Here For It, or, How Not to Lose Your Soul in America, by R. Eric Thomas

R. Eric Thomas, the columnist behind the popular “Eric Reads the News” on ELLE.com, is smart. And charming. And funny. And in Here for It, his first collection of essays, he uses this smart charming humor to explore his life as a gay, black, Christian man and what it means to be different--and to be one’s truest self.

Thomas bounces between disparate topics across his essays: Michelle Obama and Mister Rogers; racial slurs and horror movies; scented candles and Pride; family and religion and first loves and true love. (There are also lots of mentions of Beyoncé throughout). Though seemingly unrelated, this wide spread is evidence of Thomas’ skill as a storyteller, a testament to his ability to use one small anecdote as an entry point into larger conversations about racism, pride, religion, and mental health--just to name a few.

“The comedic surprise I’m always trying to get to in [my] column is hope” (11), a concept that is borne out across every page in Here for It. It’s rare to laugh out loud in the midst of a story that ends in a suicide; it’s unusual to guffaw when reading about racism. Thomas’ sense of humor, though, invites readers to laugh while acknowledging the very real, very large problems facing our world today. And in between it all, that laughter succeeds in delivering just what Thomas aims to do in his columns: hope.

Recently: Essays on Feminism, Gender, Race, and Identity

Without realizing it at the time, I've been on a bit of a kick with essay collections lately--especially those related to feminism, gender identity, and race--and particularly the intersection of the three.

Neil Gaiman's The View from the Cheap Seats: Fiction and Imagination in the Real World

This review originally ran in Shelf Awareness for Readers. Reprinted here with permission.

Gaiman's works of nonfiction prove just as powerful as his fiction in exploring the lasting place of fiction and imagination in the real world.

Neil Gaiman is most recognized for the power of his imagination, with novels like Coraline, comics like Sandman and television credits like Doctor Who underscoring his ability to dream up impossible worlds and turn them into a reality. His nonfiction is just as compelling (and, perhaps not surprisingly, just as imaginative), as collected in The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfictions.

Review: The Dead Ladies Project, by Jessa Crispin

This review originally ran in Shelf Awareness for Readers. Reprinted here with permission.

Discover: This collection of personal essays follows one writer as she studies the lives of artists and writers who built new lives for themselves.

Book Review: Multiply/Divide: On the American Real and Surreal, by Wendy S. Walters

This review originally ran in Shelf Awareness for Readers.

"The border between nonfiction and fiction," writes poet Wendy S. Walters in her introduction, "is often porous enough to render the distinction irrelevant." The short pieces collected in Multiply/Divide: On the American Real and Surreal reflect this belief, moving fluidly between nonfiction (personal essays and reporting pieces) and fiction (short stories and fables), with a few lyrical essays that blend the two. 

Short Reviews of Four Short Books

I love me a good chunkster (Anna Karenina, anyone?), but from time to time, a step away from the 1,000-page tomes and into the world of 150-page micro-books is good for the soul. Here are a few short titles I've picked up of late:

Book Review: Bad Feminist, by Roxane Gay

It took me a few weeks to finish Bad Feminist, a new collection of essays from author Roxane Gay (An Untamed State). Not because it was difficult reading, but because the essays in Bad Feminist proved so thought-provoking as to require time between sections for reflection and thought.

Bad Feminist spans a surprising range of subjects for a book of its title; topics include everything from fat camp to why The Help (book and
movie) was awful, competitive Scrabble to loving the color pink, rape to reproductive rights. But regardless of subject, Gay brings a solid mix of sociology, political commentary, and self-reflection to her essays, making each topic shine in a way that may not have happened had the essays been limited to either sociology, political commentary, or memoir.

Gay does not hesitate to put herself on the pages of Bad Feminist. She recounts her experiences at fat camp as a child and her struggles with weight; the horrible rape she suffered in high school; her experiences participating in competitive Scrabble; her search for love and romance; her continued search to find people like her on television and in movies with little success. This sense of self is ultimately what made Gay's collection so powerful to me--in her writing, she manages to tell a story and ask big questions, but by putting herself in the context of her opinions, she forced me--and hopefully will force others--to think differently about how we all fit together in this crazy, mixed-up world.

As a white woman of relative means, I have never wondered where my next meal will come from or wished that I could see more characters similar to myself on television. If I hadn't married young, I'd probably be just like the girls in Girls (though, having never actually seen the television show, I guess I'm not entirely sure I can or should claim that). I have not suffered sexual assault, nor have I struggled with my weight or my race. And for all of that, I am eternally, unspeakably, grateful.

Bad Feminist, though, is a reminder that who I am is not as standard or as normal as I would like to believe. It is a reminder to step back and try to see the world through different eyes. It is a collection that will long live on my shelves, and to which I will return, time and time again, to remember to think about my place in the world, and others' places, how they intersect, and how they don't.

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Note: Thanks to the publisher for providing a digital copy of this title to review.
Bad Feminist | Roxane Gay | Harper Perennial | August 2014 | 336 pages

Giveaway: How to Succeed in Business Without Really Crying, signed by Carol Leifer

Carol Leifer's new book, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Crying, boasts what must be one of the most impressive collection of blurbs I've ever seen. I'll leave it here extra large so you can read them all yourself:

...and in case that wasn't impressive enough, the collection continues onto the back. I know blurbs can be a fickle thing in the publishing industry, but come on. How can you not want to read a book that Jerry Seinfeld told you to read? By an author that Chris Rock calls "funny, really funny"?

Interested?

Yeah, I thought you might be. And the good news is that thanks to the wonderful people over at Quirk Books, I can offer one of you a signed copy of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Crying for yourself. All you need to do to enter is fill out the form below. Worldwide entries are welcome!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Note: Thanks to Quirk Books for providing the copy of the book for this giveaway.

Thoughts: Emma, by Jane Austen, and A Jane Austen Education, by William Deresiewicz

I'm ready to duck from flying tomatoes after this next sentence, but I have to be honest. I've never liked Jane Austen. Granted, until recently I'd only read Pride and Prejudice (once in high school as required reading, and once again after graduating college as pleasure reading, because I don't believe in forming final opinions of a book assigned to me). I didn't like it either time.

Sure, I appreciate Austen's wit, and her humour (so much so that I was inclined to spell the word the British way when typing, and don't intend to change it), and her intelligence. But appreciating and enjoying are two very different adjectives, aren't they?

Emma was my attempt at keeping an open mind, trying a second Austen novel--and one praised as one of her finest, no less. Sadly, it met the same fate as Pride and Prejudice. I finished it, but I never liked it.

But then, maybe Emma is not a book that Austen actually intended us to like. Emma herself is a perfectly disagreeable character, and most of the people around her are trivial and insipid and shallow and vain, and nothing particularly interesting happens to any of the characters until the story is wrapped up in a neat little package with a cherry on top. William Deresiewicz argues in his essay on Emma in his recent book, A Jane Austen Education, that is precisely the beauty of Emma--the simple, dull, and the mundane are, in fact, what real lives are made up of; to spend an entire novel--or, if you will, an entire life--waiting for something riveting to happen, you miss out on what is actually happening in front of you.

Deresiewicz's essay is what I wish introductions to classics could always be: insightful and informative without ever spoiling the story to come. He reveals enough detail to lay forth his argument without assuming the reader is familiar with the novel being discussed, setting us up for a richer, more refined reading of the book whether a first or twelfth or twenty-fifth read. 

I'm glad I read Emma, glad I gave Austen a second chance (though I haven't truly changed my opinion), and glad I started this read with Deresiewicz's essay (even if I can't pronounce his name). It's one of those must-reads I firmly believe should remain a must-read, though maybe not a must-like; A Jane Austen Education, too, is a must-read for anyone setting out to read an Austen novel (or, for those unlike myself, anyone already well-versed in the author's major works).

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Emma | Jane Austen | Penguin Threads Edition, Paperback | 400 pages | Buy from an independent near you

A Jane Austen Education | William Deresiewicz | Hardcover | 272 pages | Buy from an independent near you

Book Review: When I Was a Child I Read Books, by Marilynne Robinson

Originally published in the February 21, 2012 issue of Shelf Awareness Pro. Reprinted here with permission. Receive Shelf Awareness Pro in your inbox daily by registering here.

Though most well-known for her fiction (including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead), Marilynne Robinson is also an accomplished essayist. When I Was a Child I Read Books is her fourth collection of essays, carrying forward themes for which she is consistently recognized: faith, culture, patriotism and self-identity. In exploring these ideas--and her ideals--Robinson leaves no subject untouched, from the role of science in explaining our origins to the practical worship of capitalism in the 21st century, from our treatment of the poor to the intertwined nature of religious identity and American patriotism.

With "The Fate of Ideas: Moses," Robinson examines the laws of Moses as presented in the Old Testament, which she calls "a brilliant economics based in religious ethic marked by... an anxious solicitude for the well-being of the needy and the vulnerable." She laments the loss of the spirit of these laws, positing we have come to value property and possession over assisting the impoverished.

In the title essay, Robinson uses her own experience as a child reader to parallel our one-time lust for exploration and adventure in the American West. She goes on to reckon with the loss of individualism, or perhaps the loss of the celebration of individualism, and our seeming complacency with the status quo. "Everything, for all purposes, still remains to be done," she presses. We need, in short, a modern version of the American West to spur our imaginations, to motivate us to once again embrace the spirit of the individual.

Other essays explore subjects equally important, and some just as mundane, all with a critical, questioning eye that is both impassioned and thought-provoking. Throughout, Robinson approaches these topics through the lens of her own faith and beliefs, but the lessons ultimately transcend any one religion and instead encompass our very definition of our selves, as individuals, as Americans, as readers, as members of a faith--or not, as the case may be. It is this transcendence that makes When I Was a Child I Read Books as relevant for non-religious readers as for the observant, as important for Jewish readers as Protestants. Robinson's essays are thoughtfully passionate, forceful, clear-eyed and concise. As individual pieces, they inspire a new consideration of particular issues; as a whole, they force readers to reconsider who they are--and, perhaps more importantly, why they are.

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Thoughts from other bookworms:
Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review)
Kirkus Reviews

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You might also like:
Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson
Home, by Marilynne Robinson

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When I Was a Child I Read Books | Marilynne Robinson | Farrar, Straus & Giraux | 9780374298784 | $24.00 Hardcover | 224 pages | February 2012 | Buy from an independent bookstore near you