Apology

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Plato. Dialogues of Plato: Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Republic. Trans. Jowett. New York: Washington Square Press, Inc., 1962.

It has been argued long and hard that Plato’s Apology is the true account of the trial of Socrates. As a witness to the trial he transcribes Socrates’s speech in his own defense as he faces his accusers. The court affidavit states Socrates is a “doer of evil; does not believe in the gods of the State, but has other new divinities of his own.” He is, through his own philosophies, corrupting the youth of Athens. Despite his eloquent and passionate speech Socrates is found guilty and sentenced to death by hemlock. Apology covers the trial, the verdict and the sentencing.

I find it interesting that while Plato does not reveal the number of votes that warranted a guilty verdict Socrates states, “but now, had thirty votes gone over to the other side, I should have been acquitted”  (p 32). Found guilty by only 30 votes! Another interesting moment is when Socrates confronts one of his accusers, Meletus. Socrates gets him to contradict the affidavit by admitting he thinks Socrates is an atheist. How can Socrates be both an atheist and someone who worships personal deities?

Favorite lines: “I admit that I am eloquent” (p 5), and “…I was really too honest a man to be a politician…” (p32).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called What a Trial That Was! (p 243).

December ’10 is…

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December is all about ME this time around. I am going to be taking care of my health, my family, my friends, my marriage, my house,  my education, my employment…in other words, my life! My well-being is up to me, myself and moi starting in the month of December. Why December? Why not!

For books it is:

  • Crazy in Alabama by Mark Childress ~ in honor of Alabama becoming a state
  • Made in America: an informal history of the english language by Bill Bryson ~ in honor of Bryson’s birth month
  • Best nightmare on Earth by Herbert Gold ~ in honor of December being one of the best times to visit the Caribbean.
  • Apology by Plato ~ in honor of the first Chief Justice (John Jay) of the United States. John Jay was born in December 1745.

For ME it is:

  • Running
  • Reading
  • Writing
  • Family
  • Friends
  • Cats
  • Marriage
  • House
  • Health
  • Cooking
  • much, much more!

**Edited to add: I just received word that I also have a LibraryThing Early Review selection! It’s called My Nine Lives by Leon Fleisher. It’s his memoir about his music career and dealing with focal dystonia. I’m really excited. This will be my 46th book for the Early Review program. While I am really, really honored I also feel a little guilty for being “chosen” so many times. But, here’s the thing – when people ask me why I request books (if I feel so guilty) I tell them it’s the only way I can read something NOT on the Book Lust Challenge list!

Nov ’10 was…

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More head in the sand, tail between my legs reading for the month. While it wasn’t an easy month I am happy to say it was better than October by a long shot!

  • The Harmless People by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas ~ in honor of November being the best time to visit Africa. This was an eye opener. I will never look at people the same way again.
  • The New Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed by Karen Elizabeth Gordon ~ in honor of Writing month. Information I will keep in mind but, because I’m a rebel, probably ignore. Case in point – this sentence!
  • Balsamroot: A Memoir by Mary Clearman Blew ~ in honor of Montana becoming a state in November. This was more about a favorite aunt’s slow decline than about Blew’s own personal life.
  • On the Road by Jack Kerouac ~ in honor of November being National Travel month. This was, I think, my favorite book of the month.
  • The Healing by Gayl Jones ~ in honor of November being Jones’s birth month. This was the hardest one of the bunch to read. I’ve decided I don’t care for stream of consciousness!
  • Ruby by Ann Hood ~ in honor of November being National Adoption month. This was a psychological book that had me pondering life’s bigger questions. It took me a weekend to read.
  • Brothers and Sisters by Bebe Moore Campbell ~ in honor of November being the month of Campbell’s passing. Once I got passed the stereotypical characters this was a great book!

For LibraryThing and the Early Review program: Final Flight: The Mystery of a WWII Plane Crash and the Frozen Airmen in the High Sierra by Peter Stekel. This book had everything I could want in a nonfiction: truth and mystery embedded in a well told tale. It was great!

Brothers and Sisters

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Campbell, Bebe Moore. Brothers and Sisters. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. 1994.

Discrimination is discrimination. When asked about Brothers and Sisters Campbell said if a person of color is ignored by a white waitress it is just as psychologically damaging as if the person of color is made to sit at the back of the bus. I see her point but there is a small part of me that has to ask two questions. One, is the person of color being ignored because of skin color or is the person of color being ignored by a really bad waitress? Two, does a book like Brothers and Sisters bring attention and awareness or fuel the fires of racism? I was talking to someone yesterday about the holocaust. Being German he was complaining that his country, “beats a dead horse” when remembering and making up for the atrocities of World War II. He feels that the constant reminders actually keep hate alive and if the powers that be let history slide into hazy remembrance “it wouldn’t be such a big deal.”I disagree but I have to admit it is an interesting point.

It took me a few pages to get into Brothers and Sisters. The introductions of the characters is exaggerated ; their personalities are inflated beyond reality. I found them to be too stereotypical. The need to illustrate the main character, Esther Jackson, as perfect is overdone. In the first chapter Esther  is described as “efficient, tall, large breasted, slim hipped, strong, coordinated, powerful, smooth cocoa-colored skinned, muscular legged, pleasant faced, professional, congenial, full lipped, beautiful, meticulous, painfully perfect, impeccable, devoted to duty, well-enunciated, precise.” Yet, it is hard to like her because when it comes to dealing with white people she has these attributes, “rage, anger, venomous, hostility, violent, frowning.” She becomes wild-eyed and shaking at times. The opinions and racism Esther demonstrates are so vehement I have to wonder if they aren’t a reflection of the author’s feelings.

Esther Jackson is trying to make a career for herself at a downtown Los Angeles bank right after the April 1992 riots. She currently works in middle management but dreams of climbing higher. She knows that because of the color of her skin she must work twice as hard as her white counterpart to climb the corporate ladder. Despite the unfairness of the situation Esther herself practices prejudices when it comes to relationships and friendships. Beyond skin color she screens for financial status. Her motto is “no romance without finance.” But, when she allows herself to become friends with a white woman and finds herself dating a poor man things get complicated. In Brothers and Sisters you meet all kinds of characters with personal problems with society. The politics and backstabbing of all involved was fascinating. The entire story was a game of cat and mouse but exactly who was chasing who keeps you guessing.

Author Fact: Bebe Moore Campbell died at the age of 56 from brain cancer.

Book Trivia: Brothers and Sisters was written to encourage discussion about discrimination.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust twice. First, in the chapter called “African American Fiction: She Say (p 12). Then, in the chapter called California, Here We Come (p 50).

Final Flight

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Stekel, Peter. Final Flight: the Mystery of a WWII Plane Crash and the Frozen Airmen in the High Sierra. Berkley: Wilderness Press, 2010

The backdrop for Final Flight is November 18, 1942 – the day a Beech 18 airplane went missing during a training mission in the mountains of the High Sierra. Peter Stekel, a longtime hiker of the Sierra Nevada, was introduced to the story in 2005 when a “Frozen Airman” was found and identified as part of the four-man crew in the Beech 18 crash. Stekel spends two years engrossed in the events surrounding the 63 year old tragedy, learning everything he can about the airmen on board, the weather conditions, the media reports (and misreports) and of course, the unforgiving landscape where the crash occurred. When he, himself, finds a second body in the High Sierra the research becomes a must-tell story. Enter Final Flight, the story Stekel just had to tell. I enjoy a “complete package” book: great story, compelling mystery, photographs that tell a little more, biographies that endear you to people, maps to ground you to location, references and details that urge you to learn more. I found Final Flight to have all of these elements and much, much more. First and foremost it is a true story. That alone draws you in. Then you learn two of the airmen are still missing despite reports that clearly state all four airmen were recovered and given a group burial in Golden Gate National Cemetery. Why the misinformation? That creates intrigue. Where are the remaining airmen? Will they ever be found? You want Stekel to keep digging only so he can keep you informed. The photographs not only give the visual boost to description of the glacier’s location high in the Kings Canyon National Park, but also illustrates just how difficult it was to find any remains in 1942. Finally (and above all else), Final Flight is a proper tribute to the families of the four airmen who lost their lives on November 18, 1942. Stekel’s story shows respect and offers closure.

Ruby

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Hood, Ann. Ruby. New York: Picador, 1998.

Olivia has lost her husband, David, to a reckless driver, killed while jogging along a country road. Olivia, only 37, is faced with immeasurable grief and the nagging guilt that she had something to do with his death. In an effort to move on with her life she resolves to sell their summer cottage and put the past behind her. Only she can’t. A pregnant, defiant, wayward teen has made herself at home in Olivia and David’s seemingly abandoned house. Within a few minutes of confronting her, Olivia begins to bond with Ruby, seeing more of herself in the teenager than she would like to admit. What Ruby and Olivia can admit to is the fact they need each other. From this point forward Ann Hood’s storytelling is a psychological dance between the needy yet tough Olivia and the tough yet needy Ruby. Both of them want something from the other. Both are willing to manipulate the other to get it. The story becomes a page turner because you want to know who wins.

I like books that make me wander off topic. I enjoy small tangents every now and again. Olivia mentions her plan of stenciling the words to “a William Carlos Williams poem about plums” on her cottage wall. After surfacing from the instant sadness of lost dreams the image made me want to reread the poem in question, ‘This is Just to Say.’ Of course after rereading ‘This is Just to Say’ I had to find and reread Flossie Williams’s reply to “Bill.” Together they are a poetic commentary on marriage; communication between husband and wife.

Favorite line-, “Better to share the blame than to carry it all alone” (p 19). I found this interesting because most people want to put the blame 100% on someone else, never mind sharing it.

Some nitpicking. The reader is first introduced to Olivia’s world after Olivia’s husband has been killed by a reckless driver. Because the tragedy has already occurred the reader is anticipating the demise. You never get a chance to fall in love with Olivia and David as a couple. As a result the impact of Olivia’s grief is diminished. You don’t end up feeling as sorry for her situation as you could if you had been confronted with the shock of loss at the same time.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the very first chapter called Adapting to Adoption (p 2). Nancy Pearl calls Olivia ‘Livia.’ Interesting. It must be a (another) typo because nowhere in the book does anyone call Olivia ‘Livia.’

PS~ A Review in Library Journal called Ann Hood “Barbara Kingsolver without the whimsy.” I think it’s the other way around. Barbara Kingsolver is Ann Hood without the whimsy. I don’t see Kingsolver as whimsy at all. The Lacuna and The Poisonwood Bible are far from whimsy!

The Healing

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Jones, Gayl. The Healing.Boston: Beacon Press, 1998.

I was not a fan of The Healing for several reasons. I have nothing against Gayl Jones as an author, I just don’t care for first person stream of consciousness. First and foremost, page structure is annoying. Because it is a stream of consciousness there aren’t traditional paragraph structures and page endings. It was hard to find a place to stop reading in between chapters and I’m a snippet reader. I pick up a book in line at the grocery store, as a passenger in a car, while waiting for a meeting to begin. It’s hard to read stream of consciousness in those situations. Maybe that it’s the point but I found the narrative to be a bit blah blah blah-ish, repetitious and tedious. Check out how many times the word ‘town’ was used on page seven or how may times the word ‘men’ was mentioned in the first paragraph of chapter two. Such repetition is just not my style.
Harlan Jane Eagelton is a faith healer with a colorful past. Her history of being a rock star’s manager, a hair dresser and a turtle in another life make for some wonderful storytelling (if you can get past the repetition). Harlan is smart, yet her country-bumpkin manner of speaking isn’t fooling anyone, least of all the reader. Nuggets of knowledge are firmly wedged between the bumpkin babble. Case in point – in rambling about odds and ends she inserts the names of Inuit and Inupiag peoples of Alaska with a clear understanding of the difference. Another key element to Harlan’s story is that she tells it backwards. You begin with her current occupation as a faith healer and work backwards to fill in the gaps.

Favorite lines, “She craved but never trusted the applause” (p 150). Isn’t that the way of all rock stars? “Who screwed whom before who caught whom screwing whom before who screwed whom?” (p 178). I found the vocabulary funny, my favorite word being ‘flibbertigibbets.’

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “African American Fiction: She Say” (p 13).

On the Road

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Kerouac, Jack. On the Road. New York: Penguin Books, 1991.

Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac holds an air of mystery even to this day. For generations he has been regarded as one of coolest cats of the 1950s. On The Road was an overnight success and an instant cult classic. So it came as a great surprise to everyone when I admitted I hadn’t read it. It wasn’t required in any high school, college or grad school course. Somehow it missed my radar completely. Maybe I didn’t see myself as worthy. Even when Natalie Merchant wrote “Hey Jack Kerouac” I was not moved to know more about the man or the myth. Thank heavens for More Book Lust and this self-imposed challenge. There is a vibe just holding this book. Someone killed a mosquito on page 88; it’s flattened body pressed forever like a keepsake corsage.

On the Road is an anthem for the young, the restless, the daring. It taps into a longing for freedom, a desire to roam, a quest for life and all it has to offer. The language is nonchalant and haphazard giving the story a reckless vibe. Case in point, who says “balled the jack” anymore? Kerouac captures the days when you could take a flatbed truck, load it with a group of reckless youth and roar across the country hellbent for the coast of anywhere, exhilarated just to be alive.

Favorite lines: “I hope you get where you are going and be happy when you do” (p 30), “Central City is two miles high; at first you get drunk on the altitude, then you get tired, and there’s a fever in your soul” (p 53),  “I never saw so many snarls in all my born days” (p 62) and “Everybody goes home in October” (p 103). Favorite phrases, “mixing up our souls” (p 91) and “love is a duel” (p 101)

BookLust Twist: From  Book Lust in the chapter called Road Novels (p 202) and from More Book Lust in the chapter called The Beats and Their Generation (p 17).

Balsamroot

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Blew, Mary Clearman. Balsamroot: a Memoir. New York, Viking: 1994.

Mary Blew wants people to know about her life. She wants people to know the wilds of Montana as her ancestors found it, cultivated it, endured it, survived it. However, Balsamroot is more than about Blew’s life and the personal landscape of her people. Balsamroot is about family ties. The ties that keep generations together and what tears them apart. When Blew first introduces her daughter, Elizabeth, I am sad for them. Mary makes it clear she has lost touch with her eldest daughter – hasn’t seen her in years. She doesn’t hide the fact Elizabeth is a complete stranger to her; asking “Am I really her mother?” (p 19). It dawned on me I could be Elizabeth. I could slip away from my mother and sister just as easily. I could let years and distance come between us as. It’s as easy as all that. The stories within Balsamroot bounce around a lot. Early homesteading stories and mingled with a present day pregnancy and musings about Blew’s own attempts at motherhood. It is a running commentary on growing old from the perspective of the baffled, frustrated caregiver. Dementia robs an entire family of more than just the mind and its memories. The past and present are entwined into one beautiful story.

Favorite lines, “Or I imagined my aunt falling through the hole in her mind” (p 15), “She and I talk, in the private coded language of two women who have known each other, and most of each other’s secrets for twenty years…” (p 144), and “I’m not invisible, it’s just that nobody sees me” (p 156).

Maybe this seems too intrusive, but I would have liked Blew to include photographs, especially of her Auntie.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Montana: In Big Sky Country (p 156).

Harmless People

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Thomas, Elizabeth Marshall. The Harmless People. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970.

Elizabeth Thomas put a lot of heart and soul into the writing of The Harmless People. Her research was not done from a cold, calculating, scientific perspective. From the very first pages one can feel the intensity of the respect she has for the lives and cultures Kalahari Bushmen. Thomas seems driven to convey a message more important than all the others about the reclusive tribes and that is they are gentle people. Harmless. Their tribal name for themselves is Zhu twa si, meaning the harmless people. There are many occasions for Thomas to illustrate this. In order to study each Kalahari tribe Thomas first had to find them which proved to be difficult because they had a tendency to run and hide at the first sign of stranger intrusion. Even after finding these people she (and her crew of scientists and researchers) had to convince them she wasn’t there to create conflict or enslave them or steal from them. It took a great deal of time to gain their trust just so that Thomas could live among them.

Favorite lines, “…Bushmen would not try to fight because they have no mechanism in their culture for dealing with disagreements other than to remove the causes of the disagreements” (p 22), and “We would have liked to look around, but the best thing we could do was keep our big boots and our bodies away from their delicate, fragile, almost invisible community” (p 41).
Most disturbing moment? Believe it or not, when Thomas describes the killing, cooking and consumption of a turtle. I could barely read the words.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Africa: a Reader’s Itinerary” (p 4).

The New Well-Tempered Sentence

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Gordon, Karen Elizabeth. The New Well-Tempered Sentence: a Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed.NewYork: Ticknor & Fields, 1993.

This is the kind of book the coolest of cool professors would use in a writing class. The language is hip and humorous, the illustrations funny and fabulous. While Gordon lays down the law about when and where to use an exclamation point, a period, a comma, or semi colon, I don’t feel obligated to follow her to the letter (or period). I read The New Well-Tempered Sentence as merely suggestion; here’s what you can do, if you so chose (and obviously I don’t). Think Edward Estlin Cummings. Gordon is careful to use witty examples and whimsical illustrations to prove her points to go along with that hip and cool vibe. This is the essential reference book you have on your shelf and because it is so funky you are not ashamed to have it in plain sight.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “Words to the Wise” (p 249). For this particular inclusion the chapter would have been more appropriate if called, “Words to the Wise About Writing Words” because Gordon’s book is all about punctuation.

Perma Red

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Earling, Debra Magpie. Perma Red. New York: BlueHen Books, 2002.

Perma Red takes place in the 1940s on a Wyoming Indian Reservation where ancient customs prevail and old secrets hang heavy. Louise White Elk is a contradictory girl. Independent yet needy. Brave yet frightened. An orphan with family. Louise is also has attention of many men. The list of attendees is long: trouble maker Baptiste Yellow Knife; cousin Charlie Kicking Woman (Perma’s Tribal police officer); rich man Harvey Stoner; and mystery man Jules Bart. They all want something from her whether it be under the guise to own her or protect her. They all end up using her or abusing her. At one time or another they all get their way. It is a ruthless existence. Yet, Louise welcomes it in her own strange way. She perpetuates the vicious cycle of running away at the same time as being drawn to violent and needy men. What keeps Perma Red magical is its descriptive language. The landscape is as wild and as beautiful as untamed Louise White Elk.
Ages are vague. Charlie is at least seven or eight years older than Louise and Bapstiste is older by three years or so. The reader never gets a sense of how old Louise is supposed to be when her experiences are described as coming of age and womanly all at once.

Favorite sentences, “Louise sat down at the bar long enough so no one would recognize her broken heart” (p 43), “together their thinness made them appear stingy and dangerous” (p 64), and “I felt heavy with marriage” (p 114).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called, “American Indian Literature” (p 23).

Strange observation – the author’s name is a footnote on every even page. I’ve never seen that before so it seems a little hubris to me.

Nov ’10 is…

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October was a simply fantastic month for reading. Being on vacation and a few days to myself certainly helped. I’m not sure what November will be like, but here are the books I hope to get through:

  • The Harmless People by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas~ in honor of November being the best time to visit Africa
  • Perma Red by Debra Magpie Earling~ in honor of Native American month
  • The New Well-Tempered Sentence: a Punctuation Handbook by Karen Elizabeth Gordon~ in honor of National Writing Month
  • The Healing by Gayle Jones~ in honor of Gayle Jones’s birth month
  • On the Road by (Hey) Jack Kerouac~ in honor of November being the best time to travel

In other news November is the very last Natalie show until who knows when. I’m looking forward to this one because it promises to be different from any of the others I went to this year. I really don’t know what else to expect from the month and maybe that is a good thing.

October ’10 was…

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Our nightly view

I spent the first eight days of October “stranded” on a remote, windblown island off the coast of Maine. Every morning was spent leisurely reading in bed, half listening to the sounds of surf and squabbling gulls. Cloudy afternoons were spent either hiking along rocky shores and overlooking cliff high vistas or combing seaweed strewn beaches for sea glass and shells. Quiet evenings were whiled away in front of a snapping orange glow fire with a good book in hand. It was a delicious way to end the day – just as I had started it, behind the pages of a book. Because of this simple routine it was easy to finish three books in eight days:

  • Messiah by Gore Vidal ~ in honor of Vidal’s birth month. This stayed with me as prophetic as it was.
  • The Poison Oracle by Peter Dickinson ~ in honor of October being special child month. Another futuristic story about a different kind of greed.
  • The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve ~ in honor of Halloween. Probably my favorite book of the month.

After the vacation home I returned to the daily grind and was able to finish the following books:

  • Ways of Seeing by John Berger ~ in honor of Art Appreciation month. This took me a lunch break to read so I read it several times.
  • Bonobo: the Forgotten Ape by Frans de Waal ~ in honor of de Waal’s birth month and October being animal month. At first I was bothered by the graphic Bonobo photography but I got over it.
  • Woman: An Intimate Geography by Natalie Angier ~ in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month. I have to admit – the cover of this book cracked me up (simple, yet says so much).
  • Nothing Remains the Same: Rereading and Remembering by Wendy Lesser ~ in honor of National Book Month. This was okay.
  • Bird Brains: the Intelligence of Crows, Ravens, Magpies and Jays by Candace Savage ~ in honor of Bird Watching month. A big, bold, beautiful book (loved the photography).

For LibraryThing and the Early Review program, two books:

  • Yes You Can! : Your Guide to Becoming an Activist by Jane Drake and Ann Love was waiting for me when I returned from vacation. Since it is only 133 pages long and written for young adults it took me just a few hours to read it cover to cover.
  • Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin was really, really good.

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Confession: Autumn has always been my private hell. People think I’m kidding when I say bad things always happen to me between September and December…until I start recounting the black clouds. This year while I had a few bad things roll in my direction it was nothing like what happened with friends and family. Losing fathers, losing jobs, losing lives. The walls came tumbling down. As one friend put it, “I’m having a hard enough time recovering as is and now this?” And now this. I bury my head in books to avert my heart.

Woman: an intimate geography

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Angier, Natalie. Woman: an Intimate Geography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999.

Angier’s style of writing is a cross between know-it-all scientist and folksy I’m-Going-To-Explain-It-All-To-You girlfriend. I happened to like the science with sass approach. It made reading about my personal landscape a great deal more interesting. It’s informative AND funny – my kind of read. Because let’s face it, who wants to pick up something that reads like a gross anatomy textbook? I want (and got) something with spunk and humor; for example, who knew ‘piglet’ was a vocal range? You wouldn’t think describing the physical attributes of the vagina could be interesting but when Angier describes it as, “a Rorschach with legs” you have to sit up and take notice. Amid education and explanation Angier periodically debunks myth and dispels rumor concerning the female form. The vagina is not dirty! She is on a one woman rampage to bring honor to her sex. While her sassy sexy tone dissuades some readers from thinking of Woman as a reference tool I, for one, am sorry it wasn’t written 30 years ago.

Confession: I skipped the chapter on breast feeding called, “Holy Water.”

Favorite lines, “The world needs more girl drummers” (p 206), and “We know it when we feel it [aggression]…and sometimes it feel nasty and sometimes it feels good” (p 262).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called, “Dewey Deconstructed: 600s” (p 72).

ps~ I love it when reading comes full circle. I started the month with Bonobo: the Forgotten Ape by Frans de Waal. In Woman: an Intimate Geography Angier cites de Waal and thanks him in her acknowledgments. Guess why – sex.