Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art by Gene Wilder

read by the author

My first reaction to listening to the audiobook version of this autobiography, which Gene Wilder narrated himself, was, “Ah, that voice—that’s the gentlest voice in the world. I love that voice.”

My second reaction was, “Man, Gene Wilder was really screwed up.”

It’s a truism that a lot of comedians and comedic actors are pretty screwed up. The line between a desire to please others and make them laugh, and an enjoyment of fame and attention—and a *need* for all of that, as a stand-in for love or a way of staving off deep, crippling anxiety—can be a fine one. In Gene Wilder’s case I think he spent most of his adult life on the sane side of that line. But he achieved that only after a lot of therapy.

We get to hear about the events of his childhood and young adulthood that shaped him as a person and contributed to his artistic and comedic sensibilities. Mr. Wilder was very open about who he was and how he responded to things, so we really get a sense of his life journey. For example, he was, if not scarred for life, at least greatly set back and discouraged, by an early encounter with the opposite sex, and while he definitely seems rather bitter about the other person involved, he doesn’t hold back about his own reaction, either.

We get to hear about his training as an actor, his friendships and romantic relationships, and his films--though the one thing I found a little disappointing about this book was that he doesn’t go into as much detail as I’d like about the making of most of his films. The only one he spends much time on is Young Frankenstein; I’d have loved to have heard much more about the personalities and the general experience involved with, say, The Frisco Kid and Blazing Saddles. Still, what he did include was more than I already knew. I loved, for example, hearing his impression of the young Harrison Ford.

And we get to hear, of course, about Gilda Radner. They had a deep love and a tumultuous relationship and he doesn’t spare himself or her in his descriptions. And we get to learn about the woman he married and was with until he died, Karen Webb.

This autobiography is full of beautiful little nuggets about the life of a very gifted man who had a lot of issues. Highly recommended to anyone who is a fan of his work.

The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family by Dan Savage

read by Paul Michael Garcia

Published in 2005, The Commitment is a snapshot of a time in our country’s life as well as famed sex-and-relationship-advice columnist Dan Savage’s life. A decade before June 26, 2015, when the United States Supreme Court struck down all state bans on same-sex marriage and legalized it everywhere, there was still a lot of very contentious debate on the topic—not least among those most directly affected by it.

For example, there was Dan Savage, his boyfriend Terry Miller, and their son, DJ, aged 6 at the time. None of them wanted Dan and Terry to get married. At least, Terry doesn’t want to get married; not because he isn’t committed to Dan and their son, but because he doesn’t want to “act straight.” He’d rather they get matching “property of” tattoos. 

And DJ is against it because, in his six-year-old worldview, boys don’t marry each other. (Never mind quite a bit of evidence to the contrary.) Plus he doesn’t want to be there when his dads say mushy things to each other and kiss in front of everyone. But he wants cake. If there’s going to be a wedding, he’s definitely going to want some cake.

But Dan isn’t sure. Marriage does seem pointless when there’s no legally-binding aspect of it and you’re an atheist. On the other hand, his Catholic mom would be beyond thrilled. Plus he’s already planning a ten-year anniversary party—the anniversary of his and Terry’s first date—and he wants everyone in the family to travel to Seattle for it, and to take it as seriously as they take other major family events. And it’s not like he’s going to be leaving Terry.

So he sets out, in his somewhat contrarian way, to explore the issue. He takes his little family to a summer camp for kids with queer families, so DJ can see that other kids *do* have parents with matching genders. The following summer, he brings his whole family along—mom, siblings-and-partners, everyone. He has conversations with them about why they have or have not chosen to marry and/or have kids, he has debates with Terry about the drawbacks and virtues of marriage and tattoos and how best to plan for their anniversary party.

The most interesting conversations he has, to me, are the ones he has with his older brother, Bill. I realized while listening to Dan recounting them just how much his philosophies on life, sex, and relationships are informed by Bill’s. In fact, many of Dan’s most regularly-repeated nuggets of wisdom come directly from the conversations about marriage that he had with Bill that summer.

In case you’re not already a Dan Savage fan and don’t already know how the story ends, I won’t spoil it for you. Whether you’re already one of his readers or listeners or not, though, I do  highly recommend this book. It’s an interesting and very personal and journey through what the politics of DOMA and the religious right put families through, and it’s told with clarity, frankness, and (sometimes self-deprecating) humor. It’s no longer ripped-from-the-headlines current, but it’s an important piece of (recent) LGBTQ+ history and a moving story.

Calypso by David Sedaris

read by the author

If you’ve never heard David Sedaris read, go google Santaland Diaries right now. You want an excerpt of him on NPR. Go ahead. I’ll wait. 

.................................................................................................................................................

All right, now that you’ve listened, you’re starting to get the picture. Sedaris is a memoirist and a performer of his memoirs, which are written in short… anecdotes? They’re more structured than that. Stage performances? You do definitely want to hear him read his work, but it also works very well in print. Stories? They are definitely that, but also highly personal and, to say the least, quirky as hell. Also deeply, sometimes shockingly, funny. You’re never sure how much of them to actually believe.

The term I see bandied about is “semi-autobiographical essays.” Which seems accurate enough, if a little pedantic. He collects these semi-autobiographical essays into books every so often, and Calypso is one of those collections.

It’s a bit of a departure from a lot of his previous work, because he was writing these stories/memories/anecdotes at a time in his life when he was dealing with the death of two family members. It’s still funny, because he’s a man who can see the humor in literally anything, and make you see it, too--and be a little shocked at yourself for laughing.

What you’ll be laughing about in this collection is a series of family vacations at a beach house on the Carolina coast, haunted by bickering, badgering, the arrival of middle age, and both the specter and the reality of mortality. There are snapping turtles and book signings, transatlantic travel and family dinners. Sedaris writes in lovingly, gleefully unsparing detail about everyone’s quirks and faults, his own most of all.

If that idea makes you squeamish, or really, if you’re squeamish at all, you should probably skip this one. But if you can handle a little tumor humor and a lot of blatant (but never gratiutous) oversharing, dive in. If he can laugh at his life, and make us laugh at it too, maybe you can start seeing the ridiculousness in yours.

Oh. And if possible, listen to the audiobook version, which he reads himself.

I’m Just a Person by Tig Notaro

read by the author

Full disclosure: I have a massive crush on Jett Reno, Tig Notaro’s character on Star Trek: Discovery. That may or may not have influenced my review.

Those of you who aren’t Star Trek folks (though honestly, what do you do with your time???) may have heard of her famous stand-up routine where she began with, “Good evening. Hello. I have cancer. How are you? Hi, how are you? Is everybody having a good time? I have cancer.” If you haven’t heard of it, go google it now.

Basically what happened was, Ms. Notaro was hospitalized with a painful and life-threatening condition, and her mother died after a freak accident, and her girlfriend broke up with her, and she was diagnosed with bilateral invasive breast cancer, all within 4 months in 2012. Bringing it to her standup routine in that raw way was her way of trying to be as alive as possible.

This memoir is about that year—the four-month period just mentioned, and the 8 months or so that followed. It’s full of all the despair and hope and chaos and love and confusion and connection that you would expect. Ms. Notaro was of course knocked completely flat by all of this; she doesn’t claim any special strength or courage. Quite the opposite. She’s not self-deprecating in the least, but she’s honest and straightforward and utterly humble.

And she managed to face her world falling completely apart with a kind of grace. A very human grace, peppered with failures and lapses in kindness and common sense—but still, a grace. I think that, and her unflagging sense of humor, derive from her refusal to refuse to face the facts, tempting as it might have been. 

That’s what I find admirable about her. And what I admire and appreciate about the book is her willingness and ability to keep the raw parts raw and not try to gloss them over or tie a pretty bow around them. At the same time, while the reader does accompany Ms. Notaro to the depths of the worst days of her life, there are notes of humor and hope throughout.

I wish her a long and happy life. And I hope you will check her memoir out. It’s harrowing sometimes, but it’s also beautiful and satisfying and will give you all the feels.

Life by Keith Richards and James Fox

read by Joe Hurley, Keith Richards, and Johnny Depp

If you’re above a certain age, it may surprise you to learn that Keith Richards and Mick Jagger aren’t baby boomers. They’re members of the Silent Generation, by two or three years. But the band they formed, along with Brian Jones, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, and Ian Stewart is such an intrinsic part of the baby boom generation that I think we’ve got to give them honorary membership. To this day, if you want a lively debate among Boomers (not to mention a significant portion of Genexers), all you’ve got to say is three words: “Beatles or Stones?”

And Keith Richards’ autobiography is necessarily a biography of the Rolling Stones—from his point of view, of course. And it turns out that he is disarmingly charming. James Fox captured his voice, first over hundreds of hours of interviews, then in writing—and he did a fantastic job. If you listen to the audiobook, Johnny Depp does some of the narration (mostly in the first few chapters and then again for a bit near the end) but Keith does quite a lot of it himself, and it’s wonderful to hear his stories.

For me the most fascinating part was how the band got together, and then their early days—both before they became famous and then after they really caught on. There was a certain early-to-mid-career part, where the sex and drugs were very present but not yet all-consuming, where Keith was fascinated with learning and perfecting his five-string open tuning, and when the relationship with Anita Pallenberg was first occurring and then was at its best, that feels to me like a golden age—if not in Keith’s life, then in the course of the book. 

But his recounting of how heroin took over his life, and heroin and paranoia took over Anita’s, and all the difficulties with parenting and with the deterioration of the friendship between Keith and Mick, is also deeply interesting. All of that went into making Keith the person he is at the end of the book, too—that, and the various deaths in his circle of family and friends and co-famous-people, and new relationships we don’t get to hear so much about anymore.

It’s not possible for me to listen to the Rolling Stones with new ears. I’m too familiar with their canon up to about Tattoo You, and I don’t care enough about anything they produced after that. But after listening to this book, and stopping frequently to listen to the song being discussed, I can say I have listened to their work with, at least, new appreciation. For the history of each track, of course, but also for the artistry that went into so much deceptive simplicity. And there was definitely artistry—technique and concept both. Keith geeks out about all this in several places, and I found it oddly charming.

In the end I can say that Keith Richards is a man of depth and complexity who follows all of his passions well beyond the dictates of common sense—which is the reason for his genius as well as numerous brushes with the law and with death. In short, he lives up to his reputation. 

Which is not to say that all of the rumors are true; according to him, at least, some are and some aren’t. And the truth behind at least one major one will remain forever a mystery if he has his say. No, I won’t tell you which is which. Read the book! Go on, I dare you.

Great Catherine by Carolly Erickson

read by Davina Porter

Let’s get one thing straight: I could listen to Davina Porter narrate her grocery list. All day. The woman has a voice on her. And that’s how I found this book: I was searching Audible for more books she has narrated. (Thankfully she’s narrated quite a few.) I wasn’t looking for history or biography in particular, and definitely not about Catherine the Great. All I knew about the Russian empress was the (apocryphal) story about her and the horse… and if you haven’t heard of it and you have delicate sensibilities, do *not* Google it. Trust me.

So, with that unpromising start, I dove in because I trust Ms. Porter’s taste. And because it was available as a downloadable audiobook at my library, so I didn’t even have to use my Audible credits for it. And I was not even a little bored or disappointed with the writing. In fact, this is a delightful book from beginning to end.

Ms. Erickson walks the reader through the life of the Russian autocrat from *her* unpromising start, which went on for years and years, through her glory days as a powerful and (mostly) benevolent philosopher-empress who refused to either forsake men or be ruled by one (thus earning the rabid distrust and scurrilous rumors of the world), to her final days, beset by ill health and scheming courtiers. And it’s a grand, sweeping epic, as its subject matter demands—though not especially long, at 381 pages, considering the amount of territory it covers. (See what I did there? Territory? Russia? Oh, never mind, you had to be there.)

Empress Catherine II of Russia began life as the not-especially-pretty but very well-educated Princess Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst. Which sounds like a grand title and a fine start in life, and so they should have been, but nevertheless her parents were far from certain they’d be able to make a good marriage for her. Nonetheless they took a gamble and tossed her name in the imperial marriage hat, so to speak.

Young Sophia was immediately swimming for her life in a sea of intrigue, and there was no guarantee she wouldn’t drown in it. She had, for one thing, to somehow win the trust and approval of her fiancé’s paranoid mother, Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna, who ruled the court with every dirty trick imaginable when her iron fist didn’t quite seem sufficient. 

Then, once Catherine finally married, her husband, Peter III, was an insecure, abusive, controlling petty tyrant (in addition to being emperor of all the Russias). Fortunately for her, his rule was brief; he was completely unsuited to lead Russia or Russians (whom he despised and whose language he barely spoke) and was assassinated after just six months. (Just how much Catherine herself had to do with that is open to debate; Ms. Erickson has an opinion on the subject.) And incredibly, even with such suspicions roiling about amongst the populace, Catherine managed what amounted to such a tremendous PR campaign that she was swept onto the throne by overwhelming popular support.

What followed was a tremendously successful rule—they don’t call just *anyone* “The Great,” after all—during which she greatly expanded Russian territory, kept up a regular correspondence with Voltaire, and popularized the newly-available smallpox vaccine by having first herself and then her son, the imperial heir, inoculated. She also, as I intimated earlier, went through a succession of men. Serial monogamy was very much not the done thing amongst female rulers in that place and time, and female rulers who themselves weren’t ruled by men were terrifying to men generally, so this earned her a lot of very nasty rumors. Including that horse thing.

This book is beautifully researched, relying quite a lot on Catherine’s own diaries and other primary sources. It’s also a very skillful condensation of a very large life lived in a very complex time.

Verdict: read it.

Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe

Gender Queer is a graphic memoir about coming of age as genderqueer and asexual. If you don’t know what any of this means, great! When you’re done reading this book, you will. But we can start here:

A graphic memoir is a memoir that looks like a novel-length comic book—it’s written and illustrated in panels, with word bubbles and so on. But it’s not a made-up story, and there are no superheroes or anthropomorphic animals. It’s somebody’s life story; specifically, the story of Maia Kobabe’s growing-up years.

The author identifies as genderqueer. That’s a pretty general label for people who don’t identify as either male or female—deep inside, they don’t feel like either, or maybe they feel like a little of both, or maybe which gender they feel like changes from day to day, or maybe the whole idea of gender, as either a binary or a spectrum, feels alien and wrong to their experience of the world and themselves--so the labels “male” and “female” both feel deeply wrong to them.

The author is also asexual, which is a sexual orientation (like straight, or gay, or bisexual, or any other label that identifies who you’re sexually attracted to). Asexuals (sometimes called aces for short) have no sexual desire for anybody, though some aces do enjoy romantic relationships.

So, those are the basics, extremely simplified. What this book does, skillfully, is help you *understand* all that, by showing it to you through the lens of one person’s experience.

You won’t just get exposed to the terminology (though that’s not a small part of this book); you’ll get a sense of what it feels like to grow up as a singularly-shaped peg that everyone insists should fit into either a round or a square hole. The author’s skill with words and pictures makes what could be a dry primer on gender into a story you will probably find yourself relating to—If you’ve ever been a teenager who feels at all different from their parents and/or peers, that is.

Definitely worth a read.

Girl in a Band by Kim Gordon

read by the author

I am not a fan of Sonic Youth. Yes, I admit it: I was in my 20s during the 1990s and yet, although I understand their appeal and I quite like a few of their songs, for the most part I have no particular liking for them. Dissonance has it place, but doesn’t generally do anything for me. On top of that, I’m easily startled by sudden loud or jangly noises. So you can see why they’re not my favorite performers. I do like Kim’s spooky, haunting moan of a voice—what’s not to like?—and those songs of theirs that highlight it and are more melodic. But yeah, I know, faint praise.

My main memory of having gone to see them in concert (I think it was at the Masonic?) sometime around 1992 or ‘93 was of not recognizing any of their songs and being bored. Oh, and their “opening band” was Ciccone Youth, which was an experimental band composed of… the members of Sonic Youth. The friends I attended with thought this was clever and witty of them. I’ll take their word for it.

Fast forward to 2018. Kim Gordon has published her memoir (in 2015), which I’ve bought for my partner; he has read it and enjoyed it very much. But then, he’s a fan of the band; I had no desire to read it myself. Then in early 2018 I learned that Kim Gordon and Chris Kraus (the author of I Love Dick, the book upon which the sadly short-lived TV series was based) were going to be interviewed together at City Arts and Lectures. This was obviously a perfect birthday present for my partner, so I bought the tickets and we went.

And I learned that Kim Gordon is affectless and somewhat inarticulate, especially as compared to Chris Kraus. She also came across as somewhat self-absorbed and self-important. So, okay. Not impressed.

Why did I finally decide to read the book? I think it came down to having attempted and failed to read three fiction books in a row—I didn’t even get through the first chapter of two of them. Having failed to get through a vampire novel and two different sorts of speculative fiction, I decided I needed something based in the real world. Not even realistic fiction, but nonfiction. And I came across Girl in a Band on my Libby app and basically thought, well, what have I got to lose? So I started it.

Right away I was struck, as I had been during the interview, by her affectless, flat voice. But as she talked about her childhood in Southern California and her relationship with her more-than-difficult brother, I began to understand why she talked that way. I won’t spoil it, but there’s a reason for it. She opens up in this book  as she takes you on a journey through her life, and although I still find her self-important, I also see her as strong-willed, creative, independent, and admirable. The kind of self-important she is is the kind she needs to be, as a person and as an artist, and I’m no longer put off by it.

I do wish she had gone into more detail about the earlier, better days of her relationship with Thurston Moore, but I can see why that would have been painful for her. And the audiobook version really missed an opportunity—there’s a long section where Gordon talks about a number of different songs and her memories relating to them, and it would have been great, especially for someone like me who isn’t especially familiar with the band’s oeuvre, to have heard the song in conjunction with the narration.

But overall, the book is well-written in a quirky, somewhat choppy way, and I’m glad I got to know her just a bit. Verdict: if you like memoirs or are a fan of the band, read it. You'll discover a person worth knowing about.

I'm still not a fan of the band, though.

Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free by Wednesday Martin

Read by the author

I’ll state right at the outset that this book is not for everyone. If you’re not interested in frank, open, sex-positive discussions of female sexuality—or if you’re so triggered by the thought of women who cheat on their partners that reading an account of them that doesn’t condemn them will make you fly into a rage—or if you aren’t interested in the distinction between consensual and non-consensual nonmonogamy, you probably shouldn’t read this book.

Or maybe you should.

Wednesday Martin is standing on the shoulders of the authors of Sex at Dawn, What Do Women Want?, and What Love Is and What It Could Be. From that vantage point, she can see quite a lot that our society and past sex researchers (almost exclusively male) not only couldn’t see, but actively pooh-poohed. Because she doesn’t assume, as they did, that women are more naturally monogamous than men, but is open to other possibilities, she’s able to look at existing research without discounting evidence that doesn’t fit into that box.

And what does she see? That taken as a whole, women, not men, are the ones who have a harder time maintaining monogamy. That it’s at least just as natural for women as for men to cheat on their spouses or have multiple sexual partners. That it was the rise of agrarian societies, not biology, that put a premium on controlling women’s sexuality. That in societies where women are free to have more than one sexual partner at a time without social sanction, they often do.

These ideas aren’t entirely new, of course. What Ms. Martin brings to them is the backing of scientific research. She then goes on to conduct interviews and research of her own, all of which are fascinating. She talks to women in long-term monogamous relationships, women who have cheated on their spouses, and women who practice consensual nonmonogamy. She visits a women-only sex club aimed at women who identify as basically straight, to see what women’s sexuality might be like absent the male gaze. And she draws some interesting conclusions.

This is a very wide-ranging book; topics include social anthropology/ethnography (of both familiar and less-familiar cultures, past and present), primatology, and evolutionary psychology. The numerous interviews she conducts put a human face on the scientific studies she cites. The book does occasionally seem to wander a bit aimlessly, but never for long; another fault in her writing is the focus on female vs. male as if they were immutable categories. However, overall it's a well-researched and informative book, written in a conversational tone that keeps it highly readable. Strongly recommended for anybody who is interested in female sexuality.

Teen Angst? Naaah...: A Quasi-Autobiography: #tbt review

Smart-alec urban nerd Ned Vizzini (author of It's Kind of a Funny Story) wrote a lot of anecdotes about junior high and high school and got them published while he was under 18. This collection of marvelously self-deprecating pieces will feel familiar to anybody who has ever been a teenager.

Vizzini was a nerdy Magic-playing teenager in New York City in the 1990s, and wrote about it. A lot of those anecdotes got published, and they’re all here, from the day he first played Nintendo in middle school to getting into the best public school in NYC to coming home drunk for the very first time to falling in love. The sum total of his anecdotes is a thoughtful and eloquent memoir of an adolescence, told from the point of view of someone who was still there at the time.

These are engaging little vignettes that show the author’s progress from late childhood to late adolescence, somewhere between awkwardness and grace. This is a young man who is privileged to be white and smart and financially secure in a city where many teens are anything but; he’s well aware of this. At the same time, he has faced social and emotional handicaps that form the basis of his self-deprecating sense of humor. This is a very real account of life in the big city for a teenager who may not be exactly typical but who faces many of the same problems that other teens face.

It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living by Dan Savage and Terry Miller: #tbt reviews

In response to a series of teen suicides in 2010, famed sex and relationship advice columnist Dan Savage and his husband, Terry Miller, put together this collection of open letters to LGBTQ+ teens to let them know that life really does get better after high school and to inspire them and give them courage to stick around, even in the face of bullying, and discover that for themselves.

After years of bullying, 15-year-old Justin Aalberg hanged himself in his bedroom in the summer of 2010. His suicide was followed by that of Billy Lucas, and others followed them. Dan Savage, a longtime advocate for queer rights, was painfully aware of these deaths and wished he could speak directly to young people being bullied everywhere, to let them know that it gets better if they can just manage to stick around long enough. 

Then it occurred to him that in the age of the Internet, he could speak directly to teens. He and his husband, Terry Miller, put together a video talking about that and posted it on YouTube, hoping to inspire perhaps 100 other queer adults to do the same. 

Their video went way beyond viral.

As of December 2011, over 10,000 people had made videos for the project: teens and adults in towns and cities across the world; celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres; and even President Obama. The book is a compilation of hundreds of these open letters: some transcriptions of the videos, some essays that have grown out of the videos, and some original material. The book also includes resources for queer youth and their parents, educators, and anybody who cares about them.

These are amazing stories, as individual as the people who wrote them. Each one is a celebration of life and a heartfelt plea to kids who are being bullied today to stick around long enough to learn for themselves that it does, in fact, get better.

Exception: some of the pieces, such as the one by President Obama, though they may be sincere, come across as overly polished and somewhat self-serving. The letters written by actual members of the LGBTQ+ community ring much more true and will mean more to LGBTQ+ kids. Nonetheless, it’s important for kids who are being bullied for their sexuality to read the other letters too. Because if the President of the United States thinks what these kids are going through is important enough for him to be talking about, well… maybe it does get better.

[Note from the present: Um, yeah. Let's just put a pin in that one. -MN, July 2018]

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote this book—part love letter, part polemic—for his 14-year-old son, Samori. He wrote in an outpouring of protectiveness and anguish, trying to explain to him a world—well, a country, a society—that is a constant danger to them both, in a way that his son might understand.

So that his son might, maybe, be a little safer? I don’t think Mr. Coates believes that there’s much his son, or any African American, can do to keep himself safe in this society, steeped as it is in institutional racism. So that his son can at least avoid the trap of self-hatred or internalized racism, maybe. So that his son can see the world around him more clearly than Ta-Nehisi did at his age, certainly.

And so that his son knows, now and forever, how precious and loved he is. And that there is, if not hope, at least beauty and meaning in this world—not only outside of America, though traveling to France was life-changing for Mr. Coates and his family, but also, and most importantly, within his own culture. This book is, among other things, a love letter: not just to his son, but also to his fellow black Americans, survivors all.

I am not the intended audience of this book. Nonetheless I felt it was important to read it, if only in order to bear witness to Mr. Coates’ reality. And one brings oneself to one's reading, just as I bring my point of view to this review; one can't help it. I read it as someone who hasn’t had to deal with racism on top of all the other -isms I face, but I also read it as the parent of a 14-year-old who will face -isms I never foresaw when I first became a parent. And my point of view has expanded: my eyes are clearer. I'm grateful for that.

It may be an odd comparison, but in a way, this book reminds me of Allen Ginsburg’s famous poem, Howl: it’s an intellectual torrent, beautiful and hideous and brave, simultaneously difficult to read and impossible to put down. Unlike Ginsburg's poetry, though, Mr. Coates’ prose is diamond-hard, relentless, and pitiless—as it must be. It’s also insightful and lush and lyrical and heartbreakingly full of love.

Don't let the difficulty of the subject matter put you off reading this book. It requires much of the reader, but it gives back in kind. It’s required reading for our generation.

Guest post: I Love Dick by Chris Kraus

"I Love Dick" is a cult "novel"--for a very good reason. This is a difficult train-wreck of a book, not for everyone. But there will always be people who absolutely need to hear what it has to say.

The publisher calls it a novel, perhaps to create plausible deniability, but the author, Chris Kraus, has said that everything in it is true, and, indeed, she uses the real names of real people throughout the book. The story begins when Chris and her husband Sylvère meet the eponymous, appropriately named "Dick"--a British academic living in California--for dinner. Chris fall instantly in love in him. But rather than hiding this love from her husband, she tells Sylvère all about it--and much of the first part of the book consists of love letters they take turns writing to Dick. The letters are insightful, sexy, honest, and hilarious. 

While "I Love Dick" is often discussed as an exploration of female desire, much of it is about how couples communicate and manage desire for a "third," someone outside of the marriage. At first, love for Dick seems to re-ignite their moribund marriage, emotionally, intellectually, and sexually. As the story goes on, however, Chris begins to outgrow both her husband and Dick. 

"Through love I am teaching myself how to think," Chris writes. "Love and sex both cause mutation." 

-Jeremy Adam Smith

Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northrup

Read by Louis Gosset, Jr.

In this harrowing 1841 memoir, Solomon Northrup, a free man of color from New York State, is kidnapped and sold into slavery in the swamps of Louisiana. The memoir, published in 1853, was groundbreaking in its day; it played a huge role in opening northern whites’ eyes to the brutalizing effect of the “peculiar institution” and significantly changed public opinion in favor of abolition.

I never saw the movie—very deliberately, because I didn’t feel like I could stand to be immersed in the story that way. But I finally decided I did need to know the story, so I decided listening to the audiobook was the way to go.

It’s a deeply painful story, even knowing in advance that it has a “happy ending”—as if having twelve years of your life stolen can ever have a truly happy ending. Knowing the sort of life enslaved people must have led is one thing; reading a first-hand account is something else entirely. Mr. Northrup endured having absolutely everything, even his name, taken away, and was treated with a brutality that would be hard to believe if we didn’t know better. His keen observation of people and of how things were done is put to eloquent use in his memoir. Every American should read this book.

Robin by Dave Itzkoff

Read by Fred Berman

Wow. Just… truly. Wow.

When Robin Williams died, it hit me hard. Yes, he’d been in quite a few embarrassingly bad movies. But he’d also been the heart and soul of some that had been sources of joy and comfort and solace to me. He was a bright light in the world and the loss of that light made my world noticeably dimmer.

I was also deeply furious with him, for having taken his own life. And bewildered that somebody who was so loved by so many, and had such obvious and brilliant talent, would do such a thing. How could he fail to understand that the world would be a dimmer place without him? That lasted a long time.

Finally enough time had passed that when this book came to my attention I decided I could stand to read about him. And it was just right. Itzkoff takes us through his life story, from his parents and their backgrounds, through his lonely childhood and his insecure early career, to the years we remember best. And of course we didn’t know him at all. In some ways, nobody did; I came away with the impression of an incredibly lonely man.

Itzkoff is gentle with his subject, but thorough. This isn’t a money-grubbing, celebrity-shaming tell-all, by any means, and yet I came away with an impression of having at least glimpsed every side of Robin Williams, including the less-shiny bits. But I also came away with an impression of the whys. Why he became who he became, why he took those roles, why he ended his life. Whether my impression is accurate or not, of course I will never know. Nobody but Robin Williams really knew Robin Williams. But I feel like I know some of the reasons for that, and I’m glad. And devastated all over again that he’s gone.

The narrator, Fred Berman, does a great job giving us a feel for the voices of the people whose quotes he’s reading, without quite mimicking them. I’d give him five stars--but he somehow failed to learn that Marin (as in Marin County, where Robin Williams spent much of his adult life, so it gets mentioned a lot in the book) is pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable. This was seriously and frequently irritating and seems like a major oversight. Aside from that, excellent narration.

What Love Is and What It Could Be by Carrie Jenkins

read by the author

A philosophical treatise on the nature of love—which could be dry, but it’s not. Short, super readable, peppered with pop culture references (mostly used as metaphors) which will date the book in a few more years but for now make it a very relatable read.

The author argues that love isn’t merely a social construct nor a biological process/drive, but both. As an inveterate distruster of dichotomies, which are all too often false, I am naturally inclined to appreciate the merits of this argument; but I think she really does objectively make her case. A must-read for all of us over-thinkers, and also a great book to hand to your parents who don’t "get" whatever kind of relationship you're in.

The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6’ 4”, African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama’s Boy, Dad, And Stand-Up Comedian by W. Kamau Bell

read by the author

I was on a non-fiction kick but needed something not-tragic after Just Kids. Not exactly light reading--Mr. Bell never lets the reader get quite that comfortable--but he is definitely funny. (Plus I didn’t keep wondering who was going to die of AIDS or an overdose next.) Mr. Bell first came to my attention because of the incident at the Elmwood Cafe, and I’d been curious about him ever since, so this memoir seemed like a good way to satisfy my curiosity. As expected, he is funny and smart and doesn’t hold back and he made me question myself and wish we could go out for beers. A very enjoyable book and now I want to watch United Shades of America. When I can find time between episodes of Star Trek: Discovery and The Good Place.

Just Kids by Patti Smith

read by the author

I’ve been meaning to read this ever since it was first published. I loved hearing it in Ms. Smith’s own voice—well, with respect, aside from her inability to pronounce the word “drawing” without inserting an “L” in the middle of it—in particular, hearing her echoing the loving tone in Robert Mapplethorpe’s voice when he teased her. I loved hearing how the two of them took care of each other, what their art meant to each of them and each other. If I’d known about them when I was a teenager I would have idolized them. As it is, I’ve developed a tremendous affection and respect for them both. I’m so glad I finally read this.

Blankets

by Craig Thompson

A very personal and vividly-told story about first love. I could really feel it… also, the zap that such an intensely religious upbringing put on those kids’ heads. Beautifully drawn. It feels strange to me that I don’t have more to say about this book than I do. It’s very absorbing. But it’s also a quiet book. I felt quiet when reading it, and I feel quiet now, thinking about it. Snow. Blankets. Thoughts.

The Big Book of Bisexual Trials and Errors

by Elizabeth Beier

My partner gave me this graphic novel for Christmas and I started reading it on New Year’s Eve. It’s very specific and awkward and hyperlocal and quite wonderful. It’s an autobiographical account of the author’s adventures as she moves to Berkeley and becomes actively (as opposed to merely hypothetically) bisexual. She also spends quite a bit of the book waxing lyrical about the last days of the Lexington. Vividly drawn and highly relatable, even though I’m not of her generation and reading this book *seriously* made me feel that.