Take a photo of a barcode or cover
kant_stop_reading 's review for:
I wanted to love this book - I really, really did. I will probably still recommend it for my 6th-grade daughter. You could make an argument for four stars: a wide range of women are represented and their stories are fascinating, but two things contributed to my down-grading. First, the book self-limits its chances to become a classic by taking a very informal tone. The pages are filled with current slang, probably intended to be engaging to young girls, but comes across rather silly and made me feel like while writing about strong, brilliant women that the reader would not be interested on straight narrative, but could only hold interest if it taken as seriously as an emoji at the end of a tweet. Secondly, I have read many biographies of male academics and very few of them focus on the male's sexuality, but more on their accomplishments. You would think in a book championing the accomplishments of intellectual women, the author would focus on achievements without making a TON of parenthetical comments on the subjects sexuality, especially for lesbian women. In the first two chapters of the book, no less than 8 snarky comments are made about women who lived with other women whether sexual or not and even explains the term "Boston Marriage" to readers; yet without any relevance to the success of the woman being spot-lighted. I can not understand how elevating the accomplishments of women throughout history is helped by reducing the women to their sexual preferences - especially when the audience of the book is pre-adolescent females. I would have much preferred focusing on the achievements of these amazing women than trying to peek into their bedrooms, no matter how subtle. It just reeks of a different form of sexism.