Title of Event: Sex and Bacon: Why I Love Thing That are Very, Very Bad for Me with Sarah Katherine Lewis
When: Saturday, July 26, 2008 7:00 PM
Location: BookWoman
Description:

It's said that how we eat is reflective of our appetite in bed. Food and sex: two universal experiences that can easily become addictive and all consuming. You don't need to look far--The Food Network, billboards, TV spots to name just a few--to witness firsthand the explosive combination of food and sex. In "Sex and Bacon: Why I Love Things That Are Very, Very Bad for Me," Sarah Katherine Lewis is a seductress whose observations about the interplay between food and sex are unusually delightful, sometimes raunchy, and always absorbing. "Sex and Bacon" is a unique type of lovefest, and Lewis is not your run-of-the-mill food writer.

The Book Goddess BookGroup meets the second Sunday of each month at 1pm at BookWoman. August's selection is She Who Walks the Labyrinth by Kassandra Sojourner. September's pick is Circle of Five by Dolores Stewart Riccio.

Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations by Howell, Georgina A marvelous tale of an adventurous life of great historical import She has been called the female Lawrence of Arabia, which, while not inaccurate, fails to give Gertrude Bell her due. She was at one time the most powerful woman in the British Empire: a nation builder, the driving force behind the creation of modern-day Iraq. Born in 1868 into a world of privilege, Bell turned her back on Victorian society, choosing to read history at Oxford and going on to become an archaeologist, spy, Arabist, linguist, author (of "Persian Pictures," "The Desert and the Sown," and many other collections), poet, photographer, and legendary mountaineer (she took off her skirt and climbed the Alps in her underclothes). She traveled the globe several times, but her passion was the desert, where she traveled with only her guns and her servants. Her vast knowledge of the region made her indispensable to the Cairo Intelligence Office of the British government during World War I. She advised the Viceroy of India; then, as an army major, she traveled to the front lines in Mesopotamia. There, she supported the creation of an autonomous Arab nation for Iraq, promoting and manipulating the election of King Faisal to the throne and helping to draw the borders of the fledgling state. "Gertrude Bell," vividly told and impeccably researched by Georgina Howell, is a richly compelling portrait of a woman who transcended the restrictions of her class and times, and in so doing, created a remarkable and enduring legacy.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Kingsolver, Barbara, Kingsolver, Camille “Tracing the food year, Kingsolver—with her characteristic candor, poetry, and grace—brings us meditations on asparagus, turkeys, tomatoes, and mulch as she and her family try to eat locally as much as they can. This is a distinct hybrid of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Under the Tuscan Sun, and Walden.” —Matt Plies, Annie Bloom’s Books, Portland, OR

Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary: Reflections by Women Writers by Morrison, Susan No other politician inspires such a wide range of passionate feelings as Hillary Rodham Clinton. As America's first viable female candidate for president, she has become the repository of many women's contradictory hopes and fears. To some she's a sellout who changed her name and her hairstyle when it suited her husband's career; to others she's a hardworking idealist with the political savvy to work effectively within the system. Where one person sees a carpetbagger, another sees a dedicated politician; where one sees a humiliated and long-suffering wife, another sees a dignified First Lady. Is she tainted by the scandals of her husband's presidency, or has she gained experience and authority from weathering his missteps? Cold or competent, overachiever or pioneer, too radical or too moderate, Hillary Clinton continues to overturn the assumptions we make about her. In "Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary," New Yorker editor Susan Morrison has compiled this timely collection of thirty original pieces by America's most notable women writers. This pointillistic portrait paints a composite picture of Hillary Clinton, focusing on details from the personal to the political, from the hard-hitting to the whimsical, to give a well-balanced and unbiased view of the woman who may be our first Madam President. Taken together, these essays--by such renowned writers as Daphne Merkin, Lorrie Moore, Deborah Tannen, Susan Cheever, Lionel Shriver Kathryn Harrison, and Susan Orlean--illuminate the attitudes that women have toward the powerful women around them and constitute a biography that is must reading for anyone interested in understanding this complex and controversial politician.

love conjure/blues by Bridgforth, Sharon love conjure/blues is performance literature/a novel that is constructed for breath. the piece is not meant to be theater/a concert/an opera or a staged reading but is. ... love conjure/blues considers a range of possibilities of gender expression and sexuality within a southern/rural/Black working class context that examines the blues as a way of life/as ritual--in concert with Ancient practices and new creations...