Banned Books Week

It's Banned Books Week, a celebration of books that have been banned, challenged, restricted, or burned due to controversial themes or topics that are in the book. Of course any mention of sexuality, rape, or homosexuality is immediate cause for the right wing nutjobs to start their witch hunt and challenge books. So, let's beat them at their game by supporting intellectual freedom and free speech. Purchase, beg, borrow, steal, or check out a book from the library that has been labeled as controversial or has been banned or burned!

Over on Wild Women Reviews today we just recently wrote about a few books that have been challenged this year, including Anne Frank's diary as well as books by female writers Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison. Later in the week we will be writing about some of the most controversial books written by female writers that have been challenged, restricted, banned and burned. It's important that we know about these books and read them, because there is a reason that "they" don't want to keep us away from them!

What has been the most delightfully controversial book that you have ever read??

What We've Been Up To

We have been spending a little bit of time over at our newest project, Wild Women Reviews. I mentioned it in one of the previous posts and we sure have been having fun with the project. The goal of it is to have a collective group of women who write reviews, commentary and opinion of books, movies, music and products. I often receive offers to receive advanced reviews of books in order to write a review, however sometimes I don't have the time. So therefore I decided that I would create a collaborative website where we can pass off the books and products to other women who might be interested in writing a review.

This week we've written about:

Mistrix Ms. E wrote about her favorite book by the anarchist Emma Goldman, a book that influenced her subversive thought and flourished her independent nature. Check it out by clicking here.

Yesterday I wrote about one of the books that has been most influential in my life as an independent female, Kate Chopin's The Awakening. I write about why this book is important to me. You can check out the post here.

If you are interested in joining us, please head on over there and leave us a comment. We will get back with you. We also would greatly appreciate if anyone would like to include us on their blogroll-if you do, let us know and we will gladly return the favor!

Bibliophilia

I've got bibliophilia. I could just read and read all day long, and I can never get enough of it.

So, tomorrow I have decided that I am starting a book blog. I mentioned it on twitter and a couple of other people said that they might be interested, so I am just writing down my thoughts here until I am able to set the other blog up tomorrow.

I have a few publisher connections who have asked me to review books and sometimes I don't have the time or they don't really fit into the theme of this or that blog that I am working on, so I pass up the offer. But then it suddenly occurred to me that there are probably tons of other people who wouldn't mind getting a free book here or there in exchange for a blog post about it.

So, I've decided to conserve resources and I offered up on twitter that I will be starting the blog and am inviting whoever would like to participate. I'm not sure how exactly this will pan out, but we'll see how it goes. I'll take the free review books that are offered to me and I will pass them off onto whoever might want to read them. In exchange, the person will write a quick book review.

So, if you are interested, let me know and we will keep you updated as to how this folds out. We probably won't have books for a couple of weeks, because I've got to first create a little content on the site, but sooner or later there will be opportunities. Drop me a line if you want in!

Who's Gonna Catch Me When I Fall??

I'm tired of being the strong one all the time. I even feel guilty for writing such a blasphemy.

Ever since I was a little girl, I had to be strong as I watched my mother have a break down for years after my father left her. When I was in the second grade, she broke her back and was in the hospital for quite a while and it took years for her to recover from her injury, so I became accustomed to having to watch out for my younger brother.

My brother was always weaker than me. I had to protect him from the other boys in the neighborhood, running after them and beating them up when they bullied him. My mother was very abusive and I often had to protect my brother from her physical and emotional abuse.

My mother and father always had higher expectations than they had for my brother. I had to have better grades, run faster, throw a ball farther, and anything else you might imagine. It wasn't even negotiable that I went to college, and when I was 16 my father told me that he wouldn't help me get a car because I had to work for whatever I wanted.

In my friendships I always served in the capacity as a mentor. My father had taught me a lot about money because his sorry ass became a stock broker when I was in high school and if there is anything that he did for me, it was to teach me about money and investing. That's about the only thing that he did for me, since he thought he apparently owed us nothing else. It always seemed that I also was able to crack the code to the systems-how to apply for college, how to save money, how to do this or that while my friends struggled with understanding how to do such things. So obviously while I was growing up, I did my share of making budgets for my friends, helping them find a job, and tons of other things.

In my family I always played the role of mediator and negotiator. When a cousin, aunt or some other dysfunctional person was fighting with the other person, I was always called in to mediate, solve the damn problems, or arbitrate some dispute or crisis. I sometimes look back on my life and I feel like I was never a child because I was too busy with adults dragging me into their nonsense.

The men in my life have always been extremely hard on me. Demanding, to be precise. Ever since I was a child my father demanded so much more from me than he did anyone else. "Who even needs a son, when I've got a daughter like you? You are ten times tougher than any boy could ever be," he used to tell me over and over when I was a little girl.

Many of my male relationships have seemed to repeat that pattern, where the men in my life sometimes treat me differently than they treat other women. "You're like one of the guys," I've been told far too many times. Male bosses tend to have such unrealistic expectations of me. And because I am such a perfectionist/workaholic/ambitious woman it seems that I just keep reinforcing the pattern where they have unrealistic expectations, I come through on whatever they want, and then they just ride me harder the next time.

Sometimes I just want to let it all go to hell, telling anyone who asks me for advise that to go bark up someone else's tree. Or just letting a complete disaster happen without even picking up my finger.

But then one of my male friends just called me and asked me if I would mentor his middle school daughter. "I need someone to teach her how to be a strong woman. Her mother is already losing arguments to her. I really look up to you and I need her to learn how that she can be argumentative, but in a professional way-like you," he tells me. And although I am extremely burned out with being that person who solves problems, how can I honestly turn that down?


But when do I ever get to fall and have someone catch me?? Well, it sure sounds good but then again a little thought in my head whispers to me, "Why on Earth would you even want to fall? And you definitely don't need anyone to catch you. Get up off of your bruised ass and keep on moving forward".

My point? Nothing. I'm tired. And maybe I need a damn vacation.