Michael Chabon grew up in the 70s, a semi-practicing Jewish child of divorce, often picked on for being different in school. I’m about 20 years younger, lapsed Episcopalian, and while my parents don’t always seem to like each other very much, they raised my sister and I together behind a (mostly) united front. Like Chabon, I was (and am) wildly geeky, but I found “my people” at a young age and don’t have any real memories of being bullied or teased or anything like that. […]
Wish it had been quite a bit longer!
My love for Michael Chabon has been well documented on CBR. While I enjoyed this novella — my main complaint is its incredible brevity (which I know is the point of a novella, but still) — it definitely wasn’t one of my favorites of his. True, it’s skewed towards a younger audience, but so was Summerland and I loved that book so much that it made my husband jealous. “A bitter, disappointed, and jealous man kills the man he believes to be his wife’s lover, this you consider […]
Bob Ripley was kind of an asshole
The subject of this book, Leroy Robert Ripley of “Ripley’s Believe it or Not!”, was very interesting. He was a strange, strange man who came up with an incredible concept and made quite a name for himself, although he remained unhappy for most of him life. The writing, however, left something to be desired. Thompson’s style is weirdly informal and relaxed, and comes off like he didn’t do his research (which I’m sure he did!) — more like he’s just making stuff up on the fly. The […]
I recognized her name from Nickelodeon….
Stefanie Wilder-Taylor hosts a late night (well, 9pm) stand up show on Nickelodeon. I knew I had heard her name somewhere before I read the book, and it struck me at one point. Her stand up (which I’ve never really watched, but I catch the commercials when they rerun Friends…) focuses mostly on mom stuff. I doubt, however, that it gets as real as this book does. Most of I’m Kind of a Big Deal: And Other Delusions of Adequacy focuses on Wilder-Taylor’s (slow, grueling) ascent […]
“Peculiar” Is Right
What a strange book. The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman had its moments — usually bizarre to the point of being hilarious moments — but overall it seemed intentionally confusing and strange. Set in 1950s, The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman stars a young man named, of course, Thomas Penman. His household is quite bizarre: his parents are locked in some unspoken war that he can’t quite figure out, but it involves their multitude of dogs being allowed to shit all over the house. His grandfather is slowly […]
Lots of people die in Alaska
That’s basically what I learned from Heather Lende’s If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name: News from Small-Town Alaska. Granted, the author writes the obits for her local newspaper, so many of her stories lead back to that, but still. Plane crashes seem insanely common, along with people drowning on fishing boats and falling off mountains and all the other dangers associated with living in the middle of nowhere. Plus there’s the fact that the nearest hospital to Lende’s small town of Haines, Alaska, is about 4 […]
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