Stacked Shelves

I've read more non-fiction during the first few months of this year than I usually do. I'm not sure how that happened. Usually I "get acquainted" with some non-fiction titles so I can recommend them, do a little speed reading of a chapter or two, and leave it at that. But I dove deeper earlier this year and feel smarter for it (kidding). Here, in the order of preference (most liked to least), are the books I read cover to cover: Some Writer! The Story of E.B. White by Melissa Sweet I loved this book. It's a children's biography of noted writer and style guide producer E.B. White, and it's so well done. Interspersed with the narration are examples from White's writings, personal papers, anecdotes and much more. The layout is gorgeous. Every bit of text is interesting. And White's life is worth reading about. Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper After reading Stamper's book, I now know that I am not careful enou...

Suicide Is Painless is the title of the theme song to both the movie and television series M*A*S*H (and one of the first songs I learned to play on the piano). I've just read three books that involve suicides in one way or another (some spoilers ahead) and they show how suicide painfully affects the ones left behind. Imagine Me Gone by Adam Hasslett delves into bi-polar disorder before it was called that. Married couple Margaret and John are seemingly able to cope for a long time with John's bi-polar disorder, but fail to realize how it tough it is on their children and how the oldest, Michael, seems to have inherited the disease. John's suicide changes each family member in a different way. I was bothered more than a bit with how Margaret was portrayed. She seemed so together and strong and powerful at the beginning of the novel and then so lost later. It just seemed to me that her personality changed too much. When  a second suicide happens late in ...

I rarely get angry at a book or an author, but I found myself getting increasingly angry at J.D. Vance and his book Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis . Angry enough to blog (so you know it must be bad.) This book is filled with contradictions and in several places is downright crazy because of people making really poor decisions. I am disappointed that so many people I know love it and so many book reviews rated it as one of the best books of 2016. I thought it would be a story that would teach me something about Republican/conservative voters, so I wanted to read it. It did not do that. A graduate of Ohio State and Yale Law School, and a veteran (marine), J.D. Vance is from Kentucky and Ohio (his family is originally from Kentucky but they moved to Ohio and the author spends much time traveling back and forth), so he grew up in a family of hillbillies. Most of them were very poor and didn't work and often moved to larger ...