Tag: Reading women
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Favorite Books of the 2010s: The Body Lies by Jo Baker
This is a series of reviews of my favorite books published between 2010 and 2019. The Body Lies by Jo Baker (2019) From its opening, when a young woman is sexually assaulted by a stranger on the street, this story has a subtle but growing sense of menace and dread. That one event starts a chain…
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Favorite Books of the 2010s: Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
This is a series of reviews of my favorite books published between 2010 and 2019. Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh (2015) Eileen is a most unpleasant character, a twenty-four-year-old girl working as a secretary in a juvenile delinquent facility for boys, enabling her verbally abusive father’s alcoholism, doing everything she can to make herself disappear. This is…
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Favorite Books of the 2010s: State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
This is a series of reviews of my favorite books published between 2010 and 2019. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (2011) After learning that her colleague has died of a “fever” in the Amazon jungle, Dr. Marina Singh follows in his footsteps to learn more about the cause of his death and locate the reclusive…
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Recommended Reading: Red Clocks
I am reading a lot of books in the “Angry Women” category this year, which seems appropriate for the year of #metoo. My latest read, Red Clocks by Leni Zumas, takes place in an alternate United States (or in the near future?), when a Personhood Amendment to the Constitution has made abortion and in vitro fertilization illegal. It…
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Gothic horror: We’re all mad here | Noir Femme
I try to define gothic fiction and why I love it so much: Gothic horror: We’re all mad here | Noir Femme
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A Kinder, Gentler Apocalypse: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Originally posted on Sci Femme: This essay also discusses Into the Forest (Jean Hegland; 1996); A Gift Upon the Shore (M.K. Wren; 1990); and Always Coming Home (Ursula K. Le Guin; 1985), among various other stalwarts of the post-apocalyptic sub-genre. There will be spoilers for these books. Pop quiz, hotshot. It’s the apocalypse: What do you do?…
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Horror is a feeling, not a genre
Originally posted on Noir Femme: Horror has one goal: to disturb. To remind us that we don’t have all the answers. To explode our illusions of being in control. There may be monsters or the supernatural, but there doesn’t have to be. There may be blood, gore, and guts, but there doesn’t have to be.…
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New blog: Sci Femme
I’ve resurrected an old idea of mine, which is to read science fiction about women and blog about it. I call the blog Sci Femme, and I hope to use it as a forum for longer-form essays about themes and trends in science fiction written by women. I’ll be looking at both new and classic…
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Women writing — some links
For my yearly reading project in 2015, I have been focusing on women writers, specifically of speculative fiction. This project has led me down lots of wonderful side alleys discovering new writers, revisiting old favorites, and thinking about what they have to say. It’s also helped me understand the bias that women writers continue to…