I made it rain at the friends of the library book sale just prior to my annual promise not to buy more books until I read everything in my unread stack (almost always 50 books no matter what I do), and like any good binge it was all impulse. I love personal challenge essays (see above – although I will never ever succeed in diminishing that unread stack, my novels apparently breed in captivity) and for two bucks, how bad could this be? (How many […]
Biography/Memoir
How many rules am I to break before you understand that your double standards don’t mean sh*t to me?
Originally published in French (in two volumes) as Culottées This was such a great read! I was familiar with Bagieu’s work from back when she had her blog (Ma vie est tout à fait fascinante) but had never read one of her books. Needless to say, I am going to remedy that ASAP. Brazen is a collection of graphic bios of women who refused to live according to the rules imposed by society. Some of them are very famous, some of them have been […]
In Rural Idaho, No One Can Hear You Scream
In the category Genres I Like to Read, memoir and horror tie for dead last. (Elizabeth Gilbert is a shameless exhibitionist. Fight me.) However, when a book makes all the “Best of the Year” lists, I feel obligated to give it the old Amazon 1-Click. In the mountains of Idaho, Tara is the last child of a devout Mormon couple—so devout that their youngest children have no birth certificates, have never been to school, and do not go to the doctor, not even for grievous […]
Somehow Douglas Adams + Neil Gaiman doesn’t work
On the surface, this book was made for me. A biography of Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, as taken down by Neil Gaiman. It was like someone reached into my head and wrote out my wildest dreams. And look at that cover! I am so easily sold with a good cover, y’all. There is so much that this book could have been and yet it wasn’t. I just didn’t feel this book. I appreciated Gaiman writing about Adams in the style of […]