Nom de Plume

Scratchings and Jotlings on Books, Houses, Pets, Art, the Exigencies of Daily Existence, and Other Ephemera

Women Writers Book Meme

Found on Poppy Cedes. Here are the rules: BOLD those you’ve read, ITALICIZE the ones you’ve been meaning to read.

Alcott, Louisa May–Little Women
Allende, Isabel–The House of Spirits
Angelou, Maya–I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (totally overrated in my opinion)
Atwood, Margaret–Cat’s Eye

Austen, Jane–Emma
Bambara, Toni Cade–Salt Eaters
Barnes, Djuna–Nightwood
de Beauvoir, Simone–The Second Sex
Blume, Judy–Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret (we must, we must …. I cursed myself)
Burnett, Frances–The Secret Garden
Bronte, Charlotte–Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily–Wuthering Heights
Buck, Pearl S.–The Good Earth
Byatt, A.S.–Possession
Cather, Willa–My Antonia

Christie, Agatha–Murder on the Orient Express
Cisneros, Sandra–The House on Mango Street
Clinton, Hillary Rodham–Living History
Cooper, Anna Julia–A Voice From the South
Danticat, Edwidge–Breath, Eyes, Memory
Davis, Angela–Women, Culture, and Politics
Desai, Anita–Clear Light of Day
Dickinson, Emily–Collected Poems
Duncan, Lois–I Know What You Did Last Summer
DuMaurier, Daphne–Rebecca
Eliot, Geroge–Middlemarch

Emecheta, Buchi–Second Class Citizen
Erdrich, Louise–Tracks (not this one, but plenty of others, my fave was The Beet Queen)
Esquivel, Laura–Like Water for Chocolate
Flagg, Fannie–Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Friedan, Betty–The Feminine Mystique
Frank, Anne–Diary of a Young Girl
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins–The Yellow Wallpaper

Gordimer, Nadine–July’s People
Grafton, Sue–S is for Silence
Hamilton, Edith–Mythology This seems like an odd inclusion to me.
Highsmith, Patricia–The Talented Mr. Ripley
Hooks, Bell–Bone Black
Hurston, Zora Neale–Dust Tracks on the Road
Jacobs, Harriet–Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Jackson, Helen Hunt–Ramona
Jackson, Shirley–The Haunting of Hill House
Jong, Erica–Fear of Flying
Keene, Carolyn–The Nancy Drew Mysteries (any of them)
This inclusion is just plain WRONG. The original was written by a man; the rest were written by a whole passel of writers
Kidd, Sue Monk–The Secret Life of Bees
Kincaid, Jamaica–Lucy
Kingsolver, Barbara–The Poisonwood Bible
Kingston, Maxine Hong–The Woman Warrior
Larsen, Nella–Passing
L’Engle, Madeleine–A Wrinkle in Time

Le Guin, Ursula K.–The Left Hand of Darkness
Lee, Harper–To Kill a Mockingbird
Lessing, Doris–The Golden Notebook
Lively, Penelope–Moon Tiger

Lorde, Audre–The Cancer Journals
Martin, Ann M.–The Babysitters Club Series
McCullers, Carson–The Member of the Wedding
McMillan, Terry–Disappearing Acts
Markandaya, Kamala–Nectar in a Sieve
Marshall, Paule–Brown Girl, Brownstones
Mitchell, Margaret–Gone with the Wind
Montgomery, Lucy–Anne of Green Gables

Morgan, Joan–When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost
Morrison, Toni–Song of Solomon
Murasaki, Lady Shikibu–The Tale of Genji
Munro, Alice–Lives of Girls and Women
Murdoch, Iris–A Severed Head

Naylor, Gloria–Mama Day
Niffenegger, Audrey–The Time Traveller’s Wife
Oates, Joyce Carol–We Were the Mulvaneys
And God, was it horrible.
O’Connor, Flannery–A Good Man is Hard to Find
Piercy, Marge–Woman on the Edge of Time
Picoult, Jodi–My Sister’s Keeper
Plath, Sylvia–The Bell Jar
Porter, Katharine Anne–Ship of Fools
Proulx, E. Annie–The Shipping News
Rand, Ayn–The Fountainhead
Even worse than Mulvaneys
Ray, Rachel–365: No Repeats
Rhys, Jean–Wide Sargasso Sea
Robinson, Marilynne–Housekeeping

Rocha, Sharon–For Laci
Sebold, Alice–The Lovely Bones
Shelley, Mary–Frankenstein
Smith, Betty–A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Smith, Zadie–White Teeth
Spark, Muriel–The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Spyri, Johanna–Heidi
Strout, Elizabeth–Amy and Isabelle

Steel, Danielle–The House
Tan, Amy–The Joy Luck Club
Tannen, Deborah–You’re Wearing That
Ulrich, Laurel–A Midwife’s Tale
Urquhart, Jane–Away
Walker, Alice–The Temple of My Familiar
Welty, Eudora–One Writer’s Beginnings
Wharton, Edith–Age of Innocence
Wilder, Laura Ingalls–Little House in the Big Woods
Wollstonecraft, Mary–A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Woolf, Virginia–A Room of One’s Own

Life as a Sailing Widow

The race this weekend is 30 hours long.

30 hours.

I cannot even begin to fathom what it would be like to spend 30 hours on a sailboat. It’s a good thing Steve likes the rest of the crew. They’re going to be very cozy. I, of course, am going to miss him while he’s gone. He called me at about nine this morning.

“Wanna go on a hot date tonight?”

“Sure,” I said, pleased. I didn’t think he’d want to do anything tonight; he’s a real morning person, can easily be asleep by 8 every night. Okay, okay, he is asleep by 8 every night.

“Okay,” he said. “But we have to make it early. I have an even hotter date at 7:30. With the bed.”

Not that I’m bitter or anything …

Last year, I wanted to plant masses of bulbs in the front yard. I imagined froths of hyacinths and daffodils poking their heads up spring after spring, tons of tulips for cut flowers. But no. “It’s not in keeping with a Japanese garden,” sniffed Steve in disdain. So I resigned myself to planting five or six bulbs in the ground, and the rest in pots. And we all know that I kill plants when they’re in pots. There’s a reason that Steve calls them Zia’s Torture Chambers.

So what happened this year? Steve “discovered” the joys of bulbs. He planted flat after flat of ‘em. He dragged me to McClendon’s to get the more exotic types of bulbs. He’s even ordered a bunch of them online. And when I complained? “I’m so glad I thought of putting bulbs in the front yard,” he said.

Son of a Witch – Gregory Maguire

Son of a Witch : A NovelBack by popular demand, the cast of Maguire’s fabulous Wicked appears, at least partially. Elphaba may be gone, but her spirit of the resistance lives on, both in the hearts of the –what do you call them anyway? Ozzians? Ozzites?–and in Liir, the little boy who lived with her. Is he her son? Is he someone else’s? We don’t know and it doesn’t really matter because he is thrust into a role he isn’t sure he wants to take on. I love Gregory Maguire, I loved Wicked, and Son of a Witch deserves a place on everyone’s to read list. The man is a genius.

On Rainwater Tanks

Getting one is yet another thing on the to-do list that probably isn’t going to be done anytime soon. I want one of these. Aren’t they nifty? They light up. More than that, they’re pretty.

Unfortunately, I think they’re only available in Australia. link