Week of Nov. 18, 2007 book list sent to the Ruralwomyn List by Arnica Montana. I was asked to put it online for the Towandans whose sticky notes are falling off their clothing! If you purchase any of these books, use this link http://astore.amazon.com/ruralwomynzone01 to benefit the Zone. Thank you for your support! Rural Womyn Zone Home
Now is the Time to Open Your Heart by Alice Walker
“Kate, a successful author fearful of aging and uncertain about continuing her relationship with Yolo, an artist, sets off on a journey of spiritual discovery. She has been profoundly unhappy for some time, dreaming of rivers, until she takes off for rivers–the Colorado and the Amazon. . . . . . ”
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The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel by Diane Setterfield
“There are two heroines here: Vida Winter, a famous author, whose life story is coming to an end, and Margaret Lea, a young, unworldly, bookish girl who is a bookseller in her father’s shop. Vida has been confounding her biographers and fans for years by giving everybody a different version of her life, each time swearing it’s the truth. . . . .Vida chooses Margaret to tell her story, all of it, for the first time. . . . .Margaret has a story of her own: she was one of conjoined twins and her sister died so that Margaret could live. She feels an otherworldly aura sometimes or a yearning for a part of her that is forever missing. . . . ”
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And while we’re talking about food. . . . .
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, and Steven L. Hopp
“Novelist Kingsolver recounts a year spent eating home-grown food and, if not that, local. Accomplished gardeners, the Kingsolver clan grow a large garden in southern Appalachia and spend summers “putting food by,” as the classic kitchen title goes. They make pickles, chutney and mozzarella; they jar tomatoes, braid garlic and stuff turkey sausage. Nine-year-old Lily runs a heritage poultry business, selling eggs and meat. What they don’t raise (lamb, beef, apples) comes from local farms. Come winter, they feast on root crops and canned goods, menus slouching toward asparagus. ………….”
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High school to adult level:
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel by Lisa See
See’s engrossing novel set in remote 19th-century China details the deeply affecting story of lifelong, intimate friends (laotong, or “old sames”) Lily and Snow Flower, their imprisonment by rigid codes of conduct for women and their betrayal by pride and love. While granting immediacy to Lily’s voice, See (Flower Net) adroitly transmits historical background in graceful prose. . . .”
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I’ve been avoiding reading this, then saw that the vet who raises grass fed beef is reading it. . . ..
The Ominvore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
“Pollan (The Botany of Desire) examines what he calls “our national eating disorder” (the Atkins craze, the precipitous rise in obesity) in this remarkably clearheaded book. It’s a fascinating journey up and down the food chain, one that might change the way you read the label on a frozen dinner, dig into a steak or decide whether to buy organic eggs. . . . .. . . . .
One of the many eye-openers in the book is the prevalence of corn in the American diet; of the 45,000 items in a supermarket, more than a quarter contain corn. Pollan meditates on the freakishly protean nature of the corn plant and looks at how the food industry has exploited it, to the detriment of everyone from farmers to fat-and-getting-fatter Americans.
Besides Stephen King, few other writers have made a corn field seem so sinister.”
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Mozart’s Sister by Rita Charbonnier
“Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart, affectionately called Nannerl by her family, could play the piano with an otherworldly skill from the time she was a child, when her tiny hands seemed too small to encompass a fifth. At the tender age of five, she gave her first public performance, amazing the assembled gentlemen and ladies with the beautiful music she created. But her moment of glory was cut short, for even as her father carried her around to receive their praise, her mother began laboring to bring a second child into the world. After hours of her mother’s pained cries and agonized shouts, which rang in Nannerl’s ears like a terrifying symphony, the child was born. They named him Wolfgang. . . . ”
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The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex by Incite! Women of Color Against Violence
“. . . . even as funding shrinks and government surveillance rises, many activists often find it difficult to imagine movement-building outside the nonprofit model. The Revolution Will Not Be Funded gathers original essays by radical activists from around the globe who are critically rethinking the long-term consequences of this investment. Together with educators and nonprofit staff they finally name the “nonprofit industrial complex” and ask hard questions: How did politics shape the birth of the nonprofit model?
How does 501(c)(3) status allow the state to co-opt political movements?How do we fund the movement outside this complex? Urgent and visionary, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded is an unbeholden expos of the ‘nonprofit industrial complex’ and its quietly devastating role in managing dissent.”