I’m still here! And I’ve been reading! And I have 2.5 recommendations for you. In the past week I read a funny feel-good book, an entertaining, inspiring and honest book and a total downer that was still a good book.
First, Tina Fey’s Bossypants. HILARIOUS. It probably helps that I’m a huge Tina Fey and 30 Rock fan, but I think most people would find this entertaining, as long as you don’t have an aversion to some crude humor (you stick-in-the-mud!).
Next, Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s memoir The Bucolic Plague. Josh is part of the team who started Beekman 1802 and stars in the reality-documentary show The Fabulous Beekman Boys. Love the show, love the book, love the love. His memoir was a very interesting look at how he and his boyfriend went from city professionals to farming entrepreneurs (with goats). Inspiring and surprising, my only complaint was that sometimes the chapter endings were a little too heavy-handed with the dramatic phrasing. I’m being picky.
My half recommendation is for Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge. I say read it because it’s well-written and kept me hooked, but I say don’t read it because it’s damn depressing. It’s Strout’s talent for understanding people and our deepest fears and thoughts that makes it so depressing, but still, it’s a downer nonetheless. The format was very clever; the book is several short stories with a few overlapping characters, namely Olive Kitteridge, and the stories all take place in a small coastal town in Maine. Perhaps read this and then read Bossypants to cheer yourself up?
