How can you not want to read a book with a title like that? And the book doesn’t disappoint. This thing is 352 pages chock-full of late 19th century sensation, intrigue, and occasional bouts of madness. This story combs through the entirety of the bizarre Druce-Portland affair, a famously strange set of legal cases taking place in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. The press and public obsessed over it for more than a decade. It’s hard to imagine any case finding the same level […]
By Your Command: Creative on Command
I read a fair amount of so called “self-help” books; some because the subject interests me, some because they’ve been recommended to me, and some even though I know I may roll my eyes through 90% of the book and get something of worth from the other 10%. So this book was kind of a good news/bad news situation for me: the good news was that I found useful information in about half the book. The bad news is that the first half of the […]
Another Memoir About a Nutty Family
Gwendolyn Knapp is only in her thirties, but her colorful family and personal relationships have already provided enough fodder for a memoir. After While is the story of Gwendolyn, her sister Molly, her mother Margie, and her stepfather John. Of course, there is a host of other family members and the occasional love interest that pepper her life with stress and shenanigans. Knapp grew up in Florida where she lived with her packrat mother and overachieving goth sister, as well as her mother’s extended family. […]
Even Mary Roach can make floating turds and liquid food enticing
Did you ever wonder how an astronaut goes to the bathroom in space? Mary Roach will make you question why you’ve never pondered this before. With lines from her book like, “give me a napkin quick, there’s a turd floating in the air,” she’ll also give you the greatest appreciation of gravity you never anticipated… Roach is a master of taking a topic (like cadavers, sex, and in this case, space travel) and deconstructing it, showing its many facets…whether interesting, surprising, or even a bit […]
Maybe Everything Isn’t Hopeless Bullshit
I was a big fan of the Hyperbole and a Half blog so I kept meaning to get around to reading this memoir/graphic novel by Allie Brosh, but for some reason it kept getting pushed to the bottom of my reading pile. Maybe subconsciously I was saving it for a low point, some future time when I needed a serious laugh. I’m glad I saved it because it was just the medicine I needed when I was sick and stuck in bed for a week. […]
Lovely Jenny Lee.
I came to Call the Midwife, the first book in Jennifer Worth’s series of nursing memoirs set in post-WWII East End of London, in an ass-backwards way. I had seen the entire series as it aired on PBS, and then again as it was released on DVD, before I happened upon a copy of this first volume in a used bookstore. The show is remarkably faithful to the books, so all of the stories that are featured here I already knew. And I was still riveted by them. […]
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