Review: Same Kind of Different as Me

Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall, Denver Moore, and Lynn Vincent

Genres: Memoir, Christianity
Maturity Level: 3 (content warning: n-word, cancer)
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Rating: ⋆⋆⋆⋆

It begins outside a burning plantation hut in Louisiana . . . and an East Texas honky-tonk . . . and, without a doubt, inside the heart of God. It unfolds at a Hollywood hacienda . . . an upscale New York gallery . . . a downtown dumpster . . . a Texas ranch.

Gritty with betrayal, pain, and brutality, it also shines with an unexpected, life-changing love.

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Ron Hall was (is?) a millionaire art dealer in the Dallas/Fort Worth area of Texas. When he began volunteering at a local homeless shelter he met and eventually became friends with Denver Moore, who had been homeless some thirty years after spending time in prison. They changed each other’s lives, and remain best friends.

Audiobook Review: As You Wish

As You Wish: Inconceivable Takes from the Making of the Princess Bride by Cary Elwes

Narrated by: Cary Elwes, with guest appearances
Genre: Memoir
Maturity Level: 2
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Rating: ⋆⋆⋆⋆⋆

From actor Cary Elwes, who played the iconic role of Westley in The Princess Bride, comes a first-person account and behind-the-scenes look at the making of the cult classic film filled with never-before-told stories, exclusive photographs, and interviews with costars Robin Wright, Wallace Shawn, Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest, and Mandy Patinkin, as well as author and screenwriter William Goldman, producer Norman Lear, and director Rob Reiner.

The Princess Bride has been a family favorite for close to three decades. Ranked by the American Film Institute as one of the top 100 Greatest Love Stories and by the Writers Guild of America as one of the top 100 screenplays of all time, The Princess Bride will continue to resonate with audiences for years to come.

Cary Elwes was inspired to share his memories and give fans an unprecedented look into the creation of the film while participating in the twenty-fifth anniversary cast reunion. In As You Wish he has created an enchanting experience; in addition to never-before seen photos and interviews with his fellow cast mates, there are plenty of set secrets, backstage stories, and answers to lingering questions about off-screen romances that have plagued fans for years!

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I LOVED THIS BOOK! It was like watching a behind-the-scenes or making-of film, but obviously no such thing exists. This is the next best thing. The only thing that could have made it better would have been if Elwes had collaborated with other members of the cast and production team to make it an all-play. Which, honestly, he kind of did, so it could almost not be better.

Review: The Library Book

The Library Book by Susan Orlean

Genre: Non-Fiction
Maturity Level: 3
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Rating: ⋆⋆⋆⋆

On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual fire alarm. As one fireman recounted, “Once that first stack got going, it was ‘Goodbye, Charlie.’” The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who?

Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a mesmerizing and uniquely compelling book that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before.

In The Library Book, Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries across the country and around the world, from their humble beginnings as a metropolitan charitable initiative to their current status as a cornerstone of national identity; brings each department of the library to vivid life through on-the-ground reporting; studies arson and attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; reflects on her own experiences in libraries; and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the LAPL more than thirty years ago.

Along the way, Orlean introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters from libraries past and present—from Mary Foy, who in 1880 at eighteen years old was named the head of the Los Angeles Public Library at a time when men still dominated the role, to Dr. C.J.K. Jones, a pastor, citrus farmer, and polymath known as “The Human Encyclopedia” who roamed the library dispensing information; from Charles Lummis, a wildly eccentric journalist and adventurer who was determined to make the L.A. library one of the best in the world, to the current staff, who do heroic work every day to ensure that their institution remains a vital part of the city it serves.

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This book was completely different than I was expecting. Now that I’m re-reading the synopsis I see I can’t blame THAT for misleading me, but for some reason I had it in my head that this was going to be a true-crime book similar to The Orchid Thief. And while there were some elements of that present, that is not the proper way to characterize this book. Instead, this was Orlean’s love-letter to the Los Angeles Public Library.

Review: Heartland

Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh

Genre: Memoir
Maturity Level: 4
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Rating: ⋆

During Sarah Smarsh’s turbulent childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, the forces of cyclical poverty and the country’s changing economic policies solidified her family’s place among the working poor. By telling the story of her life and the lives of the people she loves, Smarsh challenges us to look more closely at the class divide in our country and examine the myths about people thought to be less because they earn less. Her personal history affirms the corrosive impact intergenerational poverty can have on individuals, families, and communities, and she explores this idea as lived experience, metaphor, and level of consciousness.

Smarsh was born a fifth generation Kansas wheat farmer on her paternal side and the product of generations of teen mothers on her maternal side. Through her experiences growing up as the daughter of a dissatisfied young mother and raised predominantly by her grandmother on a farm thirty miles west of Wichita, we are given a unique and essential look into the lives of poor and working class Americans living in the heartland. Combining memoir with powerful analysis and cultural commentary, Heartland is an uncompromising look at class, identity, and the particular perils of having less in a country known for its excess.

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There is so much I didn’t like about this book that I’m honestly not sure where to begin. So maybe it makes sense to start with what I did like?

Review: And Now We Have Everything

And Now We Have Everything by Meaghan O’Connell

Genre: Memoir
Maturity Level: 5
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Rating: ⋆⋆⋆

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Meaghan O’Connell always felt totally alienated by the cutesy, sanctimonious, sentimental tone of most writing about motherhood. After getting accidentally pregnant in her twenties, she realized that the book she needed–a brutally honest, agenda-less take on the emotional and existential impact of motherhood–didn’t exist. So she decided to write it herself.

And Now We Have Everything is O’Connell’s brave exploration of transitioning into motherhood as a fledgling young adult. With her dark humor and hair-trigger B.S. detector, O’Connell addresses the pervasive impostor syndrome that comes with unplanned pregnancy, the second adolescence of a changing postpartum body, the problem of sex post-baby, the weird push to make “mom friends,” and the fascinating strangeness of stepping into a new, not-yet-comfortable identity. 

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I’m having a really hard time rating this book, because I felt three different ways about the three different sections: pregnancy, childbirth, and new-mom. Don’t get me wrong, they were all very cohesive, and O’Connell wrote with the same voice and dark humor throughout, but I just connected with her three different parts of her story in different ways.

Review: Bringing Up Bébé

Bringing Up Bébé by Pamela Druckerman

Genres: Parenting, Memoir, Non-fiction
Maturity Level: 4
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Rating: ⋆⋆⋆⋆

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The secret behind France’s astonishingly well-behaved children. When American journalist Pamela Druckerman has a baby in Paris, she doesn’t aspire to become a “French parent.” French parenting isn’t a known thing, like French fashion or French cheese. Even French parents themselves insist they aren’t doing anything special.

Yet, the French children Druckerman knows sleep through the night at two or three months old while those of her American friends take a year or more. French kids eat well-rounded meals that are more likely to include braised leeks than chicken nuggets. And while her American friends spend their visits resolving spats between their kids, her French friends sip coffee while the kids play.

With a notebook stashed in her diaper bag, Druckerman-a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal-sets out to learn the secrets to raising a society of good little sleepers, gourmet eaters, and reasonably relaxed parents. She discovers that French parents are extremely strict about some things and strikingly permissive about others. And she realizes that to be a different kind of parent, you don’t just need a different parenting philosophy. You need a very different view of what a child actually is.

While finding her own firm non, Druckerman discovers that children-including her own-are capable of feats she’d never imagined.

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Bringing Up Bébé is not a step-by-step parenting “how to”. It’s not even really a parenting book in the way you would expect. It’s half memoir, half journalistic cultural exploration of how the French culture views children in a profoundly different way than the American culture.

Review: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom by Amy Chua

Genres: Parenting, Memoir, Non-fiction
Maturity Level: 3
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Rating: ⋆⋆⋆⋆

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At once provocative and laugh-out-loud funny, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother ignited a global parenting debate with its story of one mother’s journey in strict parenting. Amy Chua argues that Western parenting tries to respect and nurture children’s individuality, while Chinese parents typically believe that arming children with skills, strong work habits, and inner confidence prepares them best for the future. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother chronicles Chua’s iron-willed decision to raise her daughters, Sophia and Lulu, the Chinese way–and the remarkable, sometimes heartbreaking results her choice inspires. Achingly honest and profoundly challenging, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is one of the most talked-about books of our times. 

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It’s easy to see why Battle Hymn offended so many people. I know all too well how poorly dry humor comes across in the written word, especially when you don’t know the author or aren’t looking for it. And, honestly, who is looking for dry humor in a book marketed as a “parenting book”? Even aware of the satirical nature of the book, and even as a person with the driest sense of humor, I often had a hard time telling when Amy Chua was joking.

Review: A Year of Biblical Womanhood

A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans

Genres: Memoir, Christianity, Nonfiction
Maturity Level: 2
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Rating: ⋆⋆⋆⋆⋆

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Strong-willed and independent, Rachel Held Evans couldn’t sew a button on a blouse before she embarked on a radical life experiment–a year of biblical womanhood. Intrigued by the traditionalist resurgence that led many of her friends to abandon their careers to assume traditional gender roles in the home, Evans decides to try it for herself, vowing to take all of the Bible’s instructions for women as literally as possible for a year.

Pursuing a different virtue each month, Evans learns the hard way that her quest for biblical womanhood requires more than a “gentle and quiet spirit” (1 Peter 3:4). It means growing out her hair, making her own clothes, covering her head, obeying her husband, rising before dawn, abstaining from gossip, remaining silent in church, and even camping out in the front yard during her period.

See what happens when a thoroughly modern woman starts referring to her husband as “master” and “praises him at the city gate” with a homemade sign. Learn the insights she receives from an ongoing correspondence with an Orthodox Jewish woman, and find out what she discovers from her exchanges with a polygamist wife. Join her as she wrestles with difficult passages of scripture that portray misogyny and violence against women. 

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Part memoir, part Biblical study, A Year of Biblical Womanhood was funny, informative, touching, and thoughtful.

Review: Homer’s Odyssey

Homer’s Odyssey by Gwen Cooper

Genres: Memoir, Animals, Nonfiction
Maturity Level: 3
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Rating: ⋆⋆⋆⋆

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The last thing Gwen Cooper wanted was another cat. She already had two, not to mention a phenomenally underpaying job and a recently broken heart. Then Gwen’s veterinarian called with a story about a three-week-old eyeless kitten who’d been abandoned. It was love at first sight.

Everyone warned that Homer would always be an “underachiever.” But the kitten nobody believed in quickly grew into a three-pound dynamo with a giant heart who eagerly made friends with every human who crossed his path. Homer scaled seven-foot bookcases with ease, survived being trapped alone for days after 9/11 in an apartment near the World Trade Center, and even saved Gwen’s life when he chased off an intruder who broke into their home in the middle of the night. But it was Homer’s unswerving loyalty, his infinite capacity for love, and his joy in the face of all obstacles that transformed Gwen’s life. And by the time she met the man she would marry, she realized that Homer had taught her the most valuable lesson of all: Love isn’t something you see with your eyes.

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Probably the only thing I enjoyed more than falling in love with a blind cat was reading about other people falling in love with a blind cat.