“The process of engaging your celebrity is not unlike being a photographer at the Sears portrait studio. You just need a different version of a squeaky toy so their eyes follow you and they smile occasionally.” Jancee Dunn grew up in suburban Jersey, with two little sisters, a former Southern beauty queen for a mother and a JC Penney exec for a father. She somehow stumbled into a job writing for Rolling Stone, and ended up traveling around the world as she interviewed celebrity after celebrity. […]
Book of Ages by Jill Lepore
Book of Ages was a 2013 National Book Award finalist in the non-fiction category. Historian Jill Lepore pieces together the life of Ben Franklin’s sister Jane and in doing so not only reveals the life of a fascinating “ordinary” 18th-century woman who happened to be the beloved little sister of a Founding Father, but also demonstrates her own prodigious skills as an historian. Lepore’s work is specifically about Jane but more broadly about history and historians, biography and novels, and determining whose lives are worth […]
Anarchy in Italy
Graphic memoirs are in a real danger of becoming an old hat. The genre seemed so groundbreaking in the early 90’s when Art Spiegelman finished Maus, or even in 2000 with Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, and there are still some interesting work published under the umbrella “graphic memoir.” And it’s a good thing that the new comic book releases shelve in our local library calls to me like heroin calls to Iggy Pop, or I might have missed one of them, namely Ulli Lust’s
The Tender Memoir You Might Not Expect From a Radical Feminist
I hope I will not be criticized for enjoying Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood simply as a childhood memoir of well-known feminist lecturer and author bell hooks. It was surprising to me how sweet and tender her quickly sketched remembrances of her childhood could be, as they were unexpected from someone so admired (and by some reviled) for her outspokenness and advocacy for and about women, especially women of color. Mrs Smith Reads Bone Black by bell hooks
Simple Dog, Alot, and Cake!
My BFF Nicole and I have been fans of Allie Brosh’s blog for years.
Badkittyuno’s Review #3: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
“She’s the most important person in the world and her family living in poverty. If our mother is so important to science, why can’t we get health insurance?” Y’all, this is a good book. I read a lot of non-fiction, and this book moves faster and stays interesting in a way where a lot of non-fiction falls short. Rebecca Skloot is a talented writer and researcher, and I can’t wait to see what she tackles next. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is about a […]