Women

The Summer Without Men

2011, Books in Bed, Favorites, Feminism, Fiction, Women /

Earlier in the week, I was looking for something to read that was either short, funny, or a quick read because nothing on the library stack was really screaming “Read ME Next!”. The Summer Without Men looked like it might work. Short book, interesting title, interesting cover, interesting paper, and the author has an interesting name.

Two pages later I realized that while this book is short, it’s not really funny or a quick read. It was downright serious and, gasp, literary! So a book I thought would take me a day – took a week. Now that’s not a bad thing, it just wasn’t what I was interested in at that moment. With no significant time to read and fried brain cells when I did have time to read, this book would have been better read on the weekend because it wouldn’t have taken me nearly as long.

50 something woman (who happens to be a poet and a Colombia professor) has a bit of a breakdown after her husband tells her he’s having an affair (with a younger woman, obviously.) She spends the summer in a small town, teaching a poetry class to pre-teen girls (with all of the mean girl madness that goes with something like that), in the house next door is a young mom of two whose husband is an ass, and her mom is in a retirement facility nearby where we also meet some wonderfully interesting “swans”.

The book is just plain brilliant. I think it’s miss-titled but I can overlook that.  I’d like to own it. In fact, I think I’ll put it on my “this is what I want for my birthday list”.

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The Love Goddess’ Cooking School

2011, Books in Bed, Chick Lit, cookbooks, Favorites, Fiction, Women /

TW asked me why I was reading The Love Goddess’ Cooking School, like it wasn’t a book I’d like, or something. Weird because there was nothing about it that I didn’t like. I like food stories. I like a nice piece of chick lit. I like stories with good teen characters. I like stories with a little bit of magic tossed in.

TW said this book was like Sarah Addison Allen – she’s right. But I think it might be more like a cross between Sarah Addison Allen and Adriana Trigiani which means – you should read this one.

I wonder what happens next… sequel, please.

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Jeannie Out of the Bottle

2 Comments / 2011, Books in Bed, Favorites, Non-Fiction, Women /

Who knew Barbara Eden had been in so many movies and TV movies and stuff? I mean I knew she was a staple of my childhood but when I think Barbara Eden, I just think Jeannie.  OK I also vividly remember her on Dallas because that was kind of unforgettable. Reading Jeannie Out of the Bottle made me want to go back and watch some of these old movies and stuff.

If you grew up with Jeannie, read the book. It’s fun – except when it’s sad, of course.

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The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party

2011, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Women /

We love to listen to The Ladies #1 Detective Agency books on audio – and the timing of BlogHer Food ’11 and the latest book in the series, The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party was perfect. Until we hit the mountains of NC – when the disc started to skip.

TW cleaned the disk as best she could and put it in again – still skipping a little but we kept trying to listen to it until it skipped a lot. TW tried to clean the disk again but it was no use. We had to give up close to the end of the second to last disk. It was very sad.

When we got home, I used one of those disk cleaner thingies to clean all of the disks and kept my fingers crossed as we tried again. It worked! Well it still skipped a little on the last disk but not enough to worry about – and we made it all of the way through.

Thank goodness because the marriage of Grace and Phuti is important and we needed to know what happened to the shoes… and the tiny white van…  and the horrible person who harmed the good Botswana cattle!

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The Dry Grass of August

2011, Books in Bed, Favorites, Feminism, Fiction, Women /

TW read The Dry Grass of August last week and said it was excellent… I don’t always listen to her when she says these things but for some reason… I had a good feeling about this book. I’m damn glad I read it – excellent book. Southern family … with a black maid… in the 50’s. You know horrible things are going to happen, and they do, but most of the characters are pretty darn likeable and real.

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Kissing Babies at the Piggly Wiggly

2011, Books in Bed, Chick Lit, Fiction, Queer, Women /

Kissing Babies at the Piggly Wiggly was cute but not as cute as the first book. Probably because the Piggly Wiggly isn’t the Piggly Wiggly any longer so it’s not quite the same, ya know?  I’ll still read the third book but I kind of hope there aren’t any more after that – unless the Piggly Wiggly reopens as a Piggly Wiggly. But I doubt that’s going to happen.

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Girl in Translation

2011, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Women /

I was super excited to receive Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok as part of the new BlogHer BookClub. You can find my review here: Girl in Translation: The Strong May Choose Their Own Road. You should also check out the other reviews of Girl in Translation that were written by members of the BlogHer community and if you’ve read the book, visit our spoiler discussion to talk about that thing that we aren’t talking about in our reviews. Heh.

It was a great book and I look forward to reading Jean’s next book (which is not a sequel to Kimberly’s story but sounds very, very interesting just the same!)

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The Bird Sisters

2011, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Queer, Women /

The Bird Sisters was in my Evernote as “reserve this later” – well before later arrived, TW grabbed it from the shelf at the library. I growled a little because I was falling behind on reading and was afraid it would have to go back before I could get to it. And in fact, I ended up returning it late because once I started it, I couldn’t take it back. It was EXCELLENT.

I love Milly & Twiss. I even loved Bette – though it was hard there at the end. Very, very hard.

(And for those keeping track – this one has a wee bit of a lesbian theme tossed in.)

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Waltzing at the Piggly Wiggly

2011, Books in Bed, Chick Lit, Fiction, Women /

A few weeks ago, Sassymonkey mentioned the Piggly Wiggly series to me – it sounded vaguely familiar but I’ve never read them. Seemed like a good series for TW’s mom, so I grabbed the first one, Waltzing in the Piggly Wiggly, in large print… sure enough, she read it and loved it. Chuckled her way through it.  I read it next and it was certainly amusing but boy was there a lot of sex for a book about small town 50/60/70 year old widows in rural Mississippi! Sheesh.

I miss the Piggly Wiggly. No idea why, since my mother didn’t really shop there when I was a kid.

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