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jennifer's reviews
173 reviews
Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. by Viv Albertine
4.0
What a fine memoir and a bit of a feminist powerhouse. I came into it expecting very little. I wasn't a fan of The Slits (her second band and the one she's most famous for); in fact I had only heard of them in the last couple years via some BBC documentary on women in punk. Albertine was engaging in the docu and when, coincidentally, I saw she was speaking about the book at an event in Berlin last month, I went to see her on a whim.
In the book, Albertine discloses Patti Smith was a major influence on her, so I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise that her memoir has a lot in common with Smith's Just Kids. Like Just Kids, you might start reading the book to learn more about a well-known artistic era in an iconic city--NYC in the 60s and 70s in Just Kids, London in the 70s for Clothes, Music, Boys. And you do: Viv was close friends with Sid Vicious and dated Mick Jones on and off for years, just to give you a taste. But also like Just Kids, Clothes, Music, Boys evolves into something much more delicate and moving than just a chance to be a voyeur of a bygone era. Hats off to Albertine. I may just have to go download a The Slits album now.
In the book, Albertine discloses Patti Smith was a major influence on her, so I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise that her memoir has a lot in common with Smith's Just Kids. Like Just Kids, you might start reading the book to learn more about a well-known artistic era in an iconic city--NYC in the 60s and 70s in Just Kids, London in the 70s for Clothes, Music, Boys. And you do: Viv was close friends with Sid Vicious and dated Mick Jones on and off for years, just to give you a taste. But also like Just Kids, Clothes, Music, Boys evolves into something much more delicate and moving than just a chance to be a voyeur of a bygone era. Hats off to Albertine. I may just have to go download a The Slits album now.
The First Bad Man by Miranda July
5.0
The First Bad Man is the best book I've read in recent memory. Totally fresh, startling, gross, and very very funny.
Cheryl Glickman is a lost soul, prone to the kind of inner monologue of someone who's lived alone in LA for too long. The genius is that, despite her weirdness, you can't help relating to her (if you're me, perhaps a little more often than is comfortable).
She works at Open Palm, a non-profit dedicated to self-defense and rife with dysfunctional relationships. When the dysfunctional relationships extend into Cheryl's house and the daughter of the owners of the non-profit moves in unbidden, the real fun begins.
Other than the comedy and genuine emotion, this book excels at its evocation of California. From the opening scene at a Chromotherapy office to the sly references to Ojai to the pretentious adoption of Japanese or pseudo-Japanese etiquette at the non-profit, California makes this book possible (or is it this stuff that makes California possible?). In a hundred small ways, this book is as Californian as The White Album or Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
Cheryl Glickman is a lost soul, prone to the kind of inner monologue of someone who's lived alone in LA for too long. The genius is that, despite her weirdness, you can't help relating to her (if you're me, perhaps a little more often than is comfortable).
She works at Open Palm, a non-profit dedicated to self-defense and rife with dysfunctional relationships. When the dysfunctional relationships extend into Cheryl's house and the daughter of the owners of the non-profit moves in unbidden, the real fun begins.
Other than the comedy and genuine emotion, this book excels at its evocation of California. From the opening scene at a Chromotherapy office to the sly references to Ojai to the pretentious adoption of Japanese or pseudo-Japanese etiquette at the non-profit, California makes this book possible (or is it this stuff that makes California possible?). In a hundred small ways, this book is as Californian as The White Album or Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett
5.0
A gem of a book of short stories and poetry and sometimes a mix of both—most spectacularly in the last paragraph of The Gloves Are Off, which goes on for a page and a half—that reminded me at different times of a British version of Joan Didion channeling Marcel Proust or Seamus Heaney, or some combination thereof. This is, by the way, a compliment.
It is not a book of food writing and yet it also made me want to crack open my Chez Panisse cookbooks on multiple occasions, such as in the second story, Morning, Noon & Night, where dinner "would frequently involve broad beans, lemons, perhaps some spinach, and plenty of chopped walnuts and white cheese."
In one of my favorite stories, Finishing Touch, the narrator declares she's going to throw a party where "sure enough there'll be martinis and Campari and champagne and bottle after bottle of something from Vinsobres. And beautiful heaps of salad in beautiful bowls. Fennel and grapefruit and walnuts and feta cheese and all kinds of spread-eagled leaves basking in oil and vinegar." The story ends with some "nicely slumped cheese."
In Over and Done With (a perfect story to read now that Christmas is behind us if you're the sort that finds Christmas a bit trying) she talks about Christmas dinner of pheasant "Wrapped in thick rivulets of streaky bacon and the whole thing gussied up with such deliciously tart redcurrants" and surmises that "next time I'll do it slightly differently. Next time I'll break the bugger's backbone and do him in the pan."
There's also a short paean to tomato purée, appropriately titled Oh, Tomato Purée, and another to the surprising therapeutic benefits of Stir-Fry. Oh and another about the control knobs on her cooker (stove). But I promise you it's not really a book about food, just a lucky coincidence for those of us who like to eat.
It is not a book of food writing and yet it also made me want to crack open my Chez Panisse cookbooks on multiple occasions, such as in the second story, Morning, Noon & Night, where dinner "would frequently involve broad beans, lemons, perhaps some spinach, and plenty of chopped walnuts and white cheese."
In one of my favorite stories, Finishing Touch, the narrator declares she's going to throw a party where "sure enough there'll be martinis and Campari and champagne and bottle after bottle of something from Vinsobres. And beautiful heaps of salad in beautiful bowls. Fennel and grapefruit and walnuts and feta cheese and all kinds of spread-eagled leaves basking in oil and vinegar." The story ends with some "nicely slumped cheese."
In Over and Done With (a perfect story to read now that Christmas is behind us if you're the sort that finds Christmas a bit trying) she talks about Christmas dinner of pheasant "Wrapped in thick rivulets of streaky bacon and the whole thing gussied up with such deliciously tart redcurrants" and surmises that "next time I'll do it slightly differently. Next time I'll break the bugger's backbone and do him in the pan."
There's also a short paean to tomato purée, appropriately titled Oh, Tomato Purée, and another to the surprising therapeutic benefits of Stir-Fry. Oh and another about the control knobs on her cooker (stove). But I promise you it's not really a book about food, just a lucky coincidence for those of us who like to eat.
The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion by Meghan Daum
5.0
Despite living in Los Angeles for at least three of the years during which Daum wrote a weekly column in the LA Times, I only came across her last year through a book she edited, Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids. While she wrote the introduction to that book, I didn't really read anything by her until Difference Maker, which (I think) appeared in the New Yorker last year. It's about her experience as an advocate in the foster care system and I cried, undoubtedly because the writing was good but also because my own niece arrived with my sister and her wife through the foster care system. When I bought a copy of The Unspeakable on a whim a couple weekends ago, I didn't realize Difference Maker was one of the essays in the collection until I came across it mid-way and declined to read it again because, you know, feelings. Luckily skipping one of the essays was easy because the other nine are so good, notably the opener, Matricide, which is exactly the way to open a book of essays.
Disclaimer: I'm not going to win any bonus points for widening my point of view by reading Meghan Daum. From what she discloses in the book we appear to be of essentially the same demographic, and the more I read the more I harbored the fantasy that we are essentially the same person, barring little facts like she's a successful writer who was mentored by Nora Ephron. But we were both born in the bay area of California at roughly the same time, both grew up on the east coast, both chose not to have kids, and both live (lived in my case) in Los Angeles as adults. While not wishing to diminish the tremendous skill it takes to make one's writing relatable, all I am saying is that there are touch points that probably make me relate to Meghan Daum's writing more than others might. For instance, I recognized myself in her hilarious essay Honorary Dyke, which made me feel very validated about the fact that I admired and emulated Ellen DeGeneres' style way before she came out on her very first television show in the 1990s.
Let's pause a moment so I can tell you about a riff in Honoray Dyke in which Daum imagines a Title Nine (you know, the women's sports apparel catalog) model rescuing Paris Hilton from Everest, which is the best piece of humor writing I've read all year. The passage ends with the model "flinging a Jeanette Winterson book at her and telling her not come back until she's manned up enough to qualify as a woman." I'm not going to quote the rest so you'll be forced to read the book.
Anyway, after being charmed to find that Daum apparently likes Winterson, too, I began to be slightly disheartened in subsequent essays to find that we are not in fact the same person, a truth that became obvious to me as she professed a love of Joni Mitchell and dogs that surpasses my mere gentle appreciation of the same subjects. Then she dealt the death blow with an essay On Not Being A Foodie and I wasn't sure we could even be friends anymore.
Luckily the writing kept me going long enough to laugh at an LA story about playing charades at Nora Ephron's house. Larry David is trying to act out Days of Thunder only he doesn't know what it is, which is made all the more awkward by Nicole Kidman's presence in the room. I liked this essay even though Daum was being pretty in my face about the fact that we are not the same person since she gets invited to parties at Nora Ephron's house. Daum ends on a high note with an essay called Diary of a Coma in which she describes her experience with a freak illness. Although I've never been in a coma, she resonated with my own experience of being diagnosed with a chronic illness and the reality that such experiences don't always come with epiphanies, redemption and lessons learned. In other words, by the end of the book Meghan Daum and I were still friends.
Disclaimer: I'm not going to win any bonus points for widening my point of view by reading Meghan Daum. From what she discloses in the book we appear to be of essentially the same demographic, and the more I read the more I harbored the fantasy that we are essentially the same person, barring little facts like she's a successful writer who was mentored by Nora Ephron. But we were both born in the bay area of California at roughly the same time, both grew up on the east coast, both chose not to have kids, and both live (lived in my case) in Los Angeles as adults. While not wishing to diminish the tremendous skill it takes to make one's writing relatable, all I am saying is that there are touch points that probably make me relate to Meghan Daum's writing more than others might. For instance, I recognized myself in her hilarious essay Honorary Dyke, which made me feel very validated about the fact that I admired and emulated Ellen DeGeneres' style way before she came out on her very first television show in the 1990s.
Let's pause a moment so I can tell you about a riff in Honoray Dyke in which Daum imagines a Title Nine (you know, the women's sports apparel catalog) model rescuing Paris Hilton from Everest, which is the best piece of humor writing I've read all year. The passage ends with the model "flinging a Jeanette Winterson book at her and telling her not come back until she's manned up enough to qualify as a woman." I'm not going to quote the rest so you'll be forced to read the book.
Anyway, after being charmed to find that Daum apparently likes Winterson, too, I began to be slightly disheartened in subsequent essays to find that we are not in fact the same person, a truth that became obvious to me as she professed a love of Joni Mitchell and dogs that surpasses my mere gentle appreciation of the same subjects. Then she dealt the death blow with an essay On Not Being A Foodie and I wasn't sure we could even be friends anymore.
Luckily the writing kept me going long enough to laugh at an LA story about playing charades at Nora Ephron's house. Larry David is trying to act out Days of Thunder only he doesn't know what it is, which is made all the more awkward by Nicole Kidman's presence in the room. I liked this essay even though Daum was being pretty in my face about the fact that we are not the same person since she gets invited to parties at Nora Ephron's house. Daum ends on a high note with an essay called Diary of a Coma in which she describes her experience with a freak illness. Although I've never been in a coma, she resonated with my own experience of being diagnosed with a chronic illness and the reality that such experiences don't always come with epiphanies, redemption and lessons learned. In other words, by the end of the book Meghan Daum and I were still friends.