#readwomen2014: My favourites

Because I've been ridiculously caught up in organising the Valentine's Ninja Book Swap I somehow missed out on the #readwomen2014 thing that's been going on on Twitter. Not sure how I did that, but anyway I've done a little reading about it and it sounds brilliant! I know I read a fair amount of books by women anyway, but I feel that lately I spend a lot of time talking about sexism and inequality and that this would be something active to do. I came up with a little twitter list off the top of my head of female authors I'd recommend, but it got me wanting to go and look at my keeper shelf and see which women I actually love too much to part with.

The twitter list was as follows: Scarlett Thomas, Charlotte Bronte, Margaret Atwood, Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, Erin Morgenstern, Angela Carter.

Here's what my shelves say are my favourites:

1. Louisa May Alcott - no surprises here but I think everybody should probably read at least Little Women, if not the three sequels. Personally I love them all but I know that other people (hi Laura!) disagree! Little Women is the most comforting of all the books I own and I will never stop loving it. Her other books - that I've read so far anyway! - are also generally pretty good :-) 
2. Sarah Addison Allen - a discovery I made since I started blogging. Her books are lovely - full of magic and food and recipes (love a book with recipes) and women who are generally fairly awesome. They're kind of just about things that happen to people every day, but with a bit of magic thrown in, and gorgeous covers.
3. Kate Atkinson - just the Jackson Brodie books at the moment, but I'm sure that will change! I read Behind The Scenes at the Museum and although I can't now tell you what it was about I remember it being totally brilliant, because I found it on the 'literary fiction' shelf in my then local bookshop around the time when everybody was talking about how literary Ian McEwan (whose books I mostly hate, sorry) was and she is so much more accessible than him!!
4. Margaret Atwood - I have a lot on my TBR and have read a lot from the library, but The Handmaid's Tale and Alias Grace I had to go out and buy after I'd read them because they were just so good. I think Margaret Atwood might be the queen of clever, complex female characters and of exploring social issues through her fiction without making you feel like she's pushing her own agenda. 
5. Joanne Harris - again, lots of food and magic and generally awesome characters. I love her writing, and how strong but also flawed her female characters are. Vianne is great. 
6. Zoe Heller - I read Notes on a Scandal after seeing the film and immediately went and got her other books, because she is a writer who tells not so beautiful stories in a beautiful way. Definitely worth reading. 
7. Harper Lee - If you've read To Kill a Mockingbird I probably don't have to explain why she's here. If you haven't, go and do it now.
8.Jodi Picoult - In all honesty the reason I've kept so many of her books is because a lot of them have incredibly gripping storylines. Of late I've felt a bit like she gets carried away with whatever issue it is she's addressing in her books, but in the past the storyline was the thing. Particularly Plain Truth, Salem Falls and Mercy. 
9. J.K Rowling - she has a place on this list at the moment thanks to the awesome genius of Harry Potter. I've not yet read The Casual Vacancy or the other one (whose name currently escapes me) she published under a pen name, but I've heard mixed things about both of them. I will read them at some point, though, because I've always wondered if she's actually a good writer or just a woman who had a bloody brilliant idea. 
10. Scarlet Thomas - Scarlet Thomas is the writer I constantly recommend to people. If I had to pick one woman writer to recommend to people for the rest of all time, it would probably be her. I adore her books (except Bright Young Things which was only ok) because I relate so much to her characters and I love how they all have a science/maths/mystery type twist to them. She writes very clever fiction for the most part, and I look forward to everything she publishes. 
11. The Brontes - I know it's kind of awful and cheaty to put three great writers into one sentence, but actually I've only read one book by each of them (obviously there is only one book by Emily, but you know) at the moment, and of course I love Jane Eyre, but The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was so much better than I expected it to be and actually hilarious in places. Probably my favourite classic I've read recently. 
12. Erin Morgenstern - shouldn't probably be on here yet as she's only written one novel, but it was far and away the best novel I've read in the last two years. The Night Circus is brilliant and stunning and full of amazing magic. It makes you want to go and live there, no matter how many times you read it, and her description is so vivid you can almost smell the popcorn. 
13. J. Courtney Sullivan - I wasn't sure about putting her on here, but in the end I loved Maine so much I have to. She writes about relationships really, but generally the ones that get overlooked. Her latest novel, The Engagements was about a woman in advertising who writes the adverts for diamond engagement rings, while never actually getting married herself. Her stories are interesting, and usually not quite what you're expecting. 
14. Jane Austen - Because she has to be on here, really. I've enjoyed, at varying levels, all of her books, and Pride and Prejudice is probably one of my favourites. Unexpectedly I also really liked Emma. She isn't the greatest or my favourite, but she is undoubtedly a great female writer. 
15. Catherynne M. Valente - So far I've only read The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making and The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There but just wow. Such cool, quirky 'Alice in Wonderland' style stories, and I love September. I can't think of a stronger, cooler girl role model in kids fiction in recent years. 

So that's my list, and because I'm obsessed with lists I'm now going in search of lists of awesome books by women so that I can make yet more lists of things to read! What are your favourites? 

Some Thoughts about Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

Ok so to be honest my thoughts about Attachments are basically that I love it and it's the most awesome thing ever and I want to be all the characters.

So review done, that was easy!

In case any of you haven't read this awesomeness yet, here's the Goodreads synopsis:
"Hi, I'm the guy who reads your e-mail, and also, I love you . . . "

Beth Fremont and Jennifer Scribner-Snyder know that somebody is monitoring their work e-mail. (Everybody in the newsroom knows. It's company policy.) But they can't quite bring themselves to take it seriously. They go on sending each other endless and endlessly hilarious e-mails, discussing every aspect of their personal lives.

Meanwhile, Lincoln O'Neill can't believe this is his job now- reading other people's e-mail. When he applied to be "internet security officer," he pictured himself building firewalls and crushing hackers- not writing up a report every time a sports reporter forwards a dirty joke.

When Lincoln comes across Beth's and Jennifer's messages, he knows he should turn them in. But he can't help being entertained-and captivated-by their stories.

By the time Lincoln realizes he's falling for Beth, it's way too late to introduce himself.

What would he say . . . ?

I really don't know what to say about Attachments. It was lovely and so so sweet and uplifting and it's staying in my house forever, possibly right next to You've Got Mail and the Ben & Jerry's ice cream (which obviously don't actually all live together, but do on my imaginary 'happy shelf' in my mind). I think this post is going to have to go to bullet points before it completely drifts off into the realms of fantasy. 

• Even though it was told mostly in email/instant messaging format, which is a format which has annoyed me since adolescence, I still was instantly engaged in the story between Jennifer and Beth. Their friendship felt really real to me, like I know I've had friends like that in the past. 
• In the beginning I had a certain impression of Lincoln, but throughout the novel I changed my image of him several times, which was really great actually. He had a brilliant character evolution and I was really hoping everything would work out in his favour. 
• Nobody was perfect. Everybody was a little bit quirky and a little bit weird and it made them so much more likeable. 
• I don't want to ruin anything for anybody, but there is a discussion of how people feel about having children and I just loved the whole storyline relating to that. It was so real. 
• Although the ending was kind of exactly what I expected it was also not at all what I expected and that was my favourite, I think. 

I am immediately writing my name in the front cover of this and it is never leaving the house again just in case I need it!

Best Books of 2013

I have a slight problem with doing a 'Best Books of 2013' because I really don't believe that what Goodreads thinks I've read this year is the full total of everything I've actually read. As you may have noticed, my internet presence this year has been somewhat... sporadic this year and so I've only listed things as 'currently reading' on Goodreads when I remember to, thus I'm pretty sure some important stuff has been overlooked!

However, ignoring that I do just so happen to have exactly ten books on my Five Star list for 2013, and they are as follows (in kind of the order I read them):

1. Maus by Art Spiegelman (review) - Brilliant, quirky and very important. Awesome graphic novel which I should have read sooner. 
2. Wild by Cheryl Strayed (review) - The best memoir I've read in a while. Totally inspiring and beautifully written. I need to buy myself a copy so I can read it again. 
3. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor (review) - This was a re-read of a series that I thought was great as a child, and it really stood up to re-reading. Not easy reading because it's about difficult issues, but very well written and really well told. 
4. Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti (review) - Lots of people kind of hated this book, and I think having read their thoughts that it's probably worth a re-read because I tend to get carried away with people making points that are brilliant and which I agree with and gloss over the other stuff. That said, this book does make many brilliant and important points and has a lot of great reasons why feminism should be important to everyone. 
5. Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales edited by Melissa Marr & Tim Pratt (review) - This was a brilliantly timed arrival, as it turned up the day before we went to see Neil Gaiman, whose publicist is responsible for sending this collection to me, as he had written one of the stories in it, a retelling of Sleeping Beauty which was, of course, brilliant. There were a lot of stories in it which were particularly great and it was nice to read something which had some fairytales but also some other classic tales as well as some lesser known ones. 
6. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky - I never got around to reviewing this for some reason, I think because I loved it so much it was difficult to talk about it, and also probably because I watched (and also loved) the film at around the same time so it was a bit of an overload. I wish I had written about the book now because to be honest, the film is kind of overriding it in my head. All I really remember is that I prefered the ending of the film, which is totally ok to say when the director of the film is the guy who wrote the book, right? 
7. Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan (review) - I only read this a couple of weeks ago after picking it up on our epic book buying spree in Leeds, and it really didn't disappoint. It was full of awesome characters and didn't play out at all the way I thought it was going to. 
8. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell - Also didn't get around to writing about this, again because I was overwhelmed by the awesome. Eleanor and Park were both awesome, and it was so well written and beautiful and the ending was totally not what I expected. Loved it. 
9. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (review) - If I had to pick a favourite book of the year, just one, this would be it. It's my favourite of his books as well I think, and basically it's just beautiful and brilliant and you should all read it. 
10. Attachments by Rainbow Rowell - Yes I did just put The Ocean at the End of the Lane in the middle so you wouldn't notice there are two Rainbow Rowell books on this list, but I just finished Attachments and I adored it. Such awesome, gorgeous, quirky characters who I totally love now, and such a lovely, romantic, unusual plot. Rowell for the win. 

An an honourable mention needs to go to This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz, which has to be the cleverest and most beautiful collection of short stories I've read this year. 

So there's that. This post took me a looooong time to write as I've been totally flat out with a horrendous cold/flu type thing and unable to take anything for congestion or do much about my horrible cough except drink honey and lemon :-( Once I've recovered I hope to be back to blogging more regularly!

Review: - How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran

I'm back! Second post this week, and I'm very excited despite the fact that blogging is now actually costing me money as in order to access the Starbucks interwebs, I have to buy a tea first. Although tea is never a bad thing, it costing me £3 (I always end up having a cake of some sort too...) a go, is. Anyway! Aside from that, I'm really excited about this book.

I’ve read a lot of reviews of How to be a Woman; some loved it, some hated it. From reading these reviews I thought I’d probably love it, and I was so right. How to be a Woman is Caitlin Moran’s autobiography; it is also an acerbically funny look at feminism and the things that make it necessary. I won’t ramble on and on about this book – it doesn’t need me to. Moran discusses candidly all the horrible squeamish bits of being a woman that nobody ever talks about, unless they are very very drunk. She managed to make me squirm in disgust and have a very public giggling fit within the space of five minutes, and I came away from the book feeling like I’d learned a lot. Having grown up with four sisters in the kind of family where you never ever talked about the gross stuff, except by using vague shrugging gestures in the place of the thing you were actually talking about, maybe I just loved this book because it told me all the things nobody else had, and by this I don’t mean that I’ve managed to reach the age of 24 without knowing about periods or where babies come from, but just that it was amazing (and disgusting) for me to read a book that talked about all the horrible bits of childbirth as well as the awesomesauce stuff.

Here is the bit that made me laugh for a full five minutes, and then periodically throughout the day whenever I remembered it. Customers thought I was weeeeeeird that day!

 “Caz gets horrific cramps- she spends her periods in the bedroom with the curtains drawn, covered in hot water bottles, shouting ‘Fuck off’ at anyone who tries to come into the room. As part of being a hippy, my mother doesn’t ‘believe’ in pain-killers, and urges us to research herbal remedies. We read that sage is supposed to help, and sit in bed eating handfuls of sage and onion stuffing, crying. Neither of us can believe that we’re going to have to put up with this for the next 30 years.” (p20)

I have so much love, and as I’m totally hating my current rating system for books, I’m going to go with ‘this is a book that I really enjoyed, and will be keeping forever and re-reading, and recommending to absolutely everyone I can find’. Well done, Ms Moran, you are totally hilarious.

Maybe I’m just a weirdo, but it struck a chord with me, and I’ll be recommending this book to everyone I come across in the foreseeable future, whether they be male or female. Most of the men I know would benefit just as much as the women from reading about how difficult it is for a woman to know what to call her breasts and other such things.

Review: Apple Bough & When the Siren Wailed

Apple Bough  was my absolute favourite book for a while, when I was around 8. I used to borrow it from my school library over and over again, until they made me let somebody else have a turn. It is the most comforting, reassuring book I can think of, and rereading it didn't disappoint me.

Apple Bough is a big, old house, with an overgrown garden. The kind of house that's a bit dilapidated, a bit the worse for wear, kind of like the threadbare teddy you've had forever, whose ear is falling off because you cuddled him too much. It is home to the Forum children: Myra, Sebastian, Wolfgang, and Ethel, and their parents. When Sebastian is eight, he gets noticed as a child prodigy violinist, and all of the children have to go on tour with him. Apple Bough is sold, and the children become 'world citizens'.

Basically, the book is about children who want a home. The obstacle to this is that all of the younger children are extraordinarily talented: Sebastian a violinist, Wolfgang an actor and wannabe writer of pop songs, and Ethel a dancer. What Streatfeild does so well here, as in so much of her work, is to present the plight of the child who believes herself to be completely untalented and worthless.

There's a huge wish fulfilment quality in Streatfeild's work, and the endings are almost always happy. Of the novels that I've read so far, the ones that I adore the most are the ones with the most fantastically impossible happy endings; the kind of endings you always want in reality, and only ever get in books. This is still one of my absolute favourite books, ever.

Rating: *****

When the Siren Wailed

I thought that I hadn't read this book, but when I got about half way through, I realised that I had. And there's a reason why I didn't remember it. It's the first Noel Streatfeild book I've read that was only OK. It's set in the Second World War, and if I'm honest, the central characters, Laura, Andy and Tim Clarke, reminded me a lot of the children from Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks. I do want to just point out that I totally love Bedknobs and Broomsticks, but the children in it, as they do here, feel a bit like caricatures. There was no central character to immediately fall in love with, and for me that was a huge loss to the story.

This book had none of the comfort and charm of Apple Bough, and, reading it directly after the other, that bothered me. For me, the major charm of Streatfeild's work is the satisfaction of children who have big dreams, managing to find a way to make them come true, and that was missing here. I've read a lot of literature, both now and as a kid, about the war, and while it's always been a subject that's interested me, and I do feel it's particularly important for kids to learn about the things that happened then, 8 year old me wishes that Noel Streatfeild, for me the queen of safe, comforting, uplifting and inspiring books which make children feel they can do anything, hadn't ventured into this kind of subject.

Rating: ***



White Boots and Dancing Shoes, by Noel Streatfeild

For a while, I've wondered why it is that Noel Streatfeild writes so much about 'shoes', and about children in the showbusiness and entertainment worlds, and then I discovered that she was an actress herself, before becoming a writer. For me, the worlds conjured up by her books were always hugely vivid, and on re-reading them, I was not disappointed. As an adult (supposedly, anyway!) reading Streatfeild's work is as delicious and comforting as it was when I was eight, and I think that this is a product of her consistency and attention to detail, coupled with her ability to create characters who resonate with her readers.

My copy of 'White Boots' is absolutely ancient! It may well have belonged to my mother in her youth, and I certainly remember first having this copy read to me as a bedtime story, many years ago. In comparison, the copy of 'Dancing Shoes that I have is one of the re-released ones, with the very girly pink covers, which makes it look like an Angelina Ballerina book! Subject-wise, though, the books are very similar, probably unsurprisingly, given their respective publication dates of 1951 and 1957.

'White Boots' is about Hilary Johnson, a girl from a poor family, whose doctor prescribes that she go skating as a way to build up her strength after a long illness. At the rink, she meets Lalla Moore, a girl whose father was a skating world champion, and since his death, her aunt has convinced her, and everyone around her, that she will follow in his footsteps. The book follows the story of their friendship, and not only the differences between being rich and poor, but the advantages money can bring as well as highlighting the emptiness it can cause in the life of an only child.

'Dancing Shoes' also highlights social inequality, as well as sharing the sort of morals present in lots of Streatfeild's books; that people who are nice usually get good things happening to them. It has similarites to 'Ballet Shoes', which is a book I love!

It is about orphaned Rachel Lennox, and her adopted sister Hilary. After their mother's death, they are brought to live with their aunt and uncle, and spoiled cousin, Dulcie. Simply put, Dulcie is the star of her mother's dancing school, and really doesn't like it when Hilary turns out to be as good as her. Again, this is basically the story of the relationship between Rachel and Hilary, and about people getting their just deserts.

Streatfeild has a way of describing things exactly as you can imagine a child of the time might, and this, as well as the wish-fulfillment quality of her storylines, where her characters always end up getting the thing they have worked and hoped for, is what makes me love her books. I could keep reading them forever, but I feel that I need to stretch my brain a bit after three of her books in a row, so I'll take a break for now, but there's a pile of her books in the corner which will be calling out to me before long!!

Rating: both *****

Wonderful Wednesdays: Favourite Childhood Book

Little Women by Louisa Alcott



I was having a slight problem with this topic, as I have several books that I absolutely loved as a child, but after much careful thought, I decided that I'd have to go with Little Women, by Louisa M Alcott. I doubt there are many people who don't know about Little Women, but at the same time, I don't think there are too many who feel quite the way I do about it.

For me it's not only my favourite childhood book, but one of my favourite books of all time. I call it my antidepressant, as every time I'm feeling particularly down or uninspired I'll start reading the series and not stop until I'm cheered up, and so far, through biannual readings for the last fifteen years, it hasn't let me down once.

The reason I've picked it as my favourite childhood book though, is that it's the first time that I remember reading a book from cover to cover in one sitting. It was summer, as I was sat on our back doorstep, and it took me two hours to read the whole thing. When I got up I couldn't feel my legs anymore. Being brought up in a Christian household, I think that my sisters and I had a lot in common with Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March, and as a young child I used to use the book as a model for my own life. I think to some extent, I still do. I know that it's all very quaint, reading about girls who basically just want to be good, and who are very domestic and content to stay home with their parents until a nice young man comes to marry them, but, after years of struggling against it, I've come to accept that maybe that's a big part of who I am as well. As a child, I used to see the girls from the book as very individual and independent, as they are all very much their own people and have their own aspirations beyond wanting homes and families, and although my feminist tendencies have, on occassion, made me keep quiet about my love of this book, I've decided it's time for this to change.

Following reading it, I always have a hugely industrious fit and start embroidering tablecloths or making curtains and suchlike. The most recent reading spurred an obsession with self-sufficiency, which led to me buying a bunch of half price vegetable seeds to grow in the summer. To sum up, reading it, for me, creates only good things and always has done. It makes me happy, motivated, and energised, and so I've decided that in return for this favour, I'll stop being ashamed that it is my favourite!

I'm going to put in a short blurb about it, in case there's anyone who doesn't know the basic storyline, which I have, as usual, failed to even slightly outline in my ramblings!
This is what Goodreads have to say about it, and that's basically all there is to it:

Little Women is the heartwarming story of the March family that has thrilled generations of readers. It is the story of four sisters--Jo, Meg, Amy and Beth-- and of the courage, humor and ingenuity they display to survive poverty and the absence of their father during the Civil War.

Wonderful Wednesdays is a new meme hosted by Sam @ Tiny Library