Elizabeth's bookshelf: read (showing 1-30 of 140)

[close] Over halfway through this book. Really interesting read about the history of how babies were born. Fascinating to see how childbirth was wrested from midwives' hands to the hands of male doctors. And all their tools! Even so, a very objective read. Also includes info on how women's pelvises have evolved, and how walking upright has not done us any favors in the birth department.

Done now (August 2009). I highly enjoyed this book and recommend it for anyone who is interested in how we got to where we are with birth. [close]

[close] I really needed this book. I found it wonderful in that it challenges societal assumptions about how men and women relate, and how women relate to each other. Lots of thought was provoked here!

I wish bell hooks would write a whole book on the subject of romantic frienships. [close]

[close] I read about half of this book maybe five years ago. I always meant to go back to it; I put it down because it was so very dense and I needed a break to think about the ideas in it. A friend reminded me of it recently and I found it on my shelf and dusted it off.

Kidd is a woman who grew up in traditional Christianity, and her story is one of what happens when a southern belle discovers her inner woman who will not be subjected to inferiority any longer.

If you can read the first section of this book, the story about her daughter working in a drugstore and men mocking her, without being moved, then this book is definitely not for you. Kidd is an excellent and beautiful storyteller. I am looking forward to re-reading the part I already read, and putting it all together when I finish it this time. [close]

[close] Anne Lamott is so funny! She's also incredibly honest. If she had struggles as a parent or as a person in general, you'll know about it. She doesn't hide that kind of stuff, doesn't mind if we know what an imperfect person she is. Her books are a balm for the soul, and if laughter is the best medicine, then this is definitely it! [close]

[close] I rated this one as three stars and the rest higher, because I felt like Daniel Handler had some working out to do after this book. It seemed too serious and lacked the ridiculous humor that the rest did. When I'd hear complaints about "you'd let your kids read this kind of book, where children are abused and there's sexual stuff going on between an adult and a minor?" I thought they really needed to read the next book. Because you could read the first one that way--not suitable for kids. But after the first one Daniel Handler did figure out how to keep it lighter and bring in the comic elements that are really so crucial to this series. [close]

[close] The first Joyce Carol Oates book I've read. I'll be reading more! [close]

[close] I read this many years ago, and then re-read it a couple of years ago. Frank Schaeffer is a convert to the Orthodox church, as am I, and I find these books so fascinating because....I don't agree with him politically at all. He has been very harshly critical of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship, and has a son in the military. He is very hard on non-Orthodox, really sounding like he has contempt for Protestants. But these books: I can't quite figure out what part of him they're coming from. Like, there must be some part of him that needs to work something out. Because they are very critical of the legalistic missionary life, and even the strict sexually repressed teachings of the church. Portofino gets pretty sexually explicit, and it just continues in the sequels. Highly entertaining fiction (?) but I think it's based on his own experiences of growing up the son of the famous theologian Francis Schaeffer. Which makes it that much more interesting. [close]

[close] All the hype....no substance.....

A page-turner, I will grant you that. Brought up interesting ideas. Many of those ideas were quite half-baked, though....

I tore through the book, only to arrive at the last page and be totally disappointed. Yes, please do read it, but please don't take it too seriously! I had so many people coming up to me saying things like "Isn't it interesting that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene!" I'm left thinking, it's *fiction*, people! [close]

[close] I didn't actually finish this. I found it getting too self-conscious, and including pretty boring dialogue, ordinary conversation between family members. But I did think it an interesting look at a Greek-American going back to the village of her family, where her grandmother was murdered and trying to find her roots and establish herself in a village where single women were not supposed to be so autonomous. [close]

[close] Quote that spoke to me from this book:
"She just had to wait. Waiting was, after all, something to do, it's own small kind of solution."

I suppose I liked this book for it's female friendship, having just gone through the implosion of a friendship. [close]

[close] My husband and I decided that we'd read a book together and then discuss. We went to Powells yesterday and chose this one. I hope I find it as gripping as The Lovely Bones, and I hope he likes it too.

Update: Well, we read it. I'm not sure what I was expecting...but not this! Okay, it gave us lots to talk about. But I think I was hoping for more that we could relate to on a nature-of-humanity level. And there was some, but we had to dig for it.

The main character does a dastardly act in this book, and it occurs right at the end of the first chapter. I could see it was coming and yet it still shocked me when it came. And I spent the rest of the book trying to find the reason, the justification, for her act, and never really found it. Many other women in her position and not too many do this. But it was an interesting study in not being able to escape that which we're most trying to get away from.

We're going to try Alfie Cohn's parenting book next! I'm sure we'll have much more fodder for discussion from that one. [close]

[close] I didn't quite finish this book, but that didn't stop me from implementing some of the ideas in my own garden. We've converted the whole front lawn, half at a time, to garden space now, and I hope to make rain barrels sometime soon and use more of the ideas. [close]