Fun overview of women who changed the world through writing and reading!

6/1/07 - I have been carrying this book around in my file bag at work for the majority of this past school year, reading a few pages at a time here & there, when I have a few minutes to spare. Well, it took me a while, but I did make it through the whole thing, and the timing was pretty good, as I finished it this week, and school also ended this week. It's a very nice resource for giving the reader a brief glimpse into some of the world's most innovative women writers -- some I was pretty familiar with, some I had heard of but really didn't know much about, and many I had never heard of at all. It seems like a perfect book for any active BookCrosser. :')

With a title like this how could I not pick it up, especially since I found it at Half-Price Books? There are seven different groupings of women with short bios of each woman included. I enjoyed some chapters more than others and there is a large selection of women from every time period and geographic location (although it is clearly Anglo based). I had heard of maybe a little more than half of these women and enjoyed getting to know some women that I knew of, but had never read. Betty Friedan, Mary Baker Eddy, and Gertrude Stein were a few that interested me the most, since I knew so little about them. I didn’t realize that Gertrude Stein was buried at the Cemetery of Pere-Lachaise in Paris or else I would had looked for her when we were there last week. I’ll be talking about that cemetery in my Paris recap on Sunday.

I thought the book was good, but considering the title, a little boring. I read it in snippets, so it took me a long time to finish. This would not have happened if I had been truly engaged. This book is gift sized and I do think it is a fun gift for a book lover, especially those who are interested in biographies of women.

I found this one at my local library. Just a bunch of short bios of various women throughout history who have contributed to the world of literature in some way. I thought it very informative of how women played a part in the literary world.

Encyclopedia of women writers, from the obscure (but why?) to the well known. Kind of gossipy, but intellectual. Right up my alley.

This book is truly a wonder. It packs a lot of interesting facts and tidbits about nearly every writer you can think of off the top of your head! Don't let it's small size fool you. It was the perfect book to bring on vacation. I could read it at leisure. The biographies were small enough that they could be read while on the bus. Perfect!

When I started reading this book I realized by page 7 that I would need to take notes, adding to my forever expanding wish list of books I would like to read some day, but by the end of the first chapter I gave up, too many authors! My solution, I photo-copied the index for future reference. There are many authors mentioned in this book that I have never heard of and many I have heard of, but whose work I've never read. I must remedy that! Some believe that this book is US-centric. I disagree. Many authors from different parts of the world are mentioned in this book, but I won't argue that many parts of the world are left out. This is a good book overall and I would recommend it to anyone looking to add new authors to their libraries. I especially enjoyed the chapters entitled 'Ink in Their Veins,' and 'Banned, Blacklisted, and Arrested,' interesting.

It's more like 3.5 for me. While cute, part of it suffers from just being outdated since it was published in 2001 (for example, there are a lot of outdated websites... the entry on JK Rowling is outdated, etc.)

Lovely book. I am going to advise my two daughters read this book. Informative and inspirational.

A book about my own kind. Of course, I loved it.

Notes:
The earliest female author was Enheduanna of Ur. Her works dated from 2500 BCE.

Emesal- the distinctly female written dialect.

"It has been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass."- Eudora Welty.

"I walk where my own nature would be leading: it vexes me to chose another guide."- Emily Bronte

"I won't be any properer than I have a mind to be."- Harriet Beecher Stowe

"I was gravely warned by some of my female acquaintances that no woman could expect to be regarded as a lady after sh had written a book."- Lydia M. Child

"The ability to control one's own destiny... comes from constant hard work and courage."- Maya Angelou

"Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the sense shuts me from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness."- Helen Keller

"Do you find it easy to get drunk on words?"- Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers

"Are ya still alive, Djuna?"- e.e.cummings to Djuna Barnes

"The usual masculine disillusionment is in discovery that a woman has a brain."- Margaret Mitchell

This book was an interesting set of short, funny vignettes on a whole range of smart, sassy women. Perfect airplane book that was entertaining and informative.

2009- Mainly a set of mini-biographies of women who were writers or in some other way had an impact on literature. Similar to format to the Uppity Women Series, and I believe from the same publisher.