What did you read over the Summer?

Lana - Mamamia Thursday 2 February 2012 2:41pm

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I packed a kindle on my holiday recently. It was a big step for me.  I’ve always been a book with pages girl but I REALLY wanted to read How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran and I couldn’t find it anywhere – well not in the page turning format.

And then I bought a kindle and two minutes later I had the book in front of me. Handy.

Mia had spoken about Caitlin Moran’s book so much, so much that I was using other books to block my ears to drown out the constant praise. You know how when someone raves about something constantly, talks it up and demands that you read it, it can lose its sparkle?  I wanted to read it but deep in the recesses of my brain I knew that it could never be as good as Mia said it was.

Turned out I was right.

It was better. Seriously.

To give you a real idea of what the book’s about this is how it is described on her website (which I am also addicted to)

1913 – Suffragette throws herself under the King’s horse.

1969 – Feminists storm Miss World.

NOW – Caitlin Moran rewrites The Female Eunuch from a bar stool and demands to know why pants are getting smaller.

There’s never been a better time to be a woman: we have the vote and the Pill, and we haven’t been burnt as witches since 1727. However, a few nagging questions do remain…

Why are we supposed to get Brazilians? Should you get Botox? Do men secretly hate us? What should you call your vagina? Why does your bra hurt? And why does everyone ask you when you’re going to have a baby?

Part memoir, part rant, Caitlin Moran answers these questions and more in How To Be A Woman – following her from her terrible 13th birthday (‘I am 13 stone, have no friends, and boys throw gravel at me when they see me’) through adolescence, the workplace, strip-clubs, love, fat, abortion, TopShop, motherhood and beyond.

I have never ever read a book with such clarity of language, such humour and so much intelligence all in one.  I started to think about things in a completely new light, I felt validated in so many of my beliefs and I felt part of something wonderful. I did begin to worry about the porn that my son is going to have access to. This particular point was rather startling to my husband when I suddenly erupted “We have to make sure there is decent porn for Ethan in our house.”  He is only 10.  We have a couple of years. I hope

I started to do that annoying thing when you read paragraphs aloud to anyone near you so that they can appreciate how brilliant the book is.   I underlined pages at a time, I told friends that unless they read the book I would have to terminate our friendship. I tweeted Caitlin so much about how I loved her every word that I am quite sure she has blocked me on Twitter.

So yes I loved the book.  Only one problem. Just after I finished reading it and started reading Ellen DeGeneres new book Seriously I’m Kidding– I dropped the kindle (in horror – I hated that book). It broke.  Real books don’t break.

This is what the rest of the Mamamia office (and their families) were reading:

Mia and Lana weren't the only ones who read this book - Nat, Lucy and Bec all read it too.

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What did you read over the summer?