How to Think Like a Woman: Four Women Philosophers Who Taught Me How to Love the Life of the Mind
Regan Penaluna
“Not to be confused with the male gaze, which objectifies women’s bodies, the male glance does the opposite to women’s creative work: it barely gives it a second look. Those under its spell decide after cursory examination that the work in question isn’t of much value.”
As I learned from reading The Once and Future Sex, we’ve spent centuries and a lot of energy deciding to ignore or destroy women’s thoughts on anatomy, religion, and science — why not philosophy too? Part memoir, part biography, How to Think Like a Woman sheds light on how female philosophers from vastly different times showed a young woman how to think for herself and become the person she was meant to be.
Like author Regan Penaluna, I don’t recall learning about a single female philosopher in school. This not only weakens students’ abilities to get a more complete and varied view of the subject, it also lets Western culture continue perpetuating the idea that women are not smart enough to grasp or participate in the world around them. The women in Penaluna’s book used the logic and ethics of philosophy to explain their beliefs in knowledge and God, as well as to advocate for treating girls and women as equals to men. By turns they either leaned into the maternal aspect that men would consider more palatable (“If you educate the mother, she’ll raise a son who becomes a manly leader who does manly things”) or called men out for their biases (“You seem to be led around by your penis — are you sure you’re objective enough to philosophize about females?”). I enjoyed seeing Penaluna empower herself through studying these women. This is another book I’ve covered in note-filled Post-Its and will be re-visiting as I continue my philosophy studies.
Read this if you want to learn about the hidden history of female philosophers.
The Anomaly (The Anomaly Files #1)
Michael Rutger
“In silence this profound you felt different. Some deep, rusty, older part of your brain urged you to remain quiet, to avoid being noticed.”
Nolan Moore makes a living investigating secrets, treasures, and conspiracy theories of all kinds. This week their goal is to re-discover a hidden cavern accessible only through the Grand Canyon. Most of his team’s work comes down to creative editing and just enough “tantalizing evidence” to keep people hooked, and there’s no reason to suspect this adventure will be any different. But it’s all just fun and games until the conspiracy turns out to be true — and ready to unleash the apocalypse.
This novel has been on my TBR for almost two years, so when I stumbled across it at the library I figured it was a sign. I was in no way surprised to learn that Rutger is a screenwriter — the book’s setting and descriptions leap off the page and demand to be front and center. It kept me guessing (and freaked out) for most of the story as their flashlights failed, water dwindled, and people started dying. While the reveal wasn’t quite my cup of tea and didn’t hang together as well as I’d hoped, I thoroughly enjoyed the ride.
A good choice if you like unseen monsters and don’t mind a little hinky logic.
Turn Off the Light
Jacquie Walters
“The apple is an omen. She does not know why yet, but she is sure of it.”
Edith is a healer and a woman of faith doing her best to care for her community and give her husband a son. But when a neighbor dies and her womb remains empty, the whispers around her take on a darker tone. Claire has recently returned to the isolated town as her father’s final days draw near. Both women experience unsettling moments that convince them a supernatural evil lurks beneath the floorboards. Soon they learn they must depend on each other to survive — despite being separated by more than 400 years.
This premise is great, and I wondered how Walters was going to make it happen; turns out she knocked it out of the freakin’ park! It was “timey-wimey” without being full of plot holes or relying on over-explanation. There were a few predictable moments near the end, but otherwise this novel had me reading with all the lights on and wondering if the main characters would get their (deserved) happy endings. I loved this, and will be checking Walters’ backlog for more interesting stories to add to my TBR.
Perfect for fans of a spooky tale told with a unique setup and structure.
Seek Immediate Shelter
Vincent Yu
“If only the world presented real checkpoints. If only there were genuine chances to re-create your life at a certain moment, to reconstruct how it was before the big thing that changed everything had occurred.”
It’s a normal day in small-town Massachusetts when residents receive a phone alert: BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. Less than 20 minutes later, a follow-up message: FALSE ALARM. PLEASE DISREGARD. ALL CLEAR. What happens in the time between panic and relief reveals everyone’s truest selves — with lifelong consequences.
This is technically a series of slightly-interconnected short stories, which isn’t my preferred form of storytelling; however, the premise and buzz around Yu’s debut was enough for me to set aside my dubiousness. And my goodness was I rewarded. This book was challenging, heartbreaking, and such a good choice for my book club. Some stories were centered on the event itself, while others showed life after or even years before the moment that changes the characters’ lives. It shows every character and those around them exactly who they are, then leaves them to figure out how to change (or not) in the aftermath.
Perfect for a buddy/group read — just be prepared for likeable people to be thin on the ground.
The Sea Captain’s Wife: A True Story of Mutiny, Love, and Adventure at the Bottom of the World
Tilar J. Mazzeo
“There will be no safe harbor in San Francisco, no freedom, no farm running down to the banks of the Weskeag River unless she fights for them. This is the moment her story begins.”
It’s 1856, and the clipper-ship Neptune’s Car has entered the treacherous passage between South America and Antarctica. The waves average 50 feet high, a mutinous first mate is chained in the brig, and the captain has just become incapacitated. With the lives of the crew, her husband, and her unborn child on the line, it’s up to Mary Ann Patten to take charge and bring the ship safely to harbor.
I love stories of women defying the odds and proving that they are capable of far more than what society’s limitations have placed on them. Mary Ann deserves recognition as the first female captain to navigate Antarctica, and I enjoyed learning about her story — it’s in danger of being lost to history. In truth it already has been; Mary Ann’s captain’s log is lost, her family line ended, and more people are interested in the adventures of men. And that’s why this book didn’t hit for me. There’s so little firsthand knowledge from Mary Ann to go on that the book ends up being mostly about stuff other than her (they didn’t even put the complete photo of her on the cover). I wanted to know more about her and her accomplishments, not the history of her family and her husband’s accomplishments and how she was a dutiful wife before and after the great thing she actually did and the book purports to be about. It’s so frustrating to see the results of women’s words being ignored or discarded.
An interesting read, just not as much about Mary Ann as I’d hoped.
Reliquary (Agent Pendergast #2)
Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
“ ‘But I sense, Dr. Green, that when we know what they are—and why they were lying enshrined on a stone platform, thirty stories below New York City—we’ll have the key to this puzzle.’ “
Eighteen months after the horrifying events at the New York Museum of Natural History, Dr. Margo Green is still trying to come to terms with how that night changed her life. Her relative equanimity is upended when she gets a call from NYPD Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta demanding her presence in the museum’s forensics lab. It seems the Mbwun legacy has gone underground — and unleashed a new nightmare that threatens more than just New York.
I love a late-1990s thriller. So far this series has been fun and non-complicated — just a smart detective, hand-wavey genetic monster science, and gruesome death in dark places. Perfect for summer reading or when you’re just looking for something enjoyable. Not sure I’ll ever be able to get through the authors’ collective backlog (50+ combined and solo), but I bet I’d have a lot of fun trying.
Perfect for lovers of thrills-and-chills adventures. The series starts with Relic.
The Seven Rings (Lost Bride Trilogy #3)
Nora Roberts
Caution: Spoilers ahead.
“For all those who came before her, for the house she’d made her home, for those seven lost brides, she vowed to stay and hunt and fight.”
I reviewed the first two books of this series in February, and have been waiting months to get my grubby paws on the conclusion. While book 1 was a great pitch and book 2 was a big ‘ol swing, for me the final book was a total whiff. There’s some cool build-up, but most of this 460-page chonker was descriptions of the main characters making food, drinking a lot, and letting pets in and out of the house. The final confrontation doesn’t even start until about page 435, and was kind of a letdown. It seemed like Roberts forgot there was an evil ghost plotline she needed to resolve, so she shoved it in at the last second.
People who love this series really love it, apparently for all the reasons it didn’t hit for me. I’m not a Nora Roberts/”classic romance” reader, so maybe I should have calibrated my expectations differently going in.
So this series didn’t end up being my jam, and I think it would have been stronger as a duology. But Roberts’ books are incredibly popular for a reason, so don’t let me scare you off!
Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses
Robin Wall Kimmerer
“A close encounter with a mossy log always makes me think of entering a fantasy fabric shop. Its windows overflow with rich textures and colors that invite you closer to inspect the bolts of cloth arrayed before you.”
It’s easy to overlook moss. The kinds we see in cityscapes aren’t beautiful, and in nature are overshadowed by the big trees we’re often there to see. Gathering Moss is a series of love letters to mosses and humanity, both of which are entwined in ways too big and too small to see with the naked eye.
While I’d heard of Braiding Sweetgrass, I didn’t pick up a Kimmerer book until Google recommended this one. I read (and mostly disliked) Anna North’s Bog Queen earlier this year and wanted to further explore the idea of ancient mosses and our connections to them. This essay collection was a perfect way to wind down the summer. Kimmerer is a great writer, and I enjoyed seeing how each essay started with a seemingly unrelated story before miraculously becoming about moss. Her writing is clear and evocative, and I loved learning about these tiny but compelling life forms underneath my feet.
Excellent quiet read, especially accompanied by a hot cup of tea and a cozy chair.
Photo by Tatiana Reusche on Unsplash