I have a love hate relationship with books that deal with psychological issues. As someone who has dealt with various diagnosis, prescriptions and failed therapy sessions sometimes they hit a little too close to home. Sara Benincasa’s memoir chronicles her journey through crippling panic attacks that leave her temporarily unable to leave her college apartment. A particularly nervous child, Sara’s book begins with her going to an Italian ER for a panic attack while on a school trip and follows her into college at Emerson. […]
Happy Accidents
Jane Lynch is one of those actors that didn’t get a big break until her late 30s, the first thing I remember her being in was Best in Show (when she was 40) even though I’ve seen her actual first movie role- The Fugitive- a dozen times. This whole book is basically the story of her growing up and hustling her way into pop culture permanence as Sue Sylvester from Glee. Lynch was brought up in a suburb of Chicago as the middle child of […]
Yeah, You’re Probably a Little Bigoted
You’re not racist, right? I mean, if given two equally qualified candidates for a job you were hiring for, you’d be just as likely to give it to the Black person as the White person, right? And you’re in favor of same sex marriage, so you definitely don’t give any preference to straight people, right? Not so fast. The premise of this book – which is backed up by some pretty solid science – is that we all hold biases in our unconscious minds that […]
Hindsight is bittersweet, but the facts are hard
I rarely read non-fiction and even more rarely read memoirs so I went into this read with few expectations. It was the pick for my book club, so I picked it up dutifully, much like I would tackle required reading in school. I’m hesitant to say I enjoyed this book, because the subject matter was difficult and heart-wrenching, but I am glad that I read it. Alysia Abbott is the daughter of two free spirited parents in the 70s, in a non-traditional configuration. Her parents […]
It’s getting plainer all the time
This book is the follow up to Why I Left The Amish. That book dealt with the author’s “now”, her mature years while confronting her father’s impending death, and her remote past, her childhood. This book fills in her young adult years. Saloma grew up in an abusive family, physically abused, emotionally damaged, and sexually violated. As we left her in the first book, she was escaping to the real world of her dreams, Vermont. Saloma makes what seems to be a successful transition. She […]
It’s plain to see…
Working as I do with the Amish, it’s interesting for me to get a look at what Amish life is like when we English aren’t around. Bearing in mind that this is a different state (and the Amish can differ quite a bit from one church district to another, let alone another state), and a different era, it is still clear that the Amish are just people, dealing with many of the same issues we all do, but in a completely different framework. Saloma left […]