I have been a fan of Oliver Sacks and his writing for decades. When that first beautiful NYT article came out in early 2015 and revealed he was dying from cancer, I essentially hid my head in the sand and refused to read anything else from him for a long time. He was warm and kind and insightful and passionate and I just wasn’t ready to say goodbye. The day of Anthony Bourdain’s death, I walked into my library and On the Move was sitting […]
Killer Queen
I honest to the heavens thought I’d reviewed this one. The short version is: True crime fans/Murderinos will probably enjoy this one. I’m not sure anyone else will; the subject matter is pretty grim and the person in question warped like HH Holmes. Lizzie Borden may have killed her father and stepmother with an axe, but Belle Gunness killed a hell of a lot more, including her own children.
My favourite book of 2018
I know it is a terrible cliche, but every chapter inevitably had me thinking “this sounds familiar, I feel like we read this every day, the more things change…” While I did not grow up watching the television series, I was a voracious reader as a child, and repeatedly read The Little House of the Prairie series. I am also very interested in biographies of writers I enjoy, particularly when my perception of them isn’t particularly well matched by the reality (see also L. M. […]
Louder Than Life? No Kidding!
One of the unexpected joys I’ve discovered since I’ve started listening to audiobooks is the self-narrated biography or memoir. There is just something about hearing the voice of the subject that really enhances the experience. This is especially so for biographies written by entertainers and performers, who naturally make excellent narrators. So far, I have enjoyed biographies read and written by Alexei Sayle, Eddie Izzard, Magda Szubanski and David Attenborough. But there is only one so far that I would say HAS to be […]