I watched the British version of The Office when it was released to DVD, and I enjoyed it. Then, I grew to love its American counterpart once it had grown into itself a bit (Season 3 was my entrance to the show). While I was never a huge Dwight fan, I appreciate the complexity and nuance with which Rainn Wilson imbued the character. So I was delighted to see the audiobook version of his memoir The Bassoon King at my local library last month. The […]
Take A Walk on the Wild Side
“So what’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen?” After a decade spent as a paramedic, it’s a question Kevin Hazzard loves to hate. Which stories should he tell? Should he talk about the gunshots, the cardiac arrests, the overdoses, the man swarming with maggots? Or should he lighten the mood and talk about the fake suicide attempts and the surprising amount of nudity? Either way, he knows that people will be listening. Because the dirty secret is we’re all rubberneckers, slowing down to stare at […]
A memoir about language
When I was a child, my mom took my sister and me to Spanish lessons each week for something like a year or two (I honestly don’t remember). She was determined that we would grow up to be bilingual. Well, after Spanish lessons as a child, Spanish 1 and 2 in high school, and Intermediate Spanish in College, I’m still not bilingual. I’ve had trouble explaining to my mom why that is, especially since I spent a summer with my best friend’s family, who is […]
“It’s hard to know what’s in a person’s heart when she never says good-bye.”
I don’t know that I would have ever picked up Kate Mulgrew’s poignant and beautifully written memoir if it hadn’t been for narfna’s lovely review from late last year. Sure, I had put it on my 500 book deep to read list over on Goodreads (side note: I may have an electronic hoarding problem – send help!), but it like many other “oh that looks interesting” books would have slipped past my immediate attention. You see, I didn’t know who Captain Janeway was. My only […]
Frantic Avoidance
As a piece of art, I have to give it to Dave Eggers. AHBWOSG is carefully composed, wonderfully constructed, funny, poignant, and moving. But it’s also a pile of emotional bullshit that took me ages to read, and I couldn’t get away from it fast enough once I had inhaled the last intentionally-breakneck run-on paragraph. I have now moved on, immediately and purposefully, to “Men Explain Things to Me.” But back to the “Staggering Genius,” which is a memoir, slightly fictionalized, as Eggers explains […]
When You Don’t Have A Lot of Time Left
Last week one of my city’s neighborhoods had a huge explosion, leveling three businesses and damaging three dozen more. On Friday my husband and I went there to meet up with friends and spread some local economy love, cash-style. We wandered into a (mostly) used bookstore called Couth Buzzard (plywood still covering nearly all of the windows) and this book just jumped out at me. I ended up reading it in one day because I could not put it down. Dr. Paul Kalanithi was 36 […]
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