Staff Picks Category: Memoir

Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and me by Bill Hayes [Book]

view/request

Writer and photographer Bill Hayes has written a moving memoir that is equally a love letter to New York City and an affectionate portrait of his partner, the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks. Through vignettes and diary entries we see the city and the people in it as Hayes does and his enthusiasm and affection are infectious. It’s a particular treat to see Sacks through Hayes’s eyes: here he is revealed, yes, as a brilliant scientist and writer and as a quirky genius with eccentric habits, but, more importantly, as the brilliant scientist and quirky genius whom Hayes adores and who adores Hayes in turn. As for the city, Hayes has a remarkable ability to meet, befriend, and like the people around him, and many of the passages that are not about Hayes and Sacks are about Hayes and the folks he meets: shop owners, skateboarders, dancers, artists, many of whom he meets through his photography. The photographs in the book, even when it is not clear how they relate to the text, further enhance the experience of, again, seeing through Hayes’s eyes.

Sounds like Titanic by Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman [Book]

view/request

After a childhood spent driving over the mountains of West Virginia to take violin lessons, Jessica is now officially a music student at Columbia University and on track to achieve her dream of becoming a professional violinist. As her first semester wears on, however, something becomes abundantly, horribly clear: Jessica isn’t good enough to play the violin professionally. Not even close. And the cost of her education is slowly crushing her, forcing her to take any job she can to survive.
So when Jessica is unexpectedly hired to play the violin at craft fairs and art shows by a mysterious man (identified only as The Composer throughout the book), she jumps at the opportunity. The Composer has a large, dedicated fanbase who obsess over his inoffensive, pennywhistle-heavy instrumental music, but Jessica quickly realizes that something is amiss about his live performances: they’re not live at all. As Jessica gets more and more involved in her work with the Composer, eventually touring across America with his group, she has to reckon with her own ideas of success and authenticity—all while pretending to play the violin in front of concert halls full of people.
This quick-moving memoir is a story of coming to terms with one’s own inescapable mediocrity after a lifetime of being called “gifted.” It’s also a funny and brutal look into the experience of someone who kind of, but not really, got to live out a dream—as well as a peek at the strange and mercurial composer whose fame was primarily based on the fact that his music shamelessly mimicked the soundtrack of the 1997 movie Titanic. Fans of quirky, biting, beautifully-written memoirs will love this quick read.

Crying in H Mart [Book]

view/request

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (also known by her band name Japanese Breakfast) is a beautifully crafted memoir about Zauner’s relationship with her mother and coming to terms with her mother’s slow decline and death. It grapples with themes of identity, loss, love, grief, and culture. She tells us about her and her mothers connection through vivid descriptions of Korean food and how food connects people, families, and cultures. It is a warm and yet heartbreaking story (one that will make you cry within the first chapter) that teaches us how we must not only remember the people who formed us, but also that we have the power to construct our own identities too.

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay [Book]

view/request

Roxane Gay’s memoir Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body is startling. It is moving and important. It is hard to read and hard to put down.

In this memoir of her body Gay puts into words so much that would generally be left unsaid. Gay’s writing is clear and concise. It does not shy from the contradictions in life. It is both restrained and emotional. It is devastating. Gay tells us about her life. She was raped at the age of twelve. She is fat. She is scared. She is complex, intelligent, insightful, compassionate, and a brilliant writer. She lives a privileged life and recognizes her privilege. She is the subjected to great prejudice and discrimination. In Hunger she shares truths that must be incredibly difficult to share and she does so very well.

Gay’s book tells us much about her life, but it also tells us much about our culture, our country, our attitudes. We are not kind to fat bodies. We are not kind to women’s bodies. We are not kind to black bodies. We are not kind to ourselves. You probably already know this, but Gay’s book will still open your eyes. Her perspective is probably not one you have heard before.

On the back of the dust jacket Ann Patchett tells us why this book is important and I cannot improve on what she says. She writes:

“It turns out that when a wrenching past is confronted with wisdom and bravery, the outcome can be compassion and enlightenment—both for the reader who has lived through this kind of unimaginable pain and for the reader who knows nothing of it. Roxane Gay shows us how to be decent to ourselves and decent to one another. Hunger is an amazing achievement in more ways than I can count.”

Endurance: a year in space, a lifetime of discovery by Scott Kelly [Audiobook]

view/request

Scott Kelly reads the parallel stories of how a boy from blue collar New Jersey, son of alcoholic parents, became an astronaut and how he endured a year on the International Space Station. These stories are told in alternating chapters. Once you get used to his somewhat deadpan (I’m a tough fighter pilot, man of few words) delivery the parallel stories are engaging. Details of training in Russia and life aboard the ISS are fascinating. For those with an interest in the space program and science in general.

Hidden by Loïc Dauvillier [Graphic Novel]

view/request

Memories of being hidden, and keeping those memories hidden… A grandmother tells a special story from her childhood in this touching graphic novel about being young during World War II.

Douina’s lives with her mother and father in Paris. Her life is relatively normal until she is made to wear a star on her jacket. Her father had told her it was a sheriff’s star but everyone begins to treat her differently. Soon her parents are taken away to work camps and Douina is left to be cared for by neighbors and kind strangers. As she settles into her new life and new name, Simone, she can’t help but miss her mother and father. Once the war has ended and it is safe again, she travels back home and begins the search for her parents.

This book offers children a glimpse into the past- what it was like to be young during WWII and how some children and families were affected by the Holocaust in France. Words by Loïc Dauvillier and art by Marc Lizano and Greg Salsedo

Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match by Monica Brown [Book]

view/request

A wonderful book about self confidence and being an individual! The story centers around a young Scottish-Peruvian girl who is extremely creative, confident, and embraces her mixed heritage. Everyone in Marisol’s life tells her that she doesn’t match- her clothes, her name, even her red hair. Marisol tries to change her appearance and the way she acts but ends up very unhappy. Her teacher asks her why she changed and Marisol could not find a reasons. In the end she realizes that other people’s opinions don’t matter and she is happy to be herself.

Show Me the Magic by Paul Mazursky [Book]

view/request

riter/director/producer/actor Paul Mazursky’s autobiography is an anecdotal collection of Hollywood tales, international adventures and reflections on growing up in Brooklyn. A real page turner, too! I ignored those around me and read this cover to cover in two evenings. Mazursky, who directed classics such as Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, Blume in Love, Tempest, Moscow on the Hudson and An Unmarried Woman, has plenty of interesting tales to share.

The author recalls showbiz run-ins with Stanley Kubrick (Mazursky’s first major acting role was in Kubrick’s Fear and Desire), Orson Welles, Peter Sellers, George Segal, John Cassavetes, Gena Rowlands, Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood among others. What’s possibly the most fascinating is his relationship with Federico Fellini. It’s a touching friendship and their meeting is something of legend. In addition, Mazursky includes several letters from the great Italian film director in his book.

The title “Show Me the Magic” comes from one of the most exciting pieces of cinema history; a piece of dialog from Mazursky’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Forever imprinted in my mind is the scene where John Cassavetes conjures up a small miracle… in a film that plays it straight up until that point. An unpredictable moment on screen and perfectly fitting coming the mind of a man who lived an exciting and unpredictable life.

Trippin’ with Terry Southern by Gail Gerber with Tom Lisanti [Book]

view/request

Gail Gerber’s memoir recalls her time spent with the famous novelist and screenwriter Terry Southern (Dr. Strangelove, the Magic Christian, Blue Movie, Candy, etc.).  Despite the title, the book is not filled with madcap, drug taking adventures.  Rather, we see an intimate portrait of a couple’s life together through a thirty year period.  It also focuses on Southern’s idiosyncrasies, humor and career highs and lows.

Gerber, a stage actress and ballet dancer, also shares several of her professional and personal experiences ranging from early 60’s appearances in Beach Ball, The Loved One and a couple of Elvis Presley films to life as a casual farmer.

Trippin’ with Terry Southern is an interesting memoir and is certainly essential read for Southern fans.  In addition, those who enjoy reading about 1960’s and 70’s escapades will be really enjoy the memoir… just peak at the back index to see a list of all of the exciting characters who will pop up (there’s Dennis Hopper, Rip Torn and Stanley Kubrick just to name a few)!

Blood, Bones, & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton [Book]

view/request

Hailed as “the best memoir by a chef ever” by Anthony Bourdain, and a NY Times Notable Book in 2010, this unusual memoir follows the life of Gabrielle Hamilton, now chef/owner of Prune in NYC. It is unusual in that Hamilton is such a good writer, and seemingly holds nothing back, allowing us to see the bad and ugly along with the good.
The quality of her writing is partially explained with her MFA from the University of Michigan, an experience she relates in ambivalent terms, “It’s a tired reading style…it attaches more importance to the words than the words themselves — as they’ve been arranged, could possibly sustain, and it gives poets and poetry a bad name. Which is not what I came to graduate school for; I want to forever admire poets.”
The bad and the ugly includes her wayward youth and relationship with her family after her parent’s divorce. How she develops from a lost girl to opening an award-winning restaurant in New York and a marriage with an Italian doctor (and his family), is a compelling story, with lots of detail of the food along the way, that never feels like it bogs down the story.
And here, as a treat to celebrate my last day before continuing on my journey, when we drove to the coast, past fields of shooting asparagus and trees about to burst forth, and we stopped finally at the water’s edge in St. Malo- here are platters of shellfish pulled that very morning from the sea-langouste, langoustines, moules, crevetted, huitres, bigorneaux, coques. These are the pearl-tipped hat pins stuck into a wine bottle cork for pulling to the meats of the sea snails. The tide ran out, and the fishing boats slumped in the mud attached to their slack anchors like leashed dogs sleeping in the yard. The particular smell of sea mud went up our nostrils as we slurped the brine from the shells in front of us, so expertly and neatly arranged on the tiers.

The Bedwetter by Sarah Silverman [Book]

view/request

Bossypants by Tina Fey [Book]

view/request

SNL and 30 Rock star, writer and producer Tina Fey is as smart and irreverent as she is funny. This memoir gives an inside look at the improv comedy incubator Second City, developing material for Saturday Night Live, and how Fey and her contemporaries broke through the glass ceiling of comedy.*
Here in a quick engaging read is an honest tongue-in-cheek and witty look at success, motherhood, TV, sexism, and lots of famous people you may have been wondering about. A few classic scripts are included, notably the Sarah Palin/Hillary Clinton sketch that Fey and Amy Poehler did in the 2008 campaign season.

* “Women just aren’t funny.”–every male producer/director from the beginning of time.