In this luminous volume, New York Times bestselling writer Julia Pierpont and artist Manjit Thapp match short, vibrant, and surprising biographies with stunning full-color portraits of secular female “saints”: champions of strength and progress. These women broke ground, broke ceilings, and broke molds—including Maya Angelou • Jane Austen • Ruby Bridges • Rachel Carson • Shirley Chisholm • Marie Curie & Irène Joliot Curie • Isadora Duncan • Amelia Earhart • Artemisia Gentileschi • Grace Hopper • Dolores Huerta • Frida Kahlo • Billie Jean King • Audre Lorde • Wilma Mankiller • Toni Morrison • Michelle Obama • Sandra Day O’Connor • Sally Ride • Eleanor Roosevelt • Margaret Sanger • Sappho • Nina Simone • Gloria Steinem • Kanno Sugako • Harriet Tubman • Mae West • Virginia Woolf • Malala Yousafzai Open to any page and find daily inspiration and lasting delight. I envision giving this beautiful, fun and empowering book to my teen niece to inspire her. Like a traditional book of saints, each woman featured in the book has her own "feast day." Although not every day is covered, one can read about a couple powerful and inspiring women per week to get you thinking. There are about 99 "saints" featured in all. The diversity of women covered is tremendous - you have Oprah, Malala, Madonna - as well as some pretty fantastic women I've never heard of such as Wangari Maathai (from Kenya), matron saint of sustainability; and Yayoi Kusama (from Japan), matron saint of visionaries. From many ethnicities and many countries. Each "matron saint" gets a beautiful black and white portrait and a full page bio about her accomplishments.
March 26, 2018
March 19, 2018
Book Review: Everless by Sara Holland
In
the kingdom of Sempera, time is currency—extracted from blood, bound to iron, and
consumed to add time to one’s own lifespan. The rich aristocracy, like the Gerlings,
tax the poor to the hilt, extending their own lives by centuries.
No
one resents the Gerlings more than Jules Ember. A decade ago, she and her father
were servants at Everless, the Gerlings’ palatial estate, until a fateful accident
forced them to flee in the dead of night. When Jules discovers that her father is
dying, she knows that she must return to Everless to earn more time for him before
she loses him forever.
But
going back to Everless brings more danger—and temptation—than Jules could have ever
imagined. Soon she’s caught in a tangle of violent secrets and finds her heart torn
between two people she thought she’d never see again. Her decisions have the power
to change her fate—and the fate of time itself.
If
you've ever seen the movie In Time, then you would get a glimmer of this
fantasy version of a world where time is money. It all stems from the origin
story of the Sorceress and the Alchemist, long, long ago, when the Alchemist
somehow converted blood into time and tricked the Sorceress into giving away
her heart (literally). I didn't much understand this fable but it is very
prettily told. In Everless, the Gerlings
are the rich and Jules is one of the poor.
There is Roan who is the beloved golden son and Liam, the cruel, angry
one, and if you don't see a love triangle coming then you have never read a
young adult novel.
The
premise lured me, but the very impetuous/kinda maddening Jules and the
confusing origin myth inspired only lukewarm feelings upon completion. But complete it I did so I would rate
Everless as a mildly pleasant diversion.
Oh, and it is the beginning of series.
March 12, 2018
Book Review: The English Wife by Lauren Willig
Annabelle
and Bayard Van Duyvil live a charmed life in New York: he’s the scion of an old
Knickerbocker family, she grew up in a Tudor house in England, they had a
fairytale romance in London, they have three-year-old twins on whom they dote,
and he’s recreated her family home on the banks of the Hudson and named it
Illyria. Yes, there are rumors that she’s having an affair with the architect,
but rumors are rumors and people will gossip. But then Bayard is found dead
with a knife in his chest on the night of their Twelfth Night Ball, Annabelle
goes missing, presumed drowned, and the papers go mad. Bay’s sister, Janie,
forms an unlikely alliance with a reporter to try to uncover the truth,
convinced that Bay would never have killed his wife, that it must be a third
party, but the more she learns about her brother and his wife, the more
everything she thought she knew about them starts to unravel. Who were her
brother and his wife, really? And why did her brother die with the name George
on his lips?
I
have been such a fan of Lauren Willig since The Ashford Affair, The Other
Daughter, as well as The Forgotten Room.
The English Wife has the same unputdownable quality of her previous
books. I read it in 2 sittings, fighting, then ultimately succumbing to, sleep
at one point.
The
novel opens in the middle of the glamorous Twelfth Night Ball just before Bay
is found dead, with his wife, Annabelle, having disappeared. Their beautiful,
privileged life is seen from the outside by Bay's sister, Janie, often
overlooked and pitied. The narrative alternates between the aftermath of that
night and the years before, starting with how Annabelle and Bay met.
Nothing
is what it seems - let me get that out of the way. The theme of Twelfth Night is not a throwaway
detail at all - let that prepare you for having your expectations turned upside
down and inside out, not once, not twice, but multiple times as it did
mine. Of course we find out that Bay and
Annabelle's perfect marriage was anything but.
Just when I felt sure I knew how the story would turn, it goes in an
unforeseen path. Just when I thought I
had pinpointed the murderer, the next chapter would undermine that theory and
inspire a new one.
Though
the book is mostly tragic, it does end in a happy ending for some. Yet, I
couldn't shake a haunted feeling as I read the last chapter - hoping for a
sudden twist that sadly did not happen.
March 5, 2018
Book Review: The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn
It
isn’t paranoia if it’s really happening . . .
Anna
Fox lives alone—a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside.
She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling
happier times . . . and spying on her neighbors.
Then
the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother, their teenage
son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something
she shouldn’t, her world begins to crumble—and its shocking secrets are laid bare.
What
is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In this diabolically
gripping thriller, no one—and nothing—is what it seems.
At
about the 75% mark, I gasped out loud and my mouth hung open for a minute. "Whoa, whaaat?" I exclaimed to the otherwise
empty room. And then furiously debated whether
to reread the entire book up until that point, only to decide in favor of pushing
forward to the finish in order to find out what happens next. Really, that's all you need to know.
A.J.
Finn doesn't try to hide his influences - As soon as the reader is introduced to
agoraphobic Anna Fox, the film noir references start rolling in, with a particular
emphasis on Hitchcock. The title and description immediately recall Rear Window.
The title also neatly fits into the proliferation of "girl" thrillers
(Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train) but now, thankfully, the protagonist has matured.
She has graduated to a "woman."
Three
previous works kept coming to mind when reading The Woman in the Window: The Girl
on the Train, Rear Window and Vertigo. Despite these heavy influences, however,
my ever-changing theories about whodunit and why did not bear fruit. Yes, many elements
reminded me of something I've read before or seen before, but my mind was still
blown and I can definitely say, "I did not see that coming."
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