The Guest Lecture

The Guest Lecture by Martin Riker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Guest Lecture was mildly interesting when the narrator talked about and with John Maynard Keynes or mentioned Rhetorician Aspasia, "portrayed as both a sexualised and sexually liberated woman and as a feminist role model fighting for women's rights in ancient Athens." Or even economics or philosophy, all wrapped in heavy musing, almost all musing on the narrator's part in preparing her lecture and pondering her failure to get tenure. I read half the book carefully, then skimmed wearily. Enough. Perhaps if it was the only book on my stack, but the competition is heavy. The writing, by the way, is very fine and I am impressed that the author, Martin Riker, is the publisher of feminist press Dorothy with its stunning list of titles in handsome wraps.https://dorothyproject.com/books-gallery/

View all my reviews

Vertigo & Ghosts: Poems

Vertigo & Ghost by Fiona Benson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first half of the book addresses Zeus and his rapist ways and it blew me away, captivated and chilled me. The second half deals with motherhood and nature and was less interesting, but her gifts of word choice made every poem worthwhile. Recommended by Andy Miller from Backlisted.fm where I hear about the best books.

View all my reviews

1st Day of 27 Things

Read the Welcome entry, listened to the podcast and I'm itching to begin so I went ahead and tried creating a blog...and here it is! I'm looking forward to learning about all of these mysteries which seem second nature to my 22-year-old nephew but Greek to me. I may even learn how to download that new digital camera in the next few entries. And I tried RSS once and failed so anticipate that lesson. Ready or not. Here we go.