Choose Your Own Disaster by Dana Schwartz (2018)

Hilariously and descriptively subtitled: A. A Memoir, B. A Personality Quiz, C. A Mostly True and Completely Honest Look at One Young Woman's Attempt to Find Herself, D. All of the Above.

This millennial memoir is written in a cute Choose Your Own Adventure style and the writing transcends the gimmick. Quirky look at being in one's twenties and modern feminism.

Schwartz gained fame as the creator of @GuyInYourMFA on Twitter and I'm adding her book The White Man's Guide to White Male Writers of the Western Canon to my read-now list. 

I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara (2018)

Subtitled: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer. 

McNamara, who passed away a few years ago at age 46 and was married to Patton Oswalt, was obsessed with her DIY search to find the identity of the East Area Rapist in California. Very absorbing until the very end, where her assistants tried to piece together the remainder of her search after her death. She was a terrific writer, and it's a chilling story. Perfect for the myriad fans of true crime podcasts and amateur sleuthing. 

The Stars In Our Eyes by Julie Klam (2017)

Subtitled: The Famous, the Infamous and Why We Care Too Much About Them. 

Pretty fun look at our obsession with celebrities. I think I've read an embarrassing number of books about celebrity culture, but Klam's stories about her own personal celebrity worship are relatable and enjoyable. Although this book gets a bit name-droppy, with celebrity friends describing their own brushes with fame. Dishy, fun,  and light vacation reading.

See also: But Enough About Me by Jancee Dunn (2006)

The Real Thing by Ellen McCarthy (2015)

Subtitled: Lessons on Love and Life from a Wedding Reporter's Notebook.

McCarthy had the wedding beat at the Washington Post, and shares what she's learned from heaps and heaps of couples over the years. Divided into Dating, Commitment and Breakups, and including stories from her own life, this is a charming collection that includes gentle dating and love advice with tons of real-world examples (and a few schadenfreudeish examples too--which are the best!) This is a very sweet, sensible, and a little inspirational addition to the love and marriage section. 

Evicted by Matthew Desmond (2016)

Subtitled "Poverty and Profit in the American City", this nonfiction book explores the stories of those struggling with their housing in the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee.

As Desmond says in his prologue: 

"Fewer and fewer families can afford a roof over their head. This is among the most urgent and pressing issues facing America today, and acknowledging the breadth and depth of the problem changes the way we look at poverty. For decades, we've focused mainly on jobs, public assistance, parenting and mass incarceration. No one can deny the importance of these issues, but something fundamental is missing. We have failed to full appreciate how deeply housing is implicated in the creation of poverty. Not everyone living in a distressed neighborhood is associated with gang members, parole officers, employers, social workers, or pastors. But nearly all of them have a landlord." 

Although researched beautifully (and you should read the end notes as you go along--they're amazingly informative), this book is incredibly readable and accessible. The people that Desmond focuses on are real, richly depicted characters and their situations are gripping and heart-rending. This book is transformative--it gave me insight into an issue that is too easy to overlook in everyday life. I will never view housing, poverty, my work and daily life in the city in the same way again. 

Anyone who is interested in issues of social justice and poverty would do well to read this book.

And now all of the quotes that I loved: 

"If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished neighborhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women. Poor black men were locked up. Poor black women were locked out." (p. 98) 

"Plus, Patrice would have to set foot in that grand old courthouse. The nicest building in Patrice's life was Lena's Food Market off Fond Du Lac Avenue. ....Her white friends called it the ghetto grocery store, but it was one of the better markets on the North Side. And at Lena's, Patrice never felt her existence questioned. She tried not to go to parts of the city where she did." (p. 99) 

"Psychologists might agree with him, citing research showing that under conditions of scarcity people prioritize the now and lose sight of the future, often at great cost." (p. 115) 

"Efforts to establish local cohesion and community investment are thwarted in neighborhoods with high turnover rates. in this way, eviction can unravel the fabric of a community, helping to ensure that neighbors remain strangers and that their collective capacity to combat crime and promote civic engagement remains untapped. (p 298) 

"Establishing publicly funded legal services for low-income families in housing court would be a cost-effective measure that would prevent homelessness, decrease evictions, and give poor families a fair shake."(p 303) 

"If it weren't so easy to evict someone, tenants like Doreen and Patrice could report dangerous or illegal conditions without fearing retaliation. If tenants had lawyers, they wouldn't need to go to court." (p. 304)  

"Every family below a certain income level would be eligible for a housing voucher. They could use that voucher to live anywhere they wanted, just as families can use food stamps to buy groceries virtually anywhere, as long as their housing was neither too expensive, big, and luxurious, not too shabby and run-down." (more on this on 308) 

"I learned that behavior that looks lazy or withdrawn to someone perched far above the poverty line can actually be a pacing technique. People like Crystal or Larraine cannot afford to give all their energy to today's emergency only to have none left over for tomorrow's." (p. 328) 

(on ethnography in "about this project")

"But first-person narration is not the only technique available to us. In fact, it may be the least well-suited vehicle for capturing the essence of a social world because the "I" filters all. With first-person narration, the subjects and the author are each always held in view, resulting in every observation being trailed by a reaction to the observer. No matter how much care the author takes, the first-person ethnography becomes just as much about the fieldworker as about anything she or he saw." (p. 334)

More: 

"Humans act brutally under brutal conditions…(Maslow) Ideas about aggression in low-income communities that do not account for the hard squeeze of poverty, the sheer emotional and cognitive burden that accompanies severe deprivation, do not come close to capturing the lived experience of people like Arleen and Crystal." (p 376) 

"Resource-poor schools in low-income neighborhoods often leave children with subpar language and critical-thinking skills. Those deficits will remain even if those children relocate to safe and prosperous neighborhoods later in life." (p. 377) 

"That fancy television in the ratty apartment? Those new shoes worn by the kid eating free school lunch? Their owners likely didn't pay full dollar for them. You can take a nice television off a hype for fifty bucks and find marked-down Nikes at the corner store. The price tags in inner-city clothing stores are for white suburban kids who don't know how to haggle. Next to that big-screen television too it is harder to see what is missing." (p. 378) 

 "Behavioral economists and psychologist have shown that 'poverty itself taxes the mind,' making people less intelligent and more impulsive." (p. 378)

"The poverty debate could do more to recognize the powerful effects of rejection on a person's self-confidence and stamina. Applying for an apartment or job and being turned down ten, twenty, forty times--it can wear you out." Also "exhausted settling" (p. 379) 

"Another approach involves surveying a person's resources before trying to access them. Because in poor neighborhoods the most accepted way to say no is to say, "I can't", people sometimes try to take that option off the table. So, for example, instead of asking, "Can I get a ride?" you ask, "You got gas in your car?" Instead of asking, "Could you make me a plate?" you ask, "You eat?"... Knowing how to ask for help--and, in turn, when to extend or withhold aid--is an essential skill for managing poverty." (p. 390)

See also: 

Tally's Corner by Elliot Liebow (1967), All Our Kin by Carol Stack (1974), Sidewalk by Mitchell Duneier (1999), How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis (1997), Fringe Banking by John Caskey (2013), Broke, USA by Gary Rivlin (2010), Scarcity by Mullainathan and Shafir (2013), Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2004), Doing the Best I can by Kathryn Edin and Timothy Nelson (2013), Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrows by Jacqueline Jones (2010), Growing Up Jim Crow by Jennifer Ritterhouse (2006), Every Time I feel the Spirit by Timothy Nelson (2004), When Affirmative Action Was White by Ira Katznelson (2005), When a Heart Turns Rock Solid by Timothy Black (2009), Stuck in Place by Patrick Sharkey (2013), and so so so so so many more.

Asking for It by Kate Harding (2015)

Subtitled: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture--And What We Can Do About It.

Fascinating exploration of rape culture and how incredibly pervasive it is.

Harding explores legal cases, pop culture, sports and every other aspect of our lives to show how incredibly yes, pervasive it is. And yet, she has such a hilarious, dry wit that it keeps you from throwing the book--and yourself--off of a cliff.

Available by Matteson Perry (2016)

Subtitled: A Memoir of Heartbreak, Hookups, Love and Brunch, this is a pretty adorable memoir of one guy's dating adventures in L.A., complete with regular brunch with his guy friends.

Perry is a Moth storyteller, and his book is pretty funny. I like that it doesn't pretend to be anything more than it is. It doesn't pretend to be the last word in insight into relationships, but it does give pretty interesting insight into dating.

A few quotes I loved:

 "Even buying condoms for the first time terrified me. I worried that Porcelain baby Matteson would go into the store and say, "One box of sexual condoms, please," and the clerk would laugh. "Oh no, I can't sell you those. Not only are you too young to have sex, but I can tell you're also not cool enough." (p. 24)  

Perry on his first time:

"In real life, we couldn't even get started. I'd thought it would be kind of like two magnets, that once our equipment got close enough they'd automatically pull together. Nope. I was thrusting blindly, as if I were playing an easy-looking carnival game that is actually impossible. And neither of us knew we could use our hands down there. I guess we thought sex had the same rules as soccer." (p. 27) 

And something I identify with:

"Approximately 80% of my advice is unsolicited." (p. 191)

Big Little Man: In Search of My Asian Self by Alex Tizon (2014)

Alex Tizon is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, formerly for the Los Angeles Times and Seattle Times. He and his family immigrated from the Phillipines when he was a young boy, when he quickly realized that American culture stereotyped Asian men in extremely negative ways. 

At age fourteen, he started keeping files of whenever he ran across something related to Asians—mostly race and manhood and power and sex, he would make a note and file it away. It ended up being two file cabinets full of "evidence" that he had no idea what to do with until many years later, this book.

In this book, he explores the many depictions of Asians in popular culture, and how they affected his own identity. In addition to his own experiences, he travels across the world to rediscover Asian explorers, warriors and great leaders, Asian men throughout history who have been forgotten or ignored by American history books.

This is a candid, engaging and incredibly illuminating memoir that covers a subject that isn't covered much in popular culture: sex and the Asian male.

Waking Up White: and Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving (2014)

Debby Irving grew up in a suburb of Boston, as WASPy as you can get and was totally clueless about race. As she began work on racial equity, she quickly found out she had much to learn. In her own words: 

"Not so long ago, if someone had called me a racist, I would have kicked and screamed in protest. "But I'm a good person!" I would have insisted. "I don't see color! I don't have a racist bone in my body!" … I thought being a racist meant not liking people of color or being a name-calling bigot."

"It turns out, stumbling block number 1 was that I didn't think I had a race, so I never thought to look within myself for answers. The way I understood it, race was for other people, brown and black-skinned people."

"Waking up white has been an unexpected journey that's required me to dig back into childhood memories to recall when, how and why I developed such distorted ideas about race, racism and the dominant culture in which I soaked."

Debby Irving is now a racial justice educator. Her hope is that by sharing her own sometimes cringe-worthy struggles, she can offer a fresh perspective on bias, stereotypes, and tolerance. It's a fascinating book and well worth reading for anyone who is interested in exploring issues of race, racism and white privilege.

How To Be Black by Baratunde Thurston (2012)

This book is awesome. I loved it immediately from the introduction ("Thanks for Celebrating Black History Month by Acquiring This Book"), which tells us that "this is a book about the ideas of blackness, how those ideas are changing, and how they differ from the popular ideas promoted in mainstream media and often in the black community." And Thurston discusses all of this with insight and utter hilarity.

Chapters include: "How Black Are You", "How to Be the Black Friend", "How to Speak for All Black People", "How to Be the Black Employee", and "How's That Post-Racial Thing Working Out For Ya?"  

In addition to his own thoughts, Thurston brings in his "Black Panel," including W. Kamau Bell, other interesting writers on race, and even one white guy (Christian Lander from Stuff White People Like) to provide even more insight and perspective on the issues he discusses.

I love this quote from Damali Ayo: 

"There's only so much we can say to white people anymore about this, because we've been saying the same things to white people for generations, decades upon decades. It is now really up to them. I've done workshops where I have literally taken all of the people of color out and left the white people and said, 'Your job is to end racism and I'll be back in twenty minutes. You set it up. Take it down.'" (p. 216)  

Also, Thurston's commentary on Cheryl Contee's discussion of the new Harmlem Renaissance and African American culture impacting larger culture: 

"all of these are part of this more global, collaborative resurgence of black culture and thought, and when it comes from the bottom up like this, it challenges the prevailing and limited images of blackness peddled by our major media but also the limited expectations of many black people themselves." (p. 223)

Fabulous, funny, thoughtful and important.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty (2014)

Subtitled: And Other Lessons from the Crematory.  I utterly LOVED this book.  

Doughty, after graduating with a degree in medieval history, gets a job at a crematorium and learns a LOT. This book is beautifully written, so readable and yet she integrates an amazing amount of anthropological research into her writing. 

I love her advocacy for death acceptance and the "good death.' This is totally a buy for me. I love how she talks about the real truth of death in America and how divorced we are from the reality of death. Beautifully written, and I wholeheartedly support her cause. Wonderfully said. Rave, rave, rave. 

Also, don't miss her Order of the Good Death page on Facebook. She posts the most fascinating articles and links.

March: Book One by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell (2013)

Okay, so you should know: Don't read this without having the second one close at hand. It leaves off on a total cliffhanger. And you will just need to know what is going to happen. 

This graphic novel follows the life of John Lewis, from young sharecropper child living in segregated Alabama to studying to be a preacher to getting involved with Dr. King and SNCC. Set with a poignant framing device of him getting ready (as a congressman) for the inauguration of Barack Obama, it looks back in full detail at his past. 

It's incredibly sweet and heart-rending--brought me to tears and made me really want to learn more about his work, the civil rights movement, and visit Atlanta's many civil rights museums. Fascinating and incredibly emotional.  Followed by a second volume, which will make you long for the yet-to-be released third.

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine (2014)

Amazingly thought-provoking book that explores the everyday interactions of race, in lovely, spare, poetic writing. 

Chilling and effective, with interesting illustrations (and helpful notes about them in the back). It feels like a book you should read slowly and thoughtfully, which is not something I do very often. Wonderful discussion starter. 

Here's a tip: listen to Claudia Rankine read her work. It helps to have her voice in your head as you read. I particularly love the vignette on page 131 that starts: "On the Train."

If I Can't Have You by Gregg Olsen and Rebecca Morris (2014)

Subtitled Susan Powell, Her Mysterious Disappearance and the Murder of Her Children, this true crime book starts when the Powell family fails to drop off their children at day care. Their day care provider becomes worried, and a search for the family ensues.

Eventually the husband and children show up, but without the mother and the husband is acting most suspicious.  The characters in this book (particularly the husband's family) are as chilling and creepy as in any good suspense thriller. It's also a fascinating look at the complexity of marriage, the Mormon faith, and the tenacious struggle for Susan's family to find out what happened to her.

Despite the spoilery subtitle, this book is incredibly gripping, and one of the best true crime books I've ever read. I still get the creeps when I look at that book cover photo.

Son of a Gun by Justin St. Germain (2013)

After watching Tombstone (in a spate of Michael Biehn movie binge-watching), I wanted to read more about Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and Biehn's character, Johnny Ringo.  In one of those serendipitous coincidences, St. Germain's book popped up in my catalog searches. 

St. Germain lived in (or just outside) of Tombstone with his mother and brother with a succession of his mother's boyfriends.  When he is just 20, his mother is shot to death, likely by her current husband (her fifth).  

In this book, St. Germain chronicles his attempts to make sense of his mother's death as he tries to answer the unanswered questions of her death.  

He wanders back and forth in time as he recalls his own troubled childhood with his mother, and along the way, the story of his hometown and the famous shootouts that took place there.  Simply and sparely written, St. Germain weaves together all of these elements beautifully in a very emotional, suspenseful and touching book.  A good pairing with After Visiting Friends by Michael Hanley.

Dragnet Nation by Julia Angwin (2014)

Subtitled: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance.  Angwin is an investigative journalist who explores the many ways we are being watched and recorded and what we can do about it.  

Short answer?  Not much.  

Angwin looks at how our private lives are under watch and how our private data is being collected by the bushelful, then goes deeply into security and hacker circles in order to figure out how to evade being tracked.  Fascinating and eye-opening.  

A good companion to Brandwashed by Martin Lindstrom.  Also, Angwin's sources are marvelously documented in full detail.

Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Murder Mystery by Robert Kolker (2013)

Perfectly marvelous true crime book about the unsolved murder of at least five women whose bodies were dumped on Long Island. Kolker does a beautiful job of giving us the full story on these women and their troubled lives that led to their becoming sex workers.

This book explores the semi-underground world of sex workers, the danger that they are so often in, and the heartrending stories of the family members who worked to keep their girls in the minds of the police officers who were investigating the crime (not always with much enthusiasm.)

Chilling and absorbing.

Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper and Brian Bellmont (2011)

Subtitled: The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the 70s and 80s, this is a fun, alphabetical listing of pop culture memories from that time.  A former local girl, Fashingbauer Cooper writes the fabulous blog Pop Culture Junk Mail and brings an authentic love of pop culture to the table.

The descriptions in this book are so vivid, and so lightly snarky that I longed to smell Sun-In and Love's Baby Soft one more time, slick on a little Village Bath lip balm, play Pitfall, go to Burger Chef's condiment bar, and read Dynamite magazine--among many, many more.  Crazy side note?  This book is beautifully indexed, which always scores a point with your librarian.

Followed by the equally charming and evocative The Totally Sweet 90s, which is ideal vacation reading.  Perfect little page-long snappy snippets of fun, snarky remembrances of 1990s pop culture "From Clear Cola to Furby and Grunge to Whatever: the Toys, Tastes and Trends that Defined a Decade."  So fun, so delightfully nostalgic.

Thirty Rooms to Hide In: Insanity, Addiction, and Rock 'n' roll in the Shadow of the Mayo Clinic by Luke Longstreet Sullivan (2012)

LOVED. This is a memoir about a prominent surgeon at the Mayo Clinic, his descent into alcoholism and insanity and the effect that it had on his six sons and wife. 

A fairly grim tale, but this book (and this family) is so full of dark humor that it makes the story incredibly compelling. Sullivan, an advertising man, writes wonderfully--compact and perfectly hilarious. It's also a really interesting look at domestic life in the 60s and a fascinating look at troubled family life. Many, many laugh-out loud, 'I can't believe he wrote that' moments. There's so much packed into this book: growing up as a nerd, growing up with older and younger brothers, growing up in the 60s--not to mention the complicated relationship with his father, his parents' relationship, and his father's relationship with alcohol and so much more.

This book is eminently quotable--the kind of book I'd like to buy just to highlight my favorite lines (if I was the kind of person who wrote freely in books). I love what Sullivan writes about how people of talent often get a free pass to be obnoxious alcoholics, musing that it's probably been that way since caveman times:   

"Some mead-guzzling schmuck named Thog probably did a great cave drawing and then spent the rest of his life barfing on the saber-toothed tiger rug and crying, "Village not understand Thog." (p. 242) 

And on scaring little brothers:

"At the top of the food chain was our oldest brother, Kip. He was an Eagle Scout. And given his proficiency at scaring the bejesus out of me, he must have had a merit badge somewhere, one embroidered with the icon of a fifth grader and Jesus bursting out of his chest." (p. 150)

And for a book that starts off with the main character dead, the ending still packs a punch. Interspersed with Sullivan's own remembrances are snippets from his brother's diaries, his mother's letters, and records from his father's doctors. Even the occasional photographs are carefully chosen and interspersed beautifully. Just wonderful.

People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry (2012)

Subtitled: The True Story of a Young Woman who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo and the Evil that Swallowed Her Up.  If you aren't sold already, just based on that awesome title and subtitle, here's what the book is about:  In 2000, a young British woman named Lucie Blackman was working as a hostess in a club in Tokyo when she disappears completely.  I mean, completely.

This true crime novel is fascinating on a number of levels.  First of all, it's got great literary credentials as Richard Lloyd Parry was the Asia editor of the Times of London.  Parry explores the 'water trade' and the complex hostess and hospitality culture in Japanese society.  He gets in depth with the complex relationships between Lucie's parents and family and friends.  He also provides an interesting look at the Japanese criminal process, and how very different it is from the American process.  And the book is just flat out suspenseful and gripping.  It's one of the best true crime books I've ever read.