The Mixtape of My Life by Robert K Elder

A Do-It-Yourself Music Memoir

5 stars

Okay, so I did a post last week that was a roundup of awesome Father's Day ideas, right?

After writing that post, I received this one for review and let me tell you-- THIS IS AWESOME.

For anyone with a man in their life who's into music (like, say, my dad who is in not one but TWO bands), this is a perfect gift.

It asks about music you remember from childhood; your first concert; family member favorites...

Y'all it even asks who played you the first song you heard with curse words, which I'm not totally sure how I would answer (it was probably my dad.... Karn Evil 9 by ELP, lol) but I just think is the funniest question ever.

Seriously-- take a look at this one for the music-lover in your life.  Or, you know, for yourself.

It's really just that awesome.

Real Friends by Shannon Hale

5 stars
memoir, graphic biography

This was so good.

In fact, I made this required summer reading for both Boo and Mister.... and then MeiMei insisted on reading it too.

(I wouldn't have given it to MeiMei, not because there's anything inappropriate but just because it probably went over her head a bit, but hey, she really really wanted to read it.)

Mister was a little more resistant to reading it, but he's probably the one who would benefit the most from reading about interactions with friends, so I insisted, lol.

Anyway, it's graphic novel format (though it's a memoir, not a novel) so it's a really fast read.

My only complaint is probably the font size.... my eyes are not a fan. ;)

Overall, just go read it.

Tomorrow I'm Dead by Bun Yom

3 stars
R- 2? (I can't remember anything specifically sexual, though there may have been references to rape and abuse.)
received for review

A compelling memoir.

Not necessarily a well-written one, but absolutely compelling.

If it were fiction it would have been a little too hard to suspend disbelief at times, but life is crazier than fiction.

Not a period of history I'm familiar with, so it was interesting to see inside the killing fields.

I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron

3 stars
R- 2
memoir/essays

Hmmm.

So, this was funny, don't get me wrong.

And some of the essays really resonated.  For example the one about hating purses (necessary evils I tell you) and the one about being in rapture over a book (no explanation necessary, right?).

But others parts I just didn't get.

I don't care overmuch about my physical appearance.  I don't do 90% of the things she lists as minimum maintenance.  I don't wear makeup.  My hair is only an inch or two longer than my son's, which means I can (and do) spend less than 10 minutes on it per week.  I don't own a blow dryer.

(Seriously, though, even if I were a big hair-doing person I still wouldn't.  Scary things happen when you blow dry my hair.  Don't believe me? Ask the college roommate who was convinced I wasn't doing it right and so insisted on doing it for me.  I was still triangle head for the rest of the day.)

Also, aging doesn't bother me.

Now I know a big part of that is probably the fact that I'm young.  I'm in my early 30s.  But I've never been excited about people thinking I'm younger than I am (partly because, hello, I have 5 kids and my oldest is now 12 and just how young do you think I started having kids?!)

I'm starting to get quite a few gray hairs, and you know what?  I kind of like them.

Maybe in 20 or 30 years I'll be able to relate more.

Anyway, overall this is a definitely amusing collection and objectively I probably enjoyed more than not, but the setup/premise focuses on the aging/body image elements in a way that leave me more focused on that too.

(Counting this as my "something borrowed"!)

Be Different by John Elder Robison

Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian
with practical advice for Aspergians, misfits, and their parents

4 stars
nonfiction, memoir

Fascinating.

I picked this up browsing my library, partly because I have suspicions about where one of my children may fall on the spectrum, partly just because it sounded interesting.

And it certainly was interesting.

And after reading it I'm wondering about more of the people in my household, lol.

Highly recommended.  This blend of humor, candor, and experience is a very readable look at life with Asperger's.

Endangered Edens by Marty Essen

4 stars
received for review

Conversational writing and gorgeous photos. My only real complaint (other than more than one instance of "republicans are the enemy" type generalizations, which felt preachy and annoying... And the "Mormon wife" thing which was also kind of annoying) would be the lack of captioning. Only some photos are captioned and while some I could figure out by the context, so to speak, others I could only admire the beauty without knowing what it was. 

Overall recommended. Now I'm off to see if I can get hold of his other book.

The Republic of Imagination: A Life in Books by Azar Nafisi

5 stars
nonfiction/memoir/literary commentary
book club (my pick)
copy received for review

I love this book.

I finished it and just wanted to bask in it before starting anything else.

I want to read (or reread) all of the books she discusses and then read this again.

With a highlighter.

I picked it for book club and texted my high school English teacher to tell her to read it.

Now, it wasn't perfect... the rant against Common Core in the middle got to be a bit much.  Not necessarily because I disagreed with her point, but because her point got lost a bit in just ranting.

(Let's not talk about Common Core, though, okay? I think it's good and bad but that both sides' fanatics are making things worse. Balance, people.  We need it.)

Anyway.

I loved how her memoir stories were woven in with analysis.  I love discussing books and reading about her discussing books with her friends and students spoke to me.

It kind of makes me want to take a lit class.  (Until I think how terrifying homework would be with my five-kid-circus....)

I took pictures of pages with my phone to send quotes to my friend.

Read it.  Just go read it. :)

Spotlight- Finding Matthew by Donna Kirk

 A Child with Brain Damage, a Young Man with Mental Illness, a Son and Brother with Extraordinary Spirit

I received an email about this one a while back and while it's not really my style (and I'm just too swamped to accept anything for review that isn't so much my style) I wanted to spotlight it anyway.


This quote hit me pretty hard "During the first few weeks after Matthew Kirk was born -- brain-damaged as a result of oxygen deprivation during delivery -- the doctors advised his parents, Donna and Ed Kirk, to put him in an institution, have another baby as soon as possible, and get on with their life. But what the doctors didn't understand was that Matthew was their life."


As a mother, I cannot even tell you the emotions that that quote stirred up.  Rage is right up there.

So, to help out with raising awareness for parents going through this kind of thing and for the Kirk family specifically, I wanted to share this book with you and also share some links for more information.

First, Donna's blog where you can find posts like her advice for parents of children with disabilities and her post on love and limitations.  You can also read her "true fiction" piece about Driver's Education.

Also recommended is themighty.com which has a lot of stories of living with disabilities and is working to change perceptions of families living with disabilities.

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

4 stars
Memoir, "stunt nonfiction"

Fascinating concept. Some sections resonated with me, others I kind of wanted to roll my eyes at, but that's the point-- everyone's project would and SHOULD be unique. The things she focused on wouldn't necessarily work for me, but they were HER things. We all have our things. :)

On that note, here are MY things... about this book. ;)  In no particular order, here are random things I liked and marked with scraps of paper that got smaller and smaller as I ripped them off what I was using for a bookmark.

I really liked the idea of focusing on something specific each month over the course of a year.  

And I love what she says about making little changes within the life you have:
"I wanted to change my life without changing my life, by finding more happiness in my own kitchen."

I also really loved this thought (which is actually a comment someone left on her blog):
"Remembering that joy exists is tough when you've been traumatized.  Joy is a big concept and utterly unbelievable when we are in the depths of catastrophe.  But happiness... happiness is more accessible.  We can be miserable and then find ourselves laughing, even if just for a few seconds."

This quote (also left on her blog by a reader) from Hermann Hesse:
"Happiness is a howl not a what.  A talent, not an object."
I LOVE that.  It calls us to action-- if happiness is a talent then it is something we can work on and cultivate.

Since she's a writer, one of her months focused on that-- pursuing a passion.  She used No Plot? No Problem by Chris Baty and did her own NaNo (in September).  Based on the description, the novel she wrote isn't my style, lol, but I did love the closing line: "She'd do her shopping at a different drugstore."  I don't know why exactly, but that struck me as a really awesome ending.

I found it hilarious that her husband didn't get why anyone would ever use a website where you can upload your manuscript and get a bound book.  Um, you're married to a writer, dude.  What's not to get?

Overall, not what I normally read, but it was really interesting.  (That's the best part of book clubs, isn't it? Finding a book you enjoy that you never would have picked up on your own.)  If you're interested in starting your own happiness project, Rubin has put together a website of resources-- the Happiness Project Toolbox.

Harpo Speaks... About New York by Harpo Marx

3 stars
nonfiction/memoir

It feels pretty generous calling this a book, when really it's just a portion of the full memoir, but I did enjoy it. Sadly it's the closest my library has to the full Harpo Speaks.  (Possibly the actual book is what I'll get with the gift card I got for Christmas.)

I LOVE the Marx Brothers and this was an interesting snippet of what their life (specifically Harpo, of course) was like as children.  What a crazy household! lol

The introduction by E.L. Doctorow was interesting, but while I could see what he meant about Harpo being the Marx Brother all the kids related to growing up, that wasn't at all MY experience.  Harpo was always hilarious, but with my love of words it was always Groucho who reigned supreme.

That said, Groucho was ALWAYS talking, so he doesn't seem like as much of a mystery as Harpo does, making a memoir from Harpo's perspective all the more fascinating.

Vial 023: A Father's Pursuit of Justice by Gary Cross

copy received for review

How do you rate a person's tragedy?

Are there editing issues in this book?  Yes.  Is the writing amazing?  It's not going to take your breath away, no.

But really, there's just no way I can rate this.

Summary from GoodReads:
When Gary Cross and his wife learned that their baby son Brad had hemophilia, it seemed like a relatively small bump in the road of their American dream family life. Medicine would make it all manageable. But the Crosses did not know the shots they were giving Brad for his condition carried a deadly virus. As AIDS began to dominate the headlines, Gary started to doubt the doctors' assurances that everything was OK with Brad's treatment. And his demand for answers brought to light disturbing revelations: Thousands of hemophiliacs like Brad had been infected with HIV because the blood used for their clotting factor injections came from high-risk donor groups. While caring for his ailing son, Gary embarked on a campaign for justice for Brad and the thousands like him. His efforts took him from the courtrooms to the steps of the Capitol in Washington D.C. The Crosses' heartbreaking personal story was broadcast nationally on CBS' "60 Minutes." After more than a decade, Gary's crusade ended not in court or in government chambers but in a Los Angeles hotel, where with other leaders in the hemophilia community he brokered a remarkable peace settlement with the pharmaceutical companies whose products had killed. This is his story.

This book is terrifying.  I understand that AIDS was a huge unknown and nobody knew what was going on and people were afraid and that makes people do stupid things...

But OH MY GOSH.

Are you kidding me???  The things that went on.... horrific.  Seriously.

Hard to read, but I do recommend it, if only because the more people that read it and are aware, the less likely something so awful will ever happen again.

Call the Nurse by Mary J Macleod

True Stories of a Country Nurse on a Scottish Isle

4 stars
memoir
Copy received for review

This was an interesting and fun memoir that had me wanting to visit the Scottish Hebrides.

Definitely long on stories of the quiet life and shorter on medical drama, but I enjoyed it.

A series of anecdotes strung together with a loose narrative, it is by turns funny and tragic.

Overall, recommended, just don't expect it to be a lot of medical stuff.

Not Becoming My Mother by Ruth Reichl

(And Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way)

4 stars
memoir
Book Club Book for July

While there are certainly things that disagree with the author on, this is a wonderful tribute to a mother who wasn't always wonderful.  It's a journey to understanding that mother.

And it's short, sweet and to-the-point, which at the moment is a major criteria for me. ;)

Overall, definitely recommended, especially if you loved the movie Mona Lisa Smile (similar themes) or have read and enjoyed any of the author's other memoirs.

(And really, what have you got to lose?  It'll take an hour to read.)

Bliss, Remembered by Frank Deford

5 stars
r-2

I had major reservations starting this book.  It had the dreaded sticker on the spine.  You know, the one with a heart that says "romance".

I tend to actively avoid the books the library marks with that sticker.

(No offense to those readers who love romances.  They just aren't generally my thing.)

And it was written by a guy who writes for Sports Illustrated, which makes the "romance" label seem kinda weird.

Anyway, the "romance" sticker probably does this book an injustice.

Yes, it is a love story, but it's so much more.  (Okay, it's really maybe 2 love stories, but it's still more than that.)

Beautifully written, with a fabulous voice/tone.  I loved the semi-memoir style.  (I know that's not a word, but it's an apt description.)  And the descriptions of the 1936 Olympics, especially, held a lot of the lush glamour of Fitzgerald and the 1920s.  (It is FICTION, though.  Even if it totally feels like nonfiction.)

Overall, I LOVED it and EVERYONE should read it.  Really.  Like right now.  I'll wait.  :D  (You didn't have other plans this weekend, right?)

This is very possibly going to be my favorite of this Reader's Choice list.

As I Have Loved You by Kitty De Ruyter-Bons

5 stars
LDS
memoir

I had the opportunity a couple of months ago to hear Kitty Bons speak and of course then had to read her book.

What a contrast to the last concentration camp survivor memoir I read!

Kitty's book is largely a spiritual memoir-- focusing on how her mother's faith kept them going.  It was how they survived.

Born on Java, Kitty was just 8 when the Japanese invaded.  Soon her family was placed under house-arrest.  Her father had escaped a POW camp (all military men and Europeans were thrown in camps immediately) and formed a resistance and they were to be used as bait to get him to come out of hiding.  Eventually they were moved to a camp.  And then to other camps.

The Japanese concentration camps aren't something we usually hear about.  While horrific, the intent was not genocide, but the Japanese could still be very cruel and many many people died.

Rather than dwelling on the misery and horror, this book explains how her mother taught them to love their enemies.

The story contiues, too, through the end of the war and into Kitty's adulthood.

Really just a wonderful and touching memoir.

You'll Be Sor-ree by Sid Phillips

5 stars
r-1
Copy received for review.

A wonderful memoir.  This is not at all a informative text on WWII.  It is a MEMOIR.  As in one man's memory.  If you're looking for details about the horrors of the war, this isn't the book you want.  (Sorry, negative review on Amazon irritated me.)

Rather, this is the book your grandfather may have written-- a series of anecdotes remembered from the pacific.

At least it's certainly a lot like the writings my grandpa's working on.  And this originally was for the same purpose, writings for family and friends.

I really loved it and I plan to give my copy to my grandpa.