Ill Feelings (2021)

Blue nights

Joan Didion

2011 · 188 pages · 1 review

Others: Positive

In this memoir, the author shares her observations about her daughter as well as her own thoughts and fears about having children and growing old, in a personal account that discusses her daughter's wedding and her feelings of failure as a parent. It opens on July 26, 2010, as Didion thinks back to Quintana's wedding in New York seven years before. Today would be her wedding anniversary. This fact triggers vivid snapshots of Quintana's childhood, in Malibu, in Brentwood, at school in Holmby Hills. Reflecting on her daughter but also on her role as a parent, Didion asks the candid questions any parent might about how she feels she failed either because cues were missed or perhaps displaced. Seamlessly woven in are incidents Didion sees as underscoring her own age, something she finds hard to acknowledge, much less accept.

Golem Girl

Riva Lehrer

2020 · 448 pages · 1 review

Others: Positive

"What do we sacrifice in the pursuit of normalcy? And what becomes possible when we embrace monstrosity? In 1958, Riva is one of the first children born with spina bifida to survive. Her parents and doctors are determined to 'fix' her, sending the message over and over again that she is broken. That she will never have a job, a romantic relationship, or an independent life. Enduring countless medical interventions, Riva tries her best to be a good girl and a good patient in the quest to be cured. Everything changes when, as an adult, Riva is invited to join a group of artists, writers, and performers who are building Disability Culture. Their work is daring, edgy, funny, and dark; it rejects tropes that define disabled people as pathetic, frightening, or worthless. They insist that disability is an opportunity for creativity and resistance. Emboldened, Riva asks if she can paint their portraits--an intimate and collaborative process that will transform the way she sees herself, others, and the world. With each portrait, and each person's story, the myths she's been told her whole life--about her body, her sexuality, and the value of normalcy--begin to crumble. Written with the vivid, cinematic prose of a visual artist, and the love and playfulness that defines all of Riva's work, Golem Girl is an extraordinary story of survival and creativity. With the author's magnificent portraits featured throughout, this memoir invites us to stretch ourselves toward a world where bodies flow between all possible forms of what it is to be human"--

Inferno

Catherine Cho

2020 · 248 pages · 4 reviews

Others: Overwhelmingly positive

The Stranger Beside Me

Ann Rule

1980 · 498 pages · 1 review

Others: Positive

There are actually two stories here: one describes the gradual disintegration of a seemingly normal, affable, brilliant man into a sexual psychopath so evil, so methodical in his vicious killings, that one wonders if he was at all human. The other story is that of Ann Rule herself, a decent, hard-working, middle-aged mother of four who meets and befriends a nice young man working beside her in a crisis clinic. A man she regards as a younger brother; a man she views as a close and trusted friend. The slow but inexorable realization on Rule's part that this man is in fact an unspeakably violent serial killer is as painful to read as it was for her to experience. Each victim is described in terms of such respect and such anguish that even a family member, I think, can feel that his or her daughter has been given a chance to shine, a chance to be more than a victim, more than a nameless number (8th girl killed, and so forth). The poignancy of these girls' very human preoccupations and lives serves to outline the contrasting horror in even more detail. That is why Rule does not have to defile the victims with intricate detail. The contrast between their young lives and their terrible deaths is enough in itself.

32 third graders and one class bunny

Phillip Done

2005 · 288 pages · 1 review

Others: Positive

84, Charing Cross Road

Helene Hanff

1970 · 97 pages · 6 reviews

Others: Overwhelmingly positive

It all began with a letter inquiring about second-hand books, written by Helene Hanff in New York, and posted to a bookshop at 84, Charing Cross Road in London. As Helene's sarcastic and witty letters are responded to by the stodgy and proper bookshop employee Frank Doel, a relationship blossoms into a warm and charming long-distance friendship lasting many years.