Hi everyone it's Lauren I hope you're all doing really well. Today I'm going to be
talking through all of the books that I read in the month of August as always
there'll be links to all of these in the description box below if you are
interested. So first book that I finished was our pick for the feminist orchestra
book club that I run with Jean and that was Zami by Audre Lorde: A New Spelling
of My Name and she's called it a bio-mythography. I hadn't read very much
Audre Lorde before I was really interested to pick this up because I've
heard nothing but good things about her writing and she self describes as a
'black lesbian mother warrior poet' so very interesting she had a very varied
life and this is her autobiography spanning her childhood up until I guess
her early 20s and living in New York and working out that she's a lesbian and
what it was like in that scene at that time I think I've always assumed for
some reason the Audre Lorde was a figure who was a lot more prevalent in
perhaps the 60s and 70s and that might have just been because that's when she
was older and that's when she was writing a lot but I hadn't realized that
she was born in the 30s and kind of lived through the Second World War and
really when she was a young woman a teenager coming into her own she was
living in New York in like the 40s and 50s so it was really interesting seeing
what it was like this for a black woman but equally a black gay woman at that
time because I feel like we just have this concept or perhaps it's just me
that thing's only really starts to become a lot more open and easier for
everybody in like the 60s and 70s and you kind of forget that period just
before so it was so interesting and hearing about her life but her writing
just on its own merit is so beautiful I feel like I have a tendency to speed
read and kind of brush over sentences sometimes but reading audio Lorde I just
could and it wasn't possible for me to do that because they're so measured and
you you have to really kind of slow yourself down and take in how she
constructing her sentences it's so beautiful to read and so eloquent but
also really visual as well but the whole story her whole journey is so beautiful
in so many ways I'd really recommend you picking this up whether or not you've
read any of her writing before because I haven't only
read a couple of her essays but this was so so gorgeously written that it really
makes me excited to get to Sister Outsider, I also have another collection
of her various writings and poems which I really can't wait to pick up now.
I will leave a link to the Feminist Orchestra book club on Goodreads in the
description box below if you're interested in joining us we read one
book every two months so our pick for September and October is
Ursula K Leguin's The Left Hand of Darkness...what a tongue teaser! My next
book for August was an audiobook which was The Five by Hallie Rubenhold and
this is an incredible book also an incredible audio book this is
recommended to me by Simon of Savidge Reads as something that's really really
good to listen to because I'm not I don't listen to audiobooks that often
and I do lean more towards nonfiction when I do and this was just amazing what
Hallie Rubenhold has done here is research all of the lives of the women
who were killed by Jack the Ripper or at least the ones who are traditionally
part of the canon and she gives us the story of each of the women from birth up
until her death but she doesn't go into details of their deaths which I think we
can all be thankful for there's plenty of information on how they were murdered
if you're interested in that grisly side of it but what she does here is really
humanize them there is so much evidence but she has managed to find about their
lives and where there are some gaps she uses so much like real research in and
into the context of what generally was happening in Victorian society at that
time for example the fact there was a massive glut of homelessness and the
reasons behind that and it's just amazing to see these stories fleshed out
and you can identify with them so much and the other side of it which I thought
was fascinating is that really for at least three of the women if not four of
them they wouldn't have identified as prostitutes at all in fact there's no
evidence that three of the women were ever engaged in prostitution or anything
remotely like it and it's just so fascinating to realize that we have just
pigeon-holed these women over the years because somebody said there were
prostitutes once and everyone just ran with that narrative even though there's
so much evidence to show that that they weren't and what she does really
skillfully is make you identify with these women so much
even though you know how their stories end you're sort of willing them to make
different choices because you know so many of them were victims of things like
alcoholism those reasons for them becoming destitute and you knew their
lives we're just going to progressively get worse and worse and worse and to the
point where they're living on the streets and you just you you hope so
much that they're going to somehow make different choices and an escape this
cycle and it's nuts that it takes a book like this for you to really actually
empathize with these women as women and not just victims of this glamorous
murder or these women of the night who are just sort of smaller characters in
the main attraction which is Jack the Ripper. Next I read The Shadow of What We
Were by Luis Sepulveda which is set in Chile as you can see and it's about
there's these four men, four or five men who are looking back on their time
during Pinochet's coup so all of them were kind of members of the Communist
Party and it's about what happened in Chile at that time where hundreds of
people and who were seen to be on the Left were just completely murdered or
just disappeared and sent to awful camps and this is very what I really enjoyed
about this book is it almost plays like a film
each chapter feels very visual and it's very kind of scene...scen-atic? Is that even
a word? Like it feels like you jumped from scene to scene and I could really
visualize it as a film and it's got a lot of almost kind of absurdist humor in
here and it's quite rye and I think it works really well with something which
is obviously such a difficult topic it almost felt similar in tone to Gabriel
Garcia Marquez where it's quite similar actually where odd things are happening
but is dealing with quite difficult subject matter I thought this was fine
it's very very sure as you can see and I do not have personally enough history or
what happened in Chile to probably appreciate this as much as if I had had
all of that knowledge but it has made me really want to learn more about that
next I picked up Do It Like a Woman by Caroline Criado-Perez and I did go into
this book with a little bit of trepidation because I feel like the
author has some has some views which I probably don't agree with I had
obviously I'm not an expert and everything she's ever said
but I do find that she can be quite white feminist she can be quite trans
misogynistic but I have been wanting to film a video where I talk about
different feminist book recommendations so I thought well in the interest of
research at least I will give this a go and see what it's like and in hindsight
I'm so glad that I did because there are hundreds like it must
be hundreds maybe may promote from exaggerating slightly but there are so
many women who she features in this book and it's not really about her or even
really about about her views as search it much more about giving you so many
different examples of women all over the world in various different fields who
have like achieved something amazing essentially so it's split into different
chapters doing it like a woman speaking like a woman advocating like a woman and
I have learned so many about so many amazing women for one such as the person
who was the first woman to walk solo across the Antarctic and then this these
pair of sisters in the Middle East I think Afghanistan who became like pilots
against everything standing in their way and there's also so many
examples of women and charities and organizations who are advocating for
abortion services or protection against domestic
violence and there's so many really worthwhile women I'm really glad I
learnt about by reading this book and it got me so angry and so riled up and yeah
I would a hundred percent recommend this actually I think
there's a lot of value to be had in here only a couple of issues I think I found
while reading it I feel like anything LGBTQ at all is almost like glaringly
obvious in its omission there's nothing about that and there's very little in
here about it's like a lot of the stories focused on women in the Europe
and in the Middle East and not really from other parts of the world and I mean
can you do a book which is about everyone all the time I don't know but
just in the interest of letting you know what's in here I feel like there's
there's she's focusing on specific issues probably not very intersectional
issues so I think that's a fair criticism of the book but I think
there's also so much good in here so especially recommend this if you're
looking to be inspired about women who are like doing some amazing things and
also just to be a little bit inspired about how much one person can achieve I
think this is especially now what's happening with with the environment in
politics all over the world you sometimes forget how much one person can
really do and all of us are normally very happy to kind of sit back and let
somebody else through it out for us and reading something like this I think it
really gave me a little kick up the backside to be a little bit more vocal
and a bit more active in those areas which I think are important and finally
I read something completely different this has been quite a varied reading
month actually but I picked up The Gloaming by Kirsty Logan and I've
talked about my reading experience of this book in the most recent vlog that I
did and because I read it while we were on a trip to the highlands which was so
lovely we're in a large like in the middle of nowhere it's such amazing view
and basically spend all week watching films and reading books and then doing
some walks as well in the countryside so gorgeous holiday and but this was a
really really perfect read to read well while I was in Scotland as well this is
set on an unnamed Scottish island and it's about a family we were mostly
following the middle daughter Mara and it's about how they cope with loss
within the family but it's also it plays with so many different themes and one of
the biggest theme is the sea and the earth and nature her writing is so
descriptive really evocative of fairy tales and there's big themes of selkies
or mermaids in here because Mara meets a woman who performs as like a mermaid all
over the world and that traveling shows and it does feel quite mournful in some
places because you're dealing with the passage of time you're dealing with
death with loss on this island whenever people die they sort of gradually start
turning into rock and then they go and stand on the cliff all together as
statues forever and there's so many like a couple of little bits of magic but in
dispersed without just modern-day Scotland which I thought was really
brilliantly done and I loved how those themes were then connected with the sea
and the sea taking taking away from the land eating away from people's lives
like the sea wanting your secrets the sea wanting some kind of
peace offering I suppose yeah I think it was knitted together really well and I
would recommend it especially if you enjoyed A Portable Shelter which is
Kirstie Logan's book of short stories I prefer that and this I think to The
Gracekeepers which is her book about sort of trap a bear and a girl on a
traveling circus and which is nice but it feels like in a different world
whereas this feels like a magical version of our own world which I think I
just really enjoy so that was my August I'd love to know what you've been
reading this summer I just think I get so much read in the summer I don't get
very many videos filmed I will grant you that but I feel like I read so much more
just because you sort of relaxing and it's really nice so I'd love to have any
more recommendations from you that you've been really enjoying recently
also let me know if you've read any of any of these and we can have a little
chat in the comments and I'll see you in my next video, bye!