must read books – EcoSalon

From Chick Lit to Victim Books: Problems with the Woman’s Book Club

Luanne Bradley — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 23:13:09 +0000

What came first, the depressing women’s book clubs or the morbid books?

Remember the trances and travels afforded by pleasure reading? You couldn’t wait to lose yourself in the next chapter of that murder mystery, royal court espionage or love tryst – you were a voracious reader who deeply mourned the loss of your new character friends once the final page was devoured and downloaded into your fiber.

But somehow, that pleasure has become elusive to the women’s book group, the reading less an armchair cruise than an academic grind. The inevitable prerequisite is the agreed-upon selections must be meaty enough to spark evocative feedback for eloquent sharing round the coffee table. As a result, our picks are highly wrought works of historic, political or cultural significance perpetually mired in sadness. Or, as a fellow member recently commiserated, “Can’t we move on from the holocaust and women in pain?”

“People going through misery, the good women and bad men dynamic – that was an Oprah thing,” observes Bill Dito, an employee of the popular Books Inc. shop in San Francisco, where staff specialists write their own book reviews for customers. He has a bird’s eye view of the victim trend in fiction the last decade, one that has forced us to endure an excruciating trip through a time machine or suffer female bondage of one brand or another – which only further marginalizes us as women.

Then there is the entire cottage industry one might call “victim books” from rape to exploitation to the toast of the Oprah Book Club, author Wally Lamb with big guns like Couldn’t Keep it to Myself: Wally Lamb and the Women of York Correctional Institution. In the collection described as both utterly depressing and a real page turner, inmates describe in their own words, tales of abuse, rejection, self-destructive impulses long before they entered the criminal justice system. This followed other works like She’s Come Undone and Drowning Ruth – bereft titles that speak for themselves.

When The Color Purple and Joy Luck Club came out, they were rare rather than part of a steady diet of underdog angst and could be easily digested. Now, the question remains: Are there any other stories being told?

“As someone who has written about ‘women in pain,’ women dealing with the death of a child, for example, I think that the premise of your question is problematic,” novelist Ayelet Waldman tells me. “All interesting stories are about someone in crisis – in ‘pain’ if you will. Who wants to read about happy people doing happy things? Story is conflict, conflict is story. The Corrections was about people in crisis. Does that fall into your category of ‘victim-literature?’ If it doesn’t, then I think you should take a good look at the question you’re asking, and consider whether it isn’t inherently sexist.”

When she puts it that way, I do feel I’m turning my back on the movement. Men deal in pain, too, as she aptly points out. The Kite Runner was all about the pain.

The fact is I cherish my women’s book group and our time reviewing, catching up, sipping wine and grazing on grapes and cheese. But it is time to lighten up, or at least look around. Even read about happy things. So sue me. Can’t drama tinged with humor a la Capote, Sedaris and McInerney be book group material? We have even drifted from titillating historic fiction such as Phillipa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl series.

I’d like to shirk my duty to remember and never forget (Sarah’s Key, The Invisible Bridge, The Book Thief, Jacob’s Courage, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society). I’ve hit my saturation point for the empathy we must extend to our unfortunate, ill-fated sisters still under tutelage of warlords, meddling Indian parents or Southern patriarchs (Little Bee, Sister of My Heart, Shanghai Girls, Secret Life of Bees, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Eat, Pray Love, Life of Venus, Cutting for Stone).

How might it be different if men were members? I have no idea, since I have only belonged to all women book groups.

In my group, which focuses on contemporary fiction, it would appear the lists are stocked with Sophie’s choices – just as films have waves like the one witnessed in 2008 with an abundance of Third Reich themes: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The Reader, Valkyrie, Adam Resurrected. The onslaught had New York Times contributor A.O. Scott questioning the trend, as I have questioned my book group’s thematic selections:

“The near-simultaneous appearance of all these movies is to some degree a coincidence, but it throws into relief the curious fact that early 21st-century culture, in Europe and America, on screen and in books, is intensely, perhaps morbidly preoccupied with the great political trauma of the mid-20th century,” he wrote. “The number of Holocaust-related memoirs, novels, documentaries and feature films in the past decade or so seems to defy qualification, and their proliferation raises some uncomfortable questions: Why are there so many? Why now?”

I can’t say I don’t glean knowledge, picking up more details than what I acquired or remember as a history major in college or as an impressionable kid at Communist Jewish summer camp exposed to the soul-flogging images in films like, Let My People Go, the 1965 story of Israel containing graphic footage of the remains of my ancestors being scooped up from piles at the camps after liberation. It was important to watch. Nonetheless, I wanted to run back to the arts and crafts table and make another God’s Eye.

Sarah’s Key informed me of the French betrayal and the Vichy collaboration and the wrenching view from the eyes of a child; The Invisible Bridge eloquently told the Hungarian artisan’s story of survival. And the highly literary, exquisite novel, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, allowed me to visit the British Isles during occupation where defiant members of a book group take great risks to meet and eat and break German curfews.

I benefited from all of these reads, but aren’t we ready for an expanded library, a richer experience?

“My in laws came from Poland and Hungary and they ask me about the books we read, but they can never read them and have no interest in going near them,” says another member of my group. I get it. While I didn’t live it, my grandmother was the only one of seven children in her family to escape and survive the Polish slaughter.

While I identified strongly with Jonathan Saffran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated – which recounted one man’s yearnings for his ancestors’ experience of being hidden from the Nazis in a uniquely entertaining voice – I struggle with each depiction of the hiding like animals in the woods, the mashing like cattle into jam-packed train cars, the starvation, the fear, the digging of their own graves before dropping into them. No wonder we found relief in the uber-violent Inglorious Bastards.

The same frustration is suffered in the downtrodden female tales, which produced two centuries after Jane Austen, rarely offer a happy mid-18th century way out via a beneficial marriage around the maypole or sudden death of a piggish heir. Instead, we find ourselves steeped in the relentless bellicosity of the neanderthals entrapping them, classic male withholders of the basic needs we women require to thrive: love, money, property, liberty, suffrage and great sex after 50.

Why now are we spending our free time moaning vicariously in wartime hellishness or flinching through a deranged arranged marriage when we could cuddle up in bed on a Sunday with a steamy romance epic, bone-chilling murder mystery or a young professional’s playful romp working at a style magazine or publishing house or paying dues in some hick town? Now that is chick-lit I can wrap my overloaded, burned-out brain around – reads that I won’t equate with the daily drudgery of paying bills and managing schedules.

If we must endure yet fresh pain, perhaps it might be framed not in 20th century Europe but, say, 21st century New Orleans, as in Dave Eggers’s Zeitoun. At least, as in The Help and Eat Pray Love, it is fresh stuff chronicling our own times. The Depression-era Water for Elephants, too, provided a historic perspective while still offering something totally new in the journey of a would-be vet who joins the circus. It certainly wasn’t free of struggling female characters, but the suffering didn’t dominate the theme and the redemption was a gift.

The same dearth of freshness clearly exists in in play writing, as well. How else can you explain the barrage of revivals in the last decade? If I see an ad for Annie Get Your Gun one more time, I’ll shoot myself and take Wild Bill with me. It’s the old Disney strategy of when in doubt, produce a remake or sequel. And novelists suffer from the same syndrome by focusing on what sells.

Perhaps one remedy would be to not rely solely on the New York Times lists and peruse book stores for the employee recommendations. Oftentimes, you will find sparkling little stories that didn’t cut the mustard with the corporate giant, but are worthwhile nonetheless.

“We pick and choose ones we want to read and then write it up if we like it and also accept customer reviews,” explains Dito. “You would be amazed how many people come in here to look at our reviews. That’s why there is a need for book stores. You can’t talk to someone from Amazon.”

Among the Books Inc. favorites: Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard (author of The River of Doubt ) which examines the the madness, medicine and murder of James A. Garfield; The Elegance of the Hedgehog a quirky French story by Muriel Barbery; The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell, focusing on a war-ravaged Dutch East Indies company; and Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, a romantic Japanese woman’s coming of age.

Another staff reviewer, Chris Lutes, adds that there are certainly a plethora of Third Reich era reads such as Laura Hiderbrand’s World War II survivor dramas including the recently acclaimed Unbroken. But there are plenty of alternatives worth book club consideration.

“It was a pretty trying time in history so it’s easy to revisit because even though we are removed from that drama there is such humanity to those stories and it’s easy for people to get into that mindset. Still it’s staggering how many books are published each month – so there’s a lot of other stuff out there,” he says.

Images: imdb; Skinny Chronicles, shutterhacks; Squidoo

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Slideshow: 15 Eco Fashion Books We Love

Amy DuFault — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 19:02:48 +0000

There are many levels of eco-fashion at this point in the game. So many people are trying to make us understand why we should support it, what we shouldn’t buy and what we should. Then there is the ultimate question of whether the very notion of eco-fashion is a paradox itself?

Honestly, there are times when I too feel like taking a happy pill to get away from it all but the only way to be a part of it is to be educated. So don’t stop now.

These 15 books will take you down many interesting roads on your journey. Be open to it.

1. Eco Fashion

Eco Fashion by Sass Brown

“This book shows the range of companies making a difference in the area of sustainable design in fashion, exploding the myth that sustainable design is bad design, or at best basic design, by highlighting the range of companies producing desirable and well-designed apparel and accessories with a conscience. It not only demonstrates the range of products available around the globe, but explains the stories behind them and the communities they support, as well as showing how and where they make a difference.” – Laurence King Publishing

2. Future Fashion White Papers

Future Fashion White Papers by Earth Pledge

“A collection of 30 compelling essays by scientists, retailers, farmers, dyers, models and others in the industry, including Diane von Furstenberg, Julie Gilhart, and Shalom Harlow. FutureFashion White Papers take an in-depth look at the fashion industry and provides a thoughtful, wide-ranging analysis of how a transition to sustainability can be achieved. Diane von Furstenberg notes: ‘FutureFashion White Papers is an exploration that signifies movement towards a more sustainable fashion industry. It is an opportunity to think about and evaluate the fashion industry as it stands today’.” – Earth Pledge

3. The Eco-chick Guide to Life

The Eco-chick Guide To Life by Starre Vartan

“Every now and then, someone comes along who shows the rest of us how much we take for granted the freedoms of our daily lives. The eco-journalist, blogger and all-around green genie Starre Vartan is one such person. In The Eco Chick Guide to Life, her earth-first program for glamorous but environmentally conscious living, she mines new lodes of guilt, finding gems of awareness and providing detailed eco-wise shopping guides for the body, the closet, the home and the larder.” – The New York Times

4. DIY Fashion

DIY Fashion by Selena Francis-Bryden

“DIY Fashion is a cool, quirky, and creative guide to making and customizing your own clothes, bags, and accessories. It contains more than 40 thrifty, sustainable, and stylish projects, none of which require prior skill or a sewing machine. From customized hand-me-downs to elegant evening wear, the book is packed with ideas that the reader can adapt to their own taste.” – Amazon

5. Eco-Chic, The Fashion Paradox

Eco-Chic, The Fashion Paradox by Sandy Black

“Sandy Black has divided the book into four chapters: The Greening of the Fashion Industry, Re-Designing Fashion, Fibre to Fabric and Fabric to Fashion. In the first chapter she has profiled six of the most influential players in the UK ethical fashion industry: the inimitable Lynda Grose, the pioneering Fair Trade label People Tree, the mainstream advocates Marks and Spencer, the long-term campaigner Katharine Hamnett and the style leader Sarah Ratty of Ciel. By choosing these six profiles to feature at the beginning of the book Sandy Black has very quickly laid out the complex territory on which the battle for ethical fashion must be fought.” – Treehugger

6. Green Is The New Black

Green Is The New Black-How To Change The World With Style by Tamsin Blanchard

“Tamsin Blanchard is a journalist and writer. Since 2005, she has been the Telegraph Magazine’s style director. Before that she wrote about fashion and interiors for The Observer, and spent three years as The Independent‘s fashion editor. She is contributing fashion editor to the V&A Magazine, and a sometime contributing editor to 10 Magazine. She has also written for Vogue, Marie Claire, US Harper’s Bazaar, and The Daily Rubbish. In the late Nineties, she co-founded “˜it’ a luxury boxed magazine for fashion, art and design. She has taught fashion journalism at Central Saint Martins and University of Westminster and is currently an external assessor at London College of Fashion.”

With a foreword by Lily Cole, and lots of contributions from designers and eco experts, it is an entertaining, inspiring guide on how to be fashionably green. – www.tamsin blanchard.com

7. Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys

Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys by Kate Fletcher

“Kate Fletcher is a practitioner and academic who has been working in the field of sustainable fashion for the last 15 years: she has recently become Reader in Sustainable Fashion at London College of Fashion. Her consultancy within the fashion industry, coupled with her educational experience, makes her uniquely well qualified to write this much-needed text. Fletcher, who has helped to develop the concept of “˜slow fashion’, is at the center of research in this area and calls upon both established texts such as McDonough and Braungart’s Cradle to Cradle and recent research from a wide variety of sources, including her own, to support her writing. The quality of research is high.” – Oxford Art Journal

8. Eco Chic: The Savvy Shoppers Guide to Ethical Fashion

Eco Chic: The Savvy Shoppers Guide to Ethical Fashion by Matilda Lee

“The hottest trend on the catwalk is ethical clothing. Top fashion designers and spokes models including Katharine Hamnett, Stella McCartney and Bono’s wife Ali Hewson are all voicing the benefits of eco chic. But what is this new fad, and what difference can it make to the world? “Eco Chic” gives you the full story on this fashion phenomenon, from which fabrics are harmful to the environment, to how you can create your own eco-friendly fashions through recycling and savvy shopping. You will discover how to spot and avoid garments produced in sweatshops and why supermarket ‘fast clothes’ make both you and the planet sick. This book will allow you to look great but also feel good about your impact on other people and the planet as a whole.” – Amazon

9. Designers, Visionaries and Other Stories: A Collection of Sustainable Design Essays

Designers, Visionaries and Other Stories: A Collection of Sustainable Design Essays by Jonathan Chapman and Nick Gant

“Designers, Visionaries and Other Stories boldly presents alternative understandings of sustainable design, to curate a challenging, sometimes uncomfortable and always provocative, collection of essays by some of the world’s leading sustainable design thinkers. The result is an authoritative anthology that reinvigorates the culture of critique that in previous years has empowered design with the qualities of social, environmental and economic revolution.” – Earthscan

10. The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy

The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power and Politics of World Trade by Pietra Rivoli

-¦a readable and evenhanded treatment of the complexities of world trade”¦ As Rivoli repeatedly makes clear, there is absolutely nothing free about free trade except the slogan.” – San Francisco Chronicle

11. Threads of Labour

Threads of Labour: Garment Industry Supply Chains from the Worker’s Perspective by Angela Hale and Jane Wills

“This book gives valuable insights for decision-makers in international clothing brands. Read it and learn how garment workers worldwide are affected by the sub-contracted manufacturing that characterizes this industry.” – Dan Rees, Director of the Ethical Trading Initiative

12. Eco Colour: Botanical Dyes for Beautiful Textiles

Eco Colour: Botanical Dyes for Beautiful Textiles by India Flint

“The essence of plants bursts forth in magnificent hues and surprising palettes. Using dyes of the leaves, roots, and flowers to color your cloth and yarn can be an amazing journey into botanical alchemy. In Eco Colour, artistic dyer and colorist India Flint teaches you how to cull and use this gentle and ecologically sustainable alternative to synthetic dyes.

India explores the fascinating and infinitely variable world of plant color using a wide variety of techniques and recipes. From whole-dyed cloth and applied color to prints and layered dye techniques, India describes only ecologically sustainable plant-dye methods. She uses renewable resources and shows how to do the least possible harm to the dyer, the end user of the object, and the environment. Recipes include a number of entirely new processes developed by India, as well as guidelines for plant collection, directions for the distillation of nontoxic mordants, and methodologies for applying plant dyes.” – Amazon

13. Green Chic: Saving the Earth in Style

Green Chic: Saving the Earth in Style by Christie Matheson

“Matheson slyly steers us toward consumer goods and services that minimize our earth-stomping human footprint. She’s brave enough to say ‘buy less of everything,’ and even the politically fraught ‘buy nothing.’ Matheson’s genius is to make this seem not only doable, but fun.” – Elizabeth Royte, author of Garbage Land and Bottlemania

14. Sustainable Fashion: Why Now?

Sustainable Fashion: Why Now? A Conversation Exploring Issues, Practices and Possibilities by Janet Hethorn and Connie Ulasewicz

“Sustainable Fashion: Why Now? is a critical read for anyone with ties to the fashion industry: designers, marketers, product developers, retailers, teachers, students, and consumers that want to become involved with balancing the fashion desires of the individual with the need to be a steward of our environment.” – Fashion Practice

15. Fugitive Denim

Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade by Rachel Louise Snyder

“Smart and ambitious, cosmopolite journalist Snyder maps the global garment industry, beginning in a New York loft where designers plot a line of ultra-pricey, socially responsible jeans that would ensure a fair wage for workers and not cause excessive environmental degradation. From there she visits cotton growers in Azerbaijan, denim specialists in Italy and factories in Cambodia and China. An excellent reporter, Snyder talks comfortably to both sophisticated designers and factory workers, conveying their very different motives as she paints a picture of an industry far more tangled than most consumers imagine. She notes that economic and employment shifts are felt globally, describing Italy mourning the loss of manufacturing to cheaper factories in Asia, where low-paying jobs represent unprecedented opportunity to many workers. If the prose occasionally verges on cuteness, it’s preferable to the jargon of quotas and NGOs ubiquitous in most discussions of global trade. Snyder’s investigation is an essential read for those curious about fashion or the globe-spanning business that produces their clothes.” – Publisher’s Weekly

Photo credit: Book pages by Horia Varlan on Flickr, licensed for commercial use under Creative Commons.

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Women’s Roundup, Hear Us Roar

Kim Derby — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 19:23:36 +0000

Rather than raise our voices, we girls at EcoSalon prefer to write about it, because if you need to scream, my guess is you aren’t so certain what you have to say is worth hearing.

And really, who wants to hear a grown woman roar?

In the past few months at EcoSalon, women have taken center stage with subjects ranging from brazen to, well, more brazen. If only we could change the world with our steadfast, unwavering commitment to talking about what matters.

Oh yeah, we are.

So what have we been discussing lately with regards to women? The question should be, what haven’t we?

We talked about getting older – why welcoming 30 and reaching for 40 with gusto is a reason to celebrate. Although with age comes the need to decide short versus long…hair, that is.

Is there ever a good time to talk about infertility? But we did. Then we tossed around the wild proposition that we don’t need a baby to feel happy and fulfilled. The horror! Which brings us to contraception and the dirty, sexy pill.

While we’re on the subject of sex, we want our cake, and to eat it too. I mean, why should we have to choose?

Speaking of choices, why are being pretty and smart mutually exclusive? We can have it all! Right?

Wrong. It’s time to face the cold, hard truth. Our fantasy lover is not showing up to sweep us off our feet, because he doesn’t exist. Reality checks can be so annoying.

And so is the office flirt who makes her way to the top using her sexy. But it seems she’ll pay the price once she gets there.

Sticks and stones – but names can be controversial. Gal, chick, girl, lady or ma’m? You decide.

And finally, it’s a relief to know that there are at least nine things we don’t need in order to be happy, and that after all this talk, a little silence and a good book can be a girl’s best friend.

Images: squacco, sleepishly, Vivian Chen, quinn.anya, Samdogs

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20 Must Read Books for Women

Katherine Butler — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 23:56:28 +0000

For some people, a good book makes life better. It’s that excited feeling of discovery that usually hits somewhere around the first chapter – you’ve found a page turner, and you’re not going to stop until you’re finished. A good book means you get to step away from the computer, hang your feet over the edge of a chair, and lose yourself completely for as long as you can spare.

The only problem? Sometimes, it is finding the next book. We’ve already rounded up 28 books that will forever change how you see the world, eco fashion books we love and the best books for your home.

This list of our favorite tomes is compiled for the modern woman and those who admire her. Inspired by our friends at The Art of Manliness, check out the texts that helped to shape our lives and easy chairs.

The Awakening by Kate Chopin Kate Chopin’s 1899 masterpiece tells the tale of Edna Pontellier, a wealthy Creole woman lost in her own search for meaning. Chopin’s heroine who eschewed convention so disturbed critics that the novel was banished for decades, only to be revived during the modern feminist movement. Simply, it is exquisite.

Beloved by Toni Morrison Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for literature, Morrison’s classic looks at antebellum slavery, motherhood, and racism through a dense and complex web of subtle revelation. We follow the tale of Sethe, a former slave, who slowly gives up her horrifying past in a way that will stay with you for a long time.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood In the Republic of Gilead, once the United States, the extreme right has massacred Congress and is in control. Women are unable to read, hold jobs, or even have their own name. You are a chaste Wife, a domestic Martha, or a Handmaid – and your sole purpose in life is to bear children you will hand over immediately after birth. Feminist nightmare? Definitely. A must-read? Absolutely.

Ines of My Soul by Isabele Allende As Bookmarks Magazine writes of this novel, “If Inés of My Soul isn’t among Isabel Allende’s best novels, it still tells a remarkable, ambitious, and heretofore untold story about one of the first female conquistadors of the New World. Allende finds so many surreal subplots in Inés’s own story that the author’s imagination, rather than magical realism, prevails in her attempt to recreate the 16th-century Americas.”

Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi Faludi argues that women in the 1980s were the victim of a powerful backlash against the 1970s feminist movement. Publisher’s Weekly says “this eloquent, brilliantly argued book should be read by everyone concerned about gender equality.”

Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation by Leora Tanenbaum Tanenbaum compiles a revealing look at slut-shaming through several first-person narratives, all detailing how 50 different women survived shaming in a world ripe with double standards. As one reviewer put it, “Her social critique is solid, but it’s the personal accounts of emotional abuse – and, thankfully, perseverance – that will thoroughly convince you that the current tolerance of slut bashing is simply unacceptable.”

Eat Pray Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert Love her or hate her, Elizabeth Gilbert knows how to pull you in. At the age of 31, Gilbert swaps a husband and life in the suburbs for adventure and east in Italy and beyond. It’s a funny, relatable tale of a woman’s search for self-discovery. And the best part? No one has to die for it in the end.

Intercourse by Andrea Dworkin Germaine Greer called this “The most shocking book any feminist has yet written.” Dworkin looks at sexual intercourse as a tool of societal oppression and declares women are less able to “assert their humanity” because of the breaching of boundaries during the act of sex. It is alternately extremely controversial and absorbing.

Living My Life by Emma Goldman This one review says it all: “Forget all those New Left memoirs: for readers who want to know what it is to be a revolutionary in America, this is the book to read. At the turn of the 20th century, Emma Goldman (1869-1940) was probably the most hated woman in her adopted country. (She emigrated from Russia at age 17.) It was bad enough that she was an anarchist, accused of complicity in the 1901 assassination of President McKinley. But her vehement espousal of women’s rights, including birth control, really enraged upright citizens.” And then there’s more…

“The Laugh of the Medusa” by Hélène Cixous Cixous is considered a mother of post-structural feminist theory. In her essay “The Laugh of Medusa,” she writes: “Woman must write herself: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies. Écriture féminine places experience before language, and privileges the anti-linear, cyclical writing so often frowned upon by patriarchal society.”

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank Anne Frank’s intensely moving account of her rise into womanhood while hiding with her family from Nazi Germany is not only a memorial to the Holocaust, but a testament to the strength and grace of the human spirit.

Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by Bell Hooks Hooks looks at the history of black women from the seventeenth century onwards and how they have been oppressed by men and white women alike. As one critic writes, “Illustrating her analysis with moving personal accounts, Ain’t I a Woman is deeply critical of the racism inherent in the thought of many middle-class white feminists who have failed to address issues of race and class.”

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton Wharton’s Lily Bart lives in New York City during the Gilded Age, but she finds life amongst convention and appearances to be her greatest struggle. As Wharton writes, Bart lives “as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the drawing room.” Her fall from grace from a world built on superficial conformity and double standard reflects the narrow confines of womanhood of the time.

Crescent: A Novel by Diane Abu-Jaber As one reviewer writes, “Abu-Jaber (Arabian Jazz) weaves the story of a love affair between a comely chef and a handsome, haunted Near Eastern Studies professor together with a fanciful tale of a mother’s quest to find her wayward son in this beautifully imagined and timely novel, which explores private emotions and global politics with both grace and conviction.” Others call it “a positive relief to read a novel that treats Iraqis as real people.”

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen 1811. Two sisters, two ways of looking at the world. There’s dashing men, English countryside, and expensive pianofortes. Need we say more?

Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant by Andrea Dworkin Legendary feminist Andrew Dworkin shares the account of her “political formation.” If you want to see what makes a modern-day feminist and anti-pornographer, then pick up her tome.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See Set in 19th-century China, See’s graceful novel tells the story of Snow Flower and Lily, lifelong friends bound together by the strict conventions places on women of this time. It reveals nu shu, which is a secret written phonetic code among women. And it leads the reader most vividly through the excruciating process of foot binding, where the idea of “you must suffer for beauty” takes on a whole new meaning.

Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher As Publisher’s Weekly writes, “From her work as a psychotherapist for adolescent females, Pipher here posits and persuasively argues her thesis that today’s teenage girls are coming of age in a girl-poisoning culture. Backed by anecdotal evidence and research findings, she suggests that, despite the advances of feminism, young women continue to be victims of abuse, self-mutilation, and consumerism and media pressure to conform to others’ ideals.” A must-read for anyone who knows a young girl.

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez As one review wrote, “Reading this book was like talking to the friend that went on the same trip as you, only the week before.” Alvarez’s tale tells the story of four Dominican daughters in exile in New York City and how they rebel against the older generation.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott Alcott’s classic tells the tale of four other American daughters, but these live in mid 19th-century New England. Epitomizing the four tropes of womanhood, timely yet still applicable today, are Domestic Meg, Independent Jo, Angel Beth, and Artistic Amy. Alcott fashioned a classic for women of all time.

Image: eflon

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Is Your Coffee Table Naked?

Leigha Oaks — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 22:57:48 +0000

Is your coffee table lacking the alluring pages of charismatic books? The season of gathering and entertaining is here – don’t let your guests catch you with a naked coffee table. You can think of me as your personal coffee table librarian.

There are few things in life I love as much as a good book, so you can only imagine how my heart flutters at the opportunity to share a list of fifteen must see, must experience, must read books. Stack a few of these delicious bound visuals and let them linger haphazardly around your home. Or open a few of these delights to your favorite page and start a conversation. Plus, if you distract your guests with wit, illustrations, interesting photography, and creative concepts, they’ll be too enthralled to notice the dust bunnies you forgot to evict or the dwindling stash of spirits.

These must read titles are an eclectic anthology of gorgeous, sophisticated (some completely unsophisticated), and peculiar muses to page through. And now, drum roll please, fifteen books you cannot live without.

1. Cabinet of Natural Curiosities
2. Colorstrology
3. Dinosaur Soup
4. Erwin Olaf
5. Hip Snips
6. I Lick My Cheese
7. I Was Cuba
8. Luck: The Essential Guide
9. Pictorial Webster’s: A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities
10. Sometimes I Think, Sometimes I Am
11. The Circus: 1870 – 1950
12. The Exquisite Book
13. The Small Stakes
14. Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire
15. Walter Ford: Pancha Tantra

1. Cabinet of Natural Curiosities is a collection of 18th century scientific drawings to inspire present day pleasure. Oh, the wonder of biology. Nature is a beautiful place for oddities, peak your curiosity and perhaps even learn a little with this pictorial piece of education.

2. Colorstrology is intoxicating (as you may remember). Just as your day of birth lends you an astrological sign, it also lends a specific color that offers insight into your personality. After perusing Colorstrology, I am utterly infatuated.

3. Dinosaur Soup is delectable and full of innocence. This hysterical cookbook is the culmination of recipes from the mouths of creative children. Where else can you learn how to use a hose, paper strips, and flower petals to make Triple Bipple Muffins?

4. Erwin Olaf is a genius behind the lens. The bound photography of Mr. Olaf can grace any coffee table and enrich any conversation. Devour it.

5. Hip Snips is a compilation of “options” to fashion below the belt. Oh, and it’s illustrated, so you can observe the brilliance and architectural qualities of the Imperial, the Bea Arthur, and the Isosceles Triangle. Read with wild abandon or covertly stash it in the nightstand before your grandma sinks into the couch and asks you what a Charlie Chaplin is.

6. I Lick My Cheese is decidedly more innocuous than it sounds, boasting two hundred and twenty-four pages of humorous interactions between roommates; it’s the shamefully amusing facet of cohabitation. Maybe you’ll even be inspired to start some post-it note ramblings of your own.

7. I Was Cuba is a captivating expression of Cuban history and “an intimate view into a bygone era of glamor, political upheaval, and astounding visual culture.”

8. Luck: The Essential Guide is a handbook for deciphering the lore and beliefs of luck. Invite a dash of fortune into your own life as you thumb through the lovely graphics contained in this wooden cover (just in case you need a wooden surface to knock on – how wily!).

9. Pictorial Webster’s: A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities is, well, a visual dictionary of curiosities. Each delicate newsprint page is elegantly finished with original engravings to tell the story of Victorian era history. This book is gleaming at first glimpse and gets more charming with each page.

10. Sometimes I Think, Sometimes I Am is a walk through philosophy, quotations, and aphorisms – all coupled with the artwork of Sara Fanelli. It’s aesthetically pleasing and cognitively thought provoking. What more can you ask for?

11. The Circus holds the capricious nature of the circus from 1870 – 1950. The nostalgia of childhood adventure is captured through saturated colors, enigmatic illustrations, pure whimsy, grit, and glamor.

12. The Exquisite Book is a confection of one hundred contributing artists based on the Surrealist game Exquisite Corpse. Each chapter starts with one artist’s illustration (based on a few words given for inspiration). Each successive artist sees only a single preceding page to inspire their own illustration, resulting in amiable ambivalence – something like watching the progression of a delicious thought.

13. The Small Stakes is an amalgamation of music posters laced with graphic delight – the designs of Jason Munn are perfect. Swoon.

14. Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire is a bound collection of the Proust Questionnaire (a 19th century parlor game) pages from Vanity Fair magazine. This book encloses the questionnaires of 101 cultural icons and “vibrant personalities” to present a “candid and endlessly entertaining” read.

15. Walter Ford: Pancha Tantra is a whimsical book full of intricate illustrations based on the ancient Indian book of animal tales deemed the precursor to Aesop’s Fables. This is the type of book you study again and again, noticing something new and even more intriguing each time you thumb through it.

(My thanks to the handsome stores in Portland that made filling my library complete bliss, their curated collections were a pleasure to peruse: Anthropologie, Flutter, Moule, and West Elm.)

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