In Pieces by Sally Field
A year or so ago I won a copy of In Pieces during Cannonball Bingo. I was mildly pleased, as I like Sally Field and I like memoirs. I wasn’t excited enough to start reading it immediately, and in fact it took me a long time to read this, as I read it in fits and starts–mostly early in the morning on lazy weekends. Luckily, it’s an easy book to pick up again without forgetting what was happening when you left off. If you read […]
Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel M. Lavery
While explaining to a group of medievalists his feelings on reading pieces that are older than a hundred years old, Daniel states ‘ I feel a profound sense of triumph and superiority over the author’ I said, ‘because they are foolish enough to be dead, while I am young and gloriously alive. Not because I think their ideas are outdated or anything like that. It has nothing to do with how they think, or how we see the world differently. It is visceral, it is […]
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: & Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty
Last time you, me, and the other Caitlin who spells her name correctly met up, I was asking about what you wanted to happen to your body when you died. Remember? A good time was had by all. This time I am not going to ask what you want to happen, because while Smoke Gets in Your Eyes does talk about what one can choose for their post-mortem adventures, it also gives a breakdown (cymbal crash) of what happens to a human body when it stops being […]
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is simply a beautiful book. It is the memoir a young man who is the son of a Vietnamese immigrant single mother. The whole book is written as a letter to his mother, although she cannot read so he knows she will never read his words. The author describes his childhood in Hartford and touches on his mother and grandmother’s lives in Vietnam during the war years before they left for America. Their lives were full of intense pain and […]
Educated by Tara Westover
I picked this up knowing the broad strokes: rural girl in highly religious community and no formal education per se claws her way into and through the education system, to eventually receive a PhD. That’s right, broadly. But this memoir is not just about “book learning”: it’s about learning about your family, and learning that there are many ways to have a life, learning how to trust yourself when it seems like everyone else has given up on you, and learning to nurture your own […]
Out of the Forest by Gregory P. Smith
I’m finding it hard to start writing about this book. It’s an incredible story of a life transformed that makes me thankful for my calm and ‘normal’ upbringing and leaves me wondering if I would ever have the strength to overcome the harrowing upbringing that Gregory P. Smith endured. I’m almost brought to tears when I think about how he was dropped off by his mum at an orphanage at ten years old, separated from his dear sisters, and immediately started suffering verbal and physical […]
