Book #365 of 2021: Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang A fairly poignant account of a brief but formative period in author Qian Julie Wang’s life, spanning from 1994 when she left China for America with her family at age seven through when they moved again to Canada five years later. This sort of childhood …
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Book #306 of 2021: Black Girl Unlimited by Echo Brown This autobiographical novel — or fictionalized memoir, if you prefer — tackles some very heavy topics in the childhood and teenage years of its author / protagonist Echo Brown, a dark-skinned African-American who faces racism, colorism, domestic abuse, rape, and more, not to mention the …
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Book #281 of 2021: The Ugly Cry by Danielle Henderson This is a memoir about author Danielle Henderson and the grandmother who pretty much raised her, although the exact shape and point of the text isn’t especially clear until near the end. It’s not a tale for the faint of heart, as it contains plenty …
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Book #254 of 2021: What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon This provocative title relates the current scientific consensus that most weight-loss programs of diet and/or exercise simply don’t produce long-term stable results for most users, explores the systemic way that our culture is organized around the assumption of …
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Book #252 of 2021: Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Expanding on a viral New Yorker article, this short book from author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie shares her experience with mourning her father, who passed away in June 2020. (He didn’t die of the coronavirus, but travel restrictions aimed at containing the pandemic kept her …
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Book #228 of 2021: Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner A powerful memoir exploring the grief of losing author Michelle Zauner’s mother, who was also the main tie to the Korean side of her family. A lot of the writer’s observations are deeply rooted in particular cultural experiences, which I think will resonate with …
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Book #200 of 2021: The Only Pirate at the Party by Lindsey Stirling and Brooke S. Passey Dubstep violinist and YouTube sensation Lindsey Stirling has understandably not had the most conventional career path, and this co-written autobiography is an interesting look at the mind behind the music. Her perspective can be myopic and frustratingly twee …
Book #185 of 2021: Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life by Steve Martin The most surprising thing about this 2007 memoir by comedian Steve Martin is that it’s not particularly funny. I don’t mean that the author is attempting jokes which fall flat, merely that it’s a fairly serious reflection on his early career, featuring …
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Book #183 of 2021: Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher This 2008 memoir from actress Carrie Fisher — actually an adaptation of her autobiographical one-woman stage show, if we’re splitting hairs — is short but punchy, packing a lot of sensitive subjects in and around the wry comedy. She opens with her recent electroshock therapy to …
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Book #178 of 2021: Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone by Kenneth Cain, Andrew Thomson, and Heidi Postlewait I have profoundly mixed feelings on this 2004 book, which documents its three authors’ experiences as United Nations peacekeepers in the 1990s. They initially meet while stationed together in Cambodia, but …
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