Below you'll find all my writing tagged with the word Memoir. The posts are listed in chronological order. Click the post title to read more.
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 [...]
When we last left off, Ariel Schrag had just finished tenth grade. As good as her freshmen and sophomore years were to read, junior year is even better. The first thing I noticed about Potential the second book in Schrag’s high school chronicles, is that her drawing skills vastly improved from sophomore to junior year. [...]
“It’s a mystery of human chemistry and I don’t understand it, some people, as far as their senses are concerned, just feel like home.” That’s a line Rob Hudson (John Cusack) says in the movie “High Fidelity” and it’s exactly how I feel about Craig Thompson’s “illustrated novel” (his words) Blankets. Why yes, I did [...]
I approached Ariel Schrag’s Awkward and Definition with a little bit of trepidation. Earlier this year I made the proclamation that I was going to read one graphic novel a week, and since I’m an equal-opportunity reader I went in search of female authors. Since, I’ve already read Persepolis and Fun Home I had to [...]
It’s not a good idea to write a review of a book when your eyes are still wet with the tears it caused you to shed. So I waited an entire day to see if the raw emotion evoked by David Small’s graphic memoir Stitches would abate a little before I told you about this [...]
Finally! Finally one of the High Holys of the graphic novel realm held up to the hype. After abandoning Watchmen and being disappointed by Sandman, I approached Maus with a bit of trepidation. Could it live up to the hype? Hell yes. I’ve read Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel. I’ve seen “Schindler’s List,” “Life is [...]
By all laws of logic and mathematics, I should love Jeffrey Brown’s graphic memoir Little Things: A memoir in slices. We like the same music, we’re about the same age, we’re both writers, and this is the stuff that fills his book. Seriously, I should have a full-blown crush on this book right now. And [...]
When the Largehearted Boy proclaims that something is his all-time favorite ever, I run out and consume whatever that thing might be. That’s what fangirls do. I am still waiting for him to proclaim Michael Cera his all-time favorite Canadian ever, but that’s beside the point. The point here is that LHB proclaimed that David [...]
I picked up The Year of Magical Thinking because in his answers to the 6 questions we always ask, Bill Tuomala said he would take Joan Didion out to Jax. Plus, I vaguely remembered hearing great, great things about this memoir Didion wrote following the death of her husband. Didion’s husband, writer John Gregory Dunne [...]
I’ve been trying to write about Elizabeth McCracken’s memoir An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination for three weeks. I’ve read it twice and I’m still having a hard time finding the words. I do want to make this statement: This is unequivocally the best book I’ve read so far this year. This [...]
You know what I like the most about Juliana Hatfield’s Book Notes essay? Not only does she list a Wilson Phillips song and talk of how much she and Evan Dando loved their album, but she disses their lyrical grammar. It’s more awesomeness than the law should allow. I haven’t read her memoir yet, but [...]
Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat, because some of you won’t make it to the end of this piece. David Carr’s memoir The Night of the Gun is really good. It’s dramatic, spell-binding, engaging, encouraging, and all sorts of good stuff you look for in a book. In fact the [...]
Sometime last year or the year before that, I spent hours at Grumpy’s with Jags and The Hottie discussing the bullshit that is dubbed “creative non-fiction.” That designation as a writing genre drives me nuts. Jags and The Hottie tried to get me to understand that “creative non-fiction” is a totally legit genre and that [...]
I’ve noticed an alarming trend in the want ads lately. It seems “rock star” is the adjective du jour when describing the employees that companies want to hire. Even Hell, Inc. is looking for “rock stars” now that they got rid of all of us mid-tempo balladeers. It’s an interesting choice of words, and maybe [...]
MN Reads PW.net
