The first book in my feminist January is Talking from 9 to 5: How Women's and Men's Conversational Styles Affect Who Gets Heard, Who Gets Credit, and What Gets Done at Work by Deborah Tannen, Ph.D. This book came out in 1994 and has been on my shelf for ages--not quite since 1994, but for … Continue reading I Feel Seen: Dr. Deborah Tannen’s Talking from 9 to 5
The title sums it up well: The Arsenic Century: How Victorian Britain was Poisoned at Home, Work, & Play by James C. Whorton. We all know about issues with lead poisoning, whether in water pipes, paint, or from industrial processes, and I had read about the problems with exposure to phosphorus in match production and … Continue reading First Book of 2021: All About Arsenic
The Yellow House by Sarah Broom is labeled as a memoir, but that label doesn't really capture what the book is. Broom tells the story of her family, starting with her grandmother Amelia and then turning to her mother, Ivory Mae. If there is a central character in the book, it's Ivory Mae. She is … Continue reading Book Review: The Yellow House
The Train to Crystal City by Jan Jarboe Russell recounts the story of the World War II internment camp at Crystal City, a small South Texas town not far from the border with Mexico. Russell interviewed several survivors of the camp, and she uses these personal stories to illustrate not only the betrayal and displacement … Continue reading Review: The Train to Crystal City
Polly Evans, a travel writer and journalist, spent about five months traveling around Argentina, with a loose goal of learning to ride horses. On a Hoof and a Prayer recounts her travels and adventures. Reading travel books right now is bittersweet: it's a way to travel vicariously but also makes me miss traveling so much … Continue reading Horsing Around
Animals do weird stuff! LOTS of weird stuff. Zombie Birds, Astronaut Fish, and Other Weird Animals by Becky Crew is a collection of short descriptions of some of the world's weirdest animals, from spiders that create a diving bell out of their own webbing to male anglerfish that latch onto and merge into female anglerfish … Continue reading Freaky Animal Stuff
I thought The Minotaur: Sir Arthur Evans and the Archaeology of the Minoan Myth by Joseph MacGillivray would be a nice nonfiction companion to The King Must Die (a retelling of the myth of Theseus) and it was, once the author got us to Knossos. The author is an archaeologist specializing in Crete, so I … Continue reading The Real Minotaur…ok, maybe not
Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise of the Unruly Woman by Anne Helen Petersen looks at reactions to ten "unruly" women, including Serena Williams, Melissa McCarthy, Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Caitlin Jenner, and Jennifer Weiner. For the first couple of chapters, I wondered what I was getting out of this--I'm already pretty familiar with … Continue reading Review: Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud
