The Teacher

 By Michal Ben-Naftali

A story about a teacher who writes about her high school English teacher, who killed herself some months after the narrator's graduation. Nobody new much about the teacher. She was there and not there. Not sharing her past and her life with her students. Not with words, anyway. It was the narrator's job to piece out what information she could find and invent the rest to tell the story of the teacher, treading carefully, not to offend the late teacher, claiming it's all fiction. The teacher grew up in Hungary and was sent to the ghetto during the war, when she was in her twenties. She was part of the rescue deal known as the Kastner Train. [English translation; 196 pp.]

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The Butterfly Lampshade

 By Aimee Bender

A book about a girl whose mother's illness takes her away from her home to find a new home and family with her aunt. Weird things happen to the girl. images of things come alive, except they're dead. Are these things real? Is she imagining all that? It is a lovely story and beautiful writing. [285pp.]

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Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature

 By Linda Lear

A very detailed biography of an amazing woman. No, she wasn't perfect (for example, she was against women suffrage) but she was ahead of her time in so many other ways! Including the preservation of land and animals in England's Lake District. With the money she made from publishing her wonderful books, she bought 14 farms in the area with the intention of leaving them for the National Trust. She was also a breeder of award-winning Herdwick sheep, not too conservative to avoid trying new veterinary approaches. Really amazing reading about her. It took me a long time, and now all I want to do is watch videos about her and about where she spent most of her adult life, including two world wars. [biography, 583 pp. (including notes, index, etc.)]

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Glikl, Memoirs 1691-1719

Presented by Chava Turniansky

This was quite a journey in time and spce, to late 17th century Europe, following the life and stories of one woman and her family. Glikl (official name is Gluk) was a Jewish woman of the merchant class who tells in her own words (translated from Yiddish and Hebrew) what women like her at the time were living like and what was on her mind. Obviously, religion was a big part, the belief in the afterlife and the importance of penance and suffering. At the same time, money-making was a big part of her life as well. She was a very successful businesswoman, both before and after her first husband's death, lamenting the misfortunes/ineptitude of her sons in their businesses and having to always help them to get them out of trouble, and later her second's husband's bad lack and loss of fortune. Also interesting to see how common power shifts were in the area (today's Germany, France, Belgium) and their effects on the Jewish communities there.

Her words are accompanied by notes from Turniansky, which are sometimes helpful and interesting (other times they are stating the obvious, or are reference pointers). 

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Seeing Ourselves: Women's Self-Portraits

By Frances Borzello 

This book is full of interesting ideas, stories, analyses, and of course, beautiful images. I learned so much about the history of self-portraiture and what it meant to women artists throughout the centuries. I highly recommend it if you're interested in Art history [non-fiction; 272 pp., incl. index, biographies, bibliography, etc.] 

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The Cooking Gene

By Michael W. Twitty

A descendant of enslaved people as well as enslavers, Twitty goes from figuring out his family tree to dissecting the origins of the foods he grew up on, southern food. There's a lot to absorb here, in terms of food making, history, DNA tests. Some chapters were easier and faster for me to read, others were slower, not as interesting. Overall, quite a fascinating and illuminating journey [non-fiction; 444 pp.].

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The World New Made: Figurative Painting in the Twentieth Century

By Timothy Hyman

This book is a great introduction to modern art if you're not only interested in abstract expressionism (AbEx). As a newbie to art history, I found it fascinating and very informative, though at times I had to look at some artists' works online to compare past paintings to those included in the book.

Artists included in this book are varied in background, gender, race, and nationalities. Some are 'outsiders' who painted outside of the art world. Others had gained their name as AbEx, but realized they needed more, and as a consequence were shunned by the art scene when they switched to figurative. Different periods in the 20th century are discussed in the context of art. It's beautiful to see all the different ways artists find to express their ideas and thoughts in an era that doesn't appreciate seeing recognizable figures in paintings, and, later on, paintings in general. Many of the artists mentioned here I haven't heard of, and it's not completely due to my ignorance. They were literally erased from art history books. I'm glad things are changing now. [256 pp., including bibliogrpahy, illustration list, and index]

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