Reviews

Saffian’s birth parents made contact with her via telephone a month before her 24th birthday. She wasn’t prepared for that. What follows is the three year journey to her becoming prepared to meet with them, and her three biological siblings.

Thanks Kate Haas for telling me to read this graphic memoir about infertility. The comics are detailed and funny, and frequently feature the author’s cat Reuben.

Riches to rags story of a 14-year-old on the cusp of graduating from middle school. If you have a hard time sympathizing with poor little rich girls, this might not be the book for you. It’s not the worst read, though, and the ending is a little surprising.

I’m sorry, but I don’t especially know what to make of this one. Librarian semi-accidentally kidnaps 10-year-old whose parents and pastor are trying to de-gay him. I probably would be more charitable towards the book if it depicted librarians and library work more accurately.

This book is kind of light and chick-litish, but it’s about women’s roller derby, so it’s at least a little bit awesome. What separates it from typical chick-lit is that while there’s definitely a dude involved, it’s really about not getting the guy.

Anne’s stories of making zines with women college students in Cambodia (“women college students in Cambodia” is a really big deal), are mixed in with Cambodian history and information about the current state of the country, and etiquette lessons for foreign travelers, e.g., don’t haggle.

Don’t you hate when young (like 21), middle-class, heterosexual white guys write smart, funny, sensitive books that you can’t help but kind of love? I know I do. Kevin Roose’s story of doing a semester “abroad” from Brown at Liberty University (founded by Jerry Falwell) is a total page-turner, and like a responsible ethnographer, he does not condescend to his native population (except perhaps by occasionally referring to his underground research with evangelical Christians as ethnography).

I did want to see what Christian college was like, with as little prejudgment as possible. I knew that wouldn’t be easy--you can’t neutralize a lifetime of bias overnight--but I wanted to try my best. So my second decision was: no cheap shots. If I went to Liberty, it would be to learn with an open mind, not to mock Liberty students or the evangelical world in toto.

Cantwell’s memoir begins after she graduates from Connecticut College 1953 and moves to New York City to be a writer. She is a Catholic from a WASPy town in Rhode Island, but passes well enough. Her mother is not impressed when she marries a Jew fairly soon after graduating. But she’d slept with him, what could she do? I don’t mean to mock. On the outside Cantwell isn’t someone I can relate to, but the quality of her writing voice really got me, both its competence and its appeal, if that makes sense. It seems like the better the writing I’m reviewing the worse my own gets.

The only vacationy thing I’ve done on my staycation is this pleasure read. The third in the Mercedes Thompson series has Mercy doing more brave, rash things and getting herself into and out of some bad situations, with a little help from her wolfy friends. As in Sookie Stackhouse’s world, the fae are kind of dicks.