Category: memoir

Permission Slips: Every Woman's Guide to Giving Herself a Break by Sherri Shepherd with Laurie Kilmartin I've never watched The View and I'm not a big fan of stand-up comedy, but after reading Permission Slips, I officially love Sherri Shepherd. She tackles issues from child-rearing to bad boyfriends, from faith to family with humor and aplomb. She tells the truth about herself and about life, but is hilarious at the same time. Write yourself a permission slip to love the wrong guy. Just don't marry him. (pg. 63) She had me laughing out loud, both at the situations she found herself in and how often I could relate to what she was saying. And one look at my apartment proves I kept that promise to myself. It is a pigsty, or so I'm told. I don't notice, because I don't care. My housekeeping motto is "Carpe Diem." As in, seize the day, and don't waste a second of it scrubbing a dang toilet. (pg....

Grab your current read. Let the book fall open to a random page. Share with us two (2) "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page. You also need to share the title of the book that you're getting your "teaser" from...that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given. Please avoid spoilers! My teaser: I took my leap when my friend told me, "If it was all about stability, you wouldn't need faith." Your dreams might be different now than when you were a kid, but they're still there, waiting to be believed in. -pg. 96, Permission Slips by Sherri Shepherd with Laurie Kilmartin Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Play along....

Sex, Drugs & Gefilte Fish: The Heeb Storytelling Collection edited by Shana Liebman In the preface, Liebman writes, "So here in all their well-deserved published glory are the stories of nerds, ex-girlfriends, liars, rockers, goody goodies, sex fiends, neurotics and yes, summer campers. The authors are not all Jewish, but their stories are...sort of." The stories in this collection are both hilarious and honest, they're vulgar and sentimental. They run the gamut from a broken-hearted Bigfoot to  a "gay" Bar Mitzvah to discussing politics with Grandma. The writers discuss their love lives, their careers and, of course, their families.  I'm not Jewish, but I could still relate to many of the stories and laugh out loud along with the writers. One especially warm afternoon on summer break from college, I found myself sitting on the steps of a Conservative Jewish synagogue, eating ice cream. It seemed natural to experience a vague sense of guilt about this. For all my ignorance of Old Testament...

Don't Call Me a Crook!: A Scotsman's Tale of World Travel, Whisky and Crime by Bob Moore It is a pity there are getting to be so many places that I can never go back to, but all the same, I do not think it is much fun a man being respectable all his life. Thus begins Don't Call Me a Crook!, a memoir of a 1920s youth thoroughly, noisily and lawlessly lived. Bob Moore, a Glaswegian, was a marine engine, occasional building superintendent and ramblin' man. "I have been round the world seven times, and I have been shipwrecked three times, and I have spent £100,000," Moore boasts. In Don't Call Me a Crook he recounts pitched battles with Chinese bandits, life in gangster-infested Chicago, and decadent orgies aboard a millionaire's yacht. It's a hardboiled-noir memoir. It's picaresque, perverse, and darkly funny. A tribute to one man's triumph over the law, morals and sobriety, it's a lost confession that will be crowned...

Lucky Man by Michael J. Fox Description: The same sharp intelligence and self-deprecating wit that made Michael J. Fox a star in the Family Ties TV series and Back to the Future make this a lot punchier than the usual up-from-illness celebrity memoir. Yes, he begins with the first symptoms of Parkinson's disease, the incurable illness that led to his retirement from Spin City(and acting) in 2000. And yes, he assures us he is a better, happier person now than he was before he was diagnosed. In Fox's case, you actually might believe it, because he then cheerfully exposes the insecurities and self-indulgences of his pre-Parkinson's life in a manner that makes them not glamorous but wincingly ordinary and of course very funny. ("As for the question, 'Does it bother you that maybe she just wants to sleep with you because you're a celebrity?' My answer to that one was, 'Ah...nope.'") With a working-class Canadian background, Fox has an unusually detached perspective on the...

Do-Over!: In which a forty-eight-year-old father of three returns to kindergarten, summer camp, the prom, and other embarrassmentsby Robin Hemley Description: Robin Hemley's childhood made a wedgie of his memory, leaving him sore and embarrassed for over forty years. He was the most pitiful kindergartner, the least spirited summer camper, and dateless for prom. In fact, there's nary an event from his youth that couldn't use improvement. If only he could do them all over a few decades later, with an adult's wisdom, perspective, and giant-like height... Despite being bigger and taller, Robin learns that the bullies haven't gone away. Neither have the papier-mâché projects, his bedroom at his childhood home, or the senior prom, which he finally gets a second chance at going to—at his actual former high school, with his actual teenage crush. In the spirit of cult film classics like Billy Madison and Wet Hot American Summer,  DO-OVER! brings readers the thrill of recapturing a misspent youth and discovering what's most...