Coffee Break: Textured Vase

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1. So one of my New Year’s resolutions is to read a book a week. Happy to say I’m on track with that, alternating between heavier and lighter reads. For Women’s History month, I have decided to read all books by women authors. Does anyone have any recommendations for outstanding books authored by women? I read predominantly fiction, and would like to stay there, but really any sub category within that is free game.

   1. Emma.

      New movie version coming out. I found a manga version for my kids hoping it is the gateway drug into reading the real thing.

   2. My favorite author is Alice Munro and her stories are all about women. To stay directly on theme, I’d recommend Lives of Girls and Women.

   3. Little Fires Everywhere and Where the Crawdads Sing are the best fiction I’ve read recently – both by female authors!

      1. I was also completely blown away by little fires everywhere. I also started reading Celeste Ng’s debut, Everything I never told you. Also great read!

         1. Will have to check that out next, thanks!

         2. I am STOKED that it’s becoming a Netflix miniseries because that was one of the best books I read last year. So good.

   4. Out of books I’ve read recently, I liked A Woman is No Man – I wouldn’t call it a great work and it did have some issues, but the story is so gripping and saddening.

   5. Just finished Ain’t Nobody Nobody based on a recommendation from here, and really enjoyed it. And I second the suggestion for Where the Crawdads sing.

      1. I’m glad you liked it!

         OP, have you read NK Jemison or Carmen Maria Machado?

   6. Americanah. I think about that book at least once a week.

      Tana French for mysteries.

      Rainbow Rowell for YA — Eleanor and Park is sweet.

      1. I also loved Americanah and Tana French! I also just finished “The Whisper Network” which I thought was a good mix of thought provoking and soap opera. What genre are you looking for?

   7. Roxane Gay. If you want fiction, I’d go with her collection of stories, Difficult Women. My favorite author of all time is Margaret Atwood. I think her best book is The Robber Bride, which is not dystopian like Handmaid’s Tale and some of her other books.

      1. The Robber Bride is my favorite Atwood as well!

      2. +1 for Margaret Atwood. She is my favorite. My cat (RIP) was named Margaret Catwood.

         1. Love the cat name!!!

   8. Octavia Butler, the pride of my hometown Pasadena, California! Start with Kindred.

   9. I recommend Pachinko; The Dutch House; Olive, Again; A Place for Us; Saints for All Occasions; The Turner House; The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (and the Netflix movie version starring Lily James is sweet, too); the Elena Ferrante Neopolitan series
      +1 to Americanah and all the Jane Austen…I’m partial to Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice

   10. The entire romance genre is at your disposal, being a genre dominated by female authors writing for female readers. Alisha Rai, Courtney Milan, Alyssa Cole, Nora Roberts/JD Robb, Tessa Dare are among my favorites. You’ll find a combination of contemporary and historical with this group.

       1. Also a huge fan of Kelly Bowen, Jasmine Guillory, Helen Hoang, Grace Burrowes, Julie James, and more. A surprising proportion of my favorite romance authors are/were lawyers, and sometimes that bleeds through to the story.

       2. +1! Big fan of Tessa Dare, Sarah MacLean, Alyssa Cole and Kresley Cole. The heroines are actually *smart* not like usual chick lit (e.g., Shopaholic) where the heroine makes inexplicably dumb moves to drive the story forward. Favorite series: Girl Meets Duke, Scandal & Scoundrel, Reluctant Royals, Immortals After Dark.

   11. The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah (I will sing this book’s praises from the rooftops all.day.long!)
       Second Little Fires Everywhere, and for something with a similar feel, All We Ever Wanted by Emily Giffin
       Just finished Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon, about the interesting lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley
       The Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict, about badass Hedy Lamarr

   12. Girl Woman Other by Bernardine Evaristo was one of the best things I read last year.

   13. I really loved Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts (ignore the cutesy/juvenile title).

       Seconding Celeste Ng and Tana French and nominating for thrillers and police procedurals Denise Mina. Mina’s Conviction was very different than most thrillers, definitely worth reading if you like that kind of thing.

   14. Seanan McGuire (also writes under Mira Grant) for paranormal/urban fantasy – I particularly like her InCryptid series for a light read but some of her other series are heavier.
       Gail Carriger for steampunk fantasy.
       the entire backlog of Diana Wynne Jones if you haven’t read her adult books yet (but plenty of her YA books are great to read as an adult too!)
       Jennifer Donnelly – Revolution is one of my favorite books, set in modern & Revolutionary France

   15. All Philippa Gregory’s historical novels
       Read/ re-read Austen and the Brontes

   16. If you are open to fantasy, I am loving NK Jemison’s The Broken Earth trilogy.

   17. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett was excellent. I did the audiobook narrated by Tom Hanks. Loved it.

   18. Just finished Jenny Offill’s Weather today and loved it. Also loved her Dept. of Speculation.

       In the last year or two, my favorite fiction by women also includes Zinzi Clemmon’s What We Lose, Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black, Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker (which is about 15 years old but I just got around to it), Happiness by Aminatta Forna, Rachel Cusk’s fantastic trilogy, and everything by Munro, as someone else mentioned.

   19. I recently read Such a Fun Age in one plane ride, it was pretty good.
       The Giver of Stars is great.
       A Woman is No Man is amazing, make sure to read the author’s note/interview in the back, if your copy has it.
       Jasmine Guillory writes diverse romance that I like a lot.
       Kate Quinn’s The Alice Network is a great WWII historical fiction pick; I also liked The Huntress but opinions vary on that one.
       The Great Alone by Jodi Piccoult is very good.
       I like both of Angie Thomas’ books- technically YA, but they’re great nonetheless.
       Widows of Malabar Hill is fiction, but it’s about the first female solicitor in India.
       Stories for Punjabi Widows is good- but definitely somewhat risqué.
       Anything by Geraldine Brooks. I especially liked People of the Book.
       Burial Rites by Hannah Kent was one of my favorite reads in 2019.
       Song of Achilles and Circe are re-telling of myths, I liked Achilles better than Circe.
       Station Eleven, if it isn’t too close to home right now. ;)
       I Am, I Am, I Am is nonfiction, but really, really engaging.
       Home Fire is another good one.
       Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld if you like Pride and Prejudice!

   20. If you like mysteries that transport you elsewhere, Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti series set in Italy (mostly in Venice) is wonderful. She’s an American writer who has lived in Italy a long time and writes about the people, places and circumstances with deep knowledge. I love it that the characters in the series age and grow as it goes along, so that children you meet in the first book are young adults in the most recent ones, and so on. I alsways feel as if I just got back from Venice after reading one of her books!

2. Kiddo is tasked with doing a report on Martha Washington and I ran across this:

   https://www.colorlines.com/articles/las-marthas-will-make-you-think-twice-about-border-latinas-and-class

   IDK if anyone here is from Laredo but this is just . . . wild

   1. That’s fascinating. Thanks for sharing.

3. Talking to friends and debating who to cast my vote for in California…would love thoughts!

   My heart is with Warren. Debating between voting Warren or Biden. Ultimately, I really don’t want Sanders (though of course I will vote for anyone but Trump come November). Thoughts?

   1. Check the morning thread :) Majority said Biden.

      1. +1 on Biden, it’s key to get him enough delegates to stop Bernie. Warren won’t be able to stop Bernie.

      2. Dad would go with Biden. Elizabeth Warren may be smarter then Biden, but she is to polarizing, Dad says. Do not go with Sanders unless you want to loose your 401k, Dad says. He is not ready for his brand of “politiks”, Dad says. He says he misspelled this word on purpose, whatever that means. I wish I knew what all of this is about, b/c Dad is not even a Democrat.

   2. Give the vote to someone you believe can win. I would say at this point a primary vote for anyone other than Biden is by default a vote for Bernie.

      1. +1

         1. +2

   3. Vote your heart in the primary. Vote the incumbent out in November.
      I say this as a person who voted for Warren in Texas.

   4. Warren. The better she does, the fewer delegates go to Sanders.

      1. Not necessarily. You have to get 15 percent of the vote to get any delegates, so Warren may not pick up an delegates.
         We should have ranked choice voting, but until we do, I think it’s reasonable to vote for your second or third choice (eg., Biden) to stop your last choice (eg., Sanders) from getting the nomination.

      2. Go directly to Sanders. If she drops out and then doesn’t endorse Biden, her delegates may go to Sanders esp if she endorses him. Who knows what she does, but that would be my concern.

   5. Warren, then Sanders in November.

   6. I’m also in CA and voted for Warren. My first choice was Pete, though, and Biden has always been my last choice, so even if that means that Sanders wins the nomination, I’m okay with that. I don’t think a Sanders or Biden presidency will look all that different policy-wise because even if they do manage to win, neither will have the coattails to carry the senate and neither will manage to get anything significant passed. I don’t think either of them will be especially effective at governing, but they will be better than Trump, so obviously I’ll vote for them, but I won’t be happy about it.

   7. I’m also in California and I’m voting for Warren tomorrow. But I’m less strident than you on not wanting Bernie… I agree with much more of his politics than Biden and just don’t like his personality. Ultimately I’ll support whoever the nominee is, but I’m not excited about either of the old white men who it will likely be. I’m sad and frustrated that we’re in this position and feeling a lot of guilt that I didn’t volunteer/campaign/do more to help Warren. I think she would make a fantastic president.

      1. This exactly.

      2. This x1 million.

   8. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/if-you-think-elizabeth-warren-would-be-the-best-president-you-should-vote-for-her-now.html

   9. My heart is with Warren but I’m going with Biden.

      A lot of hearts were with Hillary… I think democrats need to get pragmatic and fast. It was disappointing to me because I really love her, but I am all about what I think will win next November. In Texas that’s definitely not Bernie! People really don’t like him, including all of the democrats I’ve spoken to!

      1. Polls > anecdata for now (even though we know that polls can be wrong). Bernie is ahead of Biden in Texas at the moment, but we’ll see what happens tomorrow.

      2. Also, I get why you want to put your vote towards the person who seems more likely to be a frontrunner for the nominee, but I’m voting for Warren because I want her to be able to look at my state and see my vote counted in the total. I want her to know that she had my support.

         1. I don’t want to be rude but do you honestly think she cares if you, personally, voted for her if she doesn’t come anywhere close to getting delegates in your state? I don’t think she’s going to be like, “Wow, I lost big but at least Anon at 4:12 voted for me! That really salves the burn!” There’s no way she’s getting the nomination. Do you want your vote to count for nothing? It’s like voting for the two people who dropped out of the race. I mean, if making a point’s that important to you vs. who actually faces Trump in the fall, I guess there’s nothing I can say to that.

            I honestly think that given what’s happened in the last 24 hours, a vote for Warren is a vote wasted (anywhere). But do you.

            1. You’re obviously being deliberately over-literal. I want her to see that she got 10 million votes instead of 9 million because a million people decided not to “waste their vote” on her. “Wasting a vote” is not a thing in the primary stage.

            2. ““Wasting a vote” is not a thing in the primary stage.”

               Au contraire, it absolutely is! Do you have absolutely no investment in who ultimately goes up against Trump in November? Like you legit do not care whether it’s Sanders or Biden?

            3. Ugh can you just not today? This was a civil thread until you came in.

            4. “Ugh can you just not today? This was a civil thread until you came in.”

               LOL, sorry your delicate sensibilities can’t handle your opinions being challenged.

            5. Anon at 5:09, I legit do not care whether it’s Sanders or Biden in November. Both of them turn off large swaths of voters, including me. I’ll vote for either one in November, but I’m not looking forward to that.

            6. If you don’t care if it’s Sanders or Biden, then it’s logical for you to vote for whoever you like best. But OP said she doesn’t want the nominee to be Sanders. And it’s nonsense to suggest that “wasting your vote is not a thing in the primary stage.” If you vote for a non-viable candidate, you are wasting your vote, just like in a general election it’s a waste of your vote to vote for a Libertarian or Green Party candidate. People are still entitled to do it if they want to and some people do it to send a message, but others are entitled to say they’ve wasted their vote because they had no more say in picking the winner than they would have if they’d stayed home.

   10. I really hope Warren is still in it come my primary on the 10th. Have been looking forward to voting for her for months.

       1. Boo! Dad does not like her, so I say FOOEY!

   11. I’m not in a Super Tuesday state, but – SHE’S ELECTABLE IF YOU ^&*(ing VOTE FOR HER.

       1. https://twitter.com/AlyssaMastro44/status/1233049874544910338
          See: these fabulous t-shirts

       2. That’s the whole point. Not enough people want to vote for her or she would have finished better in the primaries that have been held up to this point. Sorry, it IS a popularity contest and Warren lost. I am not going to throw my vote away voting for her just because she’s a woman. She has no chance of winning the nomination, no matter how much people here are browbeaten about voting for her.

          1. Less than 5% of the delegates have been awarded and she has no chance? You’re falling into the media’s story of it has to be Biden or Sanders.

             1. Sigh. Please, by all means, stay mired in denial about what the previous primary results and current polls say about Warren’s chances of winning the nomination. I am sure all that information is all just a vast media conspiracy. Just like the one about Coronavirus, according to Trump. You sound as paranoid and irrational as he does.

                I would love to see a woman president and I wish this was the year we were going to get there. But it’s not, because Warren is obviously not the woman people want to vote for. Maybe next election cycle.

   12. California, here. I voted for Warren. I think she’s the best. It’s just not clear that anyone else is such an obvious victor over Trump, so I’m voting for who I want. Screw it. I like her, I think she’ super smart, and for the love of g-d can we please not have yet another old white male???

4. I’m going for a gel manicure this afternoon, and really looking forward to the treat! What are your favorite current nail polish colors? My nails are a round shape, and I’ve had OPI dulce de leche lately. Gel lasts forever on me so I’m looking for a color that will take me through the third week in March- any springy cheerful favorites? No major client events so I’m open to almost anything (I wouldnt get shrek green no matter the occasion)

   1. Can I use gel nail color on my regular nail?

      1. Yes

         That’s what it is.

      2. Yes, you can apply gel nail polish to natural nails. It’s harder on my nails than regular polish, but at least it doesn’t chip/smear as soon as I get to my car. And I have weak, peel-y nails to begin with, so YMMV.

      3. Yes, it can be applied to your natural nails. The removal process can be rough on the nails because you need to apply a cotton pad soaked on acetone and then scrape it off. Although you may also see the polish start to lift up. I admit I have just peeled it off myself when it starts to lift. You can also book just a gel polish removal at your nail salon.

   2. I don’t know the name of the color, but I got a lovely pale white-ish blue recently and it looks awesome.

   3. My favorites for winter to spring colors are yellows (Sun, Sea and Sand in My Pants by OPI, especially if you have a deeper skin tone, Exotic Birds Do Not Tweet if you have a lighter skin tone)
      and Grayish Lavenders with a little shimmer (ILNP Lilac Bridges or OPI Nice Set of Pipes or Do You Lilac It)

   4. Opi Aurora Berryalis – a pinkish red that is not as intense as a true red and just says happy to me.

5. Just wanted to say when I get my break I really enjoy reading corporette. I would never buy 99% of this stuff (like this crazy vase) but I appreciate the community here and the comments section. Happy Monday everyone

   1. Love the community here, but counterpoint, I would love to have this vase on my table! :)

   2. Yes, we are a great community, led by Kat, Kate, Elizabeth and others. For many years, we gather strength by relying on each others to face the difficult situeations we face, be it in the office, with our personal lives and families, or with our boyfriends. The HIVE has always provided me with succor and with Kat’s leadership, we are all stronger together then we ever are alone. So I second your motion to commend the HIVE for all it has done for us over the years! YAY!!!

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