| Book Musings..... | |||
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Tuesday, February 04, 2003 ( 7:46 PM ) Jeanne I'm finding myself somewhat "fictioned" out, hence these selections... Empress of the World by Sara Ryan Ok yes it is fiction but it is young adult fiction! This is a wonderful coming of age book about a teen girl who goes to a summer camp for gifted kids and falls in love with another girl. Really well done story on the awkward nature of teen crushes that blossom into something more and how this is complicated for the protagonist by her discovering that she loves girls. The thing I really liked is that it focuses on the emotions and the relationships and *not* the fact that it is a love story about two girls. The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists they Inspired by Francine Prose I've never read Prose's fiction, but love this book! Each essay is a biographical sketch of the relationship between a muse and her artist. Prose does a great job examining the problematic nature of muse relationships, especially for women and the different ways women reacted/profited/grew or were destroyed by/from these associations. The most contemporary muse is Yoko Ono, but honestly while I loved the book so many of the critical observations Prose made in each of the essays seemed to repeat themselves and what seemed brilliant at the beginning started to get tired by the last two essays. The Kindness of Sisters: Annabella Milbanke and the Destruction of the Byrons by David Crane Truth be told I knew very little about Byron's personal life, but egads the man was a rebel rockstar of the 19th century and then some. There is a wonderful reimagined meeting between two of the central women in his life his wife and his half sister (who happened to be the mother of one of his children!). Now I want to go read a bio of Byron to fill in the details as this book focuses mostly on the women's relationship to him. # |
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