I read about this ages ago over at Sassymonkey’s blog, and I thought it sounded brilliant. The writer permitted his son to drop out of high school, drop out of high school, and stay home and watch films with him. And he knew all what films to watch, so he could pick out loads of really good ones. That’s genius. I wouldn’t ever know what films to watch, even if I were inclined to permit my offspring to drop out of school, which I really don’t think I would be. I am always a bit distressed – I have probably…
1 CommentTag: memoirs
My God, this book was sad. It was so, so, so sad. It was just so unrelentingly sad. Even when she wasn’t particularly talking about anything sad, still it was incredibly sad. I cried a lot, especially at the end. And I’ve never even had a baby! Imagine if I had had a baby and I read this book, which is Elizabeth McCracken’s memoir about how her baby was stillborn. That would have been way much even sadder. However, it was well-written and interesting. And it had lots of good bits, and Elizabeth McCracken endeared herself to me forever and…
2 CommentsOn reflection, I believe I am glad I didn’t buy this in my recent spate of bookbuying, because I have still not decided whether I want to own it forever. It’s very good – a graphic novel memoir about first love and losing faith – and I enjoyed it both times I read it, and I am looking forward to Craig Thompson’s next, whenever that may be. I don’t have anything bad to say about it, actually. The drawings are black and white, line drawings, and Mr. Thompson makes excellent use of the whole graphic novel form to do things…
2 CommentsOh, how distressing I found this book, and oh, how I wished that Peggy Orenstein had kept this whole distressing story to herself. I got annoyed with Ms. Orenstein straight away when she said that in her pre-baby-mania days, she used to say that women who made pre-Betty Friedan choices shouldn’t be surprised when they end up with pre-Betty Friedan results. Which is to say, women shouldn’t choose to be stay-at-home mums, as that is a choice that could never be feminist, and if they do make that atavistic choice, they just deserve all they get. Nasty. I found this…
3 CommentsRecommended by: A Garden Carried in the Pocket, who always seems to read such interesting books, that lucky duck. I am very, very fond of dysfunctional family memoirs. Or crazy people memoirs are also fine too. Both types of memoirs make me feel grateful for my own lovely family, which is not at all dysfunctional and handles crazy extremely well. So I enjoyed this, and it was also an interesting insight into the ways of the toffs. (Cause I’m all lower-middle-class American South girl.) When I started reading it, I thought that Liza Campbell didn’t compare well to people like,…
3 CommentsRecommended by: A Life in Books So basically I finished this book late last night and I was dead tired; but I still managed to have many thoughts about it after I had dropped it onto my flip chair and turned off the light, and they all sort of centered around the thought that this man could use some serious cognitive behavioral therapy. He might really enjoy cognitive behavioral therapy, I was thinking, because of its structured, project-like nature, and furthermore it would make him less crazy (and I use that word in its nicest sense). I was composing a…
Leave a CommentFirst my father (who was buying it for my very-difficult-to-get-presents-for mother), and then my mother told me about this book, so I heard about it from them; and in the first place it was picked up at random by my father, who knows that my very-difficult-to-get-presents-for mother enjoys reading memoirs written by neurotic people with a sense of humor. I waited until down here to put an excerpt, mainly because I wanted to defend my choice of excerpt. I am quoting this bit not because it is perfectly representative of the book at large (not that it isn’t – it’s…
2 CommentsOkay, the truth comes out. You won’t believe it, but Anna Leonowens did not, in fact, have a hot but platonic romance with the King of Siam; or if she did, she kept remarkably quiet about it in her book. Although I’m not ruling out the possibility that all the late-night “translating” she was doing for the king was actually sexual favors. Because, you know, she acts like a proper Victorian lady but who knows? Seriously, though, I feel that this memoir (travelogue) lacked a certain something. Taking into account the prejudices of her time, she was still kind of…
2 CommentsTwo months before I’d had a high-profile job with an enviable salary, a sleek black German sedan on lease, an apartment in a fashionable downtown neighborhood, and a collection of not-so-inexpensive shirts and jackets hanging in the closet. Now, there were a few hundred dollars in my pocket, no job or prospect thereof, some clothes jammed into an old handbag, and a bed in a tattered bookstore to call home. All things considered, I couldn’t have been happier. Recommended by: Kate’s Book Blog I really liked the idea of this book. It’s a memoir written by a chap who went…
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