Newest books at my house

Divas, Dames and Dolls: A Celebration of the Female Spirit ~ by Kathleen Fitzgerald, 2005

I like the subtitle, that we can celebrate the female spirit.  Even more, I like that this book is about the spirit of older women.  I'm one, ya know!  I counted about 57 women in this book, most of which has a bold black-and-white photo on the right-hand page and a write-up about the woman on the left.  I bought the book because I loved the photos and the attitude pictured in each one.

The Road Taken ~ by Rona Jaffe, 2000

This novel covers a woman's family in the twentieth century, from Rose's birth on January 1, 1900, through the loss of her mother when she was ten, life with her stepmother, and raising her own three strong-willed daughters.  The dust jacket blurb says this is "a chronicle of a woman and a family and a century like no other."

The Woman Who Gave Birth to Her Mother: Tales of Transformation in Women's Lives ~ by Kim Chernin, 1998

This classic focuses on "the point at which a woman lets go of her past and is able to live vibrantly in the present."  The back cover mentions three women in the book:  "one woman, adopted as a child, embarks on a journey to locate her birth mother; another finds the source of a voice that haunts her -- the voice of her daughter, given up at birth; a third unlocks her own creative process and paints her way out of her painful history."

Evvy's Civil War ~ by Miriam Brenaman, 2002

It's 1860 in Virginia, and Evvy Chamberlyn is expected to behave in a certain way.  She, however, has no intentions of living up to those expectations about how to "dress, speak, and act the part of the proper Southern belle."  I'm not sure what I expect from this small paperback book, but it called to me when I saw it at my library and I checked it out.  I was curious about 14-year-old Evvy.

Return of the Great Goddess ~ by Burleigh Muten, 1994

"From Sappho to Judy Chicago, from the late Egyptian era to Audrey Flack, this anthology of fine art reproductions and literary excerpts proclaims the strength and majesty of the feminine experience. The images and messages remind women of their spiritual heritage, their innate wisdom, the integrity of the female body and its rites of passage, and the growing global community of women who celebrate the return of a female deity." -- product description

Every Last One ~ by Anna Quindlen, 2010

I should probably be leery of reading this book, since the dust jacket says it's "a novel about facing every last one of the things we fear the most, about finding ways to navigate a road we never intended to travel, and about living a life we never dreamed we'd have to live, but find ourselves brave enough to try."  My friend Mary Grace told me, "I identified so strongly with the mother.  I felt like what happened to her happened to me.......and it was awful.  It will take a while to recover from reading this book."

Shanghai Girls ~ by Lisa See, 2009

This is the book chosen for discussion in June by both my face-to-face book club and my online book club.  I had the book on hold at the library, but June is upon us!  So I bought it the other day and will start reading it tonight.  In the mid-1930s, two sisters leave Shanghai when their father, facing bankruptcy, arranges for them to marry men who have come from Los Angeles looking for wives.  They face detention at Angel Island (the Ellis Island of the west) and make a pact no one can ever know.

Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual Quest (2nd ed.) ~ by Carol P. Christ, 1980

"Based on the writings of Kate Chopin, Margaret Atwood, Doris Lessing, Adrienne Rich, and Ntozake Shange, Diving Deep and Surfacing reveals how the classic works of these five writers can take the place of traditional religious texts in women's search for spiritual renewal."  (This shows the cover of the third edition, because I couldn't find an image of the second edition.)

What books have "walked into your house" this week?