Category — Book Club

New list below! We’re onto the final group, Group C:

Welcome to the eighth tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade–a book club from the comfort of your own living room. Grab a cup of coffee and start clicking away at the links below.

Just to explain, this book club is entirely online and open to anyone (male or female) in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/parenting-after-infertility world (as well as any other related category I inadvertently left off the list). It is called a book tour because everyone reads the same book and then poses a question to the group. Participants choose a few questions to answer and then post their response on their blog. Readers can jump from blog to blog, commenting along the way.

Book: The Handmaid’s Tale
Author: Margaret Atwood
Start Date: October 31st
Post Dates: December 10, 11, and 12
(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours as well as information about all upcoming tours and book events.)

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (click on any of the links below to take you to a stop on this book tour. Jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on The Handmaid’s Tale. We’ve broken down the current tour into three groups. This is the final list).

Group C:

My Journey to Motherhood (Courtney)
Tired of Waiting (Holly)
The Infertile Long and Winding Road (Ms. Infertile)
Candy’s Land (Candy)
Coming2Terms (Pamela Jeanne)
Confessions of a Paranoid Parent (Paranoid)
The Road Less Travelled (Loribeth)
The Duchess (Duchess)
The Dunn Family (Erica)

Even if you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t read The Handmaid’s Tale, you can still add your own thoughts on the blog tour or react to someone else’s critique.

Like the idea of being in a book club without leaving your living room? The next book for book tour #9 is a non-IF book (otherwise known as a pepper book by the Barren Bitches) The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler. The next 7 book tours or so all have author participation so you’ll also be able to interact online with Karen and ask your questions about her book.

The Details: Tour #9 will start December 13. Participants will read The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Fowler. On Wednesday, January 16th everyone will send one question based on the book (to get a sense of questions, click here to see the questions sent for book tour #2) to me. I will compile the questions into lists that will be emailed out to you on January 17th. Everyone will choose 3 questions from the list and answer them on their own blog on January 22–24th (we will break up into two or three smaller groups and you can choose which day works best for you when the date gets closer). Each day of the tour, I’ll also post a master list and people can jump from blog to blog, reading and commenting on the book tour.

If you would like to sign up to participate in book tour #9, leave a comment below or send me an email. I need the title and a link to your blog as well as an email address where you’d like the two or three book club emails sent. If a spouse wants to participate too and he/she doesn’t have their own blog, have them set up a blog solely for book tours (as we did with the Annex) and send me a link to that blog. And if you’re a reader without a blog, now is a great time to set up a space for yourself on Blogger. People will be able to find brand-spanking-new blogs because they will be on the book tour’s participant list. The next few tours are always listed on the new upcoming and past tours list. Happy reading.

Also: upcoming book event! January 9, 2008 at 8 p.m. (Wednesday night): online chat with Darci Klein of To Full Term. Read the book beforehand and bring your questions-OR-simply come and hear this discussion. Information will be emailed prior to the event, so if you plan on joining along send an email or leave a comment below specifying the To Full Term discussion (8 p.m. is based on the American EST which is UTC -5).

New list below! We’re onto Group B:

Welcome to the eighth tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade–a book club from the comfort of your own living room. Grab a cup of coffee and start clicking away at the links below.

Just to explain, this book club is entirely online and open to anyone (male or female) in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/parenting-after-infertility world (as well as any other related category I inadvertently left off the list). It is called a book tour because everyone reads the same book and then poses a question to the group. Participants choose a few questions to answer and then post their response on their blog. Readers can jump from blog to blog, commenting along the way.

Book: The Handmaid’s Tale
Author: Margaret Atwood
Start Date: October 31st
Post Dates: December 10, 11, and 12
(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours as well as information about all upcoming tours and book events.)

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (click on any of the links below to take you to a stop on this book tour. Jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on The Handmaid’s Tale. We’ve broken down the current tour into three groups. A final list will be posted tomorrow).

Group B:

Stirrup Queens (Melissa)–post is below this one (or simply click on the permalinked blog name)
Southern Infertility (Samantha)
We Are What We Repeatedly Do (Yodasmistress)
Mommy Someday? (Michelle)
Our Box of Rain (K)
Northern Grin (Rachael)
Our Own Creation (AMS)
Slaying, Blogging, Whatever… (Delenn)
I Won’t Fear Love (Julia)
Infertile Fantasies (Bea)

Even if you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t read The Handmaid’s Tale, you can still add your own thoughts on the blog tour or react to someone else’s critique.

Like the idea of being in a book club without leaving your living room? The next book for book tour #9 is a non-IF book (otherwise known as a pepper book by the Barren Bitches) The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler. The next 7 book tours or so all have author participation so you’ll also be able to interact online with Karen and ask your questions about her book.

The Details: Tour #9 will start December 13. Participants will read The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Fowler. On Wednesday, January 16th everyone will send one question based on the book (to get a sense of questions, click here to see the questions sent for book tour #2) to me. I will compile the questions into lists that will be emailed out to you on January 17th. Everyone will choose 3 questions from the list and answer them on their own blog on January 22–24th (we will break up into two or three smaller groups and you can choose which day works best for you when the date gets closer). Each day of the tour, I’ll also post a master list and people can jump from blog to blog, reading and commenting on the book tour.

If you would like to sign up to participate in book tour #9, leave a comment below or send me an email. I need the title and a link to your blog as well as an email address where you’d like the two or three book club emails sent. If a spouse wants to participate too and he/she doesn’t have their own blog, have them set up a blog solely for book tours (as we did with the Annex) and send me a link to that blog. And if you’re a reader without a blog, now is a great time to set up a space for yourself on Blogger. People will be able to find brand-spanking-new blogs because they will be on the book tour’s participant list. The next few tours are always listed on the new upcoming and past tours list. Happy reading.

Also: upcoming book event! January 9, 2008 at 8 p.m. (Wednesday night): online chat with Darci Klein of To Full Term. Read the book beforehand and bring your questions-OR-simply come and hear this discussion. Information will be emailed prior to the event, so if you plan on joining along send an email or leave a comment below specifying the To Full Term discussion (8 p.m. is based on the American EST which is UTC -5).

Intrigued by the idea of a book tour and want to read more about The Handmaid’s Tale? Hop along to more stops on the Barren Bitches Book Brigade by visiting the master list in the post above. Want to come along for the next tour? Sign up begins today for tour #9 (The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler with author participation!) and all are welcome to join along (see the post above to sign up). All you need is a book and blog.

Two things occurred to me after I sent out my question–both which didn’t necessarily ring true–though I never noticed them before in my thirty-plus prior readings of The Handmaid’s Tale (what can I say? I love a novel with a good rallying cry. I like to alternate between reading The Handmaid’s Tale and Egalia’s Daughters by Gerd Brantenberg).

The first is the idea of the world outside Gilead. Where was Amnesty International? Where were world governments disgusted by this treatment of women? I could believe it if no one knew enough to step in–think completely closed society–but there were Japanese tourists in Gilead. Remember the scene when she was shopping in town and the tourists came to gawk at them (er…sort of like American go and gawk at the Amish…er….)? If they were allowing tourism to continue, where was the righteous anger? Where was the action?

Beyond that, we really don’t know if fertility was affected in other countries–was this extreme taken solely to produce white children in America? I was thinking of it in contrast to the book we read last year–Children of Men by PD James–and that desperation for children in order to continue the human race. As opposed to Gilead which was essentially a hysteria to produce white children who spoke with an American…or Gileadian…accent. Right? Because England was where refuges ran therefore the same system wasn’t in place overseas. What was wrong with little white babies with British accents? The racism was disgusting, but it’s the accentism that is making me wretch (um…just in case humour doesn’t come across in an online book discussion, that was meant to be tongue-in-cheek).

The other thing that didn’t ring true were the men. I am so done with the portrayal of men as indifferent during infertility. From the books that imply that men enjoy infertility (they get to have all that sex!) to the ones that simply dismiss them outright (infertility is a female issue). It’s not just that infertility itself is 30% female-factor and 30% male-factor (with 40% mixed or unexplained), but the emotions are 100% shared between men and women. In this book, only the women give a shit about infertility. The men could care less about children and parenting with the exception of the power they gain from having a handmaid succeed. The men aren’t anxiously asking her what’s up or encouraging her along. The Commander doesn’t seem interested in children at all nor does Nick. It’s definitely a female-centric book, but the narrator gives us the thoughts of people that she couldn’t possibly observe (the conversations between the Wives, for instance) so why not make some assumptions that take male emotions into account?

Men and women may express their feelings differently, but I don’t believe for a second that I care more than Josh about having a child. I don’t believe that infertility hurts him less. I think we process our emotions differently and I think I may discuss mine more therefore it appears as if it is affecting me more. But all I need to do is see the bow of his back or the lines that appear between his eyes to know his true emotions. I have yet to meet the man who wanted to parent but was indifferent to infertility. I just get so cranked out when male feelings are dismissed or belittled. And I don’t even have a penis, so I imagine men become even more cranked out than I am right now.

So…your thoughts on that?

I’ll keep my answers to my questions brief since I’ve gone on and on about small discrepancies (after throwing the whole list out of whack!):

People very often cope with death or uncomfortable situations by resorting to euphemisms. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood quite deliberately chooses instead to refer to infants with disabilities, or infants that have died, through the use of a dysphemism (an unpleasant or derogatory word or expression substituted for a pleasant or inoffensive one) – “shredder.” How did this term affect you? Did you even take note of it? Why might Atwood have chosen such a word? How does it reflect or not reflect the contemporary discourse around pregnancy loss, still birth, and infant death as you may have experienced it?

Someone in Group A (I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten who) had a quote from Atwood that said that she didn’t include anything in the book that wasn’t easily imaginable based in today’s society and I think this is true too. I think that general society knows how to act when a woman loses her husband yet at the same time, can’t wrap their mind around mourning the loss of a child. While younger widows are encouraged after a mourning period to “date again” no one thinks twice about saying to a woman who just lost a child (whether it was a miscarriage or late term loss or stillbirth or neonatal death) that she could try again or “just adopt.” Until the child has been living for a bit, I don’t think our society knows how to mourn. And with that, I think you get this concept of the shredder–that children can be lost one day but found the next and the gain cancels out the loss. Anyone who has lost a child (in utero or out) knows that this isn’t the case at all.

Aunt Lydia promises the girls that “Ordinary is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will be come ordinary.” Has infertility ever become ordinary or commonplace to you? Do the shots and procedures and blood draws feel more familiar than life before this time? Can a person truly get accustomed to anything?

Yes and no. The first time I had to give myself an injection, I was panicked. It never became commonplace, but it became easier after that first time. So yes, I became accustomed to it. And certainly, there is a rhythm you enter where the morning blood draw becomes one more thing on a to-do list (until you’re waiting the results around noon). But at the same time, no. No, I’m still not used to treatments and all it brings. If I was, I wouldn’t be so panicked about my appointment next week.

I was quite bothered that the Handmaids took on the names of their Commanders (Ofglen, Ofcharles, Offred). Seems so domineering, de-personalizing — another tool in taking power away from women in Gilead. So archaic, even. Then I realized that we do the same in our culture, but with last names. Does this make it okay? Even women who keep their maiden name (no pun intended) after marriage tend to refer back to their father’s name. Do our customs continue to de-power and de-identify women? What would a culture that values the matrilineal look like?

In Judaism, which is matrilineal in a sense (Judaism is passed through the mother), there is still this patriarchal naming system (more for ceremony than for day-to-day life): It’s Melissa daughter of R. Which means my siblings and I still share this same formal name even though my day-to-day last name has changed due to marriage. It has never bothered me–I’m someone who changed my name with
marriage–but then you ask the question and the wheels start turning…

I’ve always felt as if names have this great power and it’s strange how women go through life with their identity tied to this one name and then they shed it–they shed that identity in a way–to take on this new name that doesn’t feel quite right. It’s like putting on someone else’s clothing.

We made this really conscious choice to only give our kids a single name even though it’s popular in America to give Jewish kids an “American” name and a “Hebrew” name. Our kids only have a single name, a Hebrew name, that is easily spelled and pronounced in English. I felt like it gave them a chance to create this single, great identity without feeling this pull to have to fit a single identity into many names. Does that make any sense? I mean, Moon Unit Zappa was bound to have a personality that formed somewhat out of this name and how the world interacted with that name. But what if she was Moon Unit sometimes and Sarah at other times? How could the Sarah and Moon Unit sides of her personality exist?

Which goes back to the same idea–how can we be one name until marriage and another after? Unless we change drastically with that ceremony so we fit our new name?

For many, many more mind-blowing questions and answers, jump up a post to the list and go to another blog. Better yet, join along too for the next book by signing up through there and read along next time with your own contributions!

Welcome to the eighth tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade–a book club from the comfort of your own living room. Grab a cup of coffee and start clicking away at the links below.

Just to explain, this book club is entirely online and open to anyone (male or female) in the infertility/pregnancy loss/assisted conception/adoption/parenting-after-infertility world (as well as any other related category I inadvertently left off the list). It is called a book tour because everyone reads the same book and then poses a question to the group. Participants choose a few questions to answer and then post their response on their blog. Readers can jump from blog to blog, commenting along the way.

Book: The Handmaid’s Tale
Author: Margaret Atwood
Start Date: October 31st
Post Dates: December 10, 11, and 12
(need an explanation of how a book tour works? Click here to go to a list of posts on the past book tours as well as information about all upcoming tours and book events.)

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (click on any of the links below to take you to a stop on this book tour. Jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on The Handmaid’s Tale. We’ve broken down the current tour into three groups. This is the smallest list since I messed up the balance by not posting with my original group. I take all the blame. A new list will be posted tomorrow).

Group A:

Everyday Stranger (Helen)
Sticky Bean (Kristen)
Road Blocks and Rollercoasters (R & R)
Weebles Wobblog (Lori)
Beaten But Not Bowed (Drowned Girl)
The Open Door (Deanna)
Anno di Consolation (Beruriah)

Even if you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t read The Handmaid’s Tale, you can still add your own thoughts on the blog tour or react to someone else’s critique.

Like the idea of being in a book club without leaving your living room? The next book for book tour #9 is a non-IF book (otherwise known as a pepper book by the Barren Bitches) The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler. The next 7 book tours or so all have author participation so you’ll also be able to interact online with Karen and ask your questions about her book.

The Details: Tour #9 will start December 13. Participants will read The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Fowler. On Wednesday, January 16th everyone will send one question based on the book (to get a sense of questions, click here to see the questions sent for book tour #2) to me. I will compile the questions into lists that will be emailed out to you on January 17th. Everyone will choose 3 questions from the list and answer them on their own blog on January 22–24th (we will break up into two or three smaller groups and you can choose which day works best for you when the date gets closer). Each day of the tour, I’ll also post a master list and people can jump from blog to blog, reading and commenting on the book tour.

If you would like to sign up to participate in book tour #9, leave a comment below or send me an email. I need the title and a link to your blog as well as an email address where you’d like the two or three book club emails sent. If a spouse wants to participate too and he/she doesn’t have their own blog, have them set up a blog solely for book tours (as we did with the Annex) and send me a link to that blog. And if you’re a reader without a blog, now is a great time to set up a space for yourself on Blogger. People will be able to find brand-spanking-new blogs because they will be on the book tour’s participant list. The next few tours are always listed on the new upcoming and past tours list. Happy reading.

Also: upcoming book event! January 9, 2008 at 8 p.m. (Wednesday night): online chat with Darci Klein of To Full Term. Read the book beforehand and bring your questions-OR-simply come and hear this discussion. Information will be emailed prior to the event, so if you plan on joining along send an email or leave a comment below specifying the To Full Term discussion (8 p.m. is based on the American EST which is UTC -5).

The Barren Bitches Book Brigade turns one on November 29th. Our little girl has grown up. This year, we read 8 books and had almost 100 participants. Taking myself out of the running because I do every tour and Josh because I force him to do every tour, there was a tie for most tours between two blogs who each slogged through six books with the Barren Bitches.

The Book Slogger Award for 2006-2007 goes to…

Beaten But Not Bowed (Drowned Girl)
Southern Infertility (Samantha)

At 5 tours, an honourable mention goes to Weebles Wobblog (Lori).

Speech, speech!

If for some reason you missed it, sign up began last week for Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale. All are welcome to join along.

The overwhelming opinion of those that expressed their opinion was having some variety in the book choice; alternating between IF/pg loss/adoption books (fiction or non-fiction) and…well…non-IF/pg loss/adoption books. IF/pg loss is only half (or hopefully less) of who we are therefore it should be half of what we read. Or something like that. I love reading IF/pg loss/adoption books with you because we come from a common experience but have such divergent opinions and thoughts. So I don’t want to give that up. But there are some really cool books floating through the world right now that would be cool to read with you too. So… For the sake of clarity, I’ve named the two categories “salt” (IF/adoption/pg loss) and “pepper” (non-IF/adoption/pg loss).

It’s time to vote for the next books. First and foremost, weigh in now if you would like to read Inconceivable by Julia Indichova or if you’d rather skip this book and go to the first Pepper book. If you are planning to participate in Inconceivable, let me know now. If you’d put it back in the pool for a later read, let me know too. Weigh in.

For both the Salt and Pepper books, the voting works the same way. Even if you haven’t joined in the past, you should vote to make sure that we’re covering books in the future that you’d want to read. Here’s how it works:

• Read the blurbs below and decide which books sound potentially interesting to you.
• Leave a note in the comment section with the numbers of ALL of the books you are willing to read. List the number to the left of the book (you may not be able to participate in all the future tours, but choose books that you’d like to read if you have the time to join along).
• You may also vote two books off the island. Don’t use this if you feel neutrally towards a book, but if there is no chance you would ever join along if we were reading a particular book, vote it off the island. Think of it as Survivor for books.

Got it? Read the blurbs, leave a comment with the numbers of ALL the books you’ll read, and vote one or two off the list (if you wish).

SALT BOOKS (all of these books have some tie to IF/pg loss/adoption–trust me; it may be small, but it’s there)

1. The Empty Picture Frame (Jenna Nadeau): a book by one of our own in the IF/pg loss blogosphere. A panoramic view of IVF and the day-to-day life of someone struggling with infertility.

2. Gilead (Marilynne Robinson): Won the Pulitzer Prize. The narrator is an Iowan preacher writing a letter to his seven-year-old son who may never know his older father due to the preacher’s poor health. The letter serves as a way for this father to leave behind a sense of himself for his child.

3. The Yiddish Policeman’s Union (Michael Chabon): what if, instead of Israel, Jews were given a temporary settlement in Alaska after World War II? Chabon takes us to the possible ending of the settlement in a detective-murder-mystery-many-other-genres type novel.

4. The Confessions of Max Tivoli (Andrew Sean Greer): Max Tivoli was born as a 70-year-old man and he is aging backwards, working his way towards becoming a newborn. Due to this strange phenomenon, his life intersects others at various points, constantly appearing as a new person each time.

5. Embryo Culture (Beth Kohl): not only a first-hand account of treatments and the emotions of infertility, but a look at treatments as an industry, how fertility is handled in other cultures, and the far-reaching grasp of technology.

6. The Mistress’s Daughter (A.M. Homes): A.M. Homes’ memoir about her reunion with the mother who placed her for adoption many years earlier and the father who is absent even when present is truly a look at nature vs. nurture–where do our bloodlines end and environment begins?

7. The Baby Void (Judith Uyterlinde): reviewed here (suggested by Drowned Girl).

8. So Close (Tertia Albertyn): again, a book by one of our own, this memoir covers Tertia’s quest to become a mother via IVF as well as her son, Ben’s, life and death.

9. Four Minus Three (Guitelle H. Sandman): It’s a story of how this mother lived through the de
aths of her three sons, at different times and ages (suggested by Julia).

10. Coming to Term (Jon Cohen): a non-fiction book covering pregnancy loss (suggested by Ms. Planner).

11. Tick Tock (Dr. Lillian Schapiro): This is about a young gyno resident who finds herself on the receiving end of fertility treatment (suggested by Kristen).

12. Almost Perfect (Dianne Blacklock): After 7 years of in-vitro treatment, the couple begins to drift apart and the guy starts an affair with another woman, who winds up pregnant at the drop of a hat (suggested by Kristen).

13. Baby Trail (Sinead Moriarty): it begins with a woman who carefully plans going off the pill and getting pregnant soon after (sound familiar?) only to discover she can’t plan everything. It goes on through her foray into fertility treatment (suggested by Kristen).

14. To Full Term (Darci Klein): Through her research and her stick-to-it-iveness, she is able to overcome the odds and avoid a fourth loss. Lots of facts and statistics but more about her true life story (suggested by Kristen).

15. Digging to America (Anne Tyler): two families adopt children from Korea. The book does not focus on infertility or adoption as the centerpiece, but rather uses these as a springboard to exploring our notions of family and how we create ties with the ones we love (suggested by Samantha).

PEPPER BOOKS (no ties to IF/pg loss/adoption as far as I know)

16. Songs Without Words (Ann Packer): Liz has always been the friend who takes care of Sarabeth. But when the tables turn and Liz is the one in need of comfort, Sarabeth is too riddled with traumatic memories to step up and provide support.

17. Eat, Pray, Love (Elizabeth Gilbert): “At the age of thirty-one, Gilbert moved with her husband to the suburbs of New York and began trying to get pregnant, only to realize that she wanted neither a child nor a husband. Three years later, after a protracted divorce, she embarked on a yearlong trip of recovery, with three main stops: Rome, for pleasure (mostly gustatory, with a special emphasis on gelato); an ashram outside of Mumbai, for spiritual searching; and Bali, for “balancing.”–from The New Yorker.

18. Water for Elephants (Sara Gruen): “The novel, told in flashback by nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski, recounts the wild and wonderful period he spent with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, a traveling circus he joined during the Great Depression.”–from Publishers Weekly.

19. The Jane Austen Book Club (Karen Fowler): “Five women and one man meet periodically to discuss the work of (arguably) the greatest novelist in English. Six people, one for each Jane Austen title. It is California, a hot summer in the Central Valley early in the 21st century, and these are ordinary people, neither happy nor unhappy, but each of them hurting in different ways, all of them mixed up about love.”–from The Washington Post.

20. The Eyre Affair (Jasper Fforde): “Surreal and hilariously funny, this alternate history will appeal to lovers of zany genre work (think Douglas Adams) and lovers of classic literature alike. The scene: Great Britain circa 1985, but a Great Britain where literature has a prominent place in everyday life.”–from Publishers Weekly.

Okay, get voting. The booth is now open until November 15th (Thursday) at 10 p.m. EST. New books will be announced in the roundup on the 16th. And weigh in on whether you’re planning on joining for Inconceivable by Indichova (currently on the side bar as the next book) or if we should jump to the first “pepper” (non-IF) book on the list after voting. If you do not want to leave your vote in the comments section below, you can email me your vote.