As a loyal listener of “This American Life,” I’ve been listening to stories from David Sedaris for ages. I rarely find him shocking (do people find him shocking?), but actually, hilarious and delightful. I would go so far as to say that I find him to be a comfort, and a familiar. This is the first of his books that I’ve actually listened to with my eyes. His voice is immediate and steadily present for me, in the best possible way. A series of stories […]
See what courage sounds like
I usually sit down and bash out a review shortly after turning the last page, mindful that I harness the swirling thoughts and ideas I have about the latest book before they are lost to the ether (or one too many glasses of single malt scotch). Subtle and refined I’m not. So here I sit, staring at that blinking cursor, wondering if I can do this book justice with my customary slapdash manner. And then I decide that it will have to do, because whether […]
What Does The Biographer Owe Us?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChxUVscPrp4] This book raised some questions about what we should expect from biographers. Are they merely relating details of the life of a person, or should they provide more of a commentary on that life as well? Is what we might consider to be ‘neutral’ reporting actually just reinforcing the status quo? By not dwelling on the more questionable parts of a subject’s personality, is the biographer acting in an appropriate manner, or are they implicitly giving their approval by not spending more time […]
A Different Life in America
A friend of mine introduced me to Ta-Nehisi Coates with The Beautiful Struggle, a book I found both moving and eye-opening. When I started seeing Between the World and Me (2015) on bookshelves, I knew I’d be reading it. The Beautiful Struggle was a memoir of Coates’s life, growing up in the violent streets of Baltimore with a dictatorial father.Between the World and Me covers some of the same ground but in a very different way. This book is an existentialist (according to the NY Times) letter to […]
Welcome to Shondaland
I remember being a freshman in college and gathering at the big screen TV in my floor’s common area to watch Grey’s Anatomy with a dozen other girls on Thursday nights. After “ghost Denny” my infatuation with Seattle Grace dwindled. A few years ago my husband and I started at the beginning (on Netflix) in an effort to watch the 2014-15 season live, but if we’re home on Thursdays we just watch football. With Cristina gone Grey Sloan Memorial is a lot less appealing; I’ll […]
Hello Darkness My Old Friend
Anna Lyndsey lives in the darkness. Although she was once an average person with a job, a boyfriend and a new apartment, in 2005 her skin began to feel like it was burning while she sat in front of the computer. At first she just rigged a fan to her desk. The fan didn’t help. She just got worse, and soon the condition spread and all forms of light affected her entire body. She ended up confined to her bedroom, covering the cracks in the […]
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