OT- Books

[margo49]

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I'm a big Karen Armstrong fan (Lise, were we twins seperated at birth?)

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Make that triplets

Anyone read her new one The Great Transformation?

[bikerz]

Anyone read her new one The Great Transformation?

It's on my list - but I think I'll wait for the paperback release! I'm looking forward to reading it - I'm trying to get my book club to read it but I think I will not be successful!

[Lise]

Make that triplets

Anyone read her new one The Great Transformation?

Ooooh! Ooooh! A new one! Thanks for the info! What a remarkable writer (and person) she is, that people get so excited when she publishes a new book on the history of religion.

Edit: I just went to Amazon and read reviews. This book looks amazing: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/037...e=UTF8&s=books
Amazon's selling the hardcover for $18.90. I like to get her books in hardcover--sort of a sign of respect!

Her two volumes of autobiography were so moving, especially The Spiral Staircase. I first read Jerusalem in '97. My sister had just come back from living in Tel Aviv for 15 years. I'd been to visit her three times. Karen Armstrong makes the historical record read like a novel. It took me 9 months to finish Holy Wars, which is about the Crusades. I usually only have time to read before going to bed, and that book is slow going. It gave me good historical back ground on the relation between the Arab and European/Western worlds.

Holy Wars and The Battle for God, by KA, and Thomas Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem helped me have a wider perspective on the Middle East's conflicts.

[RoadRaven]

Like WrensMom I would recommend "Mists of Avalon" by Marion Zimmer Bradley

For some easy to read and interesting essays on feminism and comments on the place of women in history (both contemporary and long past), read Kathryn Rountree's "Embracing the Witch and the Goddess". She explores things like stereotypes... women must be the maid (virginal), or cast as the bad person (prostitutes/mother in laws) or as a saint (his mother no one can live up to, Mother Teresa). She explores the social history that progressively took power away from women (for example, not owning land, not being able to work /have own wages, and for a while, midwifes not being able to help birth babies!). And Rountree explores ways we have been reclaiming the power we have.

I like Wilbur Smiths books for an easy escapism - The Seventh Scroll is one of my faves

**** Francis still turns out a good mystery.

Clare Francis writes extremly well, as does Nelson deMille.

Another fun book that debunks the myths surrounding how women should be and I believe should be a must for any teenage daughters... is "Real Gorgeous" by Kaz Cook... it challenges the media nonsense that females are ingrained with from magazines, TV and advertising... things around skinny is fit, and fat is undesirable, and you have to do what your friends say, and real girlfriends go all the way... its matter of fact, and fun and very affirming.

Oh... Ben Elton... some of his books area riot! (and what would you expect from the writer of the Young Ones, Black Adder and Filthy Rich and Catflap!)

[Lise]

...and for a while, midwifes not being able to help birth babies!).

Midwives' practice is still interfered with in myriad ways around the world, not to mention right here at home, and sometimes downright outlawed. Sigh. Que sigue la lucha. (the fight goes on)

[Trek420]

In my backpack now The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. It was reccomended by my sister, fast moving, well written, set in Chicago, great artists, incredible history and horrific violence.

[RoadRaven]

Midwives' practice is still interfered with in myriad ways around the world, not to mention right here at home, and sometimes downright outlawed. Sigh. Que sigue la lucha. (the fight goes on)

I know...
There are still many restrictions around midwifery here... but I remember reading a history of midwifery (when i was contemplating training to be one) and reading how for a while there in the post-middle ages, midwives sometimes tied womens legs together -so great was their fear that the woman would give birth before the (male) doctor got there... awful!

I think you'd find the book I recommended (Rountree's) interesting, Lise

[Deanna]

I'm more of a fiction fan, but there are a few non-fiction that stick out for me:

Rain of Gold, by Victor Villasenor. The biography of his grandparents and a great read about immigrants setting roots in America. This is one I've recommended over and over.

Just about anything by Bill Bryson & Hunter Thompson

The Shirley Letters by Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe, a collection of articles written as letters from a woman in the California Gold Mines. If you've spent time in the Feather River/Plumas County area you'll enjoy it even more.