Patti Smith, Just Kids

Patti Smith, Just Kids. I found the writing style exasperatingly earnest, but I felt affection for Patti and enjoyed her story of friendship and adventure with Robert Mappelthorpe. The photographs were lovely.

Augusten Burroughs, Magical Thinking

Augusten Burroughs, Magical Thinking. Well, he seems to have become a bit happy and metaphorically plump, but he's still delightfully narcissistic.

Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd Be Cake

Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd Be Cake. These were like going out for coffee with a friend (who you don't really like, but who is really entertaining when she talks about herself, which is always).

Michael Chabon, Manhood for Amateurs

Michael Chabon, Manhood for Amateurs. Pretty fun set of essays. Hard not identify when you have kids. He falls into old-fogeyisms occasionally (when I was a kid, yadda yadda, kids nowdays, yadda yadda) that I think are a little much. Enjoyed his stories about drawing superheroes and playing legos with his kids, and his defense of popular culture.

Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking. This book was terrifying to me. I don't want to think about how precarious life is and how fundamentally powerless I am to control it. And yet I've been circling around this knowledge daily, learning how fragile and intricate is our construction, and how contingent.

But, back to the story. Joan Didion is a graceful writer, and her precision and clarity make her emotion more powerful. It's not really a memoir of grief, but a story of the loves of her life, her husband and child, of companionship and friendship and living together, brought into relief by sudden absence. She conveys her grief and love in stark and thoughtful narrative.

Mitch Albom, tuesdays with Morrie

Mitch Albom, tuesdays with Morrie. A dear friend gave me this book as a gift. To be honest, I thought I wouldn't like it ("I don't usually go for the uplifting") but I did enjoy reading it. Maybe I didn't connect with the author's tone or his answers, but I did connect to the questions he was asking. These questions matter. How do you live a good life? How do you value other people and love them? What is important and what is distraction? What are the values of our culture and are they right? How do you live a good life within a culture that is dysfunctional? How do you tolerate fear, pain, and loss? How do you confront your own death, and worse, the death of those you love? I enjoy people who ask these questions and honestly try to answer them. It's not a matter of religion or no religion to me - I can deeply empathize with most people if they are thoughtful. The intolerable sin is apathy, a careless approach to life. Don't be unthoughtful or formulaic - have a reason for what you do and who you are. Not asking questions is worse than having the wrong answers or no answers. Morrie's insights reminded me of the Forster epigraph "only connect". So the answers in this book were simple - love each other, listen, touch, learn. Pretty basic humanism, hard to argue with (water's mighty wet stuff, chief!). I didn't love the author - he didn't delve deeply enough, it seemed to me, but I loved the subject of the book. A great teacher is important and should be cherished - don't let your teachers fade from your mind.

David Sheff, Beautiful Boy

David Sheff, Beautiful Boy. A memoir of living with a son's drug addiction, so a fairly terrifying book for a parent to read. Matt brought this home because they're promoting it at Starbucks and he wanted to know if it's "well-written" for his customers. Fairly. Not incredibly gripping, a little repetitive. But still, I had to keep reading, hoping for a neat resolution and a happy ending for Nic. By the nature of the story, you care for the characters despite Nic's flaws (the subject of the book, after all) and David's extraordinary navel gazing. Although you have to excuse some of the constant self-blame, because mostly David's role consisted of worrying. The second half of the book was tighter than the first. David suffered a brain hemorrhage some way through the writing process,and I wonder if that paradoxically cleaned up the narrative. I read that Nic Sheff wrote a memoir published at the same time, and I'm curious to read it. Not curious enough to buy it, but if I run across it I'll read it.