EDUCATED, A MEMOIR In 2014 at age twenty-seven, Idaho-born Tara Westover received a Ph.D. in history from Cambridge University, UK. Remarkable? Yes. Made more remarkable
THE FARAWAY NEARBY Rebecca Solnit’s collection of nature essays The Faraway Nearby has a distinctive, graceful prose style that in some passages leaves this reader giddy with
WHAT HAPPENED Like a dedicated political junkie, I followed in real time the events that Hillary Clinton retraces in her book about the 2016 presidential
THE ART OF MISDIAGNOSIS: SURVIVING MY MOTHER’S SUICIDE In The Art of Misdiagnosis, Gayle Brandeis strives to solve the mystery of her mother’s suicide and make sense
BORN A CRIME: STORIES FROM A SOUTH AFRICAN CHILDHOOD Trevor Noah, South African comedian, recent emigrant to the U.S., and currently the host of The
BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME Between the World and Me takes the form of a letter Ta-Nehisi Coates writes to his teenage son. In a
HILLBILLY – A MEMOIR OF FAMILY AND A CULTURE IN CRISIS: Traditionally, an elegy is a poem or song of lamentation. Although neither a poem
One of the delights of “Bookin’ with Sunny” is discovering books and authors you otherwise might miss. That’s true for reviewers as well as for
Four Seasons in Rome – On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World Reportedly, Anthony Doerr took ten years to
Old Glory, A Voyage Down the Mississippi Who in his right mind would navigate a sixteen-foot, fifteen-horsepower outboard aluminum motorboat down the Mississippi from the
My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life Comfort food! My Kitchen Year reminds me of a delectable word salad of arugula and vine-ripened
My Life on the Road Several times in her most recent memoir, My Life on the Road, Gloria Steinem admits her affinity for cultures that
West with the Wind Not long ago I reviewed Circling the Sun for “Bookin’ with Sunny.” Circling the Sun is Paula McLain’s fictional rendition of
BROWN GIRL DREAMING, Snapshots in verse The poetry of Brown Girl Dreaming fills pages like Polaroid snapshots, described through the nostalgic lens of a child
My Life in Middlemarch Rebecca Mead pretends to be writing a riff on her own life as it echoes various Middlemarch themes, but in truth
Off Mike, A Memoir of Talk Radio Michael Krasny always wanted to be a writer like his idols Norman Mailer and Saul Bellow, but other things
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