Never Panic Early: An Apollo 13 Astronaut's Journey
In this personal and illuminating memoir, illustrated with black-and-white photographs, Haise takes an introspective look at the thrills and triumphs, regrets and disappointments, and lessons that defined his career.
The remarkable woman at heart of the smash New York Times bestseller and Oscar-winning film Hidden Figures tells the full story of her life, including what it took to work at NASA, help land the first man on the moon, and live through a century of turmoil and change.
Today in Labor History November 9, 1851: Kentucky marshals abducted abolitionist minister Calvin Fairbank from Jeffersonville, Indiana, under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. They took him to Kentucky to stand trial for helping a slave escape. Fairbank was an activist on the Underground Railroad. He spent over 17 years in prison and was lashed 35,000 times. He was pardoned in 1864. He was believed to have helped at least 47 people escape slavery. Fairbank wrote a memoir in 1890 called “Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times: How He "Fought the Good Fight" to Prepare "the Way." He died in near-poverty, in Angelica, New York, in 1898, at the age of 81.
BARBRA STREISAND’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY is as unique as its subject and her remarkable career. Lots of candor about her childhood and her professional life, very little gossip about her romantic life, a strong throughline of moral and artistic clarity. A MINUS
#BookReview How optimistic or delusional does a 25-yr veteran of publishing have to be to open a tiny bookshop up on a steep hill in an Italian Tuscan village of 180 people? Poet Alba Donati did just that in December 2019 and this is her account of returning to her childhood home and setting up a perfect little gem of a bookshop, and the ups and downs of it all. She's an embracer of life and a people person, and if this book is anything to go by, a force of nature. The diary entries flit back and forth in time, jump from what's happening with the shop to stories about the characters who make up her large family and the villagers. She writes eloquently about the mountainous landscape she loves, and the books she cares passionately about. It's catnip for readers who can't resist a book about books.
BRITNEY SPEARS’S LONG-AWAITED memoir is unsparingly candid and surprisingly sweet. There’s grief here, but little grievance in this thoughtful look at the truth behind an overwhelmingly hyped image. A MINUS
Book 48, 2023: Shame by Annie Ernaux. This memoir covers the year when she was 12, and opens with the line: "My father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, in the early afternoon."
It looks at the realisation that she has grown up relatively poor, in a difficult household, and the shame that comes with that. As usual, she opens up everything to scrutiny, her entire life on the pages.
Diagnosed with ASD at age five, McCreary got hit with the performance bug not much later. During a difficult time in junior high, he started journaling, eventually turning his pain e into something empowering—and funny. He scored his first stand-up gig at age 14, and hasn't looked back.
My Father’s Burning in Hell is a heartbreaking and highly emotional memoir where Mia McDaniel describes her life growing up in a very toxic family with two narcissistic parents hiding a very dark secret. She also shares a very strong message of healing and hope as she works on healing and building her own family.
How to Say Babylon is Sinclair’s reckoning with the culture that initially nourished but ultimately sought to silence her; it is her reckoning with patriarchy and tradition, and the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica. Rich in lyricism and language only a poet could evoke, it is both a universal story of a woman finding her own power and a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we may know how to name, but one we know little about. #memoir#nonfiction#book#bookstodon@bookstodon
Five stars: Sunshine by Jarrett J. Krosoczka (2023) is the follow up to Hey, Kiddo (2020). This one covers a week in September where Jarrett volunteered at Camp Sunshine, a camp for children with cancer, and their families.
Our publishing co-op is looking for a marketing volunteer, which could lead to paying work once we are funded or selling more books. (We are currently developing a crowdfunding campaign / investment round to launch later this fall.)
Book 45, 2023: The Young Man by Annie Ernaux. This is an EXTREMELY short memoir, with a font the size of a Dr Seuss book, about the relationship she had, when she was in her early fifties, with a male student 30 years her junior. It is as unsparing as usual, and is interesting on the reversal of gender roles, such as the looks the couple get from strangers, which they wouldn't were the sexes reversed.
Today in Labor History October 6, 1900: English anarchist author Ethel Mannin was born in London. Her memoir of the 1920s, Confessions and Impressions was one of the first Penguin paperbacks. Her 1944 book Bread and Roses: A Utopian Survey and Blue-Print has been described as "an ecological vision in opposition to the prevailing and destructive industrial organization of society." Mannin protested imperialism in Africa during the 1930s. She was also very active in anti-fascist movements, including the Women's World Committee Against War and Fascism, and she supported the military actions of the Spanish Republic.
I'm reading Viet Thanh Nguyen's 'A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial'.
It's astounding. The author's command of language churns and easily sways the contents of this book into anger, an easily read and yet complex turn into a deeply engaging Vietnam-in-USA trip.