Helloooo CBR 12! Excited to post my first review of the year, and I started with a bit of a bookend. My last read for CBR 11 was my (first ever) read of the Diary of Anne Frank, which was a long time coming, and a great book to read. So, I found it appropriate to start with George Takei’s “They Called Us Enemy” which is George Takei’s graphic novel memoir of growing up in internment in the American concentration camps during World War II. […]
Freaks, Geeks, and Automobiles
Role Models by John Waters
Oooh mama, this is not for the faint of heart! If you aren’t already a fan of John Waters and his coterie of misfits and outsiders then this is NOT the place to start! I first became aware of John Waters through the 1990 film Cry-Baby. It used to be on TV fairly frequently in the late 90s/early Aughts, and I would secretly watch bits and pieces of it when my parents weren’t in the room. I had the “flashback” button on the remote primed and […]
“If you get killed in America, there is a 38 percent chance your killer won’t be caught.”
Chase Darkness with Me: How One True-Crime Writer Started Solving Murders by Billy Jensen
Bill Jensen became interested in crime (and catching bad guys) at a young age — his father used to read him newspaper articles as bedtime stories. He even tells a heart-warming tale of learning about Son of Sam with his dad. This created a life-long obsession with crime from Jensen, and eventually led to him to not only help finish Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, but also help solve other crimes and help find missing people. “Whenever people ask me why I […]
I read this one too slow
The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
This is all on me. I read this too slow and it returned itself to the library before I could jot down my highlighted lines. I am not a digital highlighter AT ALL but I flagged at least four spots in here because the language was just that damn good and now they’re GONE. I read this slow because, well, I wasn’t sure I was going to finish it. I was about 40% through and just like “Ugh, okay, I’ll make it halfway, that’s good […]
“There’s no hierarchy of pain. Suffering shouldn’t be ranked, because pain is not a contest.”
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb
Here’s my main takeaway from this book, and it’s one that I think will help people (it’s certainly something I had never really considered but ought to have): therapists are not one size fits all. Most people can benefit from therapy, whether for a short period of time or long-term, but it’s important to find the right person. I tried therapy for a few weeks last year, felt I was attending a lecture for an hour once a week that had nothing to do with […]