Gated Grief by Leila Levinson
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April 24, 2012

How does one combine memoir, ethnography, self-discovery, and history, while contributing to two important bodies of literature—Holocaust and psychotherapy—in an eminently readable book? Do what Leila Levinson has done in Gated Grief: The Daughter of a GI Concentration Camp Liberator Discovers a Legacy of Trauma (Cable Publishing, 2011). The breadth of her project is evident even in the awards it has won—one for women’s memoir… [Read More]

Reading Non-Fiction for Pleasure
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April 17, 2012

I’m going to ‘fess up: I don’t read enough nonfiction for pleasure. Fiction has always been more compelling to me. The fantasy, the adventure, the imagination, the characters – this is the stuff of storytelling. But there are some exceptional books of non-fiction and memoir that trump my fandom of fiction. Here’s my top 4 picks for NF and memoir. These books are not only… [Read More]

When a book is bad: a pained review of The Whipping Club
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April 3, 2012

Have you ever disagreed with someone (friend, family member, stranger, bookseller) about a book? Have you ever hotly argued over the quality, or lack thereof, of one? No way! You couldn’t possibly love Freedom! What do you mean it’s a must-read? You say you couldn’t put it down? I loathed picking it up! It was awful! The characters aren’t likable, the ending sucked, and the… [Read More]

Mamas, don’t let your girls grow up to be professors
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March 13, 2012

A decade ago I kissed the golden handcuffs of tenure goodbye. I walked away from teaching journalism and media studies at Ithaca College in May 2002. No one bothered to ask me why. The conditions and experiences haven’t gotten much better for female faculty and in some ways worse. In 1980, 49 percent of full-time female faculty had tenure, compared to 70 percent of men…. [Read More]

Heaven is for Real
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March 6, 2012

Did you ever ask yourself, is there really a God?  Is Heaven for Real?  Is there life after death? Just ask 4-year-old Colton Burpo from Imperial, Nebraska, who emerged from life-threatening surgery with astounding details about his near death experience. This is a true story of Colton’s account as told by his father, Todd Burpo, to Lynn Vincent. Colton describes floating away, looking down on… [Read More]

Spring memoirs: Slices of small farm life
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February 28, 2012

While some folks like to read about the lives of celebrities, athletes, and politicians, and how they put their pants on just like you and me. I don’t. Apparently I am not alone. The new trend in small farm memoirs began in earnest when Storey Publishing, known for its how-to guidebooks for small animal farmers, released its first memoir in 2008. Jenna Woginrich began as… [Read More]

The Man in the Empty Boat by Mark Salzman
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February 14, 2012

If a man in a boat is crossing a river and an empty boat drifts along and bumps into his, he won’t get angry. But if there is someone in the other boat, then the man will shout out directions to move. …If a man could make himself empty, and pass like that through the world, then who could harm him? Mark Salzman’s ebook The… [Read More]

Review: Marriage Rules by Harriet Lerner
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February 7, 2012

I begin with two confessional caveats. One, Harriet Goldhor Lerner is my second cousin; we communicate by email, but have never met. Two, I am not Marriage Rules’ (Penguin, 2012) target audience even though my husband of 16 years and I have been in marriage counseling for two years. In 1985, Harriet (she’s family, I can call her by her first name) took the world of… [Read More]

How to Eat a Cupcake
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January 31, 2012

Meg Donohue knows how to whet an appetite and pay homage to a gal’s sweet tooth. Her first book, How to Eat a Cupcake (William Morrow Paperbacks, March 2012) unfolds over the course of a year, opening in June and wrapping up sweetly in May. The story is told from two perspectives and, while the protagonists duke it out, the reader feasts on some delicious… [Read More]

Campfire artfully brings classics to life for kids
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January 24, 2012

For a comic book, its visual design is superb. Campfire’s latest adaptation, Rudyard Kipling’s classic The Jungle Book, is absolutely gorgeous: it’s not in the same playing field as popular superhero comics by DC and Marvel, that’s for sure. (Feel free to disagree, but neither Spiderman nor Green Lantern has ever been drawn so crisply or in colors so rich.) Children will love the drawings… [Read More]