The buzz about Cheryl Strayed’s new memoir, Wild, couldn’t be ignored. If Oprah Winfrey brought back her Book Club just because of this manuscript, I knew I had to read it. Most everything Oprah recommended I’d read before she announced the selection. But Wild was a wild card thrown in my direction. The jacket described this book about the rough experiences on the Pacific Crest… [Read More]
Anne Tyler’s novels are punctuation marks in my own lifeline. Her first novels I discovered in college — If Morning Ever Comes and The Tin Can Tree — but by the time I got to graduate school, Celestial Navigation, Searching for Caleb, and Earthly Possessions captured my fancy as a reader. As each of her novels came out, I found myself compelled to purchase the… [Read More]
Passion for good, simple, healthy food is something farmers and hunters share with chefs, urban homesteaders and metropolitan diners in these new books about meat and so much more. It’s become cool to be carnivore. Farmer and evangelist for the grass-fed movement, Joel Salatin’s new book, Folks This Ain’t Normal: A Farmer’s Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World (Hatchette 2011) points… [Read More]
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]
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]
Last month, I reviewed a graphic novel/interactive documentary called KENK: A Graphic Portrait. This journalistic comic was the first release for Toronto-based multimedia production and publishing company Pop Sandbox, and it was met with a hoard of accolades and reviews within its first three months of release. I was lucky enough to snag an interview with Alex Jansen, the owner and operator of Pop Sandbox,… [Read More]
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]
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]
Leigh Stein, author of The Fallback Plan (Melville, 2012), will unashamedly tell you that she’s lived with her parents four times. Her newly-released novel, a coming-of-age about post-college angst, is spliced with details from her own experience and speaks volumes to the plight of so many twenty-something’s undergoing a quarter-life crisis. Stein’s protagonist, Esther, is a recent Northwestern graduate suffering from the post-grad blues. While… [Read More]
Author Melissa Fay Greene I had the pleasure of meeting Melissa Faye Greene at the Austin Jewish Book Fair in November. She was there to sign No Biking in the House Without a Helmet (Sarah Crichton Books, 2011) and to provide the opening address. No Biking is a memoir chronicling how she and her family of six (mom, dad, four kids) adopted five orphans from overseas—one… [Read More]
