Nonfiction | Musings of a Hollywood Mom

For my first Read Harder Challenge category, I chose the celebrity memoir because after reading some really dense Gore Vidal (more on that later), I needed something light. In selecting a book for this category, I figured there were a few ways I could go: pick a person I knew and liked, thus mostly guaranteeing enjoyment; pick someone deep, complicated, and interesting that would be impressive in dinner conversation; or pick some total fluff, like a reality star, that I cared nothing about but forced me to really branch out from what I'd normally choose.

While I toyed with the idea of selecting the fine writing of some Real Housewife of the Jersey Shore, I preserved my sanity and chose a celebrity with a slightly deeper story: Drew Barrymore.

Barrymore's Wildflower follows in the same vein as most celebrity "memoirs" these days, in that it's more a collection of essays or anecdotes—"meaningful life moments"—than a real reflection of one's life. (I mean, how much life reflection can you share when you're only 42?) In Wildflower, the actress recollects her first experience of doing laundry, living on her own at age 14. She writes odes to the people she loves—friends, husband, in-laws, children, Adam Sandler—and how their stories began. She chronicles a multi-day outward bound trek taken with her Charlie's Angels co-stars after filming wrapped, and how nature nearly got the best of her. She writes about how her three rescue dogs ushered her into a responsible adulthood and how Steven Spielberg has been an unwavering source of support since her days on the set of E.T. And of course, no celebrity "memoir" would be complete without the reflection on the life-changing do-good trip to some third-world country. (I remember Amy Poehler's feeling so forced that I nearly quit reading.)

I chose this memoir because I thought that, in the game of celebrity memoirs where every witty or popular young-ish female seems to have been given a book deal, Drew Barrymore may have something more substantial to say. Less self-indulgent. More introspective, reflective, or thought-provoking. I mean, girl's been through some stuff.

That wasn't the case. I mean, I understand not wanting to dwell on one's past, especially one so colorful that has probably been rehashed often enough when you've personally moved on. But for someone with those experiences who has so clearly learned from them and made thoughtful decisions to build a very purposeful life since, completely avoiding those topics seems like such an omission, making these words she does share seem more trivial. It seems she wants to be open, sharing the importance of some of her life's little moments. But without facing the tough moments that brought her to this current level of peace and introspection, the stories she shares end up feeling like they just skim the surface.

Ultimately, most of her recollections felt so generic, they could've been written by and about anyone. Meeting in-laws and birthing children can be monumental milestones, but I'm not reading Drew Barrymore's story for the universal experience of how having a kid changes a person; I want to read the unique stories that have built her life and made her a person worth getting this book deal. Instead, I felt like an English teacher filling the margins of a student essay with red pen critique to "dig deeper."

Nonfiction | Agonizing Over Adulthood

In case you haven't noticed, my year has been filled with a lot of middle grade reading—fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels, anything. When the next on my reading challenge list was a graphic novel, any graphic novel, it would've been easy to just pick up one of the gazillion young titles on my library shelves, but I thought this would be a good opportunity to enjoy a graphic story from a more adult voice.

The book I chose is Drinking at the Movies by Julia Wertz. She's the creator of The Fart Party, which the back of the book tells me is a cult-hit comic. Drinking at the Movies is her first full-length memoir, which chronicles the year she left her home in San Francisco and moved to New York.

There are a lot of such stories out there. Twenty-somethings move to the big city for an experience, or some kind of personal test, and it's so unlike any other experience that they, of course, document it. So there's that kind of story—first adventures/disasters/disillusions with New York City. Then there's the stories of just 20-somethings themselves—lost in life, often trying to find themselves by losing a familiar geographic sense of comfort. I guess you could consider Drinking at the Movies both of these things, but Wertz doesn't strike me as a narrator that a) takes herself too seriously, b) takes what she says too seriously, and c) ponders these experiences as big, serious life-defining moments.

In a sense, her attitude was very refreshing. In another sense, her attitude reeked of a lackadaisical "I can screw up because I'm 24, so I won't worry about my choices." Like most folks of her age and situation, Wertz drinks too much; she doesn't feel like an adult and scoffs at the idea with humor, rather than trying to evolve into it; she doesn't think of her future in a serious sort of way—it's more an immediate future worrying, not long-term thinking. It's unclear whether New York was her long-term plan or just a whim, but it was her first important step towards a more grown-up future. There are so many similar stories of people around this age doing just this, because this step outside of one's comfort zone is so developmentally significant, and can be equally as life-affirming.

Regardless of whether it's a new story or one told a thousand times before, I thought Wertz was hilarious. The structure of this book is very much short, anecdotal comics thrown together to tell a complete story. In that sense, it's a great one to read in brief spurts, though I read it basically in one sitting. She's self-critical while avoiding the self-critique that requires loads of self-reflection. Whether she's telling stories of encounters with the homeless, the days she's lost jobs, the excessive amount of junk she eats, or her drug-addicted brother's bouts in and out of rehab, Wertz writes about her life with a "HERE IT IS" attitude—and she does it with such wit that you figure she must be that great kind of sardonic storyteller in real life. Or at least that friend you can count on for a great one-liner, said under her breath, at the best moment of any situation.

Nonfiction | Hodgepodged Humor from a Comedy Queen

Yes Please by Amy Poehler
Category: An audiobook

The Read Harder challenge I am undertaking (ha, remember that? Back in February??) lists an audiobook as one of its categories. Frankly, I'm not really an audiobook fan. The couple that I've listened to have just bored me stiff; I keep thinking, "I could be reading this myself WAY faster," and I generally end up falling asleep. I know, I know... It just means I'm not the greatest listener, and I fully admit that. It requires practice, and I'll work on that.

For this challenge, though, I figured that I'd better at least choose an audiobook with an interesting narrator (because I know that can make or break it), so Amy Poehler's Yes Please, narrated by the author herself, seemed like the perfect choice.

Yes Please is diverse little book. It's sort of like a memoir, mixed with some grand advice, peppered with humorous lists, and with a few guest authors (and narrators) thrown in. She covers her first forays into acting and improv, details how to apologize from your heart instead of your ego, chronicles the drastic changes parenthood brings to life (including an especially funny letter about a birth plan), recollects favorite career moments, and offers sound advice for aging—among other things. Of course, because it's Poehler, it's all generally told with a sense of humor, but it never feels like it was written just to be funny. It's a little bit all over the place, so it's hard, ultimately, to see what exactly its purpose is. It's like she was presented with the opportunity to write to a mass audience...and this book is the hodgepodge result of all the things she wanted to say. Is it comedy? Is it a memoir? Is it self-help? Does it matter?

I'm still up in the air as to whether the audiobook made my experience with this book better or worse. On the one hand, I love Poehler on the stage (err, screen). I love her as a performer, so there's a good chance that hearing her talk was going to entertain me. Plus, the smorgasbord format of this book also lent itself to a very casual narration that was really enhanced by special guests. On the other hand, I've shared how quickly memoirs are falling out of my favor...and at times I was a little bit squeamish just hearing the author talk about herself. But, there's a good chance that's just me and my extreme tendency towards self-effacement. [It hits that same nerve as watching a talent show; it just makes me so uncomfortable.]

The hard part of listening to an audiobook for me, a visual learner, is that I can't make the physical references to words on a page—and if there's a part I want to remember, it's much harder to make it stick because I don't know where to go back for a second look. [Interesting note, though: I listened to half of this while running, and I could remember where exactly on the trail I was at certain spots in the narration. Fascinating new kind of mental referencing.]

Anyway, here is the takeaway that I remembered to come back and find online because I thought it was a good nugget to keep.

Advice from the future 90-year-old Amy Poehler to her current self:

Reading Roundup: Nonfiction Picks

In an effort to get through my lengthy backlog of books to share, here are a few varied nonfiction selections I've read as of late...(Sidenote: I started a draft of this post over a month ago. Whoops?)

Beginning with a memoir, Girl Walks Into a Bar... by former-SNL funny-woman Rachel Dratch answers the question she presumes has been on everyone's mind, which is, "Where has Rachel Dratch been since SNL?" To sum it up for you, she had a baby. It was unplanned. But it is great.

Dratch's memoir was probably published in the same vein as recent comedic releases by Tina Fey and Chelsea Handler. However, it completely lacked the universal comedic appeal that the two mentioned authors bring to their essay collections, which, though often containing personal anecdotes, tell them in a way that is just generally entertaining to read. This book did include some interesting tidbits and background info about her life and entry into show-business, but mostly it was a personal update that felt more worthy of a blog post. I enjoy Dratch immensely, but I just don't think she had enough to say to warrant a 240-page book.


I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley is another book that had been on my to-read shelf since about 2009 but that I quickly realized is not the type of book I dig. Essays like these feel little more than extended versions of social media posts or emails to friends, and I constantly wonder how and why some editor deemed them worthy of an entire book that should be shared to the masses. It seems such a formulaic trend at this point—write about your quirky upbringing, or your weird transition to college, or random drug experimentation, or the terrible jobs you held. Do that all with a comedic flair and VOILA, book deal. I don't have a thing against memoirs, but I have a thing against the ones that don't share a unique or interesting life experience. And that's how I felt with this one. Some parts of her writing made me chuckle, but overall I just didn't really care about Crosley's unexceptional experiences.

Maybe I'm being too harsh, because I did really like a similar style book by Jane Borden a couple years back. Maybe that's what these editors count on—one random person somewhere in the world that is going to totally connect with a book and say, "OMG, YES," on every other page. For this book, I wasn't that person. But I guess who cares—to hell with all I've already said! Write on, Sloane Crosley! Write on!


Now, talking about life experiences... Rick Antonson' Route 66 Still Kicks: Driving America's Main Street is one I need to have—and until then will have to settle for just reading about! What happens is these two guys, Rick and Peter, decide to have the quintessential American roadtrip by following Route 66 from Chicago to LA. No interstates allowed; they have to follow the original route—in its entirety—as best they can. And they learn that task is much easier said than done.

The original Route 66 is tricky to follow. Stretches have been re-named, re-routed, abandoned. Guides and maps have evolved over the decades in such a manner to make it incredibly difficult to figure out what's new, what's old, and what's original. Rick and Peter have an entertaining dynamic—one is go-with-the-flow, one is a planner. Their own interactions are about as entertaining as their ones with the many varied people they meet along the way. What I really enjoyed about this book was the huge amount of history and culture included in the narrative. Rick's personal account is peppered with stories of local legend and famous figures that contribute to the route's lore in American culture. I read this as an eBook and marked several pages with interesting tidbits and beautifully-phrased, poignant passages. Unfortunately, my library copy expired before I exported my notes (my own fault), so I can't share any with you now...but trust they are there; it's your turn to find them!

Speed Dating with Middle Grade: Part 3

Here's my last round of middle grade speed dating for a bit; I've played catch-up, and it's about time to get back into the adult world of literature! If last round's three titles seemed similar, this round's are everything but!

It's been interesting to see how my own opinions on certain books have changed as I consider a new perspective—that of an 11- or 12-year-old. The hardest thing to realize is that your personal adolescence is by no means representative of Adolescence. Every kid is in a different place with different emotions, different interests, and different experiences. That makes the job both motivating and disappointing as you introduce your students to new things. I can understand how long-time librarians have a tough time weeding their collection that they so meticulously curated; if you love something, you want your readers to love it too, and sometimes that just doesn't happen! [The number of check-outs on our new, hand-picked-by-me DVD copy of Harriet the Spy is just disappointingly low.]

Title: I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World (Young Readers edition)
Author: Malala Yousafzai
Genre: Memoir
Read If You Like...: True stories, inspiring figures, and world politics
Three-Sentence Thoughts: Malala Yousafzai is a figure that should be a household name—she is the youngest-ever winner of the Nobel Prize for her work in human rights advocacy and women's education, after all. Here, she tells her story as she saw her home country of Pakistan change with Taliban rule in the early 2000s, as she defied their ban on education for women, and as she survived a gunshot to the head from an attempt on her life by a Taliban soldier. Malala's story is an exceptionally moving and inspiring one that young readers should encounter, but it's also a frightening one as you realize exactly how easily the freedoms we take for granted can disappear and (for adult readers) how this moment in history happened in our lifetime right under our noses.

Title: Gone Away Lake
Author: Elizabeth Enright
Genre: Classic, Adventure
Read If You Like...: Summer stories, nostalgia, and quaint adventures
Three-Sentence Thoughts: It's summer vacation and cousins Portia and Julian find an adventure when they discover a ghost town in the woods where remnants include decadent old houses, long-forgotten antiques...and two of the town's former residents still living in their deserted home! The jacket flap blurb led me to believe this was going to be much more of an adventure-mystery than it actually was, as the actual plot was pretty dated and not very exciting. Nostalgic adults may delight in this old-fashioned adventure, but now, with my middle school librarian perspective, all I could think was how my kids would be bored out of their minds with this.

Title: Cleopatra in Space: Target Practice
Author: Mike Maihack
Genre: Graphic novel, Fantasy
Read If You Like...: Historical figures, time travel, and Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century [anyone? anyone??]
Three-Sentence Thoughts: In this time-traveling adventure, a young Cleopatra finds a mysterious tablet that zaps her from ancient Egypt to the far, far future where she learns of a prophecy that she will save the galaxy from an evil ruler. She enrolls in school with a typical course-load of math, biology, and combat training and is put to the test to find out if she does, in fact, have the potential to be a hero. I breezed through this one, and it's fun but will definitely be more satisfying as the rest of the series is written and released.

Nonfiction | Riding Through Argentina

Before our travels, I scoured the public library's eBook offerings to find anything relating to our destinations—preferably more than just travel guides. In my search for Argentina, I was happy to come up with a travel memoir by Polly Evans called On a Hoof and a Prayer: Exploring Argentina at a Gallop. This was perfect—here was another experience of a place we were going and, particularly, a part of the culture I had been keen to explore myself; Argentina's gaucho history was something on my list to discover while there.

From my understanding and experience, the gaucho is one of the remaining peripheral cultures that represent a rural, traditional way of life in Argentina. Much of central Argentina is covered in a landscape known as the pampas—vast grassland that has been cultivated for crops and livestock. The "gaucho" would be known in English as a cowboy, and it's a culture that has evolved from a renegade gypsy lifestyle of stealing horses to one that maintains the land and promotes horsemanship.

So now that you've got a cultural backdrop, I'll actually talk about the book!

Evans journeyed to Argentina from her home in England with a mission to master horse-riding, a skill she'd always dreamed about, as any good young English girl is supposed to. Here, though, there are no fancy riding outfits, and the style is far from prim and proper. Evans navigates her way through the country's many regions, learning to ride but discovering the country's history and culture along the way.

I find myself more wary of memoirs as time passes, following my husband's line of thinking and finding them often too self-indulgent. I like memoirs that capture a unique moment of time or a unique experience; what do I care about random person's trip to Europe who thinks herself so cute that she feels the need to share her experience with the world? Evans, though, does a really good job of balancing her own experiences with loads of information on Argentina's history and culture. This was especially fun to read while actually being there, because I was actually learning and could see things firsthand. For me, this memoir didn't fall in the category of annoying, because Evans wrote her stories straightforward, without a forced level of comedy or quirk. It's like she recognizes that her experience wasn't any more special than another person's own unique experience, so she used them as a jumping off point to enlighten the reader about a certain place and culture, perhaps inspiring you to explore it for yourself. It was easy, enjoyable, and educational.

Or maybe I'm just slightly biased, because it's always more fun when you can see it firsthand; but I think Evans is an author I'd be keen to read more from—she's been loads more places and written much about it.

Nonfiction | How One Woman Saved 90,000 Babies

November's book club selection was a little something old, a little something new. You see, our book club was originally founded to explore NYRB's world lit catalog, and we returned to our roots this month with an NYRB selection. The new part is that it was a nonfiction title, something we haven't often visited, and it was a nice change of pace.

The book in question is S. Josephine Baker's memoir Fighting for Life. "Who is S. Josephine Baker?" you may ask. No, it is not the famous French dancer of the 1920s... this Josephine isn't often known by name (at least in most communities) but you've certainly heard of the things she's done. Seeing as how she is almost single-handedly responsible for revolutionizing infant healthcare into what we accept today as common sense... yeah, she's a pretty important lady!

A bit of a history lesson: New York at the turn of the century was home to the most densely populated, most poverty-stricken neighborhood, the Lower East Side. This area was mostly populated by immigrant communities recently arrived, and folks were stuffed to the gills in old tenement housing. It was dirty and hot and stuffy and just a breeding ground for germs. It was no surprise the city, and this area in particular, had an extremely high infant mortality rate.

This is where our Dr. Baker comes in. Family tragedy forced her into a profession rather than a marriage like most women of the early twentieth century, and medicine was the route she chose. At a time when healthcare was provided at the time of an illness, Dr. Baker championed preventative care to prevent illness from happening in the first place. Name a norm of modern infant care, and she probably started the trend. From school nurses to milk stations to healthy infant attire, Dr. Baker approached medicine on a problem-solving basis.

If you want to look at a successful PR campaign, just look at all of her work. When I say she problem-solved, I mean she really approached an issue from every angle. She got everyone involved in preventative care on a level each group could understand—doctors, nurses, politicians, parents, even the children themselves. Much of Dr. Baker's career was an uphill battle—just look at who she was and the times in which she lived. She fought for respect from her male colleagues, for resources and funding. I'm sure it wasn't easy as she lived it, but my takeaway from her memoirs was that she was the right person in the right place at the right time. These memoirs are written as recollections by the author in the late 1930s, a good twenty plus years after the start of her health revolution. Perhaps this is the reason her experiences all sounded so easy, like things just fell into place. Certainly her day to day must've been more chaotic than it comes across in her writing!

As a narrator, she's entirely unsympathetic. I don't mean she sounds insensitive; she just never discusses her experiences on a personal level, rather as a puzzle that she had to solve. She was clearly a driven, effective woman that let her work speak for itself. Fighting for Life is a piece about her work, not about her personal life, and reading this, one would almost assume she didn't have one. But surely that can't be true--small anecdotes reveal a witty, outspoken woman. As we decided in book club, it sure would be interesting to read a biography on her that included more than just her professional life; I have a feeling she was a real character. Overall, her story is fascinating when you realize the influence she's had. Like she says, it's just common sense.

Nonfiction | One funny girl

Fact about myself: my childhood was filled with hours upon hours of Nick at Nite, and I fully credit them with my extensive knowledge of retro TV shows, often singling me out amongst my peers as the one who "knows all this old stuff." Among my childhood favorites: Happy Days, I Love Lucy, Mary Tyler Moore, and Laverne & Shirley.

This, I believe, is the reason that Penny Marshall's memoir, My Mother Was Nuts, ended up in my NYPL hold queue. I must've read about it on NPR or something, and months later, it finally landed at my library for pick-up.

First of all, I have to say, Penny Marshall and her brother Garry Marshall are two people that just pop up everywhere. I remember them being two of the first actors that I started to recognize here and there—the most notable childhood reference obviously being their Hocus Pocus cameo. But, to tell you the truth, I have never known much about them. (As a kid, I remember thinking they were married, because that's the relationship between all men and women who are always together and share a last name, right?)

From what I read in her book, Penny Marshall has actually done much more than I ever knew. Did you know she, in fact, directed both Big and A League of Their Own—-two movies on my all-time top 10 list? Because I sure didn't.

Penny's book starts out like most memoirs in which a person of fame is reflecting on their life--looking back to where it all started. Sometimes, that's kind of boring, depending on the person. And when you start to read, "I grew up in [blank] town with my [blank] siblings and a mother who [blank] a father who, God love him, never really [blank]," you just kind of suck in air and say, "Oh boy..." But Penny is funny. And she tells those stories about her loud dance instructor mother and quiet accountant father, and somehow, you're interested because she makes it so.

I really enjoyed My Mother Was Nuts much more than I expected to. I keep reading these celebrity memoirs, always hoping they will turn out like this one—not overly serious and with enough anecdotes and experiences that will entertain you, the reader, and not just the reminiscing author. I think about these in terms of storytelling; would the content of this book be good if she was telling me the stories over a beer? And yes. Yes, it would.

Nonfiction | Oh, to Be a Farmer

My 16-year-old self would be so disappointed with my 26-year-old self.

When I was 16, I was aching to move to the big city. I dreamed of living "anywhere but here" (here being Tennessee) and my personal mission was to end up in New York because I just swore I was a city girl at heart.

Well, I did that. I am in New York now and have been for the past eight years. And what have I learned in those eight years? That maaaaybe I'm not as much of a city girl as my 16-year-old self would've thought. I still remember one of my first visits here as a high schooler, and I was astounded at how people's intimate lives are forced together—that I could see into another person's home through a window across the way; that I could hear their personal conversations without intentionally eavesdropping. I craved that kind of city living, being in the middle of it all, always encountering someone new.

And now, the thing I crave is quiet. And nature. And privacy. And not having to deal with strangers first thing in the morning. And sitting outside knowing that I am totally alone and no one can see me.

Ah, well. You can't win them all, can you? It's because of this recent affinity for rural settings that my interest was piqued by Jenna Woginrich's memoir Barnheart: The Incurable Longing for a Farm of One's Own back in March when I saw it on display at the PLA conference. And thanks to the lovely booth rep, I walked away with my very own copy.

Jenna had a similar craving to mine. As a twenty-something, she packed up and followed a new job to rural Vermont, determined to fulfill her dream of running a productive farm. This book is one of those blog-to-memoir examples, and Jenna has established an internet presence over the past few years at her blog Cold Antler Farm. Barnheart is told somewhat chronologically, but her chapters are structured more as vignettes, detailing a certain experience—like buying her first goat, attempting to become a shepherd, or making friends with the somewhat exclusive locals.

I did have some issues with Jenna's attitude at certain times. She can come off as awfully judgmental of lifestyles other than her own. She expresses her disgust at city folk owning vacation homes in the country where the land "isn't put to use;" she makes snide remarks about people who are uninformed about the food industry and who don't buy local / buy organic / support or adopt a sustainable lifestyle. It somewhat blemished a narrative that otherwise seemed like it wanted to be so positive and encouraging, sharing stories about the transition to farm life. I hope that, in real life, Jenna would support others following a similar path with enthusiasm and not judge everyone else who isn't.

I did enjoy hearing her story, though, and was inspired afterwards to read her blog. Being someone that lives a completely opposite lifestyle, Barnheart had the effect of taking me away to a life that part of me craves. As I sit in front of a computer all day every day, I can't help but desire an active outdoor lifestyle that is so different from the one I am currently living. I can't help it—I think I really am a country girl at heart (...or maybe more of a mix, but definitely not at 24/7 city girl).

Reading Roundup: Memoirs Memoirs

I know lots of you can read multiple books at a time and have a long queue of books to write about that, and I don't know how you do it! I have a single track mind. I told you I was really behind on posting, and it's just stressing me out. This week, I'm finally starting a long-awaited read-along of Lions of the West with the wonderful Aarti, and I want to be focused. Therefore...it's reading roundup time!

I can't remember what inspired me to put Samantha Bee's memoir I Know I Am, But What Are You? on my to-read list. I think maybe I heard her on NPR, but it actually took me forever to get my hands on a copy. Samantha Bee is most well-known as the first woman (and first Canadian) correspondant on The Daily Show. Her memoir is a collection of essays and anecdotes chronicling such things as Bee's awkward adolescent years, her stint as a Japanese anime character, and her rise out of obscurity on Comedy Central.

This is just a funny, entertaining book to read. If you liked Tina Fey's memoir, this is written in a similar style (though this was actually published first), and you'll probably enjoy this one as well. Bee has got some amusing stories to tell, often awkward, sometimes a bit vulgar. It caused me to laugh out loud a few times on the subway, and you can't ask for much more than that.

Marzi by Marzena Sowa caught my eye in the Random House booth at the ALA Midwinter conference, and the nice booth rep gave me an extra copy at the end of the show. (Thanks, person!) It's been a while since I've read a graphic novel, and I do enjoy those of the memoir variety. This one tells the story of Marzi's childhood growing up in Communist Poland in the 1980s. Political events unfold through the eyes of a child, and though Marzi sees what is happening around her and understands that it is important, she doesn't fully grasp its meaning (and thus, the same for us, the reader). There is a great mix of the big events happening in Marzi's world around her and in her own little day-to-day world. The interaction of the two create a very rich, full picture of Marzi's childhood.

My only feeling of unfulfillment is wanting to know more about Marzi's relationship with her mother. You can just feel tension between the two through the words and pictures, but it's not explored in much depth. I don't know why I need to know this intimate aspect of the author's life, but it's just hinted at so strongly that it left me curious! But beyond that, this was a good graphic pick-up.

Nonfiction | Starving Artists in the City

Patti Smith's National Book Award-winning memoir Just Kids is a book that's been on my periphery for quite a while. For a period there it was one of the books you'd most frequently see on the subway and on the 'featured' shelves of bookstores. In fact, I think I'd checked it out from the library no less than three times before I ever got around to actually reading it.

Before reading this book, I had no idea who Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe were. I got the impression that maybe these were people that are well-known to a certain crowd, a certain New York City artsy crowd, but it wasn't their story that drew me to the book in the first place; it was that the book (supposedly) captured a particular moment and lifestyle in New York City history, and as a resident, that's always exciting to read about.

So, if you also have no idea who these people are, don't worry. In a nutshell, they're sort of vagabond artists of the Dylan, Morrison, Warhol generation. They lived paycheck to paycheck, worked whatever job would pay, moved wherever was cheaper, saved pennies and occasionally splurged on treats. They did what they had to do to get by, but art was always at the forefront of their minds—creation of something...photography, painting, drawing, sculpting, writing, composing...didn't matter what. The late 60s and 70s are not often reflected upon fondly in New York City. It's an era defined by the city's decline—uptick in crime, heavy drug use, neighborhoods falling apart—but it produced some of the twentieth century's most lasting artists. Intentional or not, Smith's memoir describes the connection between art and environment, how having nothing inspires creating of something, how surroundings influence what an artist wants to say.

Patti Smith encountered a lot of famous people in her youth, people with much bigger names than hers. She never describes these people to name drop. Her own described insecurities keep her placed her on a rung below the most famous, but she did share their world. She recalls encounters with Hendrix and Joplin and describes them as the gods they have become, leaving me wondering if she remembers them with the status they have attained in the past forty years or if they really were so far above in their own time.

Smith paints a full picture of the era, complete with secondary characters and locations, but the focus of the story is always on her relationship with Mapplethorpe. Ultimately, she tells the story of two people who support each other endlessly as they each try to achieve their goals and reach their dreams.

Westward Ho!: On Little House and childhood obsessions

The kick-off novel in my Westward Ho! reading project isn't exactly the gritty historical fiction or gripping non-fiction narrative that you may expect... Instead, it's the memoir of one modern-day woman searching for something authentic in a fictional historical world that was based on real-life experiences. Got all that?

Wendy McClure's The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie is, at its most basic, a tribute to the life and stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder. On a deeper level, though, it is McClure's quest to experience the world that she loved as a child—a world she knew as fiction but discovered was very much based on fact—by obsessively reading everything she can find on the topic, retracing the Ingalls' pilgrimage West, and stocking her apartment with pioneer technologies to prove that she, a 21st-century woman, can churn butter with the best of 'em.

McClure's quest sounds like something I would absolutely do. (My own adolescent obsession was a TV show about vampire slayers, so a little more difficult to find, but trust me, I have my own stories...) I would even enthusiastically follow McClure's own traveling trail for the "historical scavenger hunt" (as I am terming it), but here's the thing...I've never read most of the Little House books. Therefore, I think this book possessed a level of enjoyment I was capable of reaching, but I couldn't go any further because I haven't read all the books and couldn't fully invest in what she was looking for. I think it was a fun read, but it would be astoundingly better for real Little House fans.

The concept of this book continues to swirl around in my head, though. My childhood and adolescence were littered with little "obsessions" that still conjure up a very special feeling in me as an adult—the feeling of which an entire moment in your life (the thoughts, emotions, experiences) are intricately linked with something so...material, sort of tangible. These feelings are harder to create as an adult (or maybe it's just that we lack the distance we now have to childhood), and we want to keep experiencing them, experiencing that magic we felt that we link to a movie, a tv show, a book, a song.

So, McClure's quest makes perfect sense to me, but it does come with the risk that we won't find what we're looking for. I marked this passage, because it perfectly identifies those fears and makes you consider if it's worth it to search at all.

But then on page after page in the book, the girl kept discovering that all the old things weren't quite what she expected. She was shown sadly regarding the log cabin that was smaller and emptier than she'd thought, and she warily eyed gift shop merchandise at one of the hometown museums. She stood on the asphalt in downton De Smet, South Dakota, waiting for a Fourth of July parade that never happened. She squinted in the sunlight of an open field where the Big Woods had once stood. I remembered enough about the books—just barely—to know what she'd been searching for.

It figures, I'd thought, and put the book back on the shelf.

Nonfiction | Southern Yankee minds think alike

A long time ago, I was taken in by a web ad and put Jane Borden's I Totally Meant to Do That on my 'to-read' list, because it just sounded too perfect. Borden grew up a debutante in North Carolina and moved to New York after college, which is essentially my life, minus the extremes of debutante (I went to public school) and hipster (yeah, I live in Brooklyn, but I don't own Oxfords).

This book is essentially my brain on paper. It’s a collection of little observations that Jane has made on the on the idiosyncrasies of city-living that only someone from the South would spend the time noticing and analyzing. To so many of her experiences, I just had to say: Yes. Been there. Experiences like:

• Stopping a stranger after picking up something they dropped, only to realize the person was, in fact, littering, and your help is interpreted as sarcasm. My first week in New York, I stopped a woman at the bank who dropped a dollar. Her response? “Pft, it’s only a dollar.”
• Being yelled at or called a profanity by a stranger after the smallest of encounters. Ugh, nothing starts your day off worse than being yelled at by a stranger at 8:30am on the subway for something inconsequential. And I end up crying every time. WHY SO RUDE???

And how, inevitably, New York has its own reasons for its behavior. Like how:

• Walking the streets is an art form (one on which I pride myself for having mastered), weaving in and out of people, avoiding stationary objects. Because the key is just to watch the people around you.
• People project no sense of privacy, because, “Wherever New Yorkers are, they feel at home. What tourists regard as exhibitionism, locals herald as the inalienable right to treat the city like a bedroom.” I think it is often gross and inappropriate. DO NOT CLIP YOUR NAILS ON THE SUBWAY.
• There’s no rule of etiquette because “manners require social interaction while New Yorkers are bred for anonymity, naturally selected to blend in and go unnoticed. Those who accidentally stand out get mugged. Or, worse, end up on reality-TV prank shows.” No joke, this is often my worst fear. That I will end up on YouTube because of something I did and didn’t even realize I was doing.

And how New York has this constant buzz of noise that you don’t even notice until you escape it completely and you realize that actually drives you crazy. And all the stimuli bombarding you constantly becomes commonplace until one day you suddenly see it clearly and it also drives you crazy. And utterly EXHAUSTS you.

After approximately 3.25 years in the city, I even made a decision similar to Jane Borden and decided to be a Southerner living in New York rather than a New Yorker from the South. And since, I’ve done what she did, trying to “import the South” with pictures, posters, recipes, bringing back “y’all” to my lexicon, probably much to the annoyance of my friends and loved ones in New York.

I read this book when I was home for Christmas, and I think I bawled in my bed at about 1:30 in the morning as I finished it, because of the ending which was just so on point that it’s not even worth paraphrasing.

“I thought I was choosing between between two geographical locations, between two ways of life. But that’s not true. North Carolina isn’t a lifestyle; it’s my family…New Yorkers participate in one another’s most intimate moments, and I want to share in them all…But by definition, these relationships could never be more than snippets—how can I justify choosing strangers over my family?…I now have three nephews and a niece who are growing up without me, know me as the aunt who flies in and out…I have wisdom to share, and I don’t want to do so over the phone or through the mail.”

Ok, for me, it is somewhat the lifestyle of geographic locations, but for the most point, she gets me. I'm not sure people who have not made the South to North move would fully get everything Borden says (get in that "OMG, YES, SO TRUE!" kind of way), but it's funny enough to be enjoyed nonetheless. It was just too eerily similar to my life that I absolutely loved it—similar even down to the same dive bar I live next door to in Brooklyn, and Southern women's fear of gypsies who will enter your unlocked house while you're outside gardening (something I was raised to fear).

Nonfiction | A man so cool, they named DVDs after him

Eeep, I have been MIA for quite a while. I know it's bad when I have my next book club meeting in two days, and my post on last month's book is still one of my most recent posts. Somehow, I imagine fall as this wonderfully peaceful time of winding down from summer and getting nestled in for winter...but that doesn't seem to be the case. Do you remember the days when your weekends just sprung up like any other day of the week, open for spontaneity and without plans? Yeah, neither do I. Something happens in adulthood where suddenly every weekend is planned, and even weeknights quickly become booked. So strange! But maybe winter will slow things down...(though I'm not holding my breath).

A few months ago, I heard Dick Van Dyke on NPR's Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me, where Peter Sagal provided the excellent introduction I am using as this post title. Dick Van Dyke has always been one of my favorites. When I was a kid, I could recite every line to Mary Poppins (which served me like counting sheep when trying to fall asleep) and spent my evenings watching Nike at Night. Needless to say, Dick Van Dyke has always entertained me, and after I heard about his memoir on Wait, Wait and I saw it at the library, I picked it up.

My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business chronicles DVD's career from his early high school days at a radio station to the present. His life is barely controversial, and he's candid and honest with his storytelling. The main point he drives home is that...he has no idea how all his success happened; he maintains it's all luck. And maybe it is, but the guy is a fabulous entertainer. He's got a rare talent of physical humor and has a pretty good stage presence. As entertaining as Dick Van Dyke is on the stage, screen, and radio...he maaaaay not be the most entertaining writer.

Some of his stories were so interesting, especially reading about the how the TV industry worked in days past. I have zero doubt in my mind that I could have dinner with DVD and he could recite every line from his book, and I'd be enthralled, intrigued, entertained, etc. But that's the thing with DVD...so much of his personality is dependent on his physical presence that his words typed on a page read kind of dry. I don't love him any less, but I think I'll stick to watching a man "so cool, his initials have entered the international lexicon" on my TV screen.

Vacation Reading, Part II

Next on my very slow (sorry!) review of books I read on vacation: What I read in Nashville

Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle has been sitting on my shelf for at least two years, but after a friend recently urged me to JUST READ IT, I moved it up in the queue. This one's had a lot of hype and been around for quite a while, so you probably already know it.

Jeannette grew up with some...interesting...parents. They were, at the same time, incredibly inspiring and incredibly negligent. I hesitate to specify any particular anecdotes so as not to sway your judgments one way or another, because this book has a very strange grey-area sort of perspective. It's written in brief snippets of chapters that are anecdotal, which make it, yes, unputdownable; it's a fast read and engrossing. But it's one of those stories that glides by on the surface as you're reading, and then when you stop to think about it, the questions pop up.

Like, isn't it interesting how Walls writes this with almost no subjectivity? Situations that enrage me, as the reader, are simply stated, without reflection or emotion. In fact, we feel more a sentiment of affection rather than anger—a sentiment that is reinforced by the fact that these family members remain a presence in each other's lives when you think most would want to move on and never look back, victims of a soon-to-be-forgotten dysfunctional adolescence.

And perhaps most importantly, how trustworthy is the author's voice? I can only attribute Walls' objectivity to the analytical adult perspective she possesses now, when looking back on memories decades old. But all these things she suffered through, all the thoughts and emotions she must have experienced as a kid and a teen, what were they like then? How would she have recorded her life in her diary, in the moment? Of course, this is a question for all memoirs, when a story relies on memories to be told.

Paris Was Ours by Penelope Rowlands is really a collection of 30-something essays or articles by a number of people who have, at some point in their life, packed up and moved to Paris. Because, really, who doesn't have that dream? I feel I can safely say that Paris is the only other city in the world alongside New York that has that "ooooOOOOoOo" aura of "living in Paris." It just has this style, this glam, these worldly cultural connotations, that make the idea of "living in Paris" something one feels they must do at some point in their life.

You know what I felt after reading all these stories? Afraid of living in Paris. Parisians are a unique breed of person (like New Yorkers) who have a distinct way of doing things (like New Yorkers) and aren't necessarily always kind to those who aren't native to their lifestyle (like New Yorkers). The thirty-two authors who contributed to this collection are diverse in age, profession, lifestyle, writing style...The stories weren't all glamorous, nor were they all intimidating. Some were humorous anecdotes, some were trivial observations. Overall, I think it painted a bit more realistic a portrait of the City of Light, making the point that it is a city with a profound influence on its inhabitants and their identities.

Tina Fey, grade 4, room 207

We've all heard about Tina Fey's Bossypants (unless you've been living in a cave). We've all probably even read it already (unless you waited too late to put it on hold at the library and are still 176 out of 342 on the list). So I am not going to tell you about this book, because you probably already know all about it. Instead, I'm going to post some of he things that made me LOL on the subway.

• "A heart-shaped ass. Unfortunately, it's a right-side-up heart; the point is at the bottom." - re: Tina's stunning physical assets
• "Don Fey is a grown-ass man! Black people find him stylish!" - re: Don Effing Fey, bad-ass father of Tina, who else?
• "Always on the cutting edge of beauty, I believe this haircut was executed by folding my face in half and cutting out a heart." - re: the best haircut Tina ever got
• "On at least three occasions, I vomited on Christmas Eve from mixing chocolate, peel-and-eat shrimp, summer sausage, and cheese. No alcohol was involved." - re: remembrances from Tina's fat phase
• "By 19, I had found my look. Oversize T-shirts, bike shorts, and wrestling shoes. To prevent the silhouette from being too baggy, I would cinch it at the waist with my fanny pack. I was pretty sure I would wear this look forever. The shirts allowed me express myself with cool sayings like ‘There’s No Crying in Baseball’ and ‘Universität Heidelberg,’ the bike shorts showed off my muscular legs, and the fanny pack held all my trolley tokens. I was nailing it on a daily basis. Find something like this for yourself as soon as possible." - sound style advice from Tina
• "And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it." - excerpts from The Mother's Prayer for Its Daughter

Tina had me burst out laughing with the one-liners. Or the frequent juxtaposition of a serious statement and a ridiculous picture, like this. (see left)

Her ability to look/sound ridiculous by making fun of herself is unlike that of anyone else I can think of. I have a couple friends who were disappointed with this book because they had the expectation it was going to be some empowering yet humorous memoir on succeeding and paving new ground for women in comedy and entertainment, and they were let down. Maybe if you read between the lines, you can find the "go go girl power" in there, but mostly, it's just Tina being funny. So go in expecting that. Funny.

With Snooki, Beyonce, and Glee references abundant, I don't think this book is really going to stay relevant too long (I hope to God that Snooki is not still relevant in 10 years). But you're probably going to laugh now, which is what matters. Tina Fey is awkwardly candid, which is hilariously awesome.


More fun Tina Fey linkage!
• Every Liz Lemon Flashback Scene From '30 Rock'
• Meet the Hand Model Behind Tina Fey's 'Bossypants' Cover [you know you're curious]

When Kafka was the rage and West Village real estate was cheap

The most recent discussion of the Idlewild book club focused on Anatole Broyard's Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir. For all you New York enthusiasts out there, listen up.

Here's how it goes according to Broyard's story—

Broyard was a WWII vet from Brooklyn who returned to New York after the war and moved to Greenwich Village to become a part of its literary and artistic movement (sort of early rumblings of what would become the "beat generation" but much less "anti-academic"). Broyard moved in with Sherri, an eccentric woman who presented herself more as performance art than a realistic person. For a young and naive veteran, Sherri opened doors to a world of art, academia, psychology, sexuality—all those "movements" credited to the Village at the time.

And in reality—

Broyard was a WWII vet from Brooklyn who returned to New York after the world and moved to Greenwich Village. But, he had also just divorced his wife, with whom he'd had a daughter. So that whole "naive war vet" facade was not too accurate of a portrayal. And while Sherri is a real person (and apparently really as crazy as she seemed), his relationship with her should by no means be interpreted as a "love story" (despite the book's two sections being title "Sherri" and "After Sherri"); she served a vessel, carrying him from one place in his life to the next.


Really though, the details about Anatole's life are not what's in focus in this short memoir; it's called "A Greenwich Village Memoir" for a reason. He uses his own story, maybe loosely, to describe the Village scene—a scene in which late night conversation at pubs was intellectual in nature; books were highly desired and coveted commodities; West Village rent was extraordinarily cheap (!!!). And though the credibility of some of the occurrences is questionable in Broyard's own life, his story certainly could be true of this place and time. The detail and personalization with which he writes his scenes—particularly of parties and clubs and various locations around the city—are very effective.

Broyard wrote this memoir 40 years after the fact, right before his death at age seventy in 1990. Forty years is a long time during which one's memory can fade or rewrite personal history, so we'll probably never know the exact "truth" of his own story. However, this memoir is incomplete; it contains an epilogue from his wife, indicating that Anatole was planning another chapter dedicated to the death of his father which would've perhaps shed some light onto the truths of his own life...

While this book is an interesting portrait of a moment in NYC history, the author's biography has proven to be equally as interesting. In fact, much discussion has been focused on him since his death when it was revealed that Broyard was actually part black (of Louisiana Creole descent), a fact that he mostly hid all his life and certainly omitted—or at least cleverly masked—in this novel.


An interesting article to serve as a follow-up to this memoir can be found here, titled "The Passing of Anatole Broyard," an essay in Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man (pub. 1997).

Another note for NYC history enthusiasts: check out Ephemeral New York, a recent happy discovery!

Wait, you mean Avenue C hasn't always had hipsters?

One of the things you always hear living in NYC is, "Oh, the city has changed so much." I'm fully convinced that statement is a some kind of special phrase used by NYC residents—no matter how long you have been a resident—to prove, "Hey, I am a New Yorker and I know it so well that I know its history, too." I've lived here six years, four of which were spent in the Greenwich Village bubble that is NYU. So trust me when I say I don't know firsthand how the city has changed so much. But because I'm quickly approaching that ten-year mark which will then unofficially deem me a "New Yorker," I find myself quick to use this phrase as well—as if I have actually spent decades here and can see the gentrification of neighborhoods and the crime rate drop (or, apparently, be back on the rise, as I am now hearing around town).

So while I have seen no noticeable changes in the past six years, I can assure you things were very different 20 or 30 years ago. Times Square used to be disgusting (in a different way than it is now...more drugs, less tourists); the Meatpacking District actually was meatpacking before it had drug dealers, prostitutes, and the Mob, BEFORE it had trendy restaurants and nightclubs; and the Lower East Side, once housing immigrants, was full of drug dealers before it was full of the hipsters that currently reside there. And this drug-infested Lower East Side (or specifically, Alphabet City, which one could argue is more East Village than LES, because the LES is technically below Houston) of the seventies and eighties is the one in which author Josh Karlen was raised and reflects upon in his memoir, Lost Lustre. Karlen lived during a very specific moment in this neighborhood's history (and every NYC neighborhood has a colorful history) that, in a way, led it to what it is today. Cheap rent attracted the bohemians that created the strong music scene (think CBGBs) of these two decades, for which the neighborhood is still known.

But enough about NYC history—Lost Lustre is a great blend of the memoir of a person and of a place. It's Karlen's individual story, but his experience was entirely dependent on his environment. Surviving as a middle-class white kid in a neighborhood that was primarily lower-class African American and Latino was no easy task for Karlen. He describes how fear and defense dominated his mindset; you couldn't count the number of times he was mugged on only two hands. His reminisces, told in an essay sort of format, range from his innocence of the sixties to being dropped in a new environment where he's afraid of walking after dark, to the rise of the East Village music scene and the ease of underage drinking, to his first teenage love and his adjustment to life at a midwest college.

Karlen must be a talented writer, because I was so sucked into a place and time I never experienced that I felt like I knew it intimately. His attention to detail—something like describing how the light hit a room—perfectly set a tone to take the reader back in time, to put the reader in Karlen's own memories.

As I was reading this, I intuited two things about Karlen:

1. He's a hopeless nostalgic. And I mean that in the way the phrase "hopeless romantic" is used, as a good thing, which indicates someone who treasures memories and uses his experiences to learn and grow as an individual.
2. He probably has more issues with his adolescence than he is letting on.

And after a couple of email exchanges with the author, in which I asked him if there was, in fact, anything he "got out" of his experiences, he summed up his feelings quite well:

"If there is anything positive resulting from growing up in Alphabet City in the 70s it is only in the sense that any negative experience tends to broaden one's view of the world, expand one's vistas, however dismaying they may be. I often felt that the drugs, violence, poverty and Latino culture surrounding me, a white, middle-class kid, on Avenue C, gave me early on a broader context of seeing my life than those of my middle-class, New York school friends...

...In writing my book, I sought only to convey my own personal experience of growing up in that particular time and place, and for me it was mostly a dark and difficult time, partly because growing up is difficult anywhere, and partly because in downtown New York we were allowed to run it out to our furthest limits without any real boundaries in a city that was itself struggling to survive. So while I do have a certain nostalgia for pieces of my adolescence in New York, and I write of them in the book, it's very much mixed with other feelings that are not especially fond. I hope I managed to convey both the light and the dark of those growing up years in New York, if not equally, at least in proportion as I felt them then, and see them in retrospect."

For both memoir fans and NYC enthusiasts, this is a must.


This is a stop on Lost Lustre's TLC Book Tour. To hit up its other stops, visit this list.

In Conclusion: Can being run over by a truck make you a happier person?

Remember when I was talking about memoirs and how they seem to fall into two categories: self-indulgent and...not as self-indulgent? Well after reading a pretty self-indulgent one, I found one in my huge to-read queue that is taking over my work desk that seemed to have a more interesting premise. And that's what usually draws me to memoirs in the first place—the setting or circumstance has to sound like it can just naturally make for an entertaining story.

So I settled down with Heather Lende's second memoir, Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs: Family, Friends, and Faith in Small-Town Alaska. [Apparently you're allowed to write more than one memoir, seeing as how Rachel Shukert did the same. I should start writing my own series of memoirs.] Her first one—If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name—introduced the reading audience to the tiny Haines, Alaska, where Lende lives with her husband and children (though it didn't introduce me, because I haven't read it). Her newest one chronicles various aspects of small-town life after a serious accident, namely, her own—getting run over by a truck while out for a bike ride.

I liked this. It's kind of a "mom" book, one of those that's thoughtful and inspiring. And despite my aversion to religious brouhaha in literature, I actually didn't really mind the Bible quotes and references, because...well, I guess I just tried to view it from her perspective. She was giving her own account of an incident and what helped her, personally, get through it. Who am I to shrug off religion in that case? And she threw out the word "fuck" a few times when talking about her "fucking broken pelvis," so I really enjoyed the balance there. I kinda want to hang out with her now.

But that whole bike incident thing...yes, MAJOR deal, but it didn't, by any means, take over the novel. Lende uses it as a jumping off point to highlight life and faith in a very small-town...a very small-town way the hell out in Alaska. Where life is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT and TOTALLY INCOMPREHENSIBLE to me. Like how she kills a freaking bear from a treetop, preserves fish and stuffs them in jars (...yuck?), and makes her own jam (ok, that one may not be that strange...). And how the community is strongly tied to tradition and custom (which is really interesting), as seen in her anecdote of townspeople raising a ginormous totem pole carved by a local Chilkat (Native Alaskan). And how people come from different places but feel the same range of emotion. Dealing with shit—it's kind of a community builder.

Alaska. Jesus, I can't imagine living there. I'm glad someone can handle it with aplomb.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

In Conclusion: But really...IS Everything Going to Be Great?

Oh, Europe. Your beauty and allure mask the epic amount of trouble you hold in store for young American travelers. We pack our bags and book our hostels with complete confidence that since you are also a developed, Western continent, we will have no problem with your languages, your people, or your customs. What deceit. At least in the experiences of Rachel Shukert.

Shukert's newest and second memoir, Everything Is Going to Be Great: An Underfunded and Overexposed European Grand Tour, logs her experiences and misadventures in Europe (though "European Grand Tour" may not be the most accurate subtitle, as this book is 90% about her time living solely in Amsterdam after an acting gig fell through).

So how is Rachel's life across the pond? Well, she's living on the couch of her gay-couple friends; she has no visa; the only work she can get is as a promoter at an American club, but she's still absolutely broke. Rachel certainly attracts drama and not really the kind that she instigates. Shit just happens to her, and apparently, it always has (alcohol may or may not always be a factor). Naturally, she's got a few good stories to tell—Like the time she dated an older man whose father was probably in the Gestapo. And the time she almost got three-way date-raped by a couple of Italian dental students, simply to get a crown replaced.

Here's my thing about memoirs—my opinion of them is changing. I've always enjoyed them while my boyfriend hates them, claiming they're too self-indulgent. I guess up to this point, I've mostly read ones that are more than just an individual's personal experiences. Instead, they seem to be one's personal account or observation of something bigger than themselves—maybe a poignant historical moment or a unique setting/environment. And I like those, because it's not all "ME ME ME!"

This one is a more on the "ME ME ME!" end of the spectrum when it comes to memoirs, but that's not to say it doesn't have its merits. It is funny. Shukert's storytelling ability leads you quickly from beginning to end with ease, sometimes causing you to laugh out loud and sometimes just to shake your head. But it's also overly crude at times, which I'm not particularly a fan of, and a lot of the time I was wondering, "Ok, what is her point?" What did she learn from all these experiences? What is all this "me me me" stuff leading up to?

The whole time, Shukert is working under the notion that Europe is the place to go in your early twenties to find yourself and discover how to live in the real world and deal with real adult things after college. That is a rough time, believe you me. And I'm sure that if I wrote a memoir about my own experiences after college, no one would read it because it would certainly have the whining but without the humor or crazy stories. The last couple of chapters, for me, redeemed a novel that could have easily veered in the "entertaining but empty" category, because Shukert does have a "what I learned" moment that is so überly coming-of-age.

I certainly enjoyed Shukert's book more than the-queen-of-self-indulgent-memoir-writing Julie Powell garbage. I certainly liked her more than I like Julie Powell. She thankfully lacked the incessant whining of Powell, and had a more, "Well this is what happened," angle than one that begged for empathy. She told things as they were without any kind of self-reflection, which was actually pretty refreshing and made the story more entertaining because I didn't have time to decide whether I really liked her as a person or not—I just "listened" to her story and laughed along with her. But at a certain point, it's like you're talking with a friend who won't shut up, and you just want to get a word in. And in this case, that word was, "Put down the bottle and pull yourself together!"

I think the true moment of crossing over into adulthood—and what may have been the aHA! moment for Rachel, as well—is when you take action to do what you need to do instead of what you think you should be doing. Like, sure, you want to live in Europe and have this great journey of self-discovery and be able to tell everyone in twenty years about the wonderful time you spent living abroad. But the world may just be telling you no—go home, regroup, and deal with what is. And luckily for Rachel's health and sanity, she listened.

Review copy provided by the publisher at BEA.