alisarae's reviews
1561 reviews

This book was way better than I was expecting! Just a random suggestion from Hoopla by a self published author that I had never heard of before. It took a little bit to convince me that I was going to like it but it starts getting cute around 20%. I am all about the cozy romance with just a touch of fantasy elements these days! I also really like the sunshine-grumpy trope so that was a bonus. 

This feminist classic made me reflect a lot on the church my family attended in high school. Evangelical churches in general were never particularly charitable to women, but certainly that one in particular was not. It had around 500 people at a given service, all middle and upper middle class white families who homeschooled. I think there was maybe one or two whose kids went to a private Christian school, and nobody that I knew of went to public school. Families with three kids were on the smaller side and five was more typical -- though we were two degrees of separation from the Duggars. This was during the Mark Driscoll era, so people dressed stylishly, with teens in Hollister and American Eagle and moms winking that their Buckle jeans were worth every cent. 

There must have been around 30 girls my age and I only knew one besides myself who ended up going to a traditional university, and that girl's family stopped attending before she graduated high school. So in effect, I was the only girl my age in a church of 500 upper middle class white people who had plans to get a 4-year degree. In fact, the only woman I knew who worked full-time was my aunt, and she didn't go to college. Interestingly, I knew multiple women who had college degrees, and one of them explicitly discouraged me from going to college. 

So, what were girls encouraged to do while their brothers went off to law school or whatever? Stay living at home "under their father's protection" until they got married and that "mantle of authority was transferred to their husband." I suppose taking some community college or bible college classes were allowed, as several ended up doing photography, graphic design, and midwifery on the side -- things that they could juggle around their "primary calling" of being a mom and homemaker. 

When Friedan describes the feminine mystique, what its demands and arguments are, I felt sure I had heard it explicitly taught before: That the greatest source of fulfilment and highest calling as a woman was in the home with their children. Ignoring the fact that this has been nearly impossible financially speaking for most families for most of history, it hardly proved true emotionally in my high school church. I found out later that not a few of the women were on antidepressants -- which, no shame if you need those and are prescribed them, but why did moms need them more than dads if both are supposedly "living their highest calling"? Wait, I think I can guess the answer: their sinful nature is causing them to desire something other than God's perfect plan for their life, just like when Eve and Sarah tried to take matters into their own hands instead of trusting God. Perhaps they needed a little synthetic joy to get the godly joy flowing. 

In a community that was trying to emulate 1950s family life ideals, it is no surprise that a psychological malady that afflicted 1950's housewives was appearing decades later...The Problem That Has No Name. I wonder what I would have thought if I had read this back then?

Pair with Jesus and John Wayne

I liked the art! The plot had an interesting premise but the storytelling was somehow a bit slow for a post apocalyptic story in only 100 pages. I think if Annette's character had been stronger comedy relief it would have been a better read for me. 

Normally I don't like going back in time for a series that is in progress, but I didn't mind this one. I loked all the side characters who were introduced and I have a strong feeling they will make an encore down the road. My least favorite story was with Sam, The Assassin and the Empire. Sam is about as interesting as a cardboard box, I'm not sorry he is dead. 

I don't like adaptations or "continuations" of classics that are set in the same time as the original, but I consistently enjoy when they are modernized. Anne is a fantastic example of this! The characters felt so true to the original and the modern day updates were a graceful fit. The art and story is very obviously meant for a middle grade audience but I loved reading it too. 

The first chapter was interesting and got me excited. The rest of the book is pretty dry and heavy on statistics and numbers. It is waaay more academic than I was expecting in that sense. So the interesting parts were few and far between. 

Concise, powerful, still painfully relevant. 

"I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. And I am not free as long as any one person of Color remains chained. Nor is any one of you." (Uses of Anger)

"Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance and to educate men as to our existance and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master's concerns. Now we hear that it is the task if women of Color to educate white women -- in the face of tremendous resistance -- as to our existance, our differences, our relative roles in our joint survival. This is a diversion of energies and a tragic repetition of racist patriarchal thought." (The Master's Tools)

Includes: The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House, Poetry is Not a Luxury, Uses of the Erotic, and Uses of Anger from the book Sister Outsider.

I mostly wanted to read this book because I wanted to see how Tucson was portrayed. Frequent references to southern Arizona hallmarks, along with some Arizona and Hohokam history and desert ecology, did not disappoint. Most of the story is set in the fictional town of Delphi, which gives Quartzite or Bisbee vibes. 

I think this book was a fine debut and the main character Jo is interesting and strong enough to carry the series forward. The premise of the plot is a little ridiculous and in all my years of being a true crime junkie, I haven't ever come across a reveal this outlandish -- fiction is stranger than truth in this case. That said, the victim, Rose, was complicated and pretty much all of the other characters could be suspects, so it is an entertaining investigation.

I liked the political intrigue! And the author is very good at building to and dropping dramatic reveals. It is really easy to keep reading because of how there is always something new in the plot. 

I have read some spicy romance but I suppose this is really what you would call erotica. 

Includes: The Veiled Woman, Linda, and Marianne from The Delta of Venus and Mandra from Little Birds.