The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

Thirst: 2600 Miles to Home Heather "Anish" Anderson, 2019 Premise: A memoir about losing and finding yourself on the trail. I think parts of this book will be with me for a while. A popular suggestion on lists of "books like Wild" or "memoirs about hiking" or "memoirs from outdoorswomen" (all lists that pique my interest), Thirst follows Heather Anderson (trail name Anish) on her attempt to set a record for hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in the fastest known time.  The story of that hike is beautifully interwoven with scenes from her life that lead up to it and reflections on her experience. At times Anish seems impossibly strong, at others foolish. Average people don't feel driven to run ultramarathons and walk for days on end. Her account feels honest, searching, vital.  She mentions a few times that she was chronicling her journey online in real time at the time, and sometimes I wished for a few more of those in-the-moment snippets. The n...

Pickets and Dead Men Bree Lowen, 2009 Premise: A memoir of being a climbing ranger on Mount Rainier. This was a prominent recommendation in a comment thread about books about mountaineering and women, and I definitely see why. It's a series of funny, frightening, visceral vignettes. As you read, you definitely understand why it was a life-altering experience, even if the author performed this job for just three summers.  Be warned, it is a little gross at times, and the author also chooses to highlight some moments of callous or posturing behavior that she felt at the time was necessary to hold her own in a testosterone-heavy field. The balance between action and personal reflection felt authentic for the job and the setting.  The job includes exciting rescues, but also body retrieval, assisting the wounded and lost, and the daily effort not to become one of the wounded or lost on the mountain. I have no aspirations to summit Rainier (although props to friends who've done it!)...

Tracks Robyn Davidson, 1980 Premise: A memoir of one woman's solo journey across the Australian desert.  I tried to start this book a few times, but the beginning didn't really hook me. This time, fortified by some recent recommendations on a forum for outdoorsy women, I pushed on and quite enjoyed it once the story picked up.  I wish I'd realized earlier in the book that it was released in 1980 and took place in 1977. (I knew it wasn't a modern book, but I didn't realize it was quite that old when I started reading.) Aspects of the relationships between people and the political situations and people's attitudes make much more sense with that context. I think I was initially frustrated because much of the first part of the book chronicles Robyn's struggles to prepare for the trip she wants to take, but it takes her a long time to actually make much progress toward her trip. Eventually, the narration acknowledges this (including her feelings of ambivalence, ...

Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North Blair Braverman, 2016 Premise: A memoir about survival, independence, and dogsledding. Content warnings for sexual assault, rape, and animal injury and death (sheep). Blair Braverman was always drawn north. Always drawn to snow and ice, to the aurora and the darkness of the Arctic latitudes. This is her story. I had a little trouble following the narrative at first, but I think that's more a function of my scattered reading time and attention than a problem with the book. It flips back and forth between the "present" - an extended summer visit to a rural town in Norway - and all the adventures that lead up to it. Blair's determination leads her to take on great things, but it also causes her to not seek help: first when she's subject to unwanted attention while an exchange student and later in a toxic relationship. Ultimately, the book is about how she is able to balan...

Becoming Us: Travelers on the Jimmy Come Lately Road Judy Bordeaux, 2019 Premise: This gentle memoir traces three generations making their way in America. Judy Bordeaux passed away in 2018. She was a fantastic storyteller. I knew her briefly because we sang with the same chorus. The introduction to this book explains how it was completed posthumously. I expected this to be well written and entertaining, but it also has a quiet depth that I really enjoyed. The book tells the story of her family through parallel struggles and situations faced by her grandparents, her parents, and herself. Some of the vignettes chronicle significant events, others the small adventures of life. Around the edges of many of the stories lurks the racism faced by her Japanese grandfather and half-Japanese father. The author uses her ancestors' stories to color her own experiences. Between the focus on the immigrant experience and the setting here in Washington state, this is a strongly Americ...

Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America Edited by Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding, 2017 Read Harder 2018 - an essay anthology Premise: Twenty-three powerful, intersectional perspectives on feminism and women in America today. Last year I tried reading a few books of reactions and essays on the current political situation, and I kept getting bogged down in things I already knew or perspectives I didn't appreciate. This is the book I was waiting for. I don't agree immediately with every point that every author has to say, and some of them contradict each other. On some level, that is the point. This is a book that personalizes a broad cross-section of women's experience, including women of every color and creed. Women who are afraid for their healthcare and women who are afraid for their children. Women who work in global health or reproductive rights. Women who face racism, misogyny, or transphobia personally, or try to...

H is for Hawk Helen Macdonald, 2014 Read Harder Challenge - A book about nature Premise: A memoir about grief, falconry, English history, and a human connection with the natural world. I was in the mood for something different recently, so I tried out this well-reviewed memoir. It's a fascinating piece, although not (in my opinion) perfect. After her father's sudden death, the author retreated into her lifelong obsession with birds and raised and trained a young goshawk. The book includes not only the story of her relationship with Mabel throughout a year of grieving and perspectives on modern falconry but also a parallel story of T. H. White's book about training a goshawk, and his relationships with both animals and people. The writing is beautiful. I can't say that enough.The descriptions are deliciously tangible and her explanations of her emotions are tremendously vivid. I loved her descriptions and musings on her relationship with her hawk and with...

Holidays on Ice David Sedaris, 2008 I haven't been subjected to this unpleasant an attempt at "humor" in some time. I thought I knew what I was getting into with this, and I expected it to be mixed. Erin spoke in the past about how much he disliked most of the Sedaris segments on This American Life . Read the whole review on Mainlining Christmas

Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail , Suzanne Roberts, 2012 Girl in the Woods: A Memoir , Aspen Matis, 2015 A few years back, I read an intriguing excerpt from a book that was just then coming out, a memoir about a woman hiking alone. I picked it up from the New York Public Library, almost on a whim, and adored it. That book was Wild by Cheryl Strayed and at this point, I've read it twice and seen the movie. It lead me to occasionally seek out other memoirs on similar themes, although until now, I haven't written about any of them here. Neither of these books was as brilliant as Wild , but they were both good. Both have themes of female empowerment and the grounded, centered feeling that can come from self-reliance in the wilderness. Almost Somewhere is the simpler and less emotionally impactful of the two. It is based on the diary and memory of the author, who hiked the John Muir Trail with two friends after college. The three young women b...

In the Country We Love Diane Guerrero with Michelle Burford, 2016 Premise: Actress Diane Guerrero shares her family's experiences with being undocumented in America. When Diane Guerrero was just fourteen, her parents were deported. She was overlooked by the child welfare system and stayed with friends and neighbors until she finished high school. There are the bones of a really fascinating, moving story here, but that isn't quite what this book ended up as. There were parts I really liked. I found her parents' lives interesting. It was moving how hard they tried to become American citizens, although all the while the knowledge of their status stole some of the joy from their lives. I was moved by her feeling pulled between two worlds, especially after her parents were deported. She is an American citizen, and America was her only home, and her parents both knew that and were happy for her and at the same time wanted her with them in Columbia. All of the chapt...

Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef Gabrielle Hamilton, 2011 Challenge Book! Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2016 - Read a food memoir Premise: Gabrielle Hamilton has a successful restaurant in New York City, but she’s always trying to capture an experience of food that you don’t normally find in the food industry. In this memoir, she traces her life from her quirky childhood through her unconventional attempts at education to her unusual marriage and the relationship with food that runs under it all. I struggled with finding a book for this challenge. I started one and dropped it, perused a lot of lists and nothing called to me. Then I saw this book on several lists of great food memoirs, and it was available from the library as an audiobook on a day when I needed a new audiobook. It must have been fate, because I really liked this one. And it’s only partially because it contains some of the best descriptions of my alma mater I’ve ...

Last Night, A Superhero Saved My Life Edited by Liesa Mignogna, 2016 Challenge Book! Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2016 - Read a collection of essays Premise: 22 authors write about their relationships with comics and superheroes. Happily or unhappily, the worst piece in this collection is the first. I was so dismayed to read a pale, pathetic piece about how Batman inspired some well-off guy I’m not familiar with to be a writer. There’s a better piece later in the book with the same thrust - superheroes inspired me to be creative. And that’s fine. But boring. The second piece is a raw, passionate, beautifully written essay from a woman whose rage causes her to connect viscerally with the Hulk, and how she eventually walks away from an abusive, toxic family life. The essays are overall interesting and often funny, but there is a bright line between the ones that are about the creative process, or even one I quite liked about a love for Spider-Man and a love for Ma...

A Child's Christmas in Wales Dylan Thomas, 1950-1955 (depending on how you count) Crossposted from Mainlining Christmas I have seen this book on lists of classic Christmas stories for years now, but it just kept falling to the bottom of the to-read list. It probably could have stayed there. There's nothing wrong with it. It's a short story's worth of words poetically describing the activities and feelings of the holiday at a very particular place and time. It's pretty, especially the version I had with big color illustrations. But there's just not much to it other than nostalgia and pretty phrases. There are some very pretty phrases, admittedly. There's food, and weather, and an amusing story about a fire scare fought with snowballs, and a brief interlude where young boys sing carols outside a creepy house. Whether the narrator is speaking to a general audience or one person was unclear; it seemed to shift without clear demarcation of any so...

Just a Geek: Unflinchingly honest tales of the search  for life, love, and fulfillment  beyond the Starship Enterprise Wil Wheaton, 2004 Premise: From the back cover: " Just a Geek is the story of how Wil Wheaton faced down his constant companion, the ghost he calls 'Prove To Everyone That Quitting Star Trek Wasn't A Mistake.'" I read this at a really good time. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that reading a memoir about career transition and self-doubt is really satisfying if one is full of doubt and in the midst of a potential career transition. It doesn't hurt that this book is also clever, touching and really funny. I rediscovered Wil Wheaton recently through the delightful Penny Arcade D&D podcasts . I don't get to do any gaming in my day-to-day life lately, so it's fun to eavesdrop on these games through the podcast. And Wil is obviously a really great gamer. Reading the book was wonderfully comfortable. It...

Up Till Now William Shatner and David Fisher, 2008 Note: I was not originally going to read this book as part of this project. I was originally going to read a completely different memoir, by a different actor. My husband objected to my doing a Star Trek unit without something by Shatner. I decided he was probably right, and that the other memoir was out of tone for this week, since it had little to do with The Original Series. Still, stay tuned for my other review soon. (Here's a spoiler: the other book is better.) Hmph. This book was, on some level, precisely what I expected. Self-deprecating on the surface, while swinging wildly between charming, funny, annoying, boring, and revolting. It often felt like it was trying too hard to be funny, which has its own tinge of pretension. And I was put off by the style. It's full of constant tangents, like 'commercials' and a weird sense of the middle ground between fact and fiction. Sometimes openly the narration...

I Am Spock Leonard Nimoy, 1995 Reading this book has caused me to think a bit about my own perspective. I wonder what it's like to read a book like this, an actor's memoir, and not have a background in the performing arts. Does it help people understand what it's like to work in the industry, or do they come away from the book thinking they understand, but with the wrong messages? I do come at this book with a background in performing arts, and am familiar with actors of many types, so what I get from this book, especially when combined with Beyond Uhura (reviewed here), is a plausible portrait of actors who seem an awful lot like actors I've known. A great deal of the book is concerned in assuring the reader that Nimoy really does love Spock, and that the title of his earlier memoir ( I Am Not Spock ) was never intended to convey animosity. From skimming excerpts of that book online, I would say that he is not exaggerating. The earlier book has the same ...

Beyond Uhura Nichelle Nichols, 1994 This was an awesome memoir. The Trek stories were fun of course, but it was really the span of Nichols' career and interests that intrigued me most. She was often in the right place at the right time to meet important directors and performers, and it's always enjoyable to get new perspectives on important movements in theater and dance. I feel a little silly saying it, but it is more affecting to have some stories told by someone you feel like you know – even if you only 'know' them from being a fan. Stories like when she loses a big contract when she refuses to sleep with a producer. or is assaulted and threatened when on an out of town job alone. A personal account of sexism and racism is simply more moving than statistics. The chapters dealing with her family and her heritage were fascinating: both moving and highly entertaining to read. Her account of every part of her life seemed very fair-minded. Her verbal pic...

The Complete Persepolis Marjane Satrapi, 2007 I don't read much biography or autobiography because I really like plot, and real life is often lacking in that.  However, I'm very glad that I finally got to this work. In case you've been living under a rock, Persepolis is a graphic novel relating the author's personal account of growing up in Iran during and after the Islamic Revolution. This was one of those fantastic books that really made me think about how much I don't know, and how much I don't even know that I don't know. The book starts when she is quite small, and follows her through war and destruction, through travel and return, from a child's understanding to an adult life. One particularly striking bit was when she left to attend school in Austria, and seeing how many parents sent their children away once they saw what was happening to the country. She has a variety of typically teenage experiences in Austria, but the people she...