The Book That Unleashed American Grief “John Gunther’s Death Be Not Proud defied a nation’s reluctance to describe personal loss.” Deborah Cohen discusses Death Be Not Proud, published in 1949, John Gunther’s account of the his son’s death at age 17 from a brain tumor. The publisher, Harper & Brothers, feared at the time that […]
Women’s History Month at New York Public Library “This March, The New York Public Library celebrates Women’s History Month with recommended reading, spotlights on significant women librarians from our 125 year history, events and programs, and more.” Categories: Literary History, Literary Criticism 13 Empowering Memoirs Written by Women In honor of Women’s History Month. Categories:
The great book shortage of 2021, explained Those exhortations you’ve heard about ordering holiday gifts early include books. My daughter reminded me just a couple of days ago to get my book requests to her soon. In defence of memoirs – a way to grip our story-shaped lives After studying life stories and their nonfiction
I have not read J.D. Vance’s multiple-award—winning 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis for a couple of reasons: I usually avoid “Poor me, I had a rough childhood” stories. There are just not enough hours in each day for reading all the books. I saw the book on
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Please read this piece by award-winning novelist Jesmyn Ward. Source: Jesmyn Ward on Her Husband’s Death and Grief During COVID-19 | Vanity Fair
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CANDID PORTRAITS OR GHOSTWRITTEN FLUFF: THE HISTORY OF THE CELEBRITY BOOK Jeffrey Davies looks at the history of the celebrity book, whether it be “a memoir, an essay collection, a cookbook, a book of poetry, or a self-help book.” He discusses the rise of the ghostwriter, what happens when celebrity culture and science clash (for
Yesterday I came across the article Readers’ Regrets: The Books We Wish We Read in 2019. It prompted me to take a look at my own shelves for the books I regret not having read in 2019. Here are 10 of them, listed in no particular order. (Links that describe the book are to either
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Here are some of the articles that got me thinking over the past week. On Impact Stephen King experienced (celebrated doesn’t seem like the appropriate word) an anniversary last week: 20 years since the automobile accident that nearly killed him. He wrote this article for The New Yorker a year after the accident. The Weird,
Kalish, Mildred Armstrong. Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression Bantam Books, 2007 Some time around 1930, when the author was “little more than five years old” (p. 6), she, her mother, her baby sister, and her two brothers went to live with her mother’s parents in
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Hood, Ann. Comfort: A Journey Through GriefNew York: Norton, 2008ISBN 978-0-393-06456-8 Highly Recommended When Ann Hood’s five-year-old daughter Grace died suddenly in 2002 from a virulent form of strep, everyone tried to comfort Ann with platitudes like “She’s in a better place” or “Time heals.” But Hood did not find these cliches comforting. And everyone
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