. Wal-Mart, the gigantic class-action suit brought against Wal-Mart by its female employees. Journalist Featherstone talks to what have to be a hundred current and former Wal-Mart employees, managers, lawyers, etc. in her effort to get the whole story, and the story isn't pretty. The picture painted is one of institutional discrimination against women on a scale of over a million. The discrimination permeates all levels at Wal-Mart, with women making less than men for the same jobs, being sexually harassed, and all of the usual crimes. The thing that makes Wal-Mart different, though (or at least this is the case the prosecution will be making) is that the policy of discrimination is not limited to a given man, or a given store, but to the entire, huge company. As women fight their ways up the management ranks at Wal-Mart, things get worse rather than better, and eventually nearly all women top out. For all of its rhetoric about being woman-friendly and family-friendly, Wal-Mart does worse by women than any other company its size.

These are the first three books we've read in my U.S. Policy History course this semester, and once I get this review up, I'll be all caught up!

by Julian E. Zelizer
Cambridge University Press, March 22, 2004

Don't read this book. It's boring. I'm interested in policy history and how Congress works, and I was bored out of my mind. It's also a lousy primer, because it skips around in time and doesn't spell things out clearly. It's a book all about Congressional reform written for people who already know all about Congressional reform. With that audience of around 13, Zelizer ought to be rolling in dough.

by Pam Houston
W.W. Norton and Company, January 1992

I'll admit it, I picked this up based on the title. I mean, what a great title, right? Unlike most books chosen based on title, though, this one paid off. It's a great book of short stories, mostly centered around women's relationships with men who are unsuitable for one reason or another, generally due to being one kind or another of "cowboy."

Which I realize doesn't make it sound very good. In fact, it makes it sound pretty fucking trite. But it's mostly not.

To your left, you see a sign I spotted in a bookstore the first night I was in Minneapolis. It caught my eye, and I have since been thinking about chick lit.

From what I can tell, chick lit covers any book by a woman or about a woman. And it is-surprise!-a derogatory term for these works. They aren't real literature. They're literature lite. Literature for girls. Diet literature. Chick lit.

edited by Megan McMorris
Seal Press, March 28, 2006

This is a book of short pieces from a variety of female writers (mostly journalists), all about dogs. I've been slowly reading it for several weeks now, and just finished it the other night.

A few of the women featured in the book are ones I've read before, most notably Pam Houston and (the late) Caroline Knapp, both of whom have other work I much admire. The dogs featured are a motley bunch, from Pam Houston's herd of Irish Wolfhounds (how I envy that!) to a couple of dauschunds. They are personal pets, dogs of friends and family, or neighborhood menances. Some of them are already gone, but most are still alive. And the essays in the book explore several angles of the human-dog relationship. Or, I guess, more specifically, the woman-dog relationship. There are good dogs and bad dogs, and relationships that are more and less fulfilling. Which is exactly why I liked the book as a whole--it portrays the relationships between women and their dogs as something more than a simple idea of unconditional love or, worse yet, surrogate children. It portrays these relationships as complex, organic entities. Which is what, in my experience, they are. As books about dogs go, I'd rank this one up there with Knapp's full length work, Pack of Two. And that's saying something.

by Marion Meade
Nan A. Talese, May 18, 2004

As hard as it was to pull myself away from the television this weekend (six soccer matches! eight episodes of Gilmore Girls!), I did also read a book. A non-fiction book, even. This book, Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin, which is a mixed autobiography of four American women writers from the 1920s, Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Edna Ferber, and Zelda Fitzgerald.

You'd think that with subject matter like that, you couldn't lose. Unfortunately, you'd be wrong. This book is just not very good. It portrays all four women, to greater or lesser degrees, as pampered, marginally talented, mentally ill, alcoholics. Which, in some cases, is likely true, but it's not very interesting, particularly when all four of the female protagonists, who were, to my knowledge, quite different, are treated interchangeably.

I started the book knowing very little about any of the women it portrayed, and I think I ended it knowing not much more. The accounts given in the book seemed very surface level, artificial, and doubtfully well-researched. And more lines and thought seemed to be given to the male characters who should have been out the outskirts (especially the fairly repulsive F. Scott Fitzgerald) than they were warranted. All in all, I found it disappointing. It did peak my interest in these women (particularly Edna Ferber, about whom I previously knew nothing) and this time period for American female writers, but it did nothing to hold it. Guess I'll have to look elsewhere.

I've been reading a lot of fiction over the past few weeks, which has been really nice. I started by picking up Toni Morrison's latest offering, Love (Knopf, October 28, 2003), which I really liked. I'm not generally a huge Morrison fan (I liked Paradise a lot, as well as The Bluest Eye but most of the books she wrote in between the two didn't do too much for me), but Love was a good read. Intense, the way all her books are, but not particularly confusing and not as irritatingly overt as some of her other work. I'd recommend it.

After I finished Love (in a couple of nights, it really is quick), I started Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace (Nan A. Talese, November 1, 1996). Atwood is another one I've never really been able to get into. Everybody loves The Handmaid's Tale, but I found it fairly irritating. And Alias Grace was even worse. Or at least started out that way. To be perfectly honest, I put it down about 50 pages in and haven't picked it back up.

I've recently been very into Pam Houston. It started when I picked up her first book of short stories, Cowboys Are My Weakness (remember, Amazon is for research, indie bookstores are for buying!), based solely on my love for its title. Not generally being a short story person, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the book. The stories are basically all about the same woman/type of woman--a early-mid 30's woman born and raised on the East coast by dysfunctional parents who expatriates to Colorado, gets into an artistic profession (usually photography or writing), does a lot of outdoor activities, especially boating/rafting, has unsuitable taste in men, and loves dogs. But they are not boring, each story illuminating a bit more of this woman/these women, and Houston's love for nature, the West, and especially dogs shines through.

by Sara Gruen
May 2006, Algonquin Books

Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants is a book after my own heart. It takes place in a travelling circus in the 1930s--what could be better than that? Told through the recollections of an elderly (either 90 or 93, he claims) man who is unwillingly cooped up in a nursing home, this tale of animals, intrigue, and true love on the circus circuit in the early 1930s kept me rapt for the entire 300+ pages, and wishing there were more when it ended.

Gruen's narrative is very colorful, with both the spectacle of the show itself and its cast of characters described so I could clearly see them in my head. This is unusual for me, as someone who usually sees nothing more than words when she reads, and it was very nice. It also really made me hope that somebody in Hollywood reads this novel, because it would make a great movie.

by Ronlyn Domingue
Atria, September 13, 2005

Razi, the narrator and protagonist of The Mercy of Thin Air, is dead. The story moves back and forth between memories of her life before she drowns in the late 1920s and her observations on the present, over seventy five years later, where she lives "between" life and death. In common parlance, Razi is a ghost--she has no physical form, but she can see, hear, and smell everything around her in the living world, as well as moving objects and herself telekinetically.

At the beginning of the novel, Razi takes up residence with a young couple, Scott and Amy, by following a bookcase she knows from her life move from an estate sale into their home. As Scott and Amy's story unfolds in the present, so do Razi's memories of what happened between her and her fiancé, Andrew, in the years before her death. Slowly, the connection between Razi's past and her "present" become clear both to her and to the reader.

by Katherine S. Newman
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and the Russell Sage Foundation, 1999

Katherine Newman's No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City is one of those books I've been meaning to read for quite some time. I first encountered excerpts from it about a year ago, while taking a class on Family Policy that focused heavily on urban poverty, but we didn't read the whole book for class, so it found its way to my personal reading list. A year later, I actually picked it up from the library and started reading it.

It's quite good. Newman is an anthropologist at Columbia, and she and her team of graduate students spent the better part of two years talking to hundreds of employees, managers, owners, and job seekers at several fast food restaurants (pseudonymed "Burger Barns" in the book) in Harlem. Newman's goal was to bring the perspective of the working poor into the poverty debate, which at the time of her research and writing (the second half of the 1990s), was heavily centered on welfare reform. She and her students work hard in the service of that goal, logging hundreds of hours of interviews and even, in some cases, taking jobs at "Burger Barn" themselves in order to get a better view of the culture and the employees.

by Barbara Ehrenreich
Metropolitan Books (September 6, 2005)

Much as I loved Ehrenreich's previous bit of class-conscious undercover work, Nickel and Dimed, and much as I admire her in general (we did go to the same school, after all), it took me a long time to get around to reading her newest work, Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream. A number of my acquaintances read it and didn't like it, their criticism ranging from a perceived lack of dedication to this project on Ehrenreich's part through criticism of her hubris in expecting to get a middle-class job with false or no credentials at all, but it wasn't really these criticisms that stopped me from picking it up. Really, what it came down to was that I didn't understand why Ehrenreich would bother with this project. I mean, given the work she did trying to understand what it was like to be part of America's working poor, why would she then revert back to (in my mind) wasting her time with the middle-class?