Tag: Africa

Biography, History, Non-Fiction

A Gross of Pirates by Terry Breverton

Sarah

I love being an adult book buyer at a bookstore. When the publisher reps hear me getting particularly excited about something, they occasionally will send me a copy, and I was lucky enough to come home the other day to A Gross of Pirates sitting on the front porch waiting for me.

Synopsis

From the Dust Jacket:
It is no use pretending that these criminals do not evoke admiration – even envy. Part of the appeal is the democrati nature of their activities, characterised as far back as the 14th century by Klaus Stortebeker thieving in the Baltic – his crew were called the Likedeelers, the equal sharers. Author Terry Breverton has brought together the extraordinary stories of 144 pirates throughout history. They include Norman privateers, Barbary Corsairs, Elizabethan adventurers, Chinese pirates, the ‘Brethren of the Coast’ – and of course the pirates of the Caribbean.

Beginning with the 9th-century ‘Shield Maiden’ pirate Alfhild and ending with Mohamed Abdi Hassan – ‘Afweyne’ (Big Mouth) – who ransomed supertankers for tens of millions of dollars, A Gross of Pirates is an exciting journey under full sail across a millennium of blood and treasure.

Review

I’ve been working on a fictionalized retelling of the adventures of Alfhild, the Shield Maiden mentioned on the cover of A Gross of Pirates for years now, ever since I was first introduced to her story in Princesses Behaving Badly five and a half years ago. So little information exists about her (her actual existence is itself debatable), I get particularly excited every time I see her mentioned somewhere and because of that, I probably own every book that references her.

While A Gross of Pirates offers me no further information on my heroine, it does offer a great detail of helpful, factual, and entertaining information about 143 other pirates, many of whom this particular pirate enthusiast has never heard of. There are the typical suspects, Henry Morgan, Blackbeard, Anne Bonny, of course, and Breverton even includes my distant relation, Sir Francis Drake, who kick-started my pirate obsession when I was in the fifth grade. The others, though, were new to me. And as an enthusiast of mini-bio books (my term for books that include short features on numerous people), it has been a long time since I’ve come across new names!

The pirates are grouped by time period, location, type of piracy, and each story seems more shocking then the one before. If you have any interest in a deliciously entertaining yet thoroughly researched pirate book, you cannot go wrong with A Gross of Pirates!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

Edition: Hardcover • $31.95 • 9781445682921 • 320 pages • published March 2019 by Amberley Publishing • read in March 2019

Gross of Pirates

Memoir/Autobiography, Non-Fiction

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life by Eric Idle

Sarah

Given that we recently traveled to Doune Castle, the filming location for Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I wanted a bit more background on one of my favorite comedy troupes, the infamous Pythons. Also, please ignore the badly photoshopped photo, I have a bone to pick with Michael Palin’s bookstore, Aberfeldy’s Watermill Bookshop about that…

Synopsis

From Inside the Dust Jacket:
We know him best for his unforgettable roles with Monty Python – from the Flying Circus to The Meaning of Life. Now Eric Idle reflects on the meaning of his own life in this entertaining memoir that takes us on a remarkable journey from his childhood in an austere boarding school through his successful career in comedy, television, theater, and film. Coming of age as a writer and comedian during the Sixties and Seventies, Eric stumbled into the crossroads of the cultural revolution and found himself rubbing shoulders with the likes of George Harrison, David Bowie, and Robin Williams, all of whom became dear lifelong friends. With anecdotes sprinkled throughout involving other close friends and luminaries such as Mike Nichols, Mick Jagger, Steve Martin, Paul Simon, and Lorne Michaels, as well as the Pythons themselves, Eric captures a time of tremendous creative output with equal parts hilarity and heart.

In Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, named for the song he wrote for Life of Brian that has become the number one song played at funerals in the UK, he shares the highlights of his life. and career with the kind of offbeat humor that has delighted audiences for five decades. The year 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Pythons, and Eric is marking the occasion with this hilarious memoir chock-full of behind-the-scenes stories from a high-flying life featuring everyone from Princess Leia to Queen Elizabeth.

Review

Eric Idle was friends with everybody. Anybody who was anyone of notes in the late ’60s through early ’90s in the comedy and rock-and-roll world was his friend. From Mick Jagger to Robin Williams and most celebrities in between, Eric Idle knew everyone in Hollywood, New York, London, and everywhere in between. His memoir reads less like a story of his life and more like a who’s who list.

Three chapters in particular, though, stuck with me. I listened to the audiobook, which Eric Idle read himself, and it was obvious which two chapters were hardest for him to write. Those that recount two deaths, that of his best friend, George Harrison, and his friend Robin Williams. I cried listening to him recount how George was assaulted and later passed away. I felt the pain he felt at loosing his best friend of nearly four decades. In his recounting of his friendship with Robin Williams, he shared that his friends also felt blindsided by his death. The public, those who knew him best, no one expected him to take his own life. The emotion Eric evokes is heavy and weighs on the narrative.

The third chapter that remains with me is that of the journey from Holy Grail to Spamalot. Eric was the musical genius of Monty Python, responsible for the vast majority of the songs in all of their works. As such, he was the driving force in adapting Holy Grail from film to stage. It’s been a show I’ve always wanted to see and one my husband saw with the original cast. Eric’s delight in the success of the show is inspiring and an uplifting moment to motivate anyone to follow their dreams.

All in all, if you love Monty Python and the British celebrity scene of the late mid-20th century, this book is a riot and perfect for you.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Edition: Hardcover • $27.00 • 9781984822581 • 304 pages • published October 2018 by Crown Archetype • average Goodreads rating 3.85 out of 5 stars • read in February 2019

Always Look On the Bright Side of Life (2)

Memoir/Autobiography, Non-Fiction, Sociology, Travel

Travels with Myself and Another by Martha Gellhorn

Sarah

In continuing my war correspondent memoir/biography trend, I figured it was time I pick up Martha Gellhorn’s Travels with Myself and Another. Those who know who she is typically think of her as Hemingway’s third wife, but those who care about journalism, know her as one of the first female war correspondents, and inspiration to my favorite journalist, Marie Colvin.

Synopsis

As a journalist, Gellhorn covered every military conflict from the Spanish Civil War to Vietnam and Nicaragua. She also bewitched Eleanor Roosevelt’s secret love and enraptured Ernest Hemingway with her courage as they dodged shell fire together.

Hemingway is, of course, the unnamed “other” in the title of this tart memoir, first published in 1979, in which Gellhorn describes her globe-spanning adventures, both accompanied and alone. With razor-sharp humor and exceptional insight into place and character, she tells of a tense week spent among dissidents in Moscow; long days whiled away in a disused water tank with hippies clustered at Eilat on the Red Sea; and her journeys by sampan and horse to the interior of China during the Sino-Japanese War.

Review

Martha Gellhorn has fascinated me for quite some time, given my present obsession with female war correspondents this should not be surprising. Her life, one wholly unconventional for her time, is inspiring, but also, in light of twenty first century sensibilities, one I had to remind myself, began over a century ago.

A feminist at her core, Martha, M as UC (unwilling companion, AKA Hemingway) calls her, sets off on each “horror journey” as she’s dubbed them, without a great deal of pre-planning, other than the bare minimum required by her destination. The era of traveling by your bootstraps, hopping flights when you need them, hoping to stumble upon a hotel with available rooms each night, etc. is simply unheard of today. Even when Ewan MacGregor and Charley Boorman went around the world and south through Africa on motorcycles, they still had reservations and accommodations, or at least tents to sleep in each night. Did Martha? No.

When I think of a single woman traveling in the 1940s, ’50s, and early ’60s, I feel a sympathetic sense of dread. I keep waiting for something to go thoroughly wrong, but by her wits or the kindness of others, she avoids any great gender related danger. M doesn’t typically discuss how her gender has anything to do with her ability to travel and I LOVE IT. I felt the real sense of, “If M can do it, so can I!” much more so than when reading Lynsey Addario’s autobiography and Lindsey’s biography of Marie Colvin (apparently a disproportionate number of my favorite journalists are Lindseys…) – they went to the front lines of war. Martha, due to either her gender or the time period, goes to the back lines of war. The war that we don’t see that isn’t quite as dangerous as the war everyone saw on the newsreels each night.

When M and UC (Hemingway) go to China during World War II, it never feels like there is a great threat on their lives. When M goes to the French islands of the Caribbean, I learned a great deal about how the Vichy government affected their lives, but I was never fearful of M’s survival. These adventures, and M’s quite frequent poor decision making – when the pilot of the boat tells you he won’t wait for you to scale a dormant volcano because he can’t dock safely, you should probably heed his warning and not be surprised when you get up in the morning and he’s gone – just a thought. But all these adventures are learning experiences for M and for us, her readers, 40 years after the original publication, 70 years after the adventure. But the real sticking point for this collection for me is M’s trip to Africa.

Holy mother of colonialism. In January of 1962, Martha Gellhorn went to Africa. I found the map in my photo in my collection of vintage maps with a copyright date of 1960 – pretty darn close to how the continent was divided politically at the time of Martha’s travels. Given that Martha’s trip to Africa is by far the longest and move life-affecting of this collection of essays, it seemed a fitting backdrop for the book. But to think of Martha’s approach to the continent, it makes me retch a bit inside.

It seems so foreign to me that we, as human beings, particularly white people, could stereotype an entire continent of people and refuse to get to know them, learn about their communities, and simply label them as selfish, liars, etc. The thing that terrifies me the most is that M was probably considered progressive for her time. While I’m sure there are readers who would find it difficult to turn off their 2018 filters and would find her recounting of her trip to Africa offensive, at it’s core it is a compelling historical and sociological exploration into the changing nature of how we travel and interact with people, and is definitely worth reading.

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars

Edition: Paperback • $17.00 • 9781585420902 • 320 pages • first published 1979, this edition published May 2001 by TarcherPerigee • average Goodreads rating 3.83 out of 5 stars • read in December 2018

Travels with Myself and Another

Biography, Non-Fiction

In Extremis: The Life and Death of War Correspondent Marie Colvin by Lindsey Hilsum

Sarah

I first came across In Extremis when going through front list (new release) publisher orders and, thanked my lucky stars I have such a good relationship with the rep because when I begged her to send me an advance copy, she happily obliged. And I think it is safe to say, In Extremis is my favorite read of the entire year.

Synopsis

When Marie Colvin was killed in an artillery attack in Homs, Syria, in 2012, at age fifty-six, the world lost a fearless and iconoclastic war correspondent who covered the most significant global calamities of her lifetime. In Extremis, written by her fellow reporter Lindsey Hilsum, is a thrilling investigation into Colvin’s epic life and tragic death based on exclusive access to her intimate diaries from age thirteen to her death, interviews with people from every corner of her life, and impeccable research.

After growing up in a middle-class Catholic family on Long Island, Colvin studied with the legendary journalist John Hersey at Yale, and eventually started working for The Sunday Times of London, where she gained a reputation for bravery and compassion as she told the stories of victims of the major conflicts of our time. She lost sight in one eye while in Sri Lanka covering the civil war, interviewed Gaddafi and Arafat many times, and repeatedly risked her life covering conflicts in Chechnya, East Timor, Kosovo, and the Middle East. Colvin lived her personal life in extremis, too: bold, driven, and complex, she was married twice, took many lovers, drank and smoked, and rejected society’s expectations for women. Despite PTSD, she refused to give up reporting. Like her hero Martha Gellhorn, Colvin was committed to bearing witness to the horrifying truths of war, and to shining a light on the profound suffering of ordinary people caught in the midst of conflict.

Review

I love war correspondents’ memoirs and biographies – It’s What I Do was one of my favorite reads of last year. And, just, oh my goodness. In Extremis dethroned Lynsey from the top of my personal ranking. Granted, I’ve only read two to completion so far (I’m reading Martha Gellhorn’s, the role model for both Lynsey and Marie, right now), but goodness gracious, it will be a long time before I find another book like this. And it caused one of the longest book hangovers I’ve ever had. And, through In Extremis, I had the opportunity to check off a book seller life goal and be the first review for a title on Goodreads and Lindsey Hilsum responded to my review!

My husband, Ben, and I have been together for almost a decade and he could not recall a single instance in that time when I stayed up past midnight to read. I absolutely love to read, but am borderline narcoleptic so I’m not a big night time reader. But for days on end, I stayed up far later than I should have, unable to put down Lindsey Hilsum’s marvelous biography of her friend and fellow journalist, Marie Colvin.

Lindsey Hilsum is, in the humble opinion of someone who has not personally met her, the best person to write Marie Colvin’s biography. A friend, but not an intimate acquaintance, she approaches her subject with the kind and caring hands of someone who felt a deep loss when she died, but removed enough to offer a fairly objective perspective on the life decisions she made that led her to that final, fateful trip to Homs, Syria in 2012. Marie kept extensive journals her entire life and they serve as the basis for the bulk of In Extremis, making it as close to an autobiography as it could possibly be. Sprinkled in are excerpts from Marie’s reporting for London’s Sunday Times, and they offer an even deeper glimpse into what inspired and drove her to seek out war zones and report on the stories of the people who live there.

A few years ago, Ben & I visited the Newseum in Washington D. C. which triggered my current obsession with journalism. I’d always loved writing and have been a news junkie from a very young age (the day does not start until I’ve checked the BBC, CNN and my custom Google newsfeed), but I never appreciated just how important journalists are worldwide until that trip. They are responsible for keeping the world apprised of the goings on in far reaches of the world and at home. And nothing, well, almost nothing, in regards to my country’s current political climate, makes me angrier than the unofficial war on journalism and the president’s constant claims of fake news. As I rally against it, and uninformed fellow Americans, I remind myself of the fact that Marie Colvin had to stand up to people who challenged the authenticity of her reporting and she did so with kindness, grace, and style.

Even though Marie’s personal life may have been a bit of a mess, okay, quite a big mess, she played a crucial role in ensuring that the western world knew exactly what was going on in the war zones of the world, particularly the Middle East. It is easy enough for those of us sitting in our living rooms in the Northeast of the US to ignore the challenges facing not only that area of the world, but also in Europe as they struggle to accommodate record numbers of refugees, and to dehumanize those who are struggling because their struggles don’t affect us directly. But Marie wouldn’t let us. She did everything in her power to bring that suffering, the plights of the people who were displaced from their homes, and the challenges they faced daily, into our collective consciousness.

When reading, and therefore constantly Google-ing Marie Colvin, I came across the production of A Private War, Matthew Heineman’s cinematic depiction of Marie’s life. While the movie is based on the Vanity Fair article published immediately after Marie’s death and not on Lindsey’s biography, the two, given their near simultaneous release dates, will become inexorably tied to each other in future. I was very nervous when I found out that Rosamund Pike is playing Marie – I adored her in Pride & Prejudice, but is she the best choice to play my new hero? After reading articles about production and how much the process of portraying Marie affected her personally, and the fact that a documentary filmmaker is at the helm, I’m far less concerned and a great deal more excited.

Lindsey’s writing is tremendous, Marie’s life equal parts inspiring and cautionary tale, and I truly hope that her story reaches as many people as possible and helps us all recognize that we are all human. We all share this world, and the sufferings of a few are the sufferings of us all.

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars

Edition: Hardcover • $28.00 • 9780374175597 • 400 pages • published November 2018 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux • read September 2018

In Extremis on Goodreads

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In Extremis

Non-Fiction, Travel

Atlas Obscura by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras & Ella Morton

Sarah

Fun and eccentric travel book with lots of random and unknown places in it? Can I have a copy now please? These may or may not have been my exact words to my boss when this book first showed up at the store. 

Synopsis

It’s time to get off the beaten path. Inspiring equal parts wonder and wanderlust, Atlas Obscura celebrates over 700 of the strangest and most curious places in the world.

Talk about a bucket list: here are natural wonders–the dazzling glowworm caves in New Zealand, or a baobob tree in South Africa that’s so large it has a pub inside where 15 people can drink comfortably. Architectural marvels, including the M.C. Escher-like stepwells in India. Mind-boggling events, like the Baby Jumping Festival in Spain, where men dressed as devils literally vault over rows of squirming infants. Not to mention the Great Stalacpipe Organ in Virginia, Turkmenistan’s 40-year hole of fire called the Gates of Hell, a graveyard for decommissioned ships on the coast of Bangladesh, eccentric bone museums in Italy, or a weather-forecasting invention that was powered by leeches, still on display in Devon, England.

More cabinet of curiosities than traditional guidebook, Atlas Obscura revels in the unexpected, the overlooked, the bizarre, and the mysterious. Every page expands our sense of how strange and marvelous the world really is. And with its compelling descriptions, hundreds of photographs, surprising charts, and maps for every region of the world. It is a book you can open anywhere. But with caution: It’s almost impossible not to turn to the next entry, and the next, and the next.

Review

Christmas shopping each year for my brother-in-law and his wife is next to impossible. As corporate lawyers in New York City (now in Miami), they want for just about nothing, so getting them a present that speaks to the interests and sensibilities is the only way to go. And it’s hard. Easier now than it was before they had children back in 2016 when this beauty arrived in the store and for once, in the 6 years I’d been buying them presents, I knew exactly what to get them. I made the book one of my staff picks for holiday gift giving and, as my boss gets each of the staff a book of their choice for Christmas each year, I asked for a copy of my own.

As regular world travels (I have great and excessive envy of their passports), my brother-in-law and his wife delighted in picking out the places they’d been and where they’d want to go. They spent hours on Christmas Day pouring over the pages and it was passed around the family for hours after that. When visiting them at their apartment, it was the only book they had out on the table, the edges now worn and clearly turned repeatedly with care.

Now, as I plan my trip to the UK to visit my sister in June, I’ve post-it noted the places I want to go, and also marked them on the Atlas Obscura website because the book is too precious (and heavy) to travel with. I’ve altered my travel plans with her to suit visiting some of the places included in this book (as well as Lonely Planet’s Global Coffee Tour) and in my researching and paging through, I was pleasantly surprised to find it included some places I had already traveled too!

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars

Edition: Hardcover • $35.00 • 9780761169086 • 480 pages • published September 2016 by Workman Publishing • average Goodreads rating 4.25 out of 5 • referenced repeatedly since December 2016

Atlas Obscura Website

Atlas Obscura on Goodreads

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Atlas Obscura

Non-Fiction, Photography/Art, Travel

The Grand Tour Guide to the World by Jeremy Clarkson, James May & Richard Hammond

Sarah

It’s all my husband’s fault. When we first started dating, he asked if I wanted to watch a little British show call Top Gear. “What is Top Gear?” I asked, ignorant of it’s cultural relevance. “Oh, well it’s kind of a car show, kind of a comedy show,” he answered. “Ok,” I shrugged, “let’s watch it.” Oh how little I anticipated that it would quickly become my favorite show of the decade.

Synopsis

The world is a big place full of interesting thins… And The Grand Tour has seen several of them. That’s why few people are better placed to lead you around this vast planet of ours than Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. As long as you don’t mind getting hot and lost.

In this indispensable guide you’ll discover an abundance of information, most of which is probably wrong and potentially dangerous. Alongside occasionally accurate guides to the places visited on the show, you’ll find exclusive interviews with the presenters and see how some of the show’s most spectacular sequences were made.

As well as being a factually dubious encyclopaedia, The Grand Tour Guide to the World is also a companion for anyone inspired by the Grand Tour traveling circus. Learn how to blend in with French car enthusiasts, how to speak Welsh (wrongly) and how to wow people with amazing facts about Swindon. And on top of all this, we reveal the world’s fastest cop cars and the planet’s greatest car makers. And there’s a picture of James May in an anorak.

Review

So I rambled about Top Gear at the beginning and you’re probably thinking, but Sarah, the title of the book says it’s called The Grand Tour! Yes, because the BBC fired the top presenter, Jeremy Clarkson, so he and his mates got picked up by Amazon to make a new show call The Grand Tour.

The Grand Tour started its second season shortly before Christmas and, when you’re working in a retail environment during the holidays as I was, you look for just about anything and everything to cheer yourself up and The Grand Tour fit the bill. Most of the original features of Top Gear (the news, celebrities driving cars, making fun of each other, races, etc.) are in the new series but with slightly different names. The boys can be counted on to make even the most mundane topic intriguing and entertaining. Even if you don’t really care about cars, like my sister… (ahem, Laura), you can still find something to laugh about.

The book is organized into 10 sections, one for each episode/location the show traveled to in the first series of The Grand Tour. The graphic design is stunning, and the content is, for the most part, informative. Would I recommend it as an actual travel guide? Of course not. But, if you are a fan of The Grand Tour, or you want to see what Clarkson, May and Hammond are all about, I suggest at least flipping through the pages of The Grand Tour Guide to the World. At the very least, their irreverent humor will occasionally bring a smile to your face.

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

Edition: Hardcover • $29.99 • 9780008257859 • 272 pages • published October 2017 by HarperCollins • average Goodreads rating 3.83 out of 5 • read in January 2018

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Grand Tour Guide to the World 2

 

Fantasy, Fiction, Young Adult

Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy by Laini Taylor

Sarah

When I first saw the cover of Daughter of Smoke and Bone, I fell head over heels – love at first sight. Blue hair, dynamic fonts, intriguing synopsis, Prague as a setting, fantasy world. I was just coming off the high of finishing City of Dark Magic and was very excited to find something that might be similarly fantastic. 

Synopsis

Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky. In a dark and dusty shop, a devil’s supply of human teeth grows dangerously low. And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherworldly war.

Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she speaks many languages – not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she’s about to find out.

Review

I didn’t know much about the Seraphim/Chimaera trope until I finished reading Daughter of Smoke and Bone and Ben had to correct my pronunciation of “chimaera.” So for the majority of the book, I was greatly intrigued by the seemingly unique fantasy world – it was just new to me. That being said, Karou discovering of her place in that world and stumbling upon the unending conflict was revealed marvelously and magnificently as she rediscovered her past – and her past love, Akiva, a seraphim.

The “modern day” fantasy retelling of Romeo and Juliet and the star-crossed lovers is common in most young adult literature, it can even be viewed as the ultimate love story, the tragic fated love of those who were never supposed to be together in the first place. Karou is brave and resilient, unapologetic for who she is (as soon as she discovers the truth) whereas Akiva is a spineless sniveling coward who just irks me to no end. Yes, he’s gorgeous. No, that’s not what you base an entire relationship on, give young adults a bit more credit. There is nothing other than wanton lust pulling these two towards each other and honestly, I’m tired of reading about hot people falling for other hot people just because they’re über-attractive. Nothing sells their relationship, nothing anchors the fantasy world of the second half of the book in reality and even the most wildly outrageous fantasy still has some sort of foot hold into reality – it’s the only way it can be relatable.

I’m not entirely sure what it was that made me decide to finish this series, given my lack of insta-love for Daughter of Smoke & Bone, but I am certainly glad I did. I enjoyed Days of Blood & Starlight and Dreams of Gods & Monsters infinitely more than I enjoyed the first book.

Days of Blood & Starlight and Dreams of Gods & Monsters take place immediately after the first book and Dreams of Gods & Monsters is set only over the course of a handful of days. They chronicle the renews war crimes committed by the chimera and the seraphim in the name of Eretz, their homeland, though further backstory reveals that the Seraphim were not always native to Eretz. As Karou takes up Brimstone’s mantle of creating new bodies for the slain chimera souls, Akiva is saving chimera in an effort to ingratiate himself with his blue haired love. The story is a rollicking adventure and the secondary characters, particularly Ziri and Liraz, and Zuzana and Mik, make the story worth reading.

Unfortunately, my lack-luster feelings for Karou and Akiva, our woeful star-crossed lovers, remain. I really struggled to connect with either of them and found their moping and whiny incredibly irritating and I really wanted to rush through their parts. But, with an audiobook, not possible, so thankfully Laini Taylor at least wrote those parts very well, even if the characters didn’t sell it for me. I tried to understand, I tried to appreciate the Romeo and Juliet nature of their relationship, but at that point, I would have realized that life is short (particularly theirs, being that they’re in the middle of  war) and therefore one shouldn’t waste any time going after the things they want and the things that will make them happy.

So overall, can I recommend the trilogy? Sure, why not. But that’s only half-hearted and rides more on the fact that Laini Taylor is a gifted wordsmith than anything else.

Rating: 6 out of 10 stars

Edition (Daughter of Smoke & Bone): Paperback • $12.99 • 9780316133999 • 418 pages • first published September 2011, this edition published June 2012 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers • average Goodreads rating 4.04 out of 5 • read in May 2013

Laini Taylor’s Website

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Daughter of Smoke & Bone (2)

Biography, Non-Fiction, Photography/Art

Women in Sports by Rachel Ignotofsky

Sarah

Why did I decide to read Women in Sports… I hope I’ve established through my selection of books so far that I absolutely adore all books that celebrate strong women and positive female role models. Sports in particular hold a very special place in my heart – those are my hockey skates in the picture – and I will do everything in my power to make sure that all little girls in my life know that they can do and be anything – including the world’s best ice hockey goalie. 

Synopsis

Women in Sports highlights the achievements and stories of fifty notable women athletes from the 1800s to today, including trailblazers, Olympians, and record-breakers in more than forty sports. The athletes featured include well-known figures like tennis player Billie Jean King and gymnast Simone  Biles, as well as lesser-known champions like Toni Stone, the first woman to play baseball in a professional men’s league, and skateboarding pioneer Patti McGee. The book also contains infographics on topics that sporty women want to know about such as muscle anatomy, a timeline of women’s participation in sports, pay and media statistics for female athletes, and influential women’s teams. Women in Sports celebrates the success of the tough, bold, and fearless women who paved the way for today’s athletes.

Review

Sports have always played a big role in my life. Whether I was playing them or watching them with my friends and family, I have loved them always. Growing up, I did gymnastics, ballet, roller bladed, biked, swam, played softball and skated like a fiend. I skiied, played basketball, and was nearly recruited to Brown University as an ice hockey goalie. My sister played soccer and tennis, my dad was a gymnast and sailor, my mom was a three sport athlete and my grandfather played four sports and for the Philadelphia Eagles. To say sports are in my blood is an understatement. The first book I ever finished writing was about a teenage hockey star.

Downside, I wasn’t really great at any sport, not a one. The jokes about ice hockey goalies were true for me – I was not a great skater. Upside, I loved it, so I worked hard and I practiced. When I found out that the author of Women in Science was writing about women in sports, I started begging our rep to send me an ARC (advanced reader copy) or finished copy of the book. Nine months ago. I knew I had to have this book.

I love this book – of all the compendium books of great women, this is by far one of my favorites. The art style is perfect for the style of book – think infographics, but with a bit more text. The decisions for which wonderful women to include must have been a challenging one, but it is definitely a worthy list – variety of sports and backgrounds of each of the women is diverse. If you are looking for inspiration for yourself, your daughter, your niece, your student, your granddaughter AND (or) your son, nephew, grandson, this is a fabulous book to encourage them to be their best and to never stop trying to excel.

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars

Edition: Hardcover • $16.99 • 9781607749783 • 128 pages • published in July 2017 by Ten Speed Press • average Goodreads rating 4.19 out of 5 • read in July 2017

Rachel Ignotofsky’s Website

Women in Sports on Goodreads

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Women in Sports 2

 

Biography, History, Non-Fiction

Rejected Princesses by Jason Porath

Sarah

Back in October, when this beautiful tome arrived at the bookstore, my coworkers were debating where it should be shelved. I chimed in by saying they could hold off deciding for a few days, because it was coming home with me! Then again, pretty much any book that comes into the store screaming “female badassery” comes home with me before too long!

Synopsis

Get ready! It’s a long (but good!) one!

Let’s face it: the list of historical women we learn about in school is lacking. It’s safe, it’s censored, it’s short. And even when we learn about a true legend – say, Harriet Tubman – we get half the story (and it’s usually not the half about her as a plantation-torching Union spy-master). This is just the list of women we know about. What about the women we don’t?

In place of complex, real-life heroines, we get sparkly, doe-eyed animated damsels who dominate children’s minds everywhere. Rejected Princesses is here to provide an alternative to that.

In this fully illustrated, deeply researched, and totally entertaining collection, Jason Porath offers 100 women too uncompromising, too untoward, or too uncomfortable to fit the modern princess mold. Gathering together a diverse set of some famous, some infamous, some forgotten, and some virtually unknown figures from history and myth, from all over the globe, this book presents the female role models we never knew we needed. Yes, there are a few princesses, but there are also pirates, spies, journalists, activists, concubines, empresses, ninjas, pilots, samurais, mathematicians, sword-slingers, and warlords too.

These women were rebels and rulers, pioneers in their fields, and fighters for their causes (and sometimes for themselves). In a time when women are still pushing for equal pay and equal opportunity, shouldn’t we be putting brave women like Sybil Ludington, Hatshepsut, Nzinga Mbande, Josephine Baker, Khutulun, Rani Lakshmibai, Harriet Tubman, Emmeline Pankhurst, and Joan of Arc on equal footing with Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty?

Women have always played a key, kick-ass role in revolutionizing our world. The girls of today are the latest links in a long chain of geniuses, warriors, and fearless women. It is the birthright of every woman to have a connection to that history.

Review

Like I mentioned in my previous review of Wonder Women, I love books that are compendiums of stories about different women who have done awe-inspiring things. The biggest selling point of this particular book for me is two fold:

  1. The author worked on my favorite animated movie – How to Train Your Dragon and helped bring one of my favorite characters, Astrid, to life! (the cake topper for my wedding was even Astrid & Hiccup!)
  2. He included Alfhild, a Viking princess turned pirate and the real life inspiration for the novel I’m writing!

In Rejected Princesses, Porath includes women who are princesses and commoners alike, who hail from all over the world, from all walks of life, of all manner of life experiences. The illustrations of each “princess” are exquisitely designed to highlight their uniqueness and specialties. Porath also designed a rating system for all the women, but not the usual misogynistic rating of hotness, but of the type of life they led, more similar to a movie rating from G to R. In this manner, Porath has ensured that Rejected Princesses can be suitable to all ages and for younger children, parents can determine which stories to share with their children.

So many of the women included would make terrific role models, especially given their diverse backgrounds, for any young woman, or man, and I absolutely cannot wait for a second volume! Porath continues to add new women to the Rejected Princesses‘ website and I hope that he will include them together in a a book just like with this volume!

Rating: 10 out of 10

Edition: Hardcover • $26.99 • 9780062405371 • 384 pages • published October 2016 by Dey Street Books • average Goodreads rating 4.54 out of 5 • read in November 2016

Rejected Princesses Website

Rejected Princesses on Goodreads

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Rejected Princesses

Essays, Non-Fiction, Sociology

Dear Ijeawele by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Sarah

A few weeks ago, I made a semi-major life change – in an effort to be more healthy, I decided to take up running on a regular basis. Struggling to find a way to do everything I wanted to in my free time (basically, I would rather be reading than running), I decided to finally download the Overdrive app and listen to audiobooks from my local library while I ran. Dear Ijeawele (Ee-gee-ah-way-lee) happened to be the first book that I searched for that was available, and I had been meaning to read We Should All be Feminists, so another book by the same author seemed fitting.

Synopsis

A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a childhood friend, asking her how to raise her baby girl to be a feminist. Dear Ijeawele is Adichie’s letter of response.

Here are fifteen invaluable suggestions – compelling, direct, wryly funny, and perceptive – for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman. From encouraging her to choose a helicopter, and not only a doll, as a toy if she so desires; having open conversations with her about clothes, makeup, and sexuality; debunking the myth that women are somehow biologically arranged to be in the kitchen making dinner and that men can “allow” women to have full careers, Dear Ijeawele goes right to the heart of sexual politics in the twenty-first century. It will start a new and urgently needed conversation about what it really means to be a woman today.

Review

The audiobook for this short tome is only an hour and a half long – the perfect length for one of my long run workouts. I don’t know about other runners/walkers, but the time for me is one of contemplation, as a distraction from focusing on my allergy induced wheezing and agonizing over how much my muscles hurt. Running through Valley Forge helps me focus on my thoughts and nature, and what I’m listening to while doing so.

As I listened to Dear Ijeawele, I considered the following: Both my sister-in-law and a close friend are expecting their first children in October and I have lately been contemplating what type of aunt/quasi-aunt I want to be. My husband has a younger sister who is 9 years old and I find myself reflecting on the sort of example I set for her when she was a very small child. Did I encourage her to be herself? Did I ever unwittingly tell her that she could or couldn’t do something simply because she was a girl? Is her present obsession with pink something she truly enjoys, or does she love pink and princesses because we as a society have conditioned her to? Did she want to wear her Converse high-tops as flower girl in my wedding because I thought it’d be cool, or because she did? How much did I influence her versus how many decisions did she make on her own?

The more I thought about it, the more worked up I got. I felt like I hadn’t followed any of Adichie’s suggestions, not that I was/am responsible for how my younger sister-in-law lives her 3rd grade life, but I want to be a positive, feminist influence on her life. And then I realized, yes, language matters, and yes, the relationships that young children witness matter, but no, not every woman has to have the same definition of feminism. So long as girls and women have choices, and those choices should be the same as men’s, they can live their lives however they want. My definition of feminism is not my mother’s definition, or even the same as my sister’s definition. My definition of feminism is to be my own person, and so long as that is what I strive to show the young children in my life, then I believe I have embodied the spirit of Adichie’s suggestions, even if I haven’t followed them letter for letter, word for word.

So learn from me, read or listen for a new and unique perspective, but do not take Dear Ijeawele as feminism gospel. Interpret Adichie’s suggestions for yourself, your family, and those young girls in your life and simply embrace the idea that everyone should have the choice and freedom to be whoever they wish to be.*

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

Edition: Hardcover • $15.00 • 9781524733131 • 80 pages • published March 2017 by Knopf Publishing Group • average Goodreads rating 4.56 out of 5 • read in April 2017

*so long as whoever you/they wish to be causes no harm to anyone else

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Website

Dear Ijeawele on Goodreads

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Dear Ijeawele