5 comments about The Bishop's Daughter: A Memoir.

1. Of the summer's two "gay Episcopal" memoirs -- the other being Gene Robinson's book -- I found Honor Moore's by far the more substantive. Nearly all of us wrestle with our parents, and the more charismatic and larger than life they are, the more likely it is that this wrestling will leave us wounded. Honor Moore courageously shows us her wounds (and her wonder) as well as her father's complexity and her mother's humanity.
   
   Moore opens a window onto the significant social pressures Episcopal clergy once faced to sunder their sexuality from their spirituality -- conservative evangelicals take note -- and this alone makes her book a valuable contribution to church social history.
   
   The real beauty of the book, however, lies in its depiction of two parents and their eldest daughter trying to live their lives as authentically as they can. This is difficult in any era, no matter what the current social prejudices, and if none of the three quite succeed as much as we would have wished, their journeys are no less moving.



2. In the memoir, The Bishop's Daughter, the life of Bishop Paul Moore is explored by his daughter, Honor. From an early age, Honor has tried to understand her feelings for her father. At first, she seems to worship him, describing how as a young man he had a religious experience that turned him away from his family's wealth and toward service of God. Being wounded in WW II seemed to cement his conviction in serving God as he returns a decorated hero, bearing scars from a bullet that just missed his heart. God has saved him, he believes, for a purpose, and he is chosen Bishop of the Episcopal Church, a man respected as a paragon of virtue, a spokesman for the poor and a defender of rights.
   
   Bishop Moore was a wealthy man, but not a happy one. His first wife described him as "the most unhappy man" she ever knew. He is estranged from Honor, the oldest of his nine children, and only at a late age, when he is diagnosed with a terminal illness, do the two strive to reconcile.
   
   While describing her father's two marriages, his fights against racial injustice, and his ascent through the church, Honor also richly describes her own battles. Sexual experimentation and secrets are threaded through the story as both father and daughter explore their bi-sexuality, their sexual freedom, and the consequences. The book explores in detail the efforts of both the bishop and his daughter to hide their secrets. After her father's death, Honor goes further, meeting his long-term male lover and trying to understand his reasons for hiding this loving relationship.
   
   This book covers many important issues of our times: race, sex, faith, politics, war, and family. A beautifully written memoir, it includes many elements of biography and autobiography. The writing is simple, clear, and enlightening. Some of the details are unpleasant, but honest. I was pleased with the way the two lives are explored and then joined together in a truth they could both understand at the end.
   
   by Rhonda Esakov
   for Story Circle Book Reviews
   reviewing books by, for, and about women



3. Honor Moore did a stupendous, much needed service for her father, Bishop Paul Moore, Jr., herself, her siblings, and all of those in our society who remain illiterate and prejudiced about any and all sexual orientations. Given the ugly consequences of ignorance and understanding regarding homosexuality, it is no wonder that Bishop Moore, like so many others, had to hide such a significant part of himself, his sexuality, or a vital part of it, in order to perform the life service that was another grand and vibrant part of himself, his church service for the good of the millions whose minds and lives he influenced for good. We must remember that homosexuals are usually given life by heterosexuals who in so many sad cases are then ready to throw those children away. We must remember that the caste system created by heterosexuals that forces bisexuals and homosexuals to live in suffocating, locked closets is the evil that promotes what appears to be the deceit or duplicity that bisexuals and homosexuals must then practice in order to also live seemingly freely, seemingly fully. Ignorance, fear, and phobia are the components of prejudice, all prejudice. We have a desperate need to enlighten the ignorance with understanding, replace the fear with acceptance and love. Only then will we see the dissolution of phobia finally evolve. And heterosexuals must pay attention to bisexuals and homosexuals to gain a wider understanding of sexuality. The opposite side of that coin is that bisexuals and homosexuals must be ready and willing to help heterosexuals learn. That will require bi-directional openness. Any of Honor Moore's siblings and any others who think she betrayed her father need to carefully study her memoirs to see how she truly provided Bishop Paul Moore, Jr., the "wings of a dove" he so painfully sought all his life. Now her memories and our knowledge of that great man, that man of clay, can allow him to function more freely and fully as shepherd of an even larger flock. Now Paul Moore, Jr., can truly "fly away and rest,"
   
   Gilbert Cantlin



4. In spite of one review that is totally inexplicable to me, I can't begin to express how beautifully wrought this memoir is, how honest and how moving. And--how courageous. I had the privilege of meeting Honor Moore last Sunday and it has added to the richness of the book, as how could it not? I am deeply impressed with this book and to be honest, it takes a lot to impress me when it comes to reminiscences (not the best choice of word) about one's family, one's place in it and what it means to take the risk and tell the story as one sees it, meanwhile honoring the Rashomon aspect of most anything in life that not everyone will necessarily perceive a life the same way. Brava, Ms. Moore! Many times over.



5. honor moore is a gorgeous writer--and this is her greatest work to date. a really important, moving book.

5 comments about Drunkard: A Hard-Drinking Life.

1. DRUNKARD, on the face of it, is another memoir of a tortured or addicted soul. One guy. But somehow Steinberg, with his lack of hyperbole and impeccable timing and style, draws us in and we feel an oddly genuine intimacy - one that good writers know how to deliver. i'm sober one year and a greedy obsessive reader, and this one rates up there with DRY by Augusten Burroughs, and Drinking, A Love Story. In fact, this book seems to me an uncanny hybrid of the two. It's not superior to either DRY or DRINKING A LOVE STORY, but it holds its own nicely. Most highly recommended.



2. I bought this book for friend who's going through rehab. He and the author have much in common - both are creative, successful and have loving spouses and families. Before passing to on to my friend and read through Drunkard quickly and found it to be an honest account of someone who was not easily convinced. Perhaps it was the reporter in him that required more than one source/or situation to tell him he was out of control. If you have a friend, family-member, loved one who could benefit from Drunkard, I recommend it.



3. and so felt a bit disappointed when I reached the end of Neil Steinberg's account of his descent into alcoholism. . Steinberg's story never really grabbed me. He's almost too detached, too analytical. I wasn't looking for Greek tragedy but I thought that somewhere along the way the author would admit to a few tears, to a sleepless night or two. I felt cheated.



4. Loved this book. Neil Steinberg isn't an out of control, down on his luck, out on the street kind of drunk. No, he's more of an average guy who finds himself thinking about drinking when he should be working. Or having a nip right before he drives his kids to a softball game. Or hits his wife because he's so loaded and she's had just about enough of him. Every single word rings true. Laughed and cried,a nd really, what more can you ask? Hats & Eyeglasses: A Family Love Affair with Gambling



5. I'll begin with my most serious criticism of this book: the book itself, not the contents. The binding shattered while I read chapter 3, then shed pages for the duration like a Persian cat sheds hair in August.
   
   I know no one's interested, but I had to vent.
   
   That said, I'll admit to an early-on fear that I'd picked up the wrong drunkalogue when the author admitted to his rehab gatekeeper a daily average consumption of only 3-5 drinks: not the stuff of alcoholism as I know it, nor the subject of a book I'd be willing to invest time into. I smelled a rat, or a moderate-drinking newspaper columnist with a nagging, teetotalling wife he'd taken an ill-advised swat at. While in the pokey, the notion of converting all that into a book opportunity crossed his mind--or so went the Murphy's Law thought that crossed MY mind, anyway; the $25 had been spent, and the book by that time was in a non-returnable condition.
   
   Happily, I can report that by the time I'd turned the final loose leaf, Steinberg had redeemed both himself and his literary effort--and, in so doing, my investment. Unlike the pages of my book, His alcoholic credentials proved solid, held firm under the weight of post-rehab mischief: slips, lapses, and relapses. Tapping on locked doors of liquor stores before hours, hoping for human mercy. Placing clinking bagfuls of hostile three-to-five-drinks-my-@$$ testimony into moonlit dumpsters. And binges, both bolt-out-of-the-blue and the more calculated when-the-cat(i.e., wife)-is-away variety, most of them conducted like shadowy, lamplit acts of marital infidelity (His wife had read him the standard booze-or-me riot act, adding her confidence that he'd "make the right decision." He clearly, by this point, wasn't so sure).
   
   Any alcoholic worthy of his or her morning shakes will feel the same warm implosion I did reading Steinberg's recollection of waking alone at 1:00 AM with a fifth of Gordon's, then watching the contents slip from "G" to "S" over the next few dark, dead-to-the-world hours. But the clincher--the profundity only another drunk can appreciate with precision--is his observation that "...memory of [drinking] prompts us to contemplate the aridity of our future lives as suburban [and abstinent] alcoholics, a bleak desert stretching before us. Where will our fun be? From whence our comfort?"
   
   Yes, he understands. Therein--and eloquently stated--is the essence of the thing.
   
   The admission must be made that save for the fact he's at least a minor celebrated figure, the wife-and-two-kids suburban backdrop of his tale is, well...ordinary. His book would surely suffer the same fate were he not a writer by vocation, and by demonstrated talent. He knows how to craft a story. And along the way, he has an insightful remark or two to make about this nation's 12-step-based rehabilitation monopoly, not all of them complementary. He has his problems with AA--the low success rate, the mind-dead sloganeering, the "God thing"--but it's the only game in town of any consequence, if a game in which many of the players march in one-lockstep-at-a-time, vacant-eyed harmony. A sobering thought, that.
   
   In the end, conflicts with his wife and his search for an agnostic's Higher Power converge and are fused into a single, novel resolution of both problems.
   
   It was a good ride, and worth the read.

5 comments about How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else.

1. I picked up this book because the premise was intriguing.
   
   The actual writing itself is dull and business-like. The narration has no flow, and the settings are jarring--moving back and forth from nostalgic waspy childhood memories to a present day Starbucks store. I realize those two concepts are supposed to juxtapose his upbringing with his current situation in life, but it's not a smooth delivery.
   
   What I liked least about the book was its author. Michael Gates Gill reminds me of what is wrong with America. He comes across as a completely pompous ignoramus. He spends at least one third of the book advertising himself and his accomplishments at J. Walter Thompson.
   
   I have a hard time conjuring up any sort of pity or appreciation for his life and his story. He made millions during his years working in advertising at JWT. He is in his SIXTIES when he gets laid off, and acts like he is a major victim of corporate America. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!
   
   What did he do during his previous 30 years of prosperity? Did he save/invest his money like a wise person? No, he floundered it away. Did he work on his marriage? No, he had an affair instead. Did he spend time with his kids? No. He made a series of bad choices that brought him to where he ended up.
   
   As for where he ended up, he does Starbucks no favors by romanticizing an unglamourous job. Most Starbucks stores do not have managers like Crystal. The employees are not always kind and courteous to one another, and the bathrooms are not always lovely and clean. I wonder how Crystal feels about the book. I would be offended to know that someone turned my career--my LIFE--into some sort of year-long anthropological study, and then published all the findings.
   
   Overall, this book was a bum deal. I gave it two stars because I reserve one star ratings for the worst of the worst.



2. A friend of mine gave me this book so I felt like I HAD to read it.
   It was painful though.
   The fact that the author was an advertising copywriter is way too obvious in this, the longest infomercial I've been through.
   If I could get paid for every time "Starbucks" was mentioned, I would be rich now.
   Way too much focus on Starbucks products.
   Having gone through business school I very much appreciate Starbucks' innovative Human Resource management and I share their views, particularly that one of respect to everyone. In fact, I'd heard about all this in case studies before.
   The book however has blatant product placement. Why do we need to read lists of products, which cakes are carried, etc. No wisdom in any of these.
   I'm sure some naive readers may end up spending a lot more money in Starbucks or getting a job there (nothing wrong with that) but the book should be given away for free as it seems to be a recruitment ad.
   Spare yourself the pain



3. This is one of the best books ever written about mid-life career crisis. The story of the advertising executive who ended up cleaning toilets at Starbucks is filled with wonderful anecdotes that can be best appreciated by those who are middle aged and beyond. Young adult readers may not appreciate or understand the life-changing lessons (as seen by some of the one-star ratings from other Amazon reviewers) and some of the book comes across as almost too hard to believe. But the book is never preachy--just a narrative progression through a life that was changed due to corporate downsizing and personal selfishness. It is also very well edited, mixing the author's current progression at the coffee shop with his recollections of knowing Jackie Kennedy, Ernest Hemingway and others. The end result is a lesson in humility and the need for respecting others you would normally consider beneath you. It should be required reading for college career courses.



4. This book is one of the worst books I have ever read. Its suppose to be a memoir, but really it just brown-noses Starbucks. I think he wrote this book for ulterior motives. (I think he wanted some executive position and was hoping Starbucks would oblige after reading this book.) As I read the book, I kept thinking it would get better, a plot line would eventually unravel. It never does. He writes this book to feed his ego and the reader gets nothing out of it.



5. I bought this book to read at the beach -- not expecting too much -- but interested by the concept. The biggest problem is that the author seems to be writing at an elementary level. He clearly has an interesting story, but nothing that couldn't be written in a two-page essay. He used to be successful, failed, and realized that people find contentment in low-paying jobs too. The end. I can't understand how a book this poorly written was ever published.

4 comments about The Two Kinds of Decay: A Memoir.

1. This is a short book about Sarah Manguso's experience with a strange autoimmune illness, which began suddenly during her freshman year at Harvard. You could easily read it in an afternoon, but it might take longer since there are so many beautiful passages to go back and read again.
   
   She has said that she intentionally did not write about the disease after it began; it must have been too difficult. In reading this book, I got the impression that as she wrote, she was actively rediscovering and redefining her illness and what her life became in the wake of being sick.
   
   Ms. Manguso is an award-winning poet, and the fantastic writing alone is worth the price of admission. The chapters are often only a page or two, the paragraphs only a few lines. The writing is simple and insightful--whether she is discussing a mundane detail, humiliating experience, or a scientific technicality. She is capable of being heartbreaking in one sentence and uplifting in the next.
   
   I should admit that I am a medical student (final year), so perhaps I got a double benefit. Her description of illness is fantastic. If I had learned about this disease from a textbook, it would have been just one of hundreds of cold facts in my brain. But from her description, I began to imagine a mysterious illness that went beyond mere words. I am sure that I now have a better understanding of patients with long-term disease. Moreover, for anyone who has to deal with illness, Sarah Manguso has likely put into words some of the complicated, frustrating feelings that accompany repeat trips to the doctor and hospital.



2. 
   An elegant little prose narrative of a rare fatal disease, told by the patient, a poet, who has been in remission for 7 years, and who seems to be a very bright young woman with a clear knack for writing, and for understanding. I bought this book entirely because my hero Garrison Kieller reported in a column that he was reading it. Then I found that the rare autoimmune disease described was almost the same as the one my wife suffered through 5 years ago - now 2 years in remission. The treatments have improved significantly in the short time between, and Sarah's were much more experimental. Written in almost poetic style, with short chapters and short sentences of well chosen word, spaced for effect, this worthwhile little book is a special sharing of the life of an extraordinary young woman, told with humor and candor at a time of sadness, fear, pain, love, and learning.



3. This book is a compelling read. It's a testimony to one woman's resiliance when the terrible thing happens to her, not to some stranger.
   
   Manguso has the courage to revisit her devastating illness, and the wisdom to find the ironies, the lessons, and even the humor in her experience.
   
   Through her sharing of the story of those terrifying sick years, she lets us see the indomitable spirit and the sense of humor that enabled her to survive them and heal.
   
   She juxtaposes pictures of illness against the lyrical beauty of her writing. I find new treasures whenever I reread it.



4. Ms. Manguso has written a medically graphic but affecting account of her battle with an auto-immune disease. Written in brief paragraphs with short chapters, the author is clealy recalling a bad dream that she rather not recall. A poet, her writing is lyrical and conversational. Once the reader starts her story, you will not put it down and it is easily read in one sitting. But it is a book that you will come back to.

5 comments about Foreskin's Lament: A Memoir.

1. Auslander is incredibly funny in his "memoir". I originally came across him in a GQ article and had to read his other material. He provided some great points about God and "theological Abuse" in this book. His negative & nonstop thoughts are both hilarious and very universal. He is in constant fear of an angry God and his idiotic rambles and stupid stunts are only fodder for a great story.



2. Take a young child who relies on his parents for a fair-minded view of the world. Add a major dose of terror and uncertainty in describing an irrational, mean-spirited God who will strike you down if you walk four steps without a yamulke or dare to eat a McDonald's burger (as if God didn't have more important things to worry about). Sprinkle in liberal doses of hypocracy from abusive rabbis, teachers, and parents. It's a sure formula for a very confused, very angry adult.
   
   We've seen it with Islamic fundamentalists...with certain Christian evangelists...and here's the Jewish version of the story. Shalom (his name means "peace" in Hebrew) navigates a rigid orthodox upbringing, where the simplest day-to-day activities -- eating, dressing, even opening a refrigerator door during Sabbath -- have the potential to bring down the wrath of God. Since, in many children's eyes, God equates father, it's no surprise that this fear is maximized because Shalom's father is physically and emotionally abusive.
   
   Shalom Auslander uses humor (just like Augusten Burroughs, his advertising background has kept him in good stead; this is a breezy read in places) to reveal the downright silliness and ultimate harm of fundamental religiosity. His anger at his parents is very thinly veiled, and his desire to be a better father for his own son is poignant.
   
   It's always been amazing to this reader that grown, intelligent men and women take ancient religious precepts at face value, without exploration or examination (Auslander quotes directly from the Talmud about a particularly gruesome torture for those who flaunt God's rules, for example). I urge those readers to pick up a copy of Christopher Hitchen's book "God Is Not Great". However, I suspect that certain readers won't be able to get out of their comfort zone and admit what Shalom Auslander already knows...it is nothing short of theological abuse to submit innocent children to mean-spirited, fundamentalist beliefs of ANY religion.



3. What a great read about a boy's life within a Jewish household. It is a sarcastic look at the double standards and tedious rules within his family's faith. Loved his perspective on the reality of strict religion and how it impacts the life of a boy living in a world full of temptation and identity.
   
   Karen



4. Auslander grew up an ultra Orthodox Jew In Monsey, New York. This memoir is his rant against the strict rules of his religious faith. But most of all it is a rant against the vengeful, fear inducing God with whom he is raised. Auslander's rebellion includes the eating of 'traif', non-kosher food. The first time he eats a Slim Jim, purchased at a heignborhood community pool, he pukes into a garbage can. This doesn't stop his venture into the world of 'traif'. He indulges in Big Macs with milk shakes, pizza with pepperoni, forbidden marshmallows made with gelatin (a pork by-product). Will his marshmallow feast result in the death of his sister? He looks at porno magazines and wonders if this is enough to kill his father by being hit by a car. In essence Auslander thinks he is a very powerful fellow in God's eyes, as his Heavenly Father is sure to punish he or his family every time he violates one of the 613 Commandments by which Orthodox Jews live their lives. It seems as if God has nothing better to do in this world of poverty, disease and war than to watch over the doings of Auslander. This is hubris on a cosmic scale.
   
   This rant can be hilarious at times. His description of his Yeshiva's Blessing Bee made me laugh out loud. But 300 plus pages of rant begins to wear thin. Leaving the Orthodox faith and his family, he finds himself a father obsessing over whether to circumcize his soon to be son. This is the Foreskin's Lament.
   
   One doesn't have to be a trained psychologist to figure out Auslander's hatred of his Heavenly Father is related to his hatred of his drunk and physically abusive father. But instead of coming to a resolution of this with his $350 per hour shrink, he rails against the 'theological' abuse of God. The destruction of his familial relationships deeply saddens me. Similiarly it is implied that Auslander's wife, Orli, is similiarly estranged from her family but this is glossed over in the book.
   
   There is much that is worthwhile here. Auslander is a Philip Roth on speed. I just hope he comes to terms with his rage. Otherwise every book this talented author will write will be poisoned by his continued rant.



5. His candor and wit are refreshing.
   I,too,used to want to get out from underneath the gnawing suspicion that my thoughts and actions had consequences. But one word proved the existance of God for me. Israel. So while I'm a Christian and my perspective differs from Mr.Auslander's, I can still relate to his predicament. The persistant pervasiveness of the Book and the people of Abraham just can't be seen in any other culture on earth. And this despite just a bit of "opposition" through the years, shall we say. God chose them to communicate His truth and His plan in written form to solve the mess we're in since sin entered our DNA. It's been available for all to hear/read, take or leave, believe or disbelieve.
   
   I may not like it sometimes. But, like Richard Gere cried in An Officer and a Gentleman, "I got nowhere else to go!"
   
   (hey, of course Christians always get "preachy." Try and see it from our perspective, it'd be like being on the Titanic, seeing the iceberg and not yelling get in the boats. So if a Christian doesn't preach at you they just don't care whether you know God has a place in a lifeboat with your name on it. Indulge us. Or at least treat us as you would a crazy relation at a family gathering, with patience and understanding)

5 comments about The Sum of Our Days: A Memoir.

1. ...which is bizarre because her daughter Paula was a Christian believer (according to Isabel herself in 'Paula'). Isabel kind of free-associates through this whole book, not really seeming to 'land' anywhere. We discover that she's a witch who belongs to a coven in the Bay area, who pulls random people she meets and likes into her family, and we're given brief snippets of their lives. Towards the end of the book she starts laying into Christians, of which I'm one, and talks about a 'new religion' she created for her grandchildren. Her ignorance of the Bible and Christianity is striking. She has an uninformed, cartoonish caricature of Christians in her mind as being white and Southern - it's apparent she's never really known a Christian before, except for her own beloved daughter, Paula (ironically enough)! Isabel forgets (?) that Christians are also Asian, Indian and African. Apparently she doesn't know that the list of 'ignorant' Creation-believing Christians includes J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Johann Sebastian Bach, Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther King, Jr., to name a very few. I realize an author takes a personal risk when writing their memoir. I know way more about Isabel now than I need to know. This book was plodding, ignorant and uninformed in areas, disjointed, and overall difficult to get through. I have to admit that I've lost some respect for her.



2. Enlightening as well.
   
   "Love is a lighting bolt that strikes suddenly changing us."
   This clever sentence resumes the lives of the generations of this story. As readers, we are touched in different ways. In my case, the core of my heart and inner motives were shaken.
   A story written with candor, filled of joyful times and also very sad, devastating moments. All of them told with a sense of humor that honors everybody's dignity. This story couldn't have been written in a different way.
   
   Thank you Isabel.



3. I have read every book Isabel Allende has written beginning with, The House of Spirits, and her novels have never disappointed me. I love her wisdom and the lessons her novels teach about the human spirit. As a teacher, I recommend her books to reluctant readers fully knowing that they'll be captivated into her magical world. This memoir reads like her fictional novels.



4. "It's hard for me to let go of people," Isabel Allende said of her deceased daughter Paula. "[She] is unreachable; only in my love for her are we in contact. She comes in signs." Pretty intense, right? Well, buckle up my friends. If you delve into THE SUM OF OUR DAYS, Allende's most recent book, you will find a bumpy, funny, delectable, brutally honest and provocatively fascinating look into the private life of her extensive and complex brood of a family. Written in daily letters to her mother back in Chile, Allende pours out the deepest and darkest secrets of her extended family post-heartbreak, the early death of her only daughter. In the wake of her mourning, she weaves a long and wavy path to her true heart, and every word is riveting.
   
   Allende is known as a "magic realist," her stock in trade as an author. However, there is little magic and lots of realism in THE SUM OF OUR DAYS. For a nation obsessed with "family values," its newest citizen goes completely against the traditional American grain with her topsy-turvy, emotionally harrowing life. Her second husband is a garrulous and outspoken attorney and advocate for illegal immigrants in the Bay area; his daughter is a drugged-out mess in and out of jail cells, which he hopes will teach her the "consequences" of her criminal acts; and her son is married to a former member of Opus Dei, who walks a straight (and completely bigoted) religiously fueled road. There are endless characters in THE SUM OF OUR DAYS, all the more intriguing because of the unflinching honesty and bright light that Allende shines on their every course of action, their every life decision, and the way that it intersects with her own difficult life.
   
   The death of her daughter has been the subject of another book (simply titled PAULA). It is clear from the content of this memoir that her broken heart will never completely mend, and the well-established credo that no parent should have to bury a child is utmost in her mind. Allende pulls no punches when discussing the bottomless love she has for her children, in life as in death, and it is this moving portrayal of motherhood that gives great heart to the stories about her family members. This is really a book about not just the sum of her family's "days," but the sum of her own multitudinous adventures as writer, mother, wife, lover, daughter, activist, immigrant, teacher...
   
   If you think that it would be an epic maneuver to pull it all into one book, you would be right. But Allende somehow finds just the right anecdotes about each member of the family to make the reader feel as if he or she was being escorted into the author's boudoir and seduced into the vortex of her life and longings. It is rare that desire has so many names, but Allende finds them all and, in short order, brings them to life on the page with a power that towers over so many of the recent memoirists in this popular genre. There are no lies here, there is no Frey or Burroughs amping up of actual life to ensure a chuckle or gulp from the reading public. Allende doesn't have to play tricks to make your heart and breath rise and fall, to make your stomach tumble each time Willie's indigent daughter almost dies (again!) or your heart break each time Allende looks back on a moment during her daughter's strangely quick descent into serious illness.
   
   THE SUM OF OUR DAYS is exactly what a memoir should be: a heartfelt and candid look at the good, the bad and the oh-so-ugly that makes up a truly human life. Like reality TV, we are hooked and cannot look away, whether we like it or not. This is a rewarding emotional rollercoaster in which a world-renowned author searches for the same answers as the rest of us, sidestepping disaster upon disaster with a warmth of spirit and an everlasting hope that any reader will find unbearably inspiring.
   
   --- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano



5. As an ardent fan of Isabel Allende's works, I looked forward to her latest book...until I started reading the first 75 pages or so. Her attempt to weave a spellbinding tale around real people falls flat: these are real people with warts and all and no amount of magical storytelling as in her fictional works can make them interesting characters or for a compelling story. This is the first Isabel Allende book I did not finish. Also, Isabel needs to move out of Marin County to Middle America as I sense a fair amount of left-coast nihilism in her American experience that does not resonate with the vast majority of middle-Americans: perhaps, then, The Sum of Our Days would be more fulfilling.

5 comments about Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project.

1. This was a great purchase. I haven't finished it, but wish I would of known about this sooner.



2. I had never heard of the StoryCorps Project until recently. Since I am facilitating a memoir writing group, I ordered Listening Is an Act of Love.
   I loved it! Every page was a gentle focus on real people's lives. I highly recommend this book. Don't miss it!



3. StoryCorps is America's largest oral history project and was begun in 2003 by Dave Isay.
   
   I became aware of this book while listening to the StoryCorps excerpts that air on NPR Friday mornings. One morning in particular I heard the story of the unofficial spokes people for StoryCorps, Annie and Danny.
   
   Their love affair is told in the final pages of the book, the chapter entitled "The Story of StoryCorps." When my daughter and I heard their segment on NPR that morning on our way to the coffee shop, we were held mesmerized until it came to an end. It was one of those "transfixed in the parking lot" moments. We sat there, tears streaming down our faces until the end. We didn't go inside for our time of coffee and conversation until we could compose ourselves. That was the day I heard about and decided I had to have this book.
   
   There are two versions, one which comes with a CD and one without. I made the mistake of saving a buck and going without. I recommend getting the CD. I suspect it makes the experience all the more enjoyable. Don't get me wrong, the book is fabulous and full of stories that fill your heart with light and love.
   
   Every section of the book has heart-wrenching pieces. Stories that will define the American experience. The section entitled Fire and Water is particularly emotional as it deals with stories from the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 and Hurricane Katrina.
   
   I will recommend this book, and give it as gifts to my parents and others.



4. These are great stories from everyday people. If our legacy is the stories of our lives that we share with others, then this CD is what we should all be recording for our family and friends. I only wish there were more than the 20 included.



5. wonderful! can't wait for another to read! opens your eyes to the great people in the U.S.-their challenges, hopes, and happy times

5 comments about The Wishing Year: A House, a Man, My Soul A Memoir of Fulfilled Desire.

1. Jump in and meet Oxenhandler's unique friends while she excavates the power of wishing. Follow her across oceans and into the past and see how her logic (applied to a broad and deep exploration of the role of wishing over centuries) creates a wonderful counterpoint to her precise point of view and wry humor. Masterful and engaging, this book is much more than a light summer read. Questions arise we all seek to answer, and in the end answers appear that create an opening that may not have been affected through any other means. Bravo to Oxenhandler, I recommend this book to all thinking readers and have sent it to many friends.



2. In this wonderful book, The Wishing Year, Noelle Oxenhandler leads readers on an engaging and enlightening journey through her yearlong experiment with wishing. Oxenhandler is not one to easily embrace New Age ideas or magical thinking, and wishing does not come naturally to her. In order to begin making shrines and sending messages to the universe about what she most wants in her life, Oxenhandler must confront what she calls her "skeptical bent and...tilt toward a certain pessimistic melancholy," along with a Jewish-Catholic upbringing and many years as a practicing Buddhist. But as she begins her first tentative steps toward manifesting three deep desires -- to buy a house of her own, to find a man to love, and to gain spiritual healing -- and the universe starts sending pieces of those desires her way, she is hooked.
   
   Oxenhandler is remarkably well read, and she gracefully weaves myth, religion, anthropology, and psychology into the story of her own experiences. Equally at home with Zen Buddhist principles, the philosophy of magic, and the archetypal meaning of Aunt Jemima, Oxenhandler draws readers along on an inner and outer voyage whose landscape includes her own resistance and bouts of despair, the hot springs of Northern California, and healing encounters in Hawaii, Mexico and France.
   
   I found Oxenhandler's writing beautifully lyrical, filled with passages of luminous intelligence and moments of impish humor. Her story made me think about my own travels away from skepticism, which began 22 years ago when I left the East Coast -- where I'd spent many years studying philosophy in Ivy League universities -- to settle in Northern California, where the world seemed so much wider and filled with so many more possibilities than I'd previously imagined. After finishing Oxenhandler's book, though, I can tell I haven't ranged far enough. I think I may need to go out and buy some joint compound and balsa wood, to start building a few shrines of my own!
   
   One caveat: I suspect that some readers may wish for a deeper level of personal revelation, may want to know the gory details behind crises that Oxenhandler refers to almost in passing -- the ending of her marriage or the collapse of her spiritual community that bring the author to the book's jumping off point. On my reading, the book is not about what brought her there, but about the journey she makes from that point on. The story begins when Oxenhandler becomes ready to suspend disbelief and give herself over to the project of wishing for her heart's desire. And that is where the gifts of this lovely book lie -- in the story of how your life can change, once you let yourself believe that just maybe, wishing can make it so.



3. "The Wishing Year," by Noelle Oxenhandler, is the kind of book that I am always wishing for--absorbing and lovely to read, and at the same time provocative and intellectually engaging. Along the lines of literary non-fiction like Jonathan Franzen's "How to Be Alone" and Rebecca Solnit's "A Fieldguide to Getting Lost," this memoir stages the existential predicament of how to approach one's own longings and ambitions, with grace and authenticity, while also acknowledging the pressures and realities of our consumer-based society. The comedic pace of the narrative is note-on, populated with wide-ranging geographical adventures, winsome characters, and deeply funny everyday moments. Waking up one January morning, Oxenhandler confronts several absences in her life and decides to embark upon a yearlong quest for very specific objects. Halfway through the book, she refers to her quest as an "experiment in desire," and this phrase seems to embody the underlying ambition of the book itself--to enter into the terrifying quandaries that genuine passion brings with it, while at the same time relishing the wonderful angst, even dread, of wishing. Oxenhandler's experiment gives rise to profound and timeless questions: what do our desires reveal about ourselves? Is it possible to seek spiritual wholeness, or romance, or even financial prosperity, and still retain skepticism towards superficial success, pop psychology, and ego-based desires? Like books by Franzen and Solnit, Oxenhandler's memoir demonstrates what, in my experience, the best kinds of texts ask of their reader--to share in the spiritually intense comedy of human life and to take real risks in the questions that we pose and the desires that we wish for.



4. The Wishing Year:A House, a Man, My soul: A Memoir of Fulfilled Desire absolutedly delighted me. I am Noelle Oxenhandler's target audience. Filled with my own spiritual misgivings about the rightness (not the efficacy) of wishing, this book spoke to me. It wasn't the question of whether it was possible to change the course of the universe by wishing, but what would I become if I started believing in the power of wishing. How flaky, how new age! I've always backed away from this sort of attempt to manipulate the course of events (even if I could be convinced it were possible), but Noelle took me on a journey that surprised even me--that the act of wishing may not change events, but it can change us. And, yes, I did once make a very serious wish for the kind of man to appear in my life and not a month later he appeared--cleaving to my wish in every detail. I didn't become a believer in wishing, but I did realize that until I'd made that wish, I'd no idea what sort of man I wanted. From then on, I did start to try to understand my desires (which are not the same as wishes). And, I'm actually glad Noelle didn't wallow too much and let the book get icky, as so many memoirs do. I liked her restraint, her sense of humor, her intelligence and her courage.



5. There's a lot going for this book, and a lot gone wrong. One gets the sense here of an author interested in wishing and desire, an academic whose editor said, "Noelle, nobody will read it like this. Rewrite it as ~Eat, Pray, Love~!" since memoir sells a lot better than academic treatises these days. This book invites comparisons to Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, but they are vastly different in tone, revelation, and outcome.
   
   The first part of the book is contrived, as if the author constructed a selective past to support the thesis, working toward a breakthrough revelation and transformation at the end: see, I couldn't wish, I couldn't accept happiness, my gold coins turned to mud under my pillow, but now I have what I asked for!
   
   And yet, for a reader like myself (the target audience, I assume), it's excruciating to follow such a sad trajectory. This could be me. In slightly different circumstances, this has been me, living on "liquids and canned peaches" for months after a slaughtering heartbreak.
   
   The author enjoys research and facts and the academic life, and those are her strong suits. She shines when she's making historical and literary connections, working her fast-moving mind and researching answers. The thick-skinned self-revelation necessary for convincing memoir, however, is notably lacking.
   
   ~Eat, Pray, Love~was breezy, self-deprecating, and funny, while this book takes itself quite seriously and, worse, is uncomfortable with significant personal revelation. I hope this book doesn't hurt the author more than it helps. She starts and ends with sensitive vulnerability and often meets her helpers when she is crying or otherwise in public emotional distress.
   
   Some of the most interesting questions raised are left frustratingly unanswered. In a Book of Days format, each chapter a month in the wishing year, the author describes the trajectory of her experiment, from doubt to testing to fulfillment. But those questions become the elephant in the living room. What was the story of the now-defunct spiritual community? She describes the unraveling of her spiritual group in half a dozen deliberately vague and short sentences. Similarly, in a prefatory note, she explains that she overexposed her daughter in a previous book and has agreed to mention her only in passing in this one; again, an important character noticeably missing.
   
   As a reluctant memoirist, she does not reveal the most essential things. Here's a mother who won't write about her daughter, a professor who doesn't write about her work, a spiritual seeker wounded by an undescribed cult - this certainly isn't Elizabeth Gilbert's year off.
   
   I don't blame her, but perhaps memoir is not her best medium. Elizabeth Gilbert made the reader believe that she wasn't withholding anything essential, that the details of her messy divorce were just boring mind chatter, but in The Wishing Year: A House, a Man, My Soul A Memoir of Fulfilled Desire, the intensity behind those secrets sinks the authenticity of the rest of the book, especially since one of the three wishes - the most noble, the most devastating, the wish for spiritual healing - goes unanswered, and the lack of answer glossed over, or perhaps not noticed. (Sitting in an empty temple for an afternoon doth not constitute spiritual healing, and the book itself confirms that.)

5 comments about Hollywood Babylon--It's Back.

1. Honestly didnt like this book too much, almost sent it back. Just flipped through it, bit too gory for me.



2. I would like to apologize to the trees who gave their lives for this piece of trash. The pictures are either dark, blurry or worse, obviously photoshopped. There are items written as fact, which were proved to be false years before this piece of trash was thrown together. Some stories are so completely made up it's embarrassingly obvious no thought was given to making them even appear to be honest or true. This "book" is quite simply, nothing but trash. Save your money and buy Globe Magazine or the National Enquirer. You'll get alot more honesty in journalism from either of these supermarket rags. I was looking for reliable, well researched, entertainment history. Instead I received a book with obvious mistakes, pictures clearly "put together" and essenitally stories without any credible references at all. Hollywood Babylon -- It's Back is a long and nasty tabloid, in the worst sense of the word. What a waste of money!



3. I enloyed this book because I could relate to all of the people discussed. I have been a movie fan (films of the 20', 30's and 40's) for over 60 years I was shocked to read how most of my favorite stars acted. Hollywood, during that peroid, was nothing but a glamorized whorehouse. Stars, no matter how famous or unknown, had to sleep with director, producers or anyone else connected with the making of a film, to get parts.
   
   The most shocking, to me anyway, was how Lucille Ball said "She never met a man she didn't sleep with. And her husband Desie Arnes was no better. I enjoyed the many photographs, nudes included, of the stars and other people involved in the picture business. I really couldn't put the book down.............



4. I definitely enjoyed KENNETH ANGER's two books that this book is riding the coattails of. I also enjoy gossipy tell-alls, and have no problem with a tall tale. However, HOLLYWOOD BABYLON IT'S BACK is dubious trashy tidbits, obsessed with celebrity endowments, apparently written over many years, and poorly cobbled together with no real editor's discerning eye. Stars of yesteryear are "quoted" amusingly and then the same "quotes" are retooled with the essential tidbits changed to suit another chapter. NICK ADAMS' reputation is mercilessly trashed, and inaccurately (uhm... how could he have been servicing ELVIS when THE KING was watching the moon landing? ADAMS had been dead nearly a year and a half, as the book itself reports!!) Every stupid, groundless rumor you've ever heard about dead stars is offered as fact, though not a single principal is left to defend themselves. Half of Hollywood is gay and the other half bisexual, and the authors enjoy pointing out who did NOT have an affair with who as if that is intended to lend credibility to the incredible. Over 350 pages, by page 126, I was appalled! Here's a quote: "In 1951 (HARRY) COHN offered (LUCILLE BALL) a trashy part in The Magic Carpet...With her commitments at Columbia finished, LUCILLE landed at RKO in 1935." So LUCILLE BALL finished up at Columbia in the early 1950s and "landed" at RKO in 1935...? Huh? I don't think these authors or their editor went over this book very well to at least cleanup the contradictions and obvious errors. This could have been better, but instead, HOLLYWOOD BABYLON IT'S BACK makes BOZE HADLEIGH appear reliable.



5. I really enjoyed this book! It was a great follow-up to Hollywood Babylon. There are lots of secrets revealed. I recommend it to everyone.

5 comments about Roasting in Hell's Kitchen: Temper Tantrums, F Words, and the Pursuit of Perfection.

1. I found this book to be well written and entertaining. It gives a different perspective of Gordon Ramsay than what most people think. I found it hard to put down, I wanted to keep finding out more about his journey to become such an outstanding chef.



2. This book grabs you from page 1. Anyone who thinks they know Gordon Ramsay -- even after watching him on TV -- will be taken aback by what they read. Here is a climb from despair, through mine fields of restaurant kitchens, to the heights of fame and fortune.



3. The book itself is a breeze to read on the Kindle. It is fairly short but doesn't come across that way on the Kindle. The pictures that he included in his book were definately a nice touch, 95% of them came out perfectly fine. The remaining 5% either came out pretty horribly or didn't come out at all. I am a big fan of his show and have had to explain to people in the past that he is doing some of the things that he does in part because he is looking out for the participants themselves. The only way to learn sometimes is to have a lesson become implanted because their is an unpleasant memory that is attached to it. His own personal history is so rough that I can see where he gets his drive to succeed in life. Anyone can make it in life we just have to not give up. And that lesson is worth infinetly more then the price of this book.



4. This is a very quick read from Gordon Ramsey. I think the media exaggerates and feeds preconceived ideas into people's minds about what this man is about. The book really hits some high notes about where Gordon Ramsey is coming from. When he appears on tv yelling and pissed off at someone, it is usually because he sees their potential and that is his way of bringing it out of the person. Surprisingly easy to read, the book gives insight on his past and just what makes him the man he is today. Definitely worth a read. I read through it pretty much through 2 sittings and found new respect for this man.



5. There's a kind of breathlessness about this wonderful autobiography, a sort of "I gotta tell this story, get it all out, and say it right." that carried me almost non-stop through it. This is no polished work edited to smithereens, it's raw, real, moving, and a lesson in how one climbs over the debris of a rotten childhood one step at a time and makes it thru commitment and hard work and dedication to a chosen profession.
   
   I first saw Ramsay in his "Kitchen Nightmares" on BBC America. Having cut my teeth on Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential", I had the advantage of not being all that shocked at the ghastly mess some of these professional restaurant kitchens are in and could focus on his approach to trying to help the restaurant of the moment start to get back on its feet. It was his passion and skill and kindness to the youngest employees and selected others of the staff and the frequent humour around his eyes that grabbed me. The cussing and the yelling were just a reflection of his passion, and I could have cared less if they were appropriate.
   
   And "The F-Word" reveals other aspects of his character that start to share a fuller picture of who this man is - the jokester (e.g.,the wine-tasting test with the guy who couldn't even identify his own wines), the boss in his own kitchen, the father of those marvelously smart, funny, giggly, balanced little children, the cook with those wonderfully simple elegant recipes that we can indeed make at home, etc. etc. etc.
   
   So buy the book and settle in for a good read - there's still a lot of Ramsay one can learn about by doing so. He may not particularly care for being an example (I read it as "Quit yer whinin' and dig in and get to work.") but he's stuck with it now. Thanks, Mr. Ramsay.
   
   :)