I love this Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl (also YaBookNerd). This theme was books to be read for winter, which for me is roughly two of my own books from now ’til March and then the required reading for the Feminist Book Club I try to go to each month.
December, well, today (the 18th), happens to be the meeting where we choose our books for the next six months. We do one meeting/book per month, so six books, and I’ll list those first. Technically, with six books and winter ending in March, three of the FBC books will be outside of the Winter timeline.
I’ll also add four more books of my own choosing and they could be anything- maybe more feminism, maybe sci-fi or non-fiction (science or history), maybe even a self-help book– just to round out to ten.
Feminist Book Club Books (Reminder: while I am a voter/member of the group, we are mixed age, sexual preference, gender identity, political party, and origin. This group keeps me open-minded and books or views reflected in this list are not necessarily my own.)
January: Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of Unruly Women | Anne Helen Petersen
I’m actually not excited to read this book. Maybe there’s been too much hype about it, the title is too grabby for me, or because I’m not that into celebrities or celebrity gossip and hype. This book picks a “too” word (Too Old) and covers a celebrity and societal views (Madonna, being too old to present herself as sexy and/or sexual). I understand that she maybe is trying to reflect that the negative reactions toward these “too” celebrities mirrors society’s, but it doesn’t because tabloids only poke fun and find negatives and that’s why I steer clear of them. I might read it to be able to participate, I may not read it and just hear what everyone else has to say.
If you’ve read this book, let me know if you loved it and why – or otherwise.
February: Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening | Manal Al-Sharif
This book was actually chosen in our last list for book club and then there was a horrible storm and the month got skipped, so we decided to add it to this six month list. I didn’t read it last time- it was picked during a rough month for me emotionally and schedule-wise. Part of me is concerned that I won’t like it because I don’t identify with the struggles of Saudi women, especially living under the thumb of the Saudi government. Moreover, it seems like she had a lot of freedom compared to other women- graduating with a degree and working as a computer security engineer – and that for all my effort in trying to understand what difficulties exist for Saudi women, her view is very different from others’ reality. Overall, it has 85% of reviewers giving at least 4-stars, but some reviewers had my same skepticism realized and are of the other 15%.
March: Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet | Claire L. Evans
Evans covers the work, research, and influence of women in web-related technologies from their inception. Some negative reviews complain that women continue to make great strides in the technological community but that Evans’ coverage stops at the dot-com era. Most of the reviews are just glad someone went back and is recognizing those who were left out when contributors were acknowledged. As someone who loved Hidden Figures and would love to read/learn more about women’s contributions previously covered up or unrecognized, I’m really excited to read this book.
April: Good and Mad : The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger | Rebecca Traister
Traister addresses that “angry women” is not a new phenomena. From the suffragettes through today she covers many political movements lead by angry women and the changes they affected. I’m truly excited to read this book and can imagine it might make me feel hopeful that the anger of today’s feminist issues, for all genders and non-conformists, that change has happened, can happen, and will happen.
May: Can We All Be Feminists?: New Writing from Brit Bennett, Nicole Dennis-Benn, and 15 Others on Intersectionality, Identity, and the Way Forward for Feminism | June Eric-Udorie
This is a short (107 pgs) compilation of work from seventeen writers. I don’t love essay compilations in general, but I do tend to love essays themselves that I connect with and are well-written. It sounds like it’ll cover intersectionality as well as difficulties identifying as a feminist, which is interesting to me. I’m also glad this is a May book for me, since may can get a little crazy and this will be a quick bite of a book, but that I can also (hopefully) really sink my teeth into.
June: Popes and Feminists: How the Reformation Frees Women from Feminism | Elise Crapuchettes
I know what you’re thinking “frees women from feminism“, isn’t this a feminist book club? Shouldn’t you be chaining people to feminism and it’s movement? That’s part of why I chose this book.
Yep, this was one of the books that I – one of the two Jewish women in the group- recommended and it got voted into the list. My argument was that it sounded like it might be a nice devil’s advocate to our usual list, and also that it references this Catholic Church whom 16% of people follow, and makes up 50% of the one-third of the population that are Christian. I’m really excited to read this book. One of my best friend’s in Colorado also is a devout Catholic and I have asked her to read this book on my behalf so that I can pick her brain, since I’ll also be leading the conversation on this book in June.
Books I Chose (or Kindle recommended and I caved.)
This Book Is Full of Spiders | David Wong
This is the sequel to John Dies at the End, also by David Wong. I read the first book and loved it (see review here – and don’t worry, it’s the first one in the linked post, so you won’t have to dig around). Naturally, as much fun as I had with the inaugural(?) book of the series, I can’t wait to read the second one!
The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up | Marie Kondō
I’ve read almost this whole book about two and a half years ago and really started to clean up; and not figuratively. I got rid of lots of clothes, found a way to spruce up a little bit each day, and then I got in my own way. I hated my living situation, had some other things that pushed my buttons, and in general my anxiety and depression flared in an extreme manner. This resulted in me not caring about my “home” space with it’s negativity and choosing instead to live out of a drawer and a duffle at my boyfriend’s place; which left my things mostly in disarray.
I’m in a great place now with my home life, a generally good place otherwise, but we haven’t made the time to move in to our new place with all of our traveling (literally myself or both of us out of town every weekend since we moved in, last weekend being our first non-travel, non-work days).
I’m hoping this book will reinstill the motivation and practice to do better. I figure I’ll give myself December to put stuff away in general and clean up a bit before rolling up my sleeves, reading this book, and really getting the place organized. Maybe throwing away some things, too.
A Beautiful Poison | Lydia Kang
Confession: I just started reading this book a few days ago. I have been trying to make a habit of reading more often so when I finished my last book, I decided to move on the my TBR list.
I’ve wanted to stop reading this book a few times.
The story is interesting, but I only sometimes care about the characters and the drama building feels like I’m headed into a soap opera. It’s a murder mystery, sort of. So far, the phrase “could care less” occurred twice which is bothersome since the story’s set in somewhat high society (middle class at least) during WWI and this is definitely not the articulate phrasing (correct is “couldn’t care less”) that they would use. Another character said “she literally eats like a bird” and I wanted to vomit. I use this phrasing, today, in 2018, and am mildly ashamed of myself for doing so. This phrase is something my mom and aunts scoff at me and my cousins for using and is, again, not era or wealth status appropriate. I am, right this second, 29% through this book. There were a few reviews on GoodReads that had similar complaints to mine, but overall this book has overwhelmingly positive reviews, so I will continue to swallow my grammar-nazi tendencies, hold back my eyerolls, and make it through to at least 50% of this book before calling it quits. Who knows, maybe I’ll read the whole thing.
Monago’s suspense/mystery set in suburbia has been on my list for a while. It’s a little over 300 pages, was $6, and just seemed like a good last addition to my list. It got great reviews from ~8,500 people on GoodReads and a suburban thriller seems to be the one thing I was missing for my TBR list.
Well, there you have it. Ten books that will last me through winter and then some. If you’ve read any of these books, tell me what you thought. If you think I’d like a book, name drop below.
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