The Word for Woman Is Wilderness | 
so-soI think I understand what the author wanted to accomplish. Unfortunately, even as the reader does witness a progression in the protagonist's thinking (a good thing, because she started out a bit insufferable), the latter half of the book was weighted down by a higher percentage of rambling space-exploration-based science-nerdery (to each their own) and veering from feminist analysis to feminist mysticism (also not my bag), 1/?
Always happy to learn a tree-related word!
pickA young British woman travels solo across Iceland, Greenland, northern Canada and into Alaska by herself, in a trip inspired by Into The Wild but gender-swapped. I loved the first half but lost enthusiasm in the wilderness section.
First bookstore visit in over a year with my family. I didn't buy anything - too many unread books at home, but read a few pages of The Word for Woman is Wilderness. The story sounds great, but somehow the writing didn't draw me in ...anyhow, so nice to be book browsing again :)
so-soThis wasn‘t what I was expecting or hoping for... it is a novel about a woman who travels from the UK to Alaska to prove that a woman can have the same kind of freedom and solitude that the “wild men” like Thoreau and McCandless. She goes by boat, dog sled, bus, and hitchhiking.
Along the way, and especially once she arrives at her cabin, it gets heavily bogged down with philosophical rambling, unfortunately too much for me.
TW in spoiler⬇️
#littlechristmasswap opening day! Thank you Kim for a book that feeds my adventure loving soul ❤️❤️❤️ and for DELIGHTFUL vegan Christmas chocolate- so much fun!! thank you Amy for organizing this fun swap!
@Mitch thank you for this book, which I‘m very much looking forward to reading, and the adorable reading cat pin! Which of your kitties posed for this?
I hope you and Mel are having a good day. Sending warm Christmas hugs. ❤️❤️❤️
@Melmar I love my #jolabokaflodswap package, thank you so much! The tagged book sounds so good! I had to put down Pattern Behavior this morning because flipping through I thought I might wake up my husband laughing! And I‘ll certainly enjoy the chocolate. Thank you! I hope you have a lovely holiday!
Thank you for hosting @MaleficentBookDragon 💕
so-soMixed feelings about this novel, which investigates why there are no Mountain Women narratives & why women have just as much of a right to solitude & nature as men do (maybe more, given what society puts us through).
There are lots of Big Ideas here but it reads more like a philosophical manifesto (against dualism & in favor of interconnectivity & fluidity) than a novel. Andrews never uses contractions, a stylistic tic that I find so grating.👇🏻
In a reader‘s life, historical moments are not just marked with “Where were you when...?” but “What were you reading when?”
WOW! What a chapter heading! Packs a punch! 😱
Reading this unapologetically feminist novel while refreshing the election results over & over & over again & shoving a peanut butter cup in my face each time I refresh.
How are you handling the morning?
Fuck.
“Wildness in women does not mean autonomy and freedom; their wildness is instead an irrational fever... Women are both excluded from, and banished to, nature.”
Art by: Cecily Brown (2003)
bailedThis needed serious editing! A 19yr old girl goes backpacking to prove that girls can travel too....! Some of the feminists rants are quite funny, but most of it is patronising and annoying. Just because it‘s the first time it‘s occurred to you, doesn‘t make it profound!! Maybe if I was a cocky 19yr old again I would appreciate it all more? But overall, it just made me groan. 🙄 DNF: 90 pages.
Hi, matches!
Don't buy me this book. 🙈
I know I said I wanted it...but my Book Club just decided to read it for an upcoming pick, so I'm going to buy it for myself.
Thanks!
Also...I'M SO EXCITED TO READ IT!
Image from @twodollarradio.
pickSuch an unusual book. It follows Erin, a 19 year old British girl, who travels to Alaska to question why many ‘explorers‘ are men and whether a journey would be different if taken by a woman. It references Thoreau, McCandless, Kerouac and the Unabomber (a lot).
It‘s fiction masquerading as NF, which confused my poor little brain. I enjoyed most of it, and it definitely challenged me, but found the philosophising and NF bits rather extraneous.
I‘m not very good at sticking to my #weeklyforecast and I have some books to drop off at the library tomorrow so I can guess what will happen there!
I‘m nearly halfway through the tagged book, and the birthday sorting jar picked the Atkinson (I‘m only halfway through my birthday pressies from 3 months ago)
On Kindle I started the Reid last night and lots of people are talking about the Attenberg, which I have on ARC.
A gift from the lovely @kathedron - not read it yet but really looking forward to it!
This novel follows a 19 year old as she leaves the UK and treks through the North American wilderness .
#girlgonewild
#movember
pickI really enjoy science and travel writing. The feminist perspective of this book, though, made it especially refreshing. The voice is convincing and enjoyable to read, though I feel like we listened to all the same Radiolab episodes.
From Sweatpants & Coffee
I probably won‘t be doing much reading. I will spend most of it outdoors. This is always a tricky day for me and I need to stay out of my head.
For all the wonderful mothers out there, Happy Mother‘s Day 💕
Girl power night here. Great book to accompany a great women‘s national championship game. 🏀
Star review! Publishers Weekly: “This deeply feminist adventure tale is a splendid, innovative response to the genre of masculine travelogue.”
This is a new kind of nature writing—one that crosses fiction with science writing and puts gender politics at the center of the landscape.
?Our March release just arrived!?
“Uplifting, with a thirsty curiosity, the writing is playful and exuberant. Riffing on feminist ideas but unlimited in scope, Andrews focuses our attention on our beautiful, doomed planet, and the astonishing things we have yet to discover."
—Ruth McKee, The Irish Times
pickThe Word for Woman is Wilderness by Abi Andrews is a philosophical novel exploring the connecting between feminism and answering the call of the wild. It feels like essay and memoir at times, combining a quest with film transcripts and charts, and it's already been a part of conversations I've had with other readers. It's also in conversation with a lot of books I've read about Alaska and Canada this year.
#readingwomenmonth I picked this up for a friends birthday. About a woman who goes to Alaska after watching to much bear gryllis and wonders why it's always the men who have the hardship travel narrative. I'm going to ask to borrow it after she has read it
@ephemeralwaltz @Andrew65
The idea of identities outside the gender binary are really only touched on in relation to the Indigenous Two Spirit sense, and then briefly, alongside acknowledging historically Indigenous matriarchies. I'm just left with a bad aftertaste of earlier waves of feminism, i.e. 'being a woman means this, this, and this, and men are historically trash' without much nuance added. It feels like near the end the author might be pushing beyond those boundaries, but it's a long time to spend reading over and over again this reaffirming of a pretty rigid dichotomy. 3/? 2y
One motion blurred black and white photo of vague scenery as seen from vehicle was enough, it didn't really act as further scene setting repeatedly interspersed in the text as the locations changed. 4/? 2y
Cognitive dissonance, the way it's written, feels like a memoir, but it IS a novel and makes me mistrust any facts delivered. What's real and what is fiction? Without footnotes citing sources, I have to hedge that it's all fake and that does take away from what I think the story was hoping to do. You could argue that there are all kinds of novels that don't bother to cite what might fall under the umbrella of 'common knowledge', but this writing goes in depth on a number of topics, scientific, historical and sociological, and it just feels like work not done that only some direct quotes are given credit in just two pages of acknowledgements (no other citations, list of sources in the book). 🤨 5/6 2y