Anne Fadiman is–by her own admission–the sort of person who learned about sex from her father’s copy of Fanny Hill, whose husband buys her 19 pounds of dusty books for her birthday, and who once found herself poring over her roommate’s 1974 Toyota Corolla manual because it was the only written material in the READ MORE
Category: Memoir
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | SO ANYWAY… – JOHN CLEESE
Candid and brilliantly funny, this is the story of how a tall, shy youth from Weston-super-Mare went on to become a self-confessed legend. En route, John Cleese describes his nerve-racking first public appearance, at St Peter’s Preparatory School at the age of eight and five-sixths; his endlessly peripatetic home life with parents who seemed incapable READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | NOT THAT KIND OF GIRL – LENA DUNHAM
“There is nothing gutsier to me than a person announcing that their story is one that deserves to be told,” writes Lena Dunham, and it certainly takes guts to share the stories that make up her first book, Not That Kind of Girl. These are stories about getting your butt touched by your boss, READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | MY SALINGER YEAR – JOANNA RAKOFF
Poignant, keenly observed, and irresistibly funny: a memoir about literary New York in the late nineties, a pre-digital world on the cusp of vanishing, where a young woman finds herself entangled with one of the last great figures of the century. At twenty-three, after leaving graduate school to pursue her dreams of becoming a poet, READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | 84, CHARING CROSS ROAD & THE DUCHESS OF BLOOMSBURY STREET – HELENE HANFF
“If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me! I owe it so much. In 1949 Helene Hanff, ‘a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books,’ wrote to Marks & Co. Booksellers of 84 Charing Cross Rd, in search of rare editions she was unable to find in READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | Q’S LEGACY – HELENE HANFF
Here is the remarkable story of how Helene Hanff came to write 84, Charing Cross Road, and of all the things its success has brought her. Hanff recalls her serendipitous discovery of a volume of lectures by a Cambridge don, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. She devoured Q’s book, and, wanting to read all the books READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | SELF-INFLICTED WOUNDS – AISHA TYLER
Comedian, actress, co-host of CBS’s daytime hit The Talk, and creator of the top-ranked podcast Girl on Guy, Aisha Tyler offers a collection of hysterical and unflinchingly personal essays about the spectacular mistakes she has made in her life and what those epic fails have taught her. A fun, revealing and savory read, Self-Inflicted Wounds READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | THE OPPOSITE OF LONELINESS – MARINA KEEGAN
Marina Keegan’s star was on the rise when she graduated magna cum laude from Yale in May 2012. She had a play that was to be produced at the New York International Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at the New Yorker. Tragically, five days after graduation, Marina died in a car READ MORE
ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK: MY YEAR IN A WOMEN’S PRISON – Piper Kerman
“With a career, a boyfriend, and a loving family, Piper Kerman barely resembles the reckless young woman who delivered a suitcase of drug money ten years before. But that past has caught up with her. Convicted and sentenced to fifteen months at the infamous federal correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, the well-heeled Smith College READ MORE
BIRTHDAYS AREN’T ALL BAD…
As those of you who read my other blog, Mpirical, will know, it was my birthday a few days ago. Thank you, thank you, yes, I had a wonderful day. But more importantly, what is a birthday without books? J. got me this little gem – very recently released, it is the (sometimes true) READ MORE
BOOK REVIEW | IF YOU ASK ME (AND OF COURSE YOU WON’T) – BETTY WHITE
I have so much respect and admiration for Betty White. Let me just say that up front. Not only has she molded an ever-growing and -changing career during a time in life when many performers are withdrawing from the public eye and enjoying the fruits of their years and years of hard work, but she READ MORE
BOOK REVIEW | TRAVELS – MICHAEL CRICHTON
You might not think so to see his books gracing the illustrious wire racks of grocery stores and newsagents, but Michael Crichton is an amazingly talented writer. I will argue this point with anyone who dares contradict me. He had me cowering under my blanket as a teenager when I was reading Jurassic Park READ MORE
BOOK REVIEW | TRAUMA FARM: A REBEL HISTORY OF RURAL LIFE – BRIAN BRETT
Trauma Farm is a book about some of the biggest issues facing us in a world of increasing globalization and corporatization. Written by a poet, who also happens to be a rural farmer, it discusses the struggles that are being faced by small-scale, non-corporate farmers throughout North America as they see their livelihoods threatened READ MORE
BOOK REVIEW | ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE: A YEAR OF FOOD LIFE – BARBARA KINGSOLVER (WITH STEVEN L. HOPP AND CAMILLE KINGSOLVER)
In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, the amazingly talented author Barbara Kingsolver takes on a new realm: the economy of food life. The idea for the book was born in her family’s move from the arid climate of Arizona to the temperate climate of southern Appalachia. Part of the motivation for this move was a desire READ MORE
POPULAR FAVOURITES
There are a bunch of books on my shelves that I don’t quite know what to do with. Every time I peruse the shelves looking for a book to write about, one that I loved or that meant something to me, I pause when I reach them but feel a sense of futility when READ MORE