This was a tough one, emotionally. One True Thing is the story of a brilliant young woman “with her whole life ahead of her” who is guilted by her controlling and emotionally-arrested father into leaving her life behind to come home and care for her dying mother. And it covers so much ground in a very gentle but sad way: gender roles, parenting, family dynamic, literature and poetry, agency, friendship, romance, and ultimately, euthanasia. At the very beginning of the story, Ellen tells us that […]
The Dangers of Biographical Non-fiction
This was an excellent book that is part journalistic inquiry, part court-room drama, and part social discourse. Janet Malcolm is an experienced journalist who receives a mysterious letter from a lawyer suggesting that a libel court case may ruin the entire professional sphere of journalism. Malcolm takes the bait and begins investigating the already exhaustively investigated murder trial of a Dr. Jeff MacDonald and his follow up libel case with his court-biographer, Joseph McGrinnis. Throughout her book, Malcolm chronicles how Dr. MacDonald came to be […]
102 minutes inside the Twin Towers.
First, some long but necessary background. On 9/11/11, I was 13. I was living in Michigan with my grandparents and being incompetently homeschooled (read: not schooled at all). No one in my house cared or talked about politics, and I was pretty sheltered. So when the planes hit, I was sitting on my grandparents’ couch, home alone, eating cereal. It was obvious from the news coverage that this was a Big Deal, but I had no context whatsoever for it. War and terrorism were totally […]
Wickedly funny, and painfully accurate, satire of journalism
I loved Scoop. LOVED IT. I’m also slightly miffed that I never read it until this year. How could it be that this awesomely biting satire on journalism was not in my life before? What starts out as a case of mistaken identity secures a foreign correspondent gig for the reluctant William Boot, a hapless columnist for the gardening section of the Beast. He is sent to the fictional African country of Ismaelia, where he is told to report the war between the good vs. the […]