As I told earlier, I thought I would join two reading challenges now, and then, maybe some time later, add some, maybe smaller, challenges to that. I already posted about joining the GLBT Challenge hosted by Amanda from The Zen Leaf, and here comes the post about the Women Unbound Challenge, but I think I'm already slipping from the decision to join only two challenges. The World Religion Challenge sounds simply too tempting, plus I have already decided to participate in the Woolf in Winter read-along. Well, how could I not! This blog was named after a non-fiction book by V. W., my heroine! :)
But back to the Women Unbound Challenge. This is a challenge co-hosted by Aarti, Care, and Eva. The aim is to read books, both fiction and non-fiction, related to the broad idea of women's studies. There are three levels of participation, and I will be aiming for the Suffragette level and read 8 books, out of which at least 3 should be non-fiction, because had I been born 100 years earlier I would have been a suffragette, too! :)
I read history at university and specialized in late 19th-early 20th century women's history. I wrote my master's thesis about the international connections of Maikki Friberg, one of the most important Finnish women's rights activist during that time period. So, I guess, I kind of have to join the Women Unbound Challenge! :) I also read a lot of fiction that would fit this challenge anyway. I'm actually thinking of trying to read more non-fiction for this challenge. I'll read mostly fiction for the GLBT challenge, so it will be a nice balance. Below are two lists. Both, of course, include the books I might read for the challenge, but also books I have read earlier, but thought some of you might find interesting. The books I have read are marked with a *. If any of you would like to know more about any of those books, just leave a comment or send me an e- mail at abookblogofonesown [at] yahoo [dot] co [dot] uk.
Fiction for the Women Unbound Challenge:
*Alsanea, Rajaa: Girls of Riyadh
*Atwood, Margaret: The Edible Woman
*Atwood, Margaret: The Handmaid's Tale (This is a must read, if you have not yet read this!)
Atwood, Margaret: Penelopiad
Barron, Stephanie: The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf
Chevalier, Tracy: Remarkable Creatures
Gaskell, Elizabeth: Four Short Stories
Hall, Sarah: The Carhullan Army
James, Henry: The Bostonians
*Kathy, Page: The Story of My Face
Khadra, Yasmina: The Swallows of Kabul
al-Sa'davi, Nawal: The Fall of the Imam
Sellers, Susan: Vanessa and Virginia
Shakib, Siba: Samira and Samir
Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina
Vartio, Marja-Liisa: The Parson's Widow
*Woolf, Virginia: Mrs. Dalloway (for the umpteenth time, but I love this book! :))
*Woolf, Virginia: Orlando (overlapping with the GLBT challenge)
Well, I'll keep the fiction list short. The non-fiction list below is a tiny bit longer:
Allen, Ann Taylor: Women in the Twentieth-Century Europe
*Anderson, Bonnie S.: Joyous Greetings: The First International Women's Movement, 1830-1860
*Anderson, Harriet: Utopian Feminism: Women's Movements in Fin-de-siècle Vienna
Aung San, Suu Kyi: Letters from Burma
Brooks, Geraldine: Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women
Buckley, Veronica: Christina: Queen of Sweden
*Building Sisterhood: A Feminist History of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, compiled by Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Bynum, Caroline Walker: Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women
Campbell, Elizabeth Delinger: Before Victoria: Extraordinary Women of the British Romantic Era
Cavallaro, Dani: French Feminist Theory: An Introduction
Dinnage, Rosemary: Alone! Alona!: Lives of Some Outsider Women
DuBois, Ellen: Feminism & Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America 1848-1869
Firestone, Shulamith: The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution
Forster, Margaret: Significant Sisters: The Grassroots of Active Feminism 1839-1939
Gardner, Catherine Villanueva: Rediscovering Women Philosophers
*Gilbert, Elizabeth: Eat, Pray, Love
Irigaray, Luce: Luce Irigaray: Key Writings
Kristeva, Julia: Hannah Arendt
*Kuhns, Elizabeth: The Habit: A History of the Clothing of Catholic Nuns
Lee,Hermione: Virginia Woolf
Mann, William J.: Kate: The Womaan Who Was Katherine Hepburn
*McFadden, Margaret H.: Golden Cables of Sympathy: The Transatlantic Sources of Nineteenth-Century Feminism
McRobbie, Angela: The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change
Moi, Toril: Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman
Moore, Lucy Liberty: The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary France
Nagel, Susan: Marie-Thérèse: The Fate of Marie Antoinette's Daughter
Nightingale, Florence: Letters from Egypt: A Journey on the Nile 1849-1850
Oldfield, Sybil: Spinsters of the Parish: The Life and Times of F. M. Mayorand and Mary Sheepshanks
Perreault, Jeanne: Writing Shelves: Contemporary Feminist Autography
Pink, Sarah: Women and Bullfighting: Gender, Sex and the Consumption of Tradition
Politics of Gender: A Century of Women's Suffrage in Finland, ed. by Anna Moring
Raitt, Suzanne: Vita and Virginia: The Work and Friendship of V. Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf
Rich, Adrienne: Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution
Robinson, Jane: Bluestockings: The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education
*Rupp, Leila J.: Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women's Movement
Skaine, Rosemarie: The Women of Afghanistan under the Taliban
Spender, Dale: Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them: From Alphra Behn to Adrienne Rich
*Suffrage & Beyond: International Feminist Perspectives, ed. by Caroline Daly & Melanie Nolan
*Tillyard, Stella: Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox 1778-1832
Tolan, Fiona: Margaret Atwood: Feminism and Fiction
Tomalin, Claire: The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft
Vicinus, Martha: Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928
Wosk, Julie: Women and the Machine: Representations from the Spinning Wheel to the Electronic Age
Åhmansson, Gabriella: A Life and Its Mirrors. Volume I: A Feminist Reading of L. M. Montgomery's Fiction
*800 Years of Women's Letters, ed. by Olga Kenyon
Teaser Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.
The rules are:
- Grab your current read.
- Open to a random page.
- Share two teaser sentences from somewhere on that page.
- Be careful not to include spoilers!
- Share the title & author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participiants can add the book to their to be read lists if they like your teasers!
My teaser this week is from a book I mentionded yesterday in my Mailbox Monday post: Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen. This is a humorous mystery set in Britain in 1932 and featuring Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie Rannoch, 34th in line for the British throne.
The teaser is from the very first page, where Lady Georgiana, as she is called, tells us what the two disadvantages of being a minor royal are. This is the disadvantage number two:"Apparently the only acceptable destiny for a young female member of the house of Windsor is to marry into another of the royal houses that still seem to litter Europe, even though there are precious few reigning monarchs these days. It seems that even a very minor Windsor like myself is a desirable commodity for those wishing a tenuous alliance with Britain at this unsettled time."
Mailbox Monday is a weekly event hosted by Marcia of The Printed Page.
I've been trying to cut down on buying books lately, as I really should do more reading of books instead of buying them! I simply have too many books I still haven't read in my bookshelves. To be honest I have too many books. Period. Or could one ever really own too many books? My books fall roughly into two categories: those I read once and will give away and those that are for keeps. But still, the shelves (we will not mentions the cupboards filled with books here, no we will not...) are starting to be pretty much filled to the capacity.
So, I have a confession to make: I should not, but I did: four books entered my collection lately. Yes, I know, maybe I should have started this post with "Hello, my name is Tiina, and I am a bookaholic."
The new additions are:
1. This very cute copy of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë I found in a library's book swap trolley. Many of our libraries have these trolleys, boxes, or shelves, where you can bring any of your books you want to give away and/or take any books you like from it.
2. Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen is a first in a mystery series featuring Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie Rannoch, 34th in line for the British throne. The book is set in 1932 and seems to be just such a humorous, historical mystery that I enjoy reading every once in a while.
3. I love Art Noveau, or Jugend, as we call it here. I love the design, the fashion, the architecture. It would be a dream come to true to be able to afford an apartment in a Jugend style building in downtown Helsinki. (Well, a girl can dream, can't she? :)) Anyway, I own a small collection of books about Art Noveau/Jugend and the latest addition is this one by Camilla de la Bedyore. A small book, but a good collection of pictures.
4. I have lately had an urge to visit some antiquarian bookshops. I guess, in a weird way it goes with my decision to buy less books. My brain intepreted the decision somewhat warpedly as "buy second hand, you'll get more books with the same amount of money!" ;) Well, I did visit the best antiquarian book store in town yesterday, but it was almost closing time so (luckily) I did not have much time to browse. I did end up buing this old book form 1967, though. It is a study about how the Finnish women used their right to vote and stand for parliament during the first decade of universal suffrage in Finland. Only later did I realize that the copy I bought is actually signed by the author!
What was your mailbox like this past week?
As I mentioned in an earlier post I have not yes posted a review of a book I read for the War Through the Generations Challenge. The book in question is Farewell, Shanghai by Angel Wagenstein. I read it already in the beginning of October, but had no time to post about it back then.
Angel Wagenstein is a Bulgarian novelist. Farewell, Shanghai is his third novel. It won the Jean Monnet Prize of European Literature in 2004. In addition of Farewell, Shanghai, also Wagenstein's first novel, Isaac's Torah, is available in English.
Farewell, Shanghai tells the stories of various individuals, among others the famous violinist Theodore Weissberg and his non-Jewish wife Elizabeth, Hilde a young actress, who hides her Jewish ancestry, and Vladek, an Eastern European adventurer wanted by the police. The story moves from Nazi Germany, through soon-to-be-occupied Paris to Shanghai, a pocket of safety (or so they think) in a world gone grazy.
What I especially liked in Farewell, Shanghai was that among all the books I have read about World War II, it brought something new to the story. The setting (Shanghai) was different and that enabled Wagenstein's stories to feel more unique than has the main part of the story been set in some European location. The characters felt real and multidimentional and as a reader I cared about all of them. If you want to read a little bit different novel about the WW II, then I highly recommend Farewell, Shanghai.
I have not been very good with the challenges I joined this, my first, year as a book blogger. I've read 3/5 of the books I planned to read for the War Through the Generations challenge and reviewed two of those three. I'm planning on getting the third review up in the not too distant future, but I know already that I will not be reading any more books about WW II this year. The other challenge I joined this year is the 9 Books for 2009 challenge, which has been really useful for finally reading some of those books I own that have been waiting for their turn for, in some cases, quite a while. I have read 4/9 of the books I chose for the challenge. I might read maybe one more, but I'm not sure. I simply have too many other, interesting books waiting for their turn! And now new challenges for 2010 have started popping up all over the blogosphere!I have thought of joining two challenges now and then we'll see, I might join one or two more a bit later. But to start with I have chosen these two: GLBT Challenge hosted by Amanda from The Zen Leaf and the Women Unbound Challenge hosted by Aarti from Booklust, Care from Care's Online Book Club and Eva from A Striped Armchair.Let's start with the GLBT Challenge for 2010:The idea of this challenge is to read books written by gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender authors and/or books about GLBT topics.
I have been thinking of joining on the Rainbow level and reading 12 books. I have not yet decided on which 12 books to read, but here is a list of possible "candidates":Baker, Dorothy: Cassandra at the Wedding (lesbian theme)Cunningham, Michael: Specimen Days (gay author)
Duffy, Carol Ann: Rapture (poems, lesbian author) (re-read)
Ebershoff, David : The Danish Girl (transgender theme)
Hollinghurst, Alan : The Line of Beauty (gay author & theme)
Jansson, Tove : Fair Play (lesbian author)
Le Guin, Ursula: The Birthday of the World (scifi, different sexualities)
Kapur, Manju : A Married Woman (lesbian theme)
Mann, Thomas: Death in Venice and Other Stories (gay theme)
Peters, Julie Ann: Luna (transgender theme)
Shaw, Fiona : Tell It to the Bees (lesbian theme)
Sinisalo, Johanna: Troll -A Love Story/Not Before Sundown (gay theme) (re-read)
Smith, Ali: The First Person and Other Stories (lesbian author)Strachey, Dorothy : Olivia (lesbian theme)
Warner, Sylvia Townsend: The Corner That Held Them (lesbian author)
Wilde, Oscar : The Picture of Dorian Gray (gay author)
Winterson, Jeanette : The PowerBook (lesbian author)Woolf, Virginia : Orlando (lesbian/bisexual author, also theme goes well with this challenge) (re-read)
I would like to add 1-2 novels with a bisexual theme, but have not found any yet. Any suggestions?
I think I will be concentrating on fiction, but being a librarian and loving book lists I compiled also a short list of non-fiction titles, if someone else wants to read some GLBT non-fiction:
Baird, Vanessa: Sex, Love & Homophobia : Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Lives.
Lee, Hermione: Virginia Woolf.
Raitt, Suzanne: Vita and Virginia: The Work and Friendship of V. Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf. (On second thought, this will very probably be among the books I'll read)
Seidman, Steven: Beyond the Closet : The Transformation of Gay and Lesbian Life.
Spencer, Colin: Homosexuality: A History.
Vicinus, Martha: Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928.
Well, it was my intention to write about both challenges in one post, but I'm running out of time (I still have to do some house cleaning before heading for the tennis courts tonight :)) I'll post about the Women Unbound Challenge soon.
Teaser Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.
The rules are:- Grab your current read.
- Open to a random page.
- Share two teaser sentences from somewhere on that page.
- Be careful not to include spoilers!
- Share the title & author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participiants can add the book to their to be read lists if they like your teasers!
At the moment I'm half way through The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig. I read about this book in somebody's blog some time ago and it seemed like a fun read. And that is exactly what it is! It is a funny historical adventure set in Napoleonic times with a good amount of romance and witty conversation to keep one entertained during these dark autumn evenings. Who would not like to read about dashing, masked heroes trying to save their country!
Here's a little appetizer from page 83:" Under cover of darkness, he shifted his weight to face Amy and asked softly, 'What brings you to France?'
Amy snapped her head up, instantly on the defensive. Richard put out a hand as though in his own defence. 'Retract your claws! I'm scarred enough from this afternoon. Can we cry a truce, at least for the night?'
Amy eyed him askance.
'Consider it our own personal Peace of Amiens. I'll be France and you can be England.'
My apologies for disappearing into thin air and not even posting about, well, the fact that I would not be posting for a while. I had a very good and happy reason, though, as you'll see in the end of this post, so I hope you'll forgive me. :)
But first a bit of book news: The annual Helsinki Book Fair took place in the Helsinki Exhibition and Convention Centre 22.-25.10. It is the biggest book fair in Finland and this year almost 77000 people visited the fair. That is more visitors than ever before! Every year there is special focus on one country. This year the country featured was Sweden, next year it will be France. A few years ago it was Britain and one of the writers visiting the fair then was Sarah Waters, who is one of my favorite authors. I was lucky enough to have her sign my copy of Fingersmith for me! This year the visiting writers included, in addition to several Swedish authors, American Karin Slaughter and Scottish Hal Duncan, whose book Vellum has just been translated into Finnish. I heard Duncan speak about his book. Here's a picture I took of him:
Our library is situated just across the street from the Exhibition and Convention Centre. So it is always very convenient to visit the book fair. I left work a bit earlier on Friday and spent the next almost 4 hours at the book fair. There are always also many second hand booksellers present and I especially love to browse their stands. This year I ended up buying a 1948 edition of Mika Waltari's Mikael Karvajalka (Michael the Finn/The Adventurer). I also managed to get some nice additions to my bookmark collection:
And now to the reason I have not been blogging lately. I don't remember whether I have written anything about my dancing on A Book Blog of One's Own before. I have been dancing more or less my whole life, first ballet, and then since my teens standard and latin american dances. I work in the library, but dancing is definitely a bit more that just a hobby for me. Two years ago I and my dance partner won the Finnish Senior 10 Dance Championships for the first time. Last year we won again. These past few weeks I was not only very busy with work, but also preparing for this year's championships. The 2009 Finnish 10-Dance Championships took place here in Helsinki last Saturday and I am so very, very happy to be able to tell you that we managed to win the senior class for the third time in a row!:) Below is a picture of us after the competition.
As I told earlier, I thought I would join two reading challenges now, and then, maybe some time later, add some, maybe smaller, challenges to that. I already posted about joining the GLBT Challenge hosted by Amanda from The Zen Leaf, and here comes the post about the Women Unbound Challenge, but I think I'm already slipping from the decision to join only two challenges. The World Religion Challenge sounds simply too tempting, plus I have already decided to participate in the Woolf in Winter read-along. Well, how could I not! This blog was named after a non-fiction book by V. W., my heroine! :)
