Sexless in the City by Anna Broadway

Synopsis:
The misadventures of a hapless twenty-something woman whose greatest fear is that she will die a virgin, and whose second greatest fear is that she’ll have sex before marriage.

Review:
I’ll let you know up front that there’s no way that I can be objective about Sexless in the City, because Anna Broadway met the woman who bought her book in my very living room. (Yes, I am Blogyenta, formerly known as Girlfriend #6.)

Reading Anna’s book was like sitting down to have a good long talk. We used to do this all the time, but then she decided that she could no longer resist the call to California, and off she went. Thankfully she’s great about keeping in touch, and made sure to come and meet Superfast Baby when she was in town a few months ago. Anna’d also honored me be asking my opinion on many a key section of the book, so there wasn’t much that was unfamiliar to me. Knowing how hard she fought to tell the truth, even when it painted her in a less than flattering light, I’m pleased to see that the end result is something of which she can be truly proud.

So congratulations, Anna! We miss you *kiss*

Sexless in the City–Win a Free Copy!

My dear friend Anna Broadway‘s book Sexless in the City is coming out on Tuesday, April 15th.

I’m so thrilled for Anna, who met the editor who bought her book in my very living room! I’ve read some sections of it and it’s just great.

So how do you win a copy? Easy–just blog about it. Mention the soundtrack and get a second entry.

Even if you don’t win, I hope you’ll check this book out.

Come Along With Me by Shirley Jackson

Synopsis:
Short stories, essays, and an unfinished novel by Shirley Jackson, queen of American Gothic and author of “The Lottery.”

Review:
My love for Shirley Jackson has been well documented in this blog, so I was delighted when my husband got me Come Along With Me for my birthday.

The collection opens with “Come Along With Me,” the novel that Jackson was working on when she died at the untimely age of 44. At about 33 pages, there isn’t much of a narrative, just a character study of an eccentric woman, drawn with Jackson’s signature idiosyncratic touch. It’s disappointing that she never completed the novel, because this fragment shows signs of being as complex and rich a work as the puzzling Hangsaman, my favorite of Jackson’s novels.

The stories that follow aren’t, in my opinion, as masterful as those found in The Lottery and Other Stories, but they’re still worth reading. My favorite was “The Bus,” where an elderly woman takes a bus ride into “Twilight Zone” territory. It’s terse and terrifying without being overstated.

Closing the collection are two lectures on writing and an essay on “The Lottery,” Jackson’s most famous short story, in which she discusses the spectrum of reactions to the story. The essays on writing are inspirational in a folksy sort of way, and offer great practical advice on story construction and harnessing the creative process. I will absolutely be rereading these.

Last Night in Paradise by Katie Roiphe

Synopsis:
A look at sexual mores in the age of AIDS.

Review:
I like a good polemic as much as the next person, particularly when it involves people having lots of sex, mostly because I always feel like that’s nice work if you can get it. Last Night in Paradise isn’t hard-hitting investigative journalism as much as it’s an apologia for all the sex that Roiphe and her friends had in the 80s and 90s: “look, we may have slept around but we are always scared we got AIDS, so that doesn’t make us sleazy like swingers in the 1970s.” Roiphe herself calls this a kind of Puritanism, yet she succumbs to it in almost every chapter, talking about how she herself worries that she’s slept with too many people, or wondering whether or not she and her friends can handle the emotional ramifications of all that “safer sex.” She never quite seems to leave the Upper East Side private school world that she herself came from, and tends to see her experiences as representative of the general population. Her astonishment that anyone would voluntarily choose abstinence belies her inability to consider that there are other perspectives on sex than her own. Continue reading

On the Death of My Father by Brian J. Martin

Synopsis:
The death of Brian Martin’s father by suicide prompted him to reflect on his own spiritual journey and battle with depression. Continue reading

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More, Now, Again by Elizabeth Wurtzel

Synopsis:
A memoir about a writer’s descent into Ritalin and cocaine addiction while working on the not-supposed-to-be-about-her follow up to her best-selling first memoir.

Review:
If I could dare to face my obsession with Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation, I would still not go into therapy because any cure for Wurtzelmania would ruin my taste for things like “Real World: Reunited” and Lindsay Lohan gossip, and I’m just not ready to give up all of my guilty pleasures. Continue reading

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On Becoming Fearless by Arianna Huffington

My review of Arianna Huffington’s On Becoming Fearless… in Love, Work, and Life appeared on BlogCritics today. I usually don’t read books like this, but it actually wasn’t terrible.

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This House of Sky by Ivan Doig

Synopsis:
A memoir of Ivan Doig’s childhood in western Montana, wrangling sheep and falling in love with words in the company of his father and maternal grandmother.

Review:
This House of Sky was given to me by my very good friend Karen. She and I have been trading books for as long as we’ve known each other, and I always know that she’ll give me something worth reading. Continue reading

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Fingers Crossed, Legs Uncrossed by Jen Limarzi

Synopsis:
A collection of essays by a bemused New York woman whose life might not be “Sex and the City” glamorous–but whose observations are “Seinfeld” acute. Continue reading

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Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl

Synopsis:
A memoir of a young schizophrenic woman, with a subsequent interpretation of her symptoms by her doctor, Marguerite Sechehaye. Continue reading

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