-This was a total impulse pick-up. I saw the title on my new audiobook app and downloaded it. I have a soft spot for travel memoirs. Even when they’re not great, I can usually get something out of it. This woman says she’s lived in a lot of places I want to go to. I’m sold. -When Rita Golden Gelman was 48, she found herself on the verge of divorce. Unhappy in her life, unsure of how she got to where she was, and feeling […]
The War Was In Color
My Queer War is the WWII memoir of James Lord, who I knew nothing about prior to picking up this book. The title is an intentional double entendre–James Lord is gay and his war was weird. He never saw combat and the vast majority of his service involved copious amounts of free time during which he was free to explore his sexuality in a way that he had never before considered possible. Bouncing from POW camps to Picasso’s social scene to underground bars where […]
Expect. Don’t Accept.
This is my book club read for the month. It was an inspiring, if not entirely engrossing read. The memoir covers Daugherty’s experiences as a father to Jillian, his second child, who has Down syndrome. The diagnosis is a surprise to Daugherty and his wife Kerry, but they become loving, attentive, and tireless advocates for their loving, attentive, and tireless daughter. Early on in the book, Daugherty reveals the mantras that he and his wife developed in the hospital that carry them through in their parenting […]
“We evolved to respond with automatic care to the young, while old age repels, makes us afraid of our own mortality.”
Well clearly I need to read the rest of Lucy Knisley’s work. I loved Relish: My Life in the Kitchen so when narfna reviewed Displacement in February, I immediately put it on my 2016 TBR. Displacement was even better than Relish. Relish was enjoyable, it’s just that Displacement spoke to my personal life and resonated in a deeper way. Knisley’s elderly grandparents, Allen and Phyllis, signed up for a cruise to the Caribbean. Unfortunately they’re in their 90s, have low mobility, know no one else […]