2018

The 5-Ingredient College Cookbook

2018, Books in Bed, cookbooks /

I’m a sucker for 5-ingredient cookbooks, which explains why I picked up The 5-Ingredient College Cookbook from the new arrivals shelf at the library. It was a bit of a disappointment because it’s a 5 FRESH ingredient cookbook, not just 5 ingredients. Hmph. It was also what you’d expect from a cookbook for college students. Pretty basic. That’s not a bad thing but I didn’t see anything that really grabbed me. (The Oberlin kid was here and flipped through it and found a recipe for a vegan… enchilada (I think that’s what it was) that sounded good, though.)

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The Sunshine Sisters

2018, Books in Bed, Chick Lit /

I don’t know why I read The Sunshine Sisters except that I was downstairs and my book was upstairs and I just needed something light to read while I was having my lunch. Also, one of the kids was home and it seemed like too much extra work to read something that wasn’t light and fluffy.

This one was the best and the worst of chicklit, all wrapped up in one predictable, stereotypical tale. I liked it except when it got to be too predictable and too stereotypical and then I rolled my eyes a lot.

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The Keeper of the Mist

2018, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

Hah, another 2016 Cybils book. I think this is (maybe) the last book from that list that I’ve had on hold at the library. Maybe. I can’t remember. There might be another. Whatever.

The Keeper of the Mist was pretty good. I was a little frustrated with Keri, particularly in the beginning. She spent far too long thinking other people could do things better than she. Imposter syndrome, too much imposter syndrome. This is why our girls grow up to be women who feel this way. Sure Keri mostly fixed it all in the end but after you’ve spent 100 pages telling girls that the heroine doesn’t think she can do shit, it’s not so much comforting as it is conditioning. Stop it with the imposter syndrome story line for girls.

Anyway, yea. The book was pretty good. I thought it was a series but so far, it seems as though it is not. Too bad, I’d have liked to learn more about what happened to the Bookkeeper.

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The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat

2018, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Women /

Last week, the second book in this series was on the new arrivals shelf at the library and instead of grabbing it, I went back to the stacks to find the first one. I’m so glad I did. I absolutely loved The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat. I laughed and laughed and I might have maybe been close to tearing up there at the end. I really hope the second book is still on the shelf when we go back to the library — if not, I’ll be reserving it.

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Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong — and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story

2018, Books in Bed, Non-Fiction, Women /

So, Happy IWD2018? Happy coincidence that I’m writing about Inferior today… and I’ll take all of the happy coincidences I can get right now because HMPH about all the things. Anyway.

This was an interesting book. Interesting to get a look at all of the different studies that have led us to where we are now. All of the ways women were left out of research, all of the ways (mostly) male researchers got it wrong, and to ponder the reasons why the (mostly) male researchers got it wrong. (And, why they are still getting it wrong more often than they should be right now.)

It was also interesting to read about some of the primate studies and insights into various tribes and groups of people in other regions. (The Agta in the Philippines, the Hadza in Africa, etc.)

I’m not really sure that new research is rewriting the story, but some researchers are certainly trying.

(PS. I’m on the side of the “grandmother theory” to explain evolution/life expectancy/menopause, how about you?)

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Books 5 & 6 in The Gender Game series

2018, Books in Bed, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

Gah, I thought The Gender Game was a six book series. It’s not. It’s a seven book series and I’m so annoyed, lol.

Book five was pretty much a bust for me (and I think for TW) book six was slightly better, (except all the people seem to have died, maybe? Hard to say with this series.)

I’m very ready for this thing to be OVER. I sure hope book seven is waiting for us at the library this weekend. (I also wish she had named these books better. I really hate their titles.)

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Ink & Paint: The Women of Walt Disney’s Animation

2018, Books in Bed, Favorites, Feminism, Non-Fiction /

The first thing you have to know about Ink & Paint: The Women of Walt Disney’s Animation is that it’s an over-sized coffee table type of book. I knew that when I reserved it and I expected it to be mostly pictures with few words. Turns out, it’s more words than pictures (though there are amazing pictures on every page) and it’s not an easy book to read in bed or in a chair or on your couch in front of your coffee table (not that I have a coffee table because coffee tables are from the devil) but still… it’s not a book I could sit comfortably and read. That was frustrating. So, I set it on the bar in my kitchen and I read a page or two at a time, while I ate lunch or while I waited for dinner to be ready. This means it took MONTHS for me to read this book.

The next thing you should know is that it’s more of a history of Walt Disney’s animation with a focus on the women of Ink & Paint. So you learn a lot about men in animation and the men who worked at “Disney’s” as they seem to call it in the early, early days. (You also learn a good bit about Walt but not as much about Roy.) There were a TON of women working for Walt Disney in the early days of animation and the book includes a yearbook style section of all of the women who worked there. Pretty cool stuff, (and it’s Women’s History Month, so this is a great time for you to dive into this book.)

Last, but not least, you should know that this is a really interesting book. If you’re like me and you don’t really know a whole lot about how animation used to work, then this is a great crash course. It may also make you want to look at a zillion old Disney shorts and commercials and maybe watch all of the Disney full-length movies in the order in which they were released (up to the move to computer animation.)

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