Category: Biographies, Memoirs, Nonfiction

Categories
Biographies, Memoirs, Nonfiction Fantasy Fiction Middle Grade Young Adult

Middle Grade March: Horrible Histories and five of my favorite MG books

I utterly failed at MiddleGradeMarch this year and finally read one of the Horrible Histories books. I’ll consider that a win!  Let me talk about that/those books for two seconds and then I’ll link some of my favorite MiddleGrade Reads from prior years to make up for my total lack of features.

I think it’s important (and getting more difficult) to find good and age appropriate Middle Grade books so I do try to participate every year. March was busy though 🤷‍♀️

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So I bought a Horrible Histories book for my niece called Dark Knights and Dingy Castles, and it was just about everything I’ve come to expect from these books.  Tons of good facts, funny illustrations, and thankfully not dumbed down too much for the age group.  Kids love gross facts and there’s definitely some poop involved.  The illustration above shows mad cows and a guy peeing, but are you going to forget crenels vs merlons after that?

I think it’s great how the illustrations are goofy but also help with recall.  Heck knows I don’t remember dry historical reading.

Long story short this one talks all about tournaments, brave and cowardly knights, castles, sieges, and a ton more. It’s great. These books have been around forever (1997 this one) and they have staying power for a reason! 100% recommend for the age group and/or anyone who wants to read horrible history for fun

I also wanted to link a few of my MG favorites over the years.  Obviously there’s Fablehaven and Skulduggery Pleasant and all the “regular” MG favorites, but let’s look at a relatively diverse list of some of the indies and small press MG books that I’ve loved over the past few years!

Geanna Culbertson is one of my favorite people in the indie and young reader community, you can read an amazing author interview I did with her here where we talk all about age appropriateness and her lovely MG series Crisanta Knight.  I reviewed the first few of them on here too back in the day. Princesses saving the day, fairy tales, and girl power, heck yeah

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A really cool little book by an Indian author is Asha and the Spirit Bird. A girl is guided through an adventure possibly by the spirit of her grandmother to save the family farm. It is a beautiful story set in rural India and I loved it endlessly

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The White Fox is by Chinese author Chen Jiatong and now the first two books have been translated into English.  It’s sad at times and well done in all regards as a fox goes on an adventure after watching his parents die 

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Dealing with anxiety, family addiction, parental strain, and a lot of other things at a completely age appropriate level, is one of my favorite MG books EVER: The Wild Path by Sarah Baughman.  I love the magic wild horses and not so magic actual horses that the main character uses to hold on to magic in a difficult time of change

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Last but not least is another of my favorite MG series: The Crowns of Croswald by D.E. Night. She has so much magical artwork and interactive things for this great series that’s HP with a lot more girl power and cute dragons.  Ivy Lovely is out to solve a curse and prove her heritage as she works her way through a magical school of discovery and beyond.  Um…apparently I have to upload my reviews for books one and two but trust me, they’re lovely books.  Here’s a link to check them out

What are your favorite MG books? Have you read any of these??

Categories
Biographies, Memoirs, Nonfiction Fantasy Paranormal

Book Tour Stop: A Cup of Tea at the Mouth of Hell by Luke Tarzian

Thanks as always to Escapist Book Tours for having me on their tour for A Cup of Tea at the Mouth of Hell by Luke Tarzian! You can check out the book tour’s home page, see the other posts, and find out about the author at the link there!

A Cup of Tea at the Mouth of Hell book cover

Here’s the book blurb:

BRIEFLY, A WORD ABOUT ORDER

Order is the focal point around which existence revolves. Without order there is only chaos. And in the halls of Damnation (pronounced Dam-NAWT-ion, thank you kindly) the first sign of impending chaos is a cup of tea made without the water having first been well and properly boiled in a kettle.

Why is this relevant, O nameless narrator, you ask? Who cares about the preparatory order of tea in the fires of Hell?

Lucifer, dear reader. After all, how does one expect to properly greet the newcomers to Hell without having first had a hot cup of tea to bulwark the cold?

Behold The Morning Star, frantic on the annual Morning of Souls, the arrival of Damnation’s newest recruits.

Someone has misplaced the kettle.

See Also: Sad Boi Searches for His Missing Tea Kettle • Bring Your Tissues • Me, Myself, and I and the Times We Got High

My Thoughts:

I have a hard time rating emotional outpourings, it feels wrong to!! How do you even?  What can you say? The story itself is whimsy, clever, and a mix of funny and slightly hard to push through since I also lost a parent very recently and things are a bit .. fresh 

The novelette starts in one place and ends somewhere totally different.  Join the characters for Lucifer’s therapy session and a joint at a hellish pizza parlor before having a look at the author’s own life.

The story itself is a bit hard to follow in that at first the demon, Stoudemire, is telling the story, then there’s a “real life” letter thrown in, followed by more demon narration before Lucifer is the final voice. He uses the same phrases as Stoudemire too so while it’s not relevant to the story itself, it’s tough for me to follow similar voices on both narrators. Lastly, it switches back to the “real life” narrator before the third section, which is a lovely collection of the  author’s own meditations on grief, trauma, writing. I think my point is that the organization threw me off

But overall? Totally recommend. This is great. It’s funny. It’s “whimsy Hell” and you’re traversing trauma and The Phallic Forest at the same time. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it (and read it twice), I just think I’d have loved it if he would have grouped the fiction and nonfiction into their own sections to let the respective narratives flow.  I’ve actually got copies of the author’s books and 100% going to check them out sooner rather than later.

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Once again, thanks so much to Escapist Book Tours for having me. I found my copy of A Cup of Tea at the Mouth of Hell on Kindle Unlimited and as always, all opinions are my own ♥️

Categories
Biographies, Memoirs, Nonfiction Fiction

Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski (thoughts)

The reprint cover of Notes of a Dirty Old Man

“Tiny snail assholes” and the savior’s balls, Bukowski had me at hello

One of the many things I’ve been trying to do over the past few years is expand my reading horizons.  I’ve got a fantastic reading list of international writers, past and present, who are brilliant and not necessarily all well known… and then I also just want to read off my shelves.

I compromised by ending 2022 with Notes of a Dirty Old Man, a collection of newspaper stories by Charles Bukowski. Funny enough it was originally compiled by an erotica loving imprint called Essex House, and is now published by beat generation enthusiasts & San Fran publishing gurus, City Lights Publishing.

Ahh I love all the history there, the web of ties between the publishers and beat generation writers, the crazy lifestyles, just something the average person can’t fathom. Bukowski was never to my knowledge grouped with that lot but he was tied up with the same publishers, knew the authors, and he had opinions 😅

About the collection itself, I found the eclectic mix of fiction and nonfiction a little jarring.  I’m spoiled and used to sections and titles in short story collections now, so we know how it’s organized, but this seems like total hodgepodge or possibly chronological by publication date. I‘m not really sure why it was compiled at all (way back in 1969) unless Essex House (who published a lot of erotica) was looking for the vastest spread of sex stories possible.  Now I know that’s a vast  oversimplification but most of the stories are true, or have true elements! Some are pure fantasy (like a guy with wings playing baseball) while many others happened to some extent, and almost all include some kind of graphic sex (I’m not going there to describe it).

A few stories were sad to me, such as a vivid recounting of how years of beatings and other abuse turns someone into a living but kind of mostly dead person.  It’s an extremely personal look at his life. Alcohol, homelessness, bouncing around various places to live and taking menial jobs, abusive relationships that went both ways, these are the real life parts. Probably/hopefully exaggerated a bit but who really knows, people are crazy.

What’s interesting too is just objectively seeing what he chose to write about once he knew the editor gave precisely zero fucks and let him write whatever he wanted! Remember, everything in the book appeared in an underground newspaper.

That said, back to my note about finding the stories sad: most of the collection is pretty funny.  Bukowski said, at one point or another, that he put the comedy into his writing so that people wouldn’t pity him – and the ironic thing is that it attracted quite a few odd admirers, many of which he writes about. Some of the writing went right over my head and I had no idea what he was talking about. Some got a chuckle. Something about tiny snail assholes had me cracking up, like yeah if you eat something whole you’re eating it’s asshole too 🤣

Of the many columns and blurbs here, there is one about a party and the time Bukowski met Neal Cassady. He took a crazy car ride with Neal driving and John Bryan (who published Cassady’s letter to Kerouac in City Lights (and gave Bukowski the platform in his Open City paper to write the segments contained in Notes of a Dirty Old Man).  

P.S. John Bryan and Jesus’ balls, literally.  What a strange and irreverent road to publishing and more than a bit refreshing in today’s PC era to go back and read these old guys writing *what-the-fck-ever*.

I totally sidetracked there. Anyway, in that particular segment about meeting Cassady and his suicide, there’s quite a dig that shows how Bukowski really felt 😅

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Jack had only written the book, he wasn’t Neal’s mother, just his destructor, deliberate or otherwise 

Oyy ok let’s get this wrapping up, I’m rambling which means I had a lot of thoughts and didn’t know how to frame them. A little bit less gay bar action would have been nice for me personally but I don’t think anyone delicate or easily offended would read Bukowski past his introduction. I’m not worried about discussing the writing here. It’s irreverent in every sense of the world and the title is aptly named. I actually started listening to this book on audio because Will Patton’s voice is everything, but without actual chapter breaks it was too hard to follow.

Overall, I think Bukowski is an interesting character in American literature and I enjoy his short stories in small doses.  He’s a decent tie in for those interested in the beat generation and those looking for irreverence in everything.  Barfly (the movie he wrote about his life) wasn’t bad, I watched it after reading, but then I read that he didn’t like his actor’s portrayal.  I guess the takeaway is that you can see a lot of the stories in the film too. Anyway, give him a shot if you are checking out American short story writers

P.s. if anyone wants sources for anything I was writing about, I can find them for you for further reading. Most of the nonfiction type info is general knowledge or came vaguely summarized from a publisher’s information, or something else Bukowski wrote

Categories
Biographies, Memoirs, Nonfiction

NonFiction November: American Heritage History of the Civil War by Bruce Catton

A quick disclaimer – this is not the illustrated edition. While the new heritage edition is phenomenal and highly recommended by me in all ways possible, I read the older, short one.  I’d probably recommend getting the new/picture edition because everyone loves pictures and as I said, it’s phenomenal.  I actually love and recommend most of the American Heritage History books but let’s not digress too much 😅

While trying to focus on sci-fi month and a million other things, I’ve sadly neglected nonfiction november. I am always and forever a huge fan of history and have written a few pieces on various Civil War literature.  I wish that this blog contained more.

Continue reading “NonFiction November: American Heritage History of the Civil War by Bruce Catton”
Categories
Biographies, Memoirs, Nonfiction Crime

I’ll Be Gone In the Dark… by Michelle McNamara et. al (Book Thoughts)

Hey, I finally read this book. (Synopsis & publication facts at the end). I’ve wanted to read it since it came out but what finally pushed me to slide it into my TBR stack was (sigh) Paul Holes’ book, which spoke even more highly of Mcnamara and her journalism related to the Golden State Killer case as well as her as a person. I think pretty much everyone in America either knew McNamara from the red carpet or from looking at TrueCrimeDiary at one point or another in their lives.  She was a phenomenal journalist and her death is one of the many things I file under the “damn shame” department.

I think what I took home from this was that she essentially joined the ranks of cold case detectives and kept America interested in the GSK. Did the book help catch the killer? Well – probably not, but she gave so many victims a name and a story for those who didn’t know. One of many sad parts, besides that she died at 49, was that she unfortunately missed – literally the same day that Patton Oswalt & co finally launched this book – the arrest of Joseph DeAngelo.

Yeah, this is a wonderfully put together and legible account of his victims, comprehensive across multiple precincts, and gave a wide account of interdepartmental politics as well as big picture ideas about the case.  It also put us into victim’s shoes in a chilling look at DeAngelo’s crimes and methods. McNamara had a knack for building reader’s interest by putting out facts and letting her audience play sleuth, which is absolutely part of the appeal of the true crime genre and her writing in particular

For a book about a killer that wasn’t yet caught at the time, this book was amazing.  The mere fact that her researcher was able to piecemeal edit thousands of pages of notes to complete the unfinished chapters was equally amazing, and so is the fact that without the editor’s notes, it would have been impossible to tell who wrote what.   I believe the later edition included the afterword by Oswalt.

Long story short, yes I would definitely check this out if you have absolutely any interest in true crime, the Golden State Killer, or McNamara’s life, as this was also in some large part her autobiography.  I loved the many human touches she added to the pages to look into the psychology of both the “armchair detective” and those who became legit assets to the case.  I think this book deserves every single award it’s won. Go read it!

Here’s the synopsis from the back cover:

A masterful true-crime account of the Golden State Killer—the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California for over a decade—from Michelle McNamara, the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case

“You’ll be silent forever, and I’ll be gone in the dark”.

Over the course of more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. In 1986 he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area.

Three decades later, Michelle McNamara, a true-crime journalist who created the popular website True Crime Diary, was determined to find the violent psychopath she called “the Golden State Killer.” Michelle pored over police reports, inter-viewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was.

At the time of the crimes, the Golden State Killer was between the ages of eighteen and thirty, Caucasian, and athletic—capable of vaulting tall fences. He always wore a mask. After choosing his victims—he favored suburban couples—he often entered their homes when no one was there, studying family pictures, mastering the layouts. He attacked while they slept, using a flashlight to awaken and blind them. Though they could not recognize him, his victims recalled his voice: a guttural whisper through clenched teeth, abrupt and threatening.

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark—the masterpiece McNamara was writing at the time of her sudden death—offers an atmospheric snapshot of a moment in American history and a chilling account of a criminal mastermind and the wreckage he left behind. It is also a portrait of a woman’s obsession and her unflagging pursuit of the truth. Framed by an introduction from Gillian Flynn and an afterword by McNamara’s husband, Patton Oswalt, the book was completed by Michelle’s lead researcher and a close colleague. Utterly original and compelling, it is destined to become a true-crime classic—and may at last unmask the Golden State Killer.

Bookish Quick Facts:

  • Title: I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
  • Author: Michelle McNamara
  • Publisher & Release: Harper, 2018
  • Pages: 352 including illustrations
  • Rating: I mean, it has to be 5 stars for everyone involved in this book’s publication
Categories
Biographies, Memoirs, Nonfiction

The Greatest Knight by Thomas Asbridge (Book Thoughts)

The Greatest Knight is a wonderfully comprehensive biography of the knight William Marshal, who served the succession of Angevin kings until his death in the early 1200s

I was surprised at how many history buffs popped up on Instagram to say hi after I posted my thoughts there! I ended up with more book recommendations, chats on historical fiction books, photos of a new monument to Marshal, and some new Insta-friends.  Definitely a pleasant surprise

I loved reading the fictional account of Marshal’s life presented by Jeff Wheeler in The First Argentines series. Now I am finally reading some of the source material he recommended.

What I liked about Thomas Asbridge’s account is that he put everything into historical context for people, like me, who aren’t experts on the Angevins and Plantagenets and medieval history in general.  I know next to nothing about the Anglo-Norman conflicts and the crusades, so reading isolated accounts can be confusing.

How did medieval parents grieve? Who can urinate in a great lord’s hall? What did tournaments look like? Who crusaded against whom? All very important things to know.  Asbridge also looked critically at a lot of source material to point to what was probably embellished and probably accurate – also where the holes and gaps in knowledge are. 

One favorite theme (among many) was the evolution of the archetypal knight, the class in general, and how warfare evolved during this period!

Marshal was an incredible figure. I appreciate the fact that he was still leading and fighting in battles into his 70s (unheard of in that era, the life span was much shorter) when I have 50 year old patients who refuse to get out of bed and wipe their own butts! An amazing man, truly 

We get the conflicts and successions and battles, the tournament years, some hints at family life.  I think what surprised me most was how each Lord just wanted more land, more power, more castles, more everything, even when they could hardly handle what they already had.

Also some of the early papacy and church dictates were hilarious, like how anyone that dies in a tournament is denied a Christian burial. I didn’t realize how involved the pope was, or even that Ireland was ever an English holding.

My favorite anecdote was the story of the knight that pulled himself out of the saddle, and Marshal found himself leading just a horse at the end of his charge 🤣

In one sentence on the Wheeler books, I think he did an amazing job converting Marshal and the Angevins into a fictional series.  Wheeler took some liberties with names, places, and sequences of events, but I was surprised to recognize so many real events from his books and sometimes know what would come next.  I do truly wish that the real William Marshal had had an ugly horse, that would have been the icing on the cake

One other thing that Wheeler did well – one of my favorite scenes of the entire series and also in the Marshal biography – was the battle of Lincoln!  Woooo talk about chills.  He wasn’t using the “Dex Aie” at that point but I was happy to hear it was a real rallying cry.

Overall – The Greatest Knight is a fast paced, easy read that doesn’t even feel like nonfiction. I think this is such a fascinating time period and I have been recommended the BBC series produced by the author which I can’t wait to try to find. There are also the Elizabeth Chadwick books for more historical fiction focused on Marshal: I’d like to read that too and then compare her series with Wheeler’s!

Bookish Quick Facts:

  • Title- The Greatest Knight: The Remarkable Life of William Marshal, the Power Behind Five English Thrones
  • Author: Thomas Asbridge
  • Publisher & Release: Ecco, December 2014
  • Length: 464 pages
  • Rate & Recommend: ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨ for fans of medieval history!

Here’s the synopsis:

A thrillingly intimate portrait of one of history’s most illustrious knights – William Marshal – that vividly evokes the grandeur and barbarity of the Middle Ages

William Marshal was the true Lancelot of his era – a peerless warrior and paragon of chivalry – yet over the centuries, the spectacular story of his achievements passed from memory. Marshal became just one more name in the dusty annals of history. Then, in 1861, a young French scholar named Paul Meyer made a startling discovery during an auction of rare medieval manuscripts. Meyer stumbled upon the sole surviving copy of an unknown text – the first contemporary biography of a medieval knight, later dubbed the History of William Marshal. This richly detailed work helped to resurrect Marshal’s reputation, putting flesh onto the bones of this otherwise obscure figure, yet even today William Marshal remains largely forgotten.

As a five-year-old boy, William was sentenced to execution and led to the gallows, yet this landless younger son survived his brush with death, and went on to train as a medieval knight. Against all odds, William Marshal rose through the ranks – serving at the right hand of five English monarchs – to become a celebrated tournament champion, a baron and politician and, ultimately, regent of the realm.

Marshal befriended the great figures of his day, from Richard the Lionheart and Eleanor of Aquitaine to the infamous King John, and helped to negotiate the terms of Magna Carta – the first ‘bill of rights’. By the age of seventy, the once-forsaken child had been transformed into the most powerful man in England, yet he was forced to fight in the frontline of one final battle, striving to save the kingdom from French invasion in 1217.

In The Greatest Knight, renowned historian Thomas Asbridge draws upon the thirteenth-century biography and an array of other contemporary evidence to present a compelling account of William Marshal’s life and times. Asbridge follows Marshal on his journey from rural England onto the battlefields of France, to the desert castles of the Holy Land and the verdant shores of Ireland, charting the unparalleled rise to prominence of a man bound to a code of honour, yet driven by unquenchable ambition.

This knight’s tale lays bare the brutish realities of medieval warfare and the machinations of royal court, and draws us into the heart of a formative period of our history, when the West emerged from the Dark Ages and stood on the brink of modernity. It is the story of one remarkable man, the birth of the knightly class to which he belonged, and the forging of the English nation.

Categories
Biographies, Memoirs, Nonfiction

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance (Book Thoughts)

*** Editing this post to say that I just did a 10 second Google search to see what the author has been up to recently, and it’s a bit of a total barf fest. I hope he stays true to wanting to help people though.  I also now have an idea of why he was inserting so many figures and facts in there (see bottom paragraph), he was probably already planning a political run.  Anyway – my experience with the book stands and damn if I’m going to delete it even though Vance turned into a giant 🍆

I found a copy of Hillbilly Elegy shortly after it came out, and it’s been sitting on my shelf ever since. I wasn’t too interested in how political people were making the book at first and I think that was a mistake since it seemed to me like an awesome story of someone who overcame poverty & trauma, family, and upward mobility.

The first thing I liked was how right in the introduction Vance frankly outlined what he was trying to do with the book, said what his own biases were, and put his own lens into perspective for the reader.  He also explicitly states that he is focusing on a small geographical area, and while I get that he offended a lot of Appalachia with some of his portrayals he never claimed that the book speaks for everyone

Anyway, I’ll hit the good, bad, and odd below

Bookish Quick Facts:

  • Title: Hillbilly Elegy
  • Author: J.D. Vance
  • Publisher & Release: Harper, June 2016
  • Length: 272 pages
  • Rate & Recommend: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ frankly yes, understanding that some things have changed since 2016

Here’s the synopsis via Am@zon:

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility.

But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history.

A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures

I think Vance accomplished his goal and shared a story of a way of life that many Americans are not (while unfortunately many are) familiar with, although the political, social, economic landscapes have now changed during Covid.

What I took away was …

1} His family story, the biography. I loved how his great grandparents, grandparents, and parents all had to overcome generational poverty and trauma to find their own way.  Some succeeded, some didn’t.  His grandmother is absolutely fierce (but not without flaws) and I wanted even more MawMaw stories.

2} Regardless of class, region, economic status, race, a lot of us can relate to having to get past our parents’ choices and the situation we are born into.  Vance dealt with parental domestic abuse, utter insanity, drug use, alcoholism, rotating men in the house, and never had a stable home life except at his grandparents.  His mom actually was going to kill him once. His sister essentially kept them afloat.  Let’s take a minute, applaud the sister Lindsay, and appreciate how hard this makes a kid’s prospects even without poverty involved

3) Can’t argue that America (post covid is another story, another universe, so much worse) relies heavily on welfare and government funding.  I totally agree with Vance that at least part of the solution is targeting at risk youth with the social, emotional, and financial support that they need, plus the safety and sense of optimism to succeed.  I can’t even begin to think of how to unclusterfuck America right now but I’d love to see how Vance feels about this now in 2022

4) I touched on it above but google the ACE score and see if you have experienced any of the acute childhood events? Do they affect you today? I think the real story is how Vance managed to overcome these generational traumas and functions like a successful human with a wife and family.  He even helped his mother still, after everything

5) A lot of success is habitual, mental, and learned behaviors

The only thing I considered truly weird was that this is largely marketed as. Memoir, which is great.  I loved the biographical elements.  The thing is that Vance also threw in facts and data to push his narrative at times … which is great but makes it less memoir and anecdotal ish and more about the author being “right”. Just odd.

Overall – I would recommend book or audio equally, from the except Vance sounds like a decent narrator

Have you read it? What did you think??

Categories
audiobooks Biographies, Memoirs, Nonfiction

When You Are Engulfed in Flames (audio thoughts) by David Sedaris

Continuing my simultaneous quests to read outside my lines and pick up random popular authors that I haven’t read yet, I turned to one of the many essay collections by David Sedaris.  This is his sixth, and while I heard that some of the earlier ones were more funny, I thought a “recent” collection might be more pertinent to today’s issues. Whether or not that is true, it was interesting to “throwback” to some of the things happening “back then” without today’s lens!

It is HARD to pick nonfiction these days when there is so much of it out there. I first heard the Sedaris name on Bojack Horseman, as his sister Amy voices a prominent character, and she seems like a hilarious person and decent actress.

Having gone to the Van Gogh exhibit recently and almost purchased a tote with the painting on the cover of When You Are Engulfed in Flames on it, i thought “hey this will be a good place to start”

Bookish Quick Facts:

  • Title: When You Are Engulfed in Flames
  • Author: David Sedaris
  • Publisher & Release: Little, Brown & Company – June 2008
  • Length: 336 pages
  • The Audio: self narrated by David Sedaris, 9 hours from Hachette Audio

I think it is a little bit hard to rate humor because everybody has a different sense of humor.  While I have a feeling that Sedaris’ personality won’t go over well with the 2022 “woke” crowd, I personally find him funny and admire the way that he can make everyday embarrassment into something worth reading about.

If you are looking for a lighter read with funny observations about life and personal experiences, Sedaris seems like a regular go-to for many people and I would certainly read & listen to more of his writings.

I laughed the most when Sedaris was *convinced* that his husband wanted a human skeleton for Christmas, when his mother – in – law had a worm in her leg with a penis-shaped head, and, at the many mistakes that happen when the literal translation of languages leaves something to be desired.  This happens a lot between Japanese and English and we see the best of it as Sedaris tries to quit smoking by immersing himself in Japanese culture

There is also some heavier commentary on his early drug and alcohol use, getting out of the closet, and many things that he probably wasn’t laughing at at the time but now can reflect back on and find the story to tell.

The audio is great too, I think he is a great orator and kept it interesting. The live recording portions were of good quality too.  Why was Sedaris sitting mostly naked in a urology waiting room? Well – you’ll have to read to find out

Categories
Biographies, Memoirs, Nonfiction Crime

Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases (ARC Review) by Paul Holes

Thank you so much to Celadon Books for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review! All opinions are my own!

I am a newer true crime reader and Unmasked is interesting on many different levels.  I think Paul Holes is a face/name that most Americans recognize. I was surprised at the depth in his memoir and so glad to read his book!

Bookish Quick Facts:

  • Title: Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases
  • Author: Paul Holes (with Robin Gaby Fisher)
  • Publisher & Release: Celadon Books , 4/26/22
  • Length: 288
  • Rate & Recommend: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ yes for true crime fans!

Here is the synopsis from GoodReads:

From the detective who found the Golden State Killer, a memoir of investigating America’s toughest cold cases and the rewards–and toll–of a life solving crime.

I order another bourbon, neat. This is the drink that will flip the switch. I don’t even know how I got here, to this place, to this point. Something is happening to me lately. I’m drinking too much. My sheets are soaking wet when I wake up from nightmares of decaying corpses. I order another drink and swig it, trying to forget about the latest case I can’t shake.

Crime solving for me is more complex than the challenge of the hunt, or the process of piecing together a scientific puzzle. The thought of good people suffering drives me, for better or worse, to the point of obsession. People always ask how I am able to detach from the horrors of my work. Part of it is an innate capacity to compartmentalize; the rest is experience and exposure, and I’ve had plenty of both. But I have always taken pride in the fact that I can keep my feelings locked up to get the job done. It’s only been recently that it feels like all that suppressed darkness is beginning to seep out.

When I look back at my long career, there is a lot I am proud of. I have caught some of the most notorious killers of the twenty-first century and brought justice and closure for their victims and families. I want to tell you about a lifetime solving these cold cases, from Laci Peterson to Jaycee Dugard to the Pittsburg homicides to, yes, my twenty-year-long hunt for the Golden State Killer.

But a deeper question eats at me as I ask myself, at what cost? I have sacrificed relationships, joy―even fatherhood―because the pursuit of evil always came first. Did I make the right choice? It’s something I grapple with every day. Yet as I stand in the spot where a young girl took her last breath, as I look into the eyes of her family, I know that, for me, there has never been a choice. “I don’t know if I can solve your case,” I whisper. “But I promise I will do my best.”

It is a promise I know I can keep

First off, it’s extremely personal. I can relate to how seeing horrible things at work kind of ruins your mind after a while. I’ve got nothing on a crime scene investigator but WOW, some of his mental and interpersonal struggles resonate. Especially when he said he was afraid of not being able to give love as others need it – right at the end – he won me over as a person too. The personal vs professional struggle for Holes is an ongoing issue even after retirement and I hope he was able to save his second family

He also wrote about some truly grisly crime scenes, things that they definitely don’t show on TV. Scraping maggots out of dead flesh, yuckkkk I would die, I can’t even imagine how anyone in the profession does it. Holes definitely doesn’t skirt over details and it always shocks me what these monsters are capable of.

The cases were fascinating too, especially how after years and years of obsession he finally tracked the Golden State Killer. I have grown up seeing some of these cases in the news and the inside look was some mix of cool and terrible. So many casualties.

Speaking of casualties – I think it’s awesome that Patton Oswalt got the featured review, that story was 💔

Lastly, there was some dense but interesting info on the progression of DNA testing and using genetics (I always wondered if those ancestry websites were an FBI DNA grab lol) to solve cases and profile killers. Interesting stuff overall.

I definitely recommend this for true crime fans and anyone interested!

Categories
Biographies, Memoirs, Nonfiction

Far Sweeter Than Honey (Book Thoughts) by William Spencer

Thank you so much to Dart Frog Books for the finished copy of Far Sweeter than Honey: searching for meaning on a bicycle by William Spencer.  All opinions are my own!

I was so excited to read about Spencer’s trek from England to India via bicycle.  This is the perfect book for someone itching to travel right now and I thought that it had all the elements of a good travelogue – interesting people to meet, descriptive scenery, food and culture, and of course personal reflection.

Bookish Quick Facts:

  • Title: Far Sweeter than Honey
  • Author: William Spencer
  • Publisher & Release: Dart Frog Books, December 2020
  • Length: 302 pages
  • Rate & Recommend: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ for fans of travel, culture, memoir

Here is the synopsis:

This is the true story of a young man’s epic bicycle journey from England to India. Traveling more than eight thousand miles, he encounters all manner of adventure, from the curious company of a butterfly in the wilds of Iran to the aftermath of a coup in Kandahar, Afghanistan—from navigating the foreign yet welcoming Muslim world, where he learns the basics of Islam, to the journey’s end in mystical India, where he arrives at an understanding of what it means to be free.

William Spencer establishes himself as a writer to watch in his debut book, weaving masterful storytelling and cultural insights in a page-turning adventure.

Spencer gives detailed and immersive descriptions of the countryside and cities, including weather, wind, and road conditions.  Whether a bucolic French countryside or the middle eastern desert, I thought he took excellent notes.

The journey originally happened in the late 1980s, and I wonder what was changed since then! Even though some elements may now be outdated, it was extremely interesting to read about the culture and culture shock, customs and people that Spencer encountered.

I heavily enjoyed the Turkey through Pakistan chapters the most.  Spencer met, for example, a college student at Damascus university taking an English lit course – and when talking about “popular authors”, none were familiar! The culture shock also came through as Spencer and his friend, Rudy, had to navigate different customs and hospitality norms, from how to act towards women to how much skin to cover.  Another image that stuck with me was the author sitting on the bank of Sea of Galilee, where Jesus walked on water in the bible, and someone was waterskiing on Christmas eve!  I can see where his expectations and reality would have totally clashed in those situations.

Spencer was struggling to reconcile the western ideal with the eastern reality, and it gave me some things to think about too.  I liked that he could say like OK, my impression on these locals is adding to their impression of Westerners, and that’s important.  Especially in those middle eastern chapters, I found the author becoming more likeable in my mind as he started accepting things as they came.

I also really, really liked the longer Pakistan chapter at the end. I had a doctor friend from a northern region (I forgot where) and he showed me tons of videos and told stories from home, and I could definitely feel some of that regard from the expats that Spencer wrote about, even in the 80s or early 90s.

The last thing to mention is that photos and sketches from the journey are included! The photos are mostly of people, while the sketches are of scenery, trees and such, and I think they added a lot to the story.  The only thing that mystified me was how long it took for Spencer to just accept the fact that there is both good and bad in every culture! One cheating merchant or unruly group of kids would sour his mood towards an entire region, even where most experiences were positive, then he would swing back again when the next good thing happened.

That said though, the book was a great mix of hardship, positive and negative, and I think a great portrayal of the journey.  There is absolutely no way in today’s day and age that one is going to visit half of these places and I loved getting a glimpse of the foreign countries.

Definitely check this one out if you like travelogues, memoirs, new ideas and cultural exploration.  It’s a slow ride but totally worth it