The Silent Boy

 The Silent Boy by Lois Lowry

2003

Weight: 5.6 oz

Method of Disposal: Recycling (unfortunately)

This is another book that is in such poor shape that I cannot donate it.  The truth is that it was already falling apart when I came into possession of it, and it has only grown worse with each move.  I did want to read it before letting it go though so it was the last book I read in my time off after surgery.

It was a very sad book.  Not the whole time you are reading it, though from the beginning you know the ending will be tragic.  You just do not know how yet.  The tragedy of this book is not some shocking, never heard it before, cannot imagine it happening sort of thing, but something that feels much more common and, maybe because of that, even heavier.  

The book is told from the point of view of a 9 year old girl and much of it is about her feelings and thoughts about a misunderstood boy, who would now likely be diagnosed with autism, but at the time was just seen as different, and even scary to many people in the town.  Though the people that actually knew him knew that he was very gentle.  You could tell by how he loved animals and they loved him.  I cannot say much more without spoiling the book.  Ultimately, I think the author was giving us a snapshot into what it was like for girls and women, for people with autism, for people in different class systems, and for people in general at the turn of the 20th century.  As always, when looking at history, there are moments of nostalgia and plenty of good things happening, but some things can seem unnecessarily bleak due to the customs and beliefs of the time.  It is still haunting in that those customs continue to shadow us today and are not completely gone.

Women and Aids

 Women and Aids by Jane Richardson
1988
Weight: 7 ounces
Method of Disposal: Donating

This book is extremely dated at this point, but it was interesting to read for so many reasons.  Living through the start of AIDS and the start of COVID would have been wildly different for so many reasons, but, having lived as an adult during the time of a pandemic, there are certain things I feel like I was more attuned to or attentive to now.  Not just the fear and the unknown, but the attempt and the struggle to manage people's reactions and to preserve a sense of humanity.  The constant reassurance that we can all still care for each other and that our fear should not make us react with hatred.  It should not make us ostracize sick people.  

Another thing I found interesting was reading this and knowing the strides we have made sense AIDS blew up on the scene in the 80's.  I could fill in some of the missing gaps in information and answer some questions.  Some things I had to Google, and I learned that way.  In other areas, I was sad to know that there were still so many things happening then that are still happening now.  The author was seemingly a compassionate person who recognized homophobia, racism, ethnocentrism, when possible, and that was much appreciated.

All in all, this was a quality book.  It was clearly more useful when it was written than it is now, but it is an excellent layout for how to write a sensitive, helpful guide on a virus that people do not know much about.

Neverhome

Neverhome by Laird Hunt
2015
Weight: 6.7 oz
Method of Disposal: Leaving in a Lending Library

The premise of this book is exciting in and of itself and, in some ways, gives the author more leeway to experiment and create because it will be interesting no matter what.  It is about a woman who dresses up as a man and goes to fight in the Civil War.  Apparently, around 400 women disguised themselves and fought on both the Confederacy and Union sides of the War.  Who were these women and what drove them?  Did anyone get away with it through the entirety of the war?

This author had a take that was different than what I was hoping for, but it was their take and I enjoyed reading it.  I struggled to relate in any real way to the primary character, but I was interested in her by default.  This has sparked a real interest in me to learn more.  I am open to suggestions!

The Hunters

The Hunters: Two Short Novels by Claire Messud
2001
Weight: 13.6 oz
Method of Disposal: Giving Away

Neither one of these stories mirrors anything that is happening in my life or that has happened in my life and yet, it seems it taps into the general malaise I have been feeling lately, and it was easy to drift in and out of.  I was tired and sad, and sometimes it was unclear to me what was fact or fiction in my own life, and I still do not know what does and does not matter or how to change any of it or if I still can.

This book contains two stories.  One is about a woman who immigrates to America after suffering horrific injustices and then becomes a housekeeper.  In time, her husband who is loves and admires dies, her son grows older and marries a woman she cannot stand, her grandchildren grow older, and she seeks comfort in a relationship she has formed with her last client, who she cleans the house of and cares for and who becomes her only confidant.  There relationship blurs the lines of employer/employee, but it is not quite friendly.  It felt easy to find space in the heart of this woman and to sit there with her ache even though I have never experienced anything like the character did and does.  I have not endured war, lost family members, started over, lost a husband, had children, had grandchildren, cleaned other people's houses, and yet this is the power of fiction.  I felt it, as if it were an inescapable truth.

The next story is about a lonely woman living in a part of London she has disdain for.  She is sad and completely self-involved, even as people gently try to nudge their way in.  She tries to be polite, but she also tries to push them off.  Her mind wanders, and she makes stories and reaffirms her opinions and beliefs.  Eventually, she pulls herself out of the muck and looks back.  I suppose I can relate to the self-involved muck, but she never shows me how to get out!  Of course, that is not really what this story is about.  We see her afterwards, with a partner, a new life, and see her looking back on that year of her life in London.  We live in our heads.  We have tunnel vision.  Sometimes the world seeps in and you get a glimpse outside yourself.  Sometimes that glimpse is jarring.

Where the Action Was

Where the Action Was: Women War Correspondents in World War II by Penny Colman
2002
Weight: 1.3 lbs
Method of Disposal:  Giving Away

This book was fantastic.  The women featured were absolutely incredible, and their life stories were fascinating.  It is just a taste of the world of women correspondents in the time of WWII, and it makes me crave more fiercely.  Wow.

Lee Carson wrote of life during war that it, "narrows down to an existence divided between fighting to stay alive and sweating out being killed.  The longer in the combat world the more improbable that other world--of sweethearts, mothers, baths, beds--becomes.  Death, dirt, and fatigue are the familiar.  All else fades into a dream.  Even such strong emotions as fear and hate are eventually wiped out by battle."

Martha Gelhorn says, "War is a malignant disease, an idiocy, a prison, and the pain it causes is beyond our telling or imagining; but war was our condition and our history, the place we had to live."

Check out this book.  The women are amazing, as our their stories and photos.

Love Warrior

Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle
2017
Weight: 9.6 oz
Method of Disposal: Left in a hotel in London

I went to a Leadercast Women Conference where there were a multitude of excellent speakers, but Glennon Doyle had the entire auditorium laughing. She was incredible. She brought honesty, feminism, love, motherhood, lesbianism to the stage and it seemed like almost everyone could relate in some way. I had to buy her book. So, I did. I was hoping to buy the book that I now realize is the ,yet to be released, Untamed.  

I am not going to lie. I was waiting for her to fall in love with her wife, Rapinoe, the whole time, since I knew that would happen from the talk she gave. So, I was disappointed when that didn’t happen! I have still another one of her books to catch up on before Untamed. Love Warrior was not hilarious in the way her talk was, but it was good. I was glad to read it, but it was also a little surreal hearing her trying to figure out her life and knowing how some things would pan out down the way, though in the book she did not.

I leave this by saying that if you ever get the chance to see Glennon Doyle do it. Don’t miss out. She’s so much fun.

Far From the Madding Crowd

Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Weight: 16 oz
Method of Disposal: Lending Library

My honey's mother bought me this book on her last visit.  I had read and loved Tess of the D'Urbervilles in college, but I have had lingering concern about being in a classroom of women who did not think Tess was raped.  I guess that later in my college career, I would be judged by my same peers in the same way.  I did not know that at the time.

We had been discussing what books I enjoyed reading, and she was asking me about British authors.  She agreed that Tess was incredibly sad, which is why she did not like it.  A few days later, before she left, she handed my Far From the Madding Crowd because I had not read it before.  She said it was not nearly as sad, and I guess it wasn't maybe.

As I read Thomas Hardy, I find myself believing that Mr. Hardy was a sympathizer of women, and that he saw the unfairness of their situation.  Sometimes, I wonder if he really, truly saw it or if he just wrote it how it was and still, all these years, later the truth shines through and now it is at a time where we can better see it.

Bathsheba was at times a frustrating character and made some dumb decisions that stood in stark contrast of her better ones, but she always just seemed young and not vicious.  I guess we are to be happy that Gabriel and Bathsheba ended up together, but I almost am not sure it was the true ending to this book.  I thought it was misery watching this young woman get pressured and misguided by two persistent men in her life.  I am surprised that by the time she had matured enough to be with a man she still liked a man at all.  And why did she seem like such a good business woman sometimes--she had to be to be a woman in that position--and the worst business woman ever--reacting to everything like a teenage girl? 

Any who, I love my honey's mom, and I love that she thinks of me and gives me such thoughtful gifts.  She is truly an artist.  She will just tell you that she is teaching me about the greatness of the Brits and maybe she is.

Love, Death, and the Changing Seasons

Love, Death, and the Changing Seasons by Marilyn Hacker
1995
Weight: 7 ounces
Method of Disposal: Donation

This book would have been even better if I had discovered it in the 90s when there were so few books written by and for lesbians, but it was great now too.  Hacker writes passionately about a woman she meets, falls in love with, and loses.  Many of the poems are erotic and charged with the excitement of finding someone completely irresistible.  The overwhelming and strong feelings behind desire, lust, and loss are feelings I am sure almost all of us can relate to at some point in our lives.  As a married person, it makes me not miss the heartbreak of loss at all, though that magnetism you feel with someone when you first start falling for them is delightful.  The security and depth of lasting love is the best, but I hope I never find out what the loss of that does to a person like me!

Other things I wish:  That I could work from home and write about my life, lesbianism, love, grief, despair, and everything else.  Le sigh.

What Happened

What Happened by Hillary Clinton
2017
Weight: 3.4 lbs
Method of Disposal: Gave to a Friend

This book was a hard one.  It was painful to relive the 2016 election and everything that led up to it and after it, but that is what reading this book asks you to do ultimately.  I wish I had read it when I first got it instead of waiting.  Reading it just reminded me constantly of how much better the world might be today if more people voted, if Russia had not got involved, if the electoral college did not over rule the popular vote, if Comey had not ambushed Clinton, if there had not been a massive anti-Hillary campaign spanning back to the 1990's.  This woman has been drug through the mud, the shit, the vomit.  She's been wrung out and hung out, and yet she never stops fighting.  All that fight and all that experience could have led us in a very different direction that the course we are on now.  Please, God, let us make it to the next presidential election.  Don't let it be too late and please oh please don't let it be rigged.  I cannot cry or worry anymore, and I know I am not the only one. It must be impossibly hard to go from thinking you will be the first woman president of the United States to watching a sexually assaulting, exploitative, sociopath move into the White House instead.  I cannot imagine a dream dying that hard.  I am just so relieved she is doing what she does best--fighting through the shit and holding herself up as an example to all women.

Right Stuff, Wrong Sex

Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: America's First Women in Space Program by Margaret A. Weitekamp
2005
Weight: 12 oz
Method of Disposal: Lending Library

This book was great.  The writing style was straight forward and factual so if you are not into history books this one will likely be a challenge for you, but the information inside of it is so important and so interesting.  How has NASA managed to exist my whole lifetime without me ever hearing about so many amazing women?  I keep having this moment.  Watching Hidden Figures, reading this book, reading Rocket Girl.  I had no idea.  I was enthralled with each woman described within this book.  I would get excited and try to remember every name and new detail so that I could share it later, but there was so much that I did not know, and I struggled to keep it all in my mind and accessible.  I think this is a great starting point to a lot more reading!

In other news, the old NASA joke that if women are ever allowed in space it will be because men have been approved to have 120 lbs of recreational equipment....not cool.  In another book I am reading currently (What Happened), Hillary Clinton talks about writing to NASA as a little girl.  She wrote to them to say that she wanted to be an astronaut.  They wrote her back that they do not have girl astronauts.  Who does that?  Even if it was true.  Crushes a kid's dreams like that.  I guess they were just trying to be honest, but come on NASA.  You have disappointed me in so many ways, but I am determined to love you.  The good news is that I bought this book in a NASA store at Cape Canaveral so I give them that.  They were not trying to hide this discouraging history.  Times truly have changed.

I have been reading about amazing and intelligent women who work so hard and are incredibly brilliant.  They have dedicated their whole lives to what they find inspiring and important and never end up achieving their ultimate goals.  I cannot help but think about how overwhelming the disappointment must have been when Jerrie Cobb realized she would never go to space.  The moment when Hillary realized she lost the chance to be the first woman President of the United States of America...and to a heartless buffoon that sexually assaults women.  I cannot think of anything more unfair, really.  To work so hard and watch the bull in a china shop trample his way through and to the top.  I think of Jill Tarter looking for extraterrestrial life and retiring with no proof that there is life out there.  It is so frustrating and, at first look, makes me sad.  Then, I think about all the amazing achievements these women did reach in their lifetimes and all of the people they influenced and touched--including someone who will become president, women astronauts that have been or are on their way to space, and the person that finally discovers and proves the existence of extraterrestrial life.  I think of all the people who are inspired by these women and make their way in other arenas with them in their thoughts.  I guess the cliche is true.  It is much more about the journey than the destination.  I hope that at some point I am able to look back on my life and feel that I used my passion to achieve something.  Of course, if I were really really lucky, I might look back and see that I achieved THE life goal.  I could be a Valentina Tereshkova and make it to space.

The Story of Jane

The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service by Laura Kaplan
1996
Weight: 1.4 lbs
Method of Disposal: Lending Library

This was a great book.  I want everyone to read it.  This group was started in 1969, and the brave and passionate women who organized and ran it are true heroines.  I remember reading this as a teenager and feeling tremendously inspired.  I took it with me to college, and I have told the story of Jane to many many people since.  I thought about them at every March For Women's Lives, every time we stood outside the abortion clinic trying to block the pro-life protesters from harassing the women walking in, every time I turned on the news and heard some new twist or turn in the great abortion debate.

They set up an underground abortion referral group without the internet or computers.  News of Jane was spread by word of mouth, and it was in the phone book under Jane.  They performed over 11, 000 abortions in the 4 years they operated until Roe V. Wade.  They provided counseling and would do the abortions for around $100, though they would work with women who could not afford the fee.  They attempted to check in on the women after they returned home and the women's mental and physical health were of utmost importance.  No patient was ever arrested, but 7 of the women working within the organization were.

This book is written by one of the members in the group and offers a lot of insight into the illegal activities of a very important and life-changing organization that saved the lives of countless women in Illinois.  Did I mention it is amazing?   It is not only the story, though that would be enough.  The writing keeps you turning pages too.

The Camera My Mother Gave Me

The Camera My Mother Gave Me by Susanna Kaysen
2001
Weight: 12 oz
Method of Disposal: Donating

I was a big Angelina Jolie fan when I was a teenager, and I had been battling my fair share of depression, so when Girl, Interrupted came out as a movie I was excited.  I also loved Winona Ryder.  From the movie, I went to the book and read it.  I was reading a lot of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Elizabeth Wurtzel then.  I was also reading The Vagina Monologues, The Clitoral Truth, Clit Notes, The V Book,  and Cunt.  From there, I stumbled upon this book which seemed to be about Susanna Kaysen and Vaginas! I purchased it, and I read it, but I did not like it as a teenager.  

I was going to pass it on without reading it again, but I vaguely remembered being introduced to some kind of new disease or disorder.  I decided to give it another go, and I thought it was much better this time around, though I can see why I was frustrated back then.  I did not think it was genius even now.  It echoed Girl, Interrupted in its self-obsessed way, though how do you write a book like this without sounding that way?  I guess I am not sure.  

It seems like people who have vulvadynia are the biggest fans.  I have many a review thanking Susanna for making them feel less alone and that, alone, makes it a worthwhile book for reading.  I thought it was good for medical professionals to see what it might feel like to be a patient in that situations.  Though, it seems like the woman who was kindest to her and might have had something to offer at the biofeedback center was one of the "hated" medical professionals.  I thought she seemed great, but Susanna did not.  Of course, after all the sexual assault offered up by her boyfriend over the year she was trying to figure out her vagina, the resemblance of the building to the mental institution she spent 2 years of her life in, and the pain she experienced daily, I suppose she was allowed to be a little cranky.  

The boyfriend.  I hope he read this and wept.  He was terrible and all the times he pressured her into having sex, did not go to the doctor with her, tried to force her to use things like the Novocaine that she kept telling him hurt her worse than if she had sex without it made me so angry.  Susanna still seemed to be grappling with why it felt like rape, though she was scared to label it anything like that.  She likely knew what all women know--that the public would tear her to shreds.  I won't label anything for her, but what he did to her was wrong and it was painful.  He needs to know that.  Any man or woman in a similar position needs to know that.  If it not consent if she does not want to say yes.

, said the shotgun to the head.

, said the shotgun to the head. by Saul Williams
2003
Weight: 8.5 oz
Method of Disposal: Donating

The look and design of this book is great.  I love that the poem has become an art form in looks and in words.  I loved this book for a long time, wooed by its good lucks.

Re-reading it now, I am less impressed.  In so many words, the book is about God being a woman and about a man being intimate with God.  I bet it makes a lot of Christians angry, which is no skin off my neck.  I just find it to be so particularly man-centric despite all the talk about SHE.  One reveiwer calls it feminsit babble.  I cannot imagine anything further from it.  As there always has been and seemingly always will be, woman is something to be ejaculated on and in even as a deity.  The penis is a gun, a weapon, a spreader of destruction.

Only a man would think of so many ways to fuck, fill up, and wallow around in God if there were one.  At once God is a woman and then later he is fucking God's wife.  I get it.  You have a powerful penis, an obsessive personality, a tendency to dream and ramble, and you feel important and disappointing all at once.  Women are better than you and pissing on them is the only way you feel like you can get close to their holiness. 

All in all, I still think it is a good poem, and the books design is great.  His subject matter is not my cup of tea, but it may be yours.  

Women

Women by Stefan May
2008
Weight: 1.6 lbs
Method of Disposal: Not Sure!

I remember liking this book, though I felt like I got it before 2008!  I guess that is not possible.  I adored and cherished Women by Susan Sontag and Annie Leibovitz when it first came out, and I think I was drawn to this one looking for more of that.  It was obvious immediately that it would never compare with Sontag and Leibovitz, but I thought it was still beautiful.  Women are just straight up gorgeous.  All of them are in some way or another.

I am far less impressed now.  Is it because I am older?  Are my tastes more refined or am I just less amused?  I realize now that these photos are all attempting to be "sexy."  The women do not have varied body shapes.  They are all beautiful in the movie star and catalog way.  Victoria Beckham and Angelina Jolie are featured so what did I expect? I read a review that claims that there is a lot of racial variety, but it is mostly white women.  There are some highly sexualized, deeply black women in stereotypical poses and shots.  It is very "African." I am almost embarrassed I ever liked this.

The problem is now what do I do with it?  I am not sure I can donate it to the AKF or Goodwill.  Maybe a Better World Books Box?  

In the Body of the World

In the Body of the World: A Memoir  by Eve Ensler
2013
Weight:8.8 oz
Method of Disposal: Lending Library

I first read The Vagina Monologues in high school, and I loved it.  I walked around reciting "My Angry Vagina" to anyone willing to listen.  In college, I had the chance to meet Eve Ensler and Jane Fonda in one of many Vagina Monologue productions I would go to see.  Attending an all women;s private school, I also began to see some of the more problematic sides of the Monologues and white western feminism.  I would speak to these too and would be guilty of my own mistakes throughout the years.

It did not stop me from going to Charis, our local feminist bookstore, to buy Necessary Targets and have it signed by her at a reading.  I was never again enthralled like I was in high school, but I also never completely lost touch. 

Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across this book at the Dollar Store of all places.  I thought maybe it would be terrible and had been banished to the dollar bin for a reason.  I was wrong.  I enjoyed it and thought Eve did what she does best.  She shows truth no matter how disgusting, vile, negative, hateful, wonderful, idiotic, perfect, exciting, personal it is.  She has been accused of being self-involved, but this is exactly what allows her to dig deep.  Self-involved walks a fine line with self-aware and is often misidentified.  People who attend to themselves, speak powerfully from their own experience, watch their own back, love themselves, care for themselves--particularly women--will be called selfish.  Taught that selfish is wrong.  Even when discussing their own battle with a very scary, very dirty disease like cancer.

I appreciate watching Eve Ensler grow and change in the world.  I may not idolize her in the way I did as a teenager, but I do not really idolize people like that anymore (unless you are Gillian Anderson--kidding, kidding) or think that they must get "it" right all the time and every time.  That they are not fallible.  Eve shows us she is imperfect and allows us to look closely at our imperfect selves too, but she always asks us to do more and to be more aware.  There is nothing wrong with that.

Saints and Strangers

Saints and Strangers by Angela Carter
1987
Weight: 3 oz
Method of Disposal: Leaving Somewhere

 

My grandmother gave me this on her 80th birthday in October 2013.  She was surprised that I had not heard of Angela Carter, and almost appalled that Harriet had not, being from England and all.  I just now read it, and I was very impressed.  My mother walked by while we were discussing the book and put in her two cents that it was horrible.  Lovely writing, but the stories would just make you feel terrible.  They were both right, but I loved it.  I was shocked and slightly embarrassed to realize how well-known and respected Angela Carter is.  A quick Google search and you find that Time magazine considered her one of the 50 greatest British writers in 2008.  I am absolutely going to be seeking out her other work.

After finishing her book, I was feeling down and decided to begin working on a realistic long-distance love letter.  Here is the start of it:

I stare at the body under my sheets.  It is blanketed in a thick, dark layer of fur.  A physical reminder of how long you have been gone.  It is dreary and self-important to think of oneself like a tree whose rings announce its age to the world, but I do.  My hair says you have been gone for months, and my general malaise says there is no end in sight. I take the razor slowly and clumsily to my skin.  It does not matter if I get it all or if it looks organized.  I have time.  I secretly hope it will speed things along, but then I realize that you left me at the coldest time of the year, and I have removed my coat for you but you are not here to accept it, and I am cold.

The water is cold.  I dry myself off with a towel, check the fire and miss you.  I get into bed and slide towards the middle.  My dogs’ weight and the age of the mattress creating a rut that is just big enough to be uncomfortable.  I lay on 15 years of dead skin cells collected from ex-lovers, old pets, and dear friends.  If you cut my mattress in half could you map out my life until now?  We could take little tacks and tiny scraps of paper.  Organize it by number.  The single digits being the deepest and driest, and the double digits being more recent and fragrant.

All of this makes me want a cigachantichocolate.  I want chocolate.  Or do I want a cigarette? 21 long days for a 22 year old woman that makes my heart as pretty as my matching shower curtain and the candles that are “just for decoration.”  I never knew that I was supposed to choose them for color over scent.  The things you learn when you trail behind the world’s most beautiful woman with your legs shaved, your panties wet, and your mind focused on reorganizing your life philosophy developed over 28 years.

All this paints a fairly unattractive portrait of what it feels like to love 4,033 miles away from you.

My incredibly sweet grandfather on my father's side always asks if I have written anything lately and wants to read it.  Should I show him this?  And, just to clear things up, I ordered a new mattress immediately after writing this.  I shouldn't even show you this...

I cannot tell you how relieved I was to see it being toted away in a giant plastic bag this afternoon.

He Began With Eve

He Began With Eve  Joyce Landorf
1983
Weight: 9. 6 oz
Method of Disposal: Leaving about town

It is Mother's Day weekend.  I spent the day with my amazing mother.  We went to an "estate" sale that was not really an estate sale.  Luckily, everyone in the family was very much alive but also very attached to the items they were trying to sell and not inexpensively or decisively I might add.  I cannot begin to recount the awkward times we had there.  We went to dinner and then home to watch a movie.

Tomorrow, I will be doing a bunch of volunteer work for my place of employment and then I will set off to my grandmother's to celebrate her as a mother and also to celebrate the day of her birth.  She is the one that passed on this bizarre book to me.  The back cover of the book and the author can be seen in the picture shown above.  I feel like this should be enough said.  Title, picture, gift from Southern Baptist Grandma.

There was something shocking about this book though.  I was surprised that my grandmother had bought and read a book that was a fictionalized account of the lives of women in the bible.  I don't know why.  She is religious.  She is a woman.  But it  seemed, almost, like a brush with feminism to me.  I know she would recoil, and I know we have differing opinions about the definition of feminism too.  It was also something about it being a FICTIONAL account from the women's perspectives that made it seem just slight subversive to me.  Am I trying too hard?  Yeah...

The Rover

The Rover Aphra Behn
1997
Weight: 5.8 oz
Method of Disposal: Leaving at Joe's in EAV

 

I went to an all-women's school and Aphra Behn was on several of my syllabi.  I could never get into reading her work, but I could respect her immensely for doing it in a time when it would be difficult to get paid for being a writer, much less for being a woman writer.  As Virginia Woolf stated, Woolf wrote, "All women together, ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn... for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds."  Okay, I may not feel that strongly, but I imagine I have a lot of women's graves I need to be throwing flowers on.  So many before me.   

Mommy Knows Worst

Mommy Knows Worst: Highlights from the Golden Age of Bad Parenting Advice  James Lileks
2005
Weight: 1 lb
Method of Disposal: Leaving at Joe's in EAV

This book is pretty hilarious.  When I was growing up, my own mother was collecting snippets from various old magazines and books to make something very similar to this about the treatment of women.  You would not believe some of the stuff she uncovered!

In this book, there are ads encouraging women to wash their nipples with boric acid before nursing, to use laxatives with the whole family to give them more energy, and to keep their baby's bowels warm.  It is worth a looksee.