Can't Help Myself by Meredith Goldstein (2018)

I was listening to Goldstein's podcast called Love Letters, and decided to check out her book. Despite being a single woman unlucky in love, Goldstein began writing an advice column at the Boston Globe, which took off. Two things I love: romance and giving advice.

A nice blend of advice letters and her answers, combined with a memoir about her unluckiness in love and her mother's death from cancer. A bit slight but well-done.

Fire Shut in My Bones by Charles Blow (2014)

“I looked over at the rusting pistol on the passenger seat. It was a .22 with a long black barrel and a wooden grip. It was the gun my mother had insisted I take with me to college “just in case.” I had grabbed it from beneath my seat when I jumped into the car. I cast glances at it as I drove. I had to convince myself that I was indeed about to use it.”

This memoir, by a columnist for the New York Times, is about growing up poor, African-American and sexually conflicted in a small, segregated town in Louisiana.

Blow shares his rich family history, the vibrant characters and vignettes from his childhood, which felt so out of time I had to keep reminding myself we were born the same year. This mesmerizing, gripping memoir follows him into college and interning for the New York Times, which brings us to the beginning of the book. 

So does he use the gun? Read the book and find out.

What We See What We Read by Peter Mendelsund (2014)

Utterly loved this nonfiction book which deconstructs 'what we see when we read': the physical and emotional act of reading. 

Absolutely fascinating, marvelously designed. So many keeper quotes. Like:

"One should watch a film adaptation of a favorite book only after considering, very carefully, the fact that the casting of the film may very well become the permanent casting of the book in one's mind. This is a very real hazard."  

"When I read, my retirement from the phenomenal world is undertaken too quickly to notice. The world is in front of me and the world "inside" me are not merely adjacent, but overlapping; superimposed. A book feels like the intersection of these two domains--or like a conduit; a bride; a passage between them." 

This is a book to buy and refer to often.  Fascinating.

But Enough About Me by Jancee Dunn (2006)

Subtitled: A Jersey Girl's Unlikely Adventures Among the Absurdly Famous.  Dunn intersperses her tales of growing up with big hair in a mildly wacky family in New Jersey with instructive, but hilarious and interesting, essays on interviewing celebrities from her experience as an interviewer for Rolling Stone. Totally un-self-conscious and completely, laugh-out-loud, read-to-anyone-nearby funny. 

The Dog Dialed 911 by William Bastone (2006)

Subtitled: A Book of Lists from The Smoking Gun.  Fantastically hilarious and embarrassing book including stuff culled from the archives of the Smoking Gun. Says more about modern American society than anything else I've seen in ages. And is FAR more entertaining! I would definitely give it to space aliens who landed and wanted info about America.

Free for All by Don Borchert (2007)

Subtitled: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library.  Written by a long-time California library staffer, this gives a pretty good depiction of what it's like to work in the public library these days. Great stories, some poignant, some nervewracking, some hilarious.