Memoirs, Humor, and More About Fatherhood

June 15, 2014June 9, 2014 / Sharon Tyler / Leave a comment

In honor of Father’s Day, let’s take a look at some dad related humor, memoirs, and related collections of letters that can be great reads for dads new to the wonders of parenthood, those that are not quite as new to its wonders, and just about anyone.

Too Good to be True: a Memoir by Benjamin Anastas. When he was three, Anastas found himself in his mother’s fringe-therapy group in Massachusetts, a sign around his neck: Too Good to Be True. The phrase haunted him through his life. This is his deeply moving memoir of fathers and sons, crushing debt and infidelity– and the first, cautious steps taken toward piecing a life back together.

A Father First: How my Life Became Bigger than Basketball by Dwyane Wade.
NBA star Dwyane Wade discusses the rewarding responsibilities of being a single dad to his two sons, Zaire and Zion and highlights of his basketball career.

The Ticking is the Bomb: a Memoir by Nick Flynn. A dazzling, searing, and inventive memoir about becoming a father in the age of terror.

Fatherhood by Bill Cosby. A collection of ruminations, anecdotes, and vignettes based on Cosby’s experiences as a son and father.

Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon. An entertaining omnibus of opinionated essays previously published mostly in Details magazine spotlights novelist Chabon’s (The Yiddish Policemen’s Union) model of being an attentive, honest father and a fairly observant Jew.

Lamentations of the Father by Ian Frazier. More serious than a “gag” writer and funnier than most essayists, Frazier has a classical originality. This collection, a companion to his previous humor collections “Dating Your Mom” and “Coyote v. Acme,” contains 33 pieces gathered from the last 13 years.

Don’t Make Me Stop this Car!: Adventures in Fatherhood by Al Roker. Al provides an unprecedented, intimate look into his experiences with infertility treatments, adoption, and the normal fears and wonders of an expecting parent. As Al manages the needs of his daughters from two marriages and the demands of a high-profile career, he is like millions of others who fantasize about the newest sport utility vehicle, struggle with a GapKids addiction, and bask in the golden moments of first steps and special Father’s Day meals. Along the way, Al comes to a deeper understanding of his parents’ love for him and a whole new appreciation of them as grandparents.

Raising Cubby: a Father and Son’s Adventures with Asperger’s, Trains, Tractors, and High Explosives John Elder Robison. The comic memoir of an Aspergian father raising his Aspergian son, by the bestselling author of Look Me in the Eye.

As usual, I found too many great books to stop, so if you are looking for even more you might want to check out; Dad is Fat by Jim Gaffigan, The Council of Dads: My Daughters, My Illness, and the Men Who Could be Me by Bruce S. Feiler, Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern, Wisdom of our Fathers: Lessons and Letters from Daughters and Sons by Tim Russer, No Wonder my Parents Drank: Tales from a Stand-up Dad by Jay Mohr, A Promise to Ourselves: a Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce by Alec Baldwin, The Bastard on the Couch: 27 Men Try Really Hard to Explain their Feelings about Love, Loss, Fatherhood, and Freedom edited by Daniel Jones, and Big Russ and Me: Father and Son by Tim Russert.

Susan Reads: Nothing to Envy

June 14, 2014June 21, 2014 / Susan O. / Leave a comment

Rarely have I come across a book so haunting.

If you Google Earth for North Korea at night, you will see South Korea as brightly lit as a coast of the US. Above it is a great C0044096-Korea_at_night,_satellite_image-SPL big blackness. This is North Korea. It is not black because they block out satellites, or by treaty.

It’s because there is no electricity.

In an entire country.

Author Barbara Dimick’s book, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea won the 2010 Samuel Booker prize, with good reason. Dimick has seen the “official” places of North Korea, but moreso spent years tracking down people who managed to escape the deadly iron fist of North Korea and interviewing them extensively. She follows several families, some of them die-hard party loyalists, through their unwavering patriotism, their questioning, their suffering, to their desperate do or die escape.

Dimick traces some of the history, from World War II, when things started to go flaky, through the Korean conflict, when things got really wacky, to the insane tyranny of Kim Jong Il, and now Kim Jong Un. North Korea, until the 1960’s, actually had a better standard of living than South Korea, but began to fall apart in the 70’s. But, unlike Russian Communism, instead of saving itself, North Korea became even more hard-nosed, more dictatorial, more insane. By the 90’s, there were no jobs, no wages, no food, no manufacturing. People began starving to death in great masses, with children so stunted by malnutrition they barely topped 4’7” as adults. Trees died, because people stripped the bark to eat. As many as three million people died, and there were many reports of cannibalism.

Imagine a place where radios and televisions are set by the government to one single official channel. Where the government doles out the very food you are allowed to eat, and the quantity, and the clothes you wear. Where everything is in black and white except the propaganda posters, which are in red, the only color people can look to with cheer. Where every home must display a photo of the dictator, and clean it daily with a special cloth, where the picture can be inspected at any time and you can be sent to the Gulag for disrespect. North Koreans are so isolated, so indoctrinated, so starved, so cowed, that they are not only utterly brainwashed against the outside world, but cannot imagine what the outside world is like. After three generations of this, they’ve never known anything else.

Perhaps the saddest, most poignant moment is when the once-loyal mother makes a desperate swim across the river into China, crawls to the first house she sees, starved, frozen, exhausted, desperate, pushes open the garden gate, and discovers a bowl of meat and rice and vegetables set outside waiting for her, and she is utterly amazed, not having seen meat or even rice in months. Then the family’s dog comes around the corner of the house, and the woman realizes that in China, even dogs eat better than North Koreans.

Read this. Really, read this book. It’s short. It will painlessly explain so much of the insanity, the politics, the danger that is North Korea, and will help you separate the Korean government from the Korean people, who have as much control over their situation as an ant has over an elephant. You will not forget it.

June is National Bathroom Reading Month

June 10, 2014June 4, 2014 / Sharon Tyler / Leave a comment

Yes, you read that right. June is actually National Bathroom Reading Month. I never knew a month was dedicated to this, but I guess everything has a special time set aside to celebrate it’s uniqueness these days.

So what kind of list do you think I will offer up here? It took me awhile to decide myself. Should I offer up books about bathroom renovation, dirty jokes, short stories, potty training, or something else completely? There are just so many options! I decided to go with reading material, mostly of a humorous bent including some memoirs, that are portioned out in short tidbits, stories, or facts, best suited for reading in short periods of time. Not that I promote reading library books in that particular room of course, but these books would do well while waiting in the car or for any short reading time spans.

1. The Ten, Make that Nine, Habits of Very Organized people. Make that Ten: the Tweets of Steve Martin

2. Napalm & Silly Putty by George Carlin

3. Our Dumb World: The Onion’s Atlas of the Planet Earth by The Onion

4. Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes go Hilariously Wrong by Jen Yates

5. Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up by Dave Barry

6. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary by David Sedaris

7. Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things that Happened by Allie Brosh

8. I Didn’t Ask to be Born (But I’m Glad I Was) by Bill Cosby; illustrations by George Booth

9. Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies: on Myths, Morons, Free Speech, Football, and Assorted Absurdities by Chris Kluwe

10. Is Everyone Hanging out Without Me? (and other concerns) by Mindy Kaling

And because I can never leave well enough alone, here are some more options: America again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren’t by Stephen Colbert, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris, Sometimes I Feel Like a Nut: Essays and Observations by Jill Kargman, Totally Mad: 60 Years of Humor, Satire, Stupidity and Stupidity by John Ficarra, Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern, The 50 Funniest American Writers*: an Anthology of Humor from Mark Twain to the Onion *according to Andy Borowitz, Humor Me: an Anthology of Funny Contemporary Writing (Plus Some Great Old Stuff Too) edited by Ian Frazier,
Our Front pages: 21 Years of Greatness, Virtue, and Moral Rectitude from America’s Finest News Source, The Onion, and Let’s Pretend this Never Happened: (a Mostly True Memoir) by Jenny Lawson the Bloggess.

Everybody’s Got a Story – 10 New and Upcoming Memoirs

May 29, 2014June 5, 2014 / Louise / Leave a comment

What is a memoir?

Memoir (from French: mémoire, meaning memory or reminiscence), is a literary subcategory of the autobiography, usually a collection of memories that an individual writes about moments or events that took place in the author’s life. Like most autobiographies, memoirs are written from the first-person point of view. Where an autobiography tells the story of a life, while memoir tells a story from a life, such as touchstone events and turning points from the author’s life.

Memoirs have seen a major surge in popularity in recent years. The old adage “everyone has a book in them” seems to be coming true! Some hypothesize that the growing popularity of social media and reality television shows has increased the public’s appetite for reading memoirs. Whatever the reason, there are more and more published every year. Here are a few of the new and noteworthy memoirs being published in 2014:

I Forgot to Remember by Su Meck. the story of an amnesia survivor who permanently lost all of her memories after a traumatic brain injury and who endured a more than 25-year effort to relearn basic skills and reclaim her life. In her own indelible voice, Su offers us a view from the inside of a terrible injury, with the hope that her story will help give other brain injury sufferers and their families the resolve and courage to build their lives anew.

Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart. A candid, witty, deeply poignant account of his life, Shteyngart shares his experience a young Russian immigrant, moving back and forth through time and memory with self-deprecating humor, moving insights, and literary bravado. It is a memoir of a Jewish family leaving Russia and coming to America, as told by a lifelong misfit who forged from his imagination an essential literary voice and, against all odds, a place in the world.

Out of the Woods by Lynn Darling. After her daughter leaves home for college, the author, a widow, embarks on a journey of self-discovery that leads her from New York to Vermont where she, with her dog and a compass, maps out a new direction for her life while adapting to the solitude of her new surroundings. Combining the soul-baring insight of Wild, the profound wisdom of Shop Class as Soulcraft, and the adventurous spirit of Eat, Pray, Love: Lynn Darling’s powerful, lyrical memoir of self-discovery, full of warmth and wry humor.

Paddle Your Own Canoe by Nick Offerman. The actor known for roles in such productions as Parks and Recreation shares whimsical musings on a range of topics from love and manliness to grooming and eating meat, offering additional discussions of his life before fame and his courtship of his wife, Megan Mullally. A mix of amusing anecdotes, opinionated lessons and rants, sprinkled with offbeat gaiety, Paddle Your Own Canoe will not only tickle readers pink but may also rouse them to put down their smart phones, study a few sycamore leaves, and maybe even hand craft (and paddle) their own canoes.

Glitter and Glue by Kelly Corrigan. The author of the best-selling The Middle Place presents an account of her perspectives on motherhood, which have been shaped by her job as a nanny for a grieving Australian family and her character-testing experiences with her daughters. A book about the difference between travel and life experience, stepping out and stepping up, fathers and mothers; But mostly it’s about who you admire and why, and how that changes over time.

Duty by Robert M. Gates. The former Secretary of Defense and director of the CIA recounts his service under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, describing his roles in such major events as the Bin Laden raid, the Guantánamo Bay controversy and the WikiLeaks scandal.

Sous Chef by Michael Gibney. An executive sous chef who has worked alongside cooks from some of the nation’s leading restaurants documents an intense twenty-four-hour period that illuminates the allures and adversities of a professional culinary life. Sous Chef is an immersive, adrenaline-fueled run that offers a fly-on-the-wall perspective on the food service industry, allowing readers to briefly inhabit the hidden world behind the kitchen doors, in real time.

Stronger by Jeff Bauman. Long-distance runner Bauman’s inspiring memoir of his experiences during the terrorist bombing at the 2013 Boston Marathon in which he lost both his legs and his ongoing mission to walk again.

Things a Little Bird Told Me by Biz Stone. Telling personal stories from his early life and careers, the co-founder of Twitter and one of today’s most successful businessmen shares his knowledge about the nature and importance of ingenuity today. Biz also addresses failure, the value of vulnerability, ambition, and corporate culture.

Hard Choices by Hillary Rodham Clinton. The former secretary of state, senator and first lady shares candid reflections about the key moments of her service in the Obama Administration as well as her thoughts about how to navigate the challenges of the 21st century.

Handling Questions About Bodies with Your Young Children

May 27, 2014June 6, 2014 / Sharon Tyler / Leave a comment

I think every parent dreads certain questions and discussions with their children. There are a thousand difficult things that we will need to discuss with them as they grow up, and no matter how well-prepared we think we are, they are bound to ask a question or make an observation we are unprepared for. In order to help us feel better about approaching the discussion about body differences, changes, and babies I put together a few book lists to help all of us.

In this post I will offer suggestions for parents in deciding what to say and when, and how to broach the body discussion with the youngest children that need to know why boys and girls are different, and why certain actions or questions might be inappropriate. I followed up that list with some book suggestions that you can share with even the youngest children to help explain matters.