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A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father

Augusten Burroughs

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 127 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Burroughs Running Out of Material... 1 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

If you have read Burrough's other memoirs, you will find this to be a big departure as it lacks the acerbic wit of the others. Unfortunately, without the humor, Burrough's writing is flat, dull, and unbearably boring. Here we have another "poor me," memoir written by a writer who has made millions off the genre, without the substance that made the others ones so entertaining. One has to wonder what he's going to write about once he runs out of people who have tortured him in the past. Maybe how mean all his critics were to him? A memoir about being sued by the "Finch" family?
In this book, Burroughs characterizes his father as a cold, sadistic, sociopath, but all I saw was a typical alcoholic with a debilitating case of rheumatoid psoriasis thrown in for good measure. We're supposed to feel great sympathy for Burroughs because his father won't hug him and forgets to feed his gerbil when he's away, but when I think about the Nixmary Browns of the world, it's hard for me to muster much pity, not when he's warm, fed, safe, and with a roof over his head...all due to his father.Forgetting to feed pets, children, etc is pretty typical behavior for a drunk... and is it possible that his father won't hug him due to the fact that he's covered with painful, flaking sores over his entire body? (Hmmm, could it be)???
The climax of this pity party occurs when Burroughs runs out of food as a young adult in his first apartment, and asks his father to bring him some. You will find a tear coming to your eye (no sarcasm, I swear)! when his father shows up with half a loaf of day old bread, some bologna, and a can of Hi-C. How horrible! Burroughs cites this as evidence of his father's sociopathy and lack of empathy, completely glossing over the fact that he told his father he needed just a little food to tide him over for a few days, and never bothered telling him what to bring or how much. Not to mention, a NORMAL PERSON just says,"Hey Dad? Can I borrow ten dollars to buy food?" Was this a test? If so, his father failed.

Don't get me wrong, no one's going to nominate Burrough's dad as parent of the year anytime soon, but he's just not the monster his son attempts to portray. Burroughs repeatedly tries to paint himself as a loving, innocent kid, but if his memoirs are any indication, he's a spoiled, ungrateful brat. He also tends to downplay his own contributions to his family's dysfunction. One example? At the end of the book, he speaks about how he calls his father often to maintain a connection, and never gets what he's looking for in that relationship. Yet, if you read DRY, another one of Burrough's memoirs, he calls his father up, screams accusations at him, gets the old man sobbing, and only ceases because his stepmother hangs up the phone on him. Is that how he maintains the weekly connection? One would think so, given his stepmother's reaction ("that's enough") and Burrough's nonchalance afterwards. And is crying at his son's words the behavior of a typical sociopath? I don't think so. No wonder his father doesn't have any deathbed words for him. We're supposed to end the book feeling sad for poor Augusten and once more impressed that he triumphed over the horrible people in his life. I just felt absolutely disgusted, and wondering if his calling his father a sociopath is a projection-if he is really the true sociopath here.

Editorial Review:

The Instant New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today Bestseller by the author of Running with Scissors

A Today Show Summer Reads Pick

With A Wolf at the Table, Augusten Burroughs takes a quantum leap: mining the emotional stratum of love and hate, and the unspeakably terrifying relationship between a father and a son. Told with unflinching emotion, A Wolf at the Table is a story for anyone who ever yearned for unconditional love from a parent.

 

Her Last Death: A Memoir

Susanna Sonnenberg

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 62 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Her Last Death begins as the phone rings early one morning in the Montana house where Susanna Sonnenberg lives with her husband and two young sons. Her aunt is calling to tell Susanna her mother is in a coma after a car accident. She might not live. Any daughter would rush the thousands of miles to her mother's bedside. But Susanna cannot bring herself to go. Her courageous memoir explains why.

Glamorous, charismatic and a compulsive liar, Susanna's mother seduced everyone who entered her orbit. With outrageous behavior and judgment tinged by drug use, she taught her child the art of sex and the benefits of lying. Susanna struggled to break out of this compelling world, determined, as many daughters are, not to become her mother.

Sonnenberg mines tender and startling memories as she writes of her fierce resolve to forge her independence, to become a woman capable of trust and to be a good mother to her own children. Her Last Death is riveting, disarming and searingly beautiful.

Three Weeks with My Brother

Nicholas Sparks, Micah Sparks

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 181 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

For those with siblings...a must read. I loved it! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

After having 4 kids, most books would put me a sleep. I could not put this book down. What a great true life story about this fantastic author.

Just alright 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I just finished this book this morning and I have to say it was just average. Having just come back from a trip with my own brother and being of similar age to the Sparks brothers, I connected with this book on some level, but not completly. For instance, they refer to each other as "Brother" or " Little Brother". I have never really heard brothers regularly refer to each other in that way. I also never realy connected with the family as a whole, so I wasn't vested in the loss of his father or mother as there was a sense of detachement for both throughout the book. His sister's struggle and ultimate death was hard to read due to my own relationship with my younger sister, so the last third of the book gripped me more than the first 2/3s.



All in all, it is an average book. If I were to rate it, "Tuesday's with Morrie" was a 10 on a 10 point scale, the "Tender Bar" was a 9 while this book was an even 6.

Editorial Review:

DESCRIPTION: In January 2003, Nicholas Sparks and his brother Micah set off on a three-week trip around the world. It was to mark a milestone in their lives, for at 37 and 38 respectively, they were now the only surviving members of their family. As Nicholas and Micah travel the globe, the intimate story of their family unfolds in the details of the untimely deaths of their parents and only sister. Against the backdrop of the wonders of the world, the Sparks brothers band together to heal, to remember, and to learn to live life to the fullest.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (Vintage International)

Haruki Murakami

Amazon Price: $11.16 List Price: $13.95 Not yet published By: Vintage

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In 1982, having sold his jazz bar to devote himself to writing, Murakami began running to keep fit. A year later, he’d completed a solo course from Athens to Marathon, and now, after dozens of such races, not to mention triathlons and a dozen critically acclaimed books, he reflects upon the influence the sport has had on his life and—even more important—on his writing.

Equal parts training log, travelogue, and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers his four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon and takes us to places ranging from Tokyo’s Jingu Gaien gardens, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston among young women who outpace him. Through this marvelous lens of sport emerges a panorama of memories and insights: the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer, his greatest triumphs and disappointments, his passion for vintage LPs, and the experience, after fifty, of seeing his race times improve and then fall back.

By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is rich and revelatory, both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in running.


From the Hardcover edition.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir

Bill Bryson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 62 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

From one of the most beloved and bestselling authors in the English language, a vivid, nostalgic, and utterly hilarious memoir of growing up in the 1950s

Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century—1951—in the middle of the United States—Des Moines, Iowa—in the middle of the largest generation in American history—the baby boomers. As one of the best and funniest writers alive, he is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24-carat memoir gold. Like millions of his generational peers, Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around his house and neighborhood with an old football jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel about his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing awful evildoers (and morons)—in his head—as "The Thunderbolt Kid."

Using this persona as a springboard, Bill Bryson re-creates the life of his family and his native city in the 1950s in all its transcendent normality—a life at once completely familiar to us all and as far away and unreachable as another galaxy. It was, he reminds us, a happy time, when automobiles and televisions and appliances (not to mention nuclear weapons) grew larger and more numerous with each passing year, and DDT, cigarettes, and the fallout from atmospheric testing were considered harmless or even good for you. He brings us into the life of his loving but eccentric family, including affectionate portraits of his father, a gifted sportswriter for the local paper and dedicated practitioner of isometric exercises, and OF his mother, whose job as the home furnishing editor for the same paper left her little time for practicing the domestic arts at home. The many readers of Bill Bryson’s earlier classic, A Walk in the Woods, will greet the reappearance in these pages of the immortal Stephen Katz, seen hijacking literally boxcar loads of beer. He is joined in the Bryson gallery of immortal characters by the demonically clever Willoughby brothers, who apply their scientific skills and can-do attitude to gleefully destructive ends.

Warm and laugh-out-loud funny, and full of his inimitable, pitch-perfect observations, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is as wondrous a book as Bill Bryson has ever written. It will enchant anyone who has ever been young.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Dave Eggers

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 917 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

A.H.B.W.O.S.G. Review 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

At age 21, Dave Eggers's mother and father die of unrelated cancers within just 5 weeks of each other. The memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, follows Dave's journey as both a young adult in search of love and freedom, and as a "single mother" to his newly-inherited little brother, Toph.
The memoir opens with a witty list of "Rules and Suggestions for Enjoyment of this Book", where in a borderline-sarcastic manner, Eggers dismisses the importance and relevance of half the book. Even in the preface, (which was read, despite his suggestions), his clever and ferocious voice bursts through the pages, and straight into the imagination of the reader.
In A.H.W.O.S.G., Eggers doesn't just sketch general ideas of what he experiences, he vividly paints a picture of specific life events; all his thoughts are splayed out on the pages, as if nothing was cut back. The reader can then enter his head, and hear his inner-thoughts, feel his raw emotions. "We wash our hands and come over... -maybe we forgot to wash our hands- and lean over in the usual way, holding her arm, all while her eyes are following us, at least on eye is following us..." (342). His brutally honest story-telling, yet maybe not-so-honest dialogue, will astonish and entertain any reader.
The beginning sections of the book describe Dave's mother's slow passing: both in-depth and disturbing, the reader automatically feels uncomfortable yet captured by the twisted, almost overly-descriptive imagery, "The tumor is rotten fruit, graying at the edges. Or the insects' hive, something festering and black and alive, fuzzy on its sides..." (32).
Eggers weaves different writing styles in and out of the book, "spicing up" the already expansive and intense work. Often out of cynicism, flowcharts, script, and sketches are added, including those of staplers and house space to slide in socks. Dialogue varies from long, deep conversations, (often accusations), to simple greeting exchanges amongst friends.
Also, Eggers provides breaks from intense, "heartbreaking", often rant-like passages. His choice of events may seem random, but always add further entry into his mind. Painful and depressing events are easier to cope with with Eggers' comedic easiness and sarcasm. But he becomes sullen by injecting feelings like paranoia and caution into what would otherwise be considered "simple" choices.
When Eggers leaves his brother with a babysitter, (something not normally seeming so terrifying), a reader is overflowed with shared feelings with Eggers. "This is stupid. We don't need this kind of risk...But I have to do this. There is no risk. But there is risk. But the risk is worth it. I'm so, so evil." (126) Without telling the reader he is distressed, the reader knows, especially after frantically following his train of thought.
As made obvious after completion of this book, Eggers used all events he viewed as important to his life. Even ones that put him in a bad light were used, "You have been determined, then and since, to get this down, to render this time, to take that terrible winter and write with it what you hope will be some heartbreaking thing" (119).
The voice, writing style, and expanded incidents in this memoir truly makes it a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.

Editorial Review:

The literary sensation of the year, a book that redefines both family and narrative for the twenty-first century. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother. Here is an exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a family together.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is an instant classic that will be read in paperback for decades to come. The Vintage edition includes a new appendix by the author.

Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany

Bill Buford

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Total reviews: 161 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Bill Buford—author of the highly acclaimed best-selling Among the Thugs—had long thought of himself as a reasonably comfortable cook when in 2002 he finally decided to answer a question that had nagged him every time he prepared a meal: What kind of cook could he be if he worked in a professional kitchen? When the opportunity arose to train in the kitchen of Mario Batali’s three-star New York restaurant, Babbo, Buford grabbed it. Heat is the chronicle—sharp, funny, wonderfully exuberant—of his time spent as Batali’s “slave” and of his far-flung apprenticeships with culinary masters in Italy.

In a fast-paced, candid narrative, Buford describes the frenetic experience of working in Babbo’s kitchen: the trials and errors (and more errors), humiliations and hopes, disappointments and triumphs as he worked his way up the ladder from slave to cook. He talks about his relationships with his kitchen colleagues and with the larger-than-life, hard-living Batali, whose story he learns as their friendship grows through (and sometimes despite) kitchen encounters and after-work all-nighters.

Buford takes us to the restaurant in a remote Appennine village where Batali first apprenticed in Italy and where Buford learns the intricacies of handmade pasta . . . the hill town in Chianti where he is tutored in the art of butchery by Italy’s most famous butcher, a man who insists that his meat is an expression of the Italian soul . . . to London, where he is instructed in the preparation of game by Marco Pierre White, one of England’s most celebrated (or perhaps notorious) chefs. And throughout, we follow the thread of Buford’s fascinating reflections on food as a bearer of culture, on the history and development of a few special dishes (Is the shape of tortellini really based on a woman’s navel? And just what is a short rib?), and on the what and why of the foods we eat today.

Heat is a marvelous hybrid: a richly evocative memoir of Buford’s kitchen adventure, the story of Batali’s amazing rise to culinary (and extra-culinary) fame, a dazzling behind-the-scenes look at the workings of a famous restaurant, and an illuminating exploration of why food matters.

It is a book to delight in—and to savor.

Running with Scissors: A Memoir

Augusten Burroughs

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Total reviews: 822 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

RUNNING WITH SCISSORS is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her unorthodox psychiatrist who bore a striking resemblance to Santa Claus. So at the age of twelve, Burroughs found himself amidst Victorian squalor living with the doctor’s bizarre family, and befriending a pedophile who resided in the backyard shed. The story of an outlaw childhood where rules were unheard of, and the Christmas tree stayed up all year-round, where Valium was consumed like candy, and if things got dull, an electroshock therapy machine could provide entertainment. The funny, harrowing, and bestselling account of an ordinary boy’s survival under the most extraordinary circumstances…

 

Running with Scissors Acknowledgments
Gratitude doesn’t begin to describe it: Jennifer Enderlin, Christopher Schelling, John Murphy, Gregg Sullivan, Kim Cardascia, Michael Storrings, and everyone at St. Martin’s Press. Thank you: Lawrence David, Suzanne Finnamore, Robert Rodi, Bret Easton Ellis, Jon Pepoon, Lee Lodes, Jeff Soares, Kevin Weidenbacher, Lynda Pearson, Lona Walburn, Lori Greenburg, John DePretis, and Sheila Cobb. I would also like to express my appreciation to my mother and father for, no matter how inadvertently, giving me such a memorable childhood. Additionally, I would like to thank the real-life members of the family portrayed in this book for taking me into their home and accepting me as one of their own. I recognize that their memories of the events described in this book are different than my own. They are each fine, decent, and hard-working people. The book was not intended to hurt the family. Both my publisher and I regret any unintentional harm resulting from the publishing and marketing of Running with Scissors. Most of all, I would like to thank my brother for demonstrating, by example, the importance of being wholly unique.

The Year of Magical Thinking

Joan Didion

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Total reviews: 505 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Disappointing 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I have read most of Didion's books and so bought this at a used bookstore without knowing what it was about. Like many of the reviewers before me, the first few chapters describing her husband's death kept me reading, but by the middle of the book I found it a chore to pick up. The content became very repetitive and, as I moved through the pages, utterly hopeless in its tone. Having experienced grief myself and knowing the grasping for some truth that would tell me 'hold on, you will get through this,' I found no such message here and would not recommend this book to anyone grieving the loss of a loved one.

The other issue Didion dealt with at the same time as John's death was their daughter's mysterious illness. Unfortunately this issue gets lost in Didion's grief and there is no real outcome provided in the book. We know that Quintana got out of the hospital but nothing beyond that. The topic is simply dropped with no real emotion expressed by the author.

I feel that for a piece to be worthy of public consumption there ought to be something of value that readers can walk away with. Perhaps as a study of grief, Didion's book could rightfully find its way onto a handful of bookshelves, but as a general reader it is sorely lacking the author's trademark writing charm and expertise. In fact, it is poorly written. There is nothing magical here, except that someone gave the book a wonderful title that belies the meaning the author intended, that she suffered through a year of denial and as of the last page had not recovered from it. Now, almost 4 years after her husband's death, I hope Ms. Didion has found some of the peace she was obviously lacking when she wrote this book.

Editorial Review:

From one of America’s iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage--and a life, in good times and bad--that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

Gift from the Sea: 50th Anniversary Edition

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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Total reviews: 107 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this inimitable, beloved classic—graceful, lucid and lyrical—Anne Morrow Lindbergh shares her meditations on youth and age; love and marriage; peace, solitude and contentment as she set them down during a brief vacation by the sea. Drawing inspiration from the shells on the shore, Lindbergh’s musings on the shape of a woman’s life bring new understanding to both men and women at any stage of life. A mother of five, an acclaimed writer and a pioneering aviator, Lindbergh casts an unsentimental eye on the trappings of modernity that threaten to overwhelm us: the time-saving gadgets that complicate rather than simplify, the multiple commitments that take us from our families. And by recording her thoughts during a brief escape from everyday demands, she helps readers find a space for contemplation and creativity within their own lives.

With great wisdom and insight Lindbergh describes the shifting shapes of relationships and marriage, presenting a vision of life as it is lived in an enduring and evolving partnership. A groundbreaking, best-selling work when it was originally published in 1955, Gift from the Sea continues to be discovered by new generations of readers. With a new introduction by Lindbergh’s daughter Reeve, this fiftieth-anniversary edition will give those who are revisiting the book and those who are coming upon it for the first time fresh insight into the life of this remarkable woman.

The sea and the beach are elements that have been woven throughout Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s life. She spent her childhood summers with her family on a Maine island. After her marriage to Charles Lindbergh in 1929, she accompanied him on his survey flights around the North Atlantic to launch the first transoceanic airlines. The Lindberghs eventually established a permanent home on the Connecticut coast, where they lived quietly, wrote books and raised their family.

After the children left home for lives of their own, the Lindberghs traveled extensively to Africa and the Pacific for environmental research. For
several years they lived on the island of Maui in Hawaii, where Charles Lindbergh died in 1974.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh spent her final years in her Connecticut home, continuing her writing projects and enjoying visits from her children and grand-children. She died on February 7, 2001, at the age
of ninety-four.

Reeve Lindbergh is the author of many books for both adults and children, including the memoirs Under a Wing and No More Words.