I needed an easy read and this definitely was one, evidenced by the fact I read it in eight days even though I was trying to get through a magazine at the same time!
Three women, unknown to each other, have valentines plans, but are stood up, all by a man by the name of Joseph Carter. Each of their stories begins there, and we see what happens over the following year.
It’s easy to read, engaging, becoming addictive later on, and I very much enjoyed it – great bank holiday weekend read!
I’d wanted to read this for ages, and then suddenly a friend was offering to lend it to me, so I jumped at the chance.
It’s not a happy read, the whole way through, you are pummelled with negative stories and stats, that make you realise just how far we still have to go; there’s not a lot of celebrating progress made. The afterword talks a little about what can be done to improve things, but I think it might have made the book a little less harrowing if this was sprinkled more throughout.
That said, it felt like a very important read, it’s a reality. And it’s not just one person blindly sharing their opinion, it’s incredibly well researched; at the back of the book are 70 pages of references used! (Which gives an added bonus of the book not being quite as long as you first think it’s going to be!)
The author talks a lot about the “gender data gap”, this is when studies/designers/anyone just use data from men and assume it’s the same for women, or use data of both genders but don’t disaggregate it to look for differences between the two. But this isn’t right, because being equal doesn’t mean being the same.
Most of the content can be summarised in three main themes, the female body and its invisibility, male sexual violence against women, and unpaid care work.
A few quotes to give you a flavour:
I was a bit concerned how much there’d be this year as it’s a bank holiday, but I’ve not been disappointed!
As per usual, I’ve put captions below the posts in case the posted get deleted later!
Let me know if you find any good ones I’ve missed and I’ll tack them on the bottom later.
Enjoy!
For some reason the McDonalds Lefty nuggets won’t embed, but you can get it at the link
Dominos Frozen Pizzas
Pink Stuff launch Brown stuff, to stop dirt standing out
Pizza Hut egg pizza
Aldi Love Aisleand
Added later:
Egg United loan Alex Horne to Chesham United
The next in my go through Philippa Gregory’s Tudor novels, easily the most famous, the only one I’m aware of that’s been made into a film, and characters that feel a little more familiar than in the last couple of books I’d read, which I guess made it a little easier to read.
That said, it’s still over 500 pages, and small font, so it took me about 6 weeks to read – not good for my Goodreads targets at all!
We all know Anne Boleyn as the second wife of Henry VIII, but this is the story of the affair her sister Mary had with him first, followed by the story we know better, but with other strings to its bow too.
Some people are critical of the historical accuracy of Gregory’s Tudor fiction, and yes, the conversations and how things happened are clearly imagined. However, some things that happened in this book were truly shocking and so as soon as I finished I opened up our friend Wikipedia, and found that the basic facts were indeed true.
The further I got through the book, the more hooked I became. And now I write this with the film on in the background, which has a ridiculous number of famous people in it, let’s see how it goes….
ineke.co.uk 