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Zadie Smith recommended Middlemarch in Books (curated)

 
Middlemarch
Middlemarch
Rosemary Ashton, George Eliot | 2003 | Fiction & Poetry
6.3 (4 Ratings)
Book Favorite

"A work of genius. But more important—and from a purely selfish point of view—a woman wrote it. That might seem ridiculous to male writers, but a man never has to think twice about the gender of genius. He’s got too many examples on his side of the fence. Eliot was the first woman I read who could go toe-to-toe with, say, Tolstoy. I was 15. Since then, I’ve learned how many grand achievements in the novel have been female, but when I was a teenager, that was news to me."

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Emma Watson recommended The Power in Books (curated)

 
The Power
The Power
Naomi Alderman | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry
7.9 (13 Ratings)
Book Favorite

"Alderman challenges the cliché that women are more noble than men, and that a world run by women would be more gentle, with benevolent leaders and no war. In fact, women become power hungry and begin to repress men. They commit war atrocities, perform male genital mutilation, rape and maim for sport and kill to occupy land. With power dynamics reversed, the women don’t choose a righteous path – they act no better than men who have abused power throughout history. I think Alderman’s point is that people who abuse, do so because they can."

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Mary Gordon recommended Pale Horse, Pale Rider in Books (curated)

 
Pale Horse, Pale Rider
Pale Horse, Pale Rider
Katherine Anne Porter | 2014 | Essays
(0 Ratings)
Book Favorite

"Porter accomplishes an extraordinary amount in a few pages. She addresses the horrors of war from a woman’s perspective; she touches on the difficult a terrain a working woman must navigate in a man’s world; she creates a desirable male, describing his physical allure from a female point of view: quite rare in most fiction. But most astonishing, in chronicling Miranda’s near death experience and her reluctant return to life, she describes the indescribable and deals with the most profound human issues: life, death, identity, in shatteringly beautiful prose."

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Leanne Crabtree (480 KP) rated Stinger in Books

Jan 11, 2021  
Stinger
Stinger
4
4.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
DNF @ 30%.

I have a thing for escorts/sexworkers and I honestly expected to like this more, with it being a male porn star, but I couldn't get into it at all. I've read a few books where the characters were in porn and I liked all the others more. It just didn't grab me emotionally or physically. I felt no connection to the characters in that first third of the book and I don't see much point in finishing a book when I feel like that, hence my DNF.
  
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Carrie Fisher recommended Middlemarch in Books (curated)

 
Middlemarch
Middlemarch
Rosemary Ashton, George Eliot | 2003 | Fiction & Poetry
6.3 (4 Ratings)
Book Favorite

"One of the greatest books ever written by a woman, especially in those early days. Although Mary Anne Evans gave herself a male pen name, she showed incredible ambition and scope in her writing—the world she created, the characters she imagined. I love that line in the book that reads: “The really delightful marriage must be that where your husband was a sort of father, and could teach you Hebrew, if you wished it.” It was hard to be a woman in those days, but her storytelling was exceptional."

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