Magical Thinking

 

By Augusten Burroughs

A memoir. Set mostly during his adult years in New York City, before he became well known for his first memoir, Running With Scissors. It deals mainly with his love life, the men he favored and the man who later became his main man at the time, Dennis aka The Schnauzer. I guess at the time he wrote this book, he was pretty certain that Dennis was forever. However, looking online I see that they split up, growing apart, according to what I read, but still fond of each other.

Burroughs loves to shock us with his crazy life. But to me the most shocking thing I read in the book was his torture killing of a mouse in his apartment. It was truly disgusting and inhumane what he did to that poor creature.

On the other hand, much of the book is really interesting and frequently funny. Oddly, he describes an encounter with Puff Daddy aka P. Diddy aka Sean Combs which I found interesting because of Combs trial this year and sentencing to about four years of incarceration. The encounter Burroughs writes about happened at the Kentucky Derby:

During the seventh race, a man in a blindingly white suit approached our box and, seeing that it was full, stood at the opening of the box next to ours, the one just slightly ahead of the finish line. A murmur rippled through the box, and I heard the word 'Daddy,' a word that for various reasons always gets my attention.

His diamond earrings flashed in the sun. Of course: P. Diddy (formerly Sean 'Puffy' Combs), rap star, music producer, recently acquitted gun-out-the-window-thrower. A small entourage of impeccably dressed and very handsome black men huddled behind him.

A crowd materialized, and there seemed to be less oxygen in the air. The dozens of photographers in front of us on the track now turned around to face Puffy. Auto-focus lenses whirred into action. Flashes fired.

'Puffy!' yelped on of the debutantes. 'A picture? Pretty please, Daddy?'

Puffy extended his arm, and the girl parted the crowd and slid right in. Flashes exploded on their faces. The light around us popped.

The crowd seemed to close in on our little box. Puffy signed autographs, signed anything passed to him. He held a cigar between his teeth. There was not a single smudge on his white suit. His Rolex shone. When he spoke, he sounded like a senator.

Even without his white, white suit, Puff Daddy would have been the whitest man at the Derby. And yet I couldn't help but think: all these Hats, swooning over him, their faces melting into smiles, their bodies leaning into him, their eyes trained on his every gesture—these ladies wouldn't give him a quarter to save his life if he were wearing sweat pants, a Fubu jersey, and a backward baseball cap. Yet now, I was certain, any of them would have been proud to bear his children. The men, too. Any one of them would happily shrug, 'What the hell?' and be his bitch."

Here is a review from Kirkus Reviews. 

And one from the New York Times.

Number One Is Walking

 

By Steve Martin, drawings by Harry Bliss

A look back at his career in cinema by actor/writer/comedian Steve Martin. Steve provided the prose and Harry Bliss did the illustrations. 

I first saw Steve Martin on Saturday Night Live when he sang "King Tut" dressed like Egyptian royalty. It was funny and weird and introduced the world to an extraordinary performer who went on to have a very successful career in entertainment. Still going strong as far as I know. More power to him!

On the other hand, I had never heard of Harry Bliss so I looked him up on Wikipedia: "Harry Bliss ... is an American cartoonist and illustrator. He has illustrated many books and produced thousands of cartoons including 25 covers for The New Yorker. He has a syndicated single-panel comic titled 'Bliss'. 'Bliss' is syndicated through Tribune Content Agency and appears in over 80 newspapers in the United States, Canada, and Japan."

I enjoyed what Steve has to say and I really enjoyed the drawings Bliss contributed. They add so much to the story. Here are a few examples of his drawings from the book:

Here is an example the style in which the story is told. And also has an explanation of the book title:

Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass

 

By Dave Barry

Dave Barry is a well known columnist, humorist and author. His skills as author and humorist are displayed beautifully in this entertaining, funny memoir. He made me laugh so many times, I think this might be one of his funniest books ever, which is saying a lot. His skills as a writer and humorist are top of the bunch.

He doesn't go into much detail about his private life beyond his childhood which he does delve into. But after that, the book is mostly about his professional life, starting off as a young reporter and kind of ending up a humor columnist accidentally. But he did graduate from serious reporting to being, as it says on the front of the book, a wiseass and we are all the better off for it. So thank you, Dave Barry, for your work and your amazing sense of humor and giving your readers decades of laughs and lighter moments.

Here are just few of the moments in the book made me literally "laugh out loud."

• "I made art projects out of construction paper and this white paste—you Boomers remember this paste—that turned out to be delicious. I enjoyed eating that paste WAY more than I enjoyed eating the Wampus Elementary cafeteria food, which came from giant government cans left over from some previous war, possibly the French and Indian."
• 
  
• "The girls were no longer girls: They were definitely young women. It was as if they had all attended Summer Bosom Camp. The boys definitely noticed this, and were feeling powerful new biological stirrings in the form of semi-permanent boners. A Category 5 puberty storm had hit Harold C. Crittenden Junior High; waves of hormones were sloshing through the halls."
• 
  
• "If you or one of your companions gets bit by a snake, don't panic. Take a razor blade and make a cut shaped like an "X," then suck out all the blood. Snakes just hate this, and after you've done it to them one or two times they stop biting people altogether."
• 
  
• "For nickname stupidity, no state challenges Indiana, which proudly calls itself "the Hoosier State," even though nobody has a clue what "Hoosier" means. It could be a Native American word meaning "Has sex with caribou."
• 
  
• "So the Republicans brought out a parade of humanizers, with the star being Mitt's wife, Ann. She talked, movingly, about a completely different Mitt Romney, a Mitt Romney whom most people have never seen, a Mitt Romney who is funny, spontaneous, tender, laid-back, five feet tall, overweight, bald and—in some [US] states—Jewish." 

I'm adding one last Dave Barry quote, but it is not a funny quote: "For the record: I can't stand Trump. He's a narcissistic jerk and a liar, and his behavior on January 6 was despicable. I'd never vote for him." 

Same for me, Dave.

Here is a review by Bookreporter.com.

Why Not Me?

 

By Mindy Kaling

Kaling's memoir of her life after The Office. She talks a lot about her comedy series The Mindy Project. And about her ambitions and, to a lesser degree, her personal life. 

Book is an OK read, probably more interesting if the reader is already a fan. I knew she was in The Office, but I didn't have cable and never saw her in The Mindy Project.  I found the book to be a tad disappointing because I was thinking it was going to be really funny but it isn't, just mildly humorous. Not to say it's a bad read, because it isn't. Just wasn't what I was looking for. 

Our Hearts Were Young and Gay

 

By Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough

After finishing school, best friends Cornelia and Emily are given permission by their parents to embark on a trip to Europe, semi-supervised by their parents who are also traveling there but on different transport. This being in the early years after the end of World War I, they're traveling by passenger ship. 

Based on a true story, Cornelia and Emily are two innocents setting out to conquer their innocence and the world, or England and France anyway. Cornelia's parents pop in and out of the picture, just in time to save Cornelia from disaster when she comes down with the measles and when she gets attacked by bedbugs. Cornelia's father, Otis, was a big deal in theater and Cornelia has ambitions in that direction also. His theater connections allow the girls chances to meet some of the more famous players of that time. Plus sightseeing, shopping, dining out, meeting boys, getting to know the locals, Cornelia and Emily are having a trip to remember and a fabulous time!

They conclude the story with this touching paragraph:

"The day before our departure, we blew ourselves to a superb lunch at Prunier's, after which we went on a pilgrimage to say good-bye to some of the places we had loved best . . . the rose window in the transept of Notre Dame, the little garden of St. Julien le Pauvre, the tomb of Ste. Genevieve to thank her for having saved Paris for us, Manet's 'Olympia,' and the lights at dusk coming on up the Champs Elysees. We didn't weep, but we were awfully quiet. The thought that we were leaving it all behind brought a lump into our throats, and the feeling in our stomachs that we were in an elevator descending rapidly . . . not a gay little Paris ascenseur, but a big, grown-up, skyscaper one. It was the end of something and we both knew it. We would come back again but it would never be the same. Our breath would come fast and our eyes would smart when the Eiffel Tower rose again in the evening mist, but that would be because we remembered it from these months. There would never again be a 'first time.' Our hearts were young and gay and we were leaving a part of them forever in Paris."

 

This story is a real gem. First of all, it is hilarious. Two teen girls, taking their first steps into adult independence, trying to follow all the advice given to them by their parents, but failing almost immediately. Both girls were quick to abandon the safety purses given them by their moms, designed to be worn under their clothes and to hold money and passports, etc. But the purses tended to bang into the legs of their dancing partners and explaining to the guys what was happening was out of the question. And the girls had been advised by their moms to make the acquaintance of some older, respectable matronly woman passenger and become part of that woman's party. Instead they made friends among the young male passengers and never got around to getting to know a matronly lady.

Anyway, if you can find a copy of this book which was published in 1942, grab it and dive into another time and into the adventures of two American girls verging on adulthood, out on their own for the first time in their lives.  

Cider With Rosie

 

By Laurie Lee

A memoir of a Lee's boyhood in a rural village in western England in the 1920s. 

The book starts with his earliest memories of his sisters and his mother and his brothers and remarks upon the absence of his father, who was never part of his boyhood life. The stories first appeared in various magazines and newspapers over several years.

It was a large family with his mother taking care of her husband's children from his first marriage plus the ones she had with him, some eight to nine kids all together. The husband was absent, apparently the marriage did not work out and he moved on. But the mother never got over his desertion, hoping that someday he would come back to her. As for child support, he was, according to the author, not a fount of generosity. In fact, there is no interaction in the stories between Laurie and his father. Anyway, they lived in poverty, not helped by the mother's lack of focus. 

Laurie clearly enjoyed his time growing up in this small village. His descriptions are a captivating story of the time just before emerging technologies like motor vehicles changed life for people in most western countries. In his village, the horse was still the choice for travel and candles and lanterns provided the lighting, wood and coal for cooking and warmth. Water was still pumped by hand and indoor toilets were rare. 

But it was not a life of untouched innocence. He tells the story of a local man who moved to another country but returned home full of money and full of himself. He made the mistake of bragging about it and sneering at the locals while getting drunk in a pub. He was attacked when he left the pub, beaten and robbed by a gang of men from the pub. They beat him unconscious and left him in the snow where his body was found the next day. But the village closed around the killers and no man was ever brought to justice for the murder. 

In other story, he tells of a man who had the misfortune to come across the body of a woman who killed herself. And then, a short time later, the same fellow saw a man die in a wagon crash. To the villagers, the fellow became a pariah, for some superstitious reason. As the author tells it:

[He] was avoided after that. We crossed roads when we saw him coming. No one would speak to him or look him in the eyes, and he wasn't allowed to deliver milk any more.

Laurie goes on to explain:

They [the murder and suicide] occurred at a time when the village was the world and its happenings all I knew. The village, in fact, was like a deep-running cave still linked to its antic past, a cave whose shadows were cluttered by spirits and by laws vaguely ancestral. ...

It was something we just had time to inherit, to inherit and dimly know—the blood and beliefs of generations who had been in this valley since the Stone Age. ... But arriving, as I did, at the end of that age, I caught whiffs of something as old as the glaciers. ... There was also a frank and unfearful attitude to death, and an acceptance of violence as a kind of ritual which no one excused or pardoned.

He goes on to talk about this attitude to violence and sexuality later in the book:

We knew ourselves to be as corrupt as any other community of our size—as any London street, for instance. But there was no talebearing then or ringing up 999; transgressors were dealt with by local opinion, by silence, lampoons or nicknames. What we were spared from seeing—because the village protected itself —were the crime of our flesh written cold in a charge sheet, the shady arrest, the police-court autopsy, the headline of the magistrate's homilies. ...

Our village was clearly no pagan paradise, neither were we conscious of showing tolerance. ... We certainly committed our share of statutory crime. Man-slaughter, arson, robbery, rape cropped up regularly throughout the years. Quiet incest flourished were the roads were bad; some found their comfort in beasts; and there were the usual friendships between men and boys who walked through the fields like lovers. ... The village neither approved nor disapproved, but neither did it complain to authority. 

So this is a memoir of another time not so long ago, but it is not afraid to show its lumps and bumps and the nastiness. According to Wikipedia, it is a very popular read in Britain:

The success of the autobiographical novel Cider with Rosie in 1959 allowed Lee to become a full-time independent writer. It continues to be one of the UK's most popular books, and is often used as a set English literature text for schoolchildren. The work depicts the hardships, pleasures and simplicity of rural life in the time of Lee's youth; readers continue to find the author's portrayal of his early life vivid and evocative.

I enjoyed the stories too. A really captivating look back at the time between the two world wars, of life for ordinary folks in ordinary communities. 

 

Never Eat Your Heart Out

 

By Judith Moore

Moore reminisces about her childhood and adulthood and her marriage and about food. The first two thirds of the book were very interesting but after her marriage ends, the rest of it was pretty boring.  

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly. 

Life Among the Savages

 

By Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson is a famous author, know mainly for her horror stories and novels, such as the short story The Lottery and the novels The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived In the Castle. But she also wrote in a lighter vein about being a mom to a large family, Life Among the Savages in 1953 and Raising Demons in 1957.

Life Among the Savages begins with the family moving from New York City to a small rural town in the northeastern United States. Jackson tells the story of adapting to a more restricted life and also bringing two more kids into the world. Actually, the story ends with the arrival of the fourth child, Barry. 

Reading these stories, one senses that life was not quite as jolly as Shirley Jackson paints it to be. In fact, there are clear hints that this setting was the seed that grew to be her famous horror novels and stories. Still, I did find the family stories to be interesting if not the laugh fest I was rather hoping for. 

Here is a review by The Guardian.

My Old Kentucky Home

 

By Elliot Paul

In about 1908, Elliot Paul, fresh out of college, moved from the northeast to Louisville, Kentucky to take on an engineering job. He lived in a boarding house while there and became quite close to some of the other boarders and to the family that ran the boarding house. He may have actually become a little too involved in their lives, but he was young and inexperienced and he got caught up in their drama. He also experienced the thrill of jazz music and became a lifelong fan of jazz and of jazz musicians. And he fell in love with a beautiful Spanish woman who was a bit older than he was. She kept him at arms length, romantically, but was quite happy to use him to help keep her slightly loony mother entertained. And the son of the boarding house owner happily introduced him to the various whore houses in town. 

This was actually an enjoyable read. Though it certainly has its racist moments. Not just about blacks but also a Jewish man. But the author does address the unfairness of discrimination later in the book: 

I tried to understand how a man like Bud, one of the advance guard of an advancing people, and one who wished everyone well, could enter so thoroughly into his small foster-son's experience and not worry himself sick about the boy's future. At that time, I was sure that if I were a Negro I would kill myself, and miss a wonderfully good time rather than face the hourly indignities to which a black man was subjected. It is one thing to acknowledge that another kind of man can throw a boomerang farther than one could hope to do, or add figures faster, or find more small talk for women's entertainment. But how would it feel, I asked myself, again and again, to have another race assume superiority, and impose their assumptions on me, denying my fundamental equality as a man, however young?

 

Kirkus has uploaded a review of the book dating from when it was first published in 1949. It does cast some doubt on the truthfulness of Eliott's narrative. Find it here: Kirkus Reviews.

 

They Came to Stay

 

By Marjorie Margolies and Ruth Gruber

Back in the early seventies, Marjorie Margolies decided she wanted to adopt a child from Korea. At the time, she was a career woman and not married although she had not ruled out marriage at some time in the future. In those days, unmarried women (and men, I suppose) were not encouraged to adopt children. But Marjorie was determined and flew to Korea to find the child of her dreams: Lee Heh. 

Lee Heh was a dream child, sweet, smart, enthusiastic about her new life and new mother. Sure, there were adjustments, but Lee Heh did fantastically well. So well, indeed, that Marjorie began to think of adopting a second child to be a little sister to Lee Heh. This time she set her sights on Vietnam, this being the time when the Vietnam war was winding down. 

And so Holly (not her birth name) came into their lives. Unlike Lee Heh, Holly's father was an American and Holly really didn't look Vietnamese. Whatever the truth of Holly's origin, it soon became clear that she was a troubled child. Marjorie and Lee Heh's lives were disrupted by Holly's rages and neediness. Holly spoke almost no English and Marjorie had a difficult time figuring out what she was so upset about. Eventually Marjorie found a Vietnamese student to serve as translator and together they found out what Holly was finding difficult to deal with in her new homeland. The whole family went into therapy to help Holly deal with her childhood traumas and to help Marjorie and Lee Heh deal with Holly.

This was a very engrossing and true story. But beyond adopting the two girls, Marjorie went on to have quite a life. She worked for NBC News and won several Emmys during her career. She also ran for Congress and served during President Bill Clinton's term. Holly and Lee Heh were not her only children. She later married and one of her sons is married to Chelsea Clinton. Marjorie is quite an accomplished and amazing woman.

Review by the New York Times.

How to American

By Jimmy O. Yang

When Jimmy was about 13, his parents migrated from China to the United States, wanting their two sons to have the advantages that they hoped America could give them.
Jimmy figured out how to be American by watching a lot of TV, mainly BET where he fell in love with rap and hip hop and stand-up comedy. But, being a good son, he continued on with his education and graduated from college with a degree in Economics and the promise of a good job with an investment firm. Imagine his parents' shock when he suddenly announced he didn't want the job. And that he wanted to do stand-up comedy.
So this is his story, from his first days in America to his first ventures as a performer and the struggle just to survive on his own and then getting a part in a TV show which led to roles in cinema. He focuses on his professional life and reveals nearly nothing about his personal life. He does not mention any girl friends or lovers.

This was a pretty good read, if only for a foreigner's take on life in America. It is at times mildly amusing but not hilarious. Jimmy may be a comedian but this is not a funny story. This is the story of his life as an immigrant and as a performer.

Bring on the Empty Horses

By David Niven

Niven looks back on his Hollywood days, focusing mainly on the actors and others in the movie business rather than on himself. He details his friendships with famous actors like Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable.
He talks about the writers, the bigwigs, the women. He exposes their affairs, their excesses, their addictions, their disappointments, their unhappy relationships and the efforts to hide it all from the judgmental press of that time.
It's a look back at time when movies were just starting to become a huge international business and the beautiful faces were capturing the audience imagination. It's an enjoyable excursion into a land and people most of us can only dream about.

Wild : From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

By Cheryl Strayed

After her mother died and her marriage ended, Cheryl Strayed knew she needed to do something. What she decided to do was hike the Pacific Crest Trail from California to Washington, alone.
Never having done an overnight hike before, Strayed was not quite prepared for the experience. First of all, her backpack was way overloaded. Second, she found out later after many, many painful miles that her boots were too small. Third, she learned that wild animals are not the biggest threat, rather it was men. Attractive and young, she fortunately only encountered one man with questionable intentions. (She got lucky in that regard.) She saw lots of wild creatures, but they were as timid of her as she was of them. (Once again, she got lucky.) Fourth, she learned that she didn't budget quite enough money for the trip. When one of her resupply drops didn't contain the cash she was expecting, she didn't have a backup plan or even a credit card.
So basically she went off half-cocked but by the end of the hike she was a lot stronger, a lot slimmer, a lot more experienced and a lot more at peace with her life.

This was a pretty good read. I liked reading about the hiking. But not so much the story of her emotional troubles. It just seemed to me that she brought a lot of that on herself.
I'm sorry her mother died so young. But the way Strayed trashed her life because of that did not sit well with me. Especially the way she sabotaged her marriage to a man she describes as loving, caring and understanding.
Just weird.

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America

By Bill Bryson

Bryson returns to the United States after living in the UK. Feeling a bit nostalgic, he takes off on a road trip to visit some of same places he visited with his parents as a kid and to visit places that he had always wanted to visit but never had.
Bryson is usually quite amusing and this book lives up that in being a humorous read. But he must have been in a bad mood when he wrote it because he really beats up on America, only rarely finding a good thing to say beyond praising the scenery occasionally.

I did enjoy the book, but I wish he could have been a little less snarky about his homeland.

See the New York Times book review from 1989.

Calypso

By David Sedaris

A collection of stories about David's life in England and at the Sea Section, his beach house in North Carolina. He lives with his partner, Hugh Hamrick, when at home in England. But when they go to the Sea Section, all the family is invited to be there too.
Sedaris comes from a large family, with four sisters and one brother. At the time of this book, his mother and a sister are both deceased. The mother died when David was in his twenties but his sister died recently, from suicide. His father is living and in his nineties.
David talks about all his family members, including Hugh's family, Hugh's mom and sister and compares them to the Sedaris family, to neither's advantage. I think he finds Hugh's family a little irritating and that they find him and his family a little wild, maybe.

After reading this book, I would think most people would be reassured that their own relatives are not as weird as they thought. The Sedaris family is weird but in a way that is familiar to anyone who has family. His sister who killed herself was mentally ill. My aunt was mentally ill. His father is a man of wealth who lives in squalor because he refuses to spend money to hire someone to help him at home. My other aunt also lived in squalor, with stuff piled everywhere. Like David's sister, we have suicide in our family too. David's mom was an alcoholic. My cousin was addicted to drugs and had to go to rehab.
Just normal, bent American families.

A review by Sarah Crown in The Guardian.

The Good Daughter

By Jasmin Darznik

The story of Jasmin's Iranian grandmother and mother. Both women suffered under the unfair rule of selfish and uncaring men and a patriarchal, overly religious society.
The grandmother, Kobra, lived with her husband and his mother. The husband was a gambler and the family's fortune ebbed and flowed with his wins and losses. Kobra had three kids, two sons, one of which died as a toddler and a daughter, Lili.
Lili's father wanted his daughter to be educated so she attended school. When she was about thirteen, she attracted the unwanted attention of a man. The man proceeded to ask to marry Lili, even though she was just a kid. In Iran, a girl was considered old enough for marriage once she had her first menses. So Lili ended up married to Kazem, a grown man.
Kazem turned out to be a brute and he beat Lili. After she gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Sara, Lili decided she could no longer tolerate being married to Kazem.
Unfortunately, in Iran at that time, a divorced woman was considered to be little more than a prostitute. Also, any children born to a married couple belonged to the father and not to the mother. Lili was forced to give up baby Sara.
But giving up Sara gave Lili the opportunity to leave Iran and travel to Germany to further her education. She attained a degree in midwifery. She also eventually married an European man and they moved to Iran.
Lili tried to maintain a relationship with her daughter, Sara, but Sara's father and his family poisoned her mind against her mother. Lili then gave birth to another daughter, Jasmin.
The political situation in Iran was becoming unstable. This was shortly before the time of the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. Lili and her husband left Iran and moved to California. Jasmin was only about three years old at the time.
Growing up in America, Jasmin didn't know about her mother's past. She didn't know Lili had been divorced, she didn't know she had a half-sister named Sara. She accidentally came across an old photo showing her mother and Kazem on the day they were married and naturally wanted to know what the deal was. But Lili refused to talk about it, telling her it wasn't any of Jasmin's business. Lili must have had second thoughts about it and she sent her daughter ten audio tapes, describing her life in Iran and her first, failed marriage and the child she left behind.

This was an OK read. When ever I read one of these Middle Eastern memoirs, it always seems to me that the women are just as much to blame for the oppression they suffer under as the men and the laws that oppress them. The women go along with it, they accept the abuse as their lot in life and they actively fight against the changes that could make their lives better, like education, like ending female circumcision, like ending child marriage. So many prefer to stay with the old ways, the old religion.

Kirkus Reviews has a review of the book.

Princess

By Jean P. Sasson

A memoir from a member of the Saudi royal family, a minor princess who goes by the fake name of Sultana in the book to hide her identity and protect from government wrath.
Sultana was born into wealth and influence. Although she certainly enjoyed the wealth but, due to her gender, she was deprived of influence. Although she was a passionate child and was not above throwing a tantrum to get her own way, it often did not work for her any more than it worked for any women living under a repressive Muslim regime.
As she grew up, she observed many instances of the imbalance in Saudi society: women beaten and murdered, divorced on a whim, unbridled male lust preying on little children, child abuse, child marriage, men chasing after child brides and putting aside their first, second & third wives, women locked away in darkness as a kind of perverted punishment for wanting to live like modern women, women servants preyed upon by their male employeers.
Sultana sees it all and chafes against the restrictions. But when her turn comes, she willingly accepts the arranged marriage and marries a man she barely knows and proceeds to bear children to him, children she has no legal right to, according to the archaic laws of her land.
But when the husband turns away from her and wants to take second wife, she runs away with the children and millions of dollars. She forces him to sign a contract guaranteeing her rights before she is willing to come home with the children.
Needless to say, such drastic actions destroy what little harmony there existed between herself and her husband. But her marriage was pretty much dead from the moment he decided he needed a second wife. So kudos to her for getting him by the short hairs.

This was an OK read. I was hoping for a little more rebellion from Sultana, but she pretty much does what is expected of her: marries young, has kids, stays behind closed doors and really doesn't do much to fight for women's rights in Saudi Arabia. Her only real rebellion comes when she gets angry at the husband for wanting to bring a second wife into the family. Maybe that was a big step for a woman in her society.

Publishers Weekly has a review.

The Middle Place

By Kelly Corrigan

Kelly Corrigan tells the true story of her life and how she coped with breast cancer battle and her father's cancer battle too.
The story shifts back and forth from the story of her life before cancer and the story of her life with cancer.
She found the lump and then had to have chemo, surgery and radiation followed by five years of hormone therapy.
Fortunately, Kelly had many close friends, loving parents, and a loving husband who were all glad to chip in and help her out when she was too ill from her treatments to take care of her two small daughters, both under the age of four.
From reading her book, it seems the worse things for her were facing her father's decline and that she would have to postpone having more children for five years because of the hormone medication, which came as an unpleasant surprise. She had always planned to have at least four kids, so waiting til she was in her forties to try and get pregnant again made the likelihood of that happening much lower.

This was an OK read. I bought this book last fall and I don't remember why I thought it would be a good read. I suspect that the blurb on the front describing the book as "funny and irresistibly exuberant" had something to do with it, along with the illustration which show a little girl bouncing high into the air. I wonder if I failed to read the back of the book where it clearly says that it is about the author's battle with cancer.
I didn't find it to be funny. To me, it was more depressing than funny. So that was disappointing.

Review by Kirkus Reviews.

Craig & Fred

By Craig Grossi

Craig was a Marine stationed in Afghanistan. He met Fred at a remote outpost. Fred was a goofy young dog who became a vital part of their small outpost, endearing himself to all the men stationed there, except for the Afghanis, who were abusive to poor Fred.
Anyway, when it was time to leave, Craig decided to take Fred back to the USA, even though it was pretty much against regulations. With the help of his riends, his family and a group of kind-hearted shippers, Fred found a himself living in the USA, waiting with relatives until Craig finished his tour of duty and came home.
Once home, things were a bit rocky. Craig kind of drifted. He went back to school and became friends with a fellow vet, Josh, a man who lost a leg when the vehicle he was riding in was blown up by an IED (improvised explosive device). They decided to take a long camping trip together with Fred, of course. It would be a chance for Josh to test the limits of himself and his artificial limb. Craig tells the story of the camping trip interspersed with the story of his time in Afghanistan and the story of Fred, the dog.

I enjoyed this book. But I didn't read it in the order in which it was printed. When I realized how it was set up, I read the chapters dealing with his time in Afghanistan first. Then went back and read the story of the road trip and of his time back home with Fred.

Review by The Washington Post.

Natural Disaster

By Ginger Zee

Ever since she was a little kid, Ginger Zee wanted to be a meteorologist. She set her sights on the Today show.
Being smart and attractive, reaching her dream wasn't an impossible goal. But Ginger's biggest hurdle was probably herself. It wasn't her professional life that was the problem. It was her bouts of depression and her poor choice in men.
In this book, Zee tells the story of how she realized she needed help with her mental illness and how she rose through the ranks to become a meteorologist on national television.

This was a pretty good read. I only had one problem with the book. She is telling the story of when she was first on TV and told the viewers how her dog had tangled with a skunk and that no matter what she washed the dog in, it still smelled of skunk. She was totally surprised at the number of people who contacted her with sure-fire recipes for curing skunk smell. But in the story, she doesn't share the winning recipe!
So I enjoyed the book, even though I didn't know who she was, never having seen her on TV.