by Jancee Dunn
ONE LINE SUMMARY: This memoir accounts Dunn’s journey from New Jersey to becoming a writer for Rolling Stone Magazine.
If you took out all of Dunn’s anecdotes about her celebrity interviews, this would still be a hilarious, enjoyable book similar to Haven Kimmel’s A Girl Named Zippy. Surprisingly, Dunn’s life is equally as entertaining as the celebrity sections, and I’d be interested in reading more about her, with or without the famous people.
by Peggy Vincent
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Peggy Vincent details her career from nurse to midwife in this memoir.
Although I don’t really understand why some women would not want pain relief if it’s available, I can understand the midwife’s perspective and would probably choose a midwife myself if I had a baby. The way doctors are trained in obstetrics is not necessarily the best way for a pregnant woman. For example, I’ve read that episiotomies often take more time to heal than a natural tear.
This book mainly consists of short chapters detailing a different patient. Although there isn’t too much personal information about Vincent, the book holds together quite well until the part when Vincent gets involved in a lawsuit. I understand the reasons for including this part, but it was an abrupt transition from the previous chapters.
This is a good book, even though I now know more about placentas than I wanted to.
by Marian Fontana
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Marian Fontana’s firefighter husband, Dave, died on 9/11, on their eighth wedding anniversary.
Normally I would hesitate to read something like this, but given Marian Fontana’s writing background (screenwriter, actress, comedienne), I had high hopes, which weren’t in vain.
This memoir is a lovely book detailing her life from 9/11 to about a year later. Although I would have liked to hear more about her life pre-9/11, I understand why there wasn’t room in the book for it. I also liked her honest depiction of the difficulties and frustrations with dealing with her son after Dave’s death.
by Rodney Rothman
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Rothman, at 28, lost his job and decided to retire early to Florida.
This book sounds like a great idea but the main reason it fails is because Rothman didn’t actually retire. Instead, he basically took an extended vacation, unpaid, in Florida, with the idea of writing a book about the experience, and then he went back to his regular life.
Another problem is that Rothman doesn’t write about his life pre-retirement, so we don’t get a sense of how retirement life is different.
There are some amusing chapters, like the one about the Red Hat Ladies, but I would have preferred reading a book about someone who led a full life and then actually retired.
by Augusten Burroughs
ONE LINE SUMMARY: The author stops drinking.
At this point, it has become clear that Augusten Burroughs had a horrific childhood, and it has also become clear that I will read everything he has written and will ever write. In this memoir, Burroughs tracks his attempts to quit drinking while maintaining his advertising career and dealing with a sick friend.
Although I cried while I read this, there’s something ultimately uplifting and honest about Burroughs’s writing. He’s able to see the humor in his life where most people wouldn’t expect any, and he also doesn’t hesitate from showing himself fully, bad faults and all. He is a terrific writer.
edited by Holly Hughes
ONE LINE SUMMARY: This collects various food essays.
I haven’t read one of the Food Writing collections before, but I’ve tried some kind of Best Mystery Stories and Best Essays and other collections in this series and not enjoyed them. This collection was very good, though, and all the essays are short enough that you can polish off one or two when you find yourself without much time to get engrossed in a full length book.
The only complaint I have about this collection is that I think I would rather have not wasted my time on the appendix, which reprints four or five random blog posts, none of which are as good as the worst essay in the book. The blog posts suffer from being reprinted out of context of an entire blog, and do not appear to be able to standalone.
by Beth Lisick
ONE LINE SUMMARY: This is a collection of funny, short essays on the author’s childhood and adult life.
The first half of this book was hysterically funny. Oddly, once the author started getting into her adult years, I found the essays less humorous and more scattered. I think I would have preferred an entire book of essays on her childhood, and then an entire book of essays on her adult life so that she had more time to go into more detail.
For instance, there is no mention anywhere of her wedding or how she decided to marry whom she did. And after reading the essays leading up to her marriage, and the ones after her marriage, the lack of an essay covering some aspect of marriage itself is glaring. I feel like we almost know who the author is, but she is just stepping back a bit before we can see who she is.
That being said, I still recommend this.
by Jacques Pepin
ONE LINE SUMMARY: Jacques Pepin reminisces about his childhood and adult life in cooking.
This is not bad, but I was suprised that a memoir by a chef contains descriptions of food that are strangely distant and passive. There are no mouth-watering phrases as in Ruth Reichl’s Garlic and Sapphires, and the recipes included in this book seem to involve ingredients too difficult to obtain for the casual reader.
The only sections that seemed to come alive for me were the ones describing Pepin’s daughter as a young child, and her involvement with food.
by Rachel DeWoskin
ONE LINE SUMMARY: An American Caucasian goes to Beijing and finds herself starring in a Chinese soap opera.
This book reminds me of a girl I once met. She’d had a wildly eccentric childhood, and various unusual adventures, and yet every story she told just made me think that it should have been more interesting than it actually was. How crazy would it be to go to Beijing for work after graduating from college, and then suddenly find yourself starring in a soap opera? Well, it should be crazier than this book.
I think there are too many topics in this book. I would have gladly read an entire memoir on any of the following: the author’s soap opera career, her relationship with a Chinese man, the upheaval and changes in Beijing while she was there, the death of a close friend. Yet somehow, when all these subjects are tied together in one book, I find myself confused as to timeline and not really enjoying the stories quite as much as I should be.
This book is well-written, but too broad in scope. A pity, because this is the kind of situation that was made for a memoir.
by Paul Feig
ONE LINE SUMMARY: The creator of “Freaks and Geeks” writes about his life.
Memoirs tend to cover specific periods in a person’s life, and this one covers that time period when Paul Feig was obsessed with sex. The memoir ends with the author’s loss of virginity at age 24.
This is moderately amusing, but the single-minded focus (it jumps right in with his first boner in second grade) was a bit dull for me. Some characterization and explanation of his childhood in this book would have helped me feel more attached to young Feig, who just comes off as Napoleon Dynamite: The Sex Years–someone kind of funny, but so removed from the people you know that you never quite bond with them and instead watch them from a distance as if you were studying them.
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