famous women

Welcome to the recap for our very first Genre Reading Group meeting held online! The evening’s topic was famous women and I am delighted with the variety brought to the table.  

If you like to color/need more diversion and have access to a printer (and want to keep the momentum going!), here are 21 coloring sheets featuring famous women: https://bit.ly/3dGqcLf

April’s topic will be books that have been adapted to stage, film, and television. Here is a link to available online resources: https://eolib.blogspot.com/2020/03/movie-tie-ins.html

Information about next month’s meeting on April 28th at 6:30pm will be available soon on the Library’s calendar at www.eolib.org and Facebook events.

Here is a list of the books we discussed:

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

(amazon) Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together in a world of danger and uncertainty.

Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family’s long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption.

Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.

Before and After: The Incredible Real Life Story of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children’s Home Society by Lisa Wingate and Judy Christie

(amazon) The compelling, poignant true stories of victims of a notorious adoption scandal - some of whom learned the truth from Lisa Wingate's best-selling novel Before We Were Yours and were reunited with birth family members as a result of its wide reach.

Ada’s Algorithm: How Lord Byron’s Daughter Ada Lovelace Launched the Digital Age by James Essinger

(amazon) Over 150 years after her death, a widely-used scientific computer program was named “Ada,” after Ada Lovelace, the only legitimate daughter of the eighteenth century’s version of a rock star, Lord Byron. Why? Because, after computer pioneers such as Alan Turing began to rediscover her, it slowly became apparent that she had been a key but overlooked figure in the invention of the computer. In Ada Lovelace, James Essinger makes the case that the computer age could have started two centuries ago if Lovelace’s contemporaries had recognized her research and fully grasped its implications.

Ada’s Legacy: Cultures of Computing from the Victorian to the Digital Age by Robin Hammerman and Andrew L. Russell

(amazon) Ada's Legacy illustrates the depth and diversity of writers, thinkers, and makers who have been inspired by Ada Lovelace, the English mathematician and writer. The volume, which commemorates the bicentennial of Ada's birth in December 1815, celebrates Lovelace's many achievements as well as the impact of her life and work, which reverberated widely since the late nineteenth century. Because of its broad focus on subjects that reach far beyond the life and work of Ada herself, Ada's Legacy will appeal to readers who are curious about her enduring importance in computing and the wider world.

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (DVD)

(rottentomatoes) When Nazi U-Boats torpedo a ship carrying 83 school children during World War II, Hollywood movie star, Hedy Lamarr, decides to exact revenge. At night, after shooting her scenes on set, she works on a secret radio system that will allow the Allies to torpedo Nazi U-Boats with deadly accuracy. Her sketches remain ideas until a chance encounter with an eccentric composer enables her to transform them into useful technology. The secret communication system she creates is groundbreaking and eventually changes the course of history. It would make a terrific fictional film, but this story happens to be true. 

Hedy Lamarr, the screen siren who was called "the most beautiful woman in the world" and starred alongside Hollywood giants like Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Stewart and Clark Gable, invented a wireless form of communication called "frequency hopping" that revolutionized mobile communications all over the world, a feat that would directly lead to the creation of secure communications for wireless phones, Bluetooth, GPS and WiFi technology itself. 

Available to rent on YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, and Amazon Prime. Available through a Netflix subscription. 

A participant mentioned a poem, written by Kent M. Keith, that Lamarr reads to her children near the end of the film:

The Paradoxical Commandments
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

Reaching for the Moon: The Autobiography of NASA Mathematician by Katherine Johnson

(amazon) As a young girl, Katherine Johnson showed an exceptional aptitude for math. In school she quickly skipped ahead several grades and was soon studying complex equations with the support of a professor who saw great promise in her. But ability and opportunity did not always go hand in hand. As an African American and a girl growing up in an era of brutal racism and sexism, Katherine faced daily challenges. Still, she lived her life with her father’s words in mind: “You are no better than anyone else, and nobody else is better than you.”

In the early 1950s, Katherine was thrilled to join the organization that would become NASA. She worked on many of NASA’s biggest projects including the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first men on the moon. Katherine Johnson’s story was made famous in the bestselling book and Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures. Now in Reaching for the Moon she tells her own story for the first time, in a lively autobiography that will inspire young readers everywhere.

Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon

(amazon) This groundbreaking dual biography brings to life a pioneering English feminist and the daughter she never knew. Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley have each been the subject of numerous biographies, yet no one has ever examined their lives in one book—until now. In Romantic Outlaws, Charlotte Gordon reunites the trailblazing author who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and the Romantic visionary who gave the world Frankenstein—two courageous women who should have shared their lives, but instead shared a powerful literary and feminist legacy.

Callas: The Art and the Life, the Great Years by John Ardoin and Gerald Fitzgerald
This book is not available digitally in the Public Libraries of Jefferson County.  Enjoy some resources available via the Internet Archive! 

(amazon) This is the story of Maria Callas. Perhaps no performer in this century has generated such adulation, stirred such controversy, and had so great an impact on the world of opera and the arts as Callas. The unrivaled singing actress of our time, she is the standard against which all others must measure themselves. She brought back a style of singing forgotten for more that a century, revived a repertory all but lost, and restored to the musical stage the dramatic power that is opera at its grandest. En route she created a legend.

In discussing opera history, a participant mentioned Anna Russell’s discerning and comedic take on Wagner’s ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’

 

Good and Mad: How Women’s Anger is Reshaping America by Rebecca Traister

(amazon) From Rebecca Traister, the New York Times best-selling author of All the Single Ladies - whom Anne Lamott called "the most brilliant voice on feminism in this country" - comes a vital, incisive exploration into the transformative power of female anger and its ability to transcend into a political movement.

Women for President: Media Bias in Nine Campaigns by Erika Falk

(amazon) Newly updated to examine Hillary Clinton's formidable 2008 presidential campaign, Women for President analyzes the gender bias the media has demonstrated in covering women candidates since the first woman ran for America's highest office in 1872.

Tracing the campaigns of nine women who ran for president through 2008--Victoria Woodhull, Belva Lockwood, Margaret Chase Smith, Shirley Chisholm, Patricia Schroeder, Lenora Fulani, Elizabeth Dole, Carol Moseley Braun, and Hillary Clinton--Erika Falk finds little progress in the fair treatment of women candidates. The press portrays female candidates as unviable, unnatural, and incompetent, and often ignores or belittles women instead of reporting their ideas and intent. This thorough comparison of men's and women's campaigns reveals a worrisome trend of sexism in press coverage--a trend that persists today.

Go With the Flow by Karen Schneemann and Lily Williams

(amazon) High school students embark on a crash course of friendship, female empowerment, and women's health issues in Lily Williams and Karen Schneemann's graphic novel Go With the Flow.

Good friends help you go with the flow.
Best friends help you start a revolution.

Sophomores Abby, Brit, Christine, and Sasha are fed up. Hazelton High never has enough tampons. Or pads. Or adults who will listen.

Sick of an administration that puts football before female health, the girls confront a world that shrugs―or worse, squirms―at the thought of a menstruation revolution. They band together to make a change. It’s no easy task, especially while grappling with everything from crushes to trig to JV track but they have each other’s backs. That is, until one of the girls goes rogue, testing the limits of their friendship and pushing the friends to question the power of their own voices.

Now they must learn to work together to raise each other up. But how to you stand your ground while raising bloody hell?

Becoming Mrs. Lewis: The Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis by Patti Callahan Henry

(amazon) When poet and writer Joy Davidman began writing letters to C. S. Lewis—known as Jack—she was looking for spiritual answers, not love. Love, after all, wasn’t holding together her crumbling marriage. Everything about New Yorker Joy seemed ill-matched for an Oxford don and the beloved writer of Narnia, yet their minds bonded over their letters. Embarking on the adventure of her life, Joy traveled from America to England and back again, facing heartbreak and poverty, discovering friendship and faith, and against all odds, finding a love that even the threat of death couldn’t destroy. 

In this masterful exploration of one of the greatest love stories of modern times, we meet a brilliant writer, a fiercely independent mother, and a passionate woman who changed the life of this respected author and inspired books that still enchant us and change us. Joy lived at a time when women weren’t meant to have a voice—and yet her love for Jack gave them both voices they didn’t know they had.  At once a fascinating historical novel and a glimpse into a writer’s life, Becoming Mrs. Lewis is above all a love story—a love of literature and ideas and a love between a husband and wife that, in the end, was not impossible at all.

A few people couldn’t attend the meeting but did email me the great books they’d read.

Becoming by Michelle Obama

(amazon) An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NAACP IMAGE AWARD WINNER

In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America—the first African American to serve in that role—she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare.


Bossypants by Tina Fey

(amazon) Before Liz Lemon, before "Weekend Update," before "Sarah Palin," Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher. She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV. She has seen both these dreams come true.

At last, Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon -- from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence. Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we've always suspected: you're no one until someone calls you bossy.


Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation (digital audiobook) by Cokie Roberts
Ebook on National Emergency Library

(amazon) From #1 New York Times bestselling author Cokie Roberts comes New York Times bestseller Founding Mothers, an intimate and illuminating look at the fervently patriotic and passionate women whose tireless pursuits on behalf of their families, and their country, proved just as crucial to the forging of a new nation as the rebellion that established it.

While much has been written about the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, battled the British, and framed the Constitution, the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters they left behind have been little noticed by history. #1 New York Times bestselling author Cokie Roberts brings us women who fought the Revolution as valiantly as the men, often defending their very doorsteps. Drawing upon personal correspondence, private journals, and even favored recipes, Roberts reveals the often surprising stories of these fascinating women, bringing to life the everyday trials and extraordinary triumphs of individuals like Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Deborah Read Franklin, Eliza Pinckney, Catherine Littlefield Green, Esther DeBerdt Reed and Martha Washington, proving that without our exemplary women, the new country might have never survived.

Eliza Hamilton: The Extraordinary Life and Times of the Wife of Alexander Hamilton by Tilar J. Mazzeo (not available digitally in the Public Libraries of Jefferson County)

(amazon) From the New York Times bestselling author of Irena’s Children comes a comprehensive and riveting biography of the extraordinary life and times of Eliza Hamilton, the wife of founding father Alexander Hamilton, and a powerful, unsung hero in America’s early days.

Fans fell in love with Eliza Hamilton—Alexander Hamilton’s devoted wife—in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s phenomenal musical Hamilton. But they don’t know her full story. A strong pioneer woman, a loving sister, a caring mother, and in her later years, a generous philanthropist, Eliza had many sides—and this fascinating biography brings her multi-faceted personality to vivid life.


Sara and Eleanor: The Story of Sara Delano Roosevelt and Her Daughter-In-Law,Eleanor Roosevelt by Jan Pottker (not available digitally in the Public Libraries of Jefferson County)

(amazon) We think we know the story of Eleanor Roosevelt--the shy, awkward girl who would redefine the role of First Lady, becoming a civil rights activist and an inspiration to generations of young women. As legend has it, the bane of Eleanor's life was her demanding and domineering mother-in-law, Sara Delano Roosevelt. Biographers have overlooked the complexity of a relationship that had, over the years, been reinterpreted and embellished by Eleanor herself.

Through diaries, letters, and interviews with Roosevelt family and friends, Jan Pottker uncovers a story never before told. The result is a triumphant blend of social history and psychological insight--a revealing look at Eleanor Roosevelt and the woman who made her historic achievements possible.