nonfiction

Sand in My Bra edited by Jennifer L. Leo

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366190Female travelers of the world will love this compilation of travel essays from 28 women headed into hilarious, dangerous, and awkward situations all over the world.  Although some of the essays are generic travel stories, most are distinctly female, and it made me aware of how infrequently I read about women adventurers.  There are stories about accepting imperfect bodies simply by being on a beach overseas, and horror stories of period catastrophes, and a lot of unironic adoration of being female.

I mean, that’s pretty much it.  If you like traveling and you like women, then you will probably like the majority of these essays.  But hey, here’s a quote to entice you just a little bit more:

This is the heart of travel.  This is why we do it.  This is why we are so willing to strap our fragile bodies into metal capsules and fly thousands of miles with hundreds of strangers endlessly exhaling new viruses into our airspace, drink water from dubious sources, eat food virulent with unknown flora and fauna, put up with impossible travel companions, lost luggage, and the legions of mule-like bureaucrats who manage to win positions of petty power in every city and village on earth.  We do it because we love this beautiful dangerous planet and we want to know it personally and, on balance, the pluses far outweigh the minuses, right?

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Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling

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mindy-kaling-why-not-meMindy’s second book is even better than her first!  Why Not Me? is less a memoir and more a series of essays about her life right now.  I’m happy to learn about her past, but I’ll be honest – I’m more interested in her life as a 30-something professional woman stumbling through love and work and being a role model.  And those topics are made infinitely better because of her hilarious sense of humor.

What I love most about Mindy is that she’s honest – she doesn’t try to downplay the perks of being famous (in fact, she revels in them), but she also freely owns up to its downsides.  It is so refreshing to read about how to be beautiful: fake hair, spray tans, tailored clothing, technological gadgets, bra tricks, good lighting, facial masks, and knowing how to pose for pictures with your arms akimbo.  No nonsense about eating right and glowing skin.  Hollywood beauty is all about hard work, and Mindy does wonders for boosting people’s body images by getting honest.

I also loved her candid enjoyment of sex scenes (“You get to crawl around in a bed with another person you either a) already know well or b) are getting to know better in the most cozy and intimate way possible.  Yes, it’s true that an entire room of people is watching you when you shoot a sex scene.  To that, I say: the more, the merrier!  Most of those people are artists whose job it is to make sure your physical imperfections are cloaked in mysterious shadows.  By the end of the shooting day, you’ll wish there were more people there.”) and the essay about her and B.J. Novak being “soup snakes.”  THOSE TWO.  When will they work it out?   Continue reading →

Girl at the End of the World by Elizabeth Esther

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514iqc7VMnL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_I am often drawn to books about people who grew up in conservative Christian circles who wind up abandoning their faith because of the pain in their past (like Jesus Land).  I want to understand how the faith that so empowers me has hurt other people so badly.  And I want to know how God’s people too often lead others away from God instead of toward him.  Many such spiritual memoirs end with the author swearing off religion, but in Girl at the End of the World, despite a childhood of emotional, spiritual, and physical abuse, Elizabeth finds her way back to faith, not through the fundamentalist religion of her past, but through the mystery-embracing truths of Catholicism.

Then I realize: She isn’t just Jesus’s mother.  She is the mother of our Lord and Savior.  Mary is important.

I touch my tender belly and think of the twins growing inside me.  I’m not just a mother either.  I am important.

The thought breaks over me like the rising dawn of a new day: What if God is pursuing me through the gentle love of His Son’s mother? What if, knowing that all the masculine roads to God are blocked for me, Jesus has sent His mother to lead me back to Him?

The granddaugher of the founders of The Assembly, Elizabeth grew up in a religious cult.  She writes about the pain of her childhood and the intense anxiety it provoked with raw honesty that absolutely draws the reader in.  She isn’t hesitant to expose herself, her family, or her faith, and because of that, her story is a beautiful portrayal of brokenness and hope.   Continue reading →

Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari

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I loved this book far more than I anticipated.  I like memoirs written by comedians, so I knew I would pick up Aziz’s when it came out.  I love him in Parks & Recreation, and his stand up on Netflix is some of the smartest, most modern, most feminist comedy I’ve seen.  I knew his book would be funny.  I did not expect it to be so smart!  He’s an insightful guy, but teamed up with Eric Klinenberg, sociologist, this book is everything my humor-loving sociology-major heart could want.

I found it fascinating to look back at courtships of yesteryear (aka 30 or 40 years ago) and compare them to my struggles as a single with an iPhone.  So much has changed with the advent of the Internet and phone apps that allow us to check out singles all over the world.  In an especially effective analogy, Ansari likens dating to a hallway.  Men and women used to enter a hallway with four or five doorways–they peeked through a couple, found one that wasn’t too horrible, and walked through.  Now, singles stand in a hallway with millions of doorways.  This enormity of options means that we are more likely to find someone who aligns closely with our interests, values, and personality.  But it also means that we are often paralyzed, terrified to walk through any doorway for fear that the next one down will be better.

Ansari hilariously describes and analyzes the frustrations of modern dating.  I appreciated his honest assessment of the good and the bad, and I really appreciated how he managed to find humor in it all.  I finished the book both thankful and horrified to be in the dating world at this time in world history.  But at least now I have the tools to understand what I’m going through and hopefully wade through the complications a little more effectively.

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At some point, every one of us embarks on a journey to find love.  We meet people, date, get into and out of relationships, all with the hope of finding someone with whom we share a deep connection.  This seems standard now, but it’s wildly different from what people did even just decades ago.  Single people today have more romantic options than at any point in human history.  With technology, our ability to connect with and sort through these options is staggering.  Just a few years ago, in 2010, 10% of single Americans said they met their significant other online.  Three years later, in 2013, that number was up to 35%.  We are truly in a new world.  What’s the good in all this change?  What’s the bad?  Why are so many people frustrated?

Some of our problems are unique to our time:  “Why did this guy just text me an emoji of a pizza?”  “Should I go out with this girl even though she listed Combos as one of her favorite food snacks?  Combos?!”  “My girlfriend just got a message from some dude named Nathan.  Who’s Nathan?  Did he just send her a picture of his penis?  Should I check just to be sure?”

But the transformation of our romantic lives can’t be explained by technology alone.  In a short period of time, the whole culture of finding love has changed dramatically.  A few decades ago people would find a decent person who lived in their neighborhood.  Their families would meet and, after deciding neither party seemed like a murderer, they would get married and soon have a kid–all by the time they were twenty-four.  Today, people marry later than ever and spend years of their lives on a quest to find the perfect person, a soul mate.

For years, Aziz Ansari has been aiming his comic insight at modern romance, but for Modern Romance, the book, he decided to take things to another level.  He teamed up with NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg and designed a massive research project, including hundreds of interviews and focus groups conducted everywhere from Tokyo to Buenos Aires to Wichita.  They analyzed behavioral data and surveys and created their own online research forum on Reddit, which drew thousands of messages.  They enlisted the world’s leading social scientists, including Andrew Cherlin, Eli Finkel, Helen Fisher, Sheena Iyengar, Barry Schwartz, Sherry Turkle, and Robb Willer.  The result is Modern Romance, a marriage of cutting-edge social science and razor-sharp humor to form an assessment of our new romantic world that is as funny as it is groundbreaking.

Release Date:  June 2015

Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter by Thomas Cahill

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I’ve already begun thinking of myself as part-Greek, which is, I know, very ridiculous.  Just because I will live in the country for a year does not mean I have a right to claim their heritage as my own….except that Cahill has written an entire book about how the Western world has been shaped by the Greek worldview for the last two and a half thousand years.  So while I may not be Greek in heritage, I am in spirit.

Cahill divides his chapters into themes that also follow a general chronological pattern.  I found this to be a much easier way to track with the history and culture presented.  He also makes use of a lot of literature, which, as a book nerd, I found especially delightful.  Beginning with Homer’s The Iliad, Cahill describes Greek warriors and their obsession with glory on the battlefield.  We then move on emotions, celebrations, politics, philosophy, art, and religion.  Over and over again, Cahill reminds us just how strongly our present-day culture resembles the ancient Greeks.

I’ve always loved Greek mythology, my high school English class spent some time with Sophocles and Homer, and I took art history classes as electives in college.  I’m a little familiar with a lot of Greek history and thought, but Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea put everything into context.  For instance, the shift in Greek sculptures from rigid idealistic poses of men to the twisting, agonized figures in the famous Laocoon and His Sons came about as the strength of Athens waned, first to Sparta in the Peloponnesian War and then to Rome.

This book hits all of my interests:  art, literature, history, culture, and GREECE.  Perfect.  Continue reading →

Never Have I Ever: My Life (So Far) Without a Date by Katie Heaney

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I loved this book, but it also infuriated me.  Two years ago, when I was 25, I wrote 80 pages of a pseudo-memoir about how I was 25 and had so far avoided having an actual boyfriend.  Now Katie Heaney does the same thing, and SO MUCH BETTER.  I’m over my jealousy – this girl is hilarious and we are kindred spirits.  Her every observation (whether about 90s kid culture, junior high horror, or college friendships) is so accurate.  Her personality, like mine, is perfectly suited to obsessions and inaction.  Which is why she’s 25 and hasn’t had a date.

“I just don’t know how anyone ever knows what to do with their bodies.  I catch myself worrying about what my arms are doing when I’m walking alone, and that is just walking.  Alone.

So I am a basket case, generally, and picky, and have almost always had crushes on people who usually don’t have crushes on me, and it’s rare that I’m so attracted to a stranger that I could imagine having sex with him at that exact moment.  And even when that has been true, I am only able to talk about thinking about it, from a safe distance.  I have no idea what I’d actually do about it.  But generally speaking, I’d like to date someone, at least a little, first.  Add all this to my somewhat looming height, an unintentional bracing hostility toward people I don’t know well, and an end to the era in my life when I might have felt the need to do something for the first time to get it over with, and it’s not hard to end up with a twenty-five-year-old who hasn’t had sex.  I put practically no effort into it at all.”

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You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day

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I’ve been a fan of Felicia’s from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog to her YouTube gaming show with Ryon Day, Co-Optitude.  It was inevitable that I would read her memoir, though now that I’ve read it, I regret letting….one whole month pass.  I should have read this the second it was released! Continue reading →

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North

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Oh noooO!!!  Too many feelings.  This review is going to be less intelligent and more an emotional outpouring of OH MY GOSH THIS BOOK.

I mean, the premise is fantastic.  Harry August lives his life, dies, and…is reborn.  As himself, same parents, same place, same situation.  But he remembers everything of his life before.  It turns out there are other people like him, and this is the story of how these men and women influence the world and each other.

It’s super cool and fascinating, and the structure allows for some amazing questions.  There’s the run of the mill immortal quandary:  What do you do to keep life interesting if you’ll never die?  Harry becomes a scientist, doctor, engineer, world traveler, etc.  He learns everything, he meets everyone, he gets married a few times in different lives to different women.  He is captured, tortured, and dies in a whole bunch of different ways.   Continue reading →

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

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I heard this was a good biography, and I like Apple products, so I gave it a chance.  Actually, I got it at the library with three other massive books (this one clocks in at 570 pages) and I chose to read it first because I assumed I wouldn’t get past the first page.  I WAS SO WRONG.  I loved Jobs’ biography, for two main reasons.

Steve Jobs was a fascinating man.  Isaacson makes sure to let the readers know Jobs’ passion often turned into screaming fights and insulting appraisals of people’s work.  And yet…despite his frequent moments as a jerk, I wound up loving the man.  He was intense, brilliant, and focused.  When he saw something inadequate, in himself or in others, he did everything in his power to improve it.  Although this cost him some relational intimacy, those exact same qualities led him to revolutionize technology, not once or twice, but in every major technological division: personal computers, music, tablets, storefronts, phones, entertainment.  He was hard to work for, but 90% of his employees were proud to be on his team because he brought out excellence they never knew they had.   Continue reading →

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

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I used to be really into novels in verse (stories told through numerous short poems), but I haven’t read one in a while.  I’m so glad Brown Girl Dreaming reminded me of the art form.  It’s a great way to condense a long story (in this case, Woodson’s childhood) into bite-sized emotional pieces.

Woodson does a wonderful job of conveying her experiences both through the micro lens of her family as well as the macro lens of the changing racial cultures around her.  We get to see what it was like for a black girl to grow up in the North and the South during the Civil Rights generally, and we get to see her family support and tragedy specifically.

I loved this book.  Because of its format, it’s a quick read.  It’s heartwarming and heartbreaking, just like life.  Continue reading →