Nonfiction

5 Memoirs About Fathers

In celebration of Father’s Day, here are five memoirs about fathers. The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr Mary Karr describes a dysfunctional childhood—by turns hilarious and appalling—in an east Texas oil town. The book’s title comes from her father’s group of male friends who would assemble in the evenings to drink and see who could […]

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Books I Read in January

January was my month for reading memoirs, according to my reading plan for 2017. I only read two, but both, which had been on my TBR shelf for quite a while, were very good. Macdonald, Helen. H Is for Hawk Grove Press, 2014 ISBN: 978–0–8021–2341–1 Highly Recommended When Helen Macdonald’s father died unexpectedly, she was

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10 Memoirs That Explore the Mother-Daughter Relationship (in remembrance of Debbie Reynolds & Carrie Fisher)

Shortly after the deaths of Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds on subsequent days, Susan Dominus examined the strained relationship between this mother and daughter in the New York Times: Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher, a Mother-Daughter Act for the Ages. Dominus writes: There is something about celebrity mother-daughter acts like the one lived by Ms.

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man reading a big book

5 Nonfiction Big Books I Loved

Related Posts: 10 Big Books I Have Read & Loved 6 Big Books I Keep Meaning to Reread 6 Big Books on My Reading List 2 Big Books That Disappointed Me Since I read a lot more fiction than nonfiction, it’s not surprising that all of my earlier Big Books lists have included only novels.

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Last Week's Links

Last Week’s Links

I’m trying out something different this week. I have three blogs: Notes in the Margin: about books, authors, reading, and all things literary Change of Perspective: about psychology, life stories, memoirs, and writing Retreading for Retirement: my personal blog about retirement, aging, and moving to a new city Because of these wide-ranging interests, I often

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The Joan Didion Documentary by Griffin Dunne and Susanne Rostock — Kickstarter

We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order to Live is the first and only documentary being made about Joan Didion. While her writing is fierce and exposed, Joan herself is an incredibly private person. We have the privilege to know Joan as a subject and also as a member of our family. Our director, Griffin Dunne,

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“Little Heathens” by Mildred A. Kalish

Kalish, Mildred Armstrong. Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression  Bantam Books, 2007 Some time around 1930, when the author was “little more than five years old” (p. 6), she, her mother, her baby sister, and her two brothers went to live with her mother’s parents in

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Monday Miscellany

THE STARS OF THESE YOUNG ADULT BOOKS SWEAR, STRUGGLE, AND GENERALLY ACT LIKE REAL TEENS In the new novel Aspen by Rebekah Crane, the teenage title character is an awkward, artsy kid who gets into a car accident that kills the most popular girl at school. The book traces the bizarre fallout in her Boulder,

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Monday Miscellany

Here’s some reading to start off your week. Five Smarter Ways to Nurture Reading Sari Harrar has suggestions, based on recent research, for helping children learn to read and to enjoy reading. This one is my favorite: Link the story to their lives. Pause when you read and ask kids how the story connects to their

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