Stephanie LaCava tells the story of her childhood — uprooted from New York to a village outside Paris — by focusing on the strange objects she collected and obsessed over in An Extraordinary Theory of Objects: A Memoir of an Outsider in Paris. It’s an interesting way to tell a story, but I ended up far more interested in the… Read more
You know, these days I read travel books with a whole different eye. One, I’m usually reading them in an airport or a hotel. Two, the situations and places in the books seem very familiar to me now. That’s one of the reasons I was so interested in Cruising Attitude: Tales of Crashpads, Crew Drama, and Crazy Passengers at 35,000… Read more
Well, the title is a little longer than that, but you get the general idea. Fabulous Finds: How Expert Appraiser Lee Drexler Sold Wall Street’s Charging Bull, Found Hidden Treasures and Mingled with the Rich & Famous is a quick little read (under 200 pages) about art appraisal — determining the value of all sorts of art objects for insurance,… Read more
Every Step You Take: A Memoir is a look back for Jock Soto at his family and his career, sorting through the influences that made him a unique figure in the ballet world. The writing took great courage, as some of his family history must have been hard to face — some unpleasant truths about his father, in particular, and… Read more
Keeping the Feast: One Couple’s Story of Love, Food, and Healing in Italy by Paula Butturini is just the sort of book I love…and just the sort of book I normally avoid. I love books about travel and Italy is high on my list of places that I absolutely must go. There’s a lot of food in this book and… Read more
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I picked up Writing Out The Notes: Life in Great Big Sea at a Great Big Sea concert in Kent, Ohio a few months ago. I confess: I am a folk music fan. I have a tremendously eclectic taste in music; my iTunes library has everything from the Sex Pistols and Einsturzende Neubauten to Bobby Golodsboro and Glenn Gould and… Read more
This book really took me back to my heavy metal roots. I was a fan in high-school and college, saw a lot of head-banging bands play live, and still have the hard rock/alternative stations programmed in the car radio. Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir is a look behind the scenes at how a scrawny kid from La Mesa, California became… Read more
Proust’s Overcoat: The True Story of One Man’s Passion for All Things Proust is an interesting little read — a case study in obsession. It is the story of a book lover, his connections to the Proust’s family, and his obsession with preserving the author’s writings and possessions. Author Lorenza Foschini does an excellent job of pulling the threads of… Read more