Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World by Lisa Bloom (nonfiction, 235 pages) I got a little carried away organizing my thoughts on this, my first book of the year, so the review is at the bottom of this post, so you don't have to scroll through it if you're uninterested.
Wit's End by Karen Joy Fowler (fiction, audiobook read by Bernadette Dunne)
I enjoyed Fowler's The Jane Austen Book Club and I had read that Wit's End addresses the questions raised by the fanfiction phenomenon. Questions like: Who owns a character? Who gets to decide the character's future or what's “in character” - the creator or the fans? What makes a character “real”? Wit's End doesn't really answer any of these questions. But it shows that solutions have become virtually impossible in this cyber-age of instant information and constant fan-community networking. While I'm not likely to read any other books by Fowler, her unique descriptions of little details of everyday life made it worthwhile.
A Girl Called Tommie by Thelma Giddings Norman (about 120/130 pages) (Children's book)
I first read the sequel, A Nurse Called Tommie, when I was seven. Even though it was a good Adventist book, it had the lure of the forbidden. Tommie had a boyfriend - a non-Adventist boyfriend! (Oh, the horror!) Furthermore, he may have smoked and certainly did drink. Of course she broke up with him and the next book, A Wife Called Tommie, was about her marriage (to a good Adventist doctor) and motherhood. (The most memorable thing about that one was that she and her husband once used grape juice in the gas tank when they ran out of gas – oh, yeah, and a whole lot o' prayer for the grape juice.) I'd never read A Girl Called Tommie and I thought it might tell more of the story of how she became an Adventist when her dad was bitterly opposed. But it didn't; it was about her mostly idyllic life in the Ozarks, where your greatest temptation is to sneak some fresh molasses and hummingbirds drink from your slice of watermelon. Oh, well, it occupied a Sabbath afternoon.
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua (nonfiction, audiobook read by the author, reread)
I've got to confess that I'm more than a little obsessed with this book, which I first read back in March 2011. (Here's an essay I wrote about some of the themes in the book.) I guess I'm fascinated by this book because I'm an undisciplined person who often feels like a failure. I'm also a mediocre pianist, singer and violinist, so the story of Chua's daughters' struggles for musical excellence is at once enviable, inspirational and daunting.
Amy Chua has tried to defend herself from those appalled and incensed by her parenting techniques by saying that her book contains self-parody. The problem is that it's sometimes hard to tell if the statements that sound ironic really are. Does she really believe her daughters could not be happy without winning first prizes in piano or violin? It's hard to tell, because just before her daughter stepped onto the stage at Carnegie hall she offered the reassurance that whatever happened now, she would have known she had done her best and put everything into her piano. But she also tells of her revered father commanding her never again to disgrace him by winning a history and science prize rather than an over-all best-student prize. While I do disagree with some of Chua's methods and emphases, my own experience tells me that she's right that a person can't be happy who doesn't feel they've done their best. But “best” to children, and even many adults, usually doesn't mean all that much. Amy Chua raised the bar high, so high that when her younger daughter refused to reach it, it nearly crashed down on the entire family.
The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir (fiction, audiobook)
Alison Weir is a notable historian, so most of this book is very true to historic fact. While most of my impressions on personalities of the era were only confirmed and strengthened, the novel did bring out some interesting slants. Was “the English Josiah” really a cold, haughty child? Actually, it makes sense that he would be, with the hopes of proud, foolish Harry Tudor all wrapped up in him. Perhaps I gained more sympathy for “Bloody” Queen Mary from this, but despite her infamous reign, who cannot pity the girl whose father so cruelly put away her mother? While this novel was about Elizabeth before she came to the throne, my dominant impressions of her as a remarkable woman, but prevaricating “political Protestant” were also confirmed. There was one notable aspect in which this book departed from verifiable fact into sensational conjecture. I won't say what that aspect is, but Alison Weir is certainly not trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes with it, since she has always argued the opposite of what she presents here, regarding this particular “legend” concerning Elizabeth I.
Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott (fiction, 288 pages, reread)
Susan Bailey, at Louisa May Alcott is My Passion, chose this book for her first book-club read and I jumped at the chance to reread it. I adored it when I first read it as a 13 year old, partly because of its similarities to the unique Adventist beliefs on morals, health, dress and education with which I was familiar. I admit that maybe I didn't enjoy it quite so much this time around, but it was still a worth-while read. (Here's my post on 19th century health and dress reform, based on the ideas in the novel, and several posts and discussions on dress and didacticism on Susan Bailey's blog that I highly recommend.)
I actually started reading this in 2011 with my mom for the 400th anniversary of the King James version, but it's a packed book, so we didn't finish until February. I won't review it, because it's an erudite book that I'll have to skim through again and it's on a controversial subject.
I'm also half way through The Pickwick Papers, a reread of Rose in Bloom, and Susan Cheever's biography of Louisa May Alcott, so have done more reading than this shamefully-meager list would seem to attest. I'm still hoping to discipline myself in other activities and read more in the next few months, but it may be more audiobooks, since it looks like my life is only going to get busier this spring.
A Review of
I found out about this book through a Facebook link to an excerpt in The Huffington Post encouraging older women to nurture the intelligence of young girls. “When you see an adorable six-year-old girl, instead of telling her how much you like her party dress (our culture's standard talking-to-little-girl icebreaker), you'll look into her eyes and ask, 'What are you reading?' Listen intently to her response, ask respectful questions about her opinions on that story, and tell her about your latest favorite book and why it means so much to you. Skip the talk about sparkly nail polish – she gets plenty of that from everyone else – and model for her what an adult female who has an active mind looks like.”
The article provoked some good discussion on Facebook about cultural beauty standards imposed on young girls, and because I'm militantly against those expectations, I ordered the book through the library.
The opening sentences of the introduction are calculated to frighten. “Twenty-five percent of young American women would rather win America's Next Top Model than the Nobel Peace Prize. Twenty-three percent would rather lose their ability to read than their figures.” According to Bloom, while girls are out-performing boys scholastically, once girls leave school they descend into appearance-obsessed celebrity-watchers.
Thankfully, (being a misanthropic, nerdy, home-schooled Adventist) the ditzy, unashamedly stupid, celebrity-obsessed culture that Bloom goes on to describe is one I see very little of. (The most notable example I've personally come across was in a neighbor in her forties whom I baby-sat for. Her only books were tabloids and Nora Roberts novels, her three year-old daughter watched TV and barbie-movies all day and had free access to sugar-laden “foods” at all times.)
Bloom offers a number of solutions to help women smarten-up. Most of them are viable and sensible. She urges women to read more, read promiscuously, find ways to cut down on housework and cooking and devote the extra time to volunteer activities, exercise and, of course, more reading. The one that I had not before tried to incorporate was her suggestion to read the serious news articles of the New York Times every day. (She quoted a teacher in a novel declaring that reading the Bible and the New York Times alone for a year would render a person well educated with a PhD vocabulary.) News is history in the making and can help alert us to the needs of the less fortunate, Bloom opines. That suggestion was perhaps the only one in the book that would lead me to form a new habit, but I also recently came across a book about How the News Makes Us Dumb . “Read not the Times, but the Eternities,” Thoreau advised. What do you, my readers, think? (I think the problem may be that the way news is presented to us is calculated to nurture our passivity, rather than encouraging us to learn more and change problematic situations.)
Now for the big question: Would I recommend this book to others? Like I said, I don't know many women or girls who need this book. Most of my friends are intelligent Christians who would be turned-off by the liberalism on issues like marriage, sexuality and abortion and by the celebrity scandals mentioned to hook the mainstream audience. And those girls who actually do need a book like this to slap them across the head, may not know how to think for themselves enough to be able to reasonably judge or reject some of the partisan politics Bloom pushes. Personally, while I'm a Christian who draws lines at certain issues, my religion isn't about political partisanship, and I can appreciate Bloom's thoughts on some issues others may shoot down as “liberal”. For instance, I don't believe that the modern environmentalist movement is an unmitigated good, but I do believe mankind was to be the steward of God's creation and that we've been doing a deplorable job of that lately.
As an ardent vegetarian, I also greatly appreciated Bloom pointing out that, according the to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the “number one cause of climate change” is “worldwide livestock farming”.
Bloom's emphasis on the plight of women worldwide, especially in sex slavery, is also extremely pertinent. And maybe I shouldn't be too hard on her for using Angelina Jolie as a hook to shine light on world poverty; after all, I first became alerted to the sex-slave trade through Emma Thompson's work with the Helen Bamber Foundation.
Hm, so I haven't answered unequivocally whether I'd recommend this book or not. I think my conclusion is that it's worth a skim, with a critical eye.
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