Posts tagged with nonfiction

Jun 29 2016

Sure...

2016-06-29-sure

I was interested in—although not 100% convinced by—Suki Kim's essay "The Reluctant Memoirist" in New Republic. Kim is the author of Without You, There Is No Us: My Time With the Sons of North Korea’s Elite, a nonfiction account of Kim's time spent teaching ESL at an evangelical university in Pyongyang. While Kim viewed her work as investigative journalism, her publisher...

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Jun 21 2016

My mom will watch this (but she'll cover her eyes a lot)

2016-06-21-my-mom-will-watch-this-but-shell-cover-her-eyes-a-lot

Slate tells me that Sarah Polley is adapting Margaret Atwood's 1996 novel Alias Grace into a six-hour-long miniseries for Netflix. The novel is a fictionalized account of the life of Grace Marks, a Canadian housemaid who was convicted of murder in 1843...

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Jun 14 2016

I would have pushed him down a well.

2016-06-14-i-would-have-pushed-him-down-a-well

I normally avoid movies that scream OSCAR BAIT!!! this loudly, but I'm mildly intrigued by the new film Genius, about the relationship between notoriously verbose writer Thomas Wolfe and his long-suffering editor Maxwell Perkins. The trailer looks...

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Jun 9 2016

Murderously adorable

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Man, Jonathan Franzen really doesn't like cats. According to this article in New Republic, Franzen thinks the time has come for cat genocide: “The bird community’s position is, we need to get rid of the feral cats, and that means cats must die.” He's also a big fan of the upcoming book Cat Wars: The Devastating Consequences of a Cuddly Killer...

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May 10 2016

Salacious! (But not really.)

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THR recently posted a juicy excerpt from Canadian filmmaker Barry Avrich's recently-released book Moguls, Monsters and Madmen: An Uncensored Life in Show Business. It's well-worth checking out, particularly if you enjoy behind-the-scenes gossip...

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Feb 23 2016

I'm sure he really needs the money.

2016-02-23-im-sure-he-really-needs-the-money

According to Page Six, former Sony CEO Tommy Mottola is accused of running off with a $150,000 advance for a book he never actually wrote, according to a lawsuit filed by Hachette Book Group yesterday...

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Jan 26 2016

Scandalous!

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I recently picked up a copy of Jane Mayer's nonfiction book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. I love books about financial scandals, and this one is even juicier when you take into account the contents of this New York Times article, which...

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Jan 5 2016

Joy, sparked

2016-01-05-joy-sparked

There's been a lot of discussion about Spark Joy, the companion book to Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. We reviewed Kondo's first book last year, and while we enjoyed reading it, the best organizational/tidying-up advice I've ever encountered...

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Dec 22 2015

Useful!

2015-12-22-useful

I'm totally in love with this Random Illustrated Facts Instagram, featuring artwork by children's illustrator Mike Lowery. (I already knew that thing about the national animal of Scotland being the unicorn, though, and it has always upset me. I mean, if...

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Nov 18 2015

Big stuff worth sweating

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The Telegraph recently posted a totally creepifying story about self-help author Kristine Carlson, who has endured years of stalking after...

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Jul 30 2015

Gross, creepy, no thank you.

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This is... discomfiting. Newsweek informs me that the College Board has bowed to conservative political pressure, and is revising their A.P. U.S. History standards to "emphasize American Exceptionalism"...

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Jul 16 2015

Another fine candidate for the $10 bill

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If you were impressed by the recent Google Doodle featuring Ida B. Wells, I encourage you to check out Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant strip about her, too...

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Jun 4 2015

Grim death/Oscar bait

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The first trailer is out for Everest, the upcoming film based on Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air, about the 1996 Mount Everest disaster...

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Apr 13 2015

Skin Cleanse, by Adina Grigore

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The world wasn't exactly crying out for another book extolling the benefits of drinking less coffee, eating more dark leafy greens, and laying off the donuts, but Adina Grigore's Skin Cleanse condenses and simplifies about ten health blogs' worth of information into a fresh, cheerful, immensely readable guide to skin health...

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Apr 13 2015

Weekly Book Giveaway: Skin Cleanse, by Adina Grigore

2015-04-13-weekly-book-giveaway-skin-cleanse-by-adina-grigore

This week's Book Giveaway is Adina Grigore's Skin Cleanse, which meets my "of general interest" standard for reviewing nonfiction. (Plus, it appeals to the same part of me that enjoys reading fancy cookbooks while eating, like, toast. I'm a big fan of theoretical self-improvement.) I haven't quite finished Ms. Grigore's book, but thus far it seems like a chattier, more grown-up version of...

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Apr 7 2015

The section about Dickens is great, too.

2015-04-07-the-section-about-dickens-is-great-too

I've finally seen the trailer for the movie Effie Gray, written by Emma Thompson and inspired by the life of Euphemia Chalmers Millais, the one-time wife of the famous critic John Ruskin...

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Mar 3 2015

And people say her work is self-absorbed

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Lena Dunham has produced an HBO documentary about illustrator Hilary Knight (best known for his work on Kay Thompson's Eloise stories), and the trailer is really heavy on... Lena Dunham. I'm happy someone is honoring Knight's career, but this movie appears to be less about him, and more about how much his art means to her...

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Feb 12 2015

Alphabet background check

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NPR has an interesting article up about Michael Rosen's new nonfiction book Alphabetical, which claims to explain the history behind all 26 letters. Rosen is not the world's most convincing interviewee...

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Jan 27 2015

Added to my to-be-read pile

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Last week, the Guardian published an article about the release of The Debs of Bletchley Park, a new collection of stories by Michael Smith. The book focuses on the largely female group of World War II code-breakers who worked at the UK's Government Code and Cypher School, which was run out of Buckinghamshire's Bletchley Park mansion...

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Jan 21 2015

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo

2015-01-21-the-lifechanging-magic-of-tidying-up-by-marie-kondo

My birthday was this week, and my mother gave me a copy of Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. No, this was not a pointed hint—I have done some work as a professional organizer, and I am a huge, huge nerd, so my mom thought I would legitimately enjoy reading it...

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Nov 25 2014

Congratulations, mom!

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My mother is prone to long, ongoing obsessions with totally random subjects, where she reads everything she can on the issue and accumulates an encyclopedic knowledge of details of no interest to anyone but herself. Her latest fixation is on Scientology's ongoing legal disputes, so...

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Oct 21 2014

Hokey or not, I'm out.

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The trailer is out for In The Heart of the Sea, the movie based on the true(ish) story that inspired Herman Melville to write Moby Dick. Setting aside my usual eye-rolling over the obvious CGI, I think this movie looks terrifying...

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Jul 10 2014

Step One: Avoid the bulls entirely.

2014-07-10-step-one-avoid-the-bulls-entirely

In a move that will, ironically, probably raise his book's profile and generate way more sales, writer Bill Hillmann, co-author of the how-to-not-get-gored-by-a-bull advice guide Fiesta: How To Survive The Bulls Of Pamplona, has been gored by a bull...

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Jun 3 2014

Attempting to upgrade

2014-06-03-attempting-to-upgrade

NPR recently posted an article about the difficulty schools are having in finding textbooks that qualify as meeting the "Common Core State Standards"—the new educational benchmarks that 44 states and the District of Columbia have adopted...

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May 23 2014

Father's Day is coming.

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According to NPR, NASA's new (and free!) 300-page e-book Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication is a fascinating exploration of the question of what would happen if...

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Jan 28 2014

Some things should not become brands.

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Okay, this news makes me MEGA uncomfortable: there are apparently THREE Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl adaptations in the works, one of which is going to be animated movie(?!?), one of which is a live-action feature film, and one of which is apparently unauthorized...

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Nov 21 2013

Breaking off a piece of the historical drama action

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According to the Christian Science Monitor, Robert K. Massie's biography Catherine the Great is being adapted into a "limited series" for ABC. The book was well-received by critics, so I'm assuming ABC is hoping for something a little more high-brow than the CW's Reign...

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Aug 27 2013

Salt Sugar Fat, by Michael Moss

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Journalist Michael Moss has made a career out of terrible food: his 2009 reporting about the safety of ground beef earned him a Pulitzer Prize, and he has recently published a book about the activities of processed food companies, aptly titled Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us...

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Apr 30 2013

How To Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate, by Wendy Moore

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Most of the critical coverage of Wendy Moore's How To Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and his Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate, a stranger-than-fiction account of the life of the 18th century radical Thomas Day, has focused on the biggest scandal of Day's life: his attempt to transform a 12-year-old orphan into his ideal of the perfect woman. This is totally understandable—that element of the story is pretty juicy...

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Apr 9 2013

Evil Pygmalion

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There have been several articles released recently about Wendy Moore’s new nonfiction title How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain’s Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate, which sounds absolutely mind-blowing...

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