I decided to finally read Code Name Verity when it was announced as the first Go Fug Yourself book club selection. It seemed like a perfectly lovely excuse to pick up a book I’d been meaning to for ages. I’m glad I did, because the book really got under my skin, and as a historian I was ridiculously pleased with Elizabeth Wein’s research and the selected bibliography she supplied at the end of the book which included a museum exhibit! *insert museum professional happy dance* […]
“I am done with things happening to me. From here on out, I am going to happen to things.”
After I finished reading Me Before You I was an emotional wreck. My roommate has taken to calling it the book that broke me, as in “Oh, did you write your review of the book that broke you?” Finally, yes. But in the meantime between reading the book and writing the review I needed something else to read, something to clear my poor brain space and think some happy thoughts. So, I grabbed my Nook and started reading Courtney Milan’s The Governess Affair, the prequel […]
“You only get one life. It’s actually your duty to live it as fully as possible.”
I put Me Before You on my to-read list after reading ModernLove’s review back in February. The emotional response she had to the book elevated it from a maybe read to a definitely read (the book was already on my radar given Jen K’s, Malin’s, and HelloKatieO’s reviews from CBR5). Here is what I wrote on Goodreads immediately following completing the novel: “This fucking book. Christ, I can’t even find the words right now. It’s poignant, and heart-rending, and should come with tissues.” I usually […]
Not trying so hard, not planning ahead, just getting out of your own head and letting the magic happen.
Rachel Dratch is not someone who I would normally go running out to buy or read their memoir. I know her from her time on SNL, which coincided with the time in my life that I initially started watching the show live. But, she wasn’t someone I followed, and I didn’t watch 30 Rock, so I was largely unaware of the media firestorm surrounding her replacement by Jane Krakowski. But after having read Tina Fey and Darrel Hammond’s biographies for previous Cannonball Reads and seeing […]
Anything that you cannot sacrifice pins you. Makes you predictable, makes you weak
I blame the internet. Earlier this year I was telling my roommate about a run of books I was in that were great, but sad. She’s dubbed my year as “The Depression Readings”. I mean, to a certain extent this is fair. I have read Burial Rites, The Black Country, Tell the Wolves I’m Home and The Age of Miracles in a 6 week period. That’s a lot of heavy reading, emotionally. So, at some point she decided that it was her mission to bring […]
Good food and good eating are about risk
There’s a certain amusement that comes from knowing more than the teller of a story. I don’t often suggest reading memoirs or the like so far after their publication dates (see my experience with Denis Leary’s Why We Suck earlier this year). But, there was a delicious sort of fun to be had reading Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential and knowing what his life would turn out like in the decade which followed the book’s publication in 2000. He certainly, had no idea. You’re likely familiar […]
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