If you want to know what it's like to live a life in-transit --- to dress yourself out of a suitcase, shower in truck stops, and sleep in airport terminals --- My Life on the Road is not the book you're looking for. Gloria Steinem's memoir is a reflection on jet-setting and wandering, but it's … Continue reading My Life on the Road: A Review
After writing a letter home from college to reveal her lesbian identity to her parents, Alison Bechdel receives a somewhat distressing phone call from her mother, who lets loose an even bigger family secret: Alison's father is a closeted gay man who kept younger men --- often his children's babysitters --- as lovers. A few … Continue reading Fun Home: A Review
I am a runner in only the loosest sense of the word. Occasionally, I fire up my Couch to 5K app and nurse dreams of becoming the next winner of the Boston Marathon. But mostly I realize how much I hate running and how much I enjoy having something like Haruki Murakami's What I Talk … Continue reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Review
Kate Bolick's Spinster is part memoir, part microhistory. It's an examination of single women's status and reputation throughout history, and the effects of that history on women today, framed with anecdotes from the author's various romances. In Spinster, Bolick studies her - not always conscious - decision to remain unmarried using the lives of other, similar women … Continue reading Spinster: A Review
There are a lot of reasons why some critics panned Lena Dunham's Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned", and most of those reasons were prejudiced. Of the negative reviews I have read, 80% - a conservative estimate - have been blatantly sexist and/or ableist; the other 20% were … Continue reading Not That Kind of Girl: A Review