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4.24 AVERAGE
4.24 AVERAGE
funny
informative
inspiring
fast-paced
challenging
funny
informative
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
funny
fast-paced
funny
informative
lighthearted
fast-paced
Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley. I should also note that I read this via Adobe Digital Editions, and for some reason each page took quite a bit of time of load. This no doubt explains some of my frustration.
On the one hand, this is a funny book about why women get written out of history. On the other hand, it is a joke that goes on for too long. I don’t usually say this, but if this book had been saying half its length, it would have been funnier.
Flemings tongue in cheek look at how men and society viewed women and why women were considered less than human is rather funny. This is true at the beginning of the book, and when she references famous figures, such as Darwin. However, in some ways once the joke has happened, there is really no reason to use it again. But it gets used again. At times the book is brilliant – in particular when Fleming is referencing a woman such as Phillis Wheatley and the reaction of male (and white) society to her. More than once I found myself wishing this had been done more often. There is plenty of material to find the stories of such woman, the work of Vicki Leon being only one starting place.
Still, I am glad I read this. It is worth reading even if the humor wears a little thin. The dust bin illustrations are worth the time it takes to read.
On the one hand, this is a funny book about why women get written out of history. On the other hand, it is a joke that goes on for too long. I don’t usually say this, but if this book had been saying half its length, it would have been funnier.
Flemings tongue in cheek look at how men and society viewed women and why women were considered less than human is rather funny. This is true at the beginning of the book, and when she references famous figures, such as Darwin. However, in some ways once the joke has happened, there is really no reason to use it again. But it gets used again. At times the book is brilliant – in particular when Fleming is referencing a woman such as Phillis Wheatley and the reaction of male (and white) society to her. More than once I found myself wishing this had been done more often. There is plenty of material to find the stories of such woman, the work of Vicki Leon being only one starting place.
Still, I am glad I read this. It is worth reading even if the humor wears a little thin. The dust bin illustrations are worth the time it takes to read.
This is a tough one for me to review, because while there was a lot I loved and I laugh through most of it, there were some things that... not really bothered me, but I missed or was annoyed that this one once more had to be mentioned even though it's inaccurate (I know that I'm weirdly specific here, but we'll get to that later).
I think the main issue is that there is so much material for this type of humour that it could easily sustain a book of 500 pages while still being non-repetitive and funny and so even though I appreciated almost everything that was here I also missed a lot. But to the positives!
I absolutely loved the angry stitching women in the background!
More of them to come!
Talking about stitching, I kind of disliked how it was handled as something... inferior. It might be hard to believe, but there are women who enjoy stitching and embroidery and even though images like this one are funny:
the truth is that women work has been diminished and deemed unimportant and seeing feminist work do it too is kind of hurtful. There are two sides of the coin, surely women should be allowed to do what was previously permitted only to men, but also women work should be considered important and men should be allowed to do it too.
I'm clearly not able to comment positively, so I'll just move my biggest complaint out of the way and that is the passage about corsets... (To give this complaint some perspective, we're talking about two pages here...) I just don't understand why we had to do this again. Ridiculing women fashion doesn't make you a feminist. It's hard to see the line, because after all it's point of this book to make fun of things that aren't really funny or necessarily accurate. But I think that in this case Fleming just chose very unfortunate angle (because the part about squished organs is mostly nonsense - while the part about weak muscles is accurate and excellent, so I guess it's fifty fifty).
My point is, corsets are meant to be support garments, tight lacing was a trend, not the original purpose of corsets... either way, I won't go into the specifics, because this is not the place, but if you are interested - or think that all corsets are devil's devices - go and watch some of [a:Bernadette Banner|21373415|Bernadette Banner|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]'s (or someone else's from historical clothing part of youtube) videos on the theme.
I think this might be a good place to start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWr_GtqsvFA
Back to the book! I really liked the idea of dustbin of history and women rescuing each other out of it - I think this is a great metaphor that works for most of the marginalized groups.
Overall, I really enjoyed the book (even though it doesn't look like it from the review), but it could have been longer and the font was sometimes a little hard to decipher (non-native English speaker here), I also think that this book would greatly benefit from some kind of footnotes, some of the information was really interesting and I would like to find out where to look for more. But as a simple funny read, this was great! Can only recommend!
I think the main issue is that there is so much material for this type of humour that it could easily sustain a book of 500 pages while still being non-repetitive and funny and so even though I appreciated almost everything that was here I also missed a lot. But to the positives!
I absolutely loved the angry stitching women in the background!
More of them to come!
Talking about stitching, I kind of disliked how it was handled as something... inferior. It might be hard to believe, but there are women who enjoy stitching and embroidery and even though images like this one are funny:
the truth is that women work has been diminished and deemed unimportant and seeing feminist work do it too is kind of hurtful. There are two sides of the coin, surely women should be allowed to do what was previously permitted only to men, but also women work should be considered important and men should be allowed to do it too.
I'm clearly not able to comment positively, so I'll just move my biggest complaint out of the way and that is the passage about corsets... (To give this complaint some perspective, we're talking about two pages here...) I just don't understand why we had to do this again. Ridiculing women fashion doesn't make you a feminist. It's hard to see the line, because after all it's point of this book to make fun of things that aren't really funny or necessarily accurate. But I think that in this case Fleming just chose very unfortunate angle (because the part about squished organs is mostly nonsense - while the part about weak muscles is accurate and excellent, so I guess it's fifty fifty).
My point is, corsets are meant to be support garments, tight lacing was a trend, not the original purpose of corsets... either way, I won't go into the specifics, because this is not the place, but if you are interested - or think that all corsets are devil's devices - go and watch some of [a:Bernadette Banner|21373415|Bernadette Banner|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]'s (or someone else's from historical clothing part of youtube) videos on the theme.
I think this might be a good place to start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWr_GtqsvFA
Back to the book! I really liked the idea of dustbin of history and women rescuing each other out of it - I think this is a great metaphor that works for most of the marginalized groups.
Overall, I really enjoyed the book (even though it doesn't look like it from the review), but it could have been longer and the font was sometimes a little hard to decipher (non-native English speaker here), I also think that this book would greatly benefit from some kind of footnotes, some of the information was really interesting and I would like to find out where to look for more. But as a simple funny read, this was great! Can only recommend!
informative
reflective
funny
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced