Book #92 of 2024: While Idaho Slept: The Hunt for Answers in the Murders of Four College Students by J. Reuben Appelman This true-crime title is pretty slim, despite how much time author J. Reuben Appelman spends on describing the victims’ backstories. He painstakingly walks through the police bodycam footage from when officers were called …
Tag Archives: nonfiction
Book Review: The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times by Michelle Obama
Book #68 of 2024: The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times by Michelle Obama As a follow-up to her acclaimed 2018 title Becoming, this 2022 release from former First Lady Michelle Obama isn’t nearly so noteworthy. Whereas that debut work was a powerful but straightforward memoir, this one blends the autobiographical genre with self-help, …
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Book Review: When I Was Your Age: Life Lessons, Funny Stories & Questionable Parenting Advice from a Professional Clown by Kenan Thompson
Book #67 of 2024: When I Was Your Age: Life Lessons, Funny Stories & Questionable Parenting Advice from a Professional Clown by Kenan Thompson An entertaining if disjointed memoir from the lifelong sketch comic, currently enjoying an unprecedented third decade at Saturday Night Live. I’ll repeat that: at 21 seasons on the show and counting, …
Book Review: Romney: A Reckoning by McKay Coppins
Book #55 of 2024: Romney: A Reckoning by McKay Coppins A remarkable inside look at a complicated political figure: the 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who as a senator during the Trump presidency then became one of the few members of that party willing to publicly stand against the president’s erratic, abusive, and outright …
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Book Review: Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story by Max Marshall
Book #38 of 2024: Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story by Max Marshall One part ethnographic history of the modern American college fraternity scene; one part true-crime reporting of a million-dollar benzodiazepine ring that operated within that ecosystem at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. To lay out my biases, I was active …
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Book Review: The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found by Frank Bruni
Book #36 of 2024: The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found by Frank Bruni A regrettably disjointed memoir. At its best, author Frank Bruni manages to convey a little of what it’s been like for him to go effectively blind in one eye overnight and learn he has a rare disorder that could …
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Book Review: King: A Life by Jonathan Eig
Book #26 of 2024: King: A Life by Jonathan Eig This 2023 title is a major new biography of the assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., representing the first such work to be published in over three decades. It draws on extensive interviews with his surviving loved ones and colleagues, as well as …
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Book Review: Strong Female Character by Fern Brady
Book #24 of 2024: Strong Female Character by Fern Brady I’m not familiar with author Fern Brady’s comedy work, but she’s written a heartfelt and eye-opening memoir about her experiences as a woman on the autism spectrum: how getting that diagnosis as an adult in her thirties both helped her navigate her life going forward …
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Book Review: What the Dead Know: Learning About Life as a New York City Death Investigator by Barbara Butcher
Book #14 of 2024: What the Dead Know: Learning About Life as a New York City Death Investigator by Barbara Butcher A morbidly fascinating look at an unusual job, but a bit too bogged down in unrelated asides on author Barbara Butcher’s personal life, especially near the end. (A little bit of memoir in such …
Book Review: The Woman in Me by Britney Spears
Book #13 of 2024: The Woman in Me by Britney Spears Three-and-a-half stars, rounded up. The personal story that Britney Spears has to tell is a moving one, centering the pain she felt over decades of mistreatment in the music industry and the public eye. Between releasing a succession of chart-topping hits, she was emotionally …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 