Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

 

By Jeanette Waterson

An novel, even though the main character is also named Jeanette and her and the author were both adopted by religious fanatics. So that's something.

Anyway, fictional Jeanette is adopted by Christian fundamentalists. Well, actually the mother is the religious nutter. The father is a nonentity in the story. The mother, Louie, is quite devoted to her religion and her adopted daughter is being raised in the faith too. No problem, the daughter is nearly as gung-ho as the mother. That is until love enters the picture, in the form of another girl.

So Jeanette's first love is a girl and so is her second love and her third love and so on. Which is ok until Louie finds out and blabs everything to the church she is devoted to. And the churchy people decide Jeanette is possessed by the devil and needs an exorcism. Jeanette doesn't respond well to the exorcism and becomes quite ill. 

When she recovers, it soon become apparent that the exorcism was a failure because Jeanette is still falling in loves with girls. Eventually her sexual preference results in not only being kicked out of their little church but out of the only home she has ever known. Now nearly grown, she has to find work and make her own way in the world without the love and support of her adoptive parents. 

This supposedly comic novel, per the blurbs on the cover ("[Waterson] has mastered both comedy and tragedy in this rich little novel." "A daring, unconventional comic novel . . . told with romping humor" "quirky and subtle hilarity of Winterson's autobiographical first novel") was boring and not what I would call comical or subtly hilarious. And it is interspersed with some weird fantasy stuff that was puzzling and I supposed was an allegory for the character's feelings or life or whatever, but I didn't care for those intrusions into the story. 

But apparently the literary world loves this novel, so what do I know? Nothing, most likely.

This is not a review but is a distillation by John Crace (Digested Classics it's called) from The Guardian. It pretty much covers the main points and I get the feeling he didn't really care much for the fantasy bits either.

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.

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.  

Living in the Country Growing Weird

 

By Dennis Parks

From the University of Nevada Press:

"In 1972, Dennis Parks, a young potter with a promising academic career ahead of him, decided to move to Tuscarora, a near-abandoned mining town in remote northeastern Nevada. Parks and his wife were attracted to Tuscarora's isolation and beautiful setting, and they believed that it might be a healthy environment in which to raise their two small sons. This is Parks' account of his family's life in Tuscarora, a tiny settlement whose population even forty years later numbers fewer than twenty permanent residents.
Parks created a pottery school that attracts students from around the world and developed for himself an international reputation as the creator of powerful, innovative works in clay. Meanwhile, he and his family had to master the skills required of those who choose to live in the back country--growing and hunting their own food, renovating or building from scratch the structures they needed for residences or studios, resolving conflicts with neighbors, inventing their own amusements. The transformation from middle-class urbanity to small-town simplicity is, as Parks reveals, a lurching and sometimes hilarious process, and the achievement of self-sufficiency is similarly fraught with unexpected challenges."



Dennis and his wife Julie made a good life for themselves and their two boys in the very isolated town of Tuscarora. They managed to make ends meet without feeling too deprived of the finer things in life, according to what he writes in his book. One of his sons, Ben, joined his dad at the pottery school and continued on with it after Parks passed in 2021.

You can find out more about his life in this obituary on the Legacy.com website.

This was an inspiring read and makes the simple life seem very appealing. It has lots of black and white photos in it but their quality is rather poor.

Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters

 

By Jean Shepherd

A collection of humorous short stories by Jean Shepherd, mainly based on his years growing up in an industrial town in Indiana, eight stories altogether.

• The Grandstand Passion Play of Delbert and the Bumpus Hounds — A large family of 'hillbillies' moves in next door to the author's family. Between the packs of angry dogs, the drunken parties, the shouting and the piles of junk and trash, the author's dad is almost at his wit's end when the Bumpus folks vanish in the night.
• County Fair! — a trip to the county fair in the 1930s which revealed to me that county fairs haven't changed much in almost 100 years. One of the best stories and the most realistic story in the collection, I think.
• Scut Farkas and the Murderous Mariah — a top battle, top as in the spinning toy. This one was a struggle for me, because I had no idea what the author was talking about, top battles? Also, basically a sports story of scant interest to  me who cares not for sports.
• Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss — loading up the family car for a trip to Clear Lake to spend a couple of weeks in a rustic cabin. An ordeal that many of us have had to endure in our lives. 
• The Star-crossed Romance of Josephine Cosnowski — a Polish family moves into the neighborhood and one of the kids is a teenage girl about the same age as the author and she is undeniably attractive. Author asks her out on a date finds out a lot about the girl and her family and he gets cold feet.
• Daphne Bigelow and the Spine-chilling Saga of the Snail-encrusted Tinfoil Noose — the author has a crush on his biology lab partner, Daphne, and works up the courage to ask her out on a date. He realizes he is out of his league when he arrives at Daphne's home and it is a mansion, with servants and a Cadillac and driver. 
• The Return of the Smiling Wimpy Doll — the author, now an adult and living far from his childhood home, receives a package from his mom containing his childhood toys and he has a blast rediscovering these treasures from his youth. A really sweet story that made me sad because all my childhood mementos were thrown away by my mom when she moved and it never occurred to her to ask if I wanted any of it. 
• Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories — returning to the author's childhood and it is time for his high school's Junior Prom. Time for fancy clothes and figuring out who to date and how to get there and all the fun before and after Prom. A bittersweet story, as I never attended a Prom or a high school dance. 

All these stories are fun and bring back memories on one's own childhood and teenage days. Really, things haven't changed all that much since the 1930s, in many ways! 

Here is a review of the book by Kirkus Reviews.

The Silver Queen

 

By Jane Candia Coleman

This is the fictionalized story of Horace and Augusta Tabor who, as a young married couple, had joined the many hopefuls heading west to make new lives for themselves, in the 1850s. Eventually they would come to own some of the richest silver mines in Colorado.

Horace and Augusta Tabor first settled on a farm in Kansas. But the unrest occasioned by the anger over slavery and a failed corn crop set Haw, as he was called, on a search for a new endeavor that would take them out of lawless Kansas. He decided the gold fields would be the making of him.

Off they went, Augusta now a mom to the only child she would ever have, Nathaniel, called Maxcy. The trail west was a trial, for sure, but they made it to Colorado intact and set out exploring the rugged mountains looking for the jackpot that would make Haw rich. Augusta struggled along with her husband, who was a bit of a dreamer, but she would have been happy to have an ordinary life. Mining for gold was not the jackpot Haw had hoped for. But they got by, helped out by Augusta's cooking and doing laundry for and selling supplies to the others in the gold fields hoping for the same dream. 

In the course of the years, they acquired several mines, none of which was particularly productive, of gold that is. But it turned out that some of the mines were very productive of silver, an ore Haw had overlooked in his dream of gold. Silver made all his dreams come true. In today's money, his fortune may have been in the $2 billion range. Certainly he was the wealthiest man of his day in Colorado.

But money was not good for the Tabor marriage. Haw had always had a tendency to stray and was perhaps a bit too fond of hanging around in saloons and bars. And his wife, Augusta was maybe a bit too stern, to apt to criticize. Haw had political ambitions and wanted her to be part of his effort to charm people and win supporters. He had a mansion built for her in Denver and she settled in to it and enjoyed her life there. But he was mostly absent, pursuing his political dreams and funding projects in Denver and Colorado. His relationship with a young widow, Baby Doe, who he set up in a suite in the hotel he owned, showering her with fine clothes and jewelry, became a scandal.

It was Augusta who pointed out to Haw that his behavior was not helping his political ambitions. If she thought that would bring her unfaithful husband back home, she was mistaken. The marriage ended in divorce and Haw married his pretty young mistress. But Augusta had taken care of herself financially, maybe she wasn't fabulously wealthy, but she had a very comfortable life. At her death, her estate was worth $1,000,000 in 1895, which is about $36 million in 2020 dollars. Things did not work out as well for Haw and Baby Doe, unfortunately. In 1890s, the value of silver started to decline drastically. Tabor lost everything but was appointed Postmaster, a position he held until his death in 1899.

Stupidly, I did not realize that the story I was reading was based on real people. I kept waiting for Augusta to have her moment of triumph over her ex-spouse, but that never really happened. She got old, he got old, even Baby Doe got old and they all died. That's when I finally understood that this story was about an actual marriage that fell apart because people change, circumstances change and love fades. I didn't get that revenge scene I was expecting but that is my fault for misunderstanding. It was a pretty good story. It's great to see someone's dream come true, but sad to see it all slip away.

How I Got This Way

 

By Patrick F. McManus

Another collection of the author's funny short stories, including hilarious stories of his childhood, stories of his adult outdoor experiences (not as funny but still very enjoyable) and even some more serious and touching stories, including a rather melancholy one about a kingfisher. All in all a wonderful, funny and touching collection that I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

The stories:

• How I Got This Way, Part I
• Ethics, and What to Do About Them
• Bambo
• Get Ready
• Toe
• The Bandage
• The Big Woods
• Elk Magic
• There She Blows
• Brimstone
• The Blue Dress
• Warped Camshaft
• The 400-Pound Pumpkin
• Tenner-Shoe Blight
• Letter from a Kingfisher
• The Ultimate Bull
• My Greatest Triumph
• Another Boring Day
• The Complete Curmudgeon
• The Liars Club
• A Couple Pickles Shy of a Full Barrel
• Excuse Me, While I Get Out of the Way
• The Two Masked Raiders
• Mosquito Bay
• My Hike with, ahem, the President
• Ed in Camp
• How I Got This Way, Part II

Here is a review from Publishers Weekly.

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. 

 

My Life and Hard Times

 

By James Thurber

A collection of short stories based on Thurber's childhood and teenage years. 

In the introduction to the stories, written by John K. Hutchens, he claims that Thurber had an excellent memory and that the stories are all true, for the greater part. I don't know if that is the case or not, but they are all funny and amazing and worthy of being cherished and passed on to later generations. 

The stories are:

• The Night the Bed Fell
• The Car We Had to Push
• The Day the Damn Broke
• The Night the Ghost Got In
• More Alarms at Night
• A Sequence of Servants
• The Dog That Bit People
• University Days
• Draft Board Nights
• A Note at the End - a commentary by Thurber on his stories. 

The book is available to read online for free at Project Gutenberg Canada.

Kirkus Reviews has a review of the book, dating from when it was published in the early 1930s: Kirkus Reviews.

Doctor In the House

 

By Richard Gordon

Richard Gordon started his professional life as a medical doctor but became famous for his humorous stories about life as a doctor. Doctor In the House  was his first semi-autobiographical novel but he went on to write several more books about his life as a doctor. His doctor series went on to inspire film and TV versions.

In this first book, the author is telling the amusing story of his experiences in medical school in London, England. It is set in the years between the two wars. 

The system used in England at the time is different from that used in the  United States today. Gordon basically went from high school directly to medical school, if I am understanding his story correctly. He has a lot of fun pointing out the doctors, nurses, patients, his own and fellow students failings and foibles. 

It was an interesting read, although I was a bit lost at times understanding what he was talking out. The period he was writing about is nearly one hundred years ago and in a medical and educational system foreign to my experience. It wasn't as amusing as I was expecting it to be, though. At times, his judgments of his fellow humans were unnecessarily harsh, in my opinion. 

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. 

The Longest Trip Home

By John Grogan

John Grogan grew up in a suburb of Detroit. His dad had a good job and his children wanted for nothing. At one point, the dad bought his son a sail boat, which tells you something about their situation.
It was a pretty sweet childhood, far from the struggles and poverty of urban Detroit. About the only fly in John's ointment was his parents  religiosity. They were extremely devout Catholics but John never felt an affinity to the religion.
Boys grow up and John heads off to live his life, eventually sharing a house with the woman he later marries. His devout parents find this arrangement very upsetting when John finally works up the nerve to tell them, which takes him a long time. Even after they get married, his parents continue to bombard him with prayers for his safe return to the religion they cherish that they have finally figured out means nothing to their son.
And so it goes. Mom and Dad get old and the inevitable arrives and  though John never returns to their religion, he and his father come to a sort of understanding about it.

I enjoyed the book. It was nice reading about his family. John was a lucky boy, that's for sure: loving parents with a stable marriage, financial security, a safe environment to grow up in. He never even got fondled by a priest even though he was an altar boy! (Or if he did, he doesn't mention it in the story.) He had the kind of childhood many can only dream about.

Review by Publishers Weekly.

Elvis Is Dead And I Don't Feel So Good Myself

By Lewis Grizzard

Lewis Grizzard was a fan of Elvis Presley. When Elvis died in 1977, it caused him to think back on his life. He remembers his childhood, his young adulthood and he complains about the changes modern life has brought and yearns for the good old days when his life was simple and he was content.

Not a particularly funny book, but it does have its moments. Too much sports stuff, though. Which is okay if you like sports. I don't.

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.

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.