Astrea Loves

'Preparing for the Perimenopause and Menopause' by Dr Louise Newson

Dr Louise Newson is the UK's leading menopause specialist, and she's determined to help women thrive during the menopause.

Despite being something that almost every woman will experience at some point in their lives, misdiagnosis, misinformation and stigma are commonplace. In Preparing for the Perimenopause and Menopause, Dr Newson will demystify the menopause and show why every woman should be perimenopause aware, regardless of their age.

'Inspirational Women in Academia: Supporting Careers and Improving Minority Representation' by Natalia Kucirkova and Loleta Fahad

Expert-led, interdisciplinary, and international in scope, this insightful book aims to increase the representation and leadership potential of women working in academia, examining the intersection of multiple inequalities with a specific focus on gender, age, ethnicity, and disability. A carefully crafted response to educational inequalities, the volume posits an invitation for dialogue around what it means to have success in higher education.

'The Four Winds' by Kristin Hannah

The Four Winds is a deeply moving, powerful story about the strength and resilience of women, the value of female friendship and the ability to love again by the multi-million copy number one bestselling author of The Nightingale, Kristin Hannah.

She will discover the best of herself in the worst of times...
 

Wordslut: a Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language by Amanda Montell

Grounded in decades of innovative feminist scholarship, full of witty personal stories, and written with the pragmatic aim of disrupting and changing the status quo, this is a book for anyone interested in gender equality, wordplay, or fostering precise communication.
 

'Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London between the Wars' by Francesca Wade

'I like this London life . . . the street-sauntering and square-haunting.' Virginia Woolf, diary, 1925.

A fascinating study of five writers who lived in Mecklenburgh Square, Bloomsbury. The modernist poet Hilda Doolittle, the maverick classicist Jane Ellen Harrison, the economic historian Eileen Power and the novelist and essayist Virginia Woolf. UCL gets a few mentions, although not always favourably! Harrison was turned down twice for the Yates Chair of Classical Archaeology, with two of the committee signing a document stating it was ‘undesirable that any teaching in University College should be conducted by a woman’.

An erudite but accessible read, this book illuminates the courage of independent women in the early 20th century.

My Wild and Sleepless Nights'' by Clover Stroud

'The best evocation of the all-consuming, self-eroding reality of motherhood, while also being luminous with love.' - The Sunday Times 

A beautiful, reflective account of all aspects of motherhood from a parent of five children aged one to seventeen. Stroud has plenty of wisdom and insight to offer women at all stages of their journey through parenting - from conception, to pregnancy to raising children - all with refreshing honesty.

'How to Break Up With Your Phone' by Catherine Price

How to Break Up With Your Phone is a smart, practical and useful plan to help you conquer your mobile phone addiction in just 30 days - and take back your life in the process.

Recent studies have shown that spending extended time on our phones affects our ability to form new memories, think deeply, focus and absorb information, and the hormones triggered every time we hear our phones buzz both add to our stress levels and are the hallmark signs of addiction. In How to Break Up with Your Phone, award-winning science journalist Catherine Price explores the effects that our constant connectivity is having on our brains, bodies, relationships, and society at large and asks, how much time do you really want to spend on your phone?

'Becoming' by Michelle Obama

Obama writes with a refreshing candor, as though her keen awareness of her celebrity is matched only by her eagerness to shed the exhausting veneer that helped enable her husband’s political rise. 

'Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong' by Angela Saini

Shedding light on controversial research and investigating the ferocious gender wars in biology, psychology and anthropology, Angela Saini takes readers on an eye-opening journey to uncover how women are being rediscovered.

'Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men' by Caroline Criado Perez

It might seem ironic that the central figure in Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men is a man, but Perez argues convincingly that the “default male” is the figure our world is designed around.
 

Lean in : women, work, and the will to lead' by Sheryl Sandberg

Sandberg forces you to open your eyes to the fact that women often hold themselves back from opportunities. She likens it to women choosing not to sit at the table and lean in when they deserve to; their achievements inspiring feelings of guilt and “the imposter syndrome” when instead they should produce celebration and pride.

'Living a Feminist Life' by Sara Ahmed 

In Living a Feminist Life Sara Ahmed shows how feminist theory is generated from everyday life and the ordinary experiences of being a feminist at home and at work.

'The Gendered Brain: The new neuroscience that shatters the myth of the female brain' by Gina Rippon

Rippon, in her book, maintains biology plays no core role in differentiating female brains from male brains. As a watershed in the history of science, She considers her findings comparable to "the idea of the Earth circling around the sun".

'Troubling Women: Feminism, Leadership, and Educational Change (Feminist Educational Thinking)' by Jill Blackmore

Jill Blackmore argues that the particular approaches taken by feminist theory towards educational leadership now require reviewing in the light of the radical restructuring of educational systems.

'We should all be feminists' by Chimanda Ngogi Adichie

 In this personal, eloquently argued essay – adapted from her much-admired TedX talk of the same name – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness.