I am constantly drawn to works written by women, about women. The pages of history are littered with the public lives of men: their wars, their treaties, their adventures, and their ambitions. But, as Virginia Woolf asked, Why are these stories anymore more interesting than the story of a woman's life? Why is the storm and tempest of a parliament any more relevant or revealing of the human condition than the management, feuds and periods of peace of a home? Indeed, I find that the stories of the private are always far mor honest and pertinant than the history of men - which is oftentimes no less fictional than a story.

So it was with great pleasure that I devoured my copy of 'The Stone Diaries' by Carol Shields. She takes the least likely protagonist and makes her relevant and even representative of her times. A lovely insight to the real developments of the 20th century - not the bombs and wars, but the people and their stories. Along the way Shield draws exquisite portraits of even the most marginal of characters: the long-living Magnus Flett, the exuberant 'Fraidy' Hoyt, the late-blooming 'Beans', the chameleon like Cuyler Goodwill and of course the protagonist herself, Daisy Goodwill-Hoad-Flett.

Written in a fascinating blend of mock-autobiography, third person voiced commentry and speculative assumption, 'The Stone Diaries' is one of the best books I read in 2009.

What a fabulous way to be thrust into the mid-nineteenth century in such an enveloping way. Celeste de Chabrillan is one of the most complex and unique personages of the Victorian era, and the memoirs of her time between Melbourne and France are compellingly honest and give enormous insight into a woman's world.
She is brutally frank about everything - her racism, her marriage, her infamous experience as a Parisian courtesan, her mother, as well as modest about her strengths, kindnesses and stoicism. The tragic course of the final chapters gives the 21st century reader a view of how heartbreakingly large and frightening the world was at that time and how tenuous and uncertain life was. Yet despite it all, people achieved all sorts of feats and lived and thrived. This diary tells more than the tale of one French woman's 5 year period. It tells us the common story of our ancestors, and reveals our own luck at being alive in this age of comforts and miracles.

A riveting glance at the world of evolutionary linguistics - examining the various extant theories about how human language evolved. Author Christine Kenneally surveys the personalities (like Stephen Gould and Chomsky) and theories of the birth of language in an accessible and constantly interesting manner. The reader, moreover, is introduced not only to the theories of evolutionary linguistics, but the history of the field itself.

I recommended this book to any amateur or professional linguist, philologist or person who has pondered the miracle of human speech and asked herself 'how', 'when' or 'why'.