Hurrah For Cincinnati Authors! Emily Henry And Kate Hattemer Are Both On The List!

A Feminist Reading List for the Holidays: Books by strong, spirited, whip-smart, flawed, fantastic, human, devastatingly talented women for anyone - female, male, or otherwise - on your list.

My Life On The Road by Gloria Steinem

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Hissing Cousins by Marc Peyser and Timothy Dwyer

Isabella: The Warrior Queen by Kirstin Downey

Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein

A House Of My Own by Sandra Cisneros

Fates & Furies by Lauren Groff

Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar

The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan

Missoula by Jon Krakauer

Let Me Tell You by Shirley Jackson

The Mare by Mary Gaitskill

You Don’t Have to Like Me by Alida Nugent (@thefrenemy​)

Peruse all of our holiday lists here!

Hello! :) Bookwench #2 reporting in. Here’s a little about me...I’m Alia, I’m 27 years old and I love books, cake and Korean food.  I used to be an elementary school teacher in Daegu, South Korea for about four years. Daegu is famous for being hot (it’s in a valley), has lots of great food and people there have the best Korean accent ( it’s like a tough southern accent). With a background in teaching and experience in children’s bookselling, my contributions to The Bookwenches will mostly be children’s literature related.  I specialize in Picture Books. You have questions? I have answers. Need a suggestion? You got it. You like looking at pretty pictures?...WELL ME TOO! I also read quite a bit of middle grade and some YA. I like a little bit of everything; fantasy, historical fiction, sci-fi, fairy tale, realistic fiction, romance, coming of age novels, graphic novels etc.  One of my favorite books of all time is Zel by Donna Jo Napoli. Like Tori, I like that medieval, princessy but AWESOME story stuff!  In 2016, I’m looking forward to Sherman Alexie and Yuyi Morales’ new book Thunder Boy Jr. It’ll be Alexie’s first picture book!! If you don’t know him, just check out The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. You won’t regret it. I’m also looking forward to Pugs of the Frozen North by Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre!  You can also check me out at my blog readitrealgood.com and I have a twitter @readitrealgood. On my blog I share diverse and excellent reads. It’s intended to be a resource for people looking for great kids books, especially ones focusing on diversity. I also discuss diversity in literature and publishing and share my thoughts from time to time. 

Nice to meet you...만나서 반갑습니다! 촣은 하루 되세요! ^_^

MY PRECIOUS! So excited to find out what's happening in Feyre and Tamlin's world.

Not familiar with this AMAZING Fantasy Young Adult Series? Check out my review for A COURT OF THORNS AND ROSES here:

http://readitrealgood.com/2015/10/30/a-court-of-thorns-and-roses/

May can't come soon enough ❤️

We’re so thrilled to reveal the covers for Sarah J. Maas’s A COURT OF MIST AND FURY! Share it if you love it!

Image credit: Penguin Random House, http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/248239/lab-girl-by-hope-jahren/9781101874936/#

Marita here with a super-long review of a book I’m super passionate about. This book isn’t out until spring, but I am counting the minutes because I am going to tell everyone and their mother to read it.

I like my biology on the cellular level or smaller. I like thinking about viruses and bacteria and antibodies. Plants, geology, and ecology are not my cup of tea at all. I’ll admit that a part of that bias is that the more controlled, rigorous, replicable sciences are seen as more “pure” or “hard.” I’m into molecular biology, and molecular biology believes itself more scientific than botany and ecology. You can’t even do your experiments indoors in a controlled environment! You have to rely largely on unpredictable natural events to supply data! Freakin’ hippies. As such, I was a very skeptical when this botanist’s memoir came to my attention.

Oh boy, was I ever blown away.

Hope Jahren is a rare find. She is a scientist who has managed to write a memoir that is humble and grateful. In my experience, intellectual types tend to backhandedly brag about the burden of being a genius at least a little bit in their memoirs. Our author doesn’t fall into that rut. Oh, she describes in great detail the hours, weeks, and months that get swallowed up by lab work. But not once does she imply that it is her natural brilliance that fuels her--she runs on nothing but curiosity and perseverance. Any success she’s experienced is the result of hard work, not natural talent.

And even better--Jahren is an exquisite writer. She speaks of running the shell of a Hawthorne tree’s seed through a mass spectrometer (normally a very dry, incredibly boring procedure), and her description of the incident brought tears to my eyes. 

This is a mass spec readout. Hope Jahren makes this seem like a thing of transcendent beauty. Image credit: IB Chemistry, http://www.ibchem.com/IB/ibnotes/full/ato_htm/12.1.2.htm

Jahren speaks of science the way I think about it, but have never found the right words for. I look at DNA and I see magic and beauty, but when I try to explain my experience to non-science people, their eyes glaze over. Jahren, on the other hand, speaks of the natural world with affection and wonder and joy. She captures that awe in the face of life’s mysteries. In her hands, science becomes a lens through which we can properly appreciate the glory of existence.

This is a book by a female scientist, so I imagine a lot of people will be expecting lots of commentary on how academia is a sexist boys’ club. Well, there isn’t. She’s been underestimated because of her gender; that’s an unavoidable fact for any woman in STEM fields. What I love about this memoir is that she acknowledges this fact and then moves on with her life. She doesn’t give those chauvinists any more of her attention than they deserve, which is none. She’s not a female scientist, she’s a scientist who happens to be female. She’s there to do a job, and that job is not to be offended. It’s to do science.

She does something special in this book, and I’ll love her forever for it: She gives us a peek behind the curtain. Her subject is the nitty-gritty of the scientific process--the undignified, inglorious, ridiculous mishaps and struggles that will never be published in a neat six-page Nature article. We live in a society where scientists present themselves as infallible and enlightened and progressive. If “science” says something, it takes precedent over any other form of knowledge. Jahren shines a light on just how dogmatic and backwards and resistant to change the world of science can be--a lesson we’d all do well to remember the next time a headline screams “Study Reveals Chocolate Helps Fight Cancer.”

Alternating chapters offer a peek into the inner lives of plants (and they are far more alive than we think). It’s a wonderful examination of these organisms we depend on, but often take for granted. Here’s how much these chapters got under my skin: Recently, while watching the Mythbusters episode where they strip a tree of its branches of its branches to make a catapult, I felt outraged at their mutilation of a living thing for entertainment.

And, of course, it would be unforgivable if I didn’t mention Bill. Oh, Bill. Partner-in-crime, best friend, collaborator, Bill is Jahren’s platonic soul mate. He’s the longtime lab partner that has been carted along with her since grad school, through three separate laboratories. He’s also quite possibly the most fun part of this book--or at least his interactions with Jahren are. What otherwise would have been a gorgeous examination of life in research is infused with humor and adventure and the best kind of weirdness thanks to him.

I love this book. It’s one of those books that feels tailor-made for me. But I want the rest of the world to read it, too. I want them to know the sacrifice and toil that went in to every line of those textbooks they fell asleep reading in high school. I want them to know that science isn’t perfect--it’s a conversation between a scientist and her data, and like all conversations, it can have awkward silences and may go in a direction you’re not comfortable with. I want them to know that life, the biological concept of life, is astounding and intrepid and precious. I want them to know that curiosity is a vital resource that should be cherished and nurtured. And I want them to know that fantastic people like Hope Jahren and Bill exist in the world. 

Image credit: The Science Mom, http://the-science-mom.com/1020/growing-plants-seed-germination/

TL;DR Science! Please, please, please read this book.

A look at recent YA books by Latino authors, providing “much-needed windows for all readers.” @schoollibraryjournal

Here’s a list of what us wenches are reading right now!

Under a Painted Sky by Stacey Lee & The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubraker Bradley

Whatcha reading, Brett?

Wing & Claw by Linda Sue Park 

By Break of Day by M L Buchman

Indeh by Ethan Hawke and Greg Ruth

Whatcha reading, Jo Ann?

Burn Math Class by Jason Wilkes

Passenger by Alexandra Bracken & Ninth Key by Meg Cabot

Whatcha reading, Tori?

We’ll get back to Mary Anning later. 

Is Kelis’ milkshake song a gift to humanity, or what?

The War In Our Stars

Kylo Ren: It's a metaphor

Kylo Ren: you wear the scary breathing mask but you don't actually need it to breathe

Exciting news yesterday from Andrea Beaty, David Roberts and Abrams Kids! The newest book in the fabulous Rosie Revere, Engineer and Iggy Peck, Architect series has been revealed. :)  She’s ADA TWIST, SCIENTIST!

Woo Hoo! for science and Woo Hoo! for two African American kids! 

Get it Squiggly Line man. Get it!! ;) 

Dance-trance Look at this while listening to music, I swear it’s gonna work with every genre! ;)

p.s. I know it isn’t perfect, but this is my first animation and I’m super-proud of it anyway!