Tag: feminism

women in black walking through a grain field

Why Women Walk: A Reflection on Gender and the Great Outdoors

Posted on by cococatani

I recently spent a weekend on the Norfolk Coast enjoying the beach, the sunshine and copious amounts of ice cream. As usual I spent much of my days (when I was not eating ice cream) on long walks. Norfolk has some great long distance walking paths, with the Norfolk Coast Path a firm favourite of mine, and I find myself returning to the prettiest sections again and again. This time I also explored some terrain more inland and racked up over fifty kilometres over the weekend.

To accompany me I brought a very appropriate book that had caught my eye in the library. Windswept: Why Women Walk by Annabel Abbs is part memoir (about Abbs own mixed feelings about walking) and part biography of several famous women who walked. The rota includes Simone de Beauviour, Gwen John, and Georgia O’Keeffe, and I was curious to find out more about their lives and the role walking played in it.

Lisa Alther: Kinflicks – Book Review

Posted on by cococatani

I only picked Kinflicks because of its slightly raunchy cover – a scantily dressed young woman jumping into the air, her face drawn into an expression of pure ecstacy. Turns out the book is actually a coming of age novel about Ginny, who returns to the Virginian town she grew up in to look after her dying mother. Oh, and also because her husband has thrown her out for what she insists was not cheating. Promising start.

Reading Unusual Books: A Continuing Story

Posted on by cococatani

With the library still closed I continue to read whatever books people throw at me. This week I’ve swapped my usual fiction for a true story: Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five. Its subtitle – The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper – tells one exactly what to expect: a story that has been told many times before and yet hasn’t. As Rubenhold rightly points out, the Ripper’s victims are often solely defined through their brief and fatal relation to their still unidentified killer. The Five aims to set this inaccuracy right and tell the untold stories of the victims’ lives rather than their deaths.