September BOTM Review - The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo - Amy Schumer

Review by Coll
5 Stars

So I have never been big into stand-up comedy (or comedy in general) and it is rare that I find a comedian I really like a lot. I could probably count how many comedians I am a “fan of” on one hand. Amy Schumer happens to be one of them. So when I saw her book, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, was being offered for the September Book of the Month I had to choose it. It has been on my TBR since it came out and this seemed like a sign to me that the timing was right to read it. I am so damn happy I did. Memoirs are not the easiest thing to review, so this may be quite short, but there were a few things I felt I should say about this book.

The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo is a memoir, but with a whole lot more mixed in. Add comedy, drama, sex, feminism, sarcasm, and a boatload of scathing honesty and there you have it. I don’t want to gush about Amy, but I just want to quickly explain what drew me to her in the first place. It is not just that I think she is hilarious, but I love what she stands for too. She is a strong-ass woman who is not afraid to speak her mind. She doesn’t let all the trolls destroy her and she doesn’t try to change herself to be more “acceptable”. And honestly, I believe she is 100% acceptable as is. If you didn’t know those things about her already, you will definitely learn them while reading this book.

Going into this book I knew it would be funny and I knew it would be brutally and wonderfully honest. What I did not know what how much soul, emotion, and heartbreak there would be in it. Amy is completely up-front with so many things that she has been through, things that I never even thought she had experienced. She comes off so perfectly flawed and I loved knowing that she was just like anyone else in the world and not afraid to show it. I also praise her so much for her honesty in this book and how she did not hold back one damn thing, no matter who it would piss off. She talked about her childhood, her parents, her start in comedy, her love life, and so much more and never once tried to make herself seem like some flawless celebrity on a pedestal. It was amazing.

One thing I really appreciated in this book was that even when she spoke about some very heavy things from her life, she always lightened it up with some humor. She would add something mocking or funny in parentheses and she would include sporadic lists throughout the book that always made me laugh. Admittedly, sometimes the parentheses remarks seemed a little forced, but more often than not I enjoyed them. My favorite chapters were ones where she would include a diary entry from when she was young and include footnotes with remark to her younger self. (This made me wish I had kept my journals from when I was younger to do the same thing.) She also includes pictures throughout the book, as all memoirs do, and they are a great mix of perfectly composed photos and completely hilarious and “unflattering” photos. We all need to admit that one of the best things about memoirs are the pictures and we always enjoy it more when some of them are just a hot mess. ;-)

If you are a fan of Amy you need to read this book. If you are not a fan and don’t know much about her but are interested, then I also recommend you read this book. I found it refreshing to hear a celebrity talk about their downfalls, mistakes, and not hold back anything because it made it much more personal and real. I felt like I got to know Amy Schumer through this book and that if I met her I would feel like I had known her for years. When it comes down to it, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo made me not only love Amy Schumer more, but it also made me love myself more, and for that I thank her. I know that might sound weird, but if you read the book you will get it. Oh and yes, she really does have that lower back tattoo. ;-)

Interested in The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo? Check it out on Goodreads.

mashup: Summer Days & Summer Nights // Brain on Fire

Hello all bookish people! As you can see from the title, this review will be an odd sort of a mashup. Mainly because, and I’ll be honest here, I personally find it impossible to properly review short story collections and/or memoirs. Especially since this memoir in question spanned a couple years of a person’s life during her illness. So, without further ado, here are two completely and utterly unrelated books in one review. I just really wanted to talk about both. I mean, they both have yellow on the cover so they are basically the same?

The first book I want to talk about is Summer Days and Summer Nights edited by Stephanie Perkins. This is the second short story collection (want to start a counter on how many times I say these words) that she curated. The first was My True Love Gave to Me which featured 12 holiday stories by different authors. This collection (count: 3), however, consists of 12 summer romances. It seems twee, but really, it’s a great idea and way to showcase the talents of several authors. Some are well-known (Leigh Bardugo, Veronica Roth), others less so (at least for me). Of course, as is with collections of any sort, there are always going to be hits and misses. I’m glad to say none of them were complete busts for me, but there were a couple that engaged me less. However, I do want to mention a couple standouts. Firstly an LGBTQ story by Nina LaCour. Now this was a sweet, sweet story, and one that stuck with me the most. It deftly dealt with the discovery of mutual attraction without “othering” same sex couples. As well is should be. There was also some stories with fantasy elements (the Leigh Bardugo one), and some that felt like comedies of manners in the current age (the oddball story by Jon Skovron).

What I enjoyed most about the short story collection (count: surely, 25 by now) was how so many of the stories were utterly unexpected. One sees the cover design (baby blue with bright yellow pages) and expects light-hearted and fluffy fun, but it was so much more than that. There were heartbreaks and the woes of first loves. Sure, there were also a few “happily ever afters”, but the majority focused on the amount of actual work that can go into falling and staying in love. All that with fantasy and sci-fi twists, as an added bonus. Four stars for me (rounded up from the calculated average of 3,5). I’d recommend it.

**

The second book I want to talk about in Susannah Cahalan’s Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness. Ms. Cahalan is a newspaper reporter who suddenly and quite inexplicably starts suffering from epileptic attacks. She is sent to NYU’s Epilepsy ward, where her symptoms worsen daily and she becomes almost catatonic and a mere husk of her former self. Susannah Cahalan has constructed the events leading up to, during, and after that month of madness, and the memoir is correspondingly divided into three main parts. The second one – her stay in the hospital – is later carefully constructed from her family members’ accounts and camera footage, because she still has little to no recollection of that time. Now, if you are having flashbacks to any House MD episodes, you’d be completely right. This was a fascinating and compulsively readable medical mystery (I feel bad for sensationalising the author’s life story), and I quite literally could not put the book down. 

I don’t want to say too much about her eventual disease because I think not knowing adds to the suspense, but it’s not a real spoiler to tell you that obviously it is a rare disease – a real “zebra” in doctors’ parlance – so the memoir doubles as a public health service announcement.

The writing style was clear. Even the science-y aspects were understandable and did not bog the narrative down. My one small quip would be that I personally would have loved to have a clear illustration of all the different parts of the human brain. She refers to them quite often and describes the location of all the lobes and areas, but I feel an actual picture would have been even better, most of all because she did include other random illustrations/copies of her medical charts/journals. All in all, this was a strong four stars. I did find the latter part slightly less engaging than the first two, but I guess it’s symbolic, in a way, as it chronicles the time spent finding her way back to herself. I personally would’ve loved to read more about what doctors and people themselves can do to ensure better cooperation between different specialists, but she touched upon this subject only briefly.

I’d recommend this to newbies and lovers of non-fiction alike. It’s important to spread awareness for this extremely rare disease that has probably gone undiagnosed in so many people, mainly because of how the symptoms can be misleading, and the condition can be misdiagnosed as mental illness. Quick note! It is also being made into a film, due to be released possibly this year. I love finding out such things after I’ve read the book.

How to Be a Woman - Caitlin Moran

Review by Coll
4 Stars

So I decided to read this book because it was the chosen one for April for Emma Watson’s Goodreads group, Our Shared Shelf. I became incredibly curious about it after seeing the numerous comments that popped up on the thread announcing the book. Some people were excited to read it, but a good many were up in arms about the book, asking for it to be changed to something else. It was obvious to me that many people were offended by the book and I was interested to see what my feeling on it would be.

Caitlin Moran wears many hats; she is an English journalist, author, and broadcaster.  She is definitely someone who is not afraid to say what is on their mind and she often does it in a comedic and explicit way. How to Be a Woman is a nonfiction book that is a mix of feminism, memoir, and humor. Moran uses her personal experiences and relates them to issues women face every day such as sexism, objectification, abortion and reproductive choices, sex, and many preconceived notions that the world holds about women that are untrue in many cases. I found it very refreshing to hear someone speak in such a blunt and forthright way about so many topics that are often deemed to be touchy subjects. To me it was nice to read the words of a woman who was basically saying “Fuck no, you can’t tell me who I should be or what I can and can’t do.” 

I want to point out that although the book is titled How to Be a Woman, do not take the title literally, which some people have seemed to. At no point is Moran instructing you on “how to be a woman”, and she even says something to that effect in the postscript.  What she is doing is relating her life to the presumption of what a woman has been, and often still is, expected to be, and then tying it all together with her opinion on the matter.
I will not deny that Moran is crude in her writing and curses, A LOT. She is also very blunt and brutally honest, and I, for one, really loved that about the book. I am not sure if it is because I was raised in Jersey and now live in Brooklyn so I am used to crude vernacular, but the language did not bother me one bit. I think it added to the humor of the book and was another level of not acting like a “woman” because she was cursing up a storm. I found it to be refreshing. :-)

The chapters in this book are not meant to apply to everyone, nor are Moran’s opinions meant to apply to everyone. I think that when reading this book it is important to keep in mind that it is an opinionated piece, full of her personal experiences and thoughts. No one is saying you have to believe or agree with everything she says, but she does make some very good points. I took the book for what it was worth and found it interesting, humorous, and insightful at times. Yes, there were some things I did not agree with, but then I am sure not everyone agrees with my opinions either, nor do I expect them to.

All in all I really did enjoy this book and thought it was a fun read, and I am glad Emma chose it for the book club. I learned some things and often found the book very relatable, I felt a little empowered by it, and of course it made me laugh at times which is a plus. I do recommend reading How to Be a Woman, but I also recommend not going into it thinking Moran is trying to guide or advise you on how to actually be a woman, or that you need to agree with all her views. After all, isn’t that supposed to be the beauty of the world, everyone having his or her own opinion? Sometimes I think we all tend to forget that.

“I’m neither “pro-women” nor “anti-men.” I’m just “Thumbs up for the six billion.”

Interested in How to Be a Woman? Check it out on Goodreads.

Lust & Wonder - Augusten Burroughs

Review by Coll
4 Stars

*I received this ebook from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review*

I have always been fascinated by Augusten Burroughs, mainly for his ability to unabashedly share his colorful life with the world. Lust & Wonder tells the post-rehab story of the start, development, and downfall of Burroughs’ relationships after moving to New York City. You do not necessarily need to read Running with Scissors and Dry before reading this book, but I do recommend them because they give a great background of his life up until this book. Through his memoirs we witness the progression of his life: from Running with Scissors where talks of his dysfunctional childhood and growing up, to Dry, which deals with his alcoholism and rehab period. Now we now come to Lust & Wonder, where he works through the different meanings of love, lust and where they merge, as he tries to figure out himself and his romantic relations.  We also get a glimpse into his struggles with giving up alcohol as a vice and the start of his writing career.

I long ago got used to Burroughs’ brutal honesty and straight-forwardness, so I was expecting plenty of that in this book. However, to my surprise, it also was incredibly heartfelt and sweet. He retains his usual forthright nature though, and speaks openly about his serious relationships with three different men while living in New York City. I went through stages with this book where I could not put it down and was completely engrossed, to not being thoroughly motivated to read it because some parts seemed to drag on. However, these moments were not common for me and for the most part I really enjoyed the majority of this book. 

Burroughs not only focuses on his current relationships, but also references aspects from his past and how they still affect him. The book shows that we are not alone in our tumultuous encounters with others, and how everything we experience shapes not just us, but those we are connect with. He holds back nothing and explains the things that people can sometimes be too ashamed to admit, such as cheating, trust issues, stalking our partners, breaking up friendships, and the most difficult thing to concede to: being at fault. He is no stranger to his indiscretions and openly offers them up to us. Whether he is talking about his past alcohol abuse, his major paranoia, or his obsessions with rare and expensive gems, he shows that there will come a time where what we see as flaws will be accepted by another as just being a part of who we are. 

A lot of this book was full of heartache and frustration. At times I wanted to scream at Burroughs for being so erratic, and other times I wanted to hug him and punish others for hurting him.  Lust & Wonder is not as humorous as his other books, it instead takes a more emotional and contemplative road. Where some might be bothered by this, it did not really concern me. Sure I missed his eccentric sense of humor sometimes, but the book still provided me with occasional laughter, while also giving me insight into another aspect of his life and personality. A more poignant and introspective side. Lust & Wonder represents a point in his life where he has matured, overcome a great deal, and is looking to settle down into as normal of a life as he can. It is a big transition from his other books, but one that I, personally, welcomed and appreciated. 

This book has its high points and its low points. I found myself exhausted at points with his tangents, but then I would realize how it is all important and in the end everything always comes together. Overall, I really loved Lust & Wonder. It evoked so many feelings in me and it felt so good to get to the point where it was making me smile and I was completely happy for Augusten. Reading a book by Burroughs is always a bizarre emotional roller coaster, but it is always completely worth the ride.  

“I know now: what is is all that matters. Not the thing you know is meant to be, not what could be, not what should be, not what ought to be, not what once was. Only the is.”

Interested in Lust & Wonder, check it out on Goodreads.