Power Notebooks is a series of brief-but-potent meditations on women, autonomy, independence, and power. Throughout the book, Roiphe draws on her experiences as an outspoken writer and critic—and a sometimes controversial activist. She also seeks insights into her own unstable affairs and breakups from the lives of outwardly successful women writers, including Sylvia Plath and Simone de Beauvoir.
In this collection of muddled stream-of-consciousness essays, Roiphe writes about her own toxic relationships with men and her struggle to find her place in a world where she often feels misunderstood and undervalued. She isn't apologetic for her mistakes, but rather wants to understand what led them to happen in the first place and why she feels such a strong pull toward submissive and abusive partners.
Like her other books, this is an audacious assessment of her messy life. But it's also sharp, smart, and literate. Whether she's theorizing about the strange, unconventional literary marriages she parsed in Uncommon Arrangements or the cultural idiosyncracies she celebrated in In Praise of Messy Lives, Roiphe is never less than a force to be reckoned with.
The Lenovo IdeaPad Y545 is an excellent Ultrabook that features the latest Intel mobile processors and plenty of storage space. What sets it apart from most other modern notebooks is its impressive PC WorldBench 98 score of 159. It's a decent performance boost over the average laptop, and enough to justify this model's premium price tag. However, we do wish it had a touchscreen display.
