I have to admit up front: I bailed on this book by Susan J. Douglas and Meredith W. Michaels after a chapter and a half. It’s an interesting idea: a couple of female professors (one at Smith and one at University of Michigan) study the effect of the media on motherhood and how it relates to the feminist causes from the 1970s. Why did I bail? I read The Price of Motherhood by Anne Crittenden a while back, and it seems to me that she had pretty much the same idea (motherhood is unrecognized by the government and society as a viable occupation) and went about it in a more interesting way. The thing that irritated me most about The Mommy Myth was all the snide and snarky comments by the authors. They assumed that whoever was reading this book was already pretty angry that society encourages mothers to stay home and not work, and set about mocking the non-feminist/liberal point of view. As a side note, though, it did deepen my resolve to get rid of the Barbies.
feminism
Non-Fiction Reject Pile
Okay — I read most of these a while ago… take everything with a bit of a grain of salt. Sometimes a bad mood or a bad day can affect how I react to a book.
Is Jesus a Republican or Democrat?, Tony Campolo (Possibly because I was reading this while I was 9 months pregnant with my daughter Caitlyn…)
Philistines at the Hedgerow, Steven Gaines (I just don’t care that much about the Hamptons. )
Blue Latitudes, Tony Horwitz (The information on Captain Cook was good, but it’s hard for me to have respect for an author who spends about 90% of the book either drunk or drinking.)
Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt (I picked it up because of the buzz, and I just didn’t get why this was supposed to be so great.)
Mothers who Think, Camille Peri and Kate Moss (Feminist mothering schlock.)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig (I only read the first part, and found that this was not a travel book. I felt betrayed.)
12,000 Miles in the Nick of Time, Mark Jacobson (It was an okay memoir of a family’s travels in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, but I thought he spent too much time ruminating about his teenage daughters and not enough on what they saw.)
Live From New York, Tom Shales (If you have fond endearing memories of Saturday Night Live you might be more interested in the sordid lives of those who were on the show that I was. I also find oral histories hard to be consistently interested in..)
Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris (He’s not as funny in print; he’s better when he reads his stuff.)
My King Arthur Fixation
I don’t know where it came from, or really even how long I’ve been interested in Camelot and the whole King Arthur story. But it seems that I’m drawn to books that are set in and deal with the whole King Arthur myth.
First off, there are (at least) two big holes in this list. I have never gotten around to reading T.H. White’s The Once and Future King. Actually, I think I tried to read it once and found it frightfully dull and have never attempted it since. The second hole is Sir Thomas Mallory’s King Arthur and the Round Table. (At least I think that’s the title.) No excuses on that one.
That being said, the King Arthur books I have read and my thoughts on them:
Ladies of the Lake, Caitlin and John Matthews: I bought this on a whim; it turned out to be an equal balance between new-agey hippy stuff (full of meditations on this line: “Imagine you’re Guenievere. You’re wandering through the garden, about to meet the love of your life…”) and decent scholarship on the women in the Arthur story: Guinevere, Morgan/Morgause, Nimue and Vivian. Kind of silly, but an interesting book overall.
In the same New Age vein, there’s… Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley: A heady piece of feminist fiction. The first time I read this, I was enraptured by the way she tells the story from the women’s point of view. Granted, I was 20-something at the time, and very much into the whole feminine power thing. This time through, it wasn’t as good as I had remembered. Perhaps it’s because I have children now that I just found it to be a bit heavy-handed. Anyway, maybe it’s a great book for 20-somethings. In addition, there’s Lady of Avalon. It’s Bradley’s “prequel” to Mists of Avalon. I had a hard time getting into the story for all the New Age Goddess schlock. If you choose to read either, read Mists. It’s better.
As for youth fiction, try…
The Lost Years of Merlin series (The Lost Years of Merlin, The Fires of Merlin, The Seven Songs of Merlin, The Mirror of Merlin, and The Wings of Merlin), T.A. Barron: I really wanted to like this series, since Barron is dealing with Merlin’s backstory. But, in the end, it was just okay. I think I had to start and re-start the first book just because I wasn’t interested in the story Barron was trying to tell. I did really like the Seven Songs of Merlin, though, so it wasn’t all a waste.
or…
Passager, Hobby, Merlin, Jane Yolen: Another look at Merlin’s backstory. Usually Yolen is a great writer; I’ve enjoyed many of her picture books. But I found this series to be a bit forced and choppy.
And, my favorite look at the King Arthur legend:
The Merlin Trilogy (The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment), Mary Stewart: It’s a good trilogy, though it drops off by the last book (and the fourth, The Wicked Day, is abominable). Mary Stewart is obviously more interested in Merlin, and by the end when Arthur is playing a more prominent role, she (and as a result the book) is less interesting. But the first book and most of the second are quite compelling.
The Book Nut 