Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom

Title: Thick And Other Essays

Author: Tressie McMillan Cottom

Publisher: New Press 2019

Genre: Nonfiction

Pages: 244

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Spring TBR

In these eight piercing explorations on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom—award-winning professor and acclaimed author of Lower Ed—embraces her venerated role as a purveyor of wit, wisdom, and Black Twitter snark about all that is right and much that is wrong with this thing we call society.

Ideas and identity fuse effortlessly in this vibrant collection that on bookshelves is just as at home alongside Rebecca Solnit and bell hooks as it is beside Jeff Chang and Janet Mock. It also fills an important void on those very shelves: a modern black American feminist voice waxing poetic on self and society, serving up a healthy portion of clever prose and southern aphorisms as she covers everything from Saturday Night Live, LinkedIn, and BBQ Becky to sexual violence, infant mortality, and Trump rallies. Thick speaks fearlessly to a range of topics and is far more genre-bending than a typical compendium of personal essays.

Essay collections are not usually my jam. I found that really enjoyed this collection more than most. We chose this for our May book club selection. I started the first essay and it was intense and dense. It felt more like academic writing than an accessible piece about race, gender, and identity. I was a bit hesitant to continue, but then the essay got a lot more accessible and interesting.. I was all in in hearing Cottom’s thoughts on a variety of topics. My favorite pieces detailed medical incompetence. While I cannot empathize with all of Cottom’s experience, I have followed the experiences of many women and their awful treatment in the medical establishments. I raged, I cried, and I laughed through this collection. Most definitely on the required reading list.

Next up on the TBR pile:

The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green

Title: The Anthropocene Reviewed

Author: John Green

Publisher: Dutton 2021

Genre: Memoir

Pages: 304

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: 

The Anthropocene is the current geologic age, in which humans have profoundly reshaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his groundbreaking podcast, bestselling author John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale—from the QWERTY keyboard and sunsets to Canada geese and Penguins of Madagascar.

Funny, complex, and rich with detail, the reviews chart the contradictions of contemporary humanity. As a species, we are both far too powerful and not nearly powerful enough, a paradox that came into sharp focus as we faced a global pandemic that both separated us and bound us together.

I’m going to start by saying that this book is definitely going onto my Top 10 of the year. It’s just that good! I finally picked this up thinking that I would read an uneven collection of memoir style essays. Sure I love John Green and his writing, but could his collection of essays engage me all the way through? Turns out that they can. From the mundane to the profound, from the serious to the comedic, Green covers a variety of topics that resonantly directly with me and my life. (As a side note, John Green and I have a lot in common, from where have lived {Indiana} to, at times, crippling anxiety. We are only a few years apart {4 to be exact} and connect on so many strange life points.) On the surface, this is a book of reviews for a variety of subjects, events, and ideas. For example, we get to hear all about the importance of Diet Dr Pepper. But embedded in these reviews are life truths expressed and quiet thoughts and emotions said out loud. Much of this book was written during the pandemic and there are many times when Green connects a variety of ideas to the reality of his present in quarantine. I was moved to laughter and tears throughout this collection. And I was forcing into J’s hands at multiple times. Guess it’s time for me to buy my own copy of this one. I give John Green and The Anthropocene Reviewed five stars!

Next up on the TBR pile:

The Book that Made Me edited by Judith Ridge

Title: The Book that Made Me: A Collection of 32 Personal Stories

Edited By: Judith Ridge

Publisher: Candlewick Press 2016

Genre: Nonfiction - About Books

Pages: 241

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: 

What if you could look inside your favorite authors’ heads and see the book that led them to become who they are today? What was the book that made them fall in love, or made them understand something for the first time? What was the book that made them feel challenged in ways they never knew they could be, emotionally, intellectually, or politically? What book made them readers, or made them writers, or made them laugh, think, or cry? Join thirty-one top children’s and young adult authors as they explore the books, stories, and experiences that changed them as readers — for good.

Like most essay collections, there are some really good ones in here and there are some more boring ones in here. Overall, I was a bit disappointed in the collection. I don’t think the good essays outweighed the less interesting ones. Oh well. Not every book is going to be 5 stars.

Next up on the TBR pile:

The Witches are Coming by Lindy West

Title: The Witches are Coming

Author: Lindy West

Publisher: Hachette Books 2019

Genre: Nonfiction

Pages: 272

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Perpetual - Feminism; Ebook

From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt. In The Witches Are Coming, firebrand author of the New York Times bestselling memoir and now critically acclaimed Hulu TV series Shrill, Lindy West, turns that refrain on its head. You think this is a witch hunt? Fine. You've got one.
In a laugh-out-loud, incisive cultural critique, West extolls the world-changing magic of truth, urging readers to reckon with dark lies in the heart of the American mythos, and unpacking the complicated, and sometimes tragic, politics of not being a white man in the twenty-first century. She tracks the misogyny and propaganda hidden (or not so hidden) in the media she and her peers devoured growing up, a buffet of distortions, delusions, prejudice, and outright bullsh*t that has allowed white male mediocrity to maintain a death grip on American culture and politics-and that delivered us to this precarious, disorienting moment in history.
West writes, "We were just a hair's breadth from electing America's first female president to succeed America's first black president. We weren't done, but we were doing it. And then, true to form-like the Balrog's whip catching Gandalf by his little gray bootie, like the husband in a Lifetime movie hissing, 'If I can't have you, no one can'-white American voters shoved an incompetent, racist con man into the White House."
We cannot understand how we got here-how the land of the free became Trump's America-without examining the chasm between who we are and who we think we are, without fact-checking the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and each other. The truth can transform us; there is witchcraft in it. Lindy West turns on the light.

Overall a very solid collection of essays. There were many that had me laughing hysterically and there were a few that had me in tears. But most of the essays had me so incredibly mad. And I’m a person who knew most of this us. I still came away with a feeling of wanting to smash the patriarchy (and a few particular men). This collection is definitely prescient in the time of #MeToo and the ongoing revelations of people’s wrongdoings. Unfortunately, we are now in the midst of COVID and Black Lives Matter and these essays fell a bit flat at times. Of course, West could not foresee the future and how our lives would change in 2020, but I still felt that something was missing from this collection. Overall I did really enjoy readying it. I’m just not the biggest fan of essay collections.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Shrill by Lindy West

Title: Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

Author: Lindy West

Publisher: Hachette Books 2016

Genre: Nonfiction

Pages: 272

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: 

Coming of age in a culture that demands women be as small, quiet, and compliant as possible--like a porcelain dove that will also have sex with you--writer and humorist Lindy West quickly discovered that she was anything but.

From a painfully shy childhood in which she tried, unsuccessfully, to hide her big body and even bigger opinions; to her public war with stand-up comedians over rape jokes; to her struggle to convince herself, and then the world, that fat people have value; to her accidental activism and never-ending battle royale with Internet trolls, Lindy narrates her life with a blend of humor and pathos that manages to make a trip to the abortion clinic funny and wring tears out of a story about diarrhea.

With inimitable good humor, vulnerability, and boundless charm, Lindy boldly shares how to survive in a world where not all stories are created equal and not all bodies are treated with equal respect, and how to weather hatred, loneliness, harassment, and loss, and walk away laughing. Shrill provocatively dissects what it means to become self-aware the hard way, to go from wanting to be silent and invisible to earning a living defending the silenced in all caps.

One of my book clubs picked West’s newer book, The Witches are Coming, as our July selection. But on eof the members said that we should read her first book before if we could. SO I grabbed it from the library and started reading. Overall, I really enjoyed this collection of essays focused on identity and sexism. I really enjoyed West’s voice throughout the stories. Often I was laughing and then crying, all in the same 5 pages. There are some really powerful messages in this collection. My issue with most essay collections, is that the message started to become repetitive when reading them all in a row. I think i prefer collections where there are multiple authors writing about a topic. Still a good read.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

Title: Bad Feminist

Author: Roxane Gay

Publisher: Harper Perennial 2014

Genre: Nonfiction Essays

Pages: 336

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Perpetual; Monthly Theme - March

A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation, Roxane Gay.

In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman (Sweet Valley High) of color (The Help) while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years (Girls, Django in Chains) and commenting on the state of feminism today (abortion, Chris Brown). The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture.

I loved every essay that Gay focused on her own experiences and thoughts. Learning her personal take on various aspects of life was eye-opening. I love feminist texts that embrace intersectional feminism. Gay excels as laying out the all the different aspects of life and how feminism affects them. I really fell into those essays. Unfortunately, she also included very academic essay focused on pop culture. Those took me right back to college and not in a good way. I was thoroughly bored with those. And of course, they were very dated 6 years later. I would have loved to delete those essays and just keep the personal ones.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Songbook by Nick Hornby

Title: Songbook

Author: Nick Hornby

Publisher: Riverhead Books 2003

Genre: Essays

Pages: 240

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Perpetual - Rory Gilmore; Popsugar - Seen on TV

Songs, songwriters, and why and how they get under our skin…

Songbook is Nick Hornby’s labor of love. A shrewd, funny, and completely unique collection of musings on pop music, why it’s good, what makes us listen and love it, and the ways in which it attaches itself to our lives—all with the beat of a perfectly mastered mix tape. 

I picked this one up to fulfill a few reading challenge slots. I have enjoyed many of Nick Hornby’s books, but this wasn’t a great one. I found many of the essays to be tedious and a little too esoteric. I think this is a case of mediocre white guy rearing it’s head. Not one I would recommend.

Next up on the TBR pile:

I Miss You When I Blink by Mary Laura Philpott

Title: I Miss You When I Blink

Author: Mary Laura Philpott

Publisher: Atria Books 2019

Genre: Memoir

Pages: 276

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Library Love; Nonfiction Bingo - Self-help Title

Mary Laura Philpott thought she’d cracked the code: Always be right, and you’ll always be happy. 

But once she’d completed her life’s to-do list (job, spouse, house, babies—check!), she found that instead of feeling content and successful, she felt anxious. Lost. Stuck in a daily grind of overflowing calendars, grueling small talk, and sprawling traffic. She’d done everything “right,” but she felt all wrong. What’s the worse failure, she wondered: smiling and staying the course, or blowing it all up and running away? And are those the only options?

In this memoir-in-essays full of spot-on observations about home, work, and creative life, Philpott takes on the conflicting pressures of modern adulthood with wit and heart. She offers up her own stories to show that identity crises don’t happen just once or only at midlife; reassures us that small, recurring personal re-inventions are both normal and necessary; and advises that if you’re going to faint, you should get low to the ground first. Most of all, Philpott shows that when you stop feeling satisfied with your life, you don’t have to burn it all down and set off on a transcontinental hike (unless you want to, of course). You can call upon your many selves to figure out who you are, who you’re not, and where you belong. Who among us isn’t trying to do that?

A real mixed bag here. I just didn’t connect to Philpott or her life even though we share a lot of similarities in our lives. Most of the essays came off as “let me tell you how to live” instead of a more personal sharing of struggles. I felt like the author came across as very condescending at many points throughout. I just really couldn’t connect with Philpott and wanted her to stop telling me what to do. Just really didn’t connect at all to this one.

Next up on the TBR pile: