why don’t i read more female authors?

Looking over my book shelves I’m embarrassed to admit that 75% of the books are by male authors. It makes me really sad. There must be more female authors that I can connect with. Most of the female writers I have read are contemporary and have only one published book but I anxiously await more. Muriel Barbery, Monica Drake, Tanya Egan Gibson, Alice Zeniter: more please. So much more please. There are of course, the classics that I read when I was younger. Mary Shelley, Anais Nin, Simone de Beauvoir and Anne Rice. Ok, maybe Anne Rice isn’t a modern classic, but she’s definitely a cult classic.

a friendly green card marriage and bi-racial families

Take This Man explores friendship, love, family, immigration, and marriage. Originally written in French by Alice Zeniter, the novel focuses on the relationship between a French girl, Alice, (whose father is from Algeria) and her best friend, Mad, who is from Mali but grew up in France. He asks her to marry him to avoid deportation. They have known each other for over a decade and although she is nervous, she says yes because she cannot imagine her life without him. Starting with Mad’s proposal to Alice and then moving backwards, Zeniter delves into Alice’s past and her childhood friendship with Mad.

it’s time to read a clockwork orange

Anthony Burgess‘ A Clockwork Orange is a smart book that suffers from the film’s reputation. I just read it for the first time;  I should have read it years ago but the identity of the film and its advertisements deterred me. Every headshop on Haight Street and in the Village sells postcards, shirts, and posters with the movie’s actor, Malcolm McDowell. The movie’s tagline is “Being the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are rape, ultra-violence, and Beethoven”. Hmm, I’m not interested in that. At some point I picked up the book, read the description, and bought it. This is one of those cases where a reader buys a book, puts it on her shelf, and doesn’t read it for six years.

book perks

If you’re lucky, you get some perks with your work. Sometimes it’s free coffee or breakfast treats, sometimes it’s discounts on tickets, or it could be discounts on clothing. There are some great things about working in a museum: the beautiful building, being surrounded by art, creative colleagues, oh and the books! When I went to museums before I worked in one I would want to buy the catalogs but couldn’t afford them. Now my desk is overflowing!