Friday, May 28, 2021

Great Books by Women Authors

On March 29, 2021 by Alexis Rossi posted the following in the Internet Archives, I thought it worth sharing. The books listed are only a small taste of what is on the links.

On March 8th New York Public Library’s Gwen Glazer published a wonderful list of books in celebration of International Women’s Day:365 Books by Women Authors to Celebrate International Women’s Day All Year.

In the spirit of continuing to celebrate female authors past the confines of Women’s History Month, the Internet Archive gathered some of these books into a special collection called Great Books by Women Authors to make it easier to find your next exceptional read. You will also find these books via Open Library as listed below. Happy reading!

 

GREAT BOOKS BY WOMEN AUTHORS

Leila Aboulela, The Kindness of Enemies

Susan Abulhawa, The Blue Between Sky and Water

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow

Svetlana Alexievich, Voices From Chernobyl

Clare Allan, Poppy Shakespeare

Sarah Addison Allen, Lost Lake

Isabel Allende, Eva Luna

Karin Altenberg, Island of Wings

Julia Alvarez, In the Time of the Butterflies

Tahmima Anam, The Good Muslim

Natacha Appanah, The Last Brother

Chloe Aridjis, Asunder

Bridget Asher, All of Us and Everything

Margaret Atwood, Oryx & Crake

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Mariama Bâ, Scarlet Song

Toni Cade Bambara, Those Bones Are Not My Child

Gioconda Belli, The Inhabited Woman

Karen Bender, Refund

Elizabeth Bishop, Geography III

Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters

Lauren Buekes, The Shining Girls

NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

Leonora Carrington, The hearing trumpet

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee

Susan Choi, American Woman

Kate Chopin, The Awakening

Sonya Chung, Long for This World

Caryl Churchill, Top Girls

Lucille Clifton, Mercy

Simin Daneshvar, Sutra & Other Stories

Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions

Edwidge Danticat, Claire of the Sea Light

Meaghan Daum, Unspeakable

Dola de Jong, The Tree and the Vine

Grazia Deledda, After the Divorce

Anita Desai, Clear Light of Day

Emily Dickinson, The Poems of Emily Dickinson

Joan Didion, Democracy

Rita Dove, On the Bus With Rosa Parks

Yasmine El Rashidi, Chronicle of a Last Summer

Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero

George Eliot, Middlemarch

Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood

Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend

Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower

Paula Fox, Desperate Characters

Lauren Francis-Sharma, Til the Well Runs Dry

Ru Freeman, On Sal Mal Lane

Rivka Galchen, Atmospheric Disturbances

Mary Gaitskill, The Mare

Petina Gappah, The Book of Memory

Elena Garro, First love ; &, Look for my obituary

Louise Gluck, Faithful and Virtuous Night

Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist

Jorie Graham, Erosion

Linda LeGarde Grover, The dance boots

Paula Gunn Allen, America the Beautiful: Last Poems

Marilyn Hacker, Names

Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness

Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun

Eve Harris, The Marrying of Chani Kaufman

Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route

Shirley Hazzard, The Transit of Venus

Bessie Head, The Collector of Treasures

Amy Hempel, Reasons to Live

Cristina Henriquez, The Book of Unknown Americans

Christine Dwyer Hickey, The Cold Eye of Heaven

Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt

Arlie Hochschild, The Second Shift

Alice Hoffman, Survival Lessons

Sara Sue Hoklotubbe, Deception on All Accounts

bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics

Keri Hulme, The Bone People

Dương Thu Hương, Paradise of the Blind

Hồ Xuân Hương, Spring Essence

Ulfat Idilbi, Grandfather’s Tale

Elfriede Jelinek, Women As Lovers

Han Kang, The Vegetarian

Mary Karr, The Liar’s Club

Kazue Kato, Blue Exorcist

Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey

Porochista Khakpour, The Last Illusion

Vénus Khoury-Ghata, A House at the Edge of Tears

Suki Kim, Without You, There Is No Us

Jamaica Kincaid, See Now Then

Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior

Natsuo Kirino, Out

Sana Krasikov, One More Year

Jean Kwok, Girl in Translation

Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland

Laila Lalami, Secret Son

Nella Larsen, Passing

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Random Family

Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird

Yiyun Li, Kinder Than Solitude

Gloria Lisé, Departing at Dawn

Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star

Inverna Lockpezer, Cuba: My Revolution

Alia Mamdouh, The Loved Ones

Dacia Maraini, The Silent Duchess

Ronit Matalon, The Sound of Our Steps

Ayana Mathis, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie

Eimear McBride, A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing

Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs

Ai Mi, Under the Hawthorn Tree

Gabriela Mistral, Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral

Nadifa Mohamed, Black Mamba Boy

Lorrie Moore, Bark

line.

Thursday, May 27, 2021

Bottom line read the story not just the headline

The headline is what most of us read and it looks bad, “Teacher’s pension fund reports gain, but misses benchmark.” If you only read the headlines you might be worried about the long-term stability of the pension plan.

The story is not that bad, but you have to look for the good news about the fund. At one point the author says “All told, Teachers says it underperformed its 10.7-per-cent benchmark by more than two full percentage points. The fund’s four-year return of 7.8 percent is slightly less than its 7.9-per-cent benchmark.

“We have beaten the benchmark eight of the last 10 years, so I think that overall that’s a solid performance from us,” Mr. Taylor said.”

The report also says, “That asset allocation helped Teachers outpace other large Canadian pensions that had put their money elsewhere. The Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System – which entered the year with 5.5 percent of its portfolio in bonds, posted a 2.7-per-cent loss in 2020 because it didn’t have a counterweight to real estate and private-investment losses.”

The report does overall present a positive take on how well the pension has done, but from the headline you would think that the fund was not doing well at all. The bottom line is that the fund missed its own benchmark by .01 of a percent. The investment board of the Teachers' Pension Plan of Ontario is still doing a very good job of making sure that they are protecting the plan and investing wisely. Bottom line, read the story, not just the headline.

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

The Hilarious Lines of Tommy Cooper and other Dad jokes

When I was a kid, I went to a psychiatrist for one of those aptitude tests. On the desk, he put a pitchfork, a wrench, and a hammer and he said to the nurse: ‘If he grabs the pitchfork, he’ll become a farmer. If he grabs the wrench, he’ll be a mechanic, and if he takes the hammer, he’ll be a carpenter.’ I grabbed the nurse...

The town was so dull, one day the tide went out and it never came back.

Every day she takes the car out, she comes back with the same question: ‘Guess who I ran into.’

A piano-tuner was called to a nightclub to tune the piano. He was at it for five hours, but the bill only came to £3. The manager said: ‘Is that all? How come you worked for five hours to tune the piano and you only charge £3?’ He said: ‘What?’

A dog bit a chunk out of my leg the other day. A friend of mine said: ‘Did you put anything on it?’ I said: ‘No, he liked it as it was.’

My wife is really into Do-It-Yourself. Every time I ask her to fix something, she says: ‘Oh, do it yourself!’

My wife does her own decorating, but she overdoes it. The other day I opened the fridge and there was a lampshade on the lightbulb.

I swam the English Channel once. ‘But a lot of people have swum the Channel.’ Lengthwise?

She’s always smiling. She’s the only girl I know whose teeth are sunburnt.

A leopard went to see a psychiatrist. He said: ‘Every time I look at my wife, I see spots before my eyes.’ The psychiatrist said: ‘That’s only natural.’ The leopard said: ‘But, doctor, she’s a zebra.’

A drunk was brought into a police station. He pounded his fist on the counter and said: ‘I want to know why I’ve been arrested.’ The sergeant said: ‘You have been brought in for drinking.’ He said: ‘Oh, that’s all right, then. Let’s get started!’

I always sit in the back of a plane. It’s much safer. You never hear of a plane backing into a mountain!

Want to live forever? Then choose one of these professions: 

Old bankers never die, they just lose their interest! 

Old lawyers never die, they just lose their appeal. 

Old limbo dancers never die, they just go under. 

Old printers never die, they're just not the type. 

Old tanners never die, they just go into hiding. 

Old wrestlers never die, they just lose their grip. 

Old chauffeurs never die, they just lose their drive. 

Old archers never die, they just bow and quiver. 

Old actors never die, they just drop apart.

Tuesday, May 25, 2021

Lost in a dream?

Ever thought that you were in a dream, that you were still asleep. Any minute now, an elephant might appear behind you wearing a pink tutu and tennis shoes. Or maybe the phone will ring, and it'll be Abraham Lincoln to ask why you're late for the ball. Or perhaps Oprah Winfrey is down the hall, live audience in tow, about to introduce you as her new favourite author. Anything can and does happen in a dream, anything, without regard to the past, without regard to logic, and you never have to figure out the "how’s."

We can learn from our dreams. Forget your past. Pitch the logic. And drop the cursed how’s and just do what you have to do.