Philobiblon

Where are all the female bloggers? HERE, in my weekly top ten.

A perfect first suggestion this week with the tale of a real femme fatale. Laura James’s CLEWS, “The Historic True Crime Blog”, reports on the case of Marie Nicolaiewna Tarnowska, of whom it was said in 1910: ““She is not yet thirty, but at least six men have ruined themselves for her; two of these met tragic deaths and four of them deserted wives and children.”

I particularly liked the case of one Borzlevski, who “invited Marie to shoot him through the hand to demonstrate his devotion (which she did)”. Then her husband challenged him to a duel and shot him again.

On to modern matters (and manners): What do (and should) women want in bed? Holly Combe on The F-word ponders the debate about “pro-sex feminism”.

Samhita on Feministing is at the intersection of feminism and environmentalism in considering why you should buy food from a local farmer, while Lucinda Marshall on ZNet Blogs questions whether you should buy items funding research into breast cancer.

Musings from Redwing Marsh, who’s a serious booklover, for anyone seeking recommendations, recalls learning how to write a diary as a child, while the question “Why do you blog?” is exercising Letters from Fairy-tale Land. She ponders her resolution to post regularly, and how it relates to her relationship with her father.

Teresa on Making Light meanwhile finds several lessons to be learned in a lively piece of human stupidity.

For the parent blog-readers, Christine Hurt on Blogcritics checks out the movie Madagascar with her under-sixes, finding that “unless they read the NYT book review” it misses the mark.

For some real life animal action, check out Maviesansmoi’s puppy blogging – and (if you can read the French) some lovely doggy tales. And while I’m going pictorial, there are some lovely pictures of Portugal by Sophil de l’eau. (Text also in French.)

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Edition 8 is here.

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Please, if you read a post in the next week by a woman blogger and think “that deserves a wider audience”, note it here in the comments here or contact me by email. And don’t be shy – please also nominate yourself.

The disclaimer: I’m trying to feature as wide a range of female bloggers as possible, so the views expressed may not reflect my own.

And finally, you may have noticed service has been a bit erratic lately – I’ve been entirely refurbishing a new flat, so most of my time has been spent on physical labour rather than at a screen. I hope normal conditions will be achieved by the end of the week.