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Category Archives: Nonfiction – General
Thoughts on James B. Woulfe’s Into the Crucible: Making Marines for the 21st Century (by Bethany)
This isn’t the sort of book that I can in good conscience “review.” I read it because a brief but important scene in the novel I’m writing takes place during the Marine Corps training exercise called “the Crucible,” and I … Continue reading
And now for something entirely different…. My Review of Jen Lancaster’s The Tao of Martha (by Jill)
As I’ve been reading Jen’s latest memoir this week, I realized that I’ve read a pretty big variety of books so far this year, from popular teen literature to a Man Booker Prize winner. What’s been absent has been nonfiction, … Continue reading
French Women Don’t Read Self-Help Books: Introducing a Mini-Marathon
I’ve had some job interviews in my life lately, bringing with them the attendant excitement and stress (and also the attendant stress eating and insomnia). I’m enjoying The Buried Giant (and will finish it tomorrow, I promise!), but when I … Continue reading
A Review of Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures (by Bethany)
This book was everywhere for a while. I know that I resisted its pull for a long time before I bought a copy. I was intrigued, but this was maybe 10-12 years ago and I knew myself to be very … Continue reading
Thoughts on A.H. Jones’ Constantine and the Conversion of Europe (by Bethany)
About 75 pages of this book were assigned for one of the MOOC’s I’m taking, and since I’m a bit of an overachiever (at least in College Education 2.0 I’m an overachiever; in the first go-round not so much), I … Continue reading
A Review of Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face (by Bethany)
Once again I’ve violated my rule about not reading books about dying children. In Lucy Grealy’s extremely well-written memoir Autobiography of a Face, the part that actually involves a dying child isn’t even the bleakest part of Grealy’s story. This … Continue reading
A Review of Emmanuel Guibert’s How the World Was: A California Childhood (by Bethany)
Emmanuel Guibert’s How the World Was: A California Childhood is only the second graphic novel I have ever read. The first was Marjane Satrapi’s The Complete Persepolis. I loved it, and I remember that I was sort of shell-shocked when … Continue reading
A Review of Richard Rodriguez’s Days of Obligation: An Argument with my Mexican Father (by Bethany)
Richard Rodriguez’s memoir Hunger of Memory has been a favorite of mine ever since I first read it as a freshman in college. The American-born son of Mexican immigrants, Rodriguez wrote in that book about juggling two cultures: the close-knit, … Continue reading
A Review of Susanna Kaysen’s Cambridge (by Bethany)
Through no conscious design of my own, I appear to have been reading a lot of books lately that walk the shifting line between memoir and autobiographical fiction. I am aware, of course, that to a writer of either of … Continue reading
Thoughts on Richard Wright’s Black Boy (by Bethany)
Over the last month or so I have sent myself back to school, thanks to the wonders of the internet and the Yale Open Courses program. If you’re the type (like me) who sometimes misses the academic atmosphere of college … Continue reading
Postcards From Purgatory 