Not That Kind of Girl: A young woman tells you what she’s “learned” by Lena Dunham (2014)

Lena Dunham was only born in 1986. If you’re not so good at math, that means she’s still in her twenties. She’s already written a memoir. Holy hell.

Good thing she’s written it now, though — she’s done so much already that waiting too long would’ve made this book too big to fit in my backpack. Essay titles include: “Platonic Bed-Sharing: A Great Idea (for People Who Hate Themselves)”, “Who Moved My Uterus”, “Emails I Would Send If I Were One Ounce Crazier/Angrier/Braver”, and “Girl Crush: That Time I Was Almost a Lesbian, Then Vomited”.

She’s funny, she’s real, she’s awkward, she’s brilliant. I realize this sounds creepy, but I’d like to be her friend. I realize this sounds even creepier, but I recently got a haircut that was semi-inspired by her current look. (In reality, it’s probably a little closer to Kaley Cuoco’s starting-to-grow-out pixie, with sleek, wavy, or tousled options.)

Not That Kind of Girl has lately been lumped in with Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist, which I realize I’m also guilty of doing by virtue of having linked to it, but both totally stand on their own. If they hadn’t been published so close to one another, I’m not sure I or anyone else would make that comparison. They’re very different books, except for having been written by ladies, so, duhhhh of course they’re exactly alike. /sarcasm

Still, it was interesting to read them both within such a short time. It kinda feels like (maybe I’m stretching here) it could be a new era of feminist literature and pop culture. I am probably overly optimistic in this regard, but a girl can dream, no?

This book has gotten a lot of media attention, and for good reason, I think. It’s very good. I already want to re-read it. Lena’s got nice quotes on the back of the book from David Sedaris and Judy Blume, for crying out loud!

I think this is a must-read for anyone who identifies as female, anyone in their twenties or thirties, anyone who pays even the slightest attention to pop culture and Lena’s TV show. Or, frankly, even if you’ve never seen her show, don’t care about pop culture, and aren’t in the correct demographic — as her dad also writes in review on the back cover,

“This book should be required reading for anyone who thinks they understand the experience of being a young woman in our culture. I thought I knew the author rather well, and I found many (not altogether welcome) surprises.”

Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxane Gay (2014)

If you haven’t already read Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist, I highly recommend it. I read it just last week, and I incurred a $0.25 library fine so I could keep it for an extra day to re-read the best bits. I believe I fist-pumped in response to at least three different sections. There are even T-shirts!

Roost: A Novel by Ali Bryan (2013)

The thing about reading books published by a small, local press is that it’s sometimes very obvious that a particular book has been published by a small, local press. This is disappointing. I’ll give two particular examples that stuck out to me in this book:

• One of the main characters has a skin condition. This information is introduced at the very beginning of the novel in such a way as to seem like a major plot point. The skin condition is never mentioned again.
• The main character flies on a plane. When the flight attendant comes around with the drinks cart, the main character orders ginger ale. (Fun fact: I always drink ginger ale on airplanes.) LITERALLY ON THE NEXT PAGE, maybe three paragraphs later, it says “she downed all her orange juice in one gulp”. Gahhhh

She ordered ginger ale.

Stuff like this drives me absolutely nuts. Independent publishers do good work, don’t get me wrong — they’re the first to support local authors and they work hard to get their authors’ books out in the world. (How else would I have seen/heard of this book?) I know indie presses aren’t exactly made of money, but you cannot skimp on editing. You just can’t.

The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir who got Trapped in an IKEA Wardrobe by Romain Puértolas (2013); English translation by Sam Taylor (2014)

This book is all over the best-seller shelves at every bookstore right now. It was originally published in French last year, and the English translation just came out recently. This was such a fun book to read, and I was hugely impressed by the amount of wordplay, especially considering that it is a translation. I wonder how the punnery holds up if you’re comparing directly to the original? Makes you wonder which bits are creditable to the author, and which to the translator.

What I Learned About Politics: Inside the Rise – and Collapse – of Nova Scotia’s NDP Government by Graham Steele (2014)

I got this book from the library a few weeks ago. I knew it was brand new, and they had it prominently displayed because it was both new and local. Obviously I scooped it up right away.

I only found out the next day from a friend who was at the book launch that the launch was actually happening while I was at the library! My local library is on. the. ball.

Anyway, this is a memoir-ish account from the former finance minister of our previous provincial government. It was the first time the NDP had formed government in any of the Atlantic provinces! Exciting stuff. And then they sort of crashed and burned.

This book has lots of interesting anecdotes and little bits of inside information. Steele does a really good job, I think, of making a book about backroom politics clear and captivating and easy to follow.

I think it’d be neat for someone to read this book who isn’t from Nova Scotia and isn’t aware of this government’s legacy. I’d be interested in hearing what they thought about it.