My book club chose this book for our next month’s reading selection. I’m not a big fan of biography or nonfiction by people who’ve just emerged from an adventure–I feel that they don’t spend enough time introspecting on what’s happened (though the events themselves may be fresher in memory). After reading this book, I remember why I don’t like this genre. First, I need to separate this review into two parts: content and style. Let’s talk content first. Dr. Jerri Nielson, an ER doctor, has […]
Still Foolin’ ‘Em by Billy Crystal
This was fantastic. Really. I listened to the audiobook — which I would highly recommend — and I was cracking up and tearing up and just loved the whole thing. I’ve always been a Billy Crystal fan — specifically, The Princess Bride and City Slickers. In fact, I’ve probably watched those two movies at least a dozen times each. I’m a bit young to be familiar with stand-up Billy Crystal or how he got his beginnings, but he takes the reader (or listener) through it all: how […]
Not trying so hard, not planning ahead, just getting out of your own head and letting the magic happen.
Rachel Dratch is not someone who I would normally go running out to buy or read their memoir. I know her from her time on SNL, which coincided with the time in my life that I initially started watching the show live. But, she wasn’t someone I followed, and I didn’t watch 30 Rock, so I was largely unaware of the media firestorm surrounding her replacement by Jane Krakowski. But after having read Tina Fey and Darrel Hammond’s biographies for previous Cannonball Reads and seeing […]
Perhaps not Staggering Genius, but Heartbreaking and Profound
After reading his The Circle and then his latest, Your Fathers, Where Are They…?, I decided it was high time to go back to Egger’s first major work and see what all the fuss was about. Written when he was a mere twenty-two, this memoir/novel describes a difficult life starting with the death of both his parents from cancer within a month or two of each other, when Eggers is just 21, his younger brother Toph is just eight, his sister Beth is in law […]
A Basket of Anecdotes
I picked this book up randomly, looking for a funny book to break up the heaviness of my recent choices. This is collection of very short anecdotes from the author’s life, no more than a few pages each. Hawn has a good sense of comedic timing, and her writing feels conversational, as if she’s really telling you this story in a bar or a stand-up routine. Everyone has unusual stuff happen to them once in a while, but not everyone can see the humor […]
Good food and good eating are about risk
There’s a certain amusement that comes from knowing more than the teller of a story. I don’t often suggest reading memoirs or the like so far after their publication dates (see my experience with Denis Leary’s Why We Suck earlier this year). But, there was a delicious sort of fun to be had reading Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential and knowing what his life would turn out like in the decade which followed the book’s publication in 2000. He certainly, had no idea. You’re likely familiar […]
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