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Do you love captivating nonfiction books? Which nonfiction books should I add to my to-read list? Troubles into a narrative, and he lays out the web of motivations and passionate beliefs behind the conflicts This was nonfiction that was so compelling it read like fiction (and served as the inspiration for this Macintyre's nonfiction book was wonderful; it really read to me like fiction.

Sports Nonfiction Book Gift Ideas Here are the 2023 sports books that I'm most excited to give as gifts Don't forget to check my past Bossy idea lists for quirky books, perennial classics, modern favorites, nonfiction Nonfiction and Hobby Book Gift Ideas for the Holidays Shhh! Bossy Nonfiction Book Gift Ideas 2023 Bossy Book Gift Guides Shhh! Freedom to Win is a detailed, deeply researched, character-driven nonfiction account of the Czech hockey

Six Great Bossy Nonfiction Reads I promise that this is the last roundup list of 2023 favorites, which You can find some of my many other lists of favorite nonfiction and memoir roundups here: Six of My Favorite Nonfiction Reads from the Past Year Six Compelling Nonfiction Reads Six Illuminating Memoirs to Dive More Fascinating Memoirs to Explore And you can click here for other memoir titles and here for more nonfiction What are some of your recent favorite nonfiction or memoir reads?

The Nonfiction Book Gift Ideas I tend to give nonfiction books for holiday gifts. These six nonfiction books look like excellent last-minute additions to a holiday gift list if you're Nonfiction and Hobby Book Gift Ideas for the Holidays Shhh! Klosterman is the bestselling author of eight nonfiction books (including Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

Six Bossy Favorite Nonfiction Reads Fridays are for highlighting books I've loved! What are some of your favorite nonfiction reads, from the past year or from this one so far? Meticulously researched, always interesting, and consistently infuriating, Empire of Pain is essential nonfiction Patrick Radden Keefe is a master of compelling, important nonfiction. book Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland was one of my Six of the Best Nonfiction

Which books are you gifting this holiday season? This is my third book gift list of the season (the first two were Shhh! Book Gift Ideas for the Holidays and Shhh! Six More Book Gift Ideas for the Holidays), and I hope the ideas here (and those to come) will help you with ideas for beautiful book gifts for anyone on your list! For even more ideas, check out my past book gift guides on the site: Shhh! Books I'm Giving As Gifts This Holiday Shhh! More Book Gift Ideas for the Holidays Shhh! Books I'm Giving Kids and Teens This Holiday, and Shhh! More Book Gifts for Kids and Teens 01 Storey's Curious Compendium of Practical and Obscure Skills How do you cope with a swarm of bees? How do you properly darn a sock? How do you navigate using the stars? How do you create a butterfly garden? How do you carve a turkey? Storey's Curious Compendium is a useful and beautifully photographed book of how-tos of all types that also feels fun to simply flip through and consider. If you've wondered about how to make, grow, build, or cope with any of the over 200 items or situations in this book (or if your interest is purely theoretical--and you also like to look at pretty photos), Storey Publishing will walk you through practical, outlandish, and always-interesting scenarios with enough detail that you just might feel like a newly minted expert. 02 Humans by Brandon Stanton Stanton is also the author of Humans of New York and Humans of New York: Stories, both of which I have gifted to loved ones before, and he's the creator of the immensely popular blog Humans of New York. In Humans, Brandon Stanton turns his attention to meeting everyday people and hearing their compelling, singular stories from forty countries around the world. As always, he presents intimate, touching, poignant, funny moments and glimpses into the shared human experience through the snapshots-of-life stories he shares. 03 Saveur: The New Classics Cookbook In this newly updated doorstop (656 pages) of a cookbook published just this week, editors of the global magazine Saveur share over 1,100 global recipes, tips, and stories. From cocktails and tapas to plant-based modern twists and one-pot meals; from suggested ingredients for a stocked Mexican kitchen to an exploration of tomato varieties; from how to fold an empanada to extensive holiday menu ideas--if you want to cook a variety of tested recipes and learn about food and cooking (or, even better, if someone else in your household wants to do these things while you test their creations), The New Classics Cookbook would make a great gift to request or to give. 04 The Backyard Birdwatcher's Bible by Paul Sterry, Christopher Perrins, and Sonya Patel Ellis Where are my birdwatcher bookworms and the people who love them? This is the first of two bird-focused books on this gift list, so buckle up for some bird love! My smart sister-in-law gave this book to the birdwatcher in my household as a birthday gift, and it's been living prominently in the family room ever since. The Backyard Birdwatcher's Bible is great for beginner or intermediate birdwatchers, with practical tips for identifying and attracting backyard birds, information about bird behavior and the bird life cycle, and how to craft bird-friendly gardens. And the illustrations and photos included in this hefty (416 pages) book are gorgeous. Last year I mentioned another great book for birders (which was a big hit with my own bird lovers), The Bird Way, on this gift list. 05 Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991 by Michael Azerrad “MacKaye never told anyone to get off the stage. Sometimes this encouraged a rapid and irreversible descent into chaos, but usually it just meant a steady stream of stage divers and kids who just wanted a few seconds of attention while they did some silly dance for their buddies. Anarchy, it seemed, could work.” Azerrad's book isn't new, but it is perfect for anyone on your gift list who loves punk-influenced rock from bands like Dinosaur Jr., The Replacements, Black Flag, Sonic Youth, Husker Du, and more. I mentioned the music-focused book Music Is History in an earlier book gift list this season and included One Last Song in this book gift list. 06 A Most Remarkable Creature by Jonathan Meiburg The subtitle of Meiburg's bird-focused book is The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World's Smartest Birds of Prey. Almost two hundred years after Darwin discovered the striking, social, crow-like falcons confined to the Falkland Islands, Jonathan Meiburg studies the rare striated caracaras, their origins, their story, their demonstrated capabilities for memory and problem-solving, and their possible future. Part memoir, part travelogue, and part science writing, A Most Remarkable Creature is a book that feels sure to fascinate someone on your gift list. I've already bought a copy to give this holiday season. A Bossy book-buying suggestion: If you're buying books this holiday season, please support your local independent bookstore. They need and appreciate our business now more than ever! Clicking on the book covers beside each Bossy Bookworm blurb will link you to Bookshop, a site that supports the beloved indies that keep readers swimming in thoughtful book recommendations and excellent customer service all year round.

Troubles into a narrative, and he lays out the web of motivations and passionate beliefs behind the conflicts For me, this was nonfiction that was so compelling it read like fiction. Macintyre's nonfiction book was wonderful; it really read to me like fiction. Any nonfiction that's grabbed you lately? Greedy Reading List of Books with White Type on Dark Covers, which is apparently the look of most of the nonfiction

Do you love nonfiction that reads like fiction? What books should I add to my nonfiction Greedy Reading List of Books with Black-and-White Covers, which is apparently the look of most of the nonfiction I read during the year? This was nonfiction that was so compelling it read like fiction (and served as the inspiration for this Macintyre's nonfiction book was wonderful; it really read to me like fiction.

Do you love reading memoirs like I do? I love digging into the story of someone's life--notable because of chance, circumstance, or choice--and escaping into an eye-opening and fascinating memoir. If you love memoirs, you might also like the titles I listed on these Greedy Reading Lists: Six Fascinating Memoirs to Explore Six More Fascinating Memoirs to Explore Six Musicians' Memoirs that Sing Six Illuminating Memoirs I've Read This Year Six More Illuminating Memoirs to Lose Yourself In Six Foodie Memoirs to Whet Your Appetite Six Powerful Memoirs about Facing Mortality Six of My Favorite Memoir Reads Last Year I'd love to hear: What are some of your favorite memoir reads? 01 Here For It by R. Eric Thomas In Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America, R. Eric Thomas, the creator of Elle's sassy and smart daily column "Eric Reads the News," shares his thoughts, experiences, and reflections about life and the world around us with honesty and humor. In essays that are sometimes heartbreaking, often inspiring, and that frequently made me laugh out loud, Thomas explores his sheltered youth, his growing realizations that he was different than most of the people he knew, his shame and fear about living as his authentic self, and his meandering path toward his current satisfying life circumstances. I listened to this as an audiobook, and I adored hearing Thomas's voice take me through his essays. His voice and delivery are fabulous. Here For It is refreshing and playful yet thoughtful. I loved spending time with the uproariously funny Thomas as he recounts how he's navigated situations large and small in his life. Thomas is also a host of The Moth storytelling podcast in D.C. and Philadelphia--and he certainly knows how to craft a compelling and full story out of a momentous moment. For my full review of this book, see Here For It. 02 Notes on a Silencing by Lacy Crawford Crawford thought the trauma of her assault at St. Paul's boarding school decades earlier was behind her. It had shaped who she was in many senses, but now she was a grown woman with a full life, and she was not regularly reliving the crushing weight of it as a vivid horror any longer. But when evidence of extensive sexual assault and new allegations at St. Paul's School came to light, she added her voice to the throng of the attacked and abused, opening her own long-closed (and hitherto unknown to her) file and seeing for the first time the brutal facts of her own attack, as well as the ensuing, elaborate efforts to keep secret the events surrounding her situation. Crawford's memoir lays bare systemic lies, gross injustices, horrifying abuses of privilege and power, and longstanding patterns of unprosecuted assaults at elite St. Paul's boarding school--as well as the persistent tragic, infuriating, shaming treatment of assault victims. The topic is crushing, but Crawford's writing is wonderful in its honest and unflinching reflections on society, her own experiences, the horrifying power of privilege, and the abhorrent treatment of assault victims. She tries to imagine the points of view of everyone involved, and she treats her young self with empathy. For my full review of this book, see Notes on a Silencing. 03 In Pieces by Sally Field Here's the list's celebrity memoir! I found Sally Field's discussion of her "craft" and how she grew and changed as an actor to be the most compelling aspect of the book--along with the politics of getting roles and how she finally began listening to her inner voice in all aspects of her life. Therapy (and acting, which also served as a sort of therapy) eventually allowed Field to come into her fully realized adult self, and this journey is satisfying to watch after living through the page time of her languishing and struggling for so long. I listened to this as an audiobook, and I loved hearing Field tell her story. I appreciate when a celebrity provides brutal honesty, and I also admit to sometimes becoming impatient with the navel-gazing necessary to create a memoir. Aaaand I realize that this is unfair since I chose to read this person's life story. For my full review of this book, see In Pieces. 04 Blood by Allison Moorer "I'm still trying not to be the daughter of a murderer. I'm still trying to redeem [my parents]. I carry the structure of their bones around my insides...and try to tell the world, '...They were more than that.'" Allison Moorer is a Grammy- and Academy Award-nominated singer-songwriter whose father killed her mother when Allison and her sister were young. A longtime musical storyteller, Moorer examines her parents, her youth, and that pivotal tragedy, considering how it has shaped her into her adult self and how much of her identity is separate from that horrifying event and its endless repercussions. There's a lot of pain here. But Blood doesn't read as though Moorer is flogging her significant sorrow and anger or highlighting dramatic events for memoir or record sales. I felt like I was following her on her honest, zigzagging, messy journey toward gaining more of an understanding of the people her parents were and the forces that shaped their lives (and their daughters' lives)--as though I was witnessing her step-by-step movement toward something that more closely resembles peace. The foreword was written by Allison's sister, singer and songwriter Shelby Lynne. Regarding their talking through their past together, Moorer says: "So many memories we share and purposely keep well-oiled. We keep them alive even if they hurt us and suck up all the air in the room. They are all we have of our folks and the family we were." For my full review of this book, please see Blood. 05 Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come by Jessica Pan Jessica Pan was an introvert out of a job. Her closest friends had moved away, and she found herself lonely, living in another country, and feeling too reliant on her husband for her entire social life. Pan decided to deliberately put herself into extremely uncomfortable social situations for a year, and she fully commits. She does improv, approaches strangers on the Tube, goes on friend dates, attends networking events, takes a vacation alone (to a destination she doesn't learn until she's at the airport), and more. She regrets her one-year plan almost instantly but feels compelled to continue her terrifying exercises. Her interviews and experiences with others who mentor her journey in different ways could have felt disruptive or jarring but didn't; they added a layer to her story that I found interesting and often revelatory. Pan is wonderfully honest, appealingly thoughtful, and often so so funny. I was so happy spending time in her point of view throughout this book. I loved it and I'd read another book by her in a second. For my full review of this book, please see Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come. 06 Wild Life by Keena Roberts Keena Roberts grew up splitting her time between a primate research camp in Botswana, where she felt at home, and an elite Philadelphia girls' school, where she did not. Wild Life's subtitle, Dispatches from a Childhood of Baboons and Button-Downs, felt whimsical and light. But Roberts's memoir doesn't merely explore her culture shock, as interesting as that is. She reflects upon her identity in a raw and genuine way that I found gripping. Her disparate life experiences ultimately led her to think deeply about her place in the world, her responsibility to humans and animals, and how she might better the lives of others. This memoir was more than I'd hoped for. I love a peek at wildlife and living in the wild. I adored reading Roberts's account of her journey, from acting in a supporting role for her parents' research to discovering her own challenging, meaningful, and important career and calling. For my full review of this book, please see Wild Life.

More Memoirs I've Loved I love a good memoir, one that offers a glimpse or a deep dive into the life and pivotal experiences of another person. For me, the best memoir makes you feel some of the author's feelings and understand their perspective. This is a genre of books I often like to listen to in the form of audiobooks read by the author, because I love hearing a person tell their own story. For more memoirs I've loved that you might want to try, check out the Greedy Reading Lists Six Illuminating Memoirs to Dive Into and Six Illuminating Memoirs I've Read This Year . Have you read any of these books? I'd love to hear what you thought! Which other books should I add to my memoir to-read list? 01 A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa Ishikawa, who is half-Korean, half-Japanese, and who lived under oppressive totalitarian rule for thirty-six years, tells a fascinating story of his life in North Korea--and of his gripping escape. The promise of better work and stronger education for the children lured Ishikawa's family from Japan to North Korea. But reality was a far cry from the promised utopia. The author traces a tragic cycle of bureaucratic ignorance and force, hunger and desperation, cruelty, and resignation. This short memoir digs into the author’s repeated experience with North Korean horrors and despair—and sets these experiences in contrast to his prior life and heartbreaking knowledge of the free, if difficult, world of his youth in poverty in Japan. The version of this book that I read was riddled with typos, which I imagine came about during the translation from the author's original Japanese account. For another set of accounts of life in North Korea, try Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea . My book club read this fascinating book, and I think Demick does an excellent job of exploring the brainwashing, isolation, and fear in North Korea, while building the stories of caring families and their everyday lives in which the madness is normalized. 02 This Will Only Hurt a Little by Busy Philipps Celebrity memoir time! I first saw Busy Philipps acting on my beloved Dawson's Creek many years ago, and since then, I've remained vaguely aware of her best-friendship with Michelle Williams, her various acting roles, and her candid social media presence. In This Will Only Hurt a Little , Philipps conversationally takes us through her youth in Scottsdale, Arizona, her awkward years, her discovery of her comedic leanings, her friendships, and her loves, mistakes, victories, and joys. She's frank about her missteps and she embraces an active-work-in-progress approach to her personal growth and learning. I listened to Busy read this in audiobook form. It’s interesting to hear experiences a person believes has shaped his or her life, and in This Will Only Hurt a Little , Philipps offers tales from childhood and Hollywood that affected her positively or negatively, while never flinching from laying bare her own regrettable, brave, stumbling, or confident decisions, trials, and adventures. 03 Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood Lockwood is a poet, and her view of the world is entertainingly quirky and off kilter. Her father the priest is an outrageous real-life character in Priestdaddy , and Lockwood works to present him as appealingly so. Late in the book she openly laments at how difficult this is (she worries, “I️ can only write down what you say”). Her tone is loyal while remaining brutal and honest. Her mother is presented sympathetically while coming off as odd, and Lockwood herself takes on a somewhat unhinged tone while recounting off-kilter periods for the family. There’s silliness, dark humor, and life-and-death tragedy—for example, the discovery of a nearby toxic waste dump as a likely reason for widespread and devastating health effects in the community. Lockwood notes that she is not a Christian but is very much “of” the church because of her upbringing. Her exploration of rituals, abuses of power in she's witnessed, and her own present-day participation in traditions felt most interesting to me. Lockwood is also the author of No One Is Talking About This , a book that is odd, disturbing, and likely not everyone's cup of tea. But it's truly unlike anything I have ever read, and the second section, which is an enormous departure in tone from section one, brought me repeatedly to tears. Please let me know if you've read this one! 04 Inheritance by Dani Shapiro Shapiro shares her shock at discovering (via a DNA test taken on a whim in her mid-fifties) that her biological identity as the descendant of two lines of Orthodox Jews is not accurate. The parents who raised her are no longer alive to question, and with this discovery, Dani voraciously challenges her own sense of self and is shaken to her core. She wonders about whether she has a claim to beloved extended relatives who shaped her life but are not, after all, blood relations; she reflects on her religious and cultural integrity and identity; she worries about her predispositions to heretofore unknown genetic health issues; and she considers her potential legacy to her own child—all while panicking about who she is after all and how she can possibly trust what she has believed to be the truth about almost anything anymore. Through practical research, lengthy reflection, and delving into the grief and the increasing layers of loss she feels, Shapiro eventually allows herself to feel hope and a growing peace regarding the likely truth—as well as a sense of freedom in having a more fluid sense of herself as a person. I thought Inheritance was fascinating, thoughtful, jarring, and just lovely. 05 Wild Game by Adrienne Brodeur Brodeur was always captivated by her mother and her magnetic personality. Her mother confided her darkest secrets to young Brodeur as though she was a friend, and she drew the teenaged Brodeur in as an accomplice to her longtime extramarital affair. I feared that reading this memoir was going to make me feel like the worst type of voyeur—that the details of the affair at the center of this story might make me feel uncomfortable at best and would feel tawdry at worst. But the story was ultimately more about an emotionally stunted mother, her codependence on her adolescent daughter, and how the author unraveled the many smothering ties to the woman whose conditional love and affection directed her life for too many years. Brodeur is a measured writer who thoughtfully considers her youth, her infatuation with and reliance on her mother (who throughout her life is only concerned with her own impulses and desires), and how her own eventual personal growth drove a rift between her and the mother she idolized, a shift that changed everything forever. Wild Game was really interesting and a quick, engrossing read that surprised me with its depth. I was given a copy of this book by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 06 My Life with Bob by Pamela Paul Pamela Paul, editor of The New York Times Book Review, writing in her mid-forties, recounts her dedication to a single book, one of her own making. She's carefully taken this book to Thailand, Paris, and London, shuffling it from apartment to apartment where it holds a place of honor and has for twenty-eight years. It's a book listing each of the books Paul has read to date. The Book of [Read] Books (which she affectionately calls Bob) reflects the author's hopes, dreams, adventures, and searches for meaning, while her life and the conditions within it affect the books she seeks out and dives into at different points of her life. My Life with Bob is also an examination of a reader's relationship with books, with reading, and with the paralyzing, never-ending, constantly expanding list of titles that make up a to-read list: “At this point, there is no human way that I could read even those books I've deliberately marked as absolute must-reads. . . . This is every reader's catch-22: the more you read, the more you realize you haven't read; the more you yearn to read more, the more you understand that you have, in fact, read nothing. There is no way to finish, and perhaps that shouldn't be the goal.” Paul delves fully into her meandering post-college years--during which Bob provides more structure in her life than anything else does. She dabbles in exploring her more recent life and reading habits as well in this thoughtful, unpretentious, gloriously nerdy, and lovable book.

"Success here means knowing how the system works and who pays what and why. It is about figuring out what is worth paying extra for--and what kind of child needs what sort of extra investment." In The Price You Pay for College: An Entirely New Road Map for the Biggest Financial Decision Your Family Will Ever Make, Ron Lieber, New York Times columnist of Your Money, attempts to break down what is possibly the most oblique cost-benefit assessment of modern day: the value, price, and cost--he differentiates between the two--of college. Who pays how much to go to college, and why? What are you meant to be getting for your money? Are there ways to cut the ballooning cost of college that's breaking the bank for many American families? Should you let a 17-year-old drive this enormously important process--which can largely determine the timing of your own retirement and may put your family into considerable debt? ...how can I think about this as a skeptical consumer seeking an institutional partner to build a product--a thinking, sociable, working adult--and less as a dutiful, supplicant family? While noting that "...colleges collectively spend something like $1 billion each year to hire...consultants to help them find students, figure out which ones should pay what and then spend a whole lot more to chase the applicants down," Lieber notes hopefully that "after several years of reporting, I have real hope that the schools are slowly hearing the growing cry for more demonstrative proof of value." Lieber explores a range of offerings, opportunities, and proposed benefits and considers their potential worth--while advising the reader as to how to attempt to assess the value for their own prospective student: honors colleges and programs; college abroad; diversity and compatibility of peers and potential partners; women's colleges; career counseling services; improving the odds when planning for grad school; school size; athletic scholarships; experienced teachers; and mental health centers. Lieber outlines which value-proven (or disproven) aspects of a college profile you should be paying attention to beyond the bottom line (for example, how many adjunct professors a college employs; the possibility for mentoring interactions between students and faculty; how much energy and money is spent on showy attention-getters like lazy rivers). By asking how we define success and considering what college is really for (learning, kinship, a credential and a job, personal branding?); exploring parents' feelings that commonly accompany the college choosing and funding process (fear, guilt, snobbery and elitism); considering aspects of the college experience and their worth; suggesting money-saving tips; and offering advice on saving and funding college, Lieber calmly injects facts into the overwhelming, often frenzied, and understandably worrisome "How will we pay, what is the actual cost, and why?" questions surrounding college. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? I recently read and reviewed two other interesting and valuable college-admissions books, Who Gets In and Why by Jeffrey Selingo and Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be by Frank Bruni.

"Does a prestigious college make you successful? Or do you do that for yourself?" But for every person whose contentment and fulfillment come from faithfully executing a predetermined script, there are at least ten if not a hundred who had to rearrange the pages and play a part they hadn't expected to, in a theater they hadn't envisioned. Life is defined by little snags and big setbacks; success is determined by the ability to distinguish between the two and rebound from either. And there's no single juncture, no one crossroads, on which everything hinges. I apologize up front for the high density of quotes from author Frank Bruni that follow. My copy of this book is highlighted to within an inch of its life because I found all of this so interesting. I'm actually impressed with how many perfect quotes I didn't include. Anyhoo, I have a senior in high school and I'm currently solidly on the sidelines of college application hustle and bustle, so it seemed like time to finally read these promising, helpful-seeming books about the consideration and application process. In Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania, insightful, thorough, down-to-earth New York Times journalist (and UNC alum) Frank Bruni considers the "terrifying and occasionally devastating" process of applying to college--and the dangerous potential belief that a young person's worth could (and often may) feel determined by which schools offer the student admission and which do not. A yes or no from Amherst or Dartmouth or Duke or Northwestern is seen as the conclusive measure of a young person's worth, a binding verdict on the life that he or she has led up until that point, an incontestable harbinger of the successes or disappointments to come. What madness. And what nonsense. For one thing, the admissions game is too flawed and too rigged to be given so much credit. For another, the nature of a student's college experience--the work that he or she puts into it, the skills that he or she picks up, the self-examination that's undertaken, the resourcefulness that's honed--matters more than the name of the institution attended. Bruni explores reassuring data showing that endless colleges can serve as jumping-off points for happy, fulfilling, successful careers and lives. He emphasizes that it's what a young person does with the opportunities available to them that makes the difference. He rejects the idea that there's any "shortage of top-notch scholars who find everything they're looking for and more" at their colleges, despite not all being "the survivors of a screening process as intimidating as Stanford's." Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be offers varied ways to think about college and the increasing pressure and weight put upon the acceptance/rejection equation for a young person. A senior in high school is, after all, entering into a jumping-off point for their lives, rather than realizing the culmination of a life's work at age 17, and the college selection process should reflect the boundless options that exist: "Do the kids getting into their top-choice schools have greater potential? Or do they just have a better understanding of the system and how to work it?" "Somewhere along the way, a school's selectiveness--measured in large part by its acceptance rate--became synonymous with its worth." "...many of the talents and strengths that wind up fueling someone's achievements don't necessarily emerge or play a part in the college application process, and aren't honed in the classrooms of exclusive schools." Bruni reassures the reader by citing successful figures in various professions, many who are well-known, and the wide array of colleges they attended. The majority of their alma maters do not appear on Top 50 lists, and when interviewed, the individuals emphasize the unexpected twists and turns of their lives and the importance of making their own opportunities. They generally eschew the idea that adhering to a more rigidly set out life plan or attending a more exclusive institution might have better led them to their current success. College is a singular opportunity to rummage through and luxuriate in ideas, to give your brain a vigorous workout and your soul a thorough investigation, to realize how very large the world is and to contemplate your desired place in it. Those four years [are] clearly seen as the staging area, not the actual operation; as the throat clearing, not the aria. Bruni also explores research that attempts to separately consider institutions' elite names and their graduates' success stories (or salaries). The likely reality: "at a certain level of intelligence and competence, what drives earnings isn't the luster of the diploma but the type of person in possession of it." He digs into a fascinating 2011 study by Princeton economist professor and former Council of Economic Advisors chairman Alan Krueger and Stacy Dale, an analyst with Mathematics Policy Research. One of their study conclusions: "The average SAT score of schools that rejected a student is more than twice as strong a predictor of the student's subsequent earnings as the average SAT score of the school the student attended." This seems to be because students are "self-sorting" as they apply to colleges, and the most ambitious young people (who often find success in life, including financial success) "are applying to the most elite schools." Therefore the confidence, assertiveness, and follow-through of applying to elite schools is likely "the key to future earnings." Krueger tells Bruni, "Another way to read my results is: A good student can get a good education just about anywhere, and a student who's not that serious about learning isn't going to get much benefit." So much is out of young people's control when it comes to college, yet they may be feeling intense pressure to meet the achievement standards and messages of "if you do X, you deserve/will achieve Y" that have been reinforced by society, parents, and/or peers. There's so much excited, anxious, and confused college talk swirling around today's teens before and as they apply to college, I found the common-sense tone and messages of Bruni's book reassuring and sound. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? I recently read another book about college admissions, the fascinating, frustrating, intriguing Who Gets In and Why. Stay tuned for my upcoming review of The Price You Pay for College by Ron Lieber!

tragic turns and deaths, and outrageous hubris that is the undoing of the young men at the heart of the nonfiction Max Marshall's Among the Bros  is a nonfiction peek into a multi-million-dollar drug ring and its many For other Bossy reviews of nonfiction books, check out the titles at this link .

Are you intrigued by reflections on life and death? This is a departure from many of my other Greedy Reading Lists: witchy books, young adult favorites, or gifty book ideas, for example. But I find a memoir about facing mortality fascinating. We're all headed toward the same end in this life, after all, and those brave enough to commit their feelings, experiences, fears, thoughts, and even joy to paper when their death is imminent seem to lay bare the true roots of the human experience. It seems inevitable that the reflections of someone facing death might lead a reader to consider their own life and how they choose to live it. Other books on my to-read list that loosely fit within this category include: If you like memoirs, you might like the books I list on these Greedy Reading Lists: Six Illuminating Memoirs to Dive Into and Six Illuminating Memoirs I've Read This Year (last year). Have you read books in this vein that you'd recommend? 01 The Unwinding of the Miracle by Julie Yip-Williams In Yip-Williams's memoir, the subtitle of which is A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After, she candidly shares the many heartbreaking aspects of facing her own imminent death from metastatic colorectal cancer. Yip-Williams is a beautiful, intelligent writer who reflects deeply on life and on her situation. The Unwinding of the Miracle serves as her powerful farewell to her family but is also meaningful for anyone considering the way they live and how they might choose to face their own mortality. The details of Yip-Williams’s childhood and the obstacles she overcame to simply be alive as an adult to face this sobering reality are incredible. But she is truly amazing in the way she honestly recounts her fury and panic, her excruciating treatments and effects, her exhaustive search for new life-extending options, and her reckoning with the realization that at some point desperate hope for survival must transform somehow into an effort for grace in dying and making plans for leaving loved ones behind. 02 I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O'Farrell I Am, I Am, I Am is Maggie O'Farrell's memoir of pivotal near-death experiences that shaped her life and affected the way she considers her existence. Her recollections include a childhood illness that left her bedridden for a year, an encounter with a potentially dangerous man in the vulnerable middle of nowhere, and her struggle to protect her daughter. The seventeen snapshots of O'Farrell's life at different stages highlight the frighteningly fragile nature of life. The construct of tracing near-death experiences to tell the story of her life didn’t feel forced at all, and O’Farrell’s meditations on the precious nature of life felt new, honest, raw, and fascinating. I loved this. O’Farrell’s writing is exacting but lyrical, capturing the nuances of the moments that lead to and make up sudden crises, arising challenges, and the dangers and narrow escapes that shape a life. For my full review of this book, see I Am, I Am, I Am. 03 When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi “I began to realize that coming in such close contact with my own mortality had changed both nothing and everything. Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But now I knew it acutely. The problem wasn’t really a scientific one. The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.” Kalanithi, a young neurosurgeon facing a terminal cancer diagnosis, found himself with many thoughts about existence and little time left in which to consider his life and his impending death. Kalanithi makes a shocking shift from being a doctor helping terminally ill patients to being a patient with inoperable lung cancer and terminally ill himself. The author was thoughtful, intelligent, and searching for purpose, grace, and meaning in life and death--whether through studying literature, practicing medicine, loving deeply, or becoming a father. His book is rich in reflections and explorations, if too short, like his life. 04 I've Seen the End of You by W. Lee Warren Warren's book, the subtitle of which is A Neurosurgeon's Look at Faith, Doubt, and the Things We Think We Know, made me cry on an airplane, repeatedly. Warren’s life story, both personal and professional, and his push and pull between faith and science, is complex and deep. His experiences as a neurosurgeon, in the war, with his divorce and his remarriage, his beloved blended family, and his suffering unimaginable loss all inform his explorations of doubt, resilience, hope, and joy as related to his faith. Watching his up-and-down, sometimes wonderfully messy self-discovery take shape through this book was a beautiful thing. I wondered if his answers would be too easily reached or too pat, but Warren digs deeply into the realities of doubting his faith, God, his life’s work, and his vision of an afterlife. Warren admits when he’s a mess, and he shows us the zigzag of a route he himself took through coping with tragedy, sharing that there are many opportunities to feel defeated, and that it’s natural to feel doubt and rage and disbelief in the face of enormous pain and tragedy. There was just a little bit of repetition at times, but I read an advance reader's copy, so this likely changed before publication. I received an advance copy of this book from WaterBrook and Multnomah and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 05 The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying by Nina Riggs “I am reminded of an image...that living with a terminal disease is like walking on a tightrope over an insanely scary abyss. But that living without disease is also like walking on a tightrope over an insanely scary abyss, only with some fog or cloud cover obscuring the depths a bit more--sometimes the wind blowing it off a little, sometimes a nice dense cover.” It seems crass to critique a book like this one. How can you wish for more of a synthesis of a life, more of an expression of heartbreak, more more more, when the real question is: how did Riggs manage to step back from her urgent life-and-death situation to write any of it? The Bright Hour is a North Carolina woman's thoughtful account of events, written with an aim of preserving the essential history and memories from her life for her two small boys. She wrote the book while she was dying of breast cancer. I don't believe Riggs's intention was to portray her husband as a largely unsympathetic figure, but that's how he came across to me as a reader. Her, waiting on the street in Paris while he visits his favorite bookstore but she's too sickly to climb the stairs to it; him, out for beers with friends while she's home coping--even though I know caregivers have to create well-earned breaks; and his funny but often dark humor. 06 Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved by Kate Bowler Plans are made. Plans come apart. New delights or tragedies pop up in their place. And nothing human or divine will map out this life, this life that has been more painful than I could have imagined. More beautiful than I could have imagined. Bowler, a young mother and divinity professor coping with long-term stage IV colon cancer, shares her faith, fury, despair, humor, and even joy as she faces difficult and beautiful truths about mortality--such as her family's future, which will continue even if she is gone. Bowler considers the flawed idea that all challenges are tests of character. There’s a frequent focus on the prosperity gospel—which I’d never heard named but that is familiar as being preached and pursued by some evangelical pastors and their followers, as well as the #blessed crowd. Bowler tackles this "God's reward/punishment" mindset within her personal framework of cancer treatment and the ebbing and flowing of hope for recovery. She tackles the biggest human issues with humor, and I love her voice. Bowler recently spoke at a virtual women's retreat I attended. She was gracious, funny, unassuming, and a pure delight to listen to. If you haven't listened to it yet to find this out for yourself, Bowler's podcast, Everything Happens, is wonderful.

eating, and appreciating delicious food is an essential part of Stanley Tucci's satisfaction, and in the nonfiction

Fascinating, sometimes infuriating firsthand peeks at admissions procedures and priorities; ways to evaluate buyer schools and seller schools; and Selingo's take on how to assess complex acceptance statistics and the importance of a specific school to a young person's success. The problem with these often-quoted statistics about selective schools is that they overlook the role that the student plays in their own eventual success.... I have a high school senior, so maybe it's time to finally read the stack of college admissions-related books I've been allowing to collect dust instead of simply continuing to take comfort in their proximity and the wisdom they may contain? In Who Gets In and Why, Jeffrey Selingo takes readers behind the scenes of three college admissions offices where he was given access during the course of a year: Emory University, Davidson College, and The University of Washington. He was given College...is an emotional decision, one economists refer to as an "experience good." We don't know what we're buying until after we experience it. Selingo also tracks the paths of a few students as they apply to college--on one end of the spectrum, a girl applying to selective universities and able to pay full tuition, and at the another end, a boy who is unaware of his secondary education and funding options and aims to be a first-generation college attendee. I love a look behind the curtain of a secret situation, and these peeks into colleges' admissions procedure, priorities, debates, dilemmas, and decision-making are absolutely fascinating. College admissions is a big business. Colleges and universities spend an estimated $10 billion annually on recruiting students. To put together a balanced lists of buyers and sellers, families need to look at two numbers in particular. The first is a school's desirability as measured by its yield--the percentage of accepted students who end up enrolling.... The second number is the percentage of institutional aid spent on non-need-based aid. Selingo dives into revealing the truth behind some of the mysteries of admissions (for example, how colleges use early decision to fill gaps they anticipate having; what makes an application essay stand out) while also studying the business of college admissions--including the money colleges spend on recruitment, where they spend it, and why; and the methods some schools have used to boost rankings or raise their perceived selectivity. But early decision also speeds up decision-making when students aren't quite ready for it. We know from neuroscientists and psychologists that the teenage brain is still maturing throughout high school...every month in high school is mentally like a year to adults. ED has a whole set of other rules, some written but many not.... Many of the seats available in the early rounds are essentially off-limits to most students. "Early decision serves the needs of colleges and universities a hell of a lot more than it serves students," says Chris Gruber, Davidson College's admissions dean. Selingo aims to eliminate the unknown in order to offer some sanity to those geared up about the overwhelming pressure of it all. He also offers tips on how to evaluate whether a school might be a match for a young person looking toward the next steps of their educational journey. He points out how college costs have soared--and how many parents go into great debt for a brand-name (or other) school. And he emphasizes his own strong belief (and the supporting data) that what a young person does with their degree is far more important than the source of that degree. I found it oddly calming to read about the varied, specific criteria desired by these varied college admissions committees in a certain year, season, and moment. This firsthand data reinforced the conclusion that acceptances aren't, of course, reflections of a young person's achievements or worth, instead mirroring an institution's priorities, however specific or broad. "Parents made clear that they believed they had to suppress their own financial anxieties," Zaloom wrote [in Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost], "so that they could allow their children's potential to take precedence." Selingo's book clarifies that there is no secret, or set of secrets, to admission. There are reasons why an institution prioritizes certain aspects of its incoming class, and factors that may be beneficial to one's odds include being an athlete, (sometimes) being a legacy, and, often, having the funds to pay for the high cost of college. Yet it feels oddly freeing to recognize the fact that so many factors relevant to a college's admissions are well beyond the control of a prospective student. The bottom line: in your college search worry less about specific name brands and even majors and worry more about acquiring skills and experiences once you're on campus, such as finding an undergraduate research project or landing an internship. By clarifying Who Gets In and Why, Selingo reinforces the approach for students of doing their thing, doing their best, being curious about the world, and feeling confident that there are many routes to their successful future. Aiming for the most talked-about institutions (and fighting to be one included in the infamous single-digit acceptance rates of some of them) is not the only way forward--and often not the most efficient move in terms of admissions, cost, or career outcomes. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Jeffrey Selingo is also the author of College Unbound and There Is Life After College.

Atul Gawande writes clearly and poignantly about the search to achieve maximum well-being rather than prolonging diminished life at all costs--as well as the many complicating factors that make it difficult to transition to a focus on quality of life. We've been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being. And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive. Those reasons matter not just at the end of life, or when debility comes, but all along the way. The past century of medical advancements have transformed some grave conditions from death sentences to manageable or curable illnesses. But the focus on living longer and attempting to move past former limitations of medical solutions sometimes create a difficult dynamic: pursuing additional years of life at any cost sometimes means paying the price by experiencing a dramatically diminished quality of life. Whenever serious sickness or injury strikes and your body or mind breaks down, the vital questions are the same: What is your understanding of the situation and its potential outcomes? What are your fears and what are your hopes? What are the trade-offs you are willing to make and not willing to make? And what is the course of action that best serves this understanding? In Being Mortal, surgeon, former Harvard professor, and public health leader (Assistant Administrator for Global Health at USAID) Atul Gawande explores the successes and failures of the medical field in prolonging a life worth living. Being Mortal is a beautiful, poignant, clearheaded examination of the intersection of mortality, medicine, dreams, and reality. Gawande emphasizes asking key questions of loved ones to clearly understand their own particular, sometimes surprising lines in the sand regarding quality of life before they are unable to make key decisions for themselves: what are they willing to forgo in order to live? By exploring studies but primarily by digging into various patients' (including his own father's) experiences with disability and end of life, Gawande emphasizes the power of communication--among family members, between patient and doctor, and regarding the extensive resources and bolstered short-term outcomes available through hospice. All-out treatment, we tell the incurably ill, is a train you can get off at any time--just say when. But for most patients and their families we are asking too much. They remain driven by doubt and fear and desperation; some are deluded by a fantasy of what medical science can achieve. I was fascinated by Gawande's study of our culture's never-give-up mentality and many loved ones' resulting feeling that it's their duty to fight for additional medical interventions for their family member or friend--no matter the likelihood of bettering their well-being, or likely detriment to their last days. He acknowledges medical professionals' role and frequent lack of training in this complicated, fraught dance: a desire for a return to full health set against the likely negative effects of powerful treatments unlikely to postpone the end of life or bolster quality of life. The nationwide movement away from dying at home has been driven in some cases by panic in the face of potential loss, and by ignorance of loved ones' wishes and understanding combined with a misguided belief in medicinal miracles. These complicating factors often lead to invasive measures unlikely to prolong life but very likely to cause significant detriments to quality of life at the end. Gawande dives into the beautiful, essential work of hospice care, and also imagines measures to better train and equip doctors to consider the trade-offs of extensive medical intervention near the end of life and its implications. We know the dance moves. You agree to become a patient, and I, the clinician, agree to try to fix you, whatever the improbability, the misery, the damage, or the cost. With this new way, in which we together try to figure out how to face mortality and preserve the fiber of a meaningful life, with its loyalties and individuality, we are plodding novices. We are going through a societal learning curve, one person at a time. Being Mortal is essential reading, gorgeously written and clearly presented. I found it fascinating, powerful, and valuable. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book or topic? If you're interested in books about mortality like I am, you might like the books on my Greedy Reading Lists Six Powerful Memoirs about Facing Mortality and Six More Powerful Books about Facing Mortality.

Barbara Brown Taylor is one of my favorite authors, but this slim, early book of hers didn't offer the candid, thought-provoking, wise voice I've loved in some of her other books. As Joseph Campbell once asked, what if the universe is not merely the product of God but also the manifestation of God.... Barbara Brown Taylor is an Episcopal priest who left a position as a church pastor and is now a college professor. I link below to my rave reviews of her books An Altar in the World (in which "Taylor explores the ways she grounds herself in everyday life while connecting with deeper meaning") and Holy Envy (which I described as "a thought-provoking, accessible look at world religions"). The Luminous Web, published in 2000, is a slim (74-page) book, quite different from either of those titles. The proposed exploration of the intersection of science and religion within The Luminous Web was an irresistible premise. I just didn't feel as though the book ever delivered depth on the topic. The book contains many (for me, it feels like too many) quotes from scientists and religious thinkers. Understandably, because the interplay between science and religion is complex, centuries old, and ongoing, the author doesn't assert earth-shattering revelations that resolve the challenges of reconciling science and religion, nor does she resolve the layered push and pull between reason and faith. I appreciated Barbara Brown Taylor's aim to close the gap between the sacred and secular, and I respected how she leant deeply into the unknowing wonder at the heart of faith. But when I finished the book, I found myself with as many, if not more, questions as I had when I began. Because I find BBT so illuminating, so candid, so thought-provoking, and so fully presented in her own voice in her other books, I was left feeling dissatisfied here. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Barbara Brown Taylor is also the author of An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others, Learning to Walk in the Dark, and Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith.

This gorgeously written set of fifty-two love letters to nature encourage reflection and urge the reader to pause to honor even the less glamorous wonders of wilderness. Pull up a weed from the wet soil of the drenched garden and smell the rich life the earthworm has left behind. Just a whiff of it will flood you with a feeling of well-being. The microbes in freshly turned soil stimulate serotonin production, working on the human brain the same way antidepressants do. In The Comfort of Crows, Margaret Renkl offers a literary, nature-focused devotional of 52 chapters, each meditating on an element inspired by her close examination of the goings-on in her backyard. Renkl's beautiful, striking observations range from a New Year's Day sighting of a crow and her exploration of crows' senses of community and cleverness, which she hopes set a tone for the year to come; to a grief-stricken examination of deadly fads such as the desire to have a vibrant green yard, free of weeds, and the widespread impacts of the poisonous chemicals required to achieve such a thing. So much of what I do in this yard is only ever an exercise in hope. The author is deeply connected to nature and has a poet's way with words as she explores the wonder of migration, nature's cycles of life and death, and wild creatures' behavior. Renkl weaves in stories of her pivotal childhood encounters with nature, and for me the book really shone when she included her family's current shifts and changes in poignant passages she linked to her observations of nature. I adored this element--possibly because with a senior in high school, I am also facing enormous pending alterations to the makeup of our household. Epigrams appear at the beginning of each essay, setting a tone for what's to come. Nothing in nature exists as a metaphor, but human beings are reckless metaphor makers anyway. I listened to The Comfort of Crows as an audiobook, but I think this one would have been even better read as a physical book for easier pausing and pondering. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Renkl is also the author of Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss and Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South.

Poet and essayist Ross Gay explores the experiences and explorations that have offered him meaning, depth, connection, understanding, and joy--despite the many challenges and heartbreaking matters that are always at hand. In poet and essayist Ross Gay's Inciting Joy, he aims to explore the joy in our interactions with each other and the avenues by which he himself finds joy. Inciting Joy is about various ways of caring for each other and the human connections that make up a full, rich life. Gay turns his thoughtful eye and sensitive mind to inspiration and fulfillment in essays with topics ranging from skateboarding to masculinity to facing mortality. At times Inciting Joy feels most like stream of consciousness reflections. I enjoy peeking into Gay's thoughtful perspective and reading his often-incisive or poignant commentary--on immersing himself in legendary Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy standup, or the power of monumental cover songs, or the poignancy of creating a community orchard that won't bear fruit for decades. But I didn't connect as fully to some of the experiences Gay shared here--or to the arc of incitements in the book--as I did the essays in his Book of Delights. I find Gay's essays most heartbreaking, beautiful, and penetrating when he digs into specifics of his own particular experiences, rather than his immersion in other media or others' writings. (Side note: I would love a separate list of the many musical, poetic, prose, comedic, and other works Gay references here out of his deep love, fascination, and awe.) I love diving into his vulnerabilities surrounding grief, change, pain, and the fight for freedom from preconceived notions. It is true that we are often implored--or compelled, especially by institutions that have the power to kill us, by which I mean the power to withhold the resources for life and the power to exterminate us--to be grateful. ...you should just be grateful you have a job here. Or you should just be grateful we let you in.... In the final pages of Inciting Joy, Gay is winding down the text when he quotes a line from Toi Derricotte's poem "The Telly Cycle" that feels like the heart of the book: "joy is an act of resistance." Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Ross Gay's Book of Delights is a sunshiny set of thoughts and examinations that's not overly earnest and never corny. I just loved it. You can check out my Bossy review of that book here.

Newman's recollections and insights are brutally honest and unforgiving. Interviews with family, friends, and coworkers shed light on the ups, downs, and various factors behind the scenes of Newman's life. While I was waiting for the audiobook version of The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man to be available through my library, I started watching The Last Movie Stars, a six-part documentary about Newman and Joanne Woodward. The weekend we got engaged in New York City, we sat near Paul and Joanne at Sam Shepherd's play True West. (Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly were two weeks into the several months they spent alternating the roles of Lee and Austin each night, and the performances were incredible.) Anyhoo, Paul was wearing the ugliest sweater with abstract stripes across it, and Barbara Walters came over and they and Joanne had the zaniest, most animated chitchat, I loved the whole vibe. (Obviously I just wanted to work into this review the not-quite-anecdote of sitting two rows behind Paul Newman over twenty years ago. Thank you for your patience.) Despite the promise of a future friendship between us that was born from our proximity in that theatre lo those many years ago, until recently, I didn't know much about Paul Newman beyond the most well-documented aspects of his life (blue eyes, movie career, wife Woodward, car racing, and his food product line and altruism with its proceeds). Early on, the television series The Last Movie Stars interviews children from Newman's first marriage (he had three; he was unfaithful to his first wife for an extended period with Woodward, and there is an unhappy abandonment reaction expressed by his daughter--I can't recall if both daughters were interviewed or only Stephanie--that persisted for me through this account of events). This setup negatively colored my view of Newman. Add to that the self-deprecating nature he displays in the interviews that make up the television documentary (an attitude also present early on in and throughout the audiobook) and his repeated assertion (I'm paraphrasing) that he's really a simple, relatively uninteresting person without a lot of complex thoughts or particular talent. He was so convincing, when I was a third of the way through the audiobook, I was still questioning whether I was interested in investing time in listening to his story and whether there would be very much to it. But a memoir, read by the author? I typically can't say no. I'm interested in a vulnerable laying-bare of emotions and an offering of behind-the-scenes insights. Paul allowed his best friend to interview him over a period of years--the recordings that, along with key asides from family and friends to add context to Newman's recollections and reflections, became this book--with one stipulation: that he and everyone involved must be brutally honest. The insights reflect what seems to be these subjects' unvarnished memories and thoughts. Newman's dogged insistence that he is not special seems to have stemmed somewhat from the volatile, emotionally unstable, neglectful home life his parents created. His resulting lack of personal expectations paired with his passion for exploration--and for passion itself--became a foundation for his life in all areas: professional, romantic, personal, hobby, and altruistic. Jeff Daniels's reading of the interviews imbues the audiobook with Newman's vulnerability and also his fiery nature. I was intrigued by Newman's straightforward approach to outlining what he feels were his faults, his greatest joys, his missteps, and his moments of earned pride. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? If you love memoirs, you might like some of the books on my many Bossy lists of favorites: Six Illuminating Memoirs to Dive Into, Six Illuminating Memoirs to Check Out, Six Fascinating Memoirs to Explore, Six More Fascinating Memoirs to Explore, Six Foodie Memoirs to Whet Your Appetite, and Six Musicians' Memoirs that Sing.

Crosley's memoir traces a treasured friendship and the gutting loss of that dear friend. She's vulnerable enough to allow the reader in on her messy, sometimes fantastical, often poignant search for answers, meaning, and hope in the future. In Sloane Crosley's memoir Grief Is for People, she explores life after the loss of her closest friend. A month before that horrible loss, her New York City apartment is burgled, and at that time, all of her tenuous physical links to her past and family members--mixed though her emotions may be concerning some of them--are suddenly gone. She obsesses over trying to track down the robber, can't let go of the fear that he might have targeted her specifically, and feels as though solving the mystery of who stole from her and why could resolve other, larger problems in her life. Crosley mentally links the theft to the gutting death of her beloved friend, retracing the path of their friendship, her struggle to understand her friend's reasoning and unknown despair, and her deep, dark sense of loss. The author allows the reader into her mind as she follows a messy, everchanging, zigzagging route toward trying to find answers, toward trying to craft resolutions to open-ended loss, and to trying to somehow move forward. I was intrigued by Crosley's mindset and the dark humor, devastating grief, and powerful memories she shares here. I listened to Grief Is for People as an audiobook. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Sloane Crosley is also the author of Cult Classic, I Was Told There’d Be Cake, The Clasp, Look Alive Out There, and How Did You Get This Number.

John Green provides a range of thoughtful, wonderfully absurd, or sentimental examinations along with his ratings on a five-star scale of various concepts, natural phenomena, and inventions of our age. When people we love are suffering, we want to make it better. But sometimes--often, in fact--you can't make it better. I'm reminded of something my supervisor said to me when I was a student chaplain: "Don't just do something. Stand there.” The Anthropocene Reviewed is a collection of personal essays from John Green. The title comes from Green's podcast of the same name, in which he rated "facets of the human condition on a five-star scale." His book includes some of the subjects he explored in the podcast, as well as some new topics. The Anthropocene is the current geological age, and Green delightfully subjects a wide range of aspects of our world (including the QWERTY keyboard, Canada geese, Super Mario Kart, the Bonneville Salt Flats, whispering, the World's Largest Ball of Paint, wintry mix, and teddy bears) to his sometimes absurd, occasionally unfavorable, often effusive star rating system. As he explores our human-centric views of the world and of the universe, he consistently questions assumptions and repeatedly delights in the beauty of the natural world's showiest and most humble productions. He also considers the ways in which we shield ourselves from vulnerability and cope with the pandemic. Green is thoughtful and self-effacing, curious, sensitive, and I reveled in his explorations of his own glorious favoritism (hello, Diet Dr. Pepper) and deep-seated resentments (I’m looking at you, Canada geese) . I listened to The Anthropocene Reviewed as an audiobook. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? John Green is the author of the young adult novels An Abundance of Katherines, Turtles All the Way Down, The Fault in Our Stars, Looking for Alaska, and Paper Towns. For more collections of essays, you might check out my glowing Bossy reviews of This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett, The Book of Delights by Ross Gay, Festival Days by Jo Ann Beard, or The Best of Me by David Sedaris.

society's pressures, and the fiction that her family attempted to portray of being perfect--despite conflict

Filled with sometimes playful, often weighty questions, scenarios, and ideas, How to Be Perfect makes considering ethics and morality fun, and Michael Schur's tone is self-deprecating and thoughtful. The best thing about Aristotle’s “constant learning, constant trying, constant searching” is what results from it: a mature yet still pliable person, brimming with experiences both old and new, who doesn’t rely solely on familiar routines or dated information about how the world works. In How to Be Perfect, Michael Schur, the creator of Parks and Recreation and The Good Place, relies upon takeaways from morality and ethics writings and lessons to craft this guide to how to behave in the world. What does being a "good" person mean? What do we owe to each other? What is our duty to our fellow humans in different situations? Schur begins the book, which is largely made up of distilled concepts and highlights of 2,500 years of writing about ethics, with a simple question to consider: "Should I punch my friend in the face for no reason?" He builds to more complex scenarios, touching on the popular trolley problem and its variations, morality and intersections with money, friendship, and knowledge, and, in the words of Samuel Beckett, how we might continue to "Try again. Fail again. Fail better." “Virtue comes about...not by a process of nature, but by habituation.… We become just by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions.” He explores various schools of thought about ethics and morality to consider more complex issues, including how much one should give to charity; whether rigidity to rules such as "no lying" will win a person friends; and when and why to help others or to do the "right" thing--even if you don't receive any credit for doing so. Schur comes across as intelligent and kind, thoughtful, and self-deprecating. I'm watching The Good Place for the third time, this time with my youngest, and I love hearing his references to the inspiration for the show and hearing his references to specific scenes, currently fresh in my mind. With sections read by stars of The Good Place, Schur's How to Be Perfect is funny, interesting--and a heartwarming reminder that there are thoughtful, kind, well-meaning people out there spending time reflecting on how best to be a human in today's world. That in and of itself is a comfort. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Michael Schur is the creator of the television shows The Good Place and Parks and Recreation. The acknowledgments section of this book is so funny, generous, specific, thanks-filled, and lovely, these pages alone are enough to make me feel confident that Michael Schur is a gem of a human being.

In and among Sedaris's oddball, incisive, skewering observations are poignant, funny, heartfelt, complicated moments from his personal life that add heart to the dark humor in this collection of essays. I like to listen to my David Sedaris books, and I listened to his newest, Happy-Go-Lucky--his first book of new essays since Calypso--as an audiobook as well. Here, Sedaris shares offbeat moments from living in Paris and Sussex, reflects on living in New York City during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and, as always, pokes fun at himself and hilariously skewers others for various affronts. In and among these scenes, Sedaris shares strange, sweet, funny, pivotal moments with each of his living sisters, discusses his sister Tiffany, who died of suicide, and faces the decline of his nonagenarian father, with whom he has always had a complicated relationship. I love to laugh at Sedaris's darkly funny reflections about the world and society--and at his recognition of his own absurdities, strongly held views, and exacting expectations. But what offer depth to his work, and Happy-Go-Lucky is no exception, are Sedaris's unflinching observations of moments in time, desperate scenes, and emotionally charged issues in all of their gritty, messy, poignant, and sometimes hilarious glory. He takes the reader on a roller coaster of emotions, and I love every bit of it. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Sedaris is also the author of Me Talk Pretty One Day, Calypso, Naked, Holidays on Ice, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, The Best of Me, and many other books. Please click here for my review of David Sedaris's The Best of Me. You can also find reviews of other books of essays I've reviewed here.

The book's pace felt halting at times and its substance somewhat light at points. The strongest aspect for me was Evans's ongoing exploration of her doubts and hard-fought realizations. Rachel Held Evans was the author of multiple books about Christian faith, and she spoke across the country about her conservative upbringing, her ongoing search for answers, and her striving toward openhearted love when she died suddenly at age 37 in 2019. Wholehearted Faith is a posthumously published collection of some of Evans's essays, talks, and anecdotes, including some previously unpublished. The book centers around Evans's reflections related to seeking spiritual wholeness and living as a genuine, faulted, wonderfully imperfect child of God. Evans's friend and fellow author Jeff Chu compiled the pieces of Evans's work, shaping them into this collection, which asks questions about belief, belonging, doubts and questions, scripture, and the exploration of faith. Evans considers her conservative evangelical faith beginnings and her evolution into the liberal Episcopalian author and speaker she became as an adult. She reflects upon exhortations to observe the Sabbath and what doing so means to her; she considers alternative interpretations regarding some of the women in the Bible; and she rejects some evangelical views that go against the idea that we are enough and we are loved just as we are. The pace of the book is sometimes halting and its sections about scripture at times felt a little light or too quickly wrapped up, which I imagine is a result of the circumstances of its completion. But Evans was an open, loving, inclusive, curious faith leader, and it was a pleasure spending time with some of her last written thoughts about--and some of her lingering hopes for realizing--a fully realized, well-rounded faith. Wholehearted Faith was most powerful to me when it centered around Evans's personal anecdotes and experiences. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of HarperOne and NetGalley. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Rachel Held Evans was the author of Jesus Feminist, Faith Unraveled, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, Searching for Sunday. and Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions.

Yet Kurczy's nonfiction explores the treasure of a promise of quiet in a world largely filled with noise If you like nonfiction books, you might like the titles on the Greedy Reading List Six Compelling Nonfiction

In her nonfiction work Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, Amanda Montell sets out to explore the language If you're into nonfiction, you might like the titles on the Greedy Reading List Six Compelling Nonfiction

This is a funny, light, self-deprecating peek into Kaling's single motherhood, dabbling in Hinduism, love of brunch, life as a producer, and love for her friend B.J. Novak. "She's worked hard her whole life. It's good she has such nice things." It was the most Indian thing I'd ever heard. Fun fact: I first saw Mindy Kaling in an off-Broadway play she'd written with and was starring in with Brenda Withers called "Matt & Ben" in the early 2000s. Mindy played the role of Ben Affleck and Brenda played Matt Damon, and in the play the script for Good Will Hunting literally falls from the sky into the boys' dumpy apartment, at which point the two realize they're being tested by a higher power and debate whether to pretend it's their own creation. It was clever and hilarious, and I loved it. I promise I'm going to talk about this book, but first let's talk audiobooks for a second. I'm usually an all-Libby (library app; free) audiobook listener, but I wanted to read Michelle Obama's newest book The Light We Carry without waiting to move up the sizable library wait list, so I listened to my audiobooks via an Audible trial for a month. (Note that Nothing Like I Imagined seems to be only available through that app as an Amazon-only offering.) But, dear reader, I've now incorporated Libro.fm into my book-devouring system--and Libro supports independent bookstores, ding ding ding! Anyway, let's talk about this book! Nothing Like I Imagined is a short (118 pages, if you're reading; 1 hour 22 minutes if you're listening) series of essays with Kaling at her witty, self-deprecating, funny best. Her "kind of Hindu" exploration is as emotionally deep as things get here, but I'd be happy to sit around for much longer than an hour listening to Mindy Kaling talk about brunch, a strange evening and an accosted thief, the perks and frustrations of her single parenthood, her obsession with Coach Taylor, persistent social awkwardness, Conan O'Brien's Christmas party and facing an unnamed action-movie hero she had talked (deserved; minor) trash about, her search for (just a few) effortless friendships, her love for her best friend B.J. Novak, and more. Mindy Kaling is so irresistibly appealing to me, I am in for this and anything else she wants to put out into the world. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Mindy Kaling is also the author of Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (And Other Concerns) and Why Not Me?

Madame Restell is compelling nonfiction about an ambitious feminist in pre-Gilded Age New York and her The subtitle of Jennifer Wright's nonfiction book is The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's

I listened to this audiobook and highly recommend immersing yourself in Michelle Obama's voice as she shares calm, wise, funny, or poignant reflections, personal practices, and gems of advice regarding retaining hope and being your best self. Many of us, I think, puzzle out our identities only over time, figuring out who we are and what we need in order to get by. We approximate our way into maturity, often following some loose idea of what we believe grown-up life is supposed to look like.... We make mistakes and then start over again.... We sample and discard different attitudes, approaches, influences, and tools for living until, piece by piece, we begin to better understand what suits us best, what helps us most. I read Michelle Obama's wonderful book Becoming, but after my wise friend Katherine mentioned having listened to it, I immediately wished I had heard Michelle's calming voice read it to me too. So I decided to listen to The Light We Carry and was instantly sure audiobook was the right format for me. Rather than pretending there are quick fixes for life's challenges and difficulties, Obama opens up her "toolbox" of emotional, meditative, and optimistic methods of coping, reminding herself of what's what, and ways in which she carries on in the face of adversity. While her White House circumstances are unusual and some of her related recollections are unique, her methods translate to the rest of us and daily life. She builds her book around pivotal encounters with others or aims to answer questions that have been frequently posed to her, along the way sharing more of the story of her family, marriage, political life, friendships, frustrations, hopes, goals, and joys. It sounds unfairly simplistic to summarize her practices with the short, catchy phrases she builds upon: "starting kind," "when they go low, we go high," and forming a "kitchen table" of friendships. While the ideas aren't complicated--which is the point of this book, after all: offering meaningful ways to be and to keep hope and be a light in the world--there are emotionally revealing stories and shining gems to dig into here. I didn't necessarily come away with new approaches (aside from entertaining the idea of incorporating a version of her friend's "Hey, Buddy!" morning self-greeting), but I thoroughly enjoyed and felt calmed by listening to this wise, kind, savvy woman read her gorgeously written thoughts and well-crafted reflections. Her writing--deep self-reflection with sometimes poetic phrasing--is just beautiful. I loved reading this and spending time with Michelle Obama. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Michelle Obama is also the author of Becoming and American Grown.

Bryson's examination of the human body, its processes, its wonders, and its limitations is surprising, illuminating, and wonderful. “We pass our existence within this wobble of flesh and yet take it almost entirely for granted.” The Body: A Guide for Occupants is made up of fascinating, funny, odd, and often unexpected information about the complicated corporeal shell we each inhabit. With his signature wit and curiosity, Bryson delves into everything you didn't know that you didn't know about the body (and, I'm glad to say, he narrates the audiobook edition of the book). “The great paradox of the brain is that everything you know about the world is provided to you by an organ that has itself never seen that world. The brain exists in silence and darkness, like a dungeoned prisoner. It has no pain receptors, literally no feelings. It has never felt warm sunshine or a soft breeze. To your brain, the world is just a stream of electrical pulses, like taps of Morse code. And out of this bare and neutral information it creates for you—quite literally creates—a vibrant, three-dimensional, sensually engaging universe. Your brain is you. Everything else is just plumbing and scaffolding.” I'm willing to accompany Bill Bryson anywhere he wants to take me, and an adventure through body systems, grievous injuries, and our various, wondrous healing processes is no exception. Bryson considers the body's systems, outside positive and detrimental influences upon the body, and disease and the process of death. He inspires wonder, shares knowledge, and offers sometimes shocking factoids about our bodies and how they work. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Bryson has also written the smart, wry travel books The Lost Continent, Neither Here nor There, Notes from a Small Island, Notes from a Big Country, and Down Under, as well as two books about the English language, Mother Tongue and Made in America, and A Short History of Nearly Everything and A Really Short History of Nearly Everything. I mentioned The Body: A Guide for Occupants in the list Shhh! Books I'm Giving as Gifts This Holiday.

Nonfiction and Hobby Book Gift Ideas for the Holidays Shhh! Yong's accessible narrative nonfiction style and extensive knowledge highlights the many magical, awe-inspiring

Parton shares the background and context for 175 of her songs, frankly discussing her inspiration, life, and the formerly untouchable topics she dove into headfirst through songs. What's better than listening to Dolly talk about her inspirations, her artistic journey, her joys and her silliness, those who have influenced her, and her motivations--along with short musical snippets? Nothing. This is a fast-paced book, as Dolly talks about various thoughts as related to 175 of her songs, while country music author Robert K. Oermann intersperses short intros to add structure and background. The interjections from Oermann are necessary, but they sometimes feel abrupt, and while Dolly's stories are as intriguing and delightful as I'd hoped, she seems to feel the need to provide summations, which begin to feel repetitive. But none of that really mattered to me. I adored listening to Dolly laugh and ponder and reminisce and reflect. Through decades of straight-talking song lyrics, she has instinctively and repeatedly offered sympathetic points of view of the persecuted, disrespected, and dismissed: prostitutes, the poor, unwed teenage mothers, and more. The characters in her songs are often driven to the edge of what they can cope with. Sometimes Dolly lets them fall, but other times her songs about freedom (with her metaphors of butterflies and eagles) set those in her songs soaring. Meanwhile, Dolly's offhanded mentions of endless projects, ideas, collaborations, and plans make clear she's one of the hardest working women in show business. I mentioned Dolly Parton, Songteller in the Greedy Reading List of book ideas Shhh! More Book Gift Ideas for the Holidays. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Another Dolly-focused book I'd like to read is She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs by Sarah Smarsh. The author examines the social progressiveness that progressive female singers like Dolly have championed through song.

A former artist-in-residence at a hospice, MacNaughton distills the process of witnessing a loved one's end of life into a few elements we can direct--and encourages us to accept the beauty of the perfectly imperfect, inevitable, departure. In How to Say Goodbye, Wendy MacNaughton, former artist-in-residence at a hospice in San Francisco, illustrates the words of kindness, thoughtful approaches, and wisdom she gained by spending time around hospice caregivers and the people relying upon them, the dying and their loved ones. While acknowledging how much is out of our control regarding our loved ones' final moments, How to Say Goodbye shines a light on the things we can potentially shape--including sharing memories, expressing love, and offering forgiveness. Focusing on respect, love, and closure, MacNaughton offers a guide to creating a path through the precious time leading up to death. The circumstances may be complicated or fraught, or they may be heartbreaking yet straightforward, but How to Say Goodbye beautifully distills the title's process--of standing by, helping, embracing silence, and turning over the reins to the person who is passing away--into its essence. MacNaughton's text feels like a poem and her illustrations offer brutal beauty and express their own lovely, heartbreaking, poetic message that embraces the perfection of imperfection and lack of control. I received a prepublication copy of this slim, powerful, gorgeous book courtesy of Bloomsbury Publishing. How to Say Goodbye is scheduled for publication July 18, 2023. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? If this book is of interest to you, you might also be interested in the books on my Greedy Reading List Six Powerful Memoirs about Facing Mortality.

From Paul Holes, the detective who found the Golden State Killer, comes a nonfiction work about tracking If you like nonfiction books, you might also like the books I list on my Greedy Reading List Six Compelling Nonfiction Reads--and stay tuned for my upcoming list of Six Nonfiction Bossy Favorites from the Past

In Katherine May's nonfiction ode to settling in, stepping back, and slowing down, she explores her own

In this narrative nonfiction, Egan explores the Klan's explosive growth and power in the 1920s in states Timothy Egan is also the author of The Worst Hard Time, fascinating narrative nonfiction about the Dust and reviewed that explore issues of race and politics or social justice as well as other fascinating nonfiction

ICYMI: I loved Taylor's exploration of various faiths, striving for open-mindedness, respecting differences, and finding captivating new avenues for her faith in this five-star read. In Holy Envy, Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest who left a position as a church pastor, shares her experiences and surprises while teaching a course on the religions of the world at a small Southern college. Holy Envy is a thought-provoking, accessible look at world religions and at the bridges that can be built between people of various faiths by considering traditions and beliefs that overlap as well as those that are wholly individual. Taylor examines differences in faiths as well as where varied faiths intersect, and by seeing these religions through the eyes of her students--many of whom are venturing into knowledge of world religions for the first time--Taylor shares how she learned more than she could have imagined. I found her lengthy exploration of the concept of and circumstances of “the stranger”--and how it can shed invaluable new light on a life and established beliefs--especially interesting. Taylor is smart and thoughtful, delicate yet straightforward, and I was taken with her vulnerability and honesty as she revealed how the lessons she learned related to and reflected upon her own experiences. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Barbara Brown Taylor is also the author of An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, Learning to Walk in the Dark, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, and other books. I love her thoughtful writing and introspection.

reading Sally Rooney's newest novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You; the brilliant Isabel Wilkerson's nonfiction

More Memoirs I've Loved I find a good memoir irresistible, whether it's made up of key moments from the life of someone unknown to me or it's the background of a famous person's journey. For more more MORE memoirs I've loved that you might want to try, check out the Greedy Reading Lists Six Illuminating Memoirs to Dive Into, Six Illuminating Memoirs I've Read This Year, Six More Illuminating Memoirs to Lose Yourself In, Six Foodie Memoirs to Whet Your Appetite, and Six Powerful Memoirs about Facing Mortality. How many memoirs is too many memoirs, you may ask? Dear reader, the limit does not exist! Have you read any of these books? I'd love to hear what you thought. Which other books should I add to my memoir to-read list? 01 The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher The Princess Diarist is based upon the diaries Carrie Fisher kept while she was a young woman stumbling into her iconic lifetime role as Princess Leia. Fisher is candid, funny, charmingly offbeat, and she's mastered the art of honest self-examination. I loved listening to her fantastically raspy voice as she read her memoir in audiobook form--and she relates her youthful affair with the gruff and married Harrison Ford for the first time here. I felt like a little too much time was spent on youthful poetry and fanciful teenaged musings, yet the young Carrie seemed frequently and charmingly self-possessed even as she questioned her own motives, feelings, and life path. I laughed out loud repeatedly at Fisher's good-natured, self-deprecating, and confidently oddball views and contemplations. For my full review of this book, check out The Princess Diarist. If you love Carrie Fisher, you might also like A Star is Bored, a fictionalized celebrity-focused book written by Carrie Fisher's former personal assistant, Byron Lane. It was fun but also poignant, and I loved it. 02 Dimestore: A Writer's Life by Lee Smith “...the linear, beginning-middle-end form doesn’t fit the lives of any women I know. For life has turned out to be wild and various, full of the unexpected, and it’s a monstrous big river out here.” Lee Smith has written numerous fictional stories about the Appalachian South, including Fair and Tender Ladies, On Agate Hill, and Oral History. Here she traces her beginnings in the Appalachian coal-mining town of Grundy, Virginia, where the background of her life was filled with tent revivals, mountain music, and her daddy's dime store and the community that flocked to it. What could have been an interesting and charming memoir about growing up in Appalachia and the incredible changes in rural Virginia from the time of Smith's childhood to now surprised me with its depth and darkness. I was taken with Smith's open exploration of the good, bad, and ugly in her life, and I adored reading mentions of University of North Carolina English professors, other Chapel Hill figures, and the hidden gems of places that I love. 03 Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story by Jewel I'm a fan of Alaska: The Last Frontier, which is about the Kilcher family--of which Jewel is a part. She only occasionally appears on the show, but she comes on to yodel (her grandparents came to Alaska from Switzerland around World War II) with her extended family from time to time, which I love to see. Anyhoo, in her memoir Never Broken, the singer-songwriter traces her Alaskan origins, her first singing performances (at age 3 alongside her parents), how she began to write songs to express herself, and the now-famous story of a DJ airing her bootleg song and beginning her rise to fame when she was 18 and homeless, living out of her car. In Never Broken, Jewel shows really lovely extensive introspection and a detailed account of the fascinating-disturbing story of her youth. She shares her ongoing, active commitment to personal and emotional growth, bettering the world, being true to herself, and evolving through hardships. She seems like a good egg, and I really liked spending time with her through this memoir. 04 The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander “The story seems to begin with catastrophe but in fact began earlier and is not a tragedy but rather a love story. Perhaps tragedies are only tragedies in the presence of love, which confers meaning to loss. Loss is not felt in the absence of love.” Alexander writes gorgeously about the husband she lost suddenly, the elements that made him irreplaceable to her and to the world, and the impossibility and inevitability of adjusting to life without him. She shares the trauma surrounding this loss and her personal journey toward finding peace. The author explores the beauty of companionship and like a poet, she lays out her unique love story. I didn't know I'd care so much about a person I'd never heard of or met by reading his widow's account of life with him, but this was exquisitely beautiful. 05 I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend by Martin Short Martin Short has recently had excellent TV roles on The Morning Show and Only Murders in the Building, and each one has reminded me of how much I love his performances. In I Must Say, Martin Short shares stories of his Canadian childhood dreaming of making it big in show business in the United States, his years of hard work and tenacity, and the magical roles that marked his success. “We arranged to spend the next day, a Sunday, looking at apartments together, followed by a round of tennis, since we both played. Before Nancy left the Pilot that night, I said to her lasciviously— I don’t know what possessed me—“Have you ever tried a comedian before?” Which was either very sexy or very creepy, depending on your opinion of me. She just stared at me, betraying no emotion, and said, “I hope you have a racket. I’m pretty good.” I Must Say is naturally full of famous names and encounters, but it doesn't feel as though Short is gratuitously name dropping. I burst out laughing at some of the transcripts and asides in Short's book. His voice in this memoir is honest, funny, and poignant, and he and his many stories are just irresistible. Short comes across as charming, nutty, grounded, and really endearing in this fun, funny memoir. 06 It's Okay to Laugh (Crying Is Okay Too) by Nora McInerny Purmort “He will die, I know it, and I go there, though I have no business doing so. Our human imaginations are woefully unprepared for predicting actual pain, but I hack away at it anyway, trying to form a scar before I m even wounded.” Twentysomethings Nora and Aaron fell in love. They were romantic and silly and young. Then Aaron was diagnosed with a rare brain cancer, but the couple doubled down, becoming engaged in the hospital, marrying after Aaron's first surgery, and having a baby while Aaron was undergoing chemotherapy. It's Okay to Laugh is a darkly humorous account of the author's numerous and condensed life-altering tragedies. The brief life-lesson interludes that break up her story felt jarring to me, but her account was honest, raw, sad, and sometimes very funny.

Young offers a brutally honest behind-the-scenes look at the systematic abuse she suffered in The Children of God cult and a front-row view of the misogyny and gaslighting she experienced in the military in this powerful memoir of resilience, reflection, and self-discovery. Daniella Mestyanek Young grew up the daughter of high-ranking members of The Children of God cult in Brazil. Her mother was forced to marry the cult's leader when she was thirteen and worked as secretary for "The Family" for many years. While in the cult, Daniella was physically, emotionally, and sexually abused, while being told these acts reflected God's love. She was not allowed to attend school. Young doesn't flinch away from sharing the grueling details of the generational abuse, hunger, male-dominated power structures, and various methods of deprivation that kept her and other cult members under control of the Uncles, as the group called the men in charge. At age 15, after years of excruciating systematic suffering, Young escaped to Texas, enrolled in school, and made a new life for herself. After various naïve missteps during her entry into a more typical American life, she graduated and gravitated toward the armed forces in intelligence. She spent years fighting against destructive misogynistic power structures and making her way, struggling with mental health issues, and trying to establish an identity within a constrictive, gaslighting environment. I'm fascinated by a peek into a secret scene, and cults and the military each fit the bill. Young's pain in both avenues is substantial and horrifying, and she is brutally honest. Yet Uncultured is primarily an affecting account of Young's impressive perseverance, hard-fought growth, personal reflections, and significant strength. I received a prepublication edition of this book courtesy of St. Martin's Press and NetGalley. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? For more more more memoirs that you might want to try, check out these Greedy Reading Lists: Six Fascinating Memoirs to Explore Six More Fascinating Memoirs to Explore Six Illuminating Memoirs to Dive Into Six Illuminating Memoirs I've Read This Year Six More Illuminating Memoirs to Lose Yourself In Six Foodie Memoirs to Whet Your Appetite Six Powerful Memoirs about Facing Mortality

In researcher and professor Angela Duckworth's nonfiction work Grit, she explores the combination of For more nonfiction books, check out the Greedy Reading List Six Compelling Nonfiction Books that Read

ICYMI: Poet Elizabeth Alexander writes a gorgeous account of her love affair with her husband and the trauma of his sudden death in a heartbreaking, heartwarming account of moving through the darkness and holding tight to life's beauty and its pain. “The story seems to begin with catastrophe but in fact began earlier and is not a tragedy but rather a love story. Perhaps tragedies are only tragedies in the presence of love, which confers meaning to loss. Loss is not felt in the absence of love.” In The Light of the World, Elizabeth Alexander writes gorgeously about Ficre Ghebreyesus, the husband she lost suddenly; the elements that made him irreplaceable to her and to the world; and the impossibility and inevitability of adjusting to life without him. Alexander shares the trauma surrounding this enormous loss--which occurred days after Ghebreyesus's fiftieth birthday surprise party--and her personal journey toward finding peace. Much of the book explores the beauty of companionship, and with poetic gorgeousness Alexander lays out her unique love story. “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don’t let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand.” Reading his widow's account of life with Ficre made me feel deeply connected to him. This was exquisitely beautiful. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? I mentioned The Light of the World in my Greedy Reading List Six Fascinating Memoirs to Explore. You might also be interested in the titles on the Greedy Reading List Six Powerful Memoirs about Facing Mortality.

Meticulously researched, always interesting, and consistently infuriating, Empire of Pain is essential nonfiction Patrick Radden Keefe is a master of compelling, important nonfiction. book Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland was one of my Six of the Best Nonfiction

#memoir, #nonfiction, #threestarbookreview

1619 Project highlights tragic, uncomfortable aspects of our nation's history in an important work of nonfiction

Come As You Are is fascinating nonfiction from sex educator Dr. Another nonfiction, engaging book I loved that is about the human body and how it works is Body: A Guide

Caste is consistently powerful, profound, disturbing, and absolutely necessary nonfiction reading from