Booktalk

[listersgirl]

Garth Nix Lirael

This was great - I mean, I enjoyed the first one (after a slow start), but I really liked this.  Lirael is a Daughter of the Clayr, but she is unlike any of the others, lacking the Sight that defines the Clayr.  Sam is the Prince and the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, much to his own dismay.  They each have a journey to take in order to help the kingdom, which is being targeted by a necromancer.  But the best parts are Lirael's explorations of the library, and her continuing curiosity.  The ending was so frustrating, though!

Geneen Roth When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair

I have a hard time with cheerleading books like these.  I think I don't take advice well unless it's clinical and academic.  But this was actually pretty interesting, if things that I mostly had heard before.  It talked about food and our relationship with it, and things that can be done to make that better.  The format was a little glib, but I think I'll look at some others' of hers.

P.G. Wodehouse Life With Jeeves

Collection that includes the stories Inimitable Jeeves, Very Good Jeeves, and Right Ho Jeeves.  Wodehouse is always wonderful, and I never regret reading Jeeves.  I think this might have been a bit of overkill, though.  Next time I'm trying some of his other works, maybe the Psmith or the Blandings books.

Naomi Wolf The Beauty Myth

This book was originally released nearly 15 years ago, but it's still incredibly relevent, and I wish I'd read it sooner.  I mean, many of the examples are so out of date it's a bit disturbing, and I'd have loved to see what she would have made the current trend toward makeover shows like The Swan, but the underlying issues and causes haven't changed - people, particularly women but increasingly men, too, are being made to feel that there is only one way to look, and that if they don't look that way, they're not worthwhile human beings.  Everyone should read the book.

Comments

The Beauty Myth

[closethipster.livejournal.com]

read it years ago and loved it. every time i see Fire With Fire in a bookstore i pick it up -- but the cover is so horrible, i don't think i can bring myself to buy it. it LOOKS -- but doesn't necessarily SOUND -- like a self-help book gone horribly wrong. have you read it by any chance?

Re: The Beauty Myth

[fromaway.livejournal.com]

I have it. It's not a self-help book, and it's not bad, although it lead some reviewers to deride Naomi Wolf as "the leading weathervane of her generation." She spends a lot of time complaining about "victim feminism" - certainly a worthy subject for complaint, but The Beauty Myth was pretty victim-ish.

I'd recommend getting it out of the library rather than buying it, personally.

Re: The Beauty Myth

[listersgirl]

This is was the first of hers that I've read.

[fromaway.livejournal.com]

I've read The Beauty Myth several times. I'm kind of disappointed by the way Naomi Wolf has followed it up.

[forest4thetrees.livejournal.com]

I found both Promicuities and Fire with Fire good reads but certainly not as powerful as The Beauty Myth was. I haven't yet read her book on motherhood but I read someone's review somewhere that it was kind of a sell out from her previous pro-choice stance.

Wodehous

[montykins.livejournal.com]

The Psmith books are great, but there's not very many of them, which is disappointing. On the other hand, there are a million Blandings Castle books, so it's almost impossible to run out, but some of the later ones aren't that great.

Re: Wodehous

[librarygal.livejournal.com]

Personally, I like the books with Uncle Fred a lot, although the Psmith books are also a hoot. The Jeeves books get predictable after a while, even though I still find them hysterically amusing...

Uncle Fred

[montykins.livejournal.com]

I usually recommend _Young Men With Spats_ just because it contains "Uncle Fred Flits By".

[forest4thetrees.livejournal.com]

The Beauty Myth pretty much opened my eyes up to feminism and changed my life. I was working in an extremely male-dominated profession at the time and this book not only helped me to put my recent experiences into context but helped me to understand my past experiences as well. I couldn't recommend it enough.

[par-avion.livejournal.com]

I read Lirael when it first came out -- I bought in hardback. Arghh! I was so peeved by the abrupt "to be continued" ending. I hadn't seen it coming until it was too late, wah. I told my friend not to bother reading it until the third book came out because the frustration takes away so much of the enjoyment. But I do love the whole beginning section before Lirael leaves the Clayr, that was really cool.

Sam annoyed me a lot. I thought he was whiny. But by the end of the second book I didn't hate him anymore.

[listersgirl]

Yeah, he really is whiny. I was enjoying it for a while, because so often kids in fantasy novels are always wise beyond their years and stuff like that, but it did get tiring.