Category: Book reviews
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Winchester Writers’ Conference and the End of the World
How long ago was it? It feels like a hundred years, and just last year. Hang on, Terry Pratchett gave the plenary speech … When did he die? I picked up a book in the library and it reminded me of something important. It was … Okay … it was well over a decade ago.…
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Whodunnit?
Don’t ask me which women’s issue this article is about… I have written elsewhere about a “controversial” meeting that happened in my town a few weeks ago. It shouldn’t have been controversial beyond the room it took place in. If political groups want to talk to people with a range of views, whether they agree…
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No, this is the best feminist book … no, THIS is… No, wait…
We were sitting around cabaret tables, at the end of the main conference day. In front of us, a promising array of glasses and cutlery and other shiny things. At the top of the room, on the other side of an expanse of empty carpet that would no doubt soon be full of activity, long…
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All human life
All human life on the planet is born of woman – Adrienne Rich That quote introduces the editor’s column in the latest edition of The Radical Notion which I intended to lose myself in, but people just kept lending me books, and suggesting I read books, some of which were immediately irresistible and so the…
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What do puberty blockers and statins have in common?
The book Why We Eat (Too Much) is three years old now, but there’s a recent edition with an added chapter about COVID. The book tells how the author, Andrew Jenkinson, a surgeon who, after working in a bariatric clinic (specializing in last-ditch treatments for obesity), decided that our medical world doesn’t know enough about…
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Battles for the moral high ground
(by fair means or foul) My life ran to sublime chaos last week. I was determined not to read all the Strike books – it’s not just that they’re huge, it’s that they are huge and they are compulsive page-turners, so they guarantee you a week at least of putting your keys in the fridge…
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The woman in white
An addition to my occasional series in which I have fun reviewing old books — in this case because I’ve realised that for me, and anyone else who’s discovered real feminism or anti-racism in recent years, it’s well worth looking again at books you read years ago – it’s amazing how they change, in the…
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Tribalism
In the run up to the EU referendum, most of our (at that time enormous) pool of Labour Party activists failed to step up and join the campaigning. I found myself working with people from other parties, or from none, who came out to have those street conversations. The conversations were mostly a waste of…
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Feminists and socialists need this book
I knew Hannah Barnes’ Time to Think was an important book. So many people with good brains and good hearts have been worried about what the current fashion for gender ideology is doing to our kids. Reading reviews and articles about the book, I could see Barnes’ investigation into what happened at the Tavistock was…
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Here’s hope for the ex-Labour many
The loss of the 2019 general election, Laura Pidcock losing her seat, Jeremy Corbyn’s resignation and then the inability of the left to come up with a credible alternative leadership candidate left many anti-austerity activists, those seeking ‘a better, kinder politics’ utterly bereft. Things have picked up a bit with the #CostofLivingCrisis and #DemandBetter campaigns…
Kay Green 