Cannonball Read 18

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Highly Entertaining Diaries Full of the Worst Opinions You’ll Ever Read

Henry "Chips" Channon: The Diaries 1918-38 by Henry Channon (edited by Simon Heffer)

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I’ve spent the last month or so working my way through this first volume of the diaries of Henry “Chips” Channon, and what a ride. My current opinion is that he’s the worst guy around but he is a great and entertaining writer who has never met a social ladder he did not want to climb, a royal he was unable to charm, and a cutting remark unsaid. He lived a really fascinating life where he knew every famous political and upper class English person […]

In the Early 1980s Fujiwara Maki began a picture diary

My Picture Diary by Maki Fujiwara

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My Picture Diary is an odd little book. It is a day-to-day/day in the life of the author, Maki Fujiwara (also illustrated by) and her family. Things are fairly dull on the surface, but a lot is going on nonetheless. You can see the era (the late 1970s/early 1980s) and the culture and country (Japan); and of course, the husband and wife and the parent(s) and child relationships. The illustrations are simple, but deceptively so. The style itself is not overly detailed, but they do […]

Random Randomness with Random People in Random Places Randomly

A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries 2003-2020 by David Sedaris

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A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries 2003-2020 by David Sedaris is basically what you’d expect from the subtitle and if you’re familiar with the author. It’s really just random collection of things seen or thought by the author over 17 years. The title doesn’t become clear until March 2013 and that’s never explained. But that’s probably the point, to make you try to reason it out, if there is actual meaning or if Sedaris just thought it sounded cool. It reads kind of like a stand-up […]

The years Alyssa and the world changed

Big Apple Diaries by Alyssa Bermudez

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I think I am reading too many coming-of-age graphic novels for younger readers. Big Apple Diaries normally would have been a 5 a few months ago for me. Yet even though Alyssa Bermudez tells a unique middle school experience due to it being set in a Catholic school, the issues of growing up are the same no matter who you are. No matter if you are half Puerto Rican, Catholic, tall, short, or blond, green eyes, have your parents divorced or together, everyone deals with […]

A Little Birdie For The Soul

Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman

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And here I continue with the children’s books. This one isn’t from my childhood bedroom though, I bought this a week ago, because it was announced that Andrew Scott would be in the movie adaptation and yeah, quite a lot of my book acquisitions follow that pattern… *chrm* In this case I’m very glad I bought it. It’s a wonderful book and I KNOW I would have adored it as a tween. It’s the fictional diary of Catherine, called Birdy, the youngest child and only […]

David Sedaris might finally be growing on me

Theft by Finding, Diaries 1977-2002 by David Sedaris

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I have a confession to make: I’m not much of a David Sedaris fan. I vehemently disliked Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk. I think I read Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls and thought it was ok, but since I can’t remember a single essay or joke, I don’t think that qualifies me as much of a fan. This lack of enthusiasm is unsettling to me, because I am very white, and David Sedaris is #25 on the  Stuff White People Like blog, the bible of all things I’m […]



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