Category Archives: Uncategorized

by

The Captive Reader

How to be a WomanAfter I finished reading Moranthology, I had all sorts of questions about Caitlin Moran.  There are just enough details about her life in that collection of articles  – about her childhood, her husband, her teen years as a wunderkind journalist – to make me want to know more.  Her memoir, How To Be a Woman, happily answers all of those questions and proves that she can be just as entertaining a memoirist as she is a columnist.

The memoir is framed around various experiences in Moran’s life that have helped to define (for her) what it means to be a woman.  She discusses with her usual humour her first period, her overweight youth, her first encounter with sexism in the workplace (which she handles with impressive bravado), her marriage, her experiences with childbirth and abortion, and her opinions on those hot button issues that allow outraged responses…

View original post 419 more words

by

The Captive Reader

badge-4Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire fromThe Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.

No books for me this week!  I might be heading out of town for a couple of weeks so have suspended all my library holds for now and forced myself not to check anything new out.  I have, however, spent a lot of time searching the library’s ebook catalogue and bookmarking titles I might want to read while I’m out of town.  The only shame is that you can only “check out” five ebooks at a…

View original post 28 more words

by

The Captive Reader

Speaking of Jane AustenThere is no doubt in my mind that Speaking of Jane Austen (or Talking of Jane Austen) by Sheila Kaye-Smith and G.B. Stern will find its way onto my “Top Ten Books of 2013” list at the end of the year; the only question is what position it will occupy.  Were I to make that list today there would be no doubt: it is far and away the best thing I have read in 2013.

I always enjoy reading other people’s thoughts on Jane Austen and, goodness knows, there are more than enough books and blogs out there to make even the most rabid Janeite happy.  My preference has always been for personal, informal lit crit: Sylvia Townsend Warner and Margaret Kennedy both wrote wonderfully intelligent and personal books that highlight both Austen’s technical genius and the kind of intense relationships her readers form with her characters.  Speaking of…

View original post 1,516 more words