Here's what I chose

A couple of weeks ago, I told you that, as a Day 5 Giveaway Winner during Armchair BEA, I was to choose from a huge list of giveaways, which I had narrowed down to seven books.  I have now received my prize and want to tell you what I got.  All of the books in that post were among my choices, but the first three were a package deal.  And that's what I received.  These three children's books arrived in yesterday's mail:



Seeds of Change: Planting a Path to Peace ~ by Jen Cullerton Johnson, 2010, biography (Wangari Maathai, Kenya)

Bird ~ by Zetta Elliott, 2008, children's

Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty ~ by G. Neri, 2010, graphic novel (Illinois)

Latest book arrival

Okay, so your eyes just glazed over when you saw this title. Uh-huh, I recognized that look!  But I'm excited.  Tuesday evening the college provided  a meal for adjunct teachers during this year's orientation, and when we went into our break-out groups, we who will be teaching developmental writing got this book and the textbook (which I got and wrote about weeks ago).

This second edition "includes revised chapters on technology and the writing process and focuses on topics relevant to non-native speakers of English in the developmental writing course. Classic scholars from the field such as Mina Shaughnessy and June Jordan, along with several new voices, offer practical, sound insight for instructors both in and outside the classroom."

I have a degree in English and have taught writing classes, but I've never had occasion to read a book like this -- and I look forward to it.  The fall semester starts in a week and a half, and I'm fired up and ready to go.  Tonight I'll start reading this 464-page book on Teaching Developmental Writing: Background Readings, by Susan Naomi Bernstein, 2004.  (No, I'm not racing to finish every article before classes start.)

What?  Not your idea of bedtime reading?

Another day, another book ~ or four

Uppity Women of the New World ~ by Vicki Leon, 2001

I like the second definition of "uppity" that I found at dictionary.com:

rebelliously
self-assertive;
not inclined to
be tractable
or deferential

I happened upon one of the books in the Uppity Women series yesterday and decided I really needed stories about "225 altruists, abolitionists, and adventurers."

Mary Haydock Reibey is in the section on Early Aussies.  When her husband died and his business partner keeled over a month later, Mary took over their cargo and trading business.  She added new warehouses, vessels, and real estate and, within nine years, "was looking at a fortune of 20,000 pounds."  There's more in her two-page story (pp. 216-217), but I'm most impressed that she was not only "in the money" but also on it.  Literally.  She's on this Australian twenty-dollar bill.

I also brought home three books from the library this week:

Day After Night ~ by Anita Diamant, 2009

Having read The Red Tent and Good Harbor by Anita Diamant, I am excited about reading another of her books.  This one, according to the dust jacket, is based on the "true story of the October 1945 rescue of more than two hundred prisoners from the Atlit internment camp, a prison for 'illegal' immigrants run by the British military near the Mediterranean coast north of Haifa."  Diamant dedicated this book to her grandfather and her uncle, both victims of the Holocaust.

The Patron Saint of Liars ~ by Ann Patchett, 1922

I've been meaning to read this ones for so many years that I began to wonder if I'd already read it and just couldn't remember the story line.  Nope.  This is the book I started reading when I got home with it, and it's not one I've read before.  I'm up to page 234 of 308 pages, and the main character is unlike any protagonist I can remember.

The short first section is background about the town of Habit, Kentucky, where most of the story takes place.  The next three sections could be called Hers, His, and Theirs -- as seen through the eyes of the central character, then her husband, then the daughter.  I'm holding my breath to find out if the daughter will finally figure out what's what with her parents.

Summer People ~ by Brian Groh, 2007

Although I wrote about the cover of this book in January 2008, I never read the book.  Characters in this novel include a young college dropout who wants to be a graphic novelist; a philosophical, ex-punk Episcopalian pastor; and the nanny of the pastor's children.  It sounds like a beach read to me, which means I'm not even sure I want to read it.  But it does have the right cover. (To understand that remark, you'll have to read my earlier post.)

Fresh arrivals ~ they keep coming!

This one is at the top because I'm not apt to actually read all the way through it and because I won't likely review the parts I do read.  Donna (my BFF) and I went to the used book store today to get books on Excel (spreadsheets she needs for her teaching) and PowerPoint (for the writing classes I'll teach this fall).  We found one chunkster of a book that included both, but this Cutting Edge PowerPoint for Dummies was three years newer (2006).  So we bought separate books, which we'll share.  It's my first book "for Dummies," since I don't actually consider myself a dummy.

This YA novel is also from the used book store.  I've read Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's Shiloh books and jumped on this YA novel when I saw it in the free bin for all the rejects.  Yes, "free" is the best price of all for used books!  And I've already started reading about 13-year-old Chrissa, whose sullen anger (my choice of words) is causing lots of friction between her and her mother.  Naylor's Ice was published in 1995, but seems current to me.  I remember when one of my kids went through some sullen years.

One more used book from today's shopping trip -- Ladies First by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel is a National Geographic book published in 2006.  While I was looking at used books, I found this one for the Women Unbound reading challenge.  (Have you noticed I've gone far, far beyond the minimum -- or even the maximum -- suggested by the three co-founders of this challenge?)  Anyway, there are some interesting "ladies" among these "40 Daring American Women Who Were Second to None":  Phillis Wheatley (first African American woman writer to be published), Wilma Mankiller (first woman to become Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation), Elizabeth Blackwell (first American woman to graduate from medical school), Dian Fossey (first woman zoologist to study mountain gorillas in their habitat), and Sally Priesand (first American woman to be ordained as a rabbi), for example.

Sheila at Book Journey turned me on to Seven Year Switch by Clair Cook, but until that gets processed into the system at my library, I have checked out another book by this author.  Multiple Choice (2004) is about a mother and daughter going to college at the same time.  It's supposed to be "hilarious," not what I usually look for in a book, but it sounds good to me at the moment.  Especially as I look forward to going back to college -- as a teacher of Developmental Writing.  We shall see.

Also from the library today was this book that I ran across while looking for something else (online book stores are good at suggesting titles that are nowhere close to what you searched for).  Wildwood by Drusilla Campbell (2003) is about "three friends, three lives, and one secret" from thirty years ago, when their innocence was shattered forever.  This is another book that seems perfect for the Women Unbound reading challenge.  (So do Ice and Multiple Choice, for that matter.)

And the final new book for today is Scout, Atticus, and Boo by Mary McDonagh Murphy (2010).  I told Donna about this celebration of fifty years of To Kill a Mockingbird, Donna's favorite book, that came out last month.  She has already bought and read the book and handed it to me to read this morning!

What books have you gotten "new" lately?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 as a metaphor for the new books that have arrived at your house.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Euclid's Window ~ my latest acquisition

In Euclid's Window: The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace (2001), Leonard Mlodinow says there have been five revolutions, centered around five people:

The Story of Euclid
The Story of Descartes
The Story of Gauss
The Story of Einstein
The Story of Witten

And he tells stories about lots of other things, like the geometry of taxation, the origin of latitude and longitude, the curved space revolution, relativity's other Albert, the weird revolution.  Just before the epilogue, he closes with "The Theory Formerly Known as Strings."  What?  I'm just beginning to get string theory, and he's changing everything?  What I've read so far, as I said above, is fascinating.  I'll try really hard to get around to a review of this one when I finish reading it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 as a metaphor for the new books that have arrived at your house.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My newest books

I dropped by the library today, and the librarian who helps me find books for the Women Unbound reading challenge gave me one of her own books she had just finished:  Red Azalea (1994), Anchee Min’s celebrated memoir of growing up in the last years of Mao’s China.  The online synopsis says:

"As a child, she was asked to publicly humiliate a teacher; at seventeen, she was sent to work at a labor collective. Forbidden to speak, dress, read, write, or love as she pleased, she found a lifeline in a secret love affair with another woman. Miraculously selected for the film version of one of Madame Mao’s political operas, Min’s life changed overnight. Then Chairman Mao suddenly died, taking with him an entire world."

I've read several books by John Shelby Spong, but not this one.  I ran across Liberating the Gospels (1996) when I was at the bookstore with my friend Donna the other day.  The subtitle is "Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes."  Since I'm working on the course I'll be teaching on "Seven Gospels," I figured it was right up my alley.  Spong says the Gospels are thoroughly Jewish texts.  The online synopsis says:

"Spong powerfully argues that many of the key Gospel accounts of events in the life of Jesus—from the stories of his birth to his physical resurrection—are not literally true. He offers convincing evidence that the Gospels are a collection of Jewish midrashic stories written to convey the significance of Jesus."

I've already told you I'm reading Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson (2009).  This book is one Donna bought new and decided to let me read first.  She knows how impressed I am by this author's writing.

I finished Summer's End by Audrey Couloumbis (2005) within hours of Donna's lending it to me.  Yep, I told you I'd read this one, but I plan a short review soon.  (Oh, so many reviews I mean to write!)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 as a metaphor for the new books that have arrived at your house.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What's new on my bookshelves

The complete title of this book is rather long, when I include the subtitle:  The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus: The Definitive Collection of Mystical Gospels and Secret Books about Jesus of Nazareth ~ by Marvin Meyer, 2005.  Meyer offers fresh translations of a dozen books, most of which were found at Nag Hammadi in the Egyptian desert in 1945.

My interest in this area started when I read the then-newly published The Gnostic Gospels, a scholarly book by Elaine Pagels (1979) which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award and was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the hundred best books of the twentieth century.  Many years later, I also read her bestseller, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (2003), in which she says the Gospel of Thomas reveals, along with other apocryphal teachings, that Jesus was not God but rather a teacher who sought to uncover the divine light in all human beings.  She argues that the Gospel of John was written as a reaction and rebuttal to the Gospel of Thomas.

This sort of thing fascinates me, so I developed a class about "Six Gospels," using the four gospels that made it into the Christian Bible (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) along with two of the gospels found at Nag Hammadi:  The Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary (Magdalene).  For later classes, I decided to include a gospel by James, the brother of Jesus.  James was the leader of the church in Jerusalem, which was decidedly on the side of Christians conforming to Jewish customs, like circumcision.  Now I want to read Meyer's new translation and see what I notice this time around.  If you are interested in attending the class when I teach it again, let me know.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 as a metaphor for the new books that have arrived at your house.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Book arrivals

Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks (1981) includes these chapters:

• Sexism and the Black Female Slave Experience
• Continued Devaluation of Black Womanhood
• The Imperialism of Patriarchy
• Racism and Feminism: The Issue of Accountability
• Black Women and Feminism

The next three books fit the World Religion reading challenge.

A friend gave me The Visual I Ching: A New Approach to the Ancient Chinese Oracle, with cards and commentary by Oliver Perrottet. The boxed set includes not only the book, but a set of cards and a cloth for laying out the cards. A quick perusal gives me the impression that this system may be more complicated than the usual I Ching that I've seen, but I'm curious and willing to give it a try.  I must say the cards are really beautiful.

The other two are library books for children, but I have long been interested in the variety of creation stories in the world -- and I know nothing (so far) about Mayan gods and goddesses:

Gods and Goddesses of the Ancient Maya ~ by Leonard Everett Fisher, 1999

From the dustjacket:  "The Ancient Maya created a remarkable civilization, one known for its skill at astronomy, mathematics, and building.  Their pyramids still dot the landscape of Central America, where they flourished more than a thousand years ago. ... Fisher describes twelve of the most important Maya gods, explaining their powers, their gifts, and their images."

In the Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World ~told by Virginia Hamilton and illustrated by Barry Moser, 1988

Twenty-five creation myths have been collected, and every one has at least one illustration.  The dust jacket gives some examples:  "In an Eskimo myth, for example, the first man pushes his way out of a pea pod.  In a story from the Kono people of Guinea, death starts the world.  A dramatic myth from China tells that the universe was originally in the shape of a hen's egg -- and from this burst the first being."

We've been hearing warnings since the late 1970s about climate change, and I've heard this book is good.  Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert was published in 2006, and I'm finally getting around to reading it.  At 194 pages, plus notes and index, it's smaller than I expected.  The book looks very reader-friendly and inviting, so maybe it won't take me very long to read through it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 as a metaphor for the new books that have arrived at your house.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So what new books have you gotten lately?

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?

Newest book arrivals

The Secret Supper ~ by Javier Sierra  (2004):

"Milan, 1497:  Leonardo da Vinci is completing his masterpiece, The Last Supper.  Pope Alexander VI is determined to execute him after realizing that the painting contains clues to a baffling — and blasphemous — message, which he is determined to decode.  The Holy Grail and the Eucharistic Bread are missing, there is no meat on the table and, shockingly, the apostles are portraits of well-known heretics — none of them depicted with halos.  And why has the artist painted himself into the scene with his back turned toward Jesus?  The clues to Leonardo's greatest puzzle are right before your eyes."

The Smoke Jumper ~ by Nicholas Evans (2001):

"The fire that was to change so many lives so utterly started with a single shaft of lightning. ... The woman, camped nearby with her group of troubled teenagers, slept on and heard nothing.  She has brought them here by court order on a youth program to help them find themselves.  But one among them will be lost forever.  For soon the cocoon of fire will hatch to engulf the entire mountain and exact its deadly toll.  And into this inferno will come the smoke jumper.  His name is Connor Ford and he falls like an angel of mercy from the sky, braving the flames to save the woman he loves but knows he cannot have.  For Julia Bishop is the partner of his closest friend, Ed Tully, an ambitious young musician.  Julia loves them both but the tragedy on Snake Mountain forces her to choose between them..."

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ~ by Mary Wollstonecraft (1792) is one of the earliest books on feminist philosophy. Wollstonecraft argues that women must be educated according to their class, since they had the major responsibility for educating the nation's children. Women are not ornaments or property to be traded in marriage, but human beings who deserve the same fundamental rights as men.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------