REVIEW: French Milk by Lucy Knisley

French Milk

by Lucy Knisley

Lucy Knisley (author of Relish) takes a trip with her mother to Paris as a present for her 22nd birthday. Knisley keeps a graphic journal of their days there, filled with museums, food and shopping.

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. I thought that since it was a single story, rather than Relish which was a reflection on her entire childhood, that it would have more of an arc. However, as it reflected real life, it was simply a record of days. The trip was enviable (and seemingly well-funded), and as a result, I wanted to go back to Paris and visit some of the places she went, but I didn't really enjoy her listing the places she went and the things she ate and the items she bought. She did occasionally have depressive episodes, but they were merely commented on and not explored. Knisley wrote just enough about them to make me start to worry existentially about my own future, as she was doing.

It really made me want to go and have those experiences in Paris for myself, but I didn't really care about reading that she had them. I did enjoy her drawings, however, as they expanded upon the action of the text beautifully. Its just sad that I am not interested in her stories. Perhaps soon she will delve into the realm of fiction and her stories and excellent illustrations will be enhanced with character arcs and conflict.

If you are looking for a fast, light, tour of places to go and things to do in Paris, this is a good book for you.

REVIEW: Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy

Relish: My Life in the Kitchen

by Lucy Knisley

“I love the treat and pleasure of eating when it becomes an act of focused giving and sharing...Wasting money and appetite on bad food is disappointing, but it doesn't matter when the company is good...[T]here's a lot to be said for eating as a social act. It's a treat, even when the food is bad.” 

Lucy has grown up in kitchens her whole life. Her mother was a fantastic cook, caterer, and farmer, and from her Lucy was introduced to the best foods available. This graphic novel memoir explores her journey from childhood to adulthood through food and several important recipes.

This graphic novel was ok. I loved the recipes! I want all of my cookbooks to have illustrations like this to accompany them:

However, the story itself was a bit lacking. It was nice to see how she grew up, and there were several funny stories, but there was no conflict. Everything was beautiful and tasty and idyllic and even when she grew surly in her teenage years, you knew she would come to see how amazing everything was. It did make me want to appreciate the preparation and consumption of my food, however.

I would definitely buy this book for the recipes. They are simple and clear and funny, with useful tips and illustrations.

REVIEW: Let's Pretend this Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir by Jenny Lawson

Let's Pretend this Never Happened 

(A Mostly True Memoir)

by Jenny Lawson

“You should just accept who you are, flaws and all, because if you try to be someone you aren't, then eventually some turkey is going to shit all over your well-crafted facade, so you might as well save yourself the effort and enjoy your zombie books.” 

It is difficult to discribe this book, so I will give you the Goodreads description: "For fans of Tina Fey and David Sedaris—Internet star Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess, makes her literary debut. Jenny Lawson realized that the most mortifying moments of our lives—the ones we’d like to pretend never happened—are in fact the ones that define us. In the #1 New York Times bestseller, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Lawson takes readers on a hilarious journey recalling her bizarre upbringing in rural Texas, her devastatingly awkward high school years, and her relationship with her long-suffering husband, Victor. Chapters include: “Stanley the Magical, Talking Squirrel”; “A Series of Angry Post-It Notes to My Husband”; “My Vagina Is Fine. Thanks for Asking”; “And Then I Snuck a Dead Cuban Alligator on an Airplane.” Pictures with captions (no one would believe these things without proof) accompany the text."

This. Book. Is. Insane. I loved it. It was like listening to your crazy best friend tell weird stories for hours and hours. Jenny's misadventures include a bathtub of raccoons, getting her hand stuck up a cow's vagina, the day her family's pet turkeys followed her to school and got in the cafeteria, having her father throw a bobcat at her boyfriend as a joke, and hundreds more stories you have to read to believe. All of them are highly entertaining.

It sometimes goes off the rails. She has arguments with her editor in the text, and tangents upon tangents (much like talking with your friends!) Sometimes I wanted her to get on with it, and sometimes it was part of the charm. And while initially I was frustrated with the "mostly true" warning in the title, I ended up being incredibly grateful for it, because I was able to choose which of her stories or actions to believe (see the chapter "A Series of Angry Post-It Notes to my Husband" and you will see what I mean). 

And it is not all fluff and hyjinks. Jenny struggles with generalized anxiety disorder (which does not mean that she has a vague sense of anxiety; it means she has anxiety about everything.) Her chapters describing her panic attacks, hiding in the bathroom (and in wooden chests) and her stress-induced word vomit are both hilarious and strangely comforting for those of us who suffer similar ailments. 

In the end, after the dust has settled and the mischief is managed, it is a book about the crazy people and events in our life that make us who we are. And more often than not, we are better off for it. 

REVIEW: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

by Cheryl Strayed

“The thing about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, the thing that was so profound to me that summer—and yet also, like most things, so very simple—was how few choices I had and how often I had to do the thing I least wanted to do. How there was no escape or denial. No numbing it down with a martini or covering it up with a roll in the hay. As I clung to the chaparral that day, attempting to patch up my bleeding finger, terrified by every sound that the bull was coming back, I considered my options. There were only two and they were essentially the same. I could go back in the direction I had come from, or I could go forward in the direction I intended to go.” 

Ever since she lost her mom, Cheryl's life had fallen apart. Divorce, drugs and sex to fill the void, family members pulling away, giving up on college. And that is just the beginning. She hits rock bottom, and on an impulse, decides to hike the Pacific Crest Trail which spans from Mexico to Canada. She is unprepared for the rigors and dangers of the trail, but through tenacity, luck, stubbornness, and sheer will, the trail turns from enemy to old friend. It breaks her down and builds her back up again as she tries to remember the child she once was and the woman she wants to be.

I always have a hard time reviewing memoirs. How do you review a person's life? I have never had something as devastating as Cheryl's mother dying make my life implode. I stand on the outside looking in, wondering if the same thing would happen to me. Part of me scoffs at the thought of me falling so irreparably apart that I destroy every other good thing in my life. Part of me fears that I would. 

This is what makes the first half of Cheryl's memoir so bafflingly heart-wrenching. When yet another mistake or tragedy rears it's ugly head, you don't know whether to laugh in disbelief or cry. The sequence with her mother's sick horse captures that feeling perfectly. It just gets more and more painful and you go right through "morbidly humorous" and right out the other side into sickeningly awful again. 

The trail starts the same way. Cheryl is woefully unprepared (or over-prepared, judging by her overstocked backpack) for the trek. She overestimates her walking stamina. She encounters bears, rattlesnakes, skeevy skeevy men, dangerous snow and ice, looses her shoes, misses her supply packages, and runs out of money several times. She looses 6 toenails and gets cuts and bruises and blisters all over. And yet, through it all, she perseveres. She learns from her mistakes. She builds muscle, and confidence. She makes friends with strangers. She navigates the wilderness. She braves hostile animals and humans. She rediscovers the strength within herself. She learns to forgive, and she is finally able to let her mother go. 

Cheryl's transformation was a joy to read. She goes from flailing about to fill the hole in her heart to finding peace in simplicity. It is written by an older Cheryl Strayed, looking back at this time in her life when she was 26. As a 28 year old, I had to keep remembering that this was not a mid life crisis book. This was someone younger than me who had experienced this huge upheaval and forced herself through a crucible of transformation. 

Many people have criticized this book for two things: 1) her seemingly horrible life choices and 2) her blind naivete on the trail which could have lead to her death, and now she is encouraging others to do the same thing. To those people, I say 1) Walk two moons, people. 2) Cheryl made no bones about the dangers of the trail, and how most of her survival was shear luck and the kindness of strangers. 

Cheryl learns. She changes. She overcomes. Regardless of the decisions she made in her time of trouble, she comes out transformed. 

An inspiring read!

Books like this:

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

The Winter of Our Disconnect by Susan Maushart

Hamlet's Dresser by Bob Smith

The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs

ARCHIVED REVIEW: The Making of the African Queen or How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall, and Huston, and almost lost my mind (9/17/11)

The Making of the African Queen 

or How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall, and Huston, and almost lost my mind

By Katherine Hepburn

"I remember observing one thing that struck me very powerfully. I would look serious or worried or trying to be sympathetic-- or solemn. And I would recieve back an absolutely impenetrable expression. A wall. But if I smiled or laughed, he did too. The universal language. This amazed me. I would have thought that tears were the things which bound us together, but no-- smiles, laughter-- and they warmed up immediately. Understand my ridiculous self-- thank you-- yes. We are rediculous, aren't we-- black-- white-- yellow? If we couldn't have some laughter we would crumble. Color be damned, We must laugh together."

This is Katherine Hepburn's first book, and she doesn't give a fuck. She writes how she wants to write and does not care about any rules or style but her own. She writes how you expect her to speak, very stoccato, with trails of sentence fragments, often separated by dashes. She will describe a room by listing nouns: "Heat-- hotel-- French-speaking Belgians-- no panes of glass in windows-- porches-- high ceilings-- blinds-- mosquito nets over the beds-- painted cement floors-- dark, spare bathroom-- watch the bugs-- watch the water-- thoughtful people-- took care of us afternoon and evening." For the most part, a coherent picture emerges, but sometimes you loose your place, or can't make the leap from one of her thoughts to another. But she is unapologetic: this is Africa as she experienced it.

It is Hepburn at her most Hepburnish: brash, bold, strangely and specifically neurotic (she can't go to the bathroom when others are nearby), and often quietly vulnerable. I was rather shocked at her selfishness (kicking the studio accountant out of his room because his room was better than hers), but she openly acknowledges that it was a mean move on her part, in retrospect.

She paints a loving portrait of Bogart, Lauren Bacall and John Huston, and their adventures filming the African Queen, faced with shipwreck, disease, and poor conditions.

Her views of the native Africans are jarring, though typical for the times. She is fascinated by their quaint ways, and can't really tell one from the other until she becomes friendly with her "boy" (the native assigned to wait on her). Even then, she holds him at a distance, not quite on the level of the white settlers, but special to her.

It is a fun, behind the scenes memoir, written by one of the most adventurous and authentic women of all time. It is not a great work of art, but it is honest, heartfelt, and unapologetic.

If you liked this book, you may like 

Kate Remembered by A. Scott Berg

ARCHIVED REVIEW: The Happiness Project (8/17/11)

The Happiness Project

by Gretchen Rubin

"A 'happiness project is an approach to changing your life. First is the preparation stage, when you identify what brings you joy, satisfaction and engagement, and also what brings you guilt, anger, boredom, and remorse. Second is the making of resolutions, when you identify the concrete actions that will boost your happiness. Then comes the interesting part: keeping your resolutions."

This book is in the amusing and enlightening tradition of other immersion journalism writing: Thoreau's Waldon, A.J. Jacob's Year of Living Biblically , Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. Each of those books is about someone changing their entire life, uprooting themselves, and drastically altering their lifestyle. While that is all well and good for those of us who have money, time, and bravery, The Happiness Project is for those of us who don't. It outlines a way for us to change our lives in small ways.

Strangely enough, it works! While I read the book, I started to apply a few of the tips she comes up with to my own life, and guess what? I was happy. I finished the book, and immediately bought it and started highlighting.

Her project is fascinating! Gretchen Rubin is happy. She has a wonderful family, career, husband, but, like many of us, she grumbles through her day, wastes time, and doesn't appreciate her life. She is afraid she is letting it slip by without living it to the fullest.

She devises a system. Each month she will focus on a theme, and within that theme she will choose 4 or 5 habits to cultivate. She prioritizes: first, energy (b/c she won't be able to do anything else if she doesn't have that), then love for her husband, career, children, etc.

For example: June's theme was friendship. She vowed to remember birthdays, be generous, show up, don't gossip, and make three new friends. The habits often seem vague until you see how she implemented them. Once she starts a new month, she adds on a new topic, and new habits, and by the end of the year, she is cultivating all of them. The bulk of the book tells of how she succeeds or fails at each of these tasks.

She also comes up with overarching principals to guide her when she is struggling with a choice, like "Be Gretchen" to keep her true to herself, and "Act the way you want to feel." These principles when introduced at the beginning seem pedantic and meaningless, but as they are applied, you begin to understand their weight and value.

Don't get me wrong, there are parts of the book that I skimmed. I did not feel connected to the passages where she re-prints the comments other people posted to her blog. Sometimes the general philosophizing about happiness felt a bit old hat. Towards the end, I got a bit fatigued with new tips and practices to focus on (only natural, as I was reading her year of effort in a week).

She emphasizes that her Happiness Project is not our Happiness Project. We need to prioritize what is important to us and create our own system. And this reader is very excited to get started.

If you liked this book, you may like:

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

A Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs

ARCHIVED REVIEW: Persepolis and Persepolis 2 (8/7/11)

Persepolis and Persepolis 2

by Marjane Satrapi

"In life you'll meet a lot of jerks. If they hurt you, tell yourself that it's because they're stupid. That will help keep you from reacting to their cruelty. Because there is nothing worse than bitterness and vengeance... Always keep your dignity and be true to yourself."

Persepolis is a simply, but elegantly illustrated biographical graphic novel of a young girl growing up in Iran during the revolution, the Iraq war, and the extremist regimes that controlled the country. Marjane Satrapi tells her story with humor and honesty, often in the face of terrible circumstances. She describes a beautiful personal journey to find her identity, a difficult task when at home her government oppresses her individuality, and abroad she struggles to remember her roots where she is seen as the "other." In the end, she is still seeking answers, but her trials and the love of her family have given her strength.

I hate to begin a review like this, but I liked it better than the movie. The movie tried to smush two journeys into one and left out a lot of the more interesting anecdotes and history. It seemed disjointed and unrealistic. However, the books tell the complete story at their own leisurely pace.

I find it difficult to describe her story. I was left with a strong impression of how Persia/ Iran, was once great, rich, and cultured, and due to greed and conflicting ideals, it had fallen to a 3rd world state. I was surprised that only recently the extremist regimes had enforced veils, closed universities, and tightened their grip on civil liberties. I am still rather afraid to show my ignorance on the subject.

What Marjane gives us, though, is a heroine going through the usual pains of growing up, albeit in extreme circumstances. Though many of her readers have not experienced what she has, everyone can relate to the struggles of childhood and adolescence. This way, Marjane can deliver her message to the world. While we all laugh and cry about childhood dreams and first love, we can follow her into and out of Iran to develop a greater understanding of the country and it's people and learn how to stand up to oppression and face our fears.

ARCHIVED REVIEW: The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment (6/30/11)

The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment

by A.J. Jacobs

"The goal is that you're able to keep the good parts and not descend into insanity. That the pain of the experiment will end up making life better in the end. And that your spouse will forgive you. For, as I've been told many times, my wife is a saint. A saint, I might add, who doesn't tolerate these experiments lying down."

List of some of A.J.'s experiments in this book (from goodreads):

• He outsources his life. A.J. hires a team of people in Bangalore, India, to take care of everything in his life from answering his e-mails to arguing with his spouse.

• He spends a month practicing Radical Honesty -- a movement that encourages us to remove the filters between our brains and mouths. (To give you an idea of what happened, the name of the chapter is "I Think You're Fat.")

• He goes to the Academy Awards disguised as a movie star to understand the strange and warping effects of fame.

• He commits himself to ultimate rationality, using cutting-edge science to make the best decisions possible. It changes the way he makes choices big and small, from what to buy at the grocery store to how to talk to his kids. And his revelations will change how you make decisions, too.

• He attempts to follow George Washington's rules of life, uncovering surprising truths about leadership and politics in the twenty-first century. He also spends a lot of time bowing and doffing his hat.

• And then there's the month when he followed his wife's every whim -- foot massages, Kate Hudson movies, and all. Depending on your point of view, it's either the best or worst idea in the history of American marriage.


-----
I love A.J. Jacobs, and his writing is very funny, but I felt that something was lacking in most of these experiments: a deeper, soul-searching core. While his other books delve into issues like the nature of intelligence, or the spiritual meaning behind the rules and rituals of religion, these essays flit across the surface of problems like what it is like to be a celebrity or if you can outsource your life to India.

I was intrigued by some of his experiments, like a month of uni-tasking to cure his multi-tasking mania, the month of following George Washington's rules of decorum (which appealed to the 18th century person in me), or the month of thinking rationally (as opposed to reacting with his subconscious brain). These, I felt, had a lasting lesson to teach A.J. and us, and he was changed for the better because of them. His commitment to the experiments, and the imaginative lengths to which he goes to complete them are always fascinating, hilarious and brave. I really related to him during his last two books as a compulsive knowledge seeker, myself.

However, there are moments in this book where I felt he was being a dick. He accommodatingly admits it and is uncomfortable about it, but I felt bad for his family and his Indian assistants. Luckily, his long suffering wife is there to bring him back to earth every so often.

Still an entertaining summer read!

If you liked this book, you may like:

A Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

ARCHIVED REVIEW: Hamlet's Dresser (5/4/11)

Hamlet's Dresser

by Bob Smith

"In sooth, I know not why I am so sad." - Merchant of Venice

Hamlet's Dresser is yet another memoir about how Shakespeare saved someone's life, and luckily I did not have to stop this one half way through.

Bob Smith is a troubled child, haunted and scarred by his unstable mother, his absentee father and his mentally retarded sister. He turns inward and finds solace in the words of Shakespeare. His life is rocky until he embraces his calling as a Shakespeare scholar, and, with this memoir, heals the wounds of his past.

Unlike Ghostlight, a plodding linear narrative that got stuck in the mire of his early childhood trauma, Hamlet's Dresser bounces around in time, from his childhood to his adulthood to various points on the timeline between. While this keeps the story from stagnating, it feels a bit arbitrary at times. Smith will finish telling a tale, and then plop you right down in the middle of it again a page or so later, which is disorienting if you care about chronology.

I did thoroughly enjoy his entry points to Shakespeare. Often, he would tell a story from his life, and then finish it with a quote from Shakespeare, and, juxtaposed, they would illuminate each other. You were able to feel the universal nature of the personal story, while at the same time discovering that Shakespeare knew what he was talking about.

He also excellently portrayed the effects of growing up as a child of a Catholic family in the 1960s, and the dents and scratches, and even lifelong burdens you get from careless things that adults and parents say. At a young age, when the world is still a mystery, you gather and retain information like a sponge, and something said in jest can reverberate through your head years later.

I do find it hard to review memoirs. It's not a fiction, or a piece of artwork that you can objectively analyze. It is a person's life, opened raw and naked, and told in the way he sees it.

Pushing past that a bit, I felt he spent too much time on his sister and his mother. His sister became a millstone around his neck, and though he loved her, he was always haunted by her half-formed presence, comparing her often to mad Ophelia. His mother would today be diagnosed as manic depressive or bipolar and she used him as a crutch rather than as a son. Several stories establish this dynamic, but they continue for half the book. Even with the jumping around, you don't get to the point when he starts working for a theater and becomes the titular Hamlet's dresser until about 3/4 of the way in.

However, this is an excellent book for examining the effect that high art can have on personal stories, not only Bob Smith's but those he loves. However, the pain of his story can often leave you exhausted and dripping with bits of his depression.

ARCHIVED REVIEW: Kate Remembered (12/2/10)

Kate Remembered
by A. Scott Berg

So I finished this book a while ago and have moved on to reading Harry Potter again before summer.

But this book was wonderful and engaging. It is the memoirs of a professional biographer and his long friendship with Katherine Hepburn. He felt he couldn't do a real biography because he loved her so much, he couldn't be objective.

It is incredibly beautiful and incredibly sad as we listen to Katherine reminisce to Scott about her life, her patient, quiet, and giving love of Spencer Tracy, her ups and downs, and how Scott himself remembers the slow tragedy of her death.

She was a hell of a woman. She went swimming every morning in the lake, no matter what the temperature, even into her later years. She always insisted everyone make their beds in the morning (she scolded Michael Jackson when he told her he didn't know how), and she spoke her mind at every turn. She was blunt and harsh and told the truth as she saw it, and people loved her for it. She made many flops, and she acknowledged them openly, but she also gave some of the most brilliant performances the world has ever seen (my two favorite are Lion in Winter and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner).

This book is not a biography, so it may frustrate some people when Scott Berg starts talking about the other books he was writing at the time and not about Kate, but it is worth it to hear her story from her own mouth, and from one who loved her.

ARCHIVED REVIEW: The Middle Place (6/2/10)

The Middle Place

by Kelly Corrigan

"Even when all the paperwork-a marriage license, a notarized deed, two birth certificates, and seven years of tax returns-clearly indicates you're an adult, but all the same, there you are, clutching the phone and thanking God that you're still somebody's daughter."

- Kelly Corrigan (The Middle Place)

This book is basically about a woman who is still her parent's daughter, but also the mother of two children. Hence the "middle place."

I liked parts of this book very much. I loved the stories of her growing up a Corrigan, as part of a galumphing and gregarious Irish family with a dad called Greenie who would shout "Hello World!" out the window every morning and make friends with everyone. I loved the stories about her kids, and how when she would yell at them, they would slyly divert her onto a conversation about how fish don't have noses and all is forgiven.

However, I had a really hard time liking Kelly Corrigan herself. There were moments when she was growing up when I understood her. And I completely understand that when both you and your dad have cancer, you are not in the best state of mind. But a lot of times, I thought she was just crazy! And I have never had cancer, so I don't know what that would do to me, but the way that she was so controlling over her father's treatment because she knew better than anyone else, or how she would get so angry when her husband called his parents to say hi, or the fact that she went out to Bed, Bath and Beyond to buy $400 worth of stuff to replace her parent's old things while her mom was out just because she thought the place looked shabby without asking if it was ok...

I just would look at her and say "Really? Let go, girl. Just let go." There were so many moments like that that I had a hard time enjoying her as a narrator.

If you liked this book, you may like:
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert