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!

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.

This All Happened: A Fictional Memoir by Michael Winter (2000)

“A fictional memoir” is a good way to describe this book. Laid out as a series of diary entries written over the course of a year, our protagonist (Gabe) explains his major life events, big struggles and decisions, as well as the everyday kind of stuff. Gabe struggles to write his novel; tries to figure out what he’s doing with his life; tries to figure out if Lydia’s really into him or if they’re really going to get married; watches his friends get married, get divorced, have babies.

Really though, it’s the everyday, mundane activities that make this book as good as it is. Canoe trips and barbeques with his friends, beers at The Ship, walking up and down the hill in front of his house, bike rides, trips to the Fluvarium, bickering with his girlfriend, kitchen parties. Even the silliest little things are described so beautifully, so delicately, with the prettiest prose. It’s lovely to read.

And as an added bonus, it’s a snapshot of the city I spent my university years in and where my parents and all my family are from. St. John’s is one of my favourite cities in the world, and although I don’t live there now, I could see myself ending up there one day. I recognized so many specific buildings and bars and gardens in this book (they mentioned a restaurant my former housemate’s family owns!), which is of course particular to people who know the city… but I think there’s something universal about this book — anyone could recognize so many of the personalities and characteristics without knowing the people or the place.

(And seriously, go back and read that wiki link on St. John’s and look at all the pics — then you’ll understand why I miss it, and maybe even convince yourself to go!)

Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison: A Memoir by Piper Kerman (2010)

I had already seen the Netflix series based on this book, which is strange for me — I almost always read the book first. But I really had no choice, as I basically mainlined the whole first season in a single day. This book is a memoir, mostly based on real-life events (some names and details were changed), while the series is kinda sorta based on the memoir.

Orange Is The New Black. photo via: http://comingsoon.net/nextraimages/orangeisblackheader.jpg

Many of the scenes that take place in the first season of Orange Is The New Black appear in the book in some form, and a lot of the characters are identifiable as pieces of characters in the book. I suppose you want to make the TV version as big a hit as possible, so you include the most provocative and intriguing personality characteristics, amalgamating them into bigger/better/bolder/brasher characters, and you leave out the stuff that’s a little more run-of-the-mill. A+ on making the Netflix adaptation as entertaining as it is, while staying true-ish (emphasis on the ish) to real life.

If you like reading non-fiction, sociological studies, or memoirs, you’ll probably find this book interesting. If you liked the show (and you’re excited out of your mind that the new season is out next week! I know I am!), you’ll probably find this book interesting. The book and the show are both interesting in totally different ways, if that makes any sense.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua (2011)

Amy Chua, the “Tiger Mom”, and her daughters at the 2011 Time 100 gala. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This book created a lot of fuss when it came out back in 2011. The Wall Street Journal published an excerpt, and there are now nearly 9,000 comments on that post. A lot of people were very upset, suffice to say. It’s a book about what Chua calls the Chinese method of parenting — it’s very strict; there’s a major focus on school and music; not so much focus on friends/sports/games/TV/”fun”, essentially. Really, read that excerpt and read some of the comments on it.

I’m neither Chinese nor a parent, and I have to say I actually agreed with a lot of Chua says in her book. Perhaps her methods are extreme (threatening to burn her daughter’s stuffed animals if she refuses to practice her instrument, for example), but I also think school and music are very important. Fun isn’t unimportant, don’t get me wrong, but it shouldn’t come at the detriment of learning. Learning can be fun!

Amy Chua doesn’t like the idea of self-esteem very much. She says in her book, “Western parents are concerned about their children’s psyches. Chinese parents aren’t. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently. […] Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them.”

I had a chat with my own mama last night about “self-esteem”. My parents always expected the best of me, so I expected (expect!) the best of me, too. Telling a child she’s “good enough” (whether it’s at math, soccer, violin, …) when she’s not is just setting her up for failure later in life, or at least mediocrity. Why bother trying to improve when you’re already “good enough”?

On an almost completely unrelated note, this is the second book in a row I’ve read where the protagonist is a lawyer and law professor who went into that career because she felt like she “should”. As someone who works with (read: for) lawyers and was half-thinking about law school, it makes you stop and re-consider.

Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight by M.E. Thomas (2013)

I actually finished this book last week, but it’s been stewing in my brain for a while… I described it to a friend as “more interesting than good”, but now I think maybe I was just being judgemental.

I always like reading get-inside-my-head type stories, but I was uncomfortable inside this person’s head. (M.E. Thomas is a pseudonym; she gave a lot of details about herself without any of them being too specific. I wonder if anyone who read this knew her and figured out who she was?) I like to think I’m a nice person, but some of the things the author said and did were not so dissimilar from myself. And since sociopaths or psychopaths are supposed to be the worst of the worst (rapists, murderers, liars, thieves, …) this was unnerving.

But I think this is exactly M.E.’s point — how different are we all, really? I mean, the first chapter is called “I’m a Sociopath and So Are You”. Everything and everyone is on a spectrum; it’s just that most of us think we’re on the ‘good’ end, while people like her are on the bad end. But then she describes her life as a powerful lawyer and a law professor, and tells stories that illustrate how much she really does love her nieces and nephews, and you think, huh. Maybe she’s not so bad, and maybe I’m not so good.

This is the forum for sociopaths on M.E. Thomas’s blog that she started back in 2008, before she wrote this book.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (2001)

The version I read had a “Pulitzer Prize nominee” sticker on the cover. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This book — you’ll notice I’ve categorized it as both fiction and non — is a memoir-ish account of the few years in the author’s life after both his parents die of cancer and he’s left to take care of his younger brother. Not something I could imagine dealing with in my early twenties, but he handles it as well as he can.

The writing is almost like poetry. Some sections are basically stream-of-consciousness, and others juxtapose different events in his life by jumping back and forth between scenes. Sometimes these two styles are combined for effect: as, for example, he’s making out with an old high school friend, he’s also describing how he visited the anatomy department of a med school to try to find out what happened to his father’s donated corpse. Unsettling, but effective.

The author is very self-aware (or self-conscious), and much of the book is describing what he’s thinking, or what he thinks about what he’s thinking. It gets a bit ‘meta’ that way, but that’s kind of fun, since you get to be in the author’s head. Sometimes it’s meta to the point of being funny, like when his brother (in his early teens at the time) delivers a huge, sophisticated, philosophical monologue, mostly for narrative purposes, and Dave responds “Careful. You’re breaking character.”

For a book about an orphan taking care of another orphan, I didn’t find it sad. It actually had some funny parts. At the same time, I could feel how angry Dave was, how lost, how frustrated. I could picture him and his brother at the beach, showing off their frisbee skills, or Dave bringing a tiny teddy bear to his friend, who was in a coma. It was a vivid and well-written story.

And it has a prologue! What’s not to like?