Feminist Pub XX - may the summer rains wash the patriarchy down the plughole

[NoTechnologicalBreakdown]

Ooh ooh! Do I get to start it?

Wine and cake all round. And a celebratory burst on the patriarchy-blasting cannon!

Old pub here

Kate Boyles Bingham

onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Bingham%2C%20Kate%20Boyles%2C%201876-1959

Or some of these?

bookriot.com/2015/07/15/8-western-novels-every-occasion/
I'm a bit wary of Mary Doria Russell though after The Sparrow (very good, but horrifying things happen to main characters).

Wow, I didn't really expect people to start looking for books for me. Thanks. I don't really know what counts as a western, I've just been given a load of categories to read one book from each, one of the categories is "western" with no further guidance. So I think I can interpret it quite loosely if needs be.

You talked about books in the feminist pub and you didn't expect people to start looking?

Hmmm, you've been away a bit too long, my dear!

Oh yes - books are always a popular topic in the pub

I thought of another possibility: Annie Proulx's Close Range: Wyoming Stories is not a novel, but a collection of short stories. It includes Brokeback Mountain.

I must have been away too long, you're right. Now, having not found a single western written by a woman myself because I haven't looked further than my local library I now have a choice, as long as I can find one of them cheap.

I don't suppose Laura Ingalls Wilder counts as westerns. There are memoirs - I've got a book called Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage by Carrie Adell Strahorn, and I've got an anthology of shorter pieces about women on the frontier.

I can't actually name any Western writers other than Zane Grey anyway. When I worked in the local lending library, they were just shelved under "Westerns", and didn't have to go in alphabetical order. (Same with "romance" and "crime".)

I think Wilder does count because Wisconsin and Minnesota were frontier regions when those books were set. Those states are part of the mid-West now. So the books are Midwesterns, maybe?

Western as a genre tends to mean cowboys and saloons etc. Although, technically, anything about the west as it expanded could count. So any pioneer tales would do, although they wouldn't be 'pure' westerns.

There's a brief mention of cowboys in Wilder, but more of American Indians, but she cut out most of the real wild west stuff, because she thought it was too nasty for children.

There's a website I found yesterday,
WomenWritingTheWest

I'm not sure if it will be any use but the website is an interesting read.

Not westerns but Louise Erdrich and Susan Power write about contemporary issues affecting North American Indian/ Native Americans

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Erdrich

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Power

(Although both tend to be of the beautifully written but what actually happened genre?)

Although it doesn't contain swing door saloons and six shooters (because it's set in the 20th century), Mary O'Hara's "Thunderhead" would fit the bill quite nicely as it's set on a horse ranch in Wyoming. Although it's the sequel to a children's horse story, it is more for adults really and very well written. The main plot is about a boy and his horse but a lot of it describes his mother Nell. Her character is well developed and a lot of the story describes her thoughts about her relationship with her husband Rob and the difficulties in their marriage caused by financial worries with the ranch (very realistically done) and his proud,uncompromising attitude. It also deals well with the father/son relationship and Nell trying to get her husband to come to terms with the traits in his son that Rob doesn't like (dreaminess, not being "man" enough). There is also a good bit about Nell herself, her thoughts about the land, the horses and the future - she's not just in the book as mother/wife, but as a person in her own right. I didn't like the book much when I was 12 as I just wanted a pony story, but I re-read it recently and thought it was very good. You don't have to have read the first book, My Friend Flicka (which is slightly more of a children's pony story) to read Thunderhead, and you don't really have to like horses to read it either I would think.

I was thinking that sounded familiar!

Jordanne Whiley won the us open wheelchair tennis title. Go her!

Me too Buffy. Is there anything in particular making you tired?

or or , Buffy?

DH has bronchitis and has been coughing all night long for the past week. Selfishly this means that I'm sleep deprived whilst doing most of the cooking in the middle of one of my busiest weeks of the year!

Really good luck with 1 and about 2. Hope your thoughts coalesce and your changes go well.

How's the thesis going?

Hahaha.

First week of term at my uni and am involved in a lot of welcome events so it's currently giving me panda eyes most of the time whilst I prep for those. Also got my first article back from peer review and editors want it back ridiculously soon the same time as my current chapter is due. Also having a bit of an existential crisis regarding academia as a whole which isn't helping with the motivation levels.

BUT the chapter I'm working on is fun and features some utterly barking mad historical characters, who brighten up my day when I finally get to doing some 'real' work.

Thunderhead = sequel to My Friend Flicka, which i loved as a kid.

Hello everyone! What have I missed?

I've been working all the hours under the sun.

I've decided today I'm doing fuck all, I'm going to bring dds wii u downstairs and play MarioMaker and I won't feel guilty for it.

My Mum has gone off in the caravan for a week, she's in the middle of her marriage breaking down and she really really needs some time alone because she's making herself ill working all sorts of hours and doing everything at home on top, while her husband watches! She's got the the "fuck it" point and has stopped doing things for him, and fucked off for a week alone. She seperated finances months ago so for the first time in years she has her own money, she's much more thrifty than her dh so has some spare cash and can afford to treat herself. I worry about her being alone, and wanted to bring her home with me, but I think it's something she needs to do for herself, so that she can stop and reflect in what she wants, because neither her or her dh are happy, I dont think he likes the change in her since she started earning, he's no longer her only focus and she's put him first for so long I think she's forgot his to be herself if that makes sense. I'm massively proud of her.