As a teenager, Blair Braverman — who always had an obsession with the North — lived as an exchange student in Norway, where she had a really messed up experience with her host family (namely, the father). So she spent the next 15 years or so trying to work through that by traveling to very, very cold places and putting herself in difficult and dangerous situations, trying to find some peace. I did really enjoy certain parts of this book. Anything involving her work with sled […]
Georgia Peaches and a lot of elephant facts
This was such a cute book, and full of great messages — love yourself, be yourself, God loves everyone, it’s okay to be gay, accept people for who they are, etc — that this straight married atheist absolutely loved. Teenager Jo Gordon has been out and proud for years, and her radio evangelist father has always supported her. Unfortunately, the summer before her senior year, he remarries for the third time (to a much younger woman), moves Jo from fairly accepting Atlanta, GA to the much more […]
A very unusual memoir
Nadja Spiegelman, daughter of Maus creator Art Spiegelman and New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly, wrote this memoir that’s less about her own life, and more about how her life weaves into her mother’s and grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s — and how secret and lies and tricks of memory can affect these relationships. “I saw a pattern forming, like a series of skipping stones that sent ripples through the generations: all the granddaughters and grandmothers who loved each other, all the mothers left stranded in between.” Nadja’s […]
Perfectly Unmemorable
This is one of those fast paced books that you can’t put down, that completely evaporates from your mind the moment you complete it. Interesting in the moment, but no lasting impact. Zoe Maisey, perfect teenage piano player, killed several of her classmates in a drunk driving accident a few years ago (there’s more to the story, but it gets parceled out bit by bit). She served her time, and now she’s out and back in school in a new town. Her mother has remarried and had […]
Well I definitely learned a lot!
How to Be Black by Baratunde R. Thurston
Baratunde Thurston writes for The Onion, among other things, and he brings that sense of humor along for this read. He also reveals a lot about himself and his upbringing, and makes some incredibly salient points about the status of race relations in our world today. You know, in between the advice about how to find a black friend: “If you find yourself in the unfortunate position of being black-friendless, you can either go to the nearest black church and strike up a conversation, or just […]
I had The Zombies song stuck in my head for a week
This was a really fascinating read by a well-spoken, intelligent woman with one hell of a sense of humor. “My conviction, by the way, had nothing to do with a desire to be feminine, but it had everything to do with being female. Which is an odd believe for a person born male. It certainly had nothing to do with whether I was attracted to girls or boys. This last point was the one that, years later, would most frequently elude people, including the overeducated […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 49
- 50
- 51
- 52
- 53
- …
- 149
- Next Page »