This week's acquisitions

* The Road from Coorain, Jill Ker Conway, Vintage 1990 (first 1989), billed as " a woman's exquisitely clear-sighted memoir of growing up Australian" (out in the bush).

On a flick through I was very taken with the paragraph (as she is leaving her mother and her home for good: "I dreaded the parting but after some rough moments I learned that time manages the most painful partings for us. One has only to set the date, buy the ticket, and let the earth, sin and moon make their passages through the sky, until inexorable time carries us with it to the moment of parting." (p. 235)

* Dangerous By Degrees: Women at Oxford and the Somerville College Novelists, Susan J. Leonardi, 1989. (They include Dorothy L Sayers, who, as I've written elsewhere, is one of my favourite authors - I'm hoping for some more background on Gaudy Night.

* The Frailty Myth: Women Approaching physical Equality, Colette Dowling, Random House, 2000 - hoping for some good facts and figures; I think I've already got the arguments.

* The Dark Brain of Piranesi and Other Essays, Marguerite Yourcenar, (Trans. Richard Howard, 1980)

* Fast Girls: Teenage Tribes and the Myth of the Slut, Emily White, 2002.

So there it was, a busy, interesting but not excessive week, then I went up to the British Museum today, and discovered they have a book sale on ... So add

* Enlightenment: Discovering the World in the Eighteenth Century, Kim Sloan (ed) - well it was a half price paperback, it is a beautiful book, and useful for handling sessions.

* Antonia Augusta: Portrait of a Great Roman Lady, Nikos Kokkinos, 1992 - "the most powerful and influential Roman woman of her time. The daughter of Mark Antony, wife of Drusus, mother of Claudius, grandmother of Caligula and great-grandmother of Nero ... well I should know more about her.


* Looking at Lovemaking: Constructions of Sexuality in Roman Art 100BC to AD250, John R. Clarke, Uni of California, 2001. Can't think of an excuse for that one except it looked fascinating. ...