Less than two months into the year and I’ve already read so many interesting things! Here’s the highlights. The Bone Clocks This is our February book club read, and boy was it a doozy. We’ve read one of David Mitchell’s other books, Cloud Atlas, and I’m pumped to discuss it in a few days. Mitchell’s…
Tag: gender
Review: The Tin Ticket
Teenagers Agnes and Janet stole clothing; Bridget stole milk; Ludlow pawned her employer’s spoons. In the early 1800s in Britain the sentence was not jail time, but transport. These women — and thousands of others like them — were convicted by courts eager to populate Van Diemen’s Land (later Tasmania). Packed into ships like cattle,…
Review: Unmentionable
If you’ve always thought that a clean, simple frock is better than low-rise jeans, that you would enjoy living in the time of Charlotte Bronte, or that the centuries before ours were simpler and better…this book is not for you. Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady’s Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners will disabuse you of the…
Review: The Scarlet Sisters
Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claftin were two of the children of a backwater snake oil salesman. The sisters spent their childhoods telling fortunes and handing out quack cures. They were not destined for great things. But the Gilded Age had a habit of propelling the least likely people to unimaginable heights. In a time when…
Review: Love, InshAllah
Finding love is hard, no matter who you are. But it might be a bit harder for American Muslim women. The 25 women who contributed essays to Love, InshAllah are planted between two worlds that seem very different on the surface. They are independent American women with careers and ambitions; they are also Muslim women…