Some Books I've Been Reading Lately

Right now I'm reading The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman. It's the true story of Jan and Antonia Zabinski, a Christian Polish couple living during WWII. Before the war the couple were caretakers of a zoo; when all the animals were either killed or taken to German zoos, the Zabinskis housed over three hundred Jews, keeping them safe from the Nazis. I'm still in the middle of the book, but it's an easy read and an intriguing story.
I'm also reading an edition of The Taming of the Shrew that also includes texts from the time period dealing with marital relations. I think sometimes the story gets a bad rap as being chauvinist; it is very interesting to learn from the book that "shrew-taming" stories were quite common in England, and were quite violent against the women. However, in Shakespeare's story, Petruchio never hits Katharina, even though she frequently hits him. The book suggests that it is the influence of the church and it's condemnation of domestic violence that influenced Shakespeare to have a gentler treatment of the subject.
I think it would be helpful for many women today to see that being b----- won't make them happy or get them want they want in life. At the very end of the play Katharina states:

136 Fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind brow,
137 And dart not scornful glances from those eyes,
138 To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor:
139 It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads,
140 Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds,
141 And in no sense is meet or amiable.
142 A woman mov'd is like a fountain troubled,
143 Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty;
144 And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
145 Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
146 Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
147 Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,
148 And for thy maintenance commits his body
149 To painful labor both by sea and land,
150 To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
151 Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;
152 And craves no other tribute at thy hands
153 But love, fair looks and true obedience;
154 Too little payment for so great a debt.

I think women today often take for granted how hard our husbands work for us.

In a side note, for all you Twilight fans out there (you know who you are :) ), I just want to say that I've read all the books, and enjoyed them. I also just recently finished reading Jane Eyre for the umpteenth time, and it blows Twilight out of the water for sheer passion. I guess that's why Jane Eyre has been around for so long.