100 Times: A Memoir of Sexism, by Chavisa Woods. Seven Stories Press, 2019
This book is laid out with a very simple format: Woods has put down on paper 100 different instances of sexual harassment and sexual abuse, ranging from discrimination, to verbal abuse to groping to out and out assault. These instances are laid out chronologically, from age ( Read more... )

Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland, by Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus with Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan. Viking, 2015
In the spring of 2003, 17 year old Amanda Berry, walking home from work, was lured into a van by the father of a schoolmate. She was then taken to his house (still believing he was taking her to see her friend), where she was ( Read more... )

Hungry: Eating, Road-Tripping, and Risking It All with the Greatest Chef in the World, by Jeff Gordinier. Tim Duggin Books, 2019Author Gordinier, Esquire food and drink editor, was having a bit of a mid-life crisis. His marriage had just ended, and he was restless and depressed. Then Rene Redzepi, owner of world famous (but I’m not enough of a ( Read more... )

Identity Theft: Rediscovering Ourselves After Stroke, by Debra Meyerson, PhD, and Danny Zuckerman. Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2019‘Identity Theft’ refers to the way that a stroke takes away from who you are- or who you think you are. Suddenly a fit, quick witted person cannot walk, or remember names, or may even lose the ability to talk at all (and ( Read more... )

Bono: The Amazing Story of a Rescue Cat Who Inspired a Community, by Helen Brown. Citadel Press, 2018
After a bout with cancer, Australian author Helen Brown decides she needs something more out of life than what she’s getting. She gets an invite from her editor to come to New York City for a while, for the US release of her book, Cats & Daughters ( Read more... )

Theda Bara, My Mentor: Under the Wing of Hollywood’s First Femme Fatale, by Joan Craig with Beverly F. Stout. McFarland & Company, Inc. 2016 Joan Craig grew up living across the street from silent film star Theda Bara, and the two pretty much instantly connected when they met, introduced by Bara’s husband who had cut a rose for Joan as she walked ( Read more... )

In the Darkroom, by Susan Faludi. Metropolitan Books, 2016 After the author’s parent’s split up when she was a teen, she saw little of her father. When she got an email from him when he was 76 years old, he had a surprise for her: he had had Sexual Reassignment Surgery and was now a woman- Steven Faludi was now Stefanie. She wanted her daughter to ( Read more... )

Iris and Her Friends: A Memoir of Memory and Desire, by John Bayley. W.W. Norton & Co; 2000 “Iris and Her Friends” is the second book John Bayley wrote about his wife, novelist and Oxford don Iris Murdoch, and her decline from Alzheimer’s disease. The term ‘her friends’ does not refer to people in her life, but to the compensations that her disease ( Read more... )

My First Time in Hollywood, by Cari Beauchamp. Wasashina & Wallace, 2015 This is a collection of short memoirs from some forty people who were in the film industry when it first started in Hollywood. It ranges from famous actors- Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, and Gloria Swanson-to producers and directors (lots of them), to writers, and people ( Read more... )

This is one of the funniest, most poignant, most touching books that I have read in recent times. This is a collection of essays, observations on life, part memoir and part opinion. Sedaris has a unique take on life and an ability to observe it in all its shades and to somehow find the humour and poignancy of it all.

There are a lot of humorous ( Read more... )