This brief audiobook gave me a bit of an existential crisis. It’s billed as a funny memoir-type-thing written by a comedian. It says so right on the cover. Which is why I spent the first half of the book asking myself, “Is this humor? What is humor? Is anything humor? What is life? Why am I here?” It wasn’t that it was a bad book, exactly, although it wasn’t great. It just wasn’t funny at all. Delaney covers his early life and youthful misadventures and…maybe […]
Cannonball: “What are our stories if not the mirrors we hold up to our fears?”
Many, many years ago, I read Wally Lamb’s first book She’s Come Undone. I can honestly say that the only thing I remember about that book is that the main character’s mother is killed when a tractor trailer crashes in to her tollbooth. Consequently, I think about that every time I drive through a toll booth. Anyway, when I read it, I happened to live with two other girls, one of whom had had the pleasure of knowing Wally Lamb as a teacher in her […]
Unsinkable doesn’t quite stay afloat
Many Canadians like myself remember Silken Laumann’s amazing perseverance after a severe leg injury, to win a bronze medal only 10 weeks later at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Even without the gold, she was one of the hero stories of the game, and certainly an important one for Canada. One day, I happened across an interview to hear her talking about her memoir, Unsinkable. She sounded quite passionate and open about her life, so I looked forward to reading it. After a long wait […]
Curiosity is a shit starter.
I don’t read as many “self-help” books as I probably should. I like to learn. Scratch that, I LOVE to learn, and in many ways books traditionally shelved in the “self-help” department are meant to help us do just that. So why stay away? Because of the other types of books that inhabit those shelves. The ones that are all touchy feely or tell you to “let go and let God”. (Yes, thank you, I’m aware of that, now what?) When I decided to do […]