Confronting the classics by Mary Beard
I feel like I’ve been reading this book since forever, which is pretty much true as I started reading it back in February. But it is a collection of essays/reviews so...
29 September 2018
The serpent and the goddess by Mary Condren
Using Ireland as a case study, this book provides an account of the decline of matriarchal power in Western civilizations and analyzes its implications for today’s women and today’s Catholic Church....
2 July 2017
The diaries of Nella Last : writing in war & peace by Nella Last
This collection brings together into a single volume the best of Nella Last’s prolific outpourings, including a great deal of new, unpublished material from the war years. Capturing the everyday trials...
28 May 2017
The truth about stories by Thomas King
From what I remember I bought this book a few years ago because of Aarti’s A More Diverse Universe reading challenge. I didn’t get around to reading it then, but for...
17 March 2017
Hidden figures [based on the book by] by Margot Lee Shetterly dir. by Theodore Melfi
Oh, I really enjoyed this film. So much more than I thought I would. I mean a story based on maths doesn’t sound all that entertaining. But I suppose that isn’t...
21 February 2017
The History Thieves : secrets, lies and the shaping of a modern nation by Ian Cobain
In 1889, the first Official Secrets Act was passed and created offences of ‘disclosure of information’ and ‘breach of official trust’. It limited and monitored what the public could, and should,...
7 January 2017
SPQR : a history of ancient Rome by Mary Beard
The Roman Empire still holds quite a sway in modern imaginations and culture. Gladiator and the tv show Rome are only two examples of its pop culture hold, and we still...
14 February 2016
Ghosts of Vesuvius by Charles Pellegrino
It is hard to blurb this book. On the one hand it is about Vesuvius and volcanic explosions and disasters both natural and man-made. But it is also a book about the origins of the earth, of the universe, and about how precarious our existence is. How so much of what we are today is dependent on natural events a thousand years ago, or a millennia ago, or so long ago that it is almost pointless to count the time because it is so difficult to grasp those sort of numbers.
8 May 2011
A vindication of the rights of woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
In the present state of society, it appears necessary to go back to first principles in search of the most simple truths, and to dispute with some prevailing prejudice every inch...
15 January 2011
Singled out by Virginia Nicholson
Full title: Singled Out: How Two Million British Women Survived Without Men After the First World War ISBN: 9780670915644 The term “lost generation” is often used to refer to the generation...
20 December 2010
Wedlock by Wendy Moore
Mary Eleanor Bowes was born in 1749. Her father was extremely wealthy and, unusually for the time, had her well educated. A most eligible young woman, not least because she was the richest heiress in C18th Britain. Her first wedding was nothing unusual for the time. Pretty loveless and to an older man it wasn’t a romantic love match. Her second, to a dashing young soldier, was. Mary Eleanor probably hadn’t intended to marry Andrew Robinson Stoney, but upon hearing that he had fought a duel for her honour and was laying on his deathbed wishing for nothing but her hand in marriage… well, who could resist that romance!
4 March 2010
The Courtesan’s Revenge by Frances Wilson
Harriette Wilson, the woman who blackmailed the king ISBN: 0571205240 See also: LibraryThing ; Other reviews Harriette Wilson’s Memoirs omit both time and place; there are no addresses given, no locations...
26 September 2008
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