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Books for Women
- February 2007 -
Volume 3 Number 2
Welcome to the February issue of More Books for Women. This edition
contains reviews of a truly eclectic group of books. Variety can definitely
be the spice of life - enjoy!
We join others in celebrating the life and work of Molly Ivins.
Her humor, passion, and spirit will be missed, but her words live on, thanks
to the printed page and the Internet. And her fight lives on - several journalists
have taken on her pledge to write regularly about the war - see Passings below
for more on Molly and the Molly Ivins Tribute Project.
Suzanne Corson
Books To Watch Out For
Ann Christophersen recommends
Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, was published in
September 2006, but it was several months later that I read it. I was drawn
to it because a bookseller colleague I know raved about Adichie's first novel,
Purple Hibiscus, and I hoped this one would be as strong as
she said that book was. But I was also drawn to it because the subject of
the novel brought up some very painful and powerful images from my young adult
years. It's about the civil war in Nigeria in 1967, when one ethnic group
decided to secede from Nigeria because of the brutality they were suffering
at the hands of another group. The new country they fought to establish was
Biafra. Though the war for Biafra is central to the novel, what Adichie focuses on are the human
dimensions of it, especially through the lives of the three main characters.
Richard is a British expatriate, a student of Igbo art, and someone who finds
a real sense of belonging in Biafra, so much so that he falls in love with
a Nigerian/Biafran woman and considers himself a Biafran. Olanna is a Nigerian
academic, a very interesting, independent woman from a wealthy family who
is at first discomfited by the war and the turmoil it is causing in her personal
life and later a zealous supporter of its goals. Ugwu, Olanna and her husband's
houseboy, is fascinating to watch as he grows up under the conditions of war,
developing his skills as a student and writer and, later, as a soldier conscripted
to fight. There is much nuance as this novel unfolds, nuance about the politics
and horror of war, certainly, but even more so about the complexity of love
and relationships. One experiences a wide range of feelings as she reads this
novel, feelings created by a writer with great talent and sensitivity and
a large measure of understanding and insight. I highly recommend this book.
Random House/Knopf, $24.95, 9781400044160.
Linda Bubon enjoys...
One of the best parts about being in a book group is reading books I would
have never discovered on my own, such as
Tropical Fish: Tales from Entebbe
by Doreen Baingana. This is a linked-story collection by a Ugandan writer
currently living in the U.S. Christine Ugisha is a young girl who narrates
the first story and most of the subsequent stories which show her navigating
the turbulent waters of adolescence; several of the stories are narrated by
her sisters. Most are set in post-Amin Uganda, an unstable, economically ravished
place, but the last two stories take our narrator to Los Angeles for some
years and then back "home." The language is precise, beautiful,
and haunting. Baingana shows us her country after Amin's brutal dictatorship
more memorably than nonfiction could, and she also captures universal truths
about teen desire, young adult angst and experimentation, growing up in a
home dominated by an alcoholic father, and the meaning of home. Random House/Harlem
Moon, $10.95, 9780767925105.
Lee Smith has really outdone herself with
On Agate Hill, a tender,
sad, compelling, exciting, and rich novel set during the fifty years
following the Civil War. I fell in love with Molly Petree, whose diaries and
letters reveal her to be bright, creative, and enormously resilient. Orphaned
by the war, living with a kindly but ill uncle and dozens of hangers-on as
well as ghosts, Molly is always honest with herself and determined to live
the life thrust upon her the best she can. As the story progresses, Molly
is sent to a girls' academy where she finally gets to have some fun and friends
although the headmistress picks on her - unaccountably, although that is just
one of the mysteries that create suspense in the novel. Molly and her best
friend and protector, Margaret, escape after graduation and wind up teaching
in a one-room schoolhouse in Appalachia. More adventures, marriage to a charismatic mountain minstrel,
and running a country store fill Molly's life with enough joy and sorrow to
satisfy any reader. Throughout her life a mysterious, wealthy, dark benefactor
intervenes in Molly's life; his story and their connection isn't revealed
until the end. This was a great read with wonderful historical detail by one
of the South's most loyal and insightful writers. Algonquin Books for Chapel
Hill, $24.95, 9781565124523.
Self-published novels complicate my life as an indie bookseller. I want to
be kind to the struggling writers in my community who are often faithful customers
and earnest, determined writers who choose to publish their own stuff for
a variety of reasons, but usually because they can't get published in the
traditional way. I sympathize, but often the books are too personal to be
of general interest, or too quirky, or just not very well written. However,
I was captivated by two such books recently and want to share them with you,
although they may be hard to find outside the Internet and Women & Children
First.
The first is a memoir by Chicagoan Shirley Simeon, an African-American woman
in her eighties who was a social worker and clinical psychologist most of
her life. She married the same man twice, had two sons - now grown and successful,
she tells us proudly - and also had passionate, rewarding affairs with women,
some long-term. She tells her story in simple, clear prose, adorned by the
occasional well-placed simile, and I was absolutely fascinated. She eschews
labels, isn't sure how she feels about the LGBT struggle for human rights,
and is somewhat elitest about ambition and education. But her reminiscences
about middle-class black life in Chicago in the 30s and 40s are priceless,
and her story is one that deserves to be heard. Imagine the Delaney sisters
being candid about their sex lives (if they had them), and you'll have an
idea what
The Other Woman is like. AuthorHouse, $28.95, 9781425940171.
On a completely different note, Chicago gay journalist and playwright Rick Karlin
has published a fun novel called
Show Biz Kids which I read in bed
on a cold, snowy day that made me feel as deliciously self-indulgent as I
might on a day at the beach. The novel follows the lives of six kids with
parents in the business from pre-adolescence in the mid-fifties to a spectacular
conclusion at the New York Bicentennial celebration. It's fun to guess who
the characters might be modeled on (Liza Minelli? Jane and Peter Fonda?) and
there's lots of sex, most of it bent. The writing is bright, witty, and never
takes itself too seriously. There's a feminist - and gay - sensibility throughout;
Gloria Steinem makes an appearance and one of the characters gets arrested
in the Stonewall riots. This is good trash. XLibris, $21.95, 9781425718596.
Chelsey Clammer is reading...
When I first started reading the new anthology
Baby
Remember My Name, edited by Michelle Tea, I expected to encounter a lot
of stories about sex, drugs, and San Francisco. I love Michelle Tea, and I
love all of her writing, therefore I thought this new anthology edited by
her would resemble her own writing. As soon as I read the first story, however,
I realized how wrong I was, and how happy I was to be so wrong. This new collection
of queer girl writing is diverse in its content and wicked in its writing.
The selection of stories ranges from the thoughts of a young Hispanic boy
who doesn't understand why everyone insists he is a girl, to the love story
of two pigeons as told by a woman spying on them from inside of her apartment.
Some of the writing is simple and organic in its approach to complex ideas
of gender, sexuality, and race; and some of the writing is poetic and spans
across many dimensions. Either way, there's something in this collection for
everyone, even those partying San Francisco queer girls. Carroll & Graf,
$14.95, 9780786717927.
I feel ashamed to admit that I have never read anything by Ali Liebegott
before. Her writing is both fun and complex and leaves you feeling very satisfied.
The IHOP Papers is a compelling story about a young woman who moves
to San Francisco to be near her college professor with whom she has fallen
in love. Liebegott takes us through the horrors of working as a waitress for
a chain restaurant, the pleasure in making friends with people who society
tries to expel, and the complexity of falling in and out of love with multiple
women at the same time. Following the standard of lesbian writing from San
Francisco, I expected the main character to have a drug or alcohol problem,
and spend most of the story being drunk and hopelessly in love with the wrong
person. Surprisingly, the main character, nicknamed Goaty, is a scruffy, recovering-alcoholic
dyke, who doesn't allow substance abuse to guide her through the story. She's
young and inexperienced in sex and love, and shows us the vulnerability that
we all have when we change our lives in the hopes of falling in love. To make
the story a little more complex, Goaty is also a cutter. This information
is presented in a very nonchalant sort of way, and allows the reader to fully
understand the complexities and intersections of pain and love. Other than
being absolutely fun to read, The IHOP Papers offers a new perspective
on life and love in the enthralling setting of San Fran. Carroll & Graf,
$14.95, 9780786717941.
Mary Ellen Kavanaugh is up all night with...
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl is a vexing novel.
Over the years, I've developed a predilection for debut novels, primarily
because I think they need to be really outstanding works, combining compelling
writing with an engaging plot, to even get to print. I was very eager to get
my hands on this one, in part because the title intrigued me and in part because
it was named one of the New York Times’s ten best books of the
year. At first, I was utterly enamored of the prose - luminescent, engaging,
literary - but soon enough, I found myself tiring of the cleverness of it.
The reader learns, early on, what the ending of the book is, and the intervening
400 or so pages play out the minutest of details leading to the actual action
you've already known was going to take place. Descriptions come complete with
drawings (visual aids, Van Meer, et al), literary references become
chapter titles (The Taming of the Shrew, et al), and there is
a final exam at the end. What started out as clever turned annoying. Sort
of like that dumb thing a lover does that you once found so endearing but
years later cannot abide. That said, I could not put this book down for about
the first 250 pages. It felt so delicious to "be" with characters,
the adolescent Blue (our narrator) and her professor father, who are intellectuals
and live and delight deeply in their intellectual pursuits. It was enriching
to read a book whose references were all ones I could identify with - as opposed,
say, to cultural references to current pop culture, which more than occasionally
elude me. I do suspect that this novel might be what is called pomo (or postmodern),
and, I suspect, that if I had taken literary criticism classes more recently
than 1977, there might be a world of wonderment for me to recognize here.
I keep trying to think about why this book was named one of the 10 best of
the year. Once you strip away the clever references, and take into consideration
that the ending is revealed before the story even begins, I still cannot come
up with anything. Penguin/Viking, $25.95. 9780670037773.
Born in the Big Rains: A Memoir of Somalia and Survival by Fadumo
Korn is yet another important memoir from the Feminist Press (2006). Anti-FGM
(female genital mutilation) activist Korn was born in Somalia, where her first
seven years were spent playing freely on the steppes in the countryside with
her nomadic family. After her circumcision at this age, she becomes quite
ill and deformed and is taken to Mogadishu to live with very rich relatives who
are able to send her to Germany when the repercussions of her circumcision
become life threatening. Eventually, she marries and is able to bear a child.
In Germany, she turns the pains of her childhood experience with FGM into
a passion to help change what she now accepts as one of Somalia's cultural mores, though still in
need of abandonment. Feminist Press, $23.95, 9781558615311.
Shortly after I got word that Tillie Olson died in January
(see MBW #15),
I picked
up the 2003 Feminist Press edition of
Silences, a book I've been meaning
to read for years. The introduction (by Shelley Fisher Fishkin) alone, brought
tears to my eyes as I realized how much of what I was able to discover, sell,
and read as a feminist bookseller was thanks to Tillie Olson. Fishkin tells
us the story of how the collection of essays now known at Silences
came to be and the myriad ways in which Olson's works have influenced feminist
literary criticism, women's studies classes, and the U.S. canon as it filters
down to high school curricula. Perhaps the biggest gift Olson's work offered
is that it provided a lens through which we are able to recognize the ways
in which women are silenced - a good beginning to bringing women's voices
into the center of the conversation. Any serious feminist personal book collection
should include a copy of this book. Feminist Press, $16.95, 9781558614406.
Stacy Mitchell, researcher for the Institute for Local Self Reliance, won
my indie-supporting heart in her first book The Hometown Advantage
(9780917582899) published by the Institute for Local Self Reliance in 2000,
which exposed practices of Walmart. In late 2006, Beacon Press published her
Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for
America’s Independent Businesses. While I am only about one-third of the way
into this (good - this means the good news is yet to come!), I did not want
to put off recommending this to folks - especially those of us who are seeing
the damage done to communities where locally-owned pharmacies, hardware, music,
and, yes, bookstores have been driven out. This book will reinforce what you
already know and provide you with interesting information to share with your
big-box store addicted pals. (Can I tell you that I'm still stuck on the statistic
that Walmart has the 34th largest economy in the world, beating out any number
of countries, such as Chile or Israel.) Mitchell outlines not only the economic
fallout of the big-box stores but also the environmental issues and the ways
in which government participates in this. The last few chapters (can't wait
to get there) talk about how one by one, communities are fighting back and
interrupting the spread of the box stores. Beacon Press, $24.95, 9780807035009.
Sara Luce Look loves...
T Cooper's first novel,
Lipshitz 6, Or Two Angry Blondes, now
in paperback, is two books in one: the first half is a historical novel about
a Jewish family who comes to the U.S. Once here, one of the sons goes missing
and the mother becomes convinced that he's Charles Lindburgh. The second half
of the book is a contemporary story of a trans man, T Cooper, a writer who
is the last living Lipshitz. The second half was a bit frustrating to me,
since it seemed like T was making fun of the first part of the book, which
I really loved. The first section reminded me of a great novel from several
years ago, Beyond the Pale by Elana Dykewomon. I think the first half
could have stood alone as a novel. Penguin/Plume, $14, 9780452288065.
As you may have noticed with my past reviews, books that feature food interest
me: Baker's Apprentice,
Full Moon Feast,
and The Language of Baklava
are a few examples. Marsha Mehran's
Pomegranate Soup is another one,
a beautifully written novel with lots of recipes. The author is Iranian and
has an Irish husband, which informs this book. Pomegranate Soup is
set in Ireland and is about three Iranian sisters who fled Iran immediately
following the revolution and opened a café in Ireland. I learned a lot about
both Iranian and Irish culture when reading this book. Random House, $13.95,
9780812972481.
I loved Radclyffe's new book,
When Dreams Tremble; it's become my
new favorite of all her titles. A woman goes back to her hometown for a visit
and runs into a former flame from high school days. This lesbian-themed title
is entertaining, romantic, and sexy. Bold Strokes Books, $15.95, 9781933110646.
The eponymous protagonist of
Polly by Amy Bryant lives just outside
of Washington, D.C. in the eighties. She comes of age during the punk rock
era, and her story is interspersed with the music of the times and the boys
and men she's involved with. (One interesting - and annoying - thing is that
the chapters are named after those boys and men.) The author's pro-choice
work experience is reflected in the book - Polly's best friend works for a
pro-choice organization. When the author was asked in an interview "What's
the book you'd most like President Bush to read?" Bryant responds, "He
knows how to read?!" Then she recommends Carole Joffe's Doctors of
Conscience. Pretty cool. HarperCollins, $13.95, 9780060898045.
And not just for the kids:
Tracy Kane and Barry Kane started their own company, Light-Beams Publishing,
to publish books and DVD's about fairy houses. Their new release,
Fairy
Houses…Everywhere!, is a companion book to Fairy Houses, in which
a girl visits an artist in Maine who tells her all about fairy houses. Fairy
Houses…Everywhere! shows photos of many fairy houses that people have
created following certain rules: they can't use anything living and only can
use "found things" in nature (flowers fallen on the ground, shells,
etc…). The book shows houses for each season as well as ones with different
themes. For ages 7 and up, it's also good as a gift book for adults who are
enchanted by fairies. $14.95 hardback, 9780970810441.
Suzanne Corson suggests...
Megan Seely, a feminist activist since childhood, was, at 28, the youngest
elected president of California National Organization for Women. She has taken
her experience and created a de facto Feminist Activism 101 with her book
Fight Like a Girl: How to be a Fearless Feminist. It's quite an impressive
text, with quotes from third-wave feminists featured throughout the chapters
on women's health, racism, sexual and gender diversity, reproductive rights,
eating disorders, feminist herstory, and fighting violence against women.
She goes into great detail about how to plan an action, including getting
media attention, provides book, film, and web resources for most chapters,
and includes timelines for significant events in both the U.S. women's movement
and the LGBT movement. She even includes a list of do's and don'ts, for both
young and "veteran" feminists. Listing more of the existing organizations
for women of color and lesbians would have been good - I was quite
surprised not to see the National Center for Lesbian Rights, for example.
And her film resource lists did not include any films made before 1988 - Norma
Rae, Silkwood, and Salt of the Earth are a few that would
have fit right in on her lists. But overall the content that was there, as
well as the organization and presentation of the material in Fight Like
a Girl were excellent. York University Press, $17.95 paper, 9780814740026.
More young women's voices are found in
We Got Issues!: A Young Woman's
Guide to a Bold, Courageous, and Empowered Life, edited by Rha Goddess
and JLove Calderón. This collection of rants, Q&A's, poetry, and essays
addresses the issues in question: health, spirituality, "the ISMs," sexuality,
love and relationships, motherhood, violence against women, money, work, and
voting/politics. Each section includes statistics about each issue that are
relevant for the more than thirty million women between the ages of eighteen
and thirty-five in the U.S. I especially liked the introductions by the editors.
From that intro:
"Now, let's get one thing clear. You will not agree
with everything in these pages - none of us who have worked on this labor
of love do. So the question is, what will you do with the ones you agree with,
and how will you react to the ones you don't? Our request: Be open to learn
from all of them. Every single voice in this book has something to offer you,
whether it's validation, resonance, and understanding, or anger, fear, and
'I told you so.'"
Inner Ocean, $14.95, 9781930722729.
In my bookselling days, one of the books I recommended often from the self-help
section was The Woman's Comfort Book by Jennifer Louden. It was a great
resource for stressed out, overly busy women who needed some easy, concrete,
and fulfilling ideas for how to give themselves some relief and respite. In
Louden's new
The Life Organizer: A Woman's Guide to a Mindful Year,
she again addresses the needs of overwhelmed women by turning her gaze to
time management. In her own life, Louden discovered that conventional time
management tools did not work for her, so she developed a system that is uniquely
suited for women, utilizing women's intuition. This lovely hardbound book
includes an undated planner (so one can begin using it any time), suggestions
from the author to guide your week, words from women who have used Louden's
system successfully, and as the second subtitle says, "(t)ips, stories,
and prompts to focus your needs and navigate your dreams." Most importantly,
this book will help the reader remember who she is, in the midst of
weeks that may be largely about the needs of those around her. New World Library,
$19.95, 9781577315544.
Another author who wants to help women live more fulfilling lives is Barbara Sher,
author of Wishcraft, I Could Do Anything If Only I Knew What It
Was, and It's Only Too Late If You Don't Start Now, among others.
One thing I especially appreciate about Sher is her ability to honor the fact
that no one solution suits everyone, that we're all individuals and have different
styles, thought patterns, and goals. She focuses on one group she calls "scanners"
in her new book
Refuse to Choose!: A Revolutionary Program for Doing Everything
You Love. Scanners, Sher says, are people who "scan the horizon,
eager to explore everything you see." Such people are often told that
they lack focus, are commitment-phobic, or that they're too idealistic. Not
only does Sher recognize and honor the way scanners think, she identifies
multiple kinds of scanners and offers support and strategies for each. She
even provides job advice for scanners. A great book for folks who are passionate
about many things simultaneously. Rodale, $24.95, 9781594863035.
Fans of Refuge, An Unspoken Hunger, Leap, and others
by Terry Tempest Williams should enjoy
A Voice in the Wilderness: Conversations
with Terry Tempest Williams. This collection of interviews, edited by
Michael Austin, spans from 1991 through 2005 and covers everything from her
spirituality and connection with the desert to her relationship to her muse.
Utah State University Press, $19.95 paper, 9780874216349.
New in Paperback:
Brass Ankle Blues by Rachel M. Harper, Simon & Schuster/Touchstone,
$13, 9780743296588, reviewed in
MBW #11.
Dope, Sara Gran, Penguin/Berkley, $14, 9780425214367, reviewed in
TLE #22.
The Last of Her Kind, Sigrid Nunez, St. Martin's/Picador, $14, 9780312425944, reviewed in
MBW #7.
Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping, Judith Levine, Free Press, $14, 9780743269360,
reviewed in MBW #10.
Rose of No Man's Land, Michelle Tea, Harcourt/Harvest, $14, 9780156030939,
reviewed in MBW #15.
The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis, Little, Brown/Back Bay, $13.99, 9780316014243,
reviewed in MBW #11.
Passings
Molly Ivins died at 62 at her home in Austin, Texas, after battling
breast cancer for a third time. Best known for her humorous and biting political
writing, most recently she had been working on a campaign to end the war in
Iraq. She had pledged to address the issue every day in her column. Unfortunately
her health did not allow that to happen, so the Berkeley Daily Planet
started the Molly Ivins Tribute Project. Announced before her January 31 death,
the "idea is that her colleagues in the opinionated part of the journalistic
world should take over her campaign while she's sick, creating a deluge of
columns about what's wrong with Bush's war and what should be done to set
things right. It would be nice if a lot of these columns could be funny, since
skewering serious subjects with humor is what Molly does best, but that's
not required."
Hers was a voice of sanity in a seemingly insane world, especially
appreciated in the 2000 election season. She gamely tried to warn the country
what we would be getting into if Shrub, as she called George W. Bush, then
governor of Texas, was unleashed on the rest of the nation. (In retrospect,
the amount of energy she expended in warning readers about Bush seems doubly
impressive since her first bout with breast cancer began in 1999. At that
time, she famously told her readers that she didn't need get-well cards; they
needed to go get mammograms.) After that election, she kept a close eye on
Shrub's doings as well as other politicians and political bodies, such as
the "Lege," the Texas Legislature, which she described as great
free entertainment and "reporter's heaven."
Books by Molly Ivins include Who Let the Dogs In?: Incredible
Political Animals I Have Known, Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?¸
You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You, Nothin' But Good
Times Ahead, and two co-authored with Lou Duboce: Shrub: The Short
but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush and Bushwacked: Life
in George W. Bush's America. Her journalism career included stints at
the New York Times, the Dallas Time-Herald, and the Star-Telegram
in Austin. At the time of her death, her syndicated column appeared in more
than 400 newspapers.
Austin Star-Telegram obituary, links to her columns, a profile,
and an audio slideshow tribute:
www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/state/16591107.htm?source
=rss&channel=dfw.
Remembrance by Anthony Zurcher, editor of her syndicated column:
www.creators.com/opinion/molly-ivins/molly-ivins-tribute.html.
Associated Press obituary:
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/01/31/
national/a160010S74.DTL.
Listen to Molly Ivins on NPR online:
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7113087.
More on the Berkeley Daily Planet's Molly Ivins Tribute Project:
http://berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?issue=
01-30-07&storyID=26216.
Mystery writer Barbara Seranella died at the age of 50 of end-stage
liver disease while awaiting a liver transplant. Once an auto mechanic, she
turned to writing and created the character Munch Mancini, an auto/motorcycle
mechanic and detective, who was featured in eight novels, most recently An
Unacceptable Death. In April, St. Martin's Press will publish Deadman's
Switch with a new character, Charlotte Lyon. Among the accolades for Barbara
Seranella and her writing, she was awarded the inaugural Dennis Lynds Memorial
Award for Social Consciousness in Crime Fiction by the Southern California
Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America in 2006.
Her website:
www.barbaraseranella.com.
Orange County Register obituary:
www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homepage/abox/article_1552067.php.
S.J. Rozan's blog tribute:
www.journalscape.com/sjrozan/2007-01-23-10:09.
Pro-Choice Reading Cancelled - and Rescheduled - in Iowa City
Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City, Iowa, cancelled a February 1 event with
Krista Jacob, editor of the book Abortion Under Attack: Women on the Challenges
Facing Choice (Seal Press, 2006), after the store owner, Jim Harris, received
threatening phone calls and letters. Publishers Weekly reported that
the owner was about to leave town and was concerned about leaving his employees
with "an awkward situation." Jacob, also an abortion rights activist,
said at the time about the decision to cancel the reading, "This bookseller
doesn't understand the impact of this [decision]. This is a tremendous victory
for the local antichoice movement. They just censored a writer." Update: Just before we
went to press, we learned that Prairie Lights has decided to reschedule the event
with Krista Jacob for March 21, and the event
will be broadcast on the Iowa Public Radio show "Live from Prairie Lights."
Awards
Among the nominees for the Mystery Writers of America's 2007
Edgar Awards are Strange Piece of Paradise
by Terri Jentz (reviewed in MBW #9)
in the Best Fact Crime category
and Best Novel nominees Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris, The
Dead Hour by Denise Mina, and The Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy
Pickard. The complete list of nominees can be found online at
www.mysterywriters.org/pages/awards/nominees07.htm.
The National Book Critics Circle has announced the nominees for their
2006 awards. Nominees include: Alison Bechdel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
(Houghton Mifflin, $19.95, 9780618477944, reviewed in
MBW #8)
and Terri Jentz, Strange Piece of Paradise (Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
$27, 9780374134983, reviewed in
MBW #9)
in the Memoir/Autobiography category; Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss
(Grove/Atlantic, $14, 9780802142818, reviewed in
MBW #7)
and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun, reviewed above,
in the Fiction category; Anne Fessler, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of
Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe V. Wade (Penguin, $24.95, 9781594200946)
in the Nonfiction category;
and Julie Phillips, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double
Life of Alice B. Sheldon (St. Martin's Press, $27.95, 9780312203856, reviewed in
MBW #15)
for Biography.
Learn more about the NBCC and see the complete list of nominees at www.bookcritics.org/?go=finalists.
The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages is the winner of the 2007 Scott
O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. The late Scott O'Dell, author of
Island of the Blue Dolphins, established this award to encourage authors
to write historical fiction for young people. The Green Glass Sea was
reviewed in MBW #12
and was named one of the favorite books of 2006 by Jill Roberts in
MBW #15.
For more information about the award, see
www.scottodell.com/odellaward.html.
The American Library Association announced its 2007 awards for children's
literature. The John Newbery Medal, for the most outstanding contribution
to children's literature, was awarded to The Higher Power of Lucky
written by Susan Patron, with illustrations by Matt Phelan. For the complete
list of award winners and other honorees, visit
www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=News&template=/
ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=146679.
Books To Watch Out For
For those who have been missing Lynda Barry since the publication of Cruddy
in 2000, relief is in sight. Publisher Drawn & Quarterly recently announced
that they will be publishing her new book, What It Is, in early 2008.
What It Is is described as "part comics, collages and paintings."
Drawn & Quarterly will also be bringing her Ernie Pook's Comeek
collections back in print with redesigned volumes.
For or more on Lynda Barry and Ernie Pook's Comeek:
www.marlysmagazine.com.
We hope you've enjoyed this issue of More Books for Women.
We all want to spread the word about great books, and
we thank you for helping us to do that. It's helpful when you add BooksToWatchOutFor.com to your list
of favorite links on your own website and in your profiles on sites like MySpace and Tribe. Please also tell your friends, colleagues, and book group(s) about us, and ask your local
independent bookstore to carry our flyers and/or mention us in their newsletters. It all helps, and we greatly appreciate it.
With thanks,
Suzanne Corson
for Books To Watch Out For
Editor@BooksToWatchOutFor.com
415.642.9993
© 2007 Books To Watch Out For
Graphics © Judy Horacek
Books To Watch Out For
PO Box 882554
San Francisco, CA 94188
415.642.9993
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