Category — Book Club

Here is the master list for the nineteenth tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade. What is the Barren Bitches Book Brigade? It’s a book club from the comfort of your own living room. The book club is conducted 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. We read both fiction and non-fiction.

Anyone can jump aboard–it’s a book club where you can drop in and out as you wish and all in the community are welcome.

Book: Navigating the Land of If (I know! My book!)
Author: Melissa Ford
Start Date: May 26
Question Due: June 24
Question List Sent Out: June 26
Post Date: June 29
(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 future tours.)
Something New: the participants on this tour will choose the next book.

About Navigating the Land of If: How can I describe my own book without it being twenty kinds of awkward?. Taken from the book’s website: “Navigating the Land of If gives the nitty-gritty on injections, rejections, biting your tongue during happy parent-to-be conversations, and trying not to cry over baby shower invitations.” You can read an excerpt of the book right here.

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (The blogs below are participating on this current book tour. On June 29, you’ll be able to jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on Navigating the Land of If. I will keep adding to this list until 11 p.m. on June 24. The list is currently open)

Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters (Yeah, I’m participating for my own book, so what? I’m not ruining perfect Barren Bitches attendance over some awkwardness)
The Annex
The Road Less Travelled
Baby Smiling in Back Seat
Weebles Wobblog
Baby Steps to Baby Shoes
Secrets of an Infertile Mom
Weber’s in Action
A View on My Life
Meepit on Parade
The Dragondreamer’s Lair
Clio
Sell Crazy Someplace Else
Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed
Baby Shmaybe?
Baby Making Journey
Birch and Maple
A Real Life
Hope in Briarrose
Sticky Feet
Here We Go Again
Tears are for Babies
It’s Not a Clown Car
Hello, My Name is M…and I’m Infertile

Not on the list and want to join? Drop me an email at thetowncriers@gmail.com. You can add yourself up until 11 p.m. on June 24.

How the book tour works:

(1) leave a comment or send me an email (thetowncriers@gmail.com) saying that you’re interested in participating. I need your blog name, blog url, and email address.

(2) read Navigating the Land of If by June 24 (or at least enough of it in order to ask a question to the group).

(3) create a single question that would kick off a discussion (in other words, any question that leads to more than a “yes” or “no” answer where someone can express their opinion) and mail it to me on June 24 (or any time beforehand). I will send you a reminder email close to the date. Click here to see sample questions from tour #4.

(4) on June 26, I will send you a list of possible questions. Everyone will choose 3 questions off the list and answer them in a blog entry.

(5) on June 29, people will begin to post their entry. Each day, I will post a linked list of all the people putting up their entry that day so people can go around and read the entries and comment (start a discussion back and forth in the comments section). Reading the entries and commenting on the posts is the best part of the tour–by the end of the week, you should have a comment from every participant (and maybe even a few new permanent blog readers).

Welcome to the eighteenth 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.

Anyone can jump aboard–it’s a book club where you can drop in and out as you wish and all in the community are welcome.

Book: The Red Tent
Author: Anita Diamant
Start Date: March 10th
Post Dates: May 26th
(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 future tours.)

About The Red Tent: According to Wikipedia, the book is “a first-person narrative which tells the story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob and sister of Joseph, a talented midwife and proto-feminist.

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (The blogs below are participating on this current book tour. You’ll be able to jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on The Red Tent.)

Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters (post below this one)
I Won’t Fear Love
The Road Less Travelled
Baby Smiling in Back Seat
Weebles Wobblog
Aurelia Ann
Coming2Terms
The Dragondreamer’s Lair

Even if haven’t read The Red Tent, 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 current group chooses the next book. The 19th tour will be…er…my book. We’re reading Navigating the Land of If by Melissa Ford and it will probably stray a bit from the traditional book club format, though I’m not entirely sure how. Read an excerpt from the book over here.

The Details: Tour #19 will start May 26. Participants will read Navigating the Land of If by Melissa Ford. On or before June 24th (the day before my blogoversary!), 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 by June 26th. Everyone will choose 3 questions from the list and answer them on their own blog on June 29th. 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 #19, 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 participants on the Navigating the Land of If book tour will choose the book for tour #20.

Happy reading.

Though it was simply the luck of the draw, it was especially fitting that this book turned out to be the 18th selection of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade. Eighteen is a special number in Judaism, symbolizing life (the word for life–chai–adds up to the number 18).

The difficulty of any novel set in a familiar space is making it new, and Anita Diamant constantly takes the reader out of the Bible and into her own imagination of life during that time period. She gives a voice to a character in the Bible who doesn’t have a voice–Dinah–and the women in her novel are, as Diamant states, “active agents in their own lives, not passive pawns or victims.”

I think what I love best about this book is the story I found on Diamant’s site about its origins. It had few reviews in major outlets and almost no advertising budget. It’s success was entirely in the hands of the early readers and I think that’s a pretty powerful statement about the story and the writing.

The family trees shown at the beginning of the book don’t include miscarriages, stillbirths, or children who died before weaning. Given the rate of infant mortality at the time, this was a logical method for “counting” children. Now that it’s much more rare (but still too common) to lose children both before and after birth, at what point do you think children should be added to the official family tree? At what point should they be added to the parents’ personal tally of children?

I kept coming back to this question so I guess I should probably try to answer it. In order to examine the question, I had to remove the idea of the state of medical care (or loss rates) or how often it occurred in Biblical times vs. now. The general population may have a numerical rate of occurrence, but the fact of the matter is that it’s 100% when it happens to you.

I really struggled to pin down a date and started as far out as possible. Anyone born alive was obviously added to the family tree. Anyone born still but over the age of viability I added to the tree. And then I started to work my way down, finally settling on ten weeks in utero. Somewhat a random distinction, but it’s the start of the fetal period.

Like so many aspects of infertility or loss, my emotional side and political side were at odds.

Dinah is awaited and welcomed by all of Jacob’s wives. The one daughter, the one to carry all their stories, all their voices. In the context of the book it is a literary device that allows the author to tell us stories of Jacob’s wives from their own perspectives. But what does it speak of to you? In your own life, have you felt, as Dinah does, a carrier of living memory? Do you feel your own voice to be better protected in the age of the blog, or do you see an enduring need for connection across generations?

This is such an interesting question because blogs do pass along our thoughts and voice in this very public manner, placing pieces of ourselves for others to carry. It’s not just the twins who will carry my stories to the next generation–all of you will carry my stories as well. I think I’m more interested in how others see themselves (as a carrier or as a giver).

“The Red Tent” vividly describes the ritual Dinah’s mother & aunts perform to celebrate her coming of age. Lately, I’ve been hearing about young girls being presented with cakes & gifts when they get their first periods. This was definitely NOT done when I was growing up! Describe your first period & your family’s reaction (if any) — how old were you, & how was the occasion marked (if at all)?

I’ve already spoken about my period enough for people to throw up in their mouths a bit so instead I’ll write about what I did for a student. Her mother died when she was nine or ten and her father was completely clueless about girls. She stayed after class one day and told me that she thought she had gotten her period for the first time. I sent her to the nurse to learn how to use a pad and to get some Tylenol.

When she got back, I told her that she should celebrate that night and she said that (1) she would never be able to discuss periods with her father and (2) her heart hurt too much to celebrate without her mother. I asked her show up at school a bit early the next day and come to my room.

The next morning, we had breakfast together and I told her that while I was not going to embarrass the crap out of her by discussing menstruation, I thought the moment should be marked. Just two women having muffins, celebrating being ladies. If her mother was not here to do it, she should not have to ask for someone to make the day special. Any adult who hears her news should throw her a small party, so I did.

I still think about that student. I have no idea where she is or what she is doing. She should be about 20-years-old by now; have experienced nearly 100 periods. I hope she always thinks about that day when she eats blueberry muffins.

Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at Stirrup Queens (above this one). You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: Navigating the Land of If by Melissa Ford.

Welcome to the seventeenth 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.

Anyone can jump aboard–it’s a book club where you can drop in and out as you wish and all in the community are welcome.

Book: Never Let Me Go
Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
Start Date: January 21st
Post Dates: March 9th
(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 future tours.)

About Never Let Me Go: Award-winning novel about a dystopian England. Saying anything more than that spoils the surprise.

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (The blogs below are participating on this current book tour. Each day, you’ll be able to jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on Never Let Me Go.)

Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters (below this post)
The Road Less Travelled
An Unwanted Path
Baby Smiling in Back Seat
The Dragondreamer’s Lair
Aurelia Ann
Destined to be an Old Woman with No Regrets
So It Goes
I Won’t Fear Love

Even if haven’t read Never Let Me Go, 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 current group chooses the next book. The 18th tour will be Anita Diamant’s, The Red Tent. According to Wikipedia, the book is “a first-person narrative which tells the story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob and sister of Joseph, a talented midwife and proto-feminist. The book’s title refers to the tent in which women of Jacob’s tribe must, according to the ancient law, take refuge while menstruating or giving birth, and in which they find mutual support and encouragement from their mothers, sisters and aunts.”

The Details: Tour #18 will start March 10. Participants will read The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. On or before May 20th (it’s a long reading period this time), 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 by May 22nd. Everyone will choose 3 questions from the list and answer them on their own blog on May 25th. 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 #18, 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 participants on the Anita Diamant book tour will choose the book for tour #19.

Happy reading.

Here is the master list for the seventeenth tour of the Barren Bitches Book Brigade. What is the Barren Bitches Book Brigade? It’s a book club from the comfort of your own living room. The book club is conducted 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. We read both fiction and non-fiction.

Anyone can jump aboard–it’s a book club where you can drop in and out as you wish and all in the community are welcome.

Book: Never Let Me Go
Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
Start Date: January 21
Question Due: March 4
Question List Sent Out: March 6
Post Date: March 9
(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 future tours.)
Something New: the participants on this tour will choose the next book and will vote on it right before Thanksgiving.

About Never Let Me Go: It is impossible to describe the book without ruining the surprise and hopefully, you will not Google it or look up information before starting to read it because it is best if you go in knowing nothing, but in case you need a reason to read it, it has won a lot of awards and pretty much rocked my world.

Barren Bitches Book Brigade List (The blogs below are participating on this current book tour. On March 9, you’ll be able to jump from post to post to read a plethora of opinions and thoughts on Never Let Me Go. I will keep adding to this list until 11 p.m. on March 4. The list is currently open)

Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters
Slaying, Blogging, Whatever…
The Road Less Travelled
An Unwanted Path
Baby Smiling in Back Seat
The Fertile Infertile
Mommy In Waiting
Aurelia Ann
Destined to be an Old Woman with No Regrets
Dittmer Digest
So It Goes

Not on the list and want to join? Drop me an email at thetowncriers@gmail.com. You can add yourself up until 11 p.m. on March 4.

How the book tour works:

(1) leave a comment or send me an email (thetowncriers@gmail.com) saying that you’re interested in participating. I need your blog name, blog url, and email address.

(2) read Never Let Me Go by March 4 (or at least enough of it in order to ask a question to the group).

(3) create a single question that would kick off a discussion (in other words, any question that leads to more than a “yes” or “no” answer where someone can express their opinion) and mail it to me on March 4 (or any time beforehand). I will send you a reminder email close to the date. Click here to see sample questions from tour #4.

(4) on March 6, I will send you a list of possible questions. Everyone will choose 3 questions off the list and answer them in a blog entry.

(5) on March 9, people will begin to post their entry. Each day, I will post a linked list of all the people putting up their entry that day so people can go around and read the entries and comment (start a discussion back and forth in the comments section). Reading the entries and commenting on the posts is the best part of the tour–by the end of the week, you should have a comment from every participant (and maybe even a few new permanent blog readers).