User Profile

I spotted this book on a promo table at a book store in San Francisco and I suppose I was taken in by the striking cover, and because you know, like, I’m a father of girls. I didn’t really know anything about it, but I added it to my list. I’ve just finished listening to the audiobook, well-read by the author.

Abbott is a little older than me, but not much, and so the story of her childhood was striking when compared to my own. The wider geopolitical beats around the story sound familiar, but the lived experience is entirely different. At times I felt so sorry for this little girl who seemed to so desperately need a little more love and attention. And in other places I found myself a little jealous of such an open relationship with such an open father, a man who knew how to express …

The book itself is straight forward, even a little boring in structure. It’s a linear telling in six sections, essentially divided by decade. But this isn’t a complaint. Madonna’s story is so compelling that it doesn’t need to be dressed up in a clever telling. Pro-tip: the ebook has an appendix of photographs that is not included with the audiobook. It’s worth seeking them out.

Over dinner, my kid told me they re-read this because their students are reading it in Literature class. Isabel said it was so much better than they remembered. I know we read this in High School, but I’m sure I “read” it in my usual way at the time, which is to say I skimmed the chapters, read the dialog, and hoped for the best. (I didn’t enjoy reading fiction until I was in my late twenties.)

Anyway, long story short I decided it was high time I actually read it for real. It was honestly so much better than I expected. I guess I was naively expecting a lot of puritanical moralizing at the expense of a woman. And in a sense I got that. But Hawthorne also gives us a strong woman, a spirited irrepressible little girl, and a sort of schizophrenic rebuke of the very moralizing he …

My brother and I read this book together during a family trip when we were maybe 10 and 11. I had completely forgotten about it until Audible promoted it to me because it is apparently having a birthday. As soon as I saw the title, the memories came flooding back, however unclear.

I remembered my brother reading it on the long car drive. He told me how amazing it was and then loaned his library copy to me when we got to the hotel.

I can’t say I remembered much detail, and much of what I did remember was mixed up (it was an old hotel in my memory, not a new apartment building, for instance). But I did remember a precocious young girl called Turtle, and some kind of elaborate and very tricky scheme. I have to say, to the jaded eyes of a 40-something, the game that drives …

You know those SNL “Stafon” skits where Bill Hader describes clubs in New York in extravagant ways, saying “It has everything!” Well, this book has everything. It is elegantly written (my version was translated by William Weaver). It is fascinatingly philosophical. It is historical. It is an engrossing mystery story. It is a very funny satire. And it is interesting.

Without spoiling it I’ll say that the resolution of the mystery integrates beautifully with the philosophical themes explored by the characters, and with the setting. The story’s hero, the ultimate villain, the 14th century Church, and the monastery and library each echo one another in fractal ways. It is remarkable how all these parts were assembled to make something cohesive, if labyrinthine.

What an engrossing and possessing book this is. I stayed up way too late finishing it. And still it took longer than I expected because, for someone like me who knows next-to-nothing about Puerto Rico (née Borikén), it sent me to Wikipedia a lot. But this isn’t a history lesson. It’s a powerful story of identity at the micro- and macro-level.

Perhaps the most wonderful thing about literature is that it invites us to experience worlds, lives, ideas that are foreign to us. I can be a woman, a Puertorriqueña, member of a big Brooklyn family, daughter of a revolutionary, even though I am none of these things. But even so, I did not expect to identify directly with Olga in the way I did. Despite the vastly different circumstances of our lives, we both have complicated parents. And Gonzalez put to words things I’ve never really been able …

This collection of sci-fi short stories by women authors is, unsurprisingly, a mixed bag, but also a lot of fun. It’s arranged chronologically, starting with a 1928 story with a twist that is completely unsurprising, and ending with Ursula K Le Guin’s 1969 classic novelette, Nine Lives.

I think the tastiest treat was C. L. Moore’s surprising, creepy, imaginative and passionate The Black God’s Kiss (1934). I won’t spoil it with description, but I loved every page. It turns out it is the first of six stories around the same protagonist, all collected in a 1969 book also called The Black God’s Kiss. You can be sure I added it to my list.

This is one of my favorite books. Tiny, impossible to classify, poetic, inspiring, challenging, and emotionally rejuvenating. It is exquisite. I've read it several times, most recently as a sort of healing balm as I grieve the loss of my brother. It is short, just 80 pages in print. I don’t know how to classify it. It reads like a memoir but isn’t, as far as I can tell. It isn’t a story either, and it isn’t an essay. Perhaps you could say it is a “fictional memoir?” I don’t know. It is certainly a beautiful thoughtful prayerful long-form prose-poem.

Linguistically it is remarkable. Philosophically it is a work of genius. Liturgically it is an anguished unsermon. It is a holy book like no other, one that does not placate, does not explain, and does not parabolize. It only evokes.

I know only enough of God to want to worship …

This was a recommendation from my father, who absolutely loved it. It’s a beautifully written book about that friction between the world we sometimes imagine we want, and the world we really possess. It’s about friendship, and about mountains. I can see why my father loved it. It’s a contemplative book, well suited to reflection. I tihnk what I liked best was its reverence– for nature, for the mountain, and for a pastoral world that no longer exists and perhaps in some sense never really did.

I’ve been reading Loren Grush’s space coverage for several years, first at The Verge and more recently at Bloomberg. Like most people I normally read sites, but she’s on the shortlist of journalists I look for by name wherever I can find them. Everything she writes is clear, interesting, and shot through with enthusiasm for what the exploration of space really represents. So when I saw she had a book coming out I put it on my list right away, and as soon as it appeared I devoured it in a few short days. I was not at all disappointed.

This book is so well constructed. Even though you probably know many of the events, Grush unfolds them for us beautifully. I found the book strangely moving well before we got to heavy-weight Challenger part. Take for example the handling of Sally Ride’s queerness. Grush finds a perfect line …

I’ve been fascinated by Cleopatra since I first read Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra a decade ago. The play is remarkable, but of course it is built around a mythical Cleopatra who only vaguely resembles the real person. This is the second Cleopatra biography I’ve read, and for my money a much better one. Schiff does such a good job illuminating the source material and putting what has been said about Cleopatra into historical and cultural context. The result is perhaps a less certain story than other books offer, but one that feels grounded in rationality and research.

I admire the Cleopatra this book reveals. She is inventive and bold, if not successful. I’ll let it speak for itself:

Two thousand years of bad press and overheated prose, of film and opera, cannot conceal the fact that Cleopatra was a remarkably capable queen, canny and opportunistic in the extreme, a strategist …

Several years ago I read 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann. I found it fascinating and eye-opening. But it also made me curious to read about these topics from the perspective of indigenous authors. All that to say: don’t be confused like I was. Indigenous Continent is not written by an indigenous author. It wasn’t until I was halfway through the book that I looked up the author out of curiosity. And then I discovered he is a white Finish man. This is an embarrassing admission. I feel somewhat excused in this mistake because it was shelved under “Indigenous Voices” at the book store in San Francisco where I first found it. Trust but verify I guess.

I don’t say this to disparage the book at all. It was very good. In the introduction, the author talks about language:

I call Native men and …

I first read this book as a child. I’d guess I was twelve. But I hadn’t thought about it in years, until I watched the recent film adaptation. It was so delightful I decided to read the book again.

It’s a funny thing, reading a book in middle age that you last read when you were a child. In my vague memory, Margaret was so grown up. She was dealing with “girl” things I didn’t know much about, which felt very mysterious. And she and her friends seemed wise and confident. I’m sure my image of Margaret and her friends was influenced by my own “big” sisters, who were (and to some degree still are) mythical to me.

Reading the book on the far-far side of childhood — my own children are now adults — these girls seem so small. Of course Margaret is still wise and at moments she …

I decided to read this because it is the basis of one of my favorite films, Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. And because the cover is gorgeous. But it is also a very timely read. Maria Antoinette is in some sense the ultimate symbol of eat-the-rich, and understandably so. At the same time, but perhaps less understood, she’s an emblem of our still-pervasive cultural hatred of women. This is the Marie Antoinette explored by Coppola in her film. I could try to explain it in my cumbersome way, but I don’t have to because Roger Ebert captured it perfectly in his review:

Every criticism I have read of this film would alter its fragile magic and reduce its romantic and tragic poignancy to the level of an instructional film. This is Sofia Coppola’s third film centering on the loneliness of being female and surrounded by a world that knows how …

I saw Deanna Templeton’s arresting photographs of young women at the Kinship: Photography and Connection exhibit at SFMOMA a few weeks ago, and took a note to seek out her book. (I found it for sale online from Setanta Books.)

I devoured this book today from beginning to end. Powerful, intimate, redemptive, and beautifully illustrated. It brought me to tears. I admire Templeton’s unashamed vulnerability in revealing this to the public. Her teenage diary entries are lightly edited, if at all, and they reveal so much— pain, self-hatred, hope, fear, small joys, acts of kindness…

I left the house crying. 1 part of me felt like saying “Fuck You!!” I don’t Need any you!!" Another part felt like fuck’n everyone, I wish I was dead. The 3rd one felt like I got stuff to live for, I can’t give up. And the 4th is alone, left confused, mad and …