Biography/Memoir

> Genre: Biography/Memoir

This elephant didn’t fly but did help save a village

Bandoola: The Great Elephant Rescue by William Grill

May 27, 2022 by BlackRaven Leave a Comment

Bandoola: The Great Elephant Rescue has a mixture of styles. I mean, while this is a non-fiction story about James Howard Williams and an elephant name Bandoola, it is also written as a fiction story. There are facts about elephants, what they eat, etc., as well as what is used and done of the teak plantation. The story is a bit controversial as it does depict the fact elephants in Myanmar were used to harvest the teak for sale around the world. It mentions some […]

Dream job?

Hey Ranger! by Jim Burnett

May 27, 2022 by Sophia Leave a Comment

I found Hey Ranger!: True Tales of Humor and Misadventure from America’s National Parks (2005) when I was looking for another audiobook to read. I love camping and backpacking and I’ve been to a number of national parks. Part of me wonders if I should have been a forest/park ranger–except the ignorant tourists who litter and feed animals would drive me crazy. Jim Burnett worked at a number of different National Parks during his career. He includes stories from the big parks, like Glacier as well […]

She did a little singing

She Sang for India: How M. S. Subbulakshmi Uses Her Voice for Change by Suma Subramaniam

May 27, 2022 by BlackRaven Leave a Comment

Do you know who M. S. Subbulakshmi (Madurai Shanmukhavadivu Subbulakshmi) was? She was a woman of India that broke gender barriers, had a powerful voice, and used it for justice and peace. Subbulakshmi was a young girl in India when girls had little options. A passion was signing, and she would sing whenever she could. And in She Sang for India: How M. S. Subbulakshmi Uses Her Voice for Change you see how she would use her singing to show her love of her homeland, […]

Law and Law with some Order

The Gotti Wars: Taking Down America's Most Notorious Mobster by John Gleeson

May 25, 2022 by Jake Leave a Comment

There’s an overabundance of text written about John Gotti, which is kind of wild when one considers he reigned as the head of the Gambino Crime Family for barely five years. Hell, the man was even one of the last subjects of Andy Warhol’s legendary career. His bombastic, publicity-hunting personality made him the most compelling mobster in the public eye since Al Capone but if you subtract that context, he was an uninspiring thug in a bureaucrat’s job (albeit the bureaucracy of a criminal syndicate) […]

Unmasked, in which “pellow” appears four times

Unmasked: My Life Solving America's Cold Cases by Paul Holes and Robin Gaby Fisher

May 23, 2022 by 1000Oysters 2 Comments

It is super weird to say you’re a true-crime fan. What exactly is there to be a fan of? There are layers and layers of grossness and weirdness. The story-telling can be exploitative and callous. Someone’s pain is being mined for entertainment. That being said, I am a consumer of true-crime content. I’ve heard some people talk about their fascination with true-crime as a way to process their own anxiety about life’s uncertainty. And others who want to get inside the heads of the perpetrators to […]

For the OG Sex and the City fans, if Samantha was the writer

Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer by Rax King

May 23, 2022 by auntadadoom 1 Comment

Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer is a sweet, sex-positive collection of essays by Rax King. The author frames each essay as “about” a particular pop cultural artifact — Hot Topic, America’s Next Top Model, the Cheesecake Factory — and uses that as a jumping-off point for personal memoir. First, the good: she’s a very skilled writer, and even the chapters that are about cultural moments that I didn’t personally experience (e.g. Degrassi) are well-handled enough that I was able […]

narfna on And now, jump back hundreds and hundreds of years…#BlameMalin on this one for me, too, because she literally sent me a copy.
narfna on “And that very same evening—that very same evening—Lord Edgware dies. Good title that, by the way. Lord Edgware Dies. Look well on a book stall.”That's gotta be the new headcanon.
drmllz on “And that very same evening—that very same evening—Lord Edgware dies. Good title that, by the way. Lord Edgware Dies. Look well on a book stall.”I like to think the wife packs Hastings off to England to hang out with Poirot and enjoys having a whole ranch to herself...
Emmalita on And now, jump back hundreds and hundreds of years…Oh yay! Another #BlameMalin victim. That was an expensive miscommunication. I'm glad your grandmother is ok.
Emmalita on I liked this more as an exercise in boundary pushing for meI have to admit, I really liked this one. But Anita Kelly's whole vibe just works for me. I do have a couple of non...

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