My Year of Running DangerouslyL A Dad, a Daughter and a Ridiculous Plan by Tom Foreman

I'm going to go ahead and admit that it's probably a good thing for our friendship that none of you actually see me in person or are on my frequent text list (Sorry, Trish, love you!) because it is embarrassing, even to me, how often I bring running up in a conversation.  I am slightly obsessed. I think about it nearly as much as I think about books. Which naturally means I must read books about it too, right?  I got this one (My Year of Running Dangerously) from NetGalley without even catching the part about the author being a CNN news anchor.

Here's the summary from Goodreads:

CNN correspondent Tom Foreman's remarkable journey from half-hearted couch potato to ultra-marathon runner, with four half-marathons, three marathons, and 2,000 miles of training in between; a poignant and warm-hearted tale of parenting, overcoming the challenges of age, and quiet triumph.

As a journalist whose career spans three decades, CNN correspondent Tom Foreman has reported from the heart of war zones, riots, and natural disasters. He has interviewed serial killers and been in the line of fire. But the most terrifying moment of his life didn't occur on the job--it occurred at home, when his 18-year old daughter asked, "How would you feel about running a marathon with me?"

At the time, Foreman was approaching 51 years old, and his last marathon was almost 30 years behind him. The race was just sixteen weeks away, but Foreman reluctantly agreed. Training with his daughter, who had just started college, would be a great bonding experience, albeit a long and painful one.

My Year of Running Dangerously is Foreman's journey through four half-marathons, three marathons, and one 55-mile race. What started as an innocent request from his daughter quickly turned into a rekindled passion for long-distance running--for the training, the camaraderie, the defeats, and the victories. Told with honesty and humor, Foreman's account captures the universal fears of aging and failure alongside the hard-won moments of triumph, tenacity, and going further than you ever thought possible.

Before Mike and I started running last year, I really had no idea that a marathon (26.2 miles) wasn't really the longest race for non-professional runners. I mean seriously, who would ever WANT to run more than that?? For that matter, who'd want to run 26.2? But the more I (we) run, the more into we get. I don't see myself ever considering a run longer than a marathon, and at a current long run record of 10 miles, 26.2 seems a long long ways off, but it was still incredibly interesting to see how Foreman handled the training.

The book opens with Foreman's college age daughter asking him to run a marathon with her. He goes from zero to marathon in 16 weeks and assume that was it. Training was hard and took up all of his spare time. (Sounds familiar!) But once that one was over, there was this other marathon that looked fun. And then a coworker mentioned ultra marathons, so he read up on them. He circles this decision for a while, and then ultimately commits to a 50 mile run.  The training for this is insane. Training runs for an ultra are longer than full marathons. His life became narrowed down to eat, sleep, work, run. He questions himself, repeatedly. This is crazy, what am I doing? What human would choose to run this far?? This training is at times dangerous to his heath. He's out in the dark, in the cold, and in remote places where injury is likely.

Foreman is not alone. Ultra running has become a big deal in running worlds. Scott Jurek recently broke the record for the Appalachian Trail and Mike and I followed it along daily on Facebook. Matthew McConaughey has signed on (requested even!) to play a role in a book to movie adaptation of the ultra running book Born to Run. (Mike and I both read it, but apparently it never occurred to me to blog about it.)  My Year of Running Dangerously fits neatly into this category. If you want to read a running account that is easily accessible to runners and non-runners, or you just enjoy this type of stunt memoir, I can easily recommend this one.

Flirting with French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart by William Alexander

I can't remember if I've ever mentioned my slight obsession with learning a foreign language.  I've bought Italian dictionaries, the Dummies guide to _________, teach yourself This Language in so many days. I took three years of Spanish in high school (I can count to 20!) and a year of German in college (WAY easier than Spanish, I wish I had continued.)

William Alexander details all the things he tries to learn to speak French like a Frenchman. He  takes classes, he finds multiple French pen pals, he adopts a French persona, he goes to a full immersion course in France. He takes his wife on vacation in France, where he insists on speaking French even to English speakers. He is single-minded and determined.  In the end tho, he still doesn't have the grasp on French that he'd like to have. Brain scans show that he recognizes it at a much deeper level, but he still feels he can't hold a decent conversation. Like all memoirs of this type, learning French isn't the entire point of the book though, and Alexander learns a lot more about himself than he ever expects.

This was a quite enjoyable little memoir, and one I'd recommend.


Here's the summary:

Description
“A delightful and courageous tale and a romping good read. Voila!” —Mark Greenside, author of I’ll Never Be French (No Matter What I Do)
William Alexander is more than a Francophile. He wants to be French. To sip absinthe at the window of a dark café, a long scarf wrapped around his neck, a copy of Le Monde at hand. Among the things that have stood in his way of becoming French, though, is the fact that he can’t actually speak the language. So Alexander sets out to conquer the language he loves. Readers will find out if it loves him back.
Alexander eats, sleeps, and dreams French. (He even conjugates in his dreams.) And while he’s playing hooky from grammar lessons and memory techniques, he travels to France, delves into the colorful history of the French language and the science of linguistics, and even goes to Google to find out what’s taking them so long to perfect translation software. Finally, he contemplates how it can be that in French, breasts are masculine and beards are feminine, and tries to make sense of idioms like c’est la fin des haricots (it’s the end of the beans)—which means, appropriately enough, “it’s hopeless.” But ca ne fait rien! (No matter!) What Bill Alexander learns while not learning French is its own reward.

Source: NetGalley

Flirting with French was published in October.

Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good by Kathleen Flinn

Just to show you that I occasionally break out of my romance loving life... I recently read Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good by Kathleen Flinn. I had read both of Flynn's other books (The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry and The Kitchen Counter Cooking School) and enjoyed them both tremendously. When I saw this one, I was anxious to read it as well.


Here's the Summary:
A delicious memoir from the author of The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry
In this family history interwoven with recipes, Kathleen Flinn returns readers to the mix of food and memoir beloved by readers of her bestselling The Sharper Your
Knife, the Less You Cry. Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good explores the very beginnings of her love affair with food and its connection to home. It is the story of her midwestern childhood, its memorable home cooks, and the delicious recipes she grew up with. Flinn shares tales of her parents’ pizza parlor in San Francisco, where they sold Uncle Clarence’s popular oven-fried chicken, as well as recipes for the vats of chili made by her former army cook Grandpa Charles, fluffy Swedish pancakes from Grandma Inez, and cinnamon rolls for birthday breakfasts. Through these dishes, Flinn came to understand how meals can be memories, and how cooking can be a form of communication. Brimming with warmth and wit, this book is sure to appeal to Flinn’s many fans as well as readers of Marcus Samuelsson, Ruth Reichl, and Julie Powell

You might wonder just how many foodie memoirs a person has in them. I know there are authors who are able to keep churning them out, each with it's own spin and each as good as the last. Sadly, I didn't feel that this one was quite as strong as the previous two. I did enjoy it, and it's a fun quick read, but I didn't feel like the food related quite so much, and that possibly it was a stretch to try and center this one around food as well. As a family history that is not about food, it was pretty average, and not entirely memorable. For example, I read it last week and honestly can only tell you the barest of details. I didn't try any recipes and I can only remember what a couple of them were for, let alone why they were relevant. This seems a very negative review, and I didn't dislike the book at all, I just think perhaps I only liked it as much as I did because I had a history with the author's books. I would definitely recommend starting with the other two books before this one.

Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good was published on August 14th.

PS. I totally wrote this weeks ago and thought I published it. Imagine my surprise to find it still in my drafts!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Pope Awesome and Other Stories by Cari Donaldson

I used to make fun of Mike for his reading habits (in my head, of course, until now.) He had a fixed set of things that he would always chose to read and it seemed like such a crazy mix of stuff- for fiction he likes thriller/suspense/political type books and for non-fiction baseball, Mt. Everest, and WWII (but not in the Pacific, only in Europe. Think Band of Brothers.)  Lately tho, as I try to actually blog everything I read, I discover a shockingly narrow range of interests of my own. (Romance novels, paranormal young adult/romance, brain science/psychology  non-fiction/memoirs and books about religious experiences/conversion.) So last fall when Cari Donaldson's book about becoming Catholic came out I made a mental note to look for it. I broke down and bought it over Christmas. A couple weeks ago we took a little car trip and for reasons unknown I skipped all my review books and decided to read this instead. I read all but the last few pages in one day.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that not many of my blog readers (all three of you) also read a lot of Catholic parenting blogs, but if you are looking for new blogs to read I can highly recommend Clan Donaldson. Cari is down to earth, funny and realistic about having a large Catholic homeschooled family.  I can honestly say I enjoy all of her posts, except the ones about The Walking Dead which I skip because we don't currently watch it AND I don't want any spoilers just in case we start.

Cari grew up going to church because you were supposed to go to church. Not because you felt anything or because of any theological reason, but because you were supposed to go. (Which is pretty much what I did. Looking back, it seems very strange that you'd go to church every week and learn these stories and listen to a minister talk, but no one ever says THIS IS WHY. It was all just stories and lock-ins but there was never any emotion or personalization. There was no discussion of what it all meant. I think perhaps as an adult you might start to clue in on your own, but as a kid? Not so much. You wore a cross because you went to church like a good girl, duh. And to get even more off track, I hear stories of little kids bullying other kids because they don't believe in God, but I bet even those bullies don't believe anything more than "good kids go to church/Heaven".) As a young adult and college student she actively avoided Christianity. She felt a void in her life but pretty much did every possible thing to fill it with any other religion or spiritual practice.  Pope Awesome is her hilarious recounting of how she ended up joining the Catholic church and how the Church ultimately overcame all her reservations about Catholicism.  Many of her reasons for not wanting to be Catholic matched up with mine, so I found that all to be highly interesting.  I'm not interested in a theological debate here on my blog, but this was a really great book that managed to be both funny and thought provoking, while not actually feeling like she's preaching to you. You never feel like she's trying to convince the reader to also become Catholic. In my informal study of religious memoirs, I'd put this right up there in my top two or three.

Now go read her blog.

The World's Strongest Librarian by Josh Hanagarne

I recently read a review of The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family that convinced me that this was the kind of book that I loved. And, on the surface, it really is. A combination of things that fascinate me- libraries and books, faith, and personal experience with something that makes him different, in this case, Tourette Syndrome. I happened to see it on my library shelf shortly thereafter and picked it up.  I mentioned recently that I’ve been doing a large portion of my reading on the Nook lately, but I realized there was no point in having all these paper books checked out if I wasn’t going to make the effort to read them so despite reading a truly excellent e-book during the day, I started reading this one at home.

Hanagarne has an easy, conversational style. His  book started with a blog (doesn’t every memoir?) and that writing style carries over.  The book is laid out chronologically, starting with his childhood and continuing on into his marriage and late start career. This is the first thing I’ve really read about Tourette’s. My idea of it was mainly of people yelling out curse words, but of course it’s much more than that. Hanagarne tries to describe what the tics are like, and how debilitating it makes his life, but I am not 100% convinced that he does a good job of it. He spends a page saying that he can’t fill the book with every tic, that we just have to imagine adding on to what he’s already said when he mentions something new.  Much of his life in his 20s is lost to the tics, and he enters and withdraws from college a dozen times. His mission trip is cut short because of their severity.  He tells us these things, but it’s not very powerful to read them.  I feel like his descriptions are a bit lacking, that what he’s said about the tics themselves and their impact on him don’t actually match up.

I had a similar response to his writing about faith. Hanagarne is a Mormon. He does an excellent job explaining specific aspects of his faith and what it entails. He writes a very powerful scene about accepting God in college, but then he kind of backs off both in his belief and in his writing about it. When his struggles with Tourette’s and his and his wife’s inability to have a child overwhelm him, he questions God, but only in the mildest of ways. It felt to me like he’s pulling his punches, that he doesn’t want to offend any of his readers, trying to keep both the religious readers and the ones who don’t care to read about religious struggles. By the end he's honest with the reader, and I can see that perhaps the uninspired writing comes from his apathy towards God, but it made for pretty boring reading, for me.

As an adult, Hanagarne falls into weight lifting as a method of controlling his tics.  He does traditional lifting before moving onto kettleballs and then spends an entire chapter talking about this strange individual who is not a trainer nor doctor nor really a friend who offers opaque advice and waits for Hanagarne to figure it out.  Ultimately, he learns that he can control his tics with breathing (until he can't), but the book really bogs down while he’s figuring it out. He could have cut out 90% of the chapter about the other guy and not lost a thing. I find his dedication to the task remarkably impressive, as well as his recall of the process (I’m guessing the blog helps), but he didn’t need to relive entire conversations.

As a whole, I found the book to be mild. Mildly interesting, mildly informative, mildly forgettable. That said- I checked out his blog while writing this, and find it to be much more interesting. In fact, it's the first new addition I've made to Feedly, now that Google Reader is gone.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess)

You've all read the post about Beyonce (the Chicken, not the singer), right? If you haven't, stop here and go read it.

Back?

Ok, now you know what Let's Pretend This Never Happened is like, review over! Just kidding. It's got a few more serious moments (the entire book doesn't make your stomach hurt laughing) but even the serious topics are funny. Lawson doesn't hold back about her crazy childhood (think: taxidermy), her high school experience (cow vagina), miscarriage (I can't even), mental illness (whoa). While I did read several of the stories on her blog prior to reading the book, I don't feel like reading the book was time wasted at all. I highly recommend this one to anyone who likes a great memoir, has a sense of humor, and isn't completely offended by the f-bomb.

You can find more chat about Let's Pretend This Never Happened at the BlogHer Book Club discussion. The Bloggess is online here, and on Twitter. You can also read an interview with her here.


This is a paid review for BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are my own.

Devotion by Dani Shapiro

 
As mid-life approaches for Dani Shapiro, she starts to struggle with anxiety about her faith and her life. Is this all there is? Clean house, do work, send email? What is the bigger picture, or is there a bigger picture? Having been raised in a devout Jewish household but no longer practicing, Shapiro dedicates herself to finding what she really believes.

 "The whole world is a lesson in what's true," she said. "Everyone is struggling. Life is difficult for everybody. And we all die in the end. So how to deal with it?" -p35

Devotion: A Memoir  is written in a very free flowing style. There are chapter breaks, if you can call them that, of only a page at times. Shapiro weaves together bits from her daily life, her struggle with her parents before their deaths, her son's life-threatening illness as an infant, and her quest to find her place spiritually.   The comparison to Eat, Pray, Love  would not have been lost on me, even if Shapiro herself did not bring it up. What keeps this from being the same book (other than the obvious of a different author) is that Shapiro does her quest from home. She doesn't take a year off her life to search for meaning, she looks as she lives.

I believe that I have mentioned in the past that I am not a religious person, but I really enjoy reading about religion and other people's search for faith and meaning. I believe that I am a spiritual person, and that there are a lot of things to gain from the ritual (there's that ritual I love again!) of regular religious practice. I find little bits of a lot of religions appeal to me quite a bit and I suspect that were I to take upon a quest like Shapiro's that I might find something meaningful to myself.  Just in reading this book I found something that really appeals to me- Shapiro attends a local retreat and learns a short mantra to think during meditation. This is taught to her by Sylvia Boorstein and begins as such (p.36):

May I feel protected and safe.
May I feel contented and pleased.
May my physical body support me with strength.
May my life unfold smoothly with ease.

The idea was to silently repeat the phrases again and again, at first focusing on ourselves, but then eventually directing the phrases to others.

Eventually, Shapiro and Boorsteing with both shorten this to be:

May I be safe
May I be happy
May I be strong
May I live with ease

That is what I'll be taking from Devotion. A bit of a rhythm to help find some calm in my mind. My situation isn't Shapiro's. I'm not full of anxiety and despair, but my life is full of chaos and stress. If I could learn to sit for even 15 minutes a day (yeah, I'm laughing too) and blank out everything else? Well, the very idea is appealing to me.

I'm not sure if Shapiro finds what she is looking for, but I enjoyed reading about her journey. She's honest about her struggle and the causes of it, and the inability to fully relax.  It's a very personal story, one that opens what's in her heart up to all of us. Shapiro doesn't claim to know the answers and she's honest about the questions she's asking.  The book has definitely made my TBR list grow as I added most of her recommended reading to my list. (I even own a couple of them, packed away in the garage.)

This is the kind of memoir that I like best, and I'm thankful to Trish of TLC book tours for sending it to me. For more information you can find the author online:

* website
* blog, Moments of Being
* Facebook
* Twitter: @DanijShapiro

The author is also available to talk to your book club via Skype. (Oh that I had a book club!)

You can see more reviews of this one on the following blog stops:

Tuesday, February 8th: Chefdruck Musings
Wednesday, February 9th: Kelly’s Lucky You!
Thursday, February 10th: Book Club Classics!
Monday, February 14th: {Mis}Adventures of an Army Wife
Tuesday, February 15th: Books Lists Life
Wednesday, February 16th: nomadreader
Tuesday, February 22nd: Coffee and a Book Chick
Wednesday, February 23rd: Colloquium
Thursday, February 24th: The 3 R’s: Reading, ‘Riting, and Randomness
Friday, February 25th: Books in the City
Monday, February 28th: English Major’s Junk Food
Tuesday, March 1st: she reads and reads
Tuesday, March 1st: The House of the Seven Tails
Wednesday, March 2nd: Boarding in My Forties
Thursday, March 3rd: Man of La Book

 



I am an Amazon Associate. As such, any purchase you make at Amazon.com after following a link from this blog will earn me a (tiny) percentage back as income. Thanks. All content copyright Books. Lists. Life. at http://bookslistslife.blogspot.com. If you're reading this post anywhere other than there, you are reading stolen content.

Official Book Club Selection by Kathy Griffin

I have to admit, I'm not the hugest fan of Kathy Griffin (not because she isn't funny, but because I'm just not into comedians) and I'm not a big reader of celebrity memoirs. So I'm not really sure why I picked Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin up at all, but it was there and I checked it out and found myself reading it. Crazy how that happens! I don't even remember seeing any other reviews of it in blogland.

Unlike most of the memoirs I read, where the author follows one thread or experiment through the book, this one is a straight up memoir of her life, from childhood until the present.  Griffin really presents herself as an unattractive dorky child. She lives with her parents until she is 28. Despite this, she also claims to have been very promiscious, sleeping with anyone she meets. Griffin works very hard to build a career in show business, long after most people would have given up. Her efforts seem to have finally paid off with My Life on the D-List. 

I was a fan of Suddenly Susan when it was on the air, and I think that was really my only exposure to Griffin prior to this book. I found myself reading it with a bit of distrust. I find it hard to believe that anyone would be so willing to put every detail in print like this, but the prevailance of reality shows argues against this. I find it hard to believe that things happened exactly as she claims and that she's so willing to name names and talk smack about other entertainers.

Overall, very lightweight, probably more entertaining if you care about comedy. Great for when your brain can't take anything else. It was pretty funny in places, as it should be, and the Reading Group Guide at the end is not to be missed.

Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin
Kathy Griffin
Ballantine Books
2009
348 pages

I am an Amazon Associate. As such, any purchase you make at Amazon.com after following a link from this blog will earn me a (tiny) percentage back as income. Thanks. All content copy write Books. Lists. Life. at http://bookslistslife.blogspot.com. If you're reading this post anywhere other than there, you are reading stolen content.

Recent Reads: A Felon and two romances

So I've read a few books lately that I haven't talked about, and I'm starting to forget what I think about them.  I've decided to just lump them all together into one post, even though I don't like to not give every book it's own review. I'm pretty sure if I don't get something posted I won't post at all!

Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison by Piper Kerman is yet another memoir style book where the author spends a certain amount of time doing something unusual. In this case, the author is in prison for a decades old crime related to drugs.  She chooses to turn her experience into a book about prison life, which is good for her, and is somewhat interesting for the reader. She manages to keep it from being all about gossip and it's not overly condescending towards her fellow inmates who are all less educated than Kerman and from a lower economic background. She talks about how different prisons are completely different in terms of how they treat prisoners and what things are available at different places, for example, at one prison they did not even have underwear for her.  It's a quick and easy book to read, but I found Kerman to be annoying and to maintain the attitude that she was somehow better than everyone else, that she didn't belong there. (Despite never denying her guilt.) I picked this one up based on a review at Tina Says...

Orange is the New Black
Piper Kerman
Spiegel & Krau
2010
320 pages
Source: library

What Happens in London by Julie London. If you recall, I just read Ten Things I Love About You (review here) and enjoyed it, but thought that I should have read this one first. So I read it, and LOVED it. This has a nice slow falling in love, with no big drama at all in the first 9/10ths of the book.  Just as I was thinking that this was a perfect romance- all about the couple, no silly outside plot to distract, etc, outside plot happened. There wasn't much hint that it would end the way it did, so I was taken by surprise, but I still ended up loving the book. Harry is just about perfect in a refreshing way and it perfectly sets up for Seb's story in Ten Things.

What Happens in London
Julia Quinn
Avon
2009
384 pages
Source: Bought it last year

Shut Up and Kiss Me by Christie Craig made my TBR list due to this review at The Good, The Bad and the Unread.  I started it right before I had the baby, and then this was the book I had with me when she was readmitted to the hospital. I spent much of that day with only what I had with me in my purse and was able to finish this one up. The lure of humor is what made me pick it up, but in practice I found the elements that were supposed to be funny to be too slapstick for me. Fortunately, these things were usually things that happened to characters other than the hero and heroine. I did enjoy the interactions between Shala and Sky, but didn't really buy the romance between them- it happened way too fast and I found the "soul mate" aspect a little too woowoo.  So, good story, and great for an afternoon sitting around the hospital, but not one that makes me want to read another by this author.

Shut up and Kiss Me
Christie Craig
Lovespell 
2010
320 pages
Source: library






I am an Amazon Associate. As such, any purchase you make at Amazon.com after following a link from this blog will earn me a (tiny) percentage back as income. Thanks.

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, briefly

The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin is one of those books that fit the category I like (stunt memoir) but that I never get around to reading when I check it out of the library. I'd had this one home twice before I saw this review by raych at books i done read, in which she gave it TEN caterpillars and then I had to go back and get it at third time.

That insanely long title pretty much sums up the premise of the book. Rubin decides to spend a year trying to be happier, kinda on the basis of fake it til you make it. It's not that she's sad or depressed, but that one day she realizes that she's kinda going through to motions waiting for "real" life to start.  At this point in her introduction I felt like I was going to love this book. I am increasingly aware of the fact that I am waiting for something elusive to happen before ... well, I don't know. It's just a vague feeling that I'm waiting on real life to start. I just had my third child. What else can I be waiting on?  Anyway, the introduction hit all the right notes and I thought I was really going to connect with the author. And I did, for a while. Maybe 2/3rds of the way through I started to get bored. It was like she was losing steam and repeating herself, a lot. I went ahead and finished and I wouldn't say that I disliked the book at all, but it didn't pan out to be all that I had hoped.

Other reviews you could read if you wanted a different perspective:
books i done read
A Striped Armchair
Frugal Wife = Wealthy Life
she reads and reads
Both Eyes Book Blog


The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin
Harper
2009
320 pages
Source: library

I am an Amazon Associate. As such, any purchase you make at Amazon.com after following a link from this blog will earn me a (tiny) percentage back as income. Thanks.

Cast Member Confidential: A Disneyfied Memoir by Chris Mitchell

It's summer vacation! Who's going to Disney World? Sadly, not me.  I have actually never been to the Magic Kingdom itself, but I did spend one day at Epcot, 8 or 9 summers ago. In retrospect, I wish we'd done the Magic Kingdom, but it was a very fun day. This doesn't mean I was able to resist picking this title up when I was at the library a couple of weeks ago. (Months ago? Who knows, time flies these days!) Cast Member Confidential: A Disneyfied Memoir by Chris Mitchell is exactly what the title suggests- the memoir of a cast member, as Disney employees are called.  After everything in his life turns ugly, Chris runs away from home and joins the photography crew at Disney World. He is almost immediately shown the ugly side of the job, and the almost cultlike working experiences. 

I found the actual facts of working there very interesting- being called a "Cast Member",  how the shifts work, how the employees get around the grounds without being seen by guests, how they prevent two Mickey Mouses from appearing in the same location- that sort of thing. I was less than interested in the scandalous details that Mitchell includes- orgy of staff parties (literally), drinking on the job, porn at work, some illegal excursions with coworkers, sex while on the clock, etc.  It wasn't the best written book I've read and I felt like he included the illicit details to make it interesting.

When looking for the link to this book I noticed quite a few memoirs of this type, including Mouse Trap: Memoir of a Disneyland Cast Member by Kevin Yee, which my library also had on the shelves. While I checked that one out as well, I found the writing in it to be even more disjointed.  Any suggestions for a well written memoir of this behind-the-scenes type? 

Have you been to Disney World? Disneyland? Are you like an acquaintance of mine who goes every year even though her only child is 18? Has Epcot bothered to update the out-of-date exhibits from 2001 yet? Which park would you recommend, if you were to only see one?  Is there an amusement park you like better?
Cast Member Confidential
Chris Mitchell
Citadel Press
2010
320 pages


I am an Amazon Associate. As such, any purchase you make at Amazon.com after following a link from this blog will earn me a (tiny) percentage back as income. Thanks.

Blog Tour: Keeping the Feast by Paula Butturini

Keeping the Feast: One Couple's Story of Love, Food, and Healing in Italy by Paula Butturini is my first venture into the world of blog tours. When I was first approached to join I thought that this would be a book that I would love. Love, Food, Italy? What's not to love?  I did end up liking it, but I wasn't totally blown away by it.

Keeping the Feast is the story of a couple of face tragedy almost immediately after their wedding.  John is reporting on a political uprising in Romania and is nearly killed by a sniper.  The newlyweds spend the next three years or so recovering from his injury and subsequent depression. Each chapter begins with the author's memories of a special food or dish from her youth that is supposed to relate to the remainder of the chapter, which is about John's injury or healing.

So. I feel almost guilty saying this, but I didn't think it worked.  I didn't think it flowed well from food story to life story. Last year I read and reviewed A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table by Molly Wisenberg, and I think it did a much better job of both writing about food and connecting it to the author's current life. I didn't really get hooked on the story until page 152, and I am unsure if I would have finished if it hadn't been for this blog tour. I felt the author's strongest writing was in the beginning when she was talking about their jobs as journalists, which only makes sense, as that was her job.

I hesitate to even say the following, but the focus of the book is her husband's descent into and out of depression, and while I know everyone's experience is different and this is her's (holy disclaimer Batman!), I am put off by some of her beliefs. Her mother also struggled with depression and the author repeats several times that it was the medications for depression that pushed her mom off the edge. She and her husband refuse to ever consider medication, and she makes a very strong point that many people are on drugs who shouldn't be, and that American doctors in particular like to prescribe drugs more than Italian doctors. I know this is her experience, but I am very turned off by a book that is almost entirely about someone's experience with depression that criticizes the use to medications that help so many people.

So there ya go. I did love the parts about Italy, but I wasn't blown away by the book. You can find other reviews on the tour that are much, MUCH more positive than mine at the following blogs:

Monday, January 18th: Tripping Towards Lucidity
Tuesday, January 19th: Park City Girl
Wednesday, January 20th: Baking Delights
Thursday, January 21st: Brunette on a Budget
Tuesday, January 26th: Farmgirl Fare
Tuesday, January 26th: Farmgirl Fare author’s recipe
Wednesday, January 27th: Booklust
Thursday, January 28th: Booklust (Rosie’s Riveters- guest post)
Tuesday, February 2nd: Peeking Between the Pages
Wednesday, February 3rd: Dolce Bellezza
Thursday, February 4th: Caribousmom
Tuesday, February 9th: Books, Lists, Life
Wednesday, February 10th: Book Addiction
Reading Series at Books on the Brain- Date TBD



Disclaimer: This book was provided to me by the publisher.



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1. The Year of Living Biblically by A. J. Jacobs

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A. J. Jacobs falls squarely into that category of memoirs/ non-fiction that I like best.  I've seen the term "stunt memoir" used to perfectly describe this type of book and would definitely apply it to this one. Jacobs has decided to follow ALL of the rules in the Bible as literally as possible (bet you couldn't figure that out from the title). He spends the first 9 months of his year with the Old Testament before finishing up in the New.

What did I think? Well, I enjoyed it and I went looking for Jacob's other books, but it took me a very long time to finish it up, I'm talking Months.  I'd put it down and walk away and there was nothing about it that compelled me to pick it back up.

Jacobs spends  a lot of time talking about how this experiment has changed his view of religion and I think that was the most interesting part, to me. He starts off the book as a non-believer of Jewish descent, but as the book goes on he has moments of pure belief. He is as startled by this as you would expect and I enjoyed his honestly.   In addition to deciphering the rules on his own, he consults with quite a few other religious scholars and the differing view on things is also quite interesting. Overall a good book, but not one of my favorites for the year.


How do you feel about "stunt memoirs"? Do you have a favorite? Do you prefer straight biographies? Do you think that writers can be completely honest when they know they are doing a trick for a book? Or do you think they probably fudge a bit to sound better? (Hello, James Frey.)

If you're interested in other books about personal religious experience, I also read and enjoyed:

Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture by Daniel Radosh (my review)
The Faith Club: A Muslim, A Christian, A Jew-- Three Women Search for Understanding by Idliby, Oliver and Warner (my review)
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert (pre-blog)

Girl Meets God: On the Path to a Spiritual Life by Lauren Winner (also pre-blog)


You can find AJ Jacobs online here, but it doesn't look like he updates very often.


The Year of Living Biblically by AJ Jacobs
Simon & Schuster
2008
416 pages

PS. I decided to number my 2010 reads in the subject line of the post. I like the idea that I'll be able to tell at a glance where I am. 



I am an Amazon Associate. As such, any purchase you make at Amazon.com after following a link from this blog will earn me a (tiny) percentage back as income. Thanks.