The Woman Upstairs – 2/5 Stars I found this book because of a list listing “Famous angry women in books” or something. And it’s true that the lead character and narrator of this book is very angry. I was hoping she’d be angrier and less articulate about her anger in this book. What’s this book about? It’s about a woman in her early 40s who was an artist who is also an elementary school teacher. She becomes friends with the mom of one her students. […]
39: Rebecca Solnit’s natural history is just as good as her feminist criticism.
I’ve stated before that I’m researching dystopian literature, and part of that includes looking at climate change, natural disaster, and catastrophe (and if you have any recommendations, by all means, provide me book titles!). In the Dawson book I read and reviewed this year, there was a citation for Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell. I’ve only ever read Men Explain Things to Me, but I loved that, as well as some of her recent essays about the election and feminism, so I was […]
Don’t do the audiobook
I really should stop trying audiobooks. Though I can listen to podcasts fairly attentively (depending on the subject matter of course), for whatever reason I don’t enjoy audiobooks. I space out a lot and if the person reading it aloud has an annoying voice I just can’t get into it. For these and other reasons I didn’t love Rebecca Solnit’s The Mother of All Questions. One of the new book clubs I’ve joined is all local moms with a feminist bent, so our book selections […]
“Violence doesn’t have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender.”
I was unable to march yesterday because I had to work so I opted to read Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me, a collection of feminist essays, instead. This a powerful collection but I think the most powerful punch was just how dated it seemed despite being published only 3 years ago. There is no Trump or Weinstein and while there is a well crafted essay on #yesallwomen it felt lacking in a world where #metoo and the Time’s Up initiative have had such widespread coverage […]