Nonfiction has not been rewarding for me this year. My guess is the petulant part of my brain feels that it is already working too hard to process this country’s current reality and has no room for more information. But then I discovered The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward by Melinda French Gates and while the book’s title did not specifically talk to me, the ... Read More...
The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West
So fine, if you insist. This is a witch hunt. We’re the witches, and we’re hunting you. November and December are my months of backlist reading—the time of year when I abandon ferreting out great new reads from publishers and instead read based on my mood or other people’s recommendations. By-and-large the 2020 iteration has meant nonfiction and fiction about crime ... Read More...
More Than A Woman by Caitlin Moran
I’ve loved all of Caitlin Moran’s fiction (How to Build a Girl, How to Be Famous) but had never read any of her nonfiction, so was interested to see she has a new book out. More Than a Woman is her follow-up to How to Be a Woman, which she wrote when she was in her 30s. A time when she was sure she had life all figured out. A decade later and she’s back, sharing her ... Read More...
Text Me When You Get Home
Today is the last of my summer nonfiction reviews, but it’s a bit unusual. It’s only partially a review of Text Me When You Get Home and mostly a rumination on all the thoughts the book brought me. Which is kind of wonderful, right? When you read a book and it fills you with good memories and positive emotions? It’s a bit of a rarity in entertainment these days, but is one of ... Read More...
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life
Samantha Irby is a 36-year-old, black, lesbian living in Chicago. She also grew up broke-ass poor—all of which she lets you know from the get-go in her essay collection We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. But her biographical details are the least interesting thing about her. What really matters is that she is wildly funny, even as I cringed at how she has NO filter about ... Read More...
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
Sometimes a book comes my way not from reviews or recommendations, but from simple proximity—I see it at the library and decide to read it. Very often these are some of my favorite books. This is the case with Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb. It’s her account of being a therapist and what happens when she needs a therapist herself. Gottlieb lives in L.A., is ... Read More...
