A Room of One’s Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on the 24th of October, 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women’s colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled Women and Fiction, and hence the essay, are considered nonfiction. The essay is seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy.
A Room of One’s Own
Virginia Woolf
(1929)
Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
Every single time I sit down with Virginia Woolf I come away a different person, whether I liked the book or not.
After reading this book I came away with a few questions.
Why a novel?
What does having space do for creativity?
How are the themes still relevant today in 2023?
Originally published in 1929 it’s hard to imagine the world Woolf lived in. This essay is a collection of two pieces that began as lectures given to students at women’s colleges.
I have some criticism that is mostly excused by this being a historical piece of literature. The takeaway for me is that for fiction and creativity to occur one must have choices, the freedom the make them, and the space in which to do them.
I can work with that.
This book has been on my to-be-read list for a long time. I am so glad to have finally read it.
A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN…⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Mindhunter:Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit
Synopsis.
When Alice and Leo move into a newly renovated house in The Circle, a gated community of exclusive houses, it is everything they’ve dreamed of. But appearances can be deceptive…
As Alice is getting to know her neighbours, she discovers a devastating secret about her new home, and begins to feel a strong connection with Nina, the therapist who lived there before.
Alice becomes obsessed with trying to piece together what happened two years before. But no one wants to talk about it. Her neighbors are keeping secrets and things are not as perfect as they seem…
The multimillion-copy New York Times bestselling author B.A. Paris returns to her heartland of gripping psychological suspense in The Therapist–a powerful tale of a house that holds a shocking secret
The Review
Mindhunter by John Douglas.
Did you watch MINDHUNTER on Netflix as I did? Knowing it was inspired by the book I made a promise to myself to read the book one day. And now that I have I wanted to share some thoughts with you on why it’s still a very fascinating read.
John Douglas comes across as a magical mind reader in this book. His interrogation techniques come down to vulnerability which is oddly the same thing these serial killers are looking for in a victim.
I found that parallel fascinating.
If you’ve watched the show and are wondering why you would invest time into reading the book then here’s my pitch for the book:
“MINDHUNTER gives a behind-the-scenes look into the intriguing tv series, giving further information than what is covered on the show and you’ll know what they might cover if there ever is a season 2.”
MINDHUNTER…⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
From Chloé Cooper Jones—Pulitzer Prize finalist, philosophy professor, Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant recipient—a groundbreaking memoir about disability, motherhood, and a journey to far-flung places in search of a new way of seeing and being seen.
“I am in a bar in Brooklyn, listening to two men, my friends, discuss whether my life is worth living.”
So begins ChloéCooper Jones’s bold, revealing account of moving through the world in a body that looks different than most. Jones learned early on to factor “pain calculations” into every plan, every situation. Born with a rare congenital condition called sacral agenesis which affects both her stature and gait, her pain is physical. But there is also the pain of being judged and pitied for her appearance, of being dismissed as “less than.” The way she has been seen—or not seen—has informed her lens on the world her entire life. She resisted this reality by excelling academically and retreating to “the neutral room in her mind” until it passed. But after unexpectedly becoming a mother (in violation of unspoken social taboos about the disabled body), something in her shifts, and Jones sets off on a journey across the globe, reclaiming the spaces she’d been denied, and denied herself.
From the bars and domestic spaces of her life in Brooklyn to sculpture gardens in Rome; from film festivals in Utah to a Beyoncé concert in Milan; from a tennis tournament in California to the Killing Fields of Phnom Penh, Jones weaves memory, observation, experience, and aesthetic philosophy to probe the myths underlying our standards of beauty and desirability, and interrogates her own complicity in upholding those myths.
With its emotional depth, its prodigious, spiky intelligence, its passion and humor, Easy Beauty is the rare memoir that has the power to make you see the world, and your place in it, with new eyes.
The Review
EASY BEAUTY by Chloe Cooper Jones
EASY BEAUTY is an eye-opening and achingly poetic memoir I read recently thanks to Avid Reader Press.
I struggled at first to see the structure of the memoir while reading. It felt more like a collection of stories. But as I got further along in the book it became apparent that memoir was fitting.
In EASY BEAUTY we meet Chloe in a three-way conversation that is alarming. It sets the tone for the entire book. Actually, it asks a question. A question of validity. And Chloe Cooper Jones spends the rest of the book answering that question.
The beauty of this memoir is the ability to gain a new perspective on something that lives outside of your own experience. It’s an empathy builder.
So grateful to have read this one.
Thanks again to Avid Reader Press for the advanced copy!
Out Now!
EASY BEAUTY…⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
