Book Addiction

This week’s theme: Choose a political or social issue that matters to you. Find several books addressing that issue; they don’t have to books you’ve read, just books you might like to read. Using images (of the book covers or whatever you feel illustrates your topic) present these books in your blog.

When I saw this week’s theme, I knew right away which social/political issue I wanted to write about:  feminism.  Feminism is extremely important to me, I wish we’d come far enough in our society to recognize that women are people deserving of equality just as the other 50% of the population, but unfortunately America is still not perfect in that respect.  We’ve come a long way from the pre-suffragist, early 1900’s, but not far enough in my opinion.  Something that I am very passionate about is studying feminism and looking at the world through my gender-focused lenses.  To do this, I frequent several feminist blogs such as Feministing, Feministe, The Curvature, and Pandagon, to name a few, and I also try to read as much feminist literature as I can.  Here are some examples of books I have read and enjoyed:

I actually just read and reviewed this book the other day.  SUCH an important contribution to feminist thought.

I read this collection of essays in college, in a women and gender studies class that I was taking.  Some wonderfully talented and amazing women contributed to this work (Anna Quindlen is one) and I really enjoyed reading it.  Here is the Amazon info.

This is another one I read recently.  Jessica is the founder of Feministing.com and has a great way of making feminism seem like the most obvious choice in the world, especially to younger girls who may not already be exposed to some of her ideas.

Now onto a few I haven’t read….

This is Valenti’s new book, and one I just ordered from Amazon the other day.  It promises to be just as good, if not better than, her first.

This one is on my current TBR pile, and I actually have it lined up pretty soon as a selection for one of the challenges I’m participating in.  It’s another collection of essays, which I’m always a fan of.

This is one of the many books by bell hooks that I’m interested in reading.  I’ve read a few essays by her, and they are always thought-provoking and intense.  She writes a lot about the intersection of race, class, and feminism, so she truly deals with a lot of the stuff that many feminists don’t want to delve into.  I’m hoping to read something by her very soon.

Well that’s about it.  I’m looking forward to reading everyone else’s weekly geeks about important social issues.  Like I said, there are a lot of issues that are important to me, so I’m sure a lot of you bloggers’ posts will interest me!

This week’s edition of Weekly Geeks is about childhood favorites.  I read a LOT as a kid, so much that most of my reading sort of blurrs together.  I would go to the library on a Saturday, spend 2-3 hours there, check out 20+ books, and read them all throughout the week, then repeat the following weekend (as you can probably guess, I had very few friends and no other real interests besides reading.  Luckily, that improved in middle school).  Although I have a hard time remembering too many favorites in particular, a few really stand out, as I kept coming back to them over and over throughout my childhood.

Addie Meets Max - this was a picture book that for some reason, I couldn’t get enough of.  If I remember correctly, it was one of those golden books that you can buy in packets as gifts.  I really cannot remember anything about the story, but I read it over and over as a little kid.

The Barenstein Bears - I would always read these books when I went to my cousin’s house, he had a HUGE collection in his bedroom and we didn’t have any of these at our house, so it was always a treat to go over there and see if he’d received any new Barenstein Bear books that I could read.

The Baby-sitters Club - I was always pretty far ahead of my grade level with my reading, so I probably started reading these way before my time.  In any case, I read them for years.  I thought these girls were just the absolute coolest people ever (that says quite a bit about my social life at that age, doesn’t it) and I wanted to be friends with them desperately.  The next best thing was reading about all their adventures, which I definitely did my fair share of.

Harriet the Spy - Another book that I read SO many times.  As I said in my recent review of this book, I even spent a brief time as a kid writing in my own “spy notebook” and trying to be just like Harriet.

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank - I was so mesmerized by Anne Frank’s story.  Even when I was very young, I was an extremely empathetic person (at times, TOO much so) and this one always, always, always made me bawl my eyes out at the incredible injustices she had to deal with.  Even so, I loved this book, and still do.

Well that’s about all I can think of for now.  I had a long day at work and my brain can’t think much more tonight.  But tell me… what were YOUR childhood favorites?

This week’s topic for Weekly Geeks is, in a nutshell, to display other bloggers’ reviews on your site.  I love this idea because, well for one, it gives everyone more exposure, which I know we all appreciate, and for two, it means you can go to one person’s blog and see several differing opinions of the same book (or maybe several of the same opinions).  I will be accepting links to reviews of books I have read from here on out, just leave me a comment and I’ll edit the post to add your review.

For a list of books I have read this year (since I started bloggin) see the Books Read in 2008 tab at the top.  I’d be happy to add reviews to any post I’ve made thus far.

I’ll also be adding a comment on the sidebar alerting people new to the blog of this excellent and fun policy.

Well I know I’m a little late on this, but I’ve decided to join Dewey’s Weekly Geeks.  This week’s theme is Discover New Blogs, and here are some of the excellent blogs that I’ve discovered since joining Dewey’s challenge:

Kristi at Passion for the Page - LOTS of interesting looking book reviews, and her blog is very well organized.  I like an organized page.

Adventures in Reading - Many book reviews on this site of books I wouldn’t normally pick up, but that’s a good thing, because if I only read reviews of my favorite books I’ll never broaden my horizons at all!

Katherine at A Girl Walks Into a Bookstore - Love the blog title.  And again, lots of great looking books she’s reviewed.

Just A Reading Fool - It’s a new blog, and my blog is also relatively new, and I think it’s important for us newbies to get our names out there!  Also the writer of the blog’s “name” is Unfinished Person, and, well, aren’t we all unfinished people?  So I like that.

Cara at The Curvature - Ok, I must confess, this is not a new blog for me.  In fact, it’s one of my favorite blogs of all time.  But I just wanted to take this opportunity to promote Cara, because she is incredibly intelligent, funny, and articulate, and one of the BEST feminist thinkers/bloggers out there.  So go check out her blog!

This is so much fun, I’m so glad I joined!  I only wish I had the time to sit and look through everyone’s blogs… in time, hopefully I will.