"Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the girls in Azar Nafisi’s living room risked removing their veils and immersed...

"An inspiring memoir of family, community, and resilience, and an ode to the power of books to help us understand ourselves, from the renowned founder of Well-Read Black Girl. 'She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.'—Toni Morrison. For Glory Edim, that 'friend of my mind' is books. Edim, who grew up in Virginia to Nigerian immigrant parents, started the popular...

Barbara Halliwell, on a grant at Oxford, receives an unexpected package-a centuries-old memoir by a Korean crown princess. An appropriate gift indeed for her impending trip to Seoul, but Barbara doesn't know who sent it. On the plane, she avidly reads the memoir, a story of great intrigue as well as tragedy. The Crown Princess Hyegyong recounts in extraordinary detail the ways of the Korean court and confesses the family dramas that left her childless...

"Upon its first publication, Loving with a Vengeance was a ground-breaking study of women readers and their relationship to mass-market romance fiction. Feminist scholar and cultural critic Tania Modleski here revisits her widely read book, bringing to this new edition a review of the issues that have, in the intervening years, shaped and reshaped questions of women's reading, including romance novels, soap operas, and "chick lit." With her understanding...

"A compendium of more than 70 iconic works of art featuring women who read, from the Virgin Mary to Marilyn Monroe"--