New books (like new crayons) are such a pleasure!

Several books arrived at my house this week.  I'll start with one I won from Color Online.

Page from a Tennessee Journal, a novel by Francine Thomas Howard (2010), is loosely based on a well-guarded family secret, we are told on the page about the author.  Rural Tennessee in 1913, black woman sharecropper trying to feed her children after her husband runs off, white landowner who gets her pregnant -- one reviewer on Amazon.com posted a quote from the book, about what the woman's Aunt Becky said:

"Ain't never been a brown-skinned woman who had any say over what a Tennessee white man can do with her body."

But it isn't as simple as that, apparently, when we throw in the spouses.  I'll let you know what it's all about, after I read the book.

I ran across Woman's Inhumanity to Woman by Phyllis Chesler while reading about feminism in relation to the Women Unbound reading challenge.  Luckily, my library had a copy.

"Like men, women are exposed to the messages of misogyny and sexism that permeate cultures worldwide. Like men, women unconsciously buy into negative images that can trigger abuse and mistreatment of other women. But like other social victims, many do not realize stereotyping affects members within the victimized group as well as those outside the group. They do not realize their behavior reflects society's biases."

I am working at my branch of the public library, as a volunteer -- two days this week, and two more next week -- so one of the three employees could take a vacation.  I was telling someone about Laurie Halse Anderson, one of my favorite authors, and showed the woman the two of her books on the YA shelves that were not checked out:  Speak, which I've read (and reviewed), and Chains, which I haven't.  Are you surprised to learn that I checked out Chains myself?  I didn't think you would be.

I read about Faith and Feminism on Ronna Detrick's blog and immediately put the book on hold at my library.  Two questions seem to be at the heart of the book, according to the back cover:

"Why do so many women of faith have such a strong aversion to feminism?  And why do so many feminists have an ardent mistrust of religion?"

The book takes a look at five spiritual women who combined their faith with feminist beliefs:  Emily Dickinson, Teresa of Avila, Sojourner Truth, Lucretia Mott, and Dorothy Day.  And I like the title of the last chapter:  "Weaving a Connection."

I'm still emptying boxes of books from my storage units.  One book I added to my TBR pile was Networking: The Great New Way for Women to Get Ahead.  I hear you thinking, "Networking is not new!" and you're right.  But this book by Mary Scott Welch was published in 1980, thirty years ago.  That was decades before Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites.  I'm curious to see how it all started.  When the author died in 1995, at the age of 75, the New York Times obituary said:

"Ms. Welch wrote Networking: The Great New Way for Women to Get Ahead (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1980) in an era when more women were competing for jobs traditionally dominated by men.  Networking, through individual contacts and professional organizations, became an important technique for women to get career advice and make connections. Such contacts also helped offset the competitive advantage men often enjoyed through their own 'old boy' network.

Based on this cover and even the title -- Clone Codes by Patricia C. McKissack, Fredrick McKissack, and John McKissack -- this doesn't sound like my kind of book at all, but I've nearly finished reading this YA novel.  Here's the online synopsis of the story:

The Cyborg Wars are over and Earth has peacefully prospered for more than one hundred years. Yet sometimes history must repeat itself until humanity learns from its mistakes. In the year 2170, despite technological and political advances, cyborgs and clones are treated no better than slaves, and an underground abolitionist movement is fighting for freedom. Thirteen-year-old Leanna's entire life is thrown into chaos when The World Federation of Nations discovers her mom is part of the radical Liberty Bell Movement. ... With help from unlikely sources, Leanna learns the origin of The Liberty Bell Movement and how its members may have answers about her past-and her new reality.As family secrets are revealed, Leanna must face startling truths about self-identity and freedom. Through time travel, advanced technologies, and artificial intelligence, this exhilarating adventure asks what it means to be human and explores the sacrifices an entire society will make to find out.

Another book from the library this week was Full, Full, Full of Love by Trish Cooke, which I've already read and reviewed here.  It's a great little children's book that I highly recommend.
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Remember when you were a kid and getting new crayons was a big deal?  Getting new books holds the same kind of magic for some of us big kids.  Susan at Color Online came up with the idea of New Crayons to represent new books that arrived during the week.
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