Book Reviews
Culture Watch - What We Aren't Told and That Salandar Woman
Two trilogies: Women write about what they wish they had known earlier. These discussions are about how the fact of being female makes the lives of women differ from the lives of men at a deeper level.Our Stieg Larsson reviewer was suspicious and too stubborn to believe that anything so popular could be so good; she finds otherwise. more »
To Read and To Write
Joan L. Cannon writes: POETRY is a big word, in both denotation and connotation. Hours of classroom time and reams of thesis papers have been wasted in the attempt to analyze, categorize, classify, and define it. Rhyme, rhythm, diction, subject ... since before written language, from nonsense through ritual and history, folk songs, epics, in all languages, the list of schools and variations in form is too long to contemplate. However many attempts are made, full agreement is not likely. more »
A Review of Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s
Coontz set out to write about a generation of intelligent, well-educated women who had been marginalized by their own society. She wanted to understand how being confined to the home had undermined their sense of self and self-worth, until Friedan told them about "the problem that has no name." more »
Book Review: You Came Here to Die, Didn't You?
It’s always easier to write about the causes of fear than every-day drudgery, and the author’s descriptions of these scares and others make her summer sound exciting – in both senses of the word. She does this as though she’s writing a novel; her account of these events is gripping. more »