The Books I'm Reading Now
I'm reading a novel in two timelines about a young woman posing as a cabin boy on a pirate's ship and a professor centuries later who tries to piece together her life, A True Account; I'm listening to Jennifer Wright's nonfiction account of a powerful, controversial, self-taught surgeon providing birth control and abortions in pre-Gilded Age New York, Madame Restell; and I'm listening to Britney Spears's memoir, The Woman In Me.
What are you reading these days, bookworms?
01 A True Account: Hannah Masury's Sojourn Amongst the Pyrates by Katherine Howe
In Katherine Howe's novel A True Account, a violent end is coming for the Golden Age of Piracy.
Hannah Masury has been hired out as a Boston waterfront inn worker since childhood, but when a man is hanged in the town square for piracy and rumors spread about a valuable Caribbean treasure, Hannah runs for her life.
She disguises herself as a cabin boy on the ship of a notorious pirate, determined to change her fate--and to try to find the notorious treasure.
Centuries later, professor Marian Beresford pieces together the story of Hannah's life from her first-person account--and tries to solve a mystery that Hannah may have been determined to take to her grave.
I received a prepublication edition of this title, published November 21, courtesy of NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company.
02 Madame Restell by Jennifer Wright
The subtitle of Jennifer Wright's nonfiction book is The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist, and in Madame Restell, Wright traces the humble beginnings, self-taught skills, carefully crafted aura, rise, fall--and rise and fall again--of the titular immigrant in pre-Gilded Age New York.
But Restell's story swirls with weighty issues still relevant today--women's rights and autonomy; the fight for fair wages; power abuses; class divides; societal pressures; wealth, privilege, and power abuses; race and racism; gender issues; and more.
Madame Restell is a feminist account of an audacious, controversial figure. I'm listening to this as an audiobook.
03 The Woman in Me by Britney Spears
In her slim memoir The Woman in Me, Britney Spears offers the story of her life to date: her youth, complicated family dynamics, the growth of her explosive fame--and the shocking loss of freedom and rights she suffered for years while her parents abused their power over her person, her estate, her finances, and her business decisions in the now-infamous conservatorship that lasted over 13 years.
I'm listening to this title as an audiobook, read by Michelle Williams.
If you like to read memoirs like I do, you might be interested in the Greedy Reading Lists here: