[ENG] January recommendations

Hello! As we are finishing the month of January today we would like to bring you our personal recommendations of this month.

ROCÍO'S RECOMMENDATIONS:

 

“The trouble with women” by Jacky Fleming

Abstract:

CAN WOMEN BE GENIUSES? OR ARE THEIR ARMS TOO SHORT? WHY DID WE ONLY LEARN ABOUT THREE WOMEN AT SCHOOL? WHAT WERE ALL THE OTHERS DOING? “The Trouble With Women” does for girls what 1066 and All That did for boys: it reminds us of what we were taught about women in history lessons at school, which is to say, not a lot. A brilliantly witty book of cartoons, it reveals some of our greatest thinkers' baffling theories about women. We learn that even Charles Darwin, long celebrated for his open, objective scientific mind, believed that women would never achieve anything important, because of their smaller brains. Get ready to laugh, wince and rescue forgotten women from the 'dustbin of history', whilst keeping a close eye out for tell-tale 'genius hair'. You will never look at history in the same way again.

Opinion:

Hustling, acid, sarcastic and biting. A (re)vision of the history and role of women during it. I love the way in which the text is presented (imitating a careless calligraphy) and the drawings that accompany it (in black and white, caricaturesque and very identifiable). A historical review of some of the most important and, ironically, forgotten women: Sarah Forbes Bonetta, Queen Victoria, Annie Oakley, Nan Aspinwall, Anna Maria van Schurman, Phillis Wheatley, Marianne North, Marie Curie, Mary Ball, Émilie du Châtelet... And also some male thinkers and artists who today are still a reference in their fields despite their comments and misogynistic contributions: Rousseau, Baron Coubertin, Schopenhauer, Picasso, Freud, Darwin ....

“Marie Antoinette. Secret diary of a queen” by Benjamin Lacombe

Abstract:

Enchanted by the figure of Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI and queen consorte of France at the time of the French Revolution, Benjamin Lacombe reconstructs in this illustrated book the psychological profile of this woman condemned for treason to France and publicly guillotined. To do so, he dusts off a series of crossed letters between Marie Antoinette and some of his relatives, and relies on the narrative formula of the secret diary, which facilitates the transmission to the reader of the intimate thoughts of the controversial character.

Opinion:

I love Benjamin Lacombe and each and every one of his works. His drawings are incredibly expressive and have a personal touch that makes him unique. I explicitly asked for this illustrated album because it deals with one of my favorite historical figures: Marie Antoinette whose life and death is surrounded by mystery and excesses. In this case, Lacombe is allied with a historian and scholar of the Queen Consort to offer us a version of her secret diary from the letters she shared with her mother and other close friends. Art and history in equal parts.

MARTA'S RECOMMENDATIONS:

“Por una rosa” by Laura Gallego, Javier Ruescas and Benito Taibo

Abstract:

Laura Gallego, Javier Ruescas and Benito Taibo, three great authors of juvenile literature, reinterpret the story of Bella and the Beast in three unforgettable stories. For Mariposa Blanco, an anthology with a very careful design and illustrations. A book that is an authentic jewel.

What if Bella hid more secrets than the Beast?

What if the Beast were really a cursed train, the convoy of death, the only road to freedom?

What if fairies, like roses, also had thorns?

Laura Gallego, Javier Ruescas and Benito Taibo give us three very different accounts of the love story that reminds us that beauty is inside.

Three authors Three stories. A classic.

Opinion:

At first I wanted to read it out of curiosity about how three writers covered the story of Beauty and the Beast. After reading it, I have to confess, that I liked it a lot. The only downside that would put is that at the end of the last story, I think Javier Ruescas, I was a little shocked without understanding the end of the story.

“Oye, morena, ¿tú qué miras?” by Megan Maxwell

Abstract:

Hi, I'm Coral. I was always an inveterate romantic, until the masculine gender broke my heart. After several disappointments, I swear I told myself that I was not going to let anyone else hurt me. How beautiful is love, but a little shit is to suffer for it!

Today I consider myself a relatively happy woman. I work as a baker, I have some amazing friends and a beautiful daughter that I adore. As for the men theme, the only thing I intend is to enjoy a fun sex with them and little else. However, I must confess that there is one that makes my stupid heart speed up every time I see it. His name is Andrew and he is the head of security of the musical tours of my friend Yanira.

Andrew is a tall, dark-eyed, dark and terribly attractive little boy. And if you add to that you drive a motorcycle and that has that little scoundrel in his eyes that drives me crazy, I'm not even telling you! But Andrew is elusive when it comes to romantic relationships, and that makes me think that he also broke his heart and that's why he never repeats with the same woman.

Repeat, repeat, I'm not going to ask you to do it with me, but when our eyes meet, a strange current is generated between us, and that makes me wonder if it really will repeat some day.

Opinion:

I decided to read it because I had previously read other books by this author and I really liked them. This as many others, has not disappointed me. It's a fun story, entertaining and full of love. This author follows x patterns at the time of writing, you could say it is repetitive, but at the moment of truth you end up liking that characteristic of hers.

SARAH’S RECOMMENDATIONS:

"Trifles" by Susan Glaspell

Abstract:

John Wright has been strangled to death with a rope in his mega-creepy Midwestern farmhouse. The main suspect of the grizzly crime? His wife. As the County Attorney, Sheriff Peters, and a neighboring farmer named Mr. Hale investigate the house for clues, the real sleuths turn out to be Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters. Though the menfolk constantly make fun of the women for worrying about female things, like Mrs. Wright's unfinished quilt, it's the ladies' attention to "woman stuff" that allows them to crack the case.

When the ladies discover Mrs. Wright's pet canary with its neck wrung, they immediately put the mystery together. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters know that the harsh Mr. Wright snapped the canary's neck, and that, after years of neglect and emotional abuse, Mrs. Wright repaid her husband by giving him a taste of what her pet bird got.

Opinion:

The perfect drama (quite literally) about the differences between women and men. (Later she published it in the form of a short story). Glaspell shows us what for some men, as she described them, cold, impolite, are ‘trifles’ and ‘woman stuff’, underestimating their worries and their way of being. Things that for a women are important. The fact that Mrs. Wright left que quilt unfinished (sewing and quilting has always represented in women’s literature the creativity and endurance of women) is for them something important. So when they have look inside the sewing box and they discover the dead canary, they discover that it was her who killed her husband, but she had several reasons. Years and years of neglect and emotional abuse until a ‘trifle’ caused her to repaid her husband by doing him the same him did to the canary. And, in the end, the women had a gesture of soririty.

 “A room of one’s own” by Virgina Woolf

Abstract:

In this extraordinary essay, Virginia Woolf examines the limitations of womanhood in the early twentieth century. With the startling prose and poetic licence of a novelist, she makes a bid for freedom, emphasizing that the lack of an independent income, and the titular ‘room of one’s own’, prevents most women from reaching their full literary potential.

As relevant in its insight and indignation today as it was when first delivered in those hallowed lecture theatres, A Room of One’s Own remains both a beautiful work of literature and an incisive analysis of women and their place in the world.

This Macmillan Collector’s Library edition of A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf features an afterword by the British art historian Frances Spalding.

Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector’s Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector’s Library are books to love and treasure.

Opinion:

A great essay where Virginia Woolf exposes the difficulty of being a woman in the world of literature, exemplifying it with real cases and real women writers, like Aphra Behn (whom we will talk about in the “women authors” part). For example, the “colleagues” that did not allow women to enroll the courses. Because, although a lot of years had passed since she published the essay (almost 100), women’s situation has not bettered, because still we are deprived from prestigious positions inside the literature world. If you do not think so, then, how many female authors appeared in “important writers” anthologies? or, how many female authors have you studied in the school?