After listening to all seventeen hours and fifty-six minutes of Pete Townshend’s autobiography I felt as though I deserved some kind of merit badge. Or a cookie. A reward was definitely in order because, man, this was one long-ass listen (the hardcover weighs in at 544 pages). I’m not sure what kind of fan of …
One of my all-time favorite Saturday Night Live moments is a Debbie Downer sketch where Rachel Dratch biffs a line and the rest of the people in the sketch — Amy Poehler, Lindsay Lohan, Horatio Sanz, and Jimmy Fallon — lose their shit. At one point Horatio Sanz is laughing so hard he has to …
I usually have a strict 100-page rule for books. If after 100 pages I don’t care, am dissatisfied, or bored by the book I chuck it aside and move on. I didn’t do that with Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama and I kind of wish I had. I stuck with it …
It’s been a long time since a book has made me actively angry while reading it, probably not since Downtown Owl. But I’m here to tell you that Fiction Ruined My Family by Jeanne Darst is so poorly written I’m puzzled as to how it even got published. What’s even more puzzling? This book is …
Sunday as I finished Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail I kind of sighed sadly and wished this book had been around when I was a young twentysomething woman. While the story is uniquely Strayed’s the meaning, the lesson, the whathaveyou feels universal. Mostly it’s this: you are …
I remember the moment Jeanette Winterson entered my life. It was the summer of 1995, upstairs in a dusty used-bookstore called The Book Peddler in downtown Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I was lost somewhere in the philosophy stacks when my friend Anderla came over holding a paperback reverently in her hands. “You have to read this,” …
I’m a big believer in that adage about not meeting your heroes because they’ll just disappoint you. The same can probably be said about reading memoirs by your heroes. Ignorance really is bliss, people. What we need here is a word for being compelled to do something you know is going to break your heart. …
Christa once said, and I can never find the original post, that she was incapable of talking about Haruki Murakami’s writing without breaking into an interpretive dance. That’s kind of how I feel about Kristin Hersh’s memoir Rat Girl. It’s kind of fitting that I need to quote Christa, since she’s the entire reason I …
I wanted to read American Widow by Alissa Torres ever since I spied it on Largehearted Boy’s list of favorite graphic novels of 2008. When it arrived in a big box of books David sent me I was giddy. I was intrigued for years by the bare bones of the story — young woman loses …
