What I’ve Been Reading Lately…

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“Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own,” Kate Bolick

   Bolick’s book is half-memoir half-advice: she uses her own life as the main example to show how one can lead a successful, happy life as a single person. She also uses examples of other women who were maybe single, maybe not, but who were independent in a time when women simply were not independent: Edith Wharton and Neith Boyce being two examples. Bolick concludes that “Solitude was a gift. A world was waiting to welcome me if I was willing to enter it alone,” something I have found to be absolutely true. 

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“The Infinite Plan,” Isabel Allende

   This novel, by well-known Chilean author Isabel Allende, is her first that not only takes place in the U.S., but has a full set of American (white) characters, and it definitely has a different feel to it. Her novel “The House of the Spirits” changed my life, but I find her other novels from that same period are somewhat exaggerated and stereotyped–so this one was a welcome change. It follows a white man growing up in a Latino neighborhood who has to come to terms with his demons, both literal and metaphorical, in order to take charge of his life.

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