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Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Secret Agent Gal
Title: Blowing My Cover
Subtitle: My Life as a CIA Spy (and Other Misadventures)
Author: Lindsay Moran (I assume that's her real name, but who knows?)
Bookmark: page from a day-to-day desk calendar
Aren't library book sales fun?
The title is a little misleading. Most of the book is about how Moran became an operative: applying to the CIA, taking two polygraphs, her training at The Farm, and eventual posting in Bulgaria. She has misgivings from the very start, but she still goes through with it, apparently, to prove that she can. Despite some weird sentence structure and occasional spots where her proofreader fell asleep, it's a very entertaining book. Moran has a good sense of humor and pace, and is pretty blunt about her misgivings with the job and her ability to do it (although from the way she rockets through the application and training process, she's either one of the best they've ever had, or the CIA's standards are MUCH lower than anybody realized), but I wondered several times while reading it whether a female reader would appreciate it as much. Despite Moran's taxing training and later employment with The Company, her greatest focus in life is always finding a man, which makes the whole book feel far less empowering than it probably could have been.Labels: 9/11, espionage, memoir
posted by reyn at
6:03 AM
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Wednesday, May 02, 2012
Having a Child Isn't Always Perfect Bliss
Title: Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
Author: Anne Lamott
Bookmark: my receipt from checking the book out from the library
I used to say that if I had to pick a favorite author, it would be Anne Lamott. I haven't read anything by her in a long time, so when I read about her new book Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son, I knew that I had to read Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year first. And what a worthwhile read it was. I think I can safely say she's still one of my favorite authors perhaps even my favorite author. You know, if I had to pick.
Many years ago (possibly high school), my best friend told me I was the most real person she knew. While it's possible she has since wanted to take that comment back or has no recollection of ever saying it, it really stuck with me. I have a great deal of respect for people who know who they are and own up to it. Anne Lamott is the most "real" writer I have read, and I love her for it. She doesn't sugar coat, she doesn't gloss over the tough bits, and she sure as hell owns up to those terrible thoughts that she wishes she didn't have.
Operating Instructions contains all the good and the bad of having a kid: the destroyed state of one's body post-pregnancy, the lack of sleep, the occasional thoughts of murder (she contemplates leaving her son out on the front porch for the night because she can't take his colic-related crying any longer), the momentous occasions (holding his own head up, first tooth, walking, etc), the incredible feelings of love for her son, and more. She also frequently laments her son's lack of a father, but one can't help but be a teensy bit jealous of the amazing support network of friends and family that she has.
All in all, I highly recommend this book. If nothing else, the frankness and honesty is so completely and utterly refreshing. I look forward to reading Some Assembly Required next.
Labels: memoir, non-fiction
posted by Kate at
11:34 AM
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Thursday, April 21, 2011
Can't touch this
Title: Touching the Void
Author: Joe Simpson
Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, both experienced climbers and mountaineers, set out to complete a first ascent of the west face of Siula Grande (an icy, storm-thrashed mountain in the Peruvian Andes). With a few difficulties and minor close calls, which are to be expected on a major ascent like that, they made the summit. Then everything went wrong.
The book is subtitled "The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival," before I was even a third of the way through, I was impressed that either man had survived. Both of them had terrifying falls which could have ended the trip and their lives. The biggest difference is that when Yates fell, he was caught by the rope, dangled free of the snow cliff, and managed to climb back up to Simpson. When Simpson fell, he landed on ice and shattered his knee.
I'm not providing any spoilers by telling you this; the whole story is well known. Even the back cover of the book tells you that Simpson broke his leg (bad news anywhere, but especially bad when you manage to break it in as spectacular a fashion as Simpson did, on top of a mountain, days from any medical support) and Yates had to help him down. It tells you that during the process of lowering his friend, something else went wrong, and Yates was forced to cut the rope, letting Simpson drop. Both men expected themselves--and each other--to die, but both survived. You don't read this book to find out what happened; you read it to find out how it happened. How both men struggled with the circumstances, their own decisions, and the harsh environment surrounding them. You read it to find out how they pushed themselves to survive, and find yourself wondering whether you could have done the same.
This book is subtitledLabels: adventure, friendship, memoir
posted by reyn at
9:37 AM
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Saturday, December 05, 2009
butchered
Ti: Cleaving
Au: Julie Powell
Bookmark - ARC edition, dog-eared it.
HC published: 12/01/09
I was excited to be offered an ARC of Julie Powell's new book. Plenty of people liked 'Julie and Julia,' including me, even if Julia didn't. It might have turned out to be telling that while 'Julie and Julia' was made into a pretty decent movie, I enjoyed the scenes with Julia more than those that focused on Julie.
Unfortunately, the part of this book that interested me most was the butchering, as the author takes on an apprenticeship after searching high and low for a traditional butcher shop that's willing to take a student. Being as this is a memoir, Powell writes quite a bit about what's going on in her life during this time. Maybe I'm judge-y, maybe I'm naive, but the airing of her not-so-secret and intense affair turned me off - especially since her husband didn't really have much of a choice in the decision to have it aired, I would imagine. On the other hand, I have to admire her balls for putting it all out there.
I do like Powell's writing and enjoyed finishing the whole book for that aspect, but also found that the book was oddly paced and ended kinda abruptly. I suppose that since it's a memoir, you sorta have to write your life at the pace and in the order that it happened and the abruptness could be one of the better ways to express what she goes through.
I suppose it might be most accurate to say that I don't like the author, rather than I don't like the book. There's certainly authenticity in her struggles and foibles, and I'm sure that many people can see things they've thought or felt expressed pretty eloquently, but it just doesn't make her a hero. I don't think she's trying to be one though, so in that way, the book probably hit the mark.Labels: infidelity, likely-future-freebie, meat, memoir, mid-life crisis, travel
posted by ~e at
1:42 AM
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Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Life in Death
Title: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death
Author: Jean-Dominique Bauby
This morning, with first light barely bathing Room 119, evil spirits descended on my world. For half an hour, the alarm on the machine that regulates my feeding tube has been beeping out into the void. I cannot imagine anything so inane or nerve-racking as this piercing beep beep beep pecking away at my brain. As a bonus, my sweat has unglued the tape that keeps my right eyelid closed, and the stuck-together lashes are tickling my pupil unbearably. And to crown it all, the end of my urinary catheter has become detached and I am drenched. Awaiting rescue, I hum an old song by Henri Salvador: “Don’t you fret, baby, it’ll be all right.” And here comes the nurse. Automatically, she turns on the TV. A commercial, with a personal computer spelling out the question: “Were you born lucky?”
Simply put, read this. But just to be safe, watch the movie first. Books often ruin a movie, but a movie seldom ruins a book, except for when that book is The Last of the Mohicans.
Jean-Dominique Bauby was the editor of French Elle, and the toast of the fashion world, when he suffered a massive stroke that left him almost completely paralyzed. Even his voice was frozen, leaving him nothing more than a nearly inaudible grunt. He was almost completely paralyzed, because he could still blink his left eye. That eyelid became Bauby’s sole means of expression, and with it he dictated this entire book, using a system in which his assistant recited the alphabet and he blinked when she reached the letter he desired. It’s hard to imagine to amount of perseverance and determination this required.
(FYI, Bauby’s right eye was sewn shut to protect the cornea from infection. The film depicts this event from his perspective, creating an intense feeling of claustrophobia as the thin sliver of light is inexorably closed fast. For a few minutes, you think you might know exactly how Bauby felt – completely, utterly helpless.)
But don’t worry that Bauby’s memoir is a downer, or sappily sentimental. The stroke may have cost him his voice and mobility, but his words are as witty and worldly as you’d expect from a man who’d lived as voraciously as he did. In other words, an editor of Elle is not going to write Chicken Soup for the Paraplegic Soul. The memoir chronicles Bauby’s life as a paraplegic (not being able to scratch your nose when a fly lands on it), but also the far-reaching journeys of his imagination as his body lies immobilized in its diving bell. In that sense, this is a compelling celebration of the joie de vivre. You’ll want to read slowly, and savor a glass of wine after finishing it.
And finally, I’m not a superstitious person, but something about this book feels as if Bauby was destined to write it, as if The Diving Bell and the Butterfly perfectly matches an experience with its chronicler, to create a work that will last generations (like Anne Frank and her diary, Boswell’s friendship with Johnson, or Krakauer and the doomed 1996 Everest expedition). Bauby was a master of the material world – possessing looks, wealth, fame, love. He lost it all in a single shattering instant, but lived to write about it in a way no one could forget (and died days after his book was published).
Even Bauby’s name is somewhat uncanny – for an English speaker, at least. The shortened form of Jean-Dominique is Jean-Do: John Doe. He is anonymous, and yet universal. He was alone in his paralysis, and yet, through this work, we can all share in the imaginative life that he found so rich. Labels: fashion, French, memoir, paralysis
posted by Elizabeth at
9:00 PM
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