As usual, skip it if you wanna.
1. All Souls: A Family Story from Southie by Michael Patrick MacDonald – Memoir of a family living in poverty in South Boston in the seventies and eighties. Interesting and very good.
2. Bus Fare to Kentucky: The Autobiography of Skeeter Davis. Life of a country music star – interesting. Oh, and here’s a question: What’s the difference between an autobiography and a memoir? Just curious.
Let’s do a movie review! “The Help”. Meh.
3. We the Animals by Justin Torres – Novella about young brothers growing up. Very good until the end, which I didn’t like.
4. Creeker by Linda Scott DeRosier – Memoir (or maybe autobiography? I DON’T KNOW) about growing up in Appalachia in the sixties – interesting.
5. Songs in Ordinary Time by Mary McGarry Morris – this was a huge book about a small town in Vermont in the early sixties. I basically hated all the main characters but couldn’t wait to find out what happened to them – I was hoping that the townspeople all banded together and beat Omar to death but – SPOILER ALERT – that didn’t happen. BOO. The book just kind of … stopped … which pissed me off.
6. A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard – Autobiography (memoir?) about the woman in California who was abducted as an eleven-year-old and help captive for eighteen years. WHOA. An uplifting, scary, and heartbreaking story.
And right now I am reading "The Road", which has got to be the most depressing book ever in the history of time. If there's a book more depressing than this one, I'd be surprised. I mean, I've read some of Mr. McCarthy's other stuff, so I knew it wasn't going to be a romantic comedy, but STILL ... honestly not sure I'm going to be able to finish it as this point.
How about you guys? Whatcha reading?
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6 comments:
Regencies, regencies, regencies.
Oh, I tried the Kindle "sample" of "50 Shades of Grey." It's absolute crap. Crap, I say, crap. If you want to get it on with some real BDSM all you need are the "Beauty" stories and "The Story of O". Please, gurlfren.
I got sucked into the Hunger Games trilogy and really liked it.
For movies, try "Winter's Bone". It isn't exactly a toe tapping good time, but if you're interested in Hunger Games, it shows you how the girl who plays the lead in here got cast as the heroine in Hunger Games.
La la la.
I think a memoir is written in a way that the author remembers his or her life whereas an autobiography is based on facts. I think. Don't quote me.
I am glad now I did not buy The Road. I am tired of depressing books.
"An autobiography focuses on the chronology of the writer’s entire life while a memoir covers one specific aspect of the writer’s life. So, if I chose to write about my complete life up to this point—including growing up in Cincinnati, my time in New York, the few years I spent in Chicago and eventually landing at Writer’s Digest—I’d write an autobiography. If wrote a book about the winter of my sophomore year in high school where I got my tongue stuck to an icy pole, I’d write a memoir." FROM www.writersdigest.com, probably an authoritative source.
Yeah, "The Help" movie was pretty meh. Luckily, I had read the book first. It was good. If I'd seen the movie first, I'd never have read the book.
"The Road" is loaded with symbolism. It takes at least two readings to get it. Don't read it as a story, read it as an allegory.
I read several books at once, scattered around the house and car. Current crop: Andrea Moore-Emmett's "God's Brothel", about Mormon and Christian fundamentalist polygamy; Noam Chomsky's "9-11 Was There an Alternative?"; Sonia Faleiro's "Beautiful Thing - Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars"; Susan Travers' "Tomorrow to be Brave", the memoir of the only woman ever to serve in the French Foreign Legion.
Becs, I read and saw "Winter's Bone". I didn't know that the same girl was in both movies. I usually give YA a pretty wide berth, but I might try reading "The Hunger Games." It seems reminiscent of a couple of King/Bachman books - "The Running Man" and "The Long Walk."
and Birdie, yeah, you might want to stay away from The Road. I'm sorry that I started it.
Thanks for the autobiography/memoir definition, ~~Silk, although I'm sure I'll still get the two terms mixed up! and it sounds like you're reading some interesting stuff.
and Oh My GOD I can FINALLY access Blogger from my own computer again! All it took was a total system reboot, right down to where the cable comes into the building. Damn!
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