A somewhat belated
check in for April. Below is a list of the books I read in April,
including the books I read during the readathon:
The Luminous Life of Lily Aphrodite – Beatrice Colin
Tamburlaine Must Die – Louise Welsh
Woman on the Edge of Time – Marge Piercy
Red Dust Road – Jackie Kay
The Tenderness of Wolves – Stef Penny
The Equality Illusion - Kat Bynard
The Second Coming – John Niven (library read)
which comes to a grand total of nineteen books read in 2012 – so
far. I've found that the readathon has re-ignited my passion for
reading which has been sadly lacking this year. In unrelated news,
Him Indoors and I are flat hunting which has become an incentive to
read as much of Mount TBR before we move. The last time we moved,
almost two years, we had eight boxes – sixty of those boxes
contained my books. Oh and I forgot to mention we were moving from a
second floor flat to a top floor one. I really don't want to have to
go through that again.
One
of my recent reads have been borrowed from my local library. For all
Glasgow's faults, the library system really is fantastic. It is free
to
request any books from the circulation stock and you can have as many
active requests as you like. There is a cap of nine requests if
you're using the online catalogue but I can live with that. The
acquisition librarians seem to be good at ordering multiple copies of
books and maintaing the stock at realistic levels. As a result I
never usually have to wait more than a month for a book.
I
have been keeping an eye on the reads at A Year of Feminist Classics.
I'm still ploughing through April's read Whipping
Girl which
I'm loving and disliking in equal measure. It has been a while since
I've read a book classed as 'feminist theory' and it has been tough
to wade through some of the academic language. It has also confirmed
my suspicions that British and American feminism can be two very
different stances. My experiences of British feminism has been very
action based, such as the fantastic Fawcett Society, whilst American
feminism is very concerned about definitions. Semantics and
linguistics are important however actions can engage people more than
a debate laden with 'new' words. The two can clash, such as the Slut
Walks which took place in Britain and North America last year.
Feminism itself is a loaded word for many women I encounter, let
alone introducing terms such as cissexist or trans-mysognotis.
Today
is a dreich day in Glasgow so I'm going to spend it catching up on
some reading. What a surprise.
6 comments:
Sorry to hear the weather's miserable where you are, though an excuse to just read is always good :-) It's sunny but not that warm down here in Bristol. Which I figure is also good reading weather. Is there such a thing as bad reading weather?
Oh, when you mentioned moving, I was reminded of the state of my TBR stacks! I had several boxes of them when I moved here five years ago, and I'm happy to report that in those years, I've whittled the Old TBRs (as distinguished from my new accumulated stacks!) to around 30 books.
I see you've listed Woman on the Edge of Time, by Marge Piercy. I adore her books and have that one and several others.
The first of hers that I read was Small Changes, back in the 70s.
Here's MY SUNDAY SALON POST
My library system has an unlimited amount of books I can request. I suppose it doesn't help that the system is fairly large that I can do that, but they do cap you at how many materials one can have out at one time.
@Nose in a book - Thanks for coming along to visit my blog. I think any weather can be classed as good reading weather :) As long as you're indoors when it's raining/snowing/sleeting!
@Laurel-Rain - I really should start being more strict with Mount TBR. One big change is that I'm not buying any books. Although, as I type, I remember buying five books at a book sale that my work had last week! Good intentions and all that.
Thanks for recommending more Marge Piercy books. I did enjoy 'Woman on the Edge of Time' but found it a bit heavy for a readathon. I'll certainly track down 'Small Changes.'
@Melissa - Glasgow does cap how many books you can have out. It's usually 12 but sometimes the duty librarian will let you check out one little extra book :)
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