Lisa is posting at FMH about what it means to have books about women and women's issues. I started responding with this as a comment and then realized that it is not completely relevant.
I was thinking about this and realized that one of the things my dad has done that has meant the most to me has been giving me books about women that he thinks I will like. One was Worth Their Salt from the USU press. One was The Brontes: A Life in Letters. One was Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner.
See? My dad is so cool! The neatest thing is that all these books have challenged me and made me grow and think about women who are not necessarily a lot like me. But they've also been obviously chosen for me by someone who knows what I think about and care about.
My mom has given me Talking Dirty With the Queen of Clean as well as some cookbooks from Weight Watchers and Cooking Light. Hmmmmmmm ... what would you infer from that?
In fairness, she also gave me The Secret Life of Bees, which I loved. (They're discussing it at Conversation this month!) And she gave me All Together in One Place, which I tried to read the horrible winter when Sam was 2 and Abe was a baby, leading to the eventual awful breakdown at the child psychiatrist's office -- we were there trying to cope with a very aggressive and difficult two-year-old -- where I sat there wailing, "I can't even sit down for half an hour and read a book!" (Yes, I know how spoiled that makes me sound. But I also trust there are other moms out there who know what I'm talking about. Bad, dark, evil times.)
And she has mostly laid off with the comments about weight and housekeeping. For which I plan to send her a copy of Cane River. Love you, mom!
Do you think Amazon will pay me for this post? Hahahaha ...
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