If it means anything to you, I cried off and on throughout Glennon Doyle Melton's Carry On, Warrior. This was surprise to me, as her memoir about drugs, bulimia, and rebellion isn't something to which I should relate. But she is such a talented writer, a gift I already knew through her very popular blog Momastery.
Several of the essays in Carry On, Warrior are posts from her blog, but since Momastery was still relatively new to me, it was still new material. Though even if you're a rabid fan, it's nice to have some of her best writing all in one place.
Glennon - if I may call her by her first name - writes candidly about motherhood and marriage, but it's not really her topics that are the draw. She says stuff other women don't say. Stuff about sex, feelings about her sister. Don't Carpe Diem, the post that catapulted her into the wider public eye, is in the book, as is A Mountain I'm Willing To Die On, which is one of the most poignant things I've ever read and brings tears to my eyes as I type. (And describes how I feel about this subject almost exactly.)
I don't know her in person, but Glennon did for me what Shauna Niequist did when I was a teenager. I didn't even know that kind of a Christian existed. Don't let that last sentence scare you if it's not your thing - the book itself is not overly Jesus and is clearly not printed by a Christian publisher. Her faith is in the background, but this is one for the women I know.
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I'm pretty sure Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple plopped on my radar when I made a call on the HH facebook page for fiction recommendations. I've been reading so much memoir lately (I love it, but I can't seem to get away from it), and I needed something else.
Where'd You Go, Bernadette? is so clever. I love it when I start a book that has an unusual narrative device that I wasn't expecting. The story is told almost entirely through sets of emails. I instantly loved the format, Bernadette herself, and the quirky tale.
It was a quick read, and well done. It was also the first book I read on my new Kindle Paperwhite.
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I read Look At Me by Jennifer Egan because several people recommended it after how much I loved The Keep and A Visit from the Goon Squad (both books, FYI, that are sort of different in their story telling, and probably aren't for everyone).
Like the others, Look At Me is smart and is talking about something way bigger than what it's talking about. And it's so interesting that it was written in 2000, before September 11, before facebook. That really makes it all that more wondrous, actually.
And, like the others, it's very well written. My problem here is that I didn't really love anyone. I wasn't cheering. Or feeling sad. For the last third, I just kept thinking, "I can't believe this was written in 2000." So while I liked what Egan was doing, The Keep is still my favorite.
What are you reading lately?
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