A stark reminder of how expensive it is to be poor Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive, by Stephanie Land, is an eye-opening look at a sadly common type of poverty: the poverty experienced by people who are working too many hours for too little pay while raising children without…Continue reading Maid, by Stephanie Land
Category: book reviews
4 Great Memoirs to Get You Through the Holidays
December is long. All those open houses, all those family dinners, all that shopping and buyer’s remorse and returning. All those cocktails. All that love and drama. All the twinkling lights and last-minute dashes to Walgreens because you forgot to get the stuff for the stockings. All those holiday cards featuring families clad in white…Continue reading 4 Great Memoirs to Get You Through the Holidays
L’appart by David Lebovitz
L’appart: The Delights and Disasters of Making My Paris Home, by David Lebovitz As charming as it is informative, L’appart offers a chef’s eye view of the beauty and bureaucratic madness that is France. After moving from San Francisco to Paris, Lebovitz spent a decade living in a tiny top-floor flat with a magnificent view…Continue reading L’appart by David Lebovitz
Exploring Inner Space in The Wanderers by Meg Howrey
The Wanderers by Meg Howrey My rating: 4 of 5 stars I requested The Wanderers by Meg Howrey because I love reading pretty much anything about space. While I was expecting a novel about traveling to Mars, I found something unique and unexpected in this novel: the three astronauts at the center of the story,…Continue reading Exploring Inner Space in The Wanderers by Meg Howrey
Bleaker House by Nell Stevens – Loneliness & Creativity in the Falklands
Verdict: an unusual and utterly absorbing memoir, an apt examination of one young woman’s struggle to create in solitude In general, I think memoirs are best told by writers who have a few decades under their belts. Memoir by its very nature tends to veer toward navel-gazing; it takes a degree of intellectual rigor and self-depecration to…Continue reading Bleaker House by Nell Stevens – Loneliness & Creativity in the Falklands