Samantha Ellis’ awesomely named memoir, filtered through her love of books and their leading ladies, is one of my favorite reads of this year. Intertwined with the author’s own backstory are all the books, stories, and heroines that have touched her life somehow – and often more than once. Growing up as a Iraqui Jew in London, it’s not as if Ellis’ life lacked for its own sense of drama, not to mention that her career path as poet, playwright, journalist and author isn’t all […]
Heartbreakingly Good
4.5 stars. This miiiiiiiight be the first celebrity memoir I’ve ever truly enjoyed enough to actually think about purchasing. (I’m not counting Ansari’s look into modern dating as a real memoir). I’ve always loved Alan Cumming’s work and he seems like a lovely person, but I’m experienced enough to know that likeability doesn’t always mean a memoir will be good. I’m happy to say that not only was Not My Father’s Son a strong piece of literature worth reading on its own merit, but I […]
The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that mine own is also.
Quite a long time ago, I read The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs, where the author, a liberal New Yorker, spends a year of his life attempting to literally follow every command in the Bible. I remember enjoying it, so when I saw The Unlikely Disciple (2009) by Kevin Roose, it sounded both interesting and familiar. It turns out, it was familiar for a good reason. Kevin Roose was A.J. Jacobs’s intern, and was the student Jacobs took with him when he visited Jerry Falwell’s […]
(Book 2 announced on her blog as coming soon, just yesterday)
Brittany Gibbons’ book Fat Girl Walking is not a diet book. It’s not a self-help book (although there she shares some very helpful things). It is a memoir, and an autobiography, and it is funny as hell. Something Brittany Gibbons is good at that I am not, by the way, is cursing in the course of her writing, making it seem natural for f*** to be in every fourth paragraph or so. I am horrible at this. I do not curse all that much anyways […]
“We try to make it easier for those who come after.”
I had a goal with this book, I wanted to be able to read and review it in time for World Aids Day, which is December 1st. I have been reading some heavy hitting things of late; Between the World and Me, Rabbit-Proof Fence, and The Fifteenth Minute come immediately to mind for different reasons, but each was difficult to review in its own way, and this one is as well. In my last review I talked about how the dark times in our history […]
Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
Gloria Steinem’s latest book is part auto-biography and part political philosophy. Steinem examines her early years with her family, a seminal trip to India, and her subsequent political activity through the prism of travel. Steinem presents a brief history of post-war US feminism here as well as the links between feminism and other civil rights’ movements. Steinem’s goal is to inspire readers to take risks, pursue dreams, and connect, to speak up but also to listen. As she has famously said, she does not want […]
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