The BookFetish Blog

I ordered Eleanore Wells’ The Spinsterlicious Life on the recommendation of my friend Landon, and the title alone had me fully intrigued.

Based on some of the  essays found on her blog of the same name, The Spinsterlicious Life  recounts Wells’ adventures in life and dating as a woman of a certain age who has chosen to remain single and childless.

I admit that although I was excited to read this one, I also approached it with a degree of trepidation. While Wells happily celebrates her choices, I am not single and childless by choice. Still, it’s the circumstance in which I find myself, and what resonates from Wells is the message that a single life, a life not defined by motherhood, is not a wasted or incomplete life.

The sisterhood of the single is an intimate one, and Wells touches on so many of its nuances. The disconnection we feel when our formerly fabulous friends pair off and procreate- and then can talk about nothing but their children. This is a delicate area, hard to approach with our friends, and Wells handles it with aplomb, honesty, and just a touch of snarky humor: “…and we want the opportunity to have conversations with you that are as banal as those we’re having with everyone else! And honestly, your kids are interesting, but they’re not that interesting.”

As a single by circumstance, I’m largely happy with my life.  Still, it’s sometimes hard to focus on what’s cool about being single rather than focusing on not being part of a long term couple. Wells points out some great things about being single, including how as singles, we’re less likely to be murdered by a loved one (I promise, this is an unexpectedly funny and simultaneously sad part of the book).

One of the things I’m most thankful for in The Spinsterlicious Life is Wells’ assertion that you can’t force chemistry. So many of my paired off friends try to talk me into liking a man when I just don’t feel that click.  With her vast dating experience Wells explains, quite well, how you can’t force, and hell, shouldn’t try to force chemistry. It’s there or it isn’t, and it’s so much more fun to date a man when it’s there.

For fabulous single and childless women – by choice or by circumstance- everywhere, The Spinsterlicious Life is a fast, fun read full of insights that make you feel a camaraderie with Eleanore Wells.  After you read the book, you can keep up with her adventures at her blog here.

I don’t think I’ve ever talked about a movie on The Book Fetish Blog before, but tomorrow is Super Tuesday, March is Women’s History Month, and if you don’t know about this film, I think you should.

Iron Jawed Angels is an HBO Film released in 2004, an Official Premier Selection of the Sundance Film Festival. I had the pleasure of seeing it at the Carter Center when it first came out, and I’ve watched it numerous time since then.

Our school history books leave out all the good parts. Most of us have heard of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the mothers of the US Women’s Suffrage movement. But they died more than fifty years before the nineteenth amendment passed. The stories of Alice Paul and Lucy Burns aren’t really in the high school history books, but they are explored in this film.

These were the rebel girls. They parted ways with the National American Woman Suffrage Association to form the National Women’s Party.  Iron Jawed Angels shows the struggle of these incredibly brave women. Every time I watch the film, I’m shocked, again, that my own grandmother’s didn’t have the right to vote when they were born.

And I watch this film nearly in tears (OK, in complete tears the first time I saw it) seeing 218 suffragists arrested over bogus charges and imprisoned in work houses. They were denied the rights of political prisoners. When they went on a hunger strike, they were force fed. In fact, it took five people to hold down Lucy Burns  and place a feeding tube up her nose to force feed her.

This part of our history isn’t often told- or at least not enough. I shouldn’t have been an adult before I knew the suffering some of these women endured so that I can vote, have a voice in my own right.  So here’s to two more heroines of mine: Lucy Burns and Alice Paul. And the countless women whose names history have forgotten. I only hope that I have as much courage as they did to fight the good fight.

I’m so excited to be a part of the blog tour for Kathleen Long’s Chasing Rainbows today. From about six pages in, I was completely hooked on the story.  I loved it. I mean, I emailed Kathleen after I finished it saying, “Sometimes, as I read, I felt like you were writing MY story.” Is there anything better to say about a book, to have a character touch you, as the reader, so deeply?

Chasing Rainbows tells the story of Bernadette “Bernie” Murphy. Already reeling from the dissolution of her marriage, and an earlier tragedy that shall not be mentioned here so I don’t spoil anything, Bernie’s world is further rocked with the sudden death of her father.  Although Bernie’s father is dead, he’s still with her in spirit- he left her with life lessons in a journal. The trouble is, the journal is all in cryptograms, and Bernie must solve the puzzles in order to understand the wisdom her father left her. Her father always said, “In life, you either choose to sing a rainbow, or you don’t.”

Bernie takes this to heart, and starts examining every part of her life: the job she detests, her failing marriage, her best friend, her own personal demons.

At times laugh out loud funny, and at others, eerily poignant, Kathleen Long gives us a very real, very empathetic character.  Although I was rooting for Bernie- even elated for her as she faces down her despicable boss- I also often found myself frustrated with her.  For every two steps forward, Bernie would fall back.  But isn’t that life? We want the best for ourselves, yet we are often our own worst enemy, getting in our own way.

The more I learned of Bernie’s story, the more I identified with her. I cheered for her, I hoped for her success. I hoped she wouldn’t be too blind to the wonderful world of opportunities in her path.  I wanted her to find her authentic self, her true path, to be happy.  I wanted her to sing a rainbow. I wanted me to sing a rainbow.

Kathleen Long gives us a page-turning story, and a likeable character who we want to see succeed.  She’s got her flaws, for certain.  But these only add to the authenticity of the story. When Bernie fights with her best friend, we’re reminded that it is those we love the most who can inflict the most scathing pain. Yet they are also the ones we want most to forgive.

From chapter two on, a cryptogram begins each chapter. I had fun seeing if I could decipher at least part of the puzzle as I read the book.  A cool bonus to the story, and something you don’t see  every day.

I thoroughly enjoyed Chasing Rainbows. As I mentioned, I emailed the author afterwards. Nothing gives me more pleasure than being able to tell an author how much I appreciate them sharing their world with us as readers. I can’t wait to read more by Kathleen Long.

It’s rare that I read a book that leaves me feeling like Catfish Alley: simultaneously a bit raw and heartbroken; joyful and hopeful. I couldn’t immediately talk about it, and even now, I’m sure I’m not doing justice to this amazing, wonderful story.

Set in the mid 2000’s in a fictional Clarksville, Mississippi, Lynne Bryant’s Catfish Alley tells the story of Roxanne Reeves and Grace Clark. Roxanne has clawed her way into her small town social strata, hiding her poor Cajun upbrining. As she’s preparing to lead the annual tour of antebellum homes, a newcomer suggests including prominent places of  local African American history in the tour. Roxanne teams with a reluctant Grace Clark, an elderly black woman and lifelong resident of Clarksville, to learn more of the African American history of the town. Grace and her friends take Roxanne back to the pivotal year of  1931 as they relay their history. As Roxanne learns more about the local history, her own life changes in previously unimaginable ways.

At first glance, Catfish Alley will garner comparisons to The Help. But the more accurate comparison, to me, is To Kill A Mockingbird.  The book’s examination of race, especially in the context of small southern towns,  is painfully honest. Roxanne’s initial reactions  to her first real exposure to  African American culture are not unlike things I have heard throughout my life. The shameful history of the deep south is unflinchingly revealed here with a storyline interweaving the Klan and lynchings- things that even now people prefer to brush under the rug of history, preferring instead hoop-skirted tours of old plantations.

At the same time, the rich culture of the African American community  is examined more broadly than in The Help. Not everyone simply works for the whites in town. Catfish Alley has a black doctor. Grace attends a teaching college and teaches for years. Adelle, Grace’s best friend, is a nurse. That being said, the book in no way glosses over the racial struggle that is in many ways still not over.  The lives of Grace and the people in her community were marked with discrimination and tragedy.

Yet, there’s a pervasive sense of joy with Grace and her community, too.  The love between Grace and Adelle and their friend Mattie is almost palpable.  Despite the tragedy and sadness in their lives, they choose to see the joy and love in life as well.  As she learns more about her new friends, Roxanne discovers what really matters in life, and allows her to fundamentally change her life.

In her author’s note, Lynne Bryant remarks that it wasn’t until years after she left Mississippi for graduate school that she realized that “my whiteness was accompanied by privilege whether I chose to exploit it or not.” I think that is an incredibly honest statement to make, and more than one reader will identify with it.

Catfish Alley left me speechless, and I urge you to read it. Now.

It’s not often that you think of punk rock and PhD’s mixing, but they meld perfectly in Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God. Co-author Greg Graffin has a PhD in Zoology, teaches Evolution at UCLA, and is the lead singer of punk band Bad Religion.

Anarchy Evolution is my February book from the backlog read for the Bookish Resolutions challenge. I’ve been reading this one on and off for a year. It’s part memoir, part celebration of the punk scene, and part approachable science text. I wouldn’t call this one a page turner, but if like me, you have an interest in music and science, I think you’ll understand the appeal.

Graffin explores his own evolution into punk rocker and scientist, while also exploring the disconnect between faith and scientific evidence.  Unlike Dawkins, Graffin comes across less antagonistic to believers, but explains how a blind faith in a literal creation story is at odds with science.  He delves into the debate between a guiding creator and the evidence of the impartiality (and sometimes the illogic) of nature and evolution.

This book wasn’t what I expected it would be when I bought it, but I am glad that I finished it. I learned about some nuances of evolutionary theory that I was unaware of. And I’ve added some Bad Religion to my Spotify account- Graffin actually sings about some of his scientific experience, and there’s an intellectualism to some of his lyrics that is missing from a lot of other songs.

I recommend this one for people with an interest in science and a fascination with how that can mix with something as creative as music.