That's how I feel right now. Ragged. Summer usually does this to me. It just gets so busy, so full, and flies by. I can't wait for autumn. For cool nights at home, for sweaters, for a quiet couple of months in the company of good books and cups of tea. I also can't wait to see my family in September; it'll be a most welcome change of pace.
Three books to talk about:
17) Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs. This series is one of my absolute favorite things happening in urban fantasy right now. Mercy Thompson is a well-fleshed-out character. The secondary characters are also well-done. The werewolf pack politics are believable, and the complicated relationships between the different kinds of fey as well as between fey and humans are spot on. This is book four. At the beginning, Mercy is still recovering from the trauma she suffered in book three, and I found her reactions to things and her panic attacks to be on the money. I can't wait to read the rest of this series, when I get my hands on it.
18) Not Flesh Nor Feathers by Cherie Priest. An older title by a long-standing favorite author of mine. This is one of the Eden Moore books, and I have to be honest: While I did enjoy it quite a bit (Southern Gothic ghost story!), it's been so long since I read the other two Eden Moore books that I'd forgotten some of the pertinent information from them. Nonetheless, this is a keeper for me, and recommended to all of you. (I just need to work on reading series titles closer together!)
19) Baby Proof by Emily Giffin. This book made me really angry. It's about a woman named Claudia, who doesn't want children. She's happily married to Ben . . . until he decides that he DOES want children. They divorce. Claudia spends time being depressed. Meanwhile, every other woman in the book treats her like she's an alien for not wanting babies. And every other woman either has kids, is trying to have kids, or is going to have kids. Claudia keeps wondering how she and Ben didn't work out if he's her soul mate. At one point, someone says to her, "He wasn't your soul mate. If he WERE, you'd do ANYTHING to keep him. Even have his baby." And that is Claudia's lightbulb moment. Her "Being with Ben is more important than my desire to not have babies" moment. And as a woman in her thirties who doesn't want children, this infuriated me. This female character decided that having her man was more important than her own wants and needs, more important than her own decisions about her body and career and etc. What. The. Hell? Every woman makes whatever decisions they make, and that's cool, but the overwhelming message I got from this book is "Ladies, you should want babies, and if you don't, there is something wrong with you. If you don't, you will lose your partner and be sad and lonely and pathetic for the rest of your life. So start making babies!"I'm angry enough at this book that I won't read any more of Emily Giffin's work, and I'm no longer recommending her to friends.
Have any of you ever read a book that made you angry? Do tell.
And on that note, I have to get back to work, it's piling up. Happy Monday, everyone!
The Myth of Fingerprints
12 years ago
2 comments:
Ugh. Snow Falling on Cedars and The Unbearable Lightness of Being, both for the same reason: neither of these men could write female characters. The female characters re predominantly flat boring virgins with no personality who need to be "saved" or evil manipulative sex-demons. Meanwhile, the male characters are sensitively drawn and fully fleshed-out. It's as if both these authors never realized that women are humans, too - and that we're not so different from each other as we'd think. With each book (which I read years apart), I made two assaults, allowing several months to pass between them, hoping I would find that my experience was different the second time. With each book, I got more than 150 pgs in before I threw them both down in disgust. I will say that I *love* the way Kundera writes about the act of writing, and his reflections on that process are beautiful. But otherwise ... ffft. Wasted hours!
I am right there with you. That is infuriating. I know lots of women in their 30s and 40s who don't want children, and there is nothing wrong with any of them! Or me, for that matter!
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