Memoir Mondays... In Stitches by Anthony Youn, M.D.

In Stitches by Anthony Youn, M.D. ....Scrubs meets David Sedaris in this hilarious fish-out-of-water memoir about a young Korean-American nerd turned renowned plastic surgeon.

Dr. Tony Youn grew up one of two Asian-American kids in a small town where diversity was uncommon. Too tall and too thin, he wore thick Coke-bottle glasses, braces, Hannibal Lecter headgear, and had a protruding jaw that one day began to grow, expanding to an unthinkable, monstrous size. After high school graduation, while other seniors partied at the beach or explored Europe, Youn lay strapped in an oral surgeon’s chair where he underwent a life-changing jaw reconstruction. Ironically, it was this brutal makeover that led him to his life’s calling, and he continued on to endure the four horrific, hilarious, sex-starved, and tension-filled years that eventually earned him an M.D. Offering a window into a side of medicine that most people never see, Youn shares his bumpy journey from a shy, skinny, awkward nerd into a renowned and successful plastic surgeon.

Now, Youn is the media’s go-to plastic surgeon. He appears regularly on The Rachael Ray Show, and his blog, Celebrity Cosmetic Surgery, is widely read and very popular. But it was a long road to success, and In Stitches recounts Dr. Youn’s misfit adolescence and his four tumultuous years in medical school with striking wit, heart, and humility.

For anyone who has ever experienced the awkward teenage years, who has struggled to find his or her way in college, who has been worried that their “calling” would never come, who wants to believe that their doctor really cares, or is just ready for a read that will make you laugh and cry at the same time, this book is for you.

Medical school, plastic surgery, memoir? I had read a little about this book and thought it might be interesting. Who wouldn't be curious at least a little about going to medical school. But what really sold me on this book was Dr. Anthony Youn's YouTube video. His good humor and wit just shines through the almost 4 minutes of book trailer, and I knew then that this would be one enjoyable and funny read! A coming of age kind of story with a scalpel. Since my first reading about In Stitches by Dr. Anthony Youn, I've read quite a few great reviews too! Thanks to the folks at Simon & Schuster, I now have my very own reading copy! So, keep your eyes peeled for my review coming soon! In the meantime, check out Dr. Anthony Youn's YouTube book trailer, and see what you think...

Memoir Monday presents... My Korean Deli by Ben Ryder Howe

My Korean Deli : Risking It All For A Convenience Store by Ben Ryder Howe... "It starts with a gift, when Ben Ryder Howe's wife, the daughter of Korean immigrants, decides to repay her parents' self-sacrifice by buying them a store. Howe, an editor at the rarefied Paris Review, agrees to go along. Things soon become a lot more complicated. After the business struggles, Howe finds himself living in the basement of his in-laws' Staten Island home, commuting to the Paris Review offices in George Plimpton's Upper East Side townhouse by day, and heading to Brooklyn at night to slice cold cuts and peddle lottery tickets. My Korean Deli follows the store's tumultuous life span, and along the way paints the portrait of an extremely unlikely partnership between characters with shoots across society, from the Brooklyn streets to Seoul to Puritan New England. Owning the deli becomes a transformative experience for everyone involved as they struggle to salvage the original gift—and the family—while sorting out issues of values, work, and identity."

I read the review of this book in the New York Times Book Review last Sunday, I knew I had to blog about it for Memoir Monday. This sounds like a fantastic read! Not simply because of the unlikely ownership of the Deli by Ben Ryder Howe who is a senior editor for one of my favorite literary magazines, The Paris Review, but because of the flavorful characters that we are promised to meet along our reading journey. Corby Kummer, who reviewed My Korean Deli by Ben Ryder Howe for the New York Times Book Review on Sunday March 2o, 2011, points out that this memoir "places careful, loving attention squarely on other people rather than the author." And goes on to say that it's "a rollicking, made-for-the-movies story in a wonderfully funny deadpan style." This all adds up to a book worth reading to me! It was published earlier this month by Henry Holt and Co. And is available for Kindle too!

Memoir Monday... TLC Virtual Book Tour Stop for Radio Shangri-La by Lisa Napoli

Radio Shangri-La by Lisa Napoli

When Napoli met the handsome Sebastian at a cookbook party in New York City, she was intrigued by this man who traveled to Bhutan regularly. And when the accomplished L.A.-based journalist (MSNBC, CNN, public radio’s Marketplace) researched the country about which he spoke so enthusiastically, she became entranced with Bhutan, a tiny Himalayan kingdom that sits between India and China.

This country–dubbed “the happiest on earth” because of its focus on environmental and social progress–is hard to get to, with its remote location and governmental deterrents to tourism, like a per-person, per-day tourist tax. But a friend of Sebastian’s needs help with startup radio station Kuzoo FM, so Napoli leaves L.A. and goes to Bhutan for six weeks. She writes, “After more than two decades of reducing even the most complex issues to 1,000 words or less, I was tired of observing life from a distance.” While the author turns an eye on her own motivations (nothing further developed with Sebastian), she refrains from tortured navel-gazing and instead shares and reflects on Bhutan’s people, history, and customs (from painting phalluses on houses to repel evil spirits to Buddhism’s role in daily life). Napoli’s adventures at home and abroad, in nature and career and spirit, will delight readers.

What Did I Think? I became totally absorbed in reading Lisa Napoli's "travel diary"! Lisa's writing is great and as you turn the pages reading, it almost feels like you are right next to Lisa on that plane flying to Bhutan. But what really drew me in was how she got to that point... disillusioned with the fast paced world around her, unhappy and seeking answers at "happy therapy", and questioning her life as she knew it with the "what ifs" we all do every now & then, Lisa just seemed like a lot of people I know. I wanted to know how was she going to get past all of that?! Meeting a handsome stranger who would change all that was like something out of a harlequin romance - I guess fantasies do come true sometimes! But this just made it even more addictive to read. But meeting a country, that was what Lisa was going to introduce me to... and her book, Radio Shangri-La, is about Bhutan, friendships, traditions and change. Ultimately Lisa was charged with helping a small "untouched" country bring a bit of the 21st century to the airwaves, but her tripped proved to be so much more than "business as usual" at the radio station. I would recommend Radio Shangri-La to people who enjoy reading about far off places, because Lisa does a great job of bringing Bhutan to life- the cultural differences, the sweeping landscape and the people themselves. But Radio Shangri-La is also inspirational as Lisa found a piece of happiness for herself as she struggled to take a step back and really connect with the world around her. Loved this book!

A Little About Lisa... When Lisa Napoli found herself unhappy with her work in the fast-paced U.S. media world, she volunteered to help start Bhutan’s first youth-oriented radio station. Bhutan is a small kingdom in the Himalayas, home to 650,000 residents, most of whom make their living as subsistence farmers. The nation has experienced rapid change in the past forty years, becoming a democracy in 2008 after a century of monarchy. In her time in Bhutan, Napoli learned more about the people, history and culture of the “last Buddhist kingdom” and the “happiest kingdom on Earth,” and she also learned quite a bit about herself. She’s sharing those lessons in her new book, Radio Shangri-la: What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth. Earlier in her career, Lisa was the Internet correspondent for MSNBC, a columnist for MSNBC.com, and the first staff reporter/columnist at the NY Times Cybertimes, now defunct. She’s also worked at a division of the home shopping channel QVC, in craft services for the horror film Hellraiser 3, and in public relations for Summit House, an alternative to prison for women and their kids in Greensboro, North Carolina. She began her career at CNN in 1984.

I want to thank Lisa from TLC Book Tours for inviting me to part of the Virtual Book Tour for Radio Shangri-La by Lisa Napoli! What a treat reading this memoir was!

Memoir Monday presents... Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer

The image in my head when I read the title of Joshua Foer's debut novel was quite funny. And that was the point, not for me, but for Joshua Foer as he learned to memorize a deck of cards, using that image in his head. In Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer, we learn the history, fascinating facts and what it takes to remember things as we follow Joshua on his journey to the U.S. Memory Championships. Here's what it's all about...

Foer's unlikely journey from chronically forgetful science journalist to U.S. Memory Champion frames a revelatory exploration of the vast, hidden impact of memory on every aspect of our lives.

On average, people squander forty days annually compensating for things they've forgotten. Joshua Foer used to be one of those people. But after a year of memory training, he found himself in the finals of the U.S. Memory Championship. Even more important, Foer found a vital truth we too often forget: In every way that matters, we are the sum of our memories.

Moonwalking with Einstein draws on cutting-edge research, a surprising cultural history of memory, and venerable tricks of the mentalist's trade to transform our understanding of human remembering. Under the tutelage of top "mental athletes," he learns ancient techniques once employed by Cicero to memorize his speeches and by Medieval scholars to memorize entire books. Using methods that have been largely forgotten, Foer discovers that we can all dramatically improve our memories.

Immersing himself obsessively in a quirky subculture of competitive memorizers, Foer learns to apply techniques that call on imagination as much as determination-showing that memorization can be anything but rote. From the PAO system, which converts numbers into lurid images, to the memory palace, in which memories are stored in the rooms of imaginary structures, Foer's experience shows that the World Memory Championships are less a test of memory than of perseverance and creativity.

Foer takes his inquiry well beyond the arena of mental athletes-across the country and deep into his own mind. In San Diego, he meets an affable old man with one of the most severe case of amnesia on record, where he learns that memory is at once more elusive and more reliable than we might think. In Salt Lake City, he swaps secrets with a savant who claims to have memorized more than nine thousand books. At a high school in the South Bronx, he finds a history teacher using twenty- five-hundred-year-old memory techniques to give his students an edge in the state Regents exam.

At a time when electronic devices have all but rendered our individual memories obsolete, Foer's bid to resurrect the forgotten art of remembering becomes an urgent quest. Moonwalking with Einstein brings Joshua Foer to the apex of the U.S. Memory Championship and readers to a profound appreciation of a gift we all possess but that too often slips our minds.

If only I could learn to memorize where I left my keys! Seriously though, this book sounds so interesting. Memories are something we all have, and it's interesting to read how our ability to remember, or memorize, is not necessarily a gift but a technique we can all learn. This book has gotten a lot of praise for being "entertaining", "captivating" and "original", and from the sounds of the reviewers, Joshua Foer takes what could have been a dry look at how he "did it", that is winning the U.S. Memory Championship and all the history behind memorization, and created a great piece of science writing that disguises itself as just a trip down memory lane.

*This Book is Kindle Ready! And available for your Nook and Sony eReaders too!

Memoir Monday... The Reluctant Tuscan by Phil Doran

Memoir and part travelogue, The Reluctant Tuscan written by Phil Doran will have you laughing out loud. What happens when the wife of a Hollywood writer buys a house in Tuscany that needs a bit of repair? And what if that house is in a small village filled with eccentric characters such as the neighbor lady that puts "the evil eye" on Phil and his wife Nancy? You get a hilarious slice of life in an Italian village that if you didn't know it were a true story you'd think it was a piece of great fiction!

Nancy is a marble sculptor married to Phil, an aging Hollywood writer. To help her husband escape the rat race and fast paced life in L.A., Nancy buys a run down farmhouse that she thinks will be the answer to their need for a new life. Something that will save both Phil's life and their marriage. What Phil finds as he arrives in Italy, is a crumbling stone house unfit to live in and with no road to even get to it. As Phil and Nancy navigate the ancient & unspoken laws of small town life in Italy, turning neighbors into friends, you will meet some of the most interesting people, imagine the most beautiful landscapes and laugh at the things Phil & Nancy must do to "fit in", part of which will be discovering their "inner Italian". Phil Doran's writing is terrific and I'm glad he turned his pen towards his life in Italy. The book is entertaining, amusing and just plain fun.

If you ever wanted to visit Italy, if you ever thought about renovating a house, and if you ever wanted to know what "extra virgin" olive oil really was, pick up The Reluctant Tuscan. Food, family and a sense of belonging are what you'll walk away with!

Memoir Monday... Day of Honey by Annia Ciezadlo

The cover photo captured my heart, of an innocent child, happy and smiling even though the world around her is hard to understand sometimes. In a Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love and War, author Annia Ciezadlo tries to make sense of it all for us as she opens up a window into a world usually hidden to outsiders.

From Inside the Jacket... In the fall of 2003, Annia Ciezadlo spent her honeymoon in Baghdad. Over the next six years, while living in Baghdad and Beirut, she broke bread with Shiites and Sunnis, warlords and refugees, matriarchs and mullahs. Day of Honey is her memoir of love, conglict and the hunger for food and friendship - a communion that feeds the soul as much as the body in times of war. As an American journalist married to a Lebanese man, she had an insider's view of these turbulent years, and she takes us inside the everyday life of two cities at war.

Living and reporting from occupied Baghdad, Ciezadlo longs for normal married life. She finds it in Beirut, her husband's hometown, a city slowly recovering from years of civil war. But as the young couple settles into their new home, and begins to discover the pleasures of food and family, the bloodshe they escaped in Iraq spreads to Lebanon and reawakens the terrible specter of sectarian violence. In lucid, fiercely intelligent prose, Ciezadlo uses food and rituals of eating to illuminate a vibrant Middle East that most Americans never see.

A luminous portrait of life in the Middle East, Day of Honey weaves history, cuisine and firsthand reporting into a fearless, intimate exploration of everyday survival.

I am so looking forward to reading this book! Just from sampling the writing, I know I'm in for a treat as Ciezadlo gives us a different view of war - from the everyday lives of the people she lived with and got to know, sharing their rituals and foods with us! (Yes, there are these wonderful recipes in the back of the book- actually pages and pages of them!) Sharing with us how they deal with the chaos around them while living as normal a life as possible.

I want to thank Free Press and Simon & Schuster for sending along a review copy! Look for my review next month. If you'd like to read this right now, Day of Honey by Annia Ciezadlo is available from your favorite bookstore! *P.S. This Book is Kindle Ready!

Celebrating Memoir Monday and My 2nd Blogiversary!

Memoir Mondays... A long long time ago, actually in Sept. 2009, I decided that there were so many great memoirs coming into my hands that I would do a weekly feature. That feature became Memoir Mondays and almost every monday since, I've reviewed, highlighted and chatted about memoirs. Last year there seemed to be an explosion of celebrity memoirs, and we've had our share of furry and four legged memoirs, not to mention the memoir of a Goldfish last year too! But no matter whose memoir, there was always that something that resonated with us... something we had in common, or a feeling we could share that made us want to open up that book, or take a better look at, and discover someone else's story, that may not be so far from our own. What makes you pick up that memoir? Why do you enjoy reading about the life of someone else?

This week is the week of my 2nd Blogiversary! (You probably knew that already!), and today to celebrate I'm giving you a chance to take a deeper look at one of those memoirs! Today I'm giving away any one of the memoirs I've highlighted or reviewed in the past year since my last Blogiversary to one lucky reader! Which memoir will you choose if you win?! Maybe something with Wild Snails? Or Birds? Or a girl dressed in orange? Come join in the fun! Enter the Memoir Monday Giveaway by filling out the form below! And since this is all about memoirs, tell me why you like reading them! *Remember, all the information I receive is private and for my eyes only. Here's all the particulars...

To Enter the Memoir Monday Giveaway...

* First, take a look at all the memoirs I highlighted on a Memoir Monday from Feb. 18th, 2010 - Feb. 14th, 2011. You can find those Memoir Monday posts by going to the Blog Archive in my sidebar on the left of the blog and clicking on a year or a month and looking through the Memoir Monday posts. *remember the book needs to be from a Memoir Monday post...

* Fill out the form below with your name, email, and answer why you like reading memoirs, plus your mailing address so I know where to send the book if you are chosen as the lucky winner.

* Anyone can join in on the fun as long as I can mail a book to you using the US Postal Service, or for International Participants, The Book Depository can mail you a book.

*This Giveaway will end February 28, 2011 at 11:59 pm EST. I will randomly pick a winner the next day. Good luck!

Memoir Monday presents... House of Prayer No. 2 by Mark Richard

Called a "special child," Southern social code for mentally — and physically — challenged children, Richard was crippled by deformed hips and was told he would spend his adult life in a wheelchair. During his early years in charity hospitals, Richard observed the drama of other broken boys' lives, children from impoverished Appalachia, tobacco country lowlands, and Richmond’s poorest neighborhoods. The son of a solitary alcoholic father whose hair-trigger temper terrorized his family, and of a mother who sought inner peace through fasting, prayer, and scripture, Richard spent his bedridden childhood withdrawn into the company of books.

As a young man, Richard, defying both his doctors and parents, set out to experience as much of the world as he could — as a disc jockey, fishing trawler deckhand, house painter, naval correspondent, aerial photographer, private investigator, foreign journalist, bartender and unsuccessful seminarian — before his hips failed him. While digging irrigation ditches in east Texas, he discovered that a teacher had sent a story of his to the Atlantic, where it was named a winner in the magazine's national fiction contest launching a career much in the mold of Jack London and Mark Twain.

A superbly written and irresistible blend of history, travelogue, and personal reflection, House of Prayer No. 2 is a remarkable portrait of a writer’s struggle with his faith, the evolution of his art, and of recognizing one's singularity in the face of painful disability. Written with humor and a poetic force, this memoir is destined to become a modern classic.

Mark Richard sounds like an amazing person, overcoming not only the stigma of being called "special", and not in a good way, but his physical handicaps as well. This story sounds inspiring, and with all the buzz surrounding this memoir, especially about Mark's wonderful prose, I'm looking forward to devouring this one. House of Prayer No. 2 is being released tomorrow! But you can find Mark Richard's writing already on your bookstores shelves! He's written numerous books as well as winning numerous writing awards including the PEN/Hemingway Award for his short story collection The Ice at the Bottom of the World.

Memoir Monday... The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok

My first impression of The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok was "here we go again". Another memoir about living with a schizophrenic mother, etc., etc. But then the reviews started coming in fast and furious about this book. Hmmm, maybe I need take another closer look at this one... Here's what Publisher's Weekly wrote about The Memory Palace:

"This moving, compassionately candid memoir by artist and children's book author Bartok describes a life dominated by her gifted but schizophrenic mother. Bartók and her sister, Rachel, both of whom grew up in Cleveland, are abandoned by their novelist father and go to live with their mother at their maternal grandparents home. By 1990, a confrontation in which her mother cuts her with broken glass leads Bartók (née Myra Herr) to change her identity and flee the woman she calls the cry of madness in the dark. Eventually, the estrangement leaves her mother homeless, wandering with her belongings in a knapsack, writing letters to her daughter's post office box. Reunited 17 years later, Bartók is suffering memory loss from an accident; her mother is 80 years old and dying from stomach cancer. Only through memories do they each find solace for their collective journey. Using a mnemonic technique from the Renaissance—a memory palace—Bartók imagines, chapter by chapter, a mansion whose rooms secure the treasured moments of her reconstructed past. With a key found stashed in her mother's knapsack, she unlocks a rental storage room filled with paintings, diaries, and photos. Bartók turns these strangely parallel narratives and overlapping wonders into a haunting, almost patchwork, narrative that lyrically chronicles a complex mother-daughter relationship.

This sounds fascinating to me. Like a treasure chest of memories, Bartok constructs her memoir around these objects. And glancing through excerpts of Mira Bartok's book, I found some beautiful artwork along with her compelling prose. So, The Memory Palace is now on my wish list! Have you read this one yet?! Share your thoughts if you have, I'd love to hear what you thought of this!

Memoir Monday... Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton

I love "food" memoirs; memoirs that give us a little behind the scene look at the restaurant business, as in Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphire: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise or Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. So I was excited to receive in the mail recently an ARC (Advanced Reading Copy) of Blood, Bones and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton from Random House. Here's what the publishers have to say...

If you were to take the heartfelt food memories of Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone, mix them with the complex family relationships of Augusten Burroughs’s Running with Scissors, throw in a little of the behind-the-scenes revelations of Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, then strip the mixture down to its grittiest core, you’d get a sense of Gabrielle Hamilton’s new memoir BLOOD, BONES, AND BUTTER.

Before Hamilton opened her acclaimed New York City restaurant, Prune, she spent twenty fierce, hard-living years trying to find the purpose and meaning in her life. BLOOD, BONES, AND BUTTER recounts this unconventional journey through the many kitchens Hamilton inhabited. The result is an unflinching and lyrical work that marks the debut of a tremendous literary talent.

Hamilton will appeal to both foodies and literary audiences alike as she deliciously divulges her experiences in love, life, and food. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, GQ, Bon Appétit, Saveur, and Food & Wine. She also authored the eight-week “The Chef” column in The New York Times, and her work was anthologized in six volumes of Best Food Writing.

Just leafing through the book, I found Gabrielle Hamilton's writing to be compelling; easy to get lost in; enjoyable. And I'm really looking forward to sinking my teeth into Blood, Bones & Butter! This is the next course on my plate! Next month look for my full review...

Memoir Monday presents... Reading Lips: A Memoir of Kisses by Claudia Sternbach

A new memoir came my way from those wonderful people atUnbridled Books! It's Reading Lips: A Memoir of Kisses by Claudia Sternbach, where Claudia writes about "the kisses - platonic and romantic - that shaped her life." Thinking about it, don't we girls remember certain kisses in our life?! From the pulblisher...

Kisses, even the ones that don’t happen, can be the trace of what’s constant when life changes. In childhood, when what seems to define everything is competition—for style, for knowing, for experience—a kiss is the first first. When a girl’s father moves out and chooses a new family, a kiss on the head from him may be the trace of constancy that she wants most.

Later, such things take on a different flavor. Sometimes the kiss she wants doesn’t come. Sometimes the one she wouldn’t have is forced upon her. From time to time, the one she has kissed before is lost to her.

Some kisses are final. When things are most hectic a kiss can be a celebration. And when circumstances grow threatening—to a woman, her family, her sister—a kiss becomes the reassertion of the most vital connections.

The rich story in these essays rings with good humor and with moving wistfulness. Throughout, Sternbach maintains a perfect balance between them as her story moves from the bittersweet desires of childhood on through loss and love.

Reading Lips is the tale of one woman who is just trying to get life right.

Reading Lips: A Memoir of Kisses by Claudia Sternbach will be published this coming April. It's already gotten some great pre-publication praise for Claudia's writing. Look for my review coming in February!

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami... a Review

What an amazing memoir, but not quite a memoir! What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is the memoir of Japanese author Haruki Murakami. But even Murakami admits that it's not a "traditional" memoir, and in fact his original concept was to publish it as a book of essays. The story has its roots in Murakami's training for the New York City Marathon, but what makes this story so interesting is his veering off the track to share thoughts about his life, career, his childhood, music, and love. He reflects on living in Boston and Hawaii. He shares his views of the world around him, and in doing he innocently gives the reader food for fodder for our own lives. And all cleverly linked together by his training.

"Once you set the pace, the rest will follow. The problem is getting the flywheel to spin at a set speed - and to get to that point takes as much concentration and effort as you can imagine."

What's particularly interesting to me is the insights he gives on writing and the origins of his writing. Not knowing much about Murakami except for his being a brilliantly popular writer, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running really let me get to know the man behind the writing. The bar owner turned writer, who loves to run even though his aging body is slowing down. And even a book "about running" in the hands of Haruki Murakami is beautifully written. It's inspiring, it's humbling.

"Sometimes when I think of life, I feel like a piece of driftwood washed up on shore."

I listened to the audiobook of What I Talk About When I Talk About Running as part of the Haruki Murakami Reading Challenge, which includes listening to audiobooks. But I enjoyed the story so much I intend to buy a copy of the book! The audiobook itself is a little over 4 hours, and is narrated by Shakespearean actor Ray Porter, who has an extensive audiobook background. Although the voice of the narrator is pleasing, at first I was a little taken aback, because I really expected a different type of voice to represent Murakami, but I slowly got use to Mr. Porter, who did a great job with all the subtleties of sharing the story with us.

I would definitely recommend What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami to any runner or athlete, because it's a wonderful love story to the hard work of training for any event, but it's also a love story of living. There are so many other reasons to praise this book- it's inspiring, it's beautifully written, it's a great way to get to know the man behind the wildly popular books you can find in any bookstore. I loved it for all those reasons. And, if I could I would put on a pair of running shoes right now and go out running!

Memoir Monday... A Widow's Story by Joyce Carol Oates

Funny, how you can know an author by name but never read her before. That's exactly what I realized when I received a copy of Joyce Carol Oates memoir in the mail from HarperCollins. I was familiar with the author by name, but I couldn't say I ever read anything by her. A Widow's Story by Joyce Carol Oates is the intimate story of the unexpected death of the author's husband and the aftermath. Here's the blurb from the publisher...

“My husband died, my life collapsed.”

On a February morning in 2008, Joyce Carol Oates drove her ailing husband, Raymond Smith, to the emergency room of the Princeton Medical Center where he was diagnosed with pneumonia. Both Joyce and Ray expected him to be released in a day or two. But in less than a week, even as Joyce was preparing for his discharge, Ray was dead from a hospital-acquired virulent infection and Joyce was suddenly faced—totally unprepared—with the stunning reality of widowhood.

A Widow’s Story illuminates one woman's struggle to comprehend a life absent of the partnership that had sustained and defined her for nearly half a century. As never before, Joyce Carol Oates shares the derangement of denial, the anguish of loss, the disorientation of the survivor amid a nightmare of "death duties," and the solace of friendship. She writes unflinchingly of the experience of grief—the almost unbearable suspense of the hospital vigil, the treacherous "pools" of memory that surround us, the vocabulary of illness, the absurdities of commercialized forms of mourning. Here is a frank acknowledgement of the widow's desperation—only gradually yielding to the recognition that "this is my life now."

Can you say a book is beautifully written when it's written about the death of someone? I have not finished reading A Widow's Story, but just from what I've read so far I know one thing: I am going to read eveything I can get my hands on that Joyce Carol Oates has written. Her prose is lyrical. Her eye for detail in the everyday and her ability to breath life in those little things is one of her gifts. And with all that she has to endure, and I feel her pain so intensely, she still is able to demonstrate her morbid sense of humor.

Look for my review in the near future, but in the meantime make a note not to miss this book if you read memoirs, or enjoy reading women's fiction, because ultimately A Widow's Story is about the journey we must take when losing a spouse. Look for A Widow's Story at your local bookstore this coming Feb. 15th.

Memoir Monday... Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda

Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda

When thinking of Lawrence of Arabia, visions of a man in flowing white robes in a desert landscape will usually come to mind. But what of the real man? Of his real accomplishments? Michael Korda's book, Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia, has gotten high praise for illuminating this legendary man, T.E. Lawrence, a scholar and an archaeologist, who was sent to Cairo as a young man and helped unite the Arab tribes to defeat the Turks.

Michael Korda's Hero is the story of an epic life on a grand scale: a revealing, in-depth, and gripping biography of the extraordinary, mysterious, and dynamic Englishman whose daring exploits and romantic profile—including his blond, sun-burnished good looks and flowing white robes—made him an object of intense fascination, still famous the world over as "Lawrence of Arabia."... In illuminating Lawrence's achievements, Korda digs further than anyone before him to expose the flesh-and-blood man and his contradictory nature. Here was a born leader who was utterly fearless and seemingly impervious to pain, thirst, fatigue, and danger, yet who remained shy, sensitive, mod-est, and retiring; a hero who turned down every honor and decoration offered to him, and was racked by moral guilt and doubt; a scholar and an aesthete who was also a bold and ruthless warrior; a writer of genius—the author of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, one of the greatest books ever written about war—who was the virtual inventor of modern insurgency and guerrilla warfare; a man who at the same time sought and fled the limelight, and who found in friendships, with everyone from Winston Churchill to George Bernard and Charlotte Shaw, from Nancy Astor to Noël Coward, a substitute for sexual feelings that he rigorously—even brutally and systematically—repressed in himself.

For history buffs, as well as people who enjoy biographies, Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia, should satisfy. I myself am looking forward to diving into this one. Not only to really learn about T.E. Lawrence, but to understand the political atmosphere that existed in the Middle East during WW I.

Memoir Monday... Cold by Bill Streever

"It is July first and fifty-one degrees above zero. I stand poised on a gravel beach at the western edge of Prudhoe Bay, three hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle, and a mile of silt-laden water separated me from what is left of the ice. The Inupiat - the Eskimos - call in aunniq, rotten ice, sea ice broken into unconsolidated chunks of varying heights and widths, like a poorly made frozen jigsaw puzzle. A few days ago, the entire bay stood frozen. During winter, it is locked under six feet of ice. Trucks drive on it to resupply an offshore oil production facility. If one were insane, or if one were simply too cheap to fly, or if boredom instilled a spirit of adventure, one could walk north to the North Pole and then south to Norway or Finland or Russia. Temperatures would range below minus fifty degrees, not counting windchill." ... Opening lines of Cold by Bill Streever

Recently I was on the Sony site looking at the Sony Reader Pocket Edition, noticing that it is now discounted $30 through Christmas, and saw a video of a Martha Stewart segment of her TV show where she talked about what she was reading. Books I'm Reading is now a regular feature on her blog, and during this segment of her show she announced her new reading selection, which she reads on her Sony Pocket Edition, and it was Cold by Bill Streever. What better kind of book to read at the beginning of a cold snowy winter! (OK, maybe something called Warmth...) It sounded interesting and sure enough after checking it out of the library (remember that Philadelphia Library card I told you about for ebooks? Another great gift for the ebook reader you know), and beginning to read it I was hooked. I have not finished it yet, but I am really enjoying Bill Streever's writing. There's an easy flow, and like a favorite teacher who could make dirt interesting, Mr. Streever succeeds in making what could be a dry travelogue of experiences, so interesting. Here's the synopsis of the book...

From avalanches to glaciers, from seals to snowflakes, and from Shackleton's expedition to "The Year Without Summer," Bill Streever journeys through history, myth, geography, and ecology in a year-long search for cold—real, icy, 40-below cold. In July he finds it while taking a dip in a 35-degree Arctic swimming hole; in September while excavating our planet's ancient and not so ancient ice ages; and in October while exploring hibernation habits in animals, from humans to wood frogs to bears.

A scientist whose passion for cold runs red hot, Streever is a wondrous guide: he conjures woolly mammoth carcasses and the ice-age Clovis tribe from melting glaciers, and he evokes blizzards so wild readers may freeze—limb by vicarious limb.

If you'd like to read Cold by Bill Streever, right now it's $7.99 for your Kindle, Nook, or Sony eReader. And about that Philadelphia Library Card? Here's my original post about it, with links to find out more information. Remember, you are checking out ePub books, and that means Kindle owners are out of luck. And of course, Cold is also available in paperback or hardcover too!

Memoir Monday... Reading Jackie by William Kuhn

They say you can tell a lot about a person by the books she reads... How about the books she edits?! I have always admired Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis for her grace and style. She was a private person, but for the last two decades of her life, she was very much part of the public- as a publisher and book editor! First as an editor for Viking and then for Doubleday, Jackie edited almost 100 books.

"Though Jackie had a reputation for avoiding publicity, she willingly courted controversy in her books. She was the first editor to commission a commercially successful book telling the story of Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with his female slave. Her publication of Gelsey Kirkland's attack on dance icon George Balanchine caused another storm. Though Jackie rarely spoke of her personal life, many of her books ran parallel to, echoed, and emerged from her own experience. She was the editor behind bestsellers on the assassinations of Tsar Nicholas II and John Lennon, and in another book she paid tribute to the allure of Marilyn Monroe and Maria Callas. Her other projects take us into territory she knew well: journeys to Egypt and India, explorations of the mysteries of female beauty and media exploitation and of the creative minds of photographers, art historians, and the designers at Tiffany & Co."... William Kuhn

William Kuhn is a historian and a biographer, who researched and conducted interviews with Jackie's friends and colleagues "to reveal both the serious and the mischievous woman underneath the glamorous public image." There has been great buzz about this book, the reviews often mentioning the fact that it is a respectful look at "the working girl" Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as opposed to sensationalizing her story. This book is on my wish list! I can't wait to read it! And this would make a great Christmas gift for the biography reader on your list! *P.S. This Book is Kindle Ready!

Memoir Monday... The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

Isabel Wilkerson interviewed more than 1200 people "whose lives had followed the same basic pattern: early years in the South followed by relocation in either the North or the West." Her research & writing of The Warmth of Other Suns, took her almost 20 years and follows "the 55 year migration of black Americans across their own country". She culls from all those rich wealth of interviews, those of three rural Southerners, whose stories will bring life to The Warmth of Other Suns... Here's what the publishers say:

In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.

With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties.

Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land.

This book has made more than one "Best Book of 2010" list, and with all the amazing buzz surrounding this book, for good reason. Just from reading the beginning excerpt of the book, I was immediately drawn into the lives of Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling, and Robert Foster, whose stories Isabel Wilkerson opens the book with. Some have wondered why The Warmth of Other Suns did not garner a nomination for the National Book Award, but awards aren't everything. This isn't really a memoir in the "traditional" sense, but I felt that the stories of Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling and Robert Foster demanded to be acknowledged as something more than history, as their stories, their lives, make up so much of The Warmth of Other Suns. This is an important book and I'm looking forward to reading it! *P.S. This Book is Kindle Ready!

My Reading Life by Pat Conroy... A Review

"From the beginning I've searched out those writers unafraid to stir up the emotions, who entrust me with their darkest passions, their most indestructible yearnings, and their most soul-killing doubts." ...Pat Conroy, My Reading Life

Perhaps you know author Pat Conroy from his unforgettable novels, The Prince of Tides, Beach Music or South of Broad. But what you might forget for a moment is that authors also read. In Pat Conroy's My Reading Life we are allowed to step back in time to learn the origins of his passion for the written word and follow along as that passion becomes a life long relationship...

In My Reading Life, Conroy revisits a life of reading through an array of wonderful anecdotes, sharing the pleasures of the local library's vast cache with his mother when he was a boy, recounting his decades-long relationship with the English teacher who pointed him onto the path of letters, and describing a profoundly influential period spent in Paris, as well as reflecting on other pivotal people, places, and experiences. His story is a moving and personal one, guided by wisdom and an undeniable honesty. Anyone who not only enjoys the pleasures of reading but believes in the power of books to shape a life will find here the greatest defense of the credo.

Pat Conroy is a wonderful storyteller, and in his book, My Reading Life, he uses his gift with the pen to weave a wonderful story full of a life long passion for reading, with the people, places and books that fed his appetite. One of those people was his mother, and at the beginning of the book I was so touched by their relationship, how they discussed books, and how Peg Conroy took her little boy's curiosity of the world around him and showed him how the answers could almost always be found between the pages of a book...

"The deep forests of those isolated bases became the kingdom that I took ownership of as a child. I followed the minnow-laced streams as they made their cutting way toward the Trent River. Each time in the woods, I brought my nature-obsessed mother a series of captured animals, from snapping turtles to copperheads... At the library she began to check out books that gave me a working knowledge of those creatures that my inquisitive, overprotective dog and I had found while wandering the woods."

Pat Conroy's mother was only the beginning of the influential people that would play a part in his reading life. There was his teacher Gene Norris that helped Pat speak his mind in defending Catcher in the Rye at a school board meeting, a grouchy librarian that handed him The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and a great antiquarian bookstore where he befriended the owner and learned the ins and outs of old books.

We all have fond memories of the books that we read as a child and of the many books we've loved as an adult. A special book you received as a gift, a teacher that inspired you to read the classics... These memories form our relationship with books and reading. My Reading Life chronicles Pat Conroy's relationship with books and reading. This is such a wonderful little book! The writing is filled with the love of reading, with books that I myself have loved and I couldn't help but enjoy reading about someone else's love of books and how it all came to be. This is a great inside look at a favorite author, but also a look at a reading compadre- someone else whose life was impacted by the written word, and who shows us that no matter what your station, books can change your life!

I want to thank Doubleday for sending along a review copy! You can get a copy for yourself at your local bookstore because My Reading Life by Pat Conroy was just released last week! *P.S. This Book is Kindle Ready!