For the 2014 Cannonball Read, 50 of my 52 reviews will be of books written by women. I am doing this as part of the #ReadWomen2014 campaign and as a way to mark my upcoming 50th birthday. Among the books to be reviewed, I have decided to include a book written by a woman in the year I was born (1964), as well as for each subsequent 10 year anniversary of my birth. First up: 1964. I came upon this novel while searching for something […]
Girls, Girls, Girls!
This graphic novel, published this year, is a short story about two girls (early teens) whose families meet every summer in Ontario at Awago Beach. Rose is an only child whose parents seem fairly ordinary. Windy is an adopted only child who goes to the beach with her mother and grandmother. It is a “coming of age” story that has been getting favorable reviews within comic book circles and even from the New York Times. For a short story (you could easily read it in […]
Trigger Warning: Life can be tragic
Last month, the New York Times, and subsequently other major news outlets, covered the controversy over trigger warnings in academia, i.e., a growing movement on US college campuses to have professors provide warnings in advance of potentially disturbing topics covered in their syllabi (rape, racism, suicide, etc.). When I saw some of the books listed as requiring trigger warnings (Huck Finn, The Great Gatsby, Things Fall Apart), I was deeply disturbed and I generally agree with those who have spoken out against warnings. And does […]
#YesAllWomen –The Novel
I happened to be reading The Handmaid’s Tale when the story about the UCSB shooting spree hit the news. By now, most likely you’ve read that the shooter hated women because he couldn’t get a date and that he left behind a “manifesto” and many videos in which he presented his misogynistic ideas. In response, and as an empowerment for women, the hashtag #YesAllWomen has gone viral, with women and men speaking up and speaking out against the culture that creates men like the shooter. […]
Women Can Be Scary Part 3: Daphne du Maurier
Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, is a classic that has been characterized as a romance and some sort of gothic chick lit. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rebecca is a dark and suspenseful novel, reminiscent of Jane Eyre, with an ending that involves violence and is far from happy. Like Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, the reader might find him/herself rooting for a murderer and feeling distinctly uncomfortable about that. Rebecca is set in the 1930s mostly at a seaside […]
Women Can be Scary Part 2: Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) was an American writer known for novels such as The Haunting of Hill House and short stories such “The Lottery,” which has horrified readers since 1948. To this day I am haunted by the short film version of “The Lottery” (with Ed Begley, Jr.!) which Sr. Mary Cabrini showed in my American Studies course in high school. The 1962 novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle is not exactly scary like Jackson’s other works, but it is disturbing and feels like […]