5 comments about Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women.

1. Great, more caterwalling from this self-obsessed, immature, indignant egomaniac. Do us all a favor Lizzy, and throw in the towel. You're schtick is overtired. You're pushing 40. Would you finally grow up and stop torturing the nation with your whining?
   
   That's right, your depression was real. But you were 19. You were nothing but a scared little girl. It doesn't take a Harvard education to figure that out.
   
   And this book, I yie yie. Please go on another bender and never ever take pen to paper again. You'll be doing us all a huge favor.



2. Everything that Elizabeth Wurtzel wrote in this book is true. The truth about how males can be so sexist, and how men are 'allowed' or supposed to do certian things, while women aren't. Elizabeth uses many examples of 'difficult women' in this book such as Dilea, Madonna, Amy Fisher and so on.
   
   I am pretty sure that everyone has heard of phrases like, "Men can sleep with 10 women and thats fine. But if a women would sleep with 10 men she is a whore or a slut." And thats what many people believe to be true.
   
   When guys are difficult and speak there mind they are 'just being a guy' but when a woman is difficlut or speaks her mind she gets classified as a bitch. And those are some of the things that she points out in her book. This is a very good book, but I wouldn't recommend it to people that have the minds set to the old fashioned ways or people that believe 'women are better off seen than heard'.



3. I have rarely been as disappointed with a book as I have been this one. In many ways Elizabeth Wurtzel is a brilliant writer, gifted with the ability to construct a memorable sentence or a brilliant image. Moreover, as a bit of a rebel and a very intelligent woman I would have imagined that this would have been a book bristling with insight. Besides, I liked the subtitle: In Praise of Difficult Women. My own thought has long been that the way our society is constructed, brilliant, independent women would often be taken by society at large as "difficult." I had imagined that this was going to have multiple overlaps with third wave feminism and perhaps the riot girrrls and all kinds of wonderful new ways of women asserting their rights to be whoever it is they want to be. Besides, she and I share very similar tastes in music and pop culture. I imagined a brilliant effort in gonzo feminism.
   
   But I was disappointed. Yes, there were the brilliant turns of phrase and startling paragraphs. But like other reviewers, when I finished I really couldn't say what the book was about. The details were often marvelously expressed, but to what overall end? The book ended up being brilliant on the micro level, but dense and opaque on the macro. The result was a book that was fun to read from beginning to end, but frustrating because I was never able to grasp what it was all about.
   
   The book is structured around five themes, each one with several women evoked to stand as icons, but in each case one woman above all others. The first part deals with sexual sirens who can also be conceived as man eaters, with Delilah, Samson's seductress/betrayal as the great example. The second part deals with under aged temptresses, with Amy Fisher as the great exemplar. The third section deals with women who died either by their own hand or by the kinds of lives they had come to live. Here several women are presented as icons, including Margaux Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Zelda Fitzgerald, and Anne Sexton. The fourth section, written at the height of Monica-gate, skewers Hillary Clinton for being a wife instead of achieving great things herself (a secton that seems hopelessly out of touch with reality as she in 2006 looks poised to run for president--for the record, a move that I am passionately opposed to, since despite the hype she is extremely conservative on most issues, especially economics, and I think she would keep America on the right wing course upon which it began under Jimmy Carter--another person perceived to be liberal who was actually quite conservative on economic issues--and has continued under all successive presidents). The final section deals with women who are the victims of extreme violence and centers on Nicole Brown Simpson. The problem is that the book simply never coalesces around any substantive ideas.
   
   In the end, the women she chooses to write about are women that are as difficult for feminism as for men or society or the public at large. Feminism simply can't absorb Amy Fisher and claim her for one of their own. The story is too tawdry and messy for that. But after three hundred pages of writing about these women, it still isn't clear what she is writing about. The big pay off never comes. It is a book that promises great--or even just pretty good--things but never delivers. This truly is a book that is far less than the sum of its parts. I think the fact that one can love many individual pages while hating it as a whole is reflected in the weirdly schizoid reviews that my Anchor Books edition contains (I have as of today the latest printing, so this may not be true of previous editions). The blurbs are divided into "The Good," "the Bad," "the Bitchy," and "The Bottom Line." The attempt on the part of the publishers almost seems an admission that it is a deeply flawed book, but they want to portray it as one of those ultra-controversial books that you have to read so that you can discuss.
   
   I stil think there are some great books to be written about truly difficult women, about women that society has trouble absorbing or that it resists. I just in the end did not feel that this was one of them. This despite the fact that she writes well, that she is obviously a smart woman, and--let's admit it--very hot. Yes, that is her on the cover. Not many writers could pull that off.



4. I was eager to read Bitch after having read Prozac Nation years before. I was sorely disappointed. Wurtzel rants and expounds on various maligned women throughout history. Her rambling can be hard to follow and I soon lost interest. This book had a lot of potential but Wurtzel just wasn't able to deliver.
   
   I later read her memoir of drug addiction and recovery, More, Now, and Again which explained Bitch's dismal failure. It turns out that during the time Wurtzel was writing Bitch she was heavily using a myriad of drugs.
   
   I suggest reading Prozac Nation and More, Now and Again (which are fabulous)and skipping Bitch. Read Manifesta and Grassroots for a modern perspective on feminism.



5. As a radical feminist, I was pathetically amused and enraged by this book. It does not celebrate women's strength or struggle, instead finding glory in the consolation prizes of temptress roles and the like. As a reader, I was intrigued but confused. It's easy to lose your place - the author is very clever but harder to stay with than a mechanical bull. I don't think any book i've ever read has given my facial muscles such a workout: i'm sure someone watching my expressions as I read would have been the more entertained of the group. Now that i've learned it was written during a drug binge, I understand it better and can get some sleep. We can do better.

5 comments about The Bipolar Advantage.

1. This book gave me one man's positive insight into living with a mental illess, which usually is a sentence to a life of pain and confusion. Tom Wootton realizes that there is a reason for everything and everyone in this universe, it's up to us to find how to cope and enjoy ourselves and others in our lives.



2. I cannot tell you how excited I was to happen upon the book THE BIPOLAR ADVANTAGE. The idea that someone had written a book with that title seemed enough, but I figured since Tom Wootton had gone to the trouble to write and publish more than just that phrase, I should give a read to something as dear to my heart as what was implied by his title.
   
   I am a 56-year-old, 6' 11" (sic), bipolar, gay male. I was first diagnosed in 1978 at the age of 28 (and committed), and later (1990) jailed for 14 weeks until my parents hired a lawyer who filed a Writ of Habeas Corpus to force the judge to deal with my case. That was it. I resolved to take care of myself, and I have not lapsed once since then.
   
   The two bipolar support groups I joined in 1990 were composed almost exclusively of people who jumped on each other to hear the latest rumors of new medications that might "cure" all their ills. They gave nary a thought to how changing their habits of thought might help in the meantime, regardless the degree of effectiveness of their current medication. While my heart went out to them, it was too depressing for me to continue with them. (I'm very glad to read that Tom's experience/work with support groups has been so much better than this.) I also found the published literature to dwell on the down side almost exclusively. This was not good enough for me.
   
   I had already studied New Thought: thoughts become things--a new one can change your life--and later the Abraham-Hicks spiritual material, and have based my pragmatic beliefs/approach on their ideas that resonated with me. I have begun work on a memoir about my own experience. Like Tom's, my mind-work rests on a foundation of proper medical care and medication--something I learned the hard way by trying it first without proper care and having my life blow up completely. My adventures include delusions and adventures/misadventures proportional to my height--but reading about Tom's adventures, you might think he is taller than I am.
   
   However, have you ever seen a sex-crazed, 7-foot giant in high mania?
   
   Four years ago, after 14 years of feeling trapped by my illness, I decided that despite everything, I would have to learn to trust myself and follow my dream--to write. So through a lot of mental work in line with Tom's exercises (which I had not yet come across), eight drafts, and 3.5 years, I taught myself to write and completed a manuscript on a different subject. I now have an agent trying to sell that book to a publisher.
   
   I have been so encouraged by discovering THE BIPOLAR ADVANTAGE and the positive, practical emphasis of the book--as well as what I have read on Tom's website about his workshops and lectures. I have begun some of Tom's exercises--they fit perfectly with what I've already proven to myself, and are the perfect step for me to take now. There really is an advantage to bipolar illness, and Tom's book is both a chronicle of his groundbreaking personal turn-around and a practical guide to the beginning of the adventure of a fulfilling life that awaits those who learn to love themselves--and their illness.



3. Iam 60 years old and just learned I am Bipolar because one of my sons is.I raised 3 teenage sons as a single parent. I was the Black Sheep of my original family. Sure, this fellar is out there sometimes but we are supposed to be. God wants us to be what he meant us to be... that is different. WE ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THE SAME. AND HE WANTS US TO ENJOY WHAT HE GAVE US!!! I DO ALLOW MYSELF TO ENJOY AND I ALLOW OTHERS TO ENJOY BEING DIFFERENT. I do not feel the badness in me now. I used to tell my mom at 3 years old, I'm just NO GOOD! I never knew why I felt so BAD. Also the author would be voted into office if everyone knew the SECRET HE TELLS ON HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT!!! Tricking your body DOES WORK! I lost 53 pounds and being BiPolar I like the tricking part and that is OK. You be you and I'll be me. It is just a different POINT OF VIEW.
   
   
   Trish McKown



4. The title of the book initially put me off. It was recommended by a friend. As I read it, and recognized the bare-all honesty, down-to-earth reality that is bipolar, I found hope in the pages. I learned practical ways to use aspects of bipolar disorder to help my life. Solid suggestions to make my life better. It's not a dry textbook like a lot of books about bipolar are. It's a real life testimony of how one man makes it work. I am grateful for it.



5. I am reading the book (checked out from my local library) with my boyfriend who is bipolar. The book is right on the track. In my experience, experts in many fields of research are only looking at the topic they study as a scholarly outsider. While this is very valid, and I learn much from the researchers' insights; the information presented by a person who is an insider to an issue is often more enlightening.

5 comments about The Curve of Time: The Classic Memoir of a Woman and Her Children Who Explored the Coastal Waters of the Pacific Northwest (Adventura Books).

1. A amazing woman. As good as any cruising book written. And a shame that this woman wrote only one book. A very good picture of cruising, the Pacific NorthWest and, a simpler time.



2. This book was highly recommended to me by a friend who has cruised the Inside Passage and explored the islets of British Columbia and Alaska for the past 15 years. Many beautiful places are vividly described by Ms.'Capi' Blanchet. The lasting impression is the feeling of having spent time as a companion to the author and her children as they experience the adventure of travel and exploration as they cruise far from home in their small boat, in the 1930's. I enjoyed meeting unique people like 'Mike' - the knowledgeable recluse who expresses much of what must be the authors own philosopy of life. Altogether this little book is a bit of history, a bit of philosophy, and a bit of adventure. I didn't want it to end.



3. I got out all the maps of the Inland Passage along the British Columbia coast to follow each adventure this articulate widow with five imaginative and curious children and one dog discovered. Her tales of their explorations in a small boat and descriptions of wonderful scenery climaxes in the longest selection near the end of the book: "A Whale...Named Henry [18 pages], the just pleads to be translated into a Newberry Award children's book!



4. This story was expecially fun for me to read because this woman lived in a time and near a place of my own grandmother. She took hold of her life after the death of her husband and shared wonderful adventures with her children each summer in the waters and byways of the Canadian BC inland waterways. She did this in an era where her family said she should sell everything and "move home where it was safer" A real joy to read. Carol Hage Wall, Oak Harbor, WashingtonThe Curve of Time: The Classic Memoir of a Woman and Her Children Who Explored the Coastal Waters of the Pacific Northwest (Adventura Books)



5. This book is beautifully written, full of vivid imagery of the stark and wild beauty of the northwest, and equally full of one woman's spirit and love for her family. It is a book I will turn to again and again.

3 comments about All the Women of the Bible.

1. This is an outstanding book that gives a complete overview of every woman in the Bible, named and unnamed. You will enjoy the deep insights Lockyer gives as you read the in-depth viewpoints. Must have for any Bible teacher.



2. I ordered eight of the books, all of them were in good condition. I had the book for a class I took in college and was already familiar with the book and pleased that I could get them at such a good price. I received them quickly. I'm using them for a Ladies Bible Study which will start in September.



3. This was an eye opener for me. It does not only give history of well known women in the bible, but those that were obscure.

5 comments about Late Bloomer's Revolution, The.

1. I couldn't put this book down. Amy has captured the problems of her generation by sharing her experiences with us. She is talented, pretty, smart, articulate, funny, considerate and just plain good. Her search for a caring, unselfish, willing to commit male always ends in disaster. Such is the story of the me generation.
   I loved her truthfulness, her sense of humor, her talks with her father.
   Any man that finds her and captures her heart is a lucky man indeed.
   The reader gets so caught up in her emotional life and just wants to cheer her on. How pleased I was that she finds she is enough, she has all she needs to live a beautiful life. Bloom on, Amy!



2. I love this book. I very much identify with Amy's struggles, her triumphs and her challenges in this book. I laughed (at times, quite loudly, and repeatedly) and cried with her, nodded my head and said, "So true!" a few times as well. I was skeptical when I purchased it, because from reading the back cover, I thought that it would be the promise of yet another insightful book that failed to deliver; that the author claimed to know all about the "Late Bloomers", and actually knew nothing. This book knocks it out of the park. If you're a "Late Bloomer", buy it. Now. Then, go back and buy copies for your friends who AREN'T "Late Bloomers" so that they can "get it".



3. I absolutely loved this book;the authors writing is be both insightful and funny, a marvelous combination. I listened to the book at work and found myself cackling aloud almost one time a page. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves the character of Liz Lemon in 30 Rock, Woody Allen, or Sex and the City.
   
   Sorry this review isn't very good but I am not a review writer. I am a prolific reader but never, even if I loved it, feel moved to write a review but I want to add my vote to all the other people saying "Read this book!"



4. Hats & Eyeglasses: A Family Love Affair with Gambling
   What a story Amy Cohen tells in this delightful memoir. A good girl who is waiting for her life to happen, Cohen keeps getting it right even when she thinks she doesn't. Loser boyfriends? check. Low self esteem? check. Fabulous writer? check, check, check.



5. The whole book you can help but woner will she ever find him? I totally felt compassion for the author and her story.

5 comments about Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now.

1. Jan Wong,a Canadian journalist of Chinese ancestry, in this illuminating volume writes of her experiences as an ardent young Maoist in the early 1970's who actually went to China to work and study.
   She hauled pig manure in a Chinese re-education farm, and at Beijing University she turned in a fellow student who had begged her help to escape to the West.
   Slowly she realized the evil of the Communist system in China and was repatriated to the West in 1978.
   Wong returned years later as an undercover journalist to China where she covered the Tianmen Square Massacre, in which three thousand pro-democracy students were mowed down in cold blood by Red China's army, on the orders of dictator, Jian Zemin.
   She also covered China's contradictory development into a capitalist state under a Communist dictatorship, or a Communist dictatorship with a capitalist economy...akin to Fascism!
   She covers the Tianmen Square Massacre of 1989, letting the the reader know of some of the lesser known details, and how the Communist army opened fire on the students after they began leaving the square:
   "A [...]girl was killed and they just brought her body back...After the third barrage I counted more than twenty bodies. One cyclist was shot in the back right below our balcony. There were two big puddles of blood on the Avenue of Eternal Peace. People carried the body of a little girl towards the back of the hotel. After twenty three more minutes, a few people gathred up enough courage to aproach the wounded. The soldiers let loose another blast, sending the would be rescuers scurrying for cover. The crowd was enraged. I grimly kept track of the time. An hour later, the wounded were still on the ground, bleeding to death.
   She speaks of the great poverty of the new Red China, with inequalities far greater than anything in the liberal democracies of the world, and crushing poverty in the rural provinces. Despite economic changes, China remains a brutal dictatorship, with no political liberalization or democratization having been allowed by the iron grip of the Communist Party.
   Peeople are still opresed in day-to-day life. People are not allowed to own dogs, and to deal with a fad of people acquiring dogs as pets in the early 1990s, special police squads swept through the neigbourhoods, strangling dogs with steel wire looped at the end of metal poles.
   The author recounts some regret at buying into the Communist lie, with the realization that "The Western world, especially Canada, is far more socialistic than China has ever been, with it's free public education, universal medicare, unemployment insurance, and government funding for television ads against domestic violence. China has made me appreciate my own country, with it's tiny ethnically diverse population of unassuming donut-eaters. I had gone all the way to China to find an idealistic revolutionary society, when I already had it right to home."
   She ends of on a positive note, predicting, in 1997, a great change in China , and the death of the Communist Party, and real democracy.
   Ten years later, this is not close to being realized, with a tightening of political control by the Communist dictatorship having taken place.
   Despite being one of the most brutal dictatorships on this planet, China has gained international acceptibility, without improving democracy or human rights!
   Nobody bats an eyelid at the Olympic Games for 2008 being set in Beijing.
   The worst abuses of the Communist regime has it's apologists in the WEst.
   The Stalinist Workers World Party in North America, (which has praised Stalinism in the Soviet Union, and applauded suicide bombings against Jewish women and chidren in Israel) congratulated the Chinese regime after the Tianmen Square Massacre, for having 'won a battle against imperialist and counter-revolutionary forces."
   The fact that such sentiments can be uttered makes one wonder how far the world has actually come.



2. Red China Blues is the story of a woman who, in her youth, idealizes communism. This idealization is partly a lack of understanding about how communism in China really worked, and partly rebellion against her own Canadian culture.
   
   As she goes to China and slowly comes to understand the horror of China under Mao, we too see and understand both the regime itself and the ways in which the people dealt with their lot. She wants so much to believe in the dream-China she's created in her head that it's painful and difficult for her to see reality. This is a sin most humans commit at some point in their lives, and many readers will wince as they're reminded of their own delusional moments.
   
   Ms. Wong does not attempt to censor any of her own sins. From simple arrogance to participation in active thought control, she tells us everything she did and leaves it to us to decide what to think of her. The same is true of the people around her: she honestly talks about the good and bad in all the people she describes to us. This lends a wonderful humanizing touch to the book and turns it from the story of a regime into a story about people *in* the regime, living as best they can. You will not be able to forgive some of them, while others will move you. Mostly, Ms. Wong leaves you to decide for yourself which people fall into which category.
   
   In other words, this is a book that lays out facts and lets you decide your opinion for yourself. She gives you the facts, tells you her opinion, and leaves the rest to you. For a clear, honest look at China's people under Mao and after his death, read this one.



3. If you want to understand China, you will need to read a considerable range of titles in order to see the country, its history, people, culture and so on from numerous and unique angles. Jan Wong's RED CHINA BLUES offers a very unique angle. Jan was born in Montreal. Her father owned a popular restaurant in that city and by the time he was thirty, he had made his first million. Jan herself, apparently suffering from an identity crisis, became disenchanted with Canada/Western culture and decided to head to China to find herself and her roots - during the height of Maoism.
   
   Young and impossibly niave, Wong hurtled herself into the Chinese world. She learned the language, demanded not to be given preferential treatment, shoveled manure on a pig farm/re-education camp, and worked in a machine factory. Ever so slowly, her idealism faded, but, as other critics have noted, this took a very long time. At one point, for example, she mentioned how at the machine factory the workers spent half their time going to political meetings as opposed to producing. One of the primary tenets or aims of Marxism (to which Wong subscribed) is to creat a "superabundance" so as to achieve economic surplus over material necessity. Only then will art, politics, philosophy, etc. be able to reach fruition. When factory workers ask Wong about conditions and money re a similar job in the West, she is reluctant to tell them. But such isolated inconsistencies didn't dampen her idealistic fervor; not for something like six years anyway. Wong returned to China in 1988, and from here the book really gears down. Because she looks and can speak Chinese, she is able to to go places and do things that real outsiders never could. Her visit to a labor camp is interesting and her first hand account of "the Tianmen Incident," (people being shot right outside her window) is, as you might imagine, chilling. This was either the first or second China book I read, and it made a lasting impression. I highly recommend it.
   
   Troy Parfitt, author



4. This is a beautiful book to read. It's well written and you can hardly put it down. Jan Wong let's us be witnesses of her life choices and their consecuences. It's interesting how and why she decides to go and live in communist China, how she strugles to get adjusted to that kind of political system and way of life. She then turns into a great journalist and let's us see some unknown aspects of modern China. It's a good book to learn more about China's history. I enjoyed it a lot!



5. An enthusiastic young activist, Jan Wong left Canada for Beijing in 1972, in hopes of simultaneously aiding Mao's cause and pursuing her ancestral roots. This well-written, enlightening account of her "journey from Mao to now" takes readers through her six years as a student and subsequent six years as a reporter in Red China's capital city.
   
   Wong was uniquely qualified to write this book, which privileges readers with deep insights into why things were the way they were then, and are now, in China. Having Chinese parents, but being raised in the West, rendered Jan part of both worlds. She experienced the Cultural Revolution and post-Mao China as both an insider and a "foreigner," resulting in a perspective on those periods that only a few can claim, and fewer still have written about.
   
   The first part of the book tells the story of the author's Beijing University days. In 1972, armed with only the vocabulary she had acquired in Mandarin 101, Wong left the comfort and security of her Montreal life to spend a summer in China. Inspired by what she observed in Red China, she found it a natural progression to move from worrying about feminist issues to supporting Maoism. So she petitioned and won permission to stay in the country to study at Beijing University for the next two years. Anti-establishmentarianism was "in," and "China was radical-chic" at the time, she explains. Western youth looked to the East for answers and antidotes to racism, "exploitation" of the masses, and materialism. Becoming a journalist seemed like the perfect job for a young woman seeking to change the world, so she decided to remain in China to learn Mandarin, Chinese history, and Maoism. Her goal was to bring knowledge of all that she thought China was doing well to the West.
   
   As a starry-eyed young Maoist, Wong did not realize how miserable people really were. Instead, when she discovered that she and the other foreign students were being given better rooms and special food privileges, they protested until they were allowed to eat the miserable starvation-level rations given to the rest of the students in their dingy canteen. Then she and her foreign friend petitioned to join their Chinese classmates in undertaking the required physical labor projects they had been exempted from. She was finally allowed to dug ditches, haul bricks, and harvest crops with everyone else.
   
   The author's first clue that Communist China might not be the paradise she had dreamed of came when the school asked her to end her friendship with a young Swedish man or be expelled. The school actually played a distressing mind game with her over this issue. From this experience she learned that in China people were not only unable to do what they wanted, but they were also not free to think what they wanted.
   
   Yet, Wong remains zealous in her attempts to prove that she is a good Maoist. In fact, Part One of the book culminates in her informing on two students who asked for her help to leave China for the US. At the time Wong thought she was doing the right thing by turning them in, but now she regrets her decision and feels great remorse for the terrible fate that probably befell these people after that.
   
   In Part Two, Wong returns to Montreal to complete her McGill University degree. Still supportive of Red China, she lectures locally in an effort to muster public support for the country and its political agenda. After graduating in 1974, Wong won a Canadian government scholarship to study at Beijing University, and off she went for more of the same. In addition to learning more about her school experiences and deepening understanding of what was happening on a personal and political level, the author meets and marries Norman Shulman---an American. After her studies end, she takes a job as a foreign correspondent for the New York Times. She finds that her Chinese appearance and fluency with the language give her a unique ability to get the local people to open up to her, when other reporters are unable to get interviews or comments.
   
   Wong reaches a turning point when Madame Mao and the rest of the Gang of Four are arrested. As she watches people rejoice in the streets, it dawns on her that the people hadn't believed in the Cultural Revolution for a long time. She feels betrayed and foolish because of her blind faith.
   
   Wong left China in 1980 to pursue a journalism degree at Columbia University, and then worked at various prestigious publications in the US and Canada for seven years. But in 1988, she was too curious to know what was really happening in China, so she asked her employer, the Toronto Globe, to transfer her. The third section of the book thus covers the late 1980s and early 1990s. The highlight of her career was covering the Tiananmen Square protests, the resulting massacre, and resulting fall out. This event served as the catalyst for shattering the last of Wong's illusions about communism in China. She declares herself no longer naïve and believes that she finally has a clear view of the "real" China.
   
   The last portion of the book presents some of Wong's most interesting interviews and perspectives on life in China, centering on human rights issues and social problems like how to uncover how many people really died in the Tiananmen Square massacre, poverty, the effects of the economic boom, retardation, drugs, prisoners, kidnapping women as brides, and the new robber barons of China.
   
   Wong left China in 1993 with no regrets. She concluded that without having spent 12 years living in and observing Red China, she would not have realized that what she was striving for all along was the socialist life style she enjoyed in Canada.
   
   Filled with interesting stories and well told, this book is a must read addition to your "good books about China" collection. As more and more people with Chinese roots return to this country, hopefully more voices like Wang's will emerge to give us perspective on what's happened between 1993 and the present, picking up where she has left off.

5 comments about One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life--A Story of Race and Family Secrets.

1. One of the best biographies ever. Blyss Broyard blends two hundred years worth of family secrets to explain how and why racial identity can be so controversial. Her father, Anatole Broyard, kept his mixed race parentage from his children and the result of that decision is this marvelous book.



2. I just finished reading a novel called Passin', by Karen E. Quinones Miller, and Broyard's father was mentioned in that book. What little I learned from Miller's book intrigued me, so I hurried up and purchased One Drop. It was a decent book, but not as interesting as I might have hoped.
   
   She had me mesmerized when writing about her father's life, but then when she goes on her own journey to learn more about her African-American roots my interest began to wan. I tried to figure out why, and then realized it was because she was writing about it almost as a disinterested character herself! She never drew me in, because she wasn't that drawn in. So why did she bother with this odyssey to find her roots, I wonder? Maybe to write this book?
   
   Also, and I saw this mentioned in a few other reviews, she seems to have some (residual?) racist views herself about blacks . . . and you out and out feel that she thinks it ironic that she's now part of a group she and her friends have always considered inferior.
   
   If anyone ever writes a full biography on her father, I'd love to read it. But this memoir left me feeling a little on the exploited side, myself.



3. Bliss' voyage was very special to me. I felt her pain and confusion and unfortunately could relate too closely to her tale. Her account is so honest and self-reflective that it was embarassing at times to be privvy to her thoughts. As a mother,I wanted to hug her and explain to her all the racial garbage that American society dumps on us. As a Creole of Color whose mother, grandmother and God knows how many other relatives passed while I couldn't, I can relate to her family stories and pain. Yet, this young lady taught me so much with her amazing historical research. If I ever drag myself back to Louisiana to my maternal home, I will have lots of tips to learn more about my family. For example, who is my Italian grandfather and does a great grandfather's portrait as a judge still hang in a county courthouse? I'd love to have her help me retrace my roots. I am amused at her stories of people discovering their black ancestry and I laugh at the thought that if people in the 30s only knew that my red-headed grandmother, a magazine cover girl, was actually black/Negroe/Colored/Creole or that my mom, the lady in the 60s Wonder Bread commercial, wasn't white. But the scars still remain with all of us. The lies, the denial of self still haunt the family. I am sending this book to my mom who prbably to this day experiences some guilt about not raising her eldest daughter because she couldn't pass in her white expatriate world.



4. Bliss Broyard is amazing, and I am so glad that she wrote this book. I discovered her existence seeing an excerpt from African American Lives and became curious about her journey. I had just had my own DNA testing done to confirm or dispel a family story about us being American Indian and Scottish, instead of Irish as we'd been told. When my results came in, showing a strong subsaharan African and Egyptian Berber influence (in addition to the Scottish and American Indian parts) I was startled and surprised. I didn't know what to make of it, or how to incorporate this new knowledge into my self-identity. So, reading Ms. Broyard's book was amazing for me, because I'd gone through many of the challenges she spoke of. I was somewhat jealous of her ability to connect to relatives and gain so much genealogy information, as I've been doing these searches for 10 years and not gotten so much. Her book is a testament to rethinking the memory of her father and making meaning for herself. Her writing is exceptional, and she's honest, sincere. I wish there were more authors (or people in general!) like Ms. Broyard. Good for her for publishing this! I've passed on my copy to other friends who struggle with their multiple cultures and identities, and gifted a copy to a friend who's interested in his own genealogy. Go Ms. Broyard, and bless you for the courage it took to write this book!



5. I liked this book. Not so much b/c I was interested in Anatole Broyard, but rather I found his family history and his daughter's struggles to come to terms with her father's and her own identity much more compelling. Bliss Broyard did a wonderful job of detailing her paternal history all the way back to 18c Louisiana. I felt her need to connect with her new found family and her pain when her family (while polite) did not fully embrace her. Highly recommended.

5 comments about The Language of Baklava.

1. Reading The Language of Baklava, I felt like I'd stepped into a 'lost world'-- the rich memories and sensations and stories were outstanding. This is my favorite kind of book, the kind that I have trouble finding any more, where I feel like you enter the heart and mind of a life and a place. I will never forget this book.



2. A lovely book, reminding me somewhat of my own childhood and my over-the-top overprotective father. The descriptions of her family's meals are incredible. I found myself rushing to make the recipes, looking forward to enjoying devouring them as I read, like I was sitting at the table with the author.
   
   One of those books that you think, "Ok, it's late... I'll just read until the end of this chapter," then you don't put it down.
   
   Well, if you're a foodie daughter of an immigrant like me, anyway.



3. Terrific memoir, funny and moving. Pretty good recipes too! Highly recommend.



4. This is a great story - Abu-Jaber shares beautiful stories of growing up with a Jordanian father and an American mother. As someone close to Middle-Eastern expats, I recognised a lot of the feelings, emotions and social situations she describes: the longing for a long lost country that is one embellished from childhood memories, the importance of food as a source of comfort and a way to bring continuation to a new lifestyle in a foreign country, the importance of family, the unity between a family that is scattered around the world but whose heritage keeps them together. I thought it was very enjoyable and entertaining. It should be especially interesting to people interested in Middle-Eastern culture and those who are or know any expats/immigrants like Abu-Jaber's father. For a deeper and less light-toned stories, I also recommend Crescent, or West of the Jordan.



5. In the book's foreword, Abu-Jaber states that the facts should never get in the way of a story, that the essence of experience is in the heart. She then tells her life story, each chapter an independent vignette, strung together by her father's love of family and food. I have little in common with Abu-Jaber, the oldest daughter of a protective, over-the-top father, who never truly left his native Jordan; and a US mother, obscure in the background, a stoical cypher. But Abu-Jaber is right, the essence of a story is in the heart, and her book connects.

5 comments about Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary.

1. Notice that if you have an encounter with the Virgin Mary. . . and write about it you are biased. If you have a feminist axe to grind and write from the point of view of philosophic naturalism, you are scholarly.

   This is political correctness applied to Mary.

   Yawn.

   JMNR




2. The fact remains that this book offers a very solid and accurately researched survey of the development of the "phenomenon" of devotion to Mary, the mother of Jesus. It is not exhaustive by any means, but traces all the major strains of development from at least the third century. What the book fails to do adequately is critically delve into the real roots of Marian themes as found in the New Testament records. Indeed, what we see in the very first century of the Christian/Biblical era is a rather rapid (and radical) development of attitudes about the Mother of Jesus, a shift from early indifference and ignorance of Mary's role (the Marcan Gospel, Pauline letters) to an outright "lifting up" of Mary as the Ideal Christian, the First True Disciple, worthy of loud praise (Luke), and even iconic status as Eve-Israel 'Mother of believers'(John) and glorified symbol of the Church itself (Revelation). I wish Werner had spent more time drawing attention to how swift and startling these developments in the understanding of Mary were when the New Testament writings were being composed. Also, how did these "arcs of thought" regarding Mary take root geographically in the 2nd century church? Werner could have noted that it was no coincidence that Gospel communities giving great prominence to the figure of Mary(Luke's Antioch, the Johannine churches) in the first century continued to preserve these emphases in the 2nd (Ignatius of Anioch, Irenaeus-Justin, etc). Otherwise, Werner gives a solid depiction of how formative ecclesiastical motives (asceticism, Christological controversy) rattled the chains of Mary's rather flexible image in the patristic age, and how her mystique lent itself so readily to mythical, legendary rumblings about her death, intercessory powers, etc. A fascinating handbook and not even remotely [a] feminist manifesto ... It seems that some would have a hard time handling the reality that much of what Mary represents was a complex combination of iconic mythologizing that began in Scriptural/Apostolic times and only grew in succeeding centuries according to the demands of the age and normal human piety.



3. Warner's book is far more than a mere history of the Virgin Mary. It is not intended for devout Catholics who only wish to hear praise heaped on the mother of God. What Warner does is chronicle the journey that Mary has taken throughout history, highlighting her many cultural guises and pointing out how they have historically been used to reflect the political motivations of the church. For anyone who is looking to read something beyond the sterile propoganda of a religion that has too long controlled the way in which people perceive and treat women, this is a book that will answer many questions. A beautiful read, written sensitively by a woman who knows Catholicism intimately, but who has been disillusioned by the deeply misogynistic foundations of the Catholic faith.



4. Marina Warner's writing style is so magnificent that each paragraph seems a tribute to the beauty of the English language. I should like to use this book as an instruction manual for advanced courses in literary composition.
   
   In itself, this book is a landmark work of European history. Marina's treatment of nearly a millennium of devotions, historical implications, poetry, art, and culture is exceedingly extensive and cohesive.
   
   I withheld the fifth star because the underlying thesis, that the devotions to Mary have condemned women to inferior status, distorts the essence of the devotions chronicled. Even in the 'age of faith,' the connections between devotion, which admits to God's ways being unknowable, and the physical manifestations (icons, relics and the like) which make them come alive for the believer, hardly would have been veritable manuals of 'how to use Mary's holiness to underline female inferiority.' In fact, were this book a historical work without the feminist angle, it would have been far better.



5. Like an appealing art gallery guide, Warner conducts a grand tour of the legends, literature, and imagery concerning Mother Mary. Along the way she exposes vast differences in the messages these artists make Mary convey. On one hand, Warner shows the church moving to emphasize a host of pre-Christian rules about the ranking of males over females, and enforcement of taboos concerning sexual pollution -- to a point where all contact between men and women was a sin to be forgiven, and all love for women was a form of idolatry. As Matfré Ermengaud put it in the 1200s, "Satan, in order to make men suffer bitterly, makes them adore women; for instead of loving as they should, the creator with fervent love, with all their heart, with all their mind, ... they sinfully love women". (p. 153.) Only males who had no part in such sin could mediate forgiveness for it.
   
   On the other hand, Warner shows the rising popular devotion to women and mothers, taking form as troubadour art and as the great cult of Mother Mary. What did it mean to love her? Countering a rise of romantic ideals, the monastic artists promoted Mary as an expression of devotion for chastity. While formally shunning all earthly females, they pointed the parishioners toward a more worthy object for their devotion -- the chaste and non-physical woman of their spiritual dreams in heaven. In the "counter-romance" of clerical poetry about Mary, chastity was actually marriage to the Virgin in heaven. The Virgin called all men to love her, and was offended if they spurned her for mortal females. In a French clerical story of the 1300's, the "Miracles de Notre Dame par Personnages", a young man considers monastic vows, but then falls in love with a woman. The Virgin Mary appears and rebukes him in his bedroom:
   
   "How can this be, since I am who I am, that you are leaving me for another woman? It seems you're badly underrating my worth and my beauty. ... You must be drunk to give your whole heart and all your love to a woman of this earth? And to leave me, the lady of heaven?" (p. 156.)
   
   Warner's juxaposition of troubadour and clerical lore shows a marvelous, artfully conducted arguement over what is good, what is beautiful, and what we can aspire to.
   
   --author of "Different Visions of Love"

5 comments about Catherine the Great.

1. Troyat needs no bolstering from me: his credentials as a well-known documenter of Russian monarchic history are legion. I relished every page of Troyat's documentaries on Ivan IV, Pjotr I, and Aleksandr I (ranking in strict chronologic order). However, his bio of Yekaterina II--while unquestionably meticulously researched--is dry. For one thing, it is quite overlong, which one must question right out of the starting gate insofar as Henri Troyat's book on Pjotr I--also a fabulous monarch of critical importance to the emergence of the empire, arguably even more so than Yekaterina II--was brief and swift. (Indeed, every paragraph literally burst with fascinating facts and characterizations.) Troyat goes on and on and on about every minor detail to the point where the essential message is basically lost amid the sheer volume: a crystalline example of forest-amid-trees overpowering. As a basis for research, for high school papers, etc., "Catherine the Great" is to be most highly commended. However, as an armchair read for the history devote [only one 'e': I can't render accent aigu through this medium, and devotee is the feminine form--Ed.], it plays marked second fiddle to Henri's Ivan, Peter, and Alex.



2. Prior to reading this book, the only information that I had on Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, was that she was an 18th century Czarina of some repute and that she was essentially a nymphomaniac. While the author disputes my clinical characterization of Catherine's sexual prowess, he certainly does take great pains to point out her long list of conquests, right up until her death at a then advanced age.
   
   This book is very informative and quite enlightening as it relates to the political and social mores of Eastern European and Asian aristocracy during the period of Catherine's reign. The tangled webs of shifting alliances during the roughly 50 years covered by the book are many times fascinating and at times hung by the thread of whether a 16 year old heir to a throne was enchanted at first site by a 13 year old princess. Entire nations hung in the balance.
   
   Especially interesting was the author's repeated juxtaposition between Catherine's espoused liberal "enlightened monarch" ideals and her actual rule over, and disposal of millions of enslaved serfs. Her fascination and financial support of many liberal French and Swiss political reformers and philosophers and then her horror when such philosophies actual came to fruition in the French Revolution.
   
   Ultimately, Catherine was a woman of her times and indisputably proved to be a most able successor to the earlier Peter the Great inasmuch as she made Russia a major player on the European stage and greatly expanded the territory under her control. The personalities involved make for a highly entertaining read.
   
   I've seen some of the comments labeling the prose as dry or tedious and tend to disagree. Certainly, writing style of non-fiction historical biographies differs from that seen in fictionalized accounts. In addition, this is a translation which perhaps hinders certain elements of style that others might prefer. All in all, I was not dissatified with the writing or the content. I recommend this book to any seeking an understanding of Russian or Eastern European history and/or culture during the mid to late 18th century.



3. Bad translation of a mediocre and sappy history. I couldn't stand it and have gone looking for a different biography of Catherin the Great.



4. This is one of the very best biographies I have ever read. Troyat has taken a very interesting but not particularly palatable historical figure ( My mother-in law referred to Catherine as "that awful person")and brought her to life with all of her fascinatingly complex character in a well wrought historical background.



5. i hard to believe a little german priness would become the most powerful woman in europe.but that catherine story .married to a stupid czravish who had no sense. he was determine to stay greman in russian,but katherina made show she learn langauge ,religion and people.she learn the art of policital when the time was right she took over.brought a new age not seen since peter the great.i would had like more about here early life in german but this book was well done.