Tag: memoir

Monica’s Musings: That Sounds Fun

That Sounds Fun by Annie F. Downs

“Travel has always been one of the best parts of my job. But about a year ago, I felt God whisper to me, ‘You’re going to want to be home next fall.’”
― Annie F. Downs, That Sounds Fun: The Joys of Being an Amateur, the Power of Falling in Love, and Why You Need a Hobby

Summary: We know there are certain things we must have to survive–food, shelter, and safety to name a few. But there are also aspects of life that truly allow us to be joyful and fulfilled. For popular podcaster and bestselling author Annie F. Downs, fun is close to the top of that list. Few would argue that having fun doesn’t enrich our lives, but so much gets in the way of prioritizing it. Tough days, busyness, and feelings that are hard to talk about keep us from the fun that’s out there waiting to be found.

With That Sounds Fun, Annie offers an irresistible invitation to understand the meaning of fun, to embrace it and chase it, and to figure out what, exactly, sounds fun to you–then do it! Exploring some research and sharing some thoughts behind why fun matters, she shows you how to find, experience, and multiply your fun. With her signature storytelling style and whimsical vulnerability, Annie is the friend we all need to guide us back to staying true to ourselves and finding the fun we need.

My Opinion: This book, while entertaining, was not at all what I expected. The story is heavily influenced by Christian values and focuses on the author’s life. I thought it would explain more about figuring out a hobby and having fun. I found the author unrelatable, but I still enjoyed hearing her story.

Listeners of her podcast would probably enjoy this very much. I had not listened to her podcast prior. I simply picked it because of the catchy title and pretty cover. I feel like this book falls more in the autobiography category rather than self-help. I am a big fan of a good self-help book that leaves you motivated for life. However, this gave very little advice, and instead was a collection of the author’s personal experiences. Overall, I didn’t take much from reading this book, but it was short and simple enough to finish it.

*I listened to the audiobook on Spotify, and I will say I skipped the interviews at the end of the book.

Monica’s Musings: Counting the Cost

Counting the Cost by Jill Duggar

“Getting out cost us, but it was worth it. It was worth it to find freedom from the guilt and the fear.”
― Jill Duggar, Counting the Cost

Summary: Jill and Derick knew a normal life wasn’t possible for them. As a star on the popular TLC reality show 19 Kids and Counting, Jill grew up in front of viewers who were fascinated by her family’s way of life. She was the responsible, second daughter of Jim Bob and Michelle’s nineteen kids; always with a baby on her hip and happy to wear the modest ankle-length dresses with throat-high necklines. She didn’t protest the strict model of patriarchy that her family followed, which declares that men are superior, that women are expected to be wives and mothers and are discouraged from attaining a higher education, and that parental authority over their children continues well into adulthood, even once they are married.

But as Jill got older, married Derick, and they embarked on their own lives, the red flags became too obvious to ignore. For as long as they could, Jill and Derick tried to be obedient family members — they weren’t willing to rock the boat. But now they’re raising a family of their own, and they’re done with the secrets. Thanks to time, tears, therapy, and blessings from God, they have the strength to share their journey. Theirs is a remarkable story of the power of the truth and is a moving example of how to find healing through honesty.

My Opinion: Overall, this memoir plays it very safe, and this is probably a wise move on Jill’s part, especially given that she does not want to burn bridges with her family. Reading this book, it seems impossible to cast her as disrespectful, rebellious, or uncaring, though other fundamentalists still somehow do so. Jill shows how she went from being obedient to slowly questioning the Duggar family values. It isn’t until about 75% in that she really shows how she began to turn away from the life she had been raised in.

It’s disheartening that Jim Bob and Michelle’s response seems to be disappointment in Jill for telling her story, though we see that it’s easier for them to maintain control and power when these issues are kept private. Although Jill doesn’t take her deconstruction as far as I’d like to see it go, this book shows the truth of the IBLP cult mentality, and how the fame from the show influenced her family’s every move.

Monica’s Musings: Crying in H Mart

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

“In fact, she was both my first and second words: Umma, then Mom. I called to her in two languages. Even then I must have known that no one would ever love me as much as she would.” ― Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Summary: A memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity.

Michelle Zauner tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.

As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, performing gigs with her fledgling band—and meeting the man who would become her husband—her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal cancer when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

My thoughts: Michelle was only 25 when she lost her mother to cancer. Michelle and her mother had many ups and downs, especially in her adolescence and early adulthood. This emotionally intense memoir reflects the complex nature of the mother-and-daughter relationship while representing Korean culture, traditions, rituals, and hierarchical patterns.

Michelle finally attempts to see things from her mother’s perspective and realizes the importance of her life lessons. It is impossible not to be shaken to the core or not to feel the intense pain Michelle had as she said goodbye to her mother. This book is great for anyone who would like to relate to grief or who wants to understand it more. Losing family is something no one fully prepares for. I would rate this highly for the author’s ability to portray such a drastic life event in a way readers can emotionally understand.

What’s Ashley Reading?: The Woman In Me

The Woman In Me by Britney Spears

First line: As a little girl I walked for hours alone in the silent woods behind my house in Louisiana, singing songs.

Summary: For the first time, Britney Spears is sharing her story in her new memoir. She lays out her childhood spent performing, the relationship with her family and finding love. With each page Britney gives the reader a look into what it is like to be a teen pop star, a young woman in love and then having her life controlled by others but eventually finding freedom.

My Thoughts: I remember seeing Britney Spears in concert at the Kansas State Fair in September 1999. It was her first ever tour. I had listened to her album on repeat so that I knew all the words. I was thirteen at the time and it was the highlight of my year! And as soon as I heard she was releasing an autobiography I knew I needed to read it. Britney was a major part of my teenage years.

I listened to the audiobook, which unfortunately Britney does not narrate, and found it very heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time. She started out very poor, rose to fame, struggled with love (from her family and romantic partners), and finally was able to free herself from the control that was forced upon her by the people that were supposed to love her.

It was brave of her to put herself out for the world to see. She revealed secrets from her past, some rather shocking, and explained her darkest times so that everyone can see her side rather than what the press reported.

The writing was simple, to the point and very easy to read.

What’s Ashley Reading?: Beyond the Wand

Beyond the Wand by Tom Felton

First line: Cards on the table: this is not going to be my proudest moment.

Summary: Tom Felton had an unconventional childhood. He started his acting career as a young child in movies such as the The Borrowers but nothing prepared him for life in the world of Harry Potter. In his memoir he describes the highlights as well as the darker moments of life in the spotlight. Working along such legendary actors as Alan Rickman, Dame Maggie Smith and Richard Harris he learned what it was like to be serious about his craft but to have fun while doing it. However, unlike his co-stars he had the chance to live a more normal life as a regular teenager who just happened to be an actor.

My Thoughts: Several months ago I came across this title as I was importing into the library’s catalog. I had no idea that Tom Felton was writing a memoir of his childhood and his time during and after Harry Potter. I was immediately putting my name on the hold list. I could not wait to see what life was like on the set of one of my favorite movie series.

Through this I learned a lot about Tom and his life but there was so much I did not expect. I did not realize that he had been acting for years before landing his role as Draco Malfoy. And that he actually got to live a rather normal life outside of work. That was the part that really shocked me.
But my favorite parts were hearing about his relationships with his cast mates like Alan Rickman and Emma Watson. The relationships between the cast seem to be more family than coworkers.

Tom’s life after Hogwarts was shocking to me. I had not heard about his troubles or just don’t remember seeing the stories. I cannot even imagine how life would change after such a big part of his life. It was heartbreaking to see the changes in him but I found it really brave of him to discuss them and how they made him realize that he needed help.

I would highly recommend this quick biography for any Harry Potter fan. It gives a little insight into the world of the movies and shows the ups and downs of life as a child actor. I have a whole new appreciation for Tom Felton after reading Beyond the Wand.

FYI: Alan Rickman’s diaries have also been published. I am eagerly pouring through them to learn about his life during Harry Potter and his other iconic roles.

Terese’s Thoughts: Easy Beauty

Easy Beauty by Chloé Cooper Jones

First Lines of the Prologue:

“I am in a bar in Brooklyn listening as two men, my friends, discuss whether or not my life is worth living. Jay is to my left and Colin to my right. Colin, an ethical philosopher trained in my same doctoral program, argues a vision for a better society, one where a body like mine would not exist. The men debate this theory, speaking through me. This is common, both the argument and the way I’m forgotten in it.”

Summary:

Jones is living in Brooklyn when we meet her, earning a PhD (her second) in philosophy. She is a recent mother, although she had always been told by doctors that becoming pregnant was not possible. Her body would not support a life, they said. Jones was born with a rare condition called sacral agenesis, resulting in chronic pain, a shortened stature, and an atypical gait. Throughout her thoughtful memoir, Jones reflects on how this difference has affected how she views herself, how she interacts with the world, and how people respond to her. Jones jumps around in time, taking us back to her childhood in Kansas, where we get to know her loving, hardworking, no-nonsense mother and the father from whom she is now estranged. We also travel alongside Jones as she searches for meaning and escape in Italy, Cambodia, and Los Angeles, including attending a Beyoncé concert and meeting Peter Dinklage. And we meet her husband and child as Jones grapples with seeing her sometimes cynical view of people rub off on her sensitive son.

My Thoughts:

When I heard that Chloé Cooper Jones was a guest on Longform, a podcast I regularly listen to, I thought her name sounded familiar. It sounded like my teacher’s name from a creative writing class I’d taken at the University of Kansas several years back. And it turns out, it was! I was shocked. From listening to her interview, I discovered she had been nominated for a Pulitzer for an article she wrote about tennis. Tennis! How had I missed this? And in the weeks that followed, it seemed I saw news of her upcoming book everywhere I turned. It was getting excellent reviews. Easy Beauty was the first book named in The New York Times Book Review feature “New Memoirs Bristling with Wit, Warmth and Spiky Intelligence.”

The writing course I took with Jones was intimate. We critiqued each other’s writing, we joked and laughed and teased. Some of us were not much younger than Jones so she felt almost like a peer. She was witty and hip. I still remember her chastising us for not looking up a word we didn’t know in an assigned short story. “You guys don’t look up words you don’t know? Always look up words you don’t know.” And now I keep a dictionary on my nightstand. So when I saw that she was, at least in the literary world, famous, I felt proud. And it was also motivating to see how much she had accomplished since I’d seen her last.

I tore through this book. It is so well written, funny, thoughtful, and lovely. It made me take a look at some of my own assumptions and privilege, and that’s always a good thing as far as I’m concerned. It made me do a lot of reflecting on the way I move through the world and how we treat one another, as humans. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

FYI: Here’s the Longform episode featuring Chloé Cooper Jones.

What’s Ashley Reading?: Happy-Go-Lucky

Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris

First line: It was spring, and my sister Lisa and I were in her toy-sized car, riding from the airport in Greensboro, North Carolina, to her house in Winston-Salem.

Summary: In David Sedaris’ latest collection of stories he tackles events like the pandemic, the death of his father and hurricanes at his beach house.

My Thoughts: As with most of his other books I was laughing through much of it. He can bring humor to such serious topics without being too vulgar. But when he talks about his father it just breaks my heart. He had such a difficult relationship with him and he does not hold back when he talks about it. I think through this collection I learned so much more about David than his previous books. It was a very small book and a quick read which I would highly recommend.

FYI: Some language and difficult topics.

In The News: Foreverland

Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage by Heather Havrilesky

A couple weeks ago, I was flipping through the Memoir edition of The New York Times Book Review. After reading the first sentences of Walter Kirn’s review of Foreverland by Heather Havrilesky, I had to stop, sit up a little straighter, and start again. Was this a take down? 

First of all, the title of the review is

“Heather Havrilesky Compares Her Husband to a Heap of Laundry.”

Tone set. The review begins by informing the audience that Havrilesky dedicates the book to her husband. In Kirn’s words, she “pays him this brief honor as a prelude to writing endlessly about his flaws.”

In the next paragraph, Kirn describes the relationship between the author and her husband as “a marriage between a neurotic perfectionist and a formidably patient man…” Ouch. Kirn’s criticisms become less personal as he questions the universality of Havrilesky’s sweeping statements about what marriage is and means.  

I was too caught up in the juiciness of the review that I hadn’t yet considered whether these criticisms were fair. It may not be my most endearing trait, but I love a good piece of author gossip. For example, this profile of actor Jeremy Strong that Michael Schulman wrote for The New Yorker and the resulting backlash from celebrities such as Jessica Chastain. And then there was the time food author Alison Roman gave an interview in which she criticized Marie Kondo and Chrissy Teigen and the internet went nuts. (There was a follow-up interview with Roman about a year later in The New Yorker where she had the chance to contextualize her comments.)  

Getting back to Foreverland, a few days after reading the review, I saw Havrilesky was a guest on Longform, a podcast I regularly listen to. To my surprise, she is still married to the heap of laundry from the book. She expressed disappointment and felt her work had been misunderstood. For one thing, she is a published cartoonist and humorist. As Havrilesky points out in the interview, the book is meant to be not only truthful but also funny.

Apparently, the ladies on the TV show The View were also critical of Havrilesky for bad mouthing her husband. The author defended herself by saying that she was trying to present an honest portrait of what marriage looks like—the good bad and ugly. She suggested misogyny was at play in some people’s negative and personal attacks on both her book and her character.  

My Thoughts

I should start by saying, I haven’t yet read the book. I hadn’t initially planned to, but now I feel obligated to. And I want to. 

As I said, I was at first all jazzed about the bad review. I was all “yeah! Take that lady!” But after hearing her speak, I had to reconsider. It is one thing to criticize a person’s writing, but it’s quite another to decide and print in an internationally renowned newspaper that an author is a “neurotic perfectionist,” and to imply that she is a bad person and a bad wife.  

I don’t doubt that misogyny has played a role in the negative reviews of Havrilesky’s book. But I also wonder if some people feel threatened by her freedom to be so honest about her feelings towards her husband and about marriage. The author apparently writes in the book about developing a crush on another man. Some may say it’s cruel to be open with her husband about that. I’m inclined to think it takes a lot of guts. It must feel freeing to have her husband truly know her. I wonder if some people don’t envy that transparency—envy her dedication to being who she is no matter the cost.

As she says in the interview, although her husband was not initially thrilled with her including this chapter in the book, ultimately, the book has brought them closer together. Now, whether Havrilesky’s marriage is something the masses want to read about depends on her writing. I’ll withhold my judgment on that until after I’ve read the book.  

  • Foreverland can be found in the New Books section of the Derby Library.

Terese’s Thoughts: Priestdaddy

Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood

First Line: At nineteen, I ought to have been in college with the rest of my high school class, gaining fifteen pounds of knowledge and bursting the sweatpants of my ignorance.

Summary: Lockwood grew up in a big family in the Midwest. Her father is a Catholic priest, a rarity for a married man with children. Both of Lockwood’s parents have their quirks and we get to know them well. Her father is loud and unfiltered, her mother obsessed with looking up tragic events and warning her children of them, both unquestionably loving despite their occasional parenting missteps. Lockwood marries young, having met her future husband on the internet and bonding over a love of poetry. They move away together, but financial strain pushes them back into the rectory with Lockwood’s parents. Eventually, Lockwood becomes famous for a poem she publishes online and receives a book deal. Along the way, Lockwood generously shares many hilarious stories of her childhood, her siblings, and her parents. Being life, there are of course some darker moments as well. 

My Thoughts: I now search for anything Patricia Lockwood has written for the London Review of Books. She is incredibly talented and inventive. She’s also hilarious. For a while, she lived in Lawrence not far from where I was living at the time. I remember when her poem went viral and she was something of a local celebrity. People were very excited, including my step-dad who wanted every detail when I spotted her at a bar downtown. She even describes this period in the book, calling Lawrence a town of “aspiring radicals.” I still can’t decide if it’s a compliment or an insult.

Reading Lockwood is pure delight. I love the way she plays with language and I can tell she does too. I inhaled this book.

Her debut novel No One is Talking About This, published in 2021, has received all kinds of rave reviews and accolades, including being shortlisted for the Booker Prize and landing on the New York Times’ 10 best books of 2021 list. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s definitely on my reading list.

The Lineup: Parker

Parker’s Lineup

TV Show: The Nanny

The Nanny is a reliable old favorite, perfect for relaxing after a day of non-stop social interaction. Fran Drescher is charming in the title role. The stories get convoluted, often, but you watch it for the humor; and who doesn’t love Niles and C. C.?

I have the DVD, but it is now available on HBO Max and Prime Video.

Movie: Almost Christmas

I saw Almost Christmas for the first time. Gabrielle Union, one of my favorite actresses, portrays perfectly the awkward girl-next-door we all know, Mo’Nique shines in anything, and Danny Glover is substantial as the family patriarch. It’s a good family comedy with some high-key dramatic moments.

Available for streaming on Prime Video and for checkout as a DVD through KanShare Libraries.

Book: You Got Anything Stronger? by Gabrielle Union

I recently read Gabrielle Union’s second memoir You got anything stronger?: Stories. She’s intimate and self-aware, sharing her journey in self-development and overcoming adversity as a black actress in Hollywood, as a mother, and as a woman. I believe it will inspire others to share their stories.

It’s available here at Derby Public Library.

Music: Demon Days by Gorillaz

Demon Days is Gorillaz’ second album and one of my all-time favorites. When it came out, I was in college, going through early-adulthood growing pains, and it spoke to me. “Feel Good Inc.” was the big single, played a lots of nightclubs, but I also like “Dare”, “Dirty Harry”, and “Demon Days. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough. I only recently learned that Damon Albarn from Blur co-created the Gorillaz, with comic book creator Jamie Hewlett, as a satire of the music industry.

Available on iTunes and for checkout as a CD through KanShare Libraries.

Video Game: Sumikko Gurashi

I started playing Sumikko Gurashi™ Gonna Make a Garden because I wanted something to do when I need a break from Pokémon Go. Perfect for Kawaii fans and Farmville nostalgics, it combines crop and product management with set-building, as you gain plots of land, facilities, decorations, and increased productivity as you progress. You can also make friends in-game and send them gifts.

Available on the App Store and Google Play.