I was able to go to the University of Washington Bookstore last night to see author Gail Carriger live, talking with the crowd of Seattle Steampunk afficionados and signing her books (I've read all but two of her novels). It was a wonderful evening, and Dwayne the book concierge who has been curating the Science Fiction and Fantasy section of the U Bookstore for at least 30 years, was there and remembered me, though I haven't been in the the store for at least 7 years. He was so kind and helped me, due to my disability, to be first in line so I didn't have to stand for hours and wait for my books to get signed, and then he held my books and my purse while he assisted me in getting down the stairs and into the parking lot to Nick's car. Miss Gail was a delight, and she loved the gifts I brought her, and she was resplendent in an Emerald green dress and gloves for her turn in the rainy Emerald City! I wish I had remembered to take photos, but I didn't. Still, it was a magical evening that I will remember forever.
These are some bookstores that I have on my bucket list to visit!
Five Bookshops for
Globetrotting Bibliophiles
Spanish writer,
academic and literary critic Jorge Carrin, for
whom a bookshop is
"the perfect place to understand the world," picked
"five
bookshops that globetrotting bibliophiles
should put on
their bucket list" for ABC Arts' The Bookshelf.
"When you
enter a bookshop you discover a kind of country--a little
world--and you can
find different aspects of the history of the world,
and also of the
present time," said Carrión, author of Bookshops:
A Reader's
History. "I know the library is more democratic than the
bookshop, but the
bookshop is part of the city. It is a private space
with a public
service dimension to the community that is very
important."
Though I am allergic, I love bookstore kitty cats! They're so calm and soothing.
The 20 Most
Instagrammable Bookstore Cats'
"There's
something magical about stepping into a bookstore and finding a
cat lounging on a
well-worn arm chair surrounded by rows and rows of
books. After all,
cats make the coziest reading companions," Electric
Lit noted in
showcasing the "20 most Instagrammable bookstore cats
I really want to read this book, it sounds fantastic. History has ignored or buried women's stories for far too long.
Review: Women Warriors: An Unexpected History
With Women
Warriors: An Unexpected History, Pamela Toler (The Heroines
of Mercy Street:
The Real Nurses of the Civil War) reveals a history
many readers will
meet with surprise as well as fascination. By the end
of this brisk
accounting of just some of the many women warriors Toler
found in her
research, she makes it clear that while little known, this
phenomenon is
neither new nor unusual.
Women Warriors is
a broad examination that spans history from the second
millennium BCE
through the present, and across Europe, Asia, Africa and
the Americas.
Toler details dozens of examples, from the better-known
(Matilda of
Tuscany, Njinga, Begum Sahib and, of course, Joan of Arc) to
the obscure (Ani
Pachen, Mawiyya, Bouboulina), in two- or three-page
summaries. She
notes primary sources in each case and questions "facts"
where appropriate
(for example, numbers of troops are notoriously
dubious), often
presenting a fact in the main body and then questioning
it in a footnote.
Chapters organize women warriors into mothers,
daughters, queens,
widows; besieged defenders and leaders of attacks;
women disguised as
men and women undisguised.
Plentiful
footnotes serve an important role, especially evidencing a
certain wry humor,
as when Toler repeatedly and impatiently points out
the tendency to
compliment women as behaving like men and to denigrate
men as behaving
like women (a habit consistent throughout history and
common to women as
well as men). Double standards are likewise
emphasized, as in
the way historians and archeologists have examined
evidence. For
example, the grave known as the "Birka man," from 834 CE,
had long been
considered that of a male because of the martial burial
items found with
him. In 2014, a bioarcheologist determined that the
bones were
actually that of a female. Despite follow-up DNA testing,
scholars,
archeologists and historians continue to argue about the
identification of
the Birka woman. As Toler points out, the scholarly
contortions now
employed to deny her status as warrior were never
mentioned while
her skeleton was assumed to be that of a male.
With such copious
content, Toler has been careful to keep her book a
manageable length:
at just over 200 pages, Women Warriors is an easy
entry to an
expansive topic. Toler found thousands of examples of women
warriors in her
research--many more than are contained in these
pages--and argues
that this proliferation deserves to be treated as more
than a series of
freak anomalies. In conclusion, answering an earlier
historian's claim
that women in warfare are "the most insignificant
exceptions,"
Toler sums up: "Exceptions within the context of their time
and place? Yes.
Exceptions over the scope of human history? Not so much.
Insignificant?
Hell, no!" --Julia Kastner,
librarian and blogger at
Sadly, we lost one of America's greatest poets this week. RIP to a wild and wonderful woman of words.
Obituary Note:
Mary Oliver
Pulitzer
Prize-winning poet "whose work, with its plain language and
minute attention
to the natural world, drew a wide following while
dividing
critics," died on January 17, the New York Times reported. She
was 83. Oliver, a
"phenomenon: a poet whose work sold strongly,"
published more
than 20 books, including the Pulitzer-winning American
Primitive National
Book Award winner New and Selected Poems.
"For her
abiding communion with nature," Oliver was often compared to
Walt Whitman and
Robert Frost, the Times noted, adding: "For her quiet,
measured
observations, and for her fiercely private personal mien (she
gave many readings
but few interviews, saying she wanted her work to
speak for itself),
she was likened to Emily Dickinson." She "often
described her
vocation as the observation of life."
Oliver's poetry
collections include The River Styx, Ohio; House of
Light; The Leaf
and the Cloud; Evidence; Blue Horses and Felicity. Among
her prose titles
are Rules for the Dance, A Poetry Handbook and Long
Life: Essays and
Other Writings.
From Oliver's poem
"When Death Comes":
When it's over, I
want to say: all my life
I was a bride
married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom,
taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I
don't want to wonder
if I have made of
my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to
find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of
argument.
I don't want to
end up simply having visited this world.
I love Gloria Steinem, and I've read and enjoyed several of her books. I hope that this movie does her justice.
Movies: The Glorias: A Life on the Road
Timothy Hutton has
joined the cast of Julie Taymor's The Glorias: A Life
on the Road
based on Gloria
Steinem's memoir, My Life on the Road, Deadline
reported. He will
play Leo Steinem, Gloria's father, alongside Julianne
Moore as Steinem
and Alicia Vikander as the feminist icon at ages 20-40.
The cast also
includes Bette Midler as Bella Abzug and Janelle Monae
stars as Dorothy
Pitman Hughes.
The movie
"follows her journey to becoming a crusader for equal rights
and her
groundbreaking work as a journalist and campaigner," Deadline
wrote. Taymor
wrote the script with playwright Sarah Ruhl. Principal
photography is
underway in Savannah, Ga.
A Second Chance and A Trail Through Time by Jodi Taylor are the 3rd and 4th books of this delightful British time-travel adventure series that has a wonderful PG Wodehouse sense of humor woven throughout the text. The crew of St Mary's is full of unforgettable characters who are out to protect history and the sanctity of St Mary's itself. Here are the blurbs: The third book in the bestselling British madcap time-travelling
series, served with a dash of wit that seems to be everyone’s cup of
tea.
Behind the seemingly innocuous facade of St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research, a different kind of academic work is taking place. Just don’t call it “time travel”—these historians “investigate major historical events in contemporary time.” And they aren’t your harmless eccentrics either; a more accurate description, as they ricochet around history, might be unintentional disaster-magnets.
The Chronicles of St. Mary’s tells the chaotic adventures of Madeleine Maxwell and her compatriots—Director Bairstow, Leon “Chief” Farrell, Mr. Markham, and many more—as they travel through time, saving St. Mary’s (too often by the very seat of their pants) and thwarting time-travelling terrorists, all the while leaving plenty of time for tea.
In A Second Chance , it seems nothing can go right for Max and her fellow historians. The team confronts a mirror-stealing Isaac Newton and later witnesses how the ancient and bizarre cheese-rolling ceremony in Gloucester can result in CBC: Concussion By Cheese.
Finally, Max makes her long-awaited jump to Bronze Age Troy, only for it to end in personal catastrophe. And just when it seems things couldn’t get any worse, it’s back to the Cretaceous Period to confront an old enemy who has nothing to lose.
Behind the seemingly innocuous facade of St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research, a different kind of academic work is taking place. Just don’t call it “time travel”—these historians “investigate major historical events in contemporary time.” And they aren’t your harmless eccentrics either; a more accurate description, as they ricochet around history, might be unintentional disaster-magnets.
The Chronicles of St. Mary’s tells the chaotic adventures of Madeleine Maxwell and her compatriots—Director Bairstow, Leon “Chief” Farrell, Mr. Markham, and many more—as they travel through time, saving St. Mary’s (too often by the very seat of their pants) and thwarting time-travelling terrorists, all the while leaving plenty of time for tea.
In A Second Chance , it seems nothing can go right for Max and her fellow historians. The team confronts a mirror-stealing Isaac Newton and later witnesses how the ancient and bizarre cheese-rolling ceremony in Gloucester can result in CBC: Concussion By Cheese.
Finally, Max makes her long-awaited jump to Bronze Age Troy, only for it to end in personal catastrophe. And just when it seems things couldn’t get any worse, it’s back to the Cretaceous Period to confront an old enemy who has nothing to lose.
The fourth book in the bestselling British madcap time-travelling series, served with a dash of wit that seems to be everyone’s cup of tea.
Behind the seemingly innocuous facade of St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research, a different kind of academic work is taking place. Just don’t call it “time travel”—these historians “investigate major historical events in contemporary time.” And they aren’t your harmless eccentrics either; a more accurate description, as they ricochet around history, might be unintentional disaster-magnets.
The Chronicles of St. Mary’s tells the chaotic adventures of Madeleine Maxwell and her compatriots—Director Bairstow, Leon “Chief” Farrell, Mr. Markham, and many more—as they travel through time, saving St. Mary’s (too often by the very seat of their pants) and thwarting time-travelling terrorists, all the while leaving plenty of time for tea.
In A Trail Through Time , Max and Leon are reunited and looking forward to a peaceful lifetime together. Sadly, that doesn’t even last until lunchtime.
The action races from seventeenth-century London to Ancient Egypt and from Pompeii to fourteenth-century Southwark as the historians are pursued up and down the timeline, playing a perilous game of hide-and-seek before seeking refuge at St. Mary’s—where new dangers await them. Overwhelmed, outnumbered, and with the building crashing down around them, will this spell the end of St. Mary’s?
Much like the times that various Star Trek crews have time traveled (I'm looking at you, Voyager) the St Mary's crew consistently mess things up in whatever time they're sent to observe, and not get involved. Of course, like the temporal prime directive, they ignore this and not only get involved, but are always stupid enough to wade into the fight and save people who are supposed to die at that point in time, regardless of the consequences. The protagonist, Max, is struck by the lack of History doing a smack down on herself and others for messing with the time line, but even though the famed soothsayer Cassandra warns Max that her protection via the muse of history isn't always going to help her, she and her beloved Leon still save a young boy from dying at Troy and bring him forward in time to work at a bar/casino. And if that wasn't confusing enough, Max is brought to an alternate time line where she had died and Leon was having to learn to live without her (Leon died in her time line). And she has to confront Bitchface Barkley again, because she's alive in this time line and, as always, out to kill Max so that she can have Leon and St Mary's to herself. While I enjoy the historical perspectives and the humor and wit of these books (I'm reading book 5 now) I get more than a bit frustrated with Max constantly flouting the rules and ending up half dead in the infirmary at the end of every book. Then there's her comrades at St Mary's who die off or are severely injured, usually due to their trying to help Max get out of the terrible situations she's gotten herself into. Why anyone would follow her to some spot in history, knowing her dismal track record, is beyond me. But I gather it's all due to her being a plucky red head, which is one of those sexist stereotypes that linger on, despite being horrifically outdated and stupid. Still, I'd give both of these books a B+, and recommend them to those who like Doctor Who and British adventure stories in general.
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