Men Explain Things To Me - a book of feminist essays by Rebecca Solnit

Kindle Monthly Deal

This book found it's way on to my Amazon wishlist and sat around there until one day I decided to take a peep at the Kindle Monthly deals (expecting to find a lot of junk I wouldn't be interested in). I certainly was not expecting to find something I was very interested in reading and made a point of paying a few visits to the library in order to find. I believe for the remainder of the month you may be able to download the ebook for $3 - and I would encourage it!
I started this book on the tail end of a vacation, which doesn't mean that it set a positive mood. Yes ma'am, this book is a bummer, but it gave me a lot of introspection to do, and the issues it's covered still niggles me.

This is a collection of essays Solnit wrote over the course of the last 5 or so years, all focused on "subtle" modern feminist issues. Mansplaining being the foremost one - but generally the little things that men don't have to deal with and so have no idea are issues that exist but women deal with regularly and are expected to just buckle down and accept. Some of them seem harmless (like men condescendingly explaining things that you may actually have more expertise in) but they tend to be a symptom of a larger, far more menacing issue. Most importantly, rape. It is 2015 and I should not have to discuss in great detail on my book review blog that rape or sexual abuse is such a problem. When a woman gets raped, there's a high chance that it will be ignored by a lot of people, including the people who are supposed to help and protect her, and this is in America. It's really disheartening!
The lengths women will go to avoid something that men don't even consider are astounding. For a personal example, I have never gone out without at least one friend present. I don't mean shopping for sundries, I mean I've never been to the downtown area in the city where I live after 5pm without a companion. Either another girl or my gay guy friend who would be described as a "bear" in the gay community. Men would typically never, ever think twice about leaving their apartment around dusk and stroll through a "bad" neighborhood to get a burger or see a movie. As a woman I would have to make arrangements with someone, or if that didn't go through, stay locked and safe in my room. Because of the risk of getting raped, mugged, or murdered, even if it's statistically unlikely, I've been conditioned to believe that it's going to happen to me if I don't take precautions. Now why is that?Because regardless of what you may think, the fact is that the playing field for genders (not just in 3rd world countries, mind you) is totally unbalanced.
It was really enlightening. If I hadn't bought it on my kindle, I'd share my copy with all my friends on the school yard until when I got it back it would be tattered and care-worn. This is an important book to read for this generation of feminists!

Book Lottery

Here's a quickie blog post - one long, bored afternoon I decided to write out on tiny slips of paper the title of every book that I own and haven't read yet, folded them up into minuscule squares, and filled up a small jar with it. This way, whenever I'm completely stumped and don't know what to read next, all I have to do is give the jar a good shake and pick a slip of paper with a book title on it. I'll have no choice but to read it! (That's the agreement I have with myself.)

here it is! My Owl Jar on my bookshelf.

I was worried when I started this project that it would have interesting and mixed results. For instance, what if I picked a book within a series? I solved that issue by only putting the most recently unread title into the jar. When that one is finished, I'll put in the next unread title in the series into the jar until I eventually get to it. Of course, I won't put in titles that I've already read, and will throw out the slips of paper out once they're done.
But there's another problem that I was worried about. So, I'm nearly done with a bunch of library books and other titles I borrowed from friends, and I decided it was finally time to work out my system.
I took down the owl jar, gave it a shake, and pulled out my next book.

I bought this book on a bargain bin - it was on sale because the spin is
printed upside own from the rest of the book ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The title I ended up pulling was a huge biography on Catherine the Great - obviously left unread because it's, well, sort of intimidating. It isn't that I'm uninterested in Catherine the Great. I'm totally game! Otherwise I wouldn't own it at all, right? It's just not exactly light, beach reading. I knew, of course, that this would be an experimental arrangement. I didn't expect to get something so dense right out of the gate. All of my history books are for research-y things. Needless to say, I'm intimidated!

574 pages in this book ⊙﹏⊙ ulp!

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

Library

This morning, on my way out of the house for work, I noticed (to my despair) a crushed snail on my path. It was probably crushed under my father's heavy work shoes earlier that morning on his way to work. I don't know about you, but stepping on snails is very distressing to me - not just because of the squick factor, but because I really love the little guys.

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating was my re-introduction to one of my favorite genres as a child - the natural sciences. This book might even have been something I would have read as a child (if it had been published back then). It was part memoir, part natural history.
It's a very short and sweet story at first about an ill, bedridden woman. Doctors are perplexed and unable to give her a clear diagnosis as the mysterious illness takes it's toll on her body. She is transplanted from the hubbub of her daily life to a lonely and quiet horizontal life in bed. Well, lonely until a friend brings her a pot of wild violets. And in this pot of violets is a tiny friend - a forest snail. This little bedside table companion proves to be just the company she needed. Her daily observations and studies of her little friend led her to a singular breakthrough - no one before had so closely observed a snail for so long. Perhaps no one had such a, well, human connection with a snail before. A humble and simple creature, certainly - nothing tremendous. But who are we to say it isn't as valuable a life?

I read this book very quickly (over a short weekend) and while it may fall far back in my memory after some time, it was a relaxing and enlightening little book.

How to be a Woman

Kindle App

If You're one of my friends who thought that they beat me to the bookstore and tried to recommend Tina Fey's Bossypants to me 3 years after I read it (you're cute; nice try) then allow me to counter back with a recommendation of my own.
How to Be A Woman is an entertaining, easily digestible break-down of the pitfalls of being a modern woman. This is no academic, silk-handkerchief skirted, henna haired feminism. If that's your brand of feminism, then this book will not be for you. Who this book is for - and I feel like a jackass for even thinking it - any woman who strongly self-identified with Bridget Jones. In other words, if you are a woman who feels at all self-deprecating about all the little girl things - from purses and designer shoes to family in all it's fucked-uppedness - and consider themselves a feminist, you'll probably enjoy this book. Not that this is a totally original concept. How many of these essayist memoirs have I read about the trials and tribulations of being a Thoroughly Modern Millie? From Tina Fey, Mindy Kaling, Nora Ephron, and Lord Knows how many Sassy Southern Ladies - the field is well trodden.
So what makes this one special? While I really love this sub-genre - it does a great job of making me snicker and punch at the air - the target audience is usually women. Real Talk for Girls. Gents will only feel put out. But God Bless Caitlin Moran, for she doesn't skewer men. Patriarchy? A little. But she's not a man-hating feminist. I really think there are tons of men in my immediate and extended social circles who would enjoy this more than some of my lady friends. All I have to say is "if you liked Bossypants, you'll Love How to Be a Woman."

Un-Popular Opinion Time

So I've been thinking. As much as I talk about books that I like here, I also want to talk about books I don't like. I was sort of thinking that, though I'm an advocate for not banning books, there are certainly some popular books I wouldn't mind if no one ever read - that way I wouldn't have to hear about them anymore. I have the idea in my head that the people who love the books that I hate and hate the books that I love are the same people. So today I decided to spill my guts out and talk about the books that I HATE. This doesn't mean I think you're wrong if they're your favorites, because even though I'm an ass I don't think I'm that big of an ass. I just happen to think that some well-loved books ain't all that. So without Further ado...

Nancy Tillman's series of ugly, mushy, badly photo-shopped children's books, starting with "On the Night You Were Born." I know this is a popular choice among the clueless for baby-showers and junk, but this is really a picture book for Mom's and Grandma's before it is for children. I've heard that some people think it's "pretty," but all I see is saturated photos with a dingy photoshop filter thrown over it. If that wasn't bad enough, the story can't even redeem it. It's just as disgusting and sentimental as you'd fear. As parents, please don't subject your children to this junk, unless you want to kill your child's interest in reading as early as possible.

Next is, yes, Goodnight Moon. I know many people have fond memories of this book. It is, after all, a classic. But not everyone has to like the classics. I remember - even as a kid - thinking that this book was nonsense and aggravating. Maybe I thought it was too simple, but I harbored no warm feelings for it. I've since made my peace with it, and as a matter of fact Margaret Wise Brown's other bunny book, Runaway Bunny, continues to be one of my all time favorite children's books. (I've even considered getting a Runaway Bunny tattoo, 'cept I'm a bit of a coward)

I knew this post wasn't going to make me popular, because this is one of my all time least favorite books, and it's dearly well loved by many people. Why did I hate The Outsiders? Part of it had to do with it's popularity, actually, and I'm a total book snob (or else I wouldn't be writing this post). In high school, we read it as an English assignment, and while the entire class enjoyed it (any small town high school English teacher would be encouraged by that feat). I was unimpressed and failed to see what made it so special, and that kind of pissed me off. I could have suggested an entire list of better books we should have read instead, I felt, and I probably could have. I had a real knack for pairing the right person with the right book.
Maybe I should have been a high school English teacher after all.

Will I hold nothing back? Is Nothing Sacred? Now, why didn't I like A Wrinkle in Time? It's up there with The Outsiders, for me, as highly recommended by Sage Adults that turned out to be a crashing disappointment. I remember reading it and feeling like the book it's self was just too pretentious - like the author wanted me to feel stupid, even for a child. It seriously made me doubt my own intellect, until I got older and tried to re-read the series and I realized that I wasn't crazy after all. This really is the sort of soaring bore of a book adults would try to shove into children's faces, forgetting that their tastes may not be the same. This doesn't mean that the world of children's books is so small, however, that they can't find something on their own that is more to their interests.

Another SUPER pretentious book? How about Philip Pullman's Dark Material's trilogy? This time, it is personal. Not only was it pretentious, but it wasn't even accidental. Pullman set out to write an anti-children children's book - a denouncement on C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, for being too sentimental about childhood and for using Christian allegory. Pullman, of course, is an Atheist. As a Catholic, that does grate on my nerves. It seems awfully shitty of him to take such liberties on children, and yes, it's very arrogant and pretentious. I think he sucks a whole ton for writing "Atheist propaganda" for children, but what I hate him even more for is that he's using these books as a platform to belittle children's intellect. A child will decide on their own wither or not Christianity is for them, as they will certainly find out that adulthood can be either awesome or awful with time. But children don't need his nihilism hammered into their skulls, really.
Other than that, this is a really strong, well written series. I remember when it was handed to me in high school, it came with a warning that I had to be mature enough to read it. I'm certain I was, but I'm grateful I at least had the warning first. (In fact, as an High School English teacher, be sure that this would be on the reading list. It is a good test of maturity.)

So... that felt good to get off of my chest. You may not agree with my assessments, and I have a feeling this is going to be controversial. I didn't go after the books that are popular to hate, after all. Disagree with me? Agree? Leave me a comment and we can talk about it.

Quelle Horreur!

image source - Graves and Ghouls 

If you were to ask me off hand what my favorite holiday was, I would say that I didn't have one. Nope, not even Christmas - and everyone loves Christmas. I think Halloween may be the closest  thing to my favorite holiday, just because of the attention I pay to it. I have some very fond memories of that fist-full amount of hours between after-school and trick-or-treating, the waiting and prepping. The air crisp and clean, the static sound of leaves rushing through the air, and during the main event - my favorite part - peeping into the foyers of the houses we'd visit  as my bag was being filled. No one really trick-or-treats in our neighborhood anymore, which is really too bad. I enjoy visiting with the parents and children who come by (always friends and acquaintances - usually students that attend the school my mother works at. It's amusing to see the expressions on the children's faces when they realize Teachers have Homes, just like They do!) At a certain age, I was deemed too old to dress up, and so just like that, I was done with Halloween. How can you love a holiday you aren't going to participate in? Though to my parents defense, my costumes were never ever store bought. They were always home made. It is one thing to make a tasteful Pocahontas costume for an 8 year old, another thing to make a historically accurate Gibson Girl costume for a 14 year old. So there is that.
A few years ago I decided I would honor the holiday they best way I knew how - by devoting the entire month to horror novels. Under normal circumstances, I actually hate the horror genre. Too often I look at the stories and themes far too pragmatically and think to myself "This isn't scary at all - it's ridiculous."Take The Ruins, for instance. It's about flesh eating plants. On the one hand, you will never view your mother's house plants the same way again (try walking past them armed with a plastic knife - just for in case - and then take a good long look at yourself). But at the end of the day, it's just about irrationally evil plants. The more I look at what we consider "scary," all it really sums up to is irrational violence. And irrational violence can at times be, well, funny.

So I'm not a fan of the horror genre. But every year I make a noble effort to try to read something from that genre. That in mind, it also takes me a tremendously long time to read these books. Most of them I never actually finish before I've fully formed and solidified my opinion. This year, rather than read novels, I've decided to try something new. I'm only going to read horror (or "spooky themed") anything-but-novels. So look out for those!

Manga Manifesto, Bride's Story, and Sakuran

I made a promise to talk about every book I've read from cover to cover - I also made a promise to talk a little about everything I read while away on vacation, and that it would be a lot. But I've never written reviews for comic books until now. Interestingly, because I've been a huge fan of manga since I was 13. College almost killed that joy, but in the past year I've reconciled with it.
A note on comics, manga, and shojo: Manga might not be as popular now as it has been in the last few years. That's okay, because it's still really huge. I understand that in the wide, wide world people still think of comic books as "for the boys," and that's still largely true - in American comics. With the introduction of manga in the US, and the shojo genre with it, there was finally something on the market for girls to read. I understand that Marvel and DC have tried (with limited success) to introduce something marketed towards girls. The thing is, they always seem completely clueless as to how to navigate those waters. I really think the popularity of manga has a lot to do with having a HUGE female audience. In 2001, I was one of those kids that helped make manga so popular. Manga, particularly CLAMP's Cardcaptor Sakura, introduced me to comic books. In the early oughts the quality and quantity of manga available doesn't compare with what it is today. Anime and manga was still a very niche market. It was rare and expensive, but the fans didn't take themselves so seriously and it was still, well, fun. All the same, when people tell me that girls don't read comic books, I think of shojo manga - a genre made for and adored by women all over the world.

Comics makes great beach reads, too. It's a breeze to read through and doesn't take the same amount of concentration that novels require. Personally, I find it hard to read anywhere that isn't perfectly quiet and private. Hotel rooms with TV's blaring, bustling pool sides, etc can be very distracting to me, even when they don't mean to be - I'm particular about my surroundings. But when I'm reading comics, none of that is an issue. That's how during this trip I managed to read 5 volumes of manga and a leetle bit of Clash of Kings.

I started the series Bride's Story by Kaoru Mori - the first three volumes of it, at least. Bride's Story is gorgeously illustrated and richly detailed. I'm personally a big fan of historic fiction and costume drama, and if you are too that this'll be your cuppa. Bride's Story is set in Central Asia's Silk Road, a setting that isn't often seen fictionalized in Western literature. That alone makes it worth a read, in my opinion.

It's about a young boy who takes a 20 year old woman from a semi-nomadic tribe as a wife. As you can imagine, there is some nudity, but it's nothing I think you'd try to hide your kids from. ... Unless it's that big of a deal to you. Honestly, it's a beautiful series with a very sweet story. Of all the manga I read this week, it's probably the best written. Even if you don't read graphic novels very often, I think this would still be interesting to a lot of women. Volume 1 introduced us to the characters and world, but not in the tired, worn out way that manga usually does it. In Volume 2, Amar (our favorite bride, who is really more of a big sister character - tough, but sweet) makes a new friend. There is some fighting over her - this is some of the family politics of the time, but it's basically resolved. Volume 3 is where the drama picks up. In fact, Amar and her child groom Karluk are barely in it. The volume ended on a cliff hanger involving a character that initially wasn't much more than a dippy side character. So I'm eagerly waiting to get my grubby little paws on volume 4.

If you're as curious about the daily lives of women and families on the silk road as you are dramatic stories - thinking along the lines of  Downton Abbey of Central Asia and The Silk Road - I do recommend this series highly.
I've quickly become a fan of Kaoru Mori's work, and it's surprising that I'm only discovering her now. She's well known for Emma, which speaking of Downton Abbey, is Victorian romance about a maid, as Kaoru Mori is a bit of an anglophile. It won't be long before I pick up that manga series as well.

The next manga title I read over vacation was a one volume, shrink wrapped title called Sakuran ("Derangement" in English). Sakuran is set in Japan's Edo period, in the "pleasure quarter," about a courtesan. In other words, it's about a Japanese prostitute. Fun Facts About "Oirans": The way you could tell the difference between a geisha and courtesan at the time is the way that they tied their Obis. Geisha's tied theirs in the back while courtesans tied theirs in the front for easier access. Otherwise, they had a few things in common.
In Sakuran, Kiyoha is sold to a brothel at a young age and is trained from a maid up until she becomes one of the most popular courtesans in the house. She's very sassy and rude, which doesn't make her very popular in the brothel - all the other women she lives with basically hate her. But, that kind of spunk and feminine wiles makes her very popular with customers. The story doesn't so much center around how competitive her life is, but the impossibility of love. As bold and brash as she is, her story is very tragic.
As I've said, it's a shrink wrapped manga, which you understand means one thing - it's for mature readers only, please. But it means another thing, too. Shrink Wrapped Manga was pretty common in the late 90's not because so much of it was for mature audiences, but because the glue was so cheap. Bending the spin while reading, even just a little bit, meant that pages would drop out. I haven't seen that as often lately with manga, but that is definitely true here. If possible, try to read it online instead of buying a hard copy - or watch the movie is you're so inclined.

Puffin Season Is Upon Us!

So my favorite animals are puffins. They're totally precious, bumbling little seabirds that migrate between the Icelandic, Scottish, and British coast, and the North American Atlantic coats. The summer months are when a large population of these birds come to nest on the coast of Maine and Nova Scotia.
These adorable house-cat sized birds are endangered. Since the 70's and 80's conservation has taken off to try and protect them.
I'm not sure why I suddenly discovered them, but I know I've been obsessed with them since the 2nd grade. I have a small collection of stuffed puffin toys, books, prints, etc. Now that I'm older, puffin conservation is one of my pet causes. Part of my summer traditions is to watch the puffin live cam from the shoreline of Seal Island in Maine, which you can't actually visit as a tourist, because Seal Island was owned by the government as kind of target practice, though it's been retired - pretty wild, right? But that makes it absolutely perfect for animal conservation.

This year there has been a dent in the puffin population owning to some mysterious deaths on the coast of Scotland. Scientists aren't really clear what's happened, but all of the deaths had one thing in common. It appears most of them were starved. Maybe it's because of the dramatic weather changes affecting their food supply (which is the rooted main cause for their endangerment), but I'm no expert in the matter. Now they've returned to the coast of North America, and our biologists are counting their numbers.
I'll keep you all updated when I learn anything new about Puffins ;) In the mean time, here are some puffin facts:

• Puffins are considered a delicacy in Iceland, since at one time there was an over-abundance of puffins and they were actually kind of a pest.
• They live most of their lives at sea, but rather than flying over the water they float on the waves.
• Puffins tend to keep one mate for life.
• They can "fly" underwater.

Baby Got Book Back Log

this looks an awful lot like
the stacks along my bed.

If I were to go and count how many books I have bought over the years and haven't yet gotten around to reading, it would be over a hundred. A hundred books I've picked up on a whim at used book sales, in bargain bins, ordered on Amazon, waiting on my Kindle, bought fresh and new because I was having a bad day and needed something to lift my spirits, was lent by friends... I have plenty to read, and more to share. It's kind of the reason why I started this blog - to talk about what I've been reading. You ever stroll around your local bookseller and spot the "Our Employee Recommendations" shelf? Not everything is hot off the presses on that shelf. But it's fun to see what fellow book lovers are reading, and what they're saying about it.

But I am not the kind of person who can buy a book new and go home and start reading it cover to cover. I'm a pretty slow reader. Often times, I only read a minimum of 50 pages a day. That's the goal I set for myself - get at least as far as this, and if you want to, go further. Or pick up another book and read 50 pages more of that. Because reading one book at a time isn't enough for me. I have this stock pile of books in my home, and it's growing. If I read one book at a time, I'd never catch up. Lord knows I probably never actually will.
I don't understand people who only ever go to the book store or library "because they have nothing to read." I don't understand "having nothing to read." It's baffling to me.

But then, what do I do with the books I have read? I need to make room for the new kids on the shelf. I'm pretty generous with my books - I'll give bags of them away to my cousins (in their teens or pre-teens) and if it's something they might be too young for I send them to the local thrift store. I know they'll find a good home there, because a lot of the people who live in my hometown don't have the means to drive to Lafayette and buy brand new shiny books. And besides, even if they could, their budget isn't more than $1 anyway.
Speaking of Lafayette, if I have any paperbacks I might bring them to my favorite used book store where I can trade them in for store credits (I had $600 in store credits there once upon a time - though that was a joint effort, I have to admit). This bookstore also has some pretty friendly cats who like you to greet them with a scratch behind the ear, then they'll ignore you. It's a bit on the small side - the way that used bookstores tend to be. Not as glossy and new as the big box bookstores, but it's got it's fans.
Personally, I like lending books out, even though I don't expect to see them again. I try not, however, to lend them out unless I've read them first. And I have a few extra copies of my favorites just in case anyone admits to me that they've never read Jane Eyre - if that's the case, then I have a copy just for you. Keep it. It's yours.