What I'm Reading This Week-- Nov 28, 2009 & Room With A View
Quote de jour
"Before I'm a writer, I'm definitely a reader and when I read memoir, I really want it to be true."~Augusten Burroughs
One of my favorite writers, Augusten Burroughs has a new book of stories out just in time for Christmas. You Better Not Cry is a perverse pleasure. I read it in the bath tub and tears of laughter turned the water salty. He mines his life, especially his childhood like scraping barnacles off a boat. Of course he has the grooviest website http://www.augusten.com
From one one extreme mood shift to another is Nothing Was The Same by Kay Redfield Jamison, the renowned psychiatrist who happens to be bi-polar. Her books on the link between madness and artistic temperament are beyond brilliant. Her latest is a memoir about the death of her husband. I can't wait to dive in and read, but I hope the comparisons between her book and Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking aren't true. Just because two writers chronicle their grief about a dead spouse doesn't make the books the same. Didion is a fiction writer for starters...
So, Layla, is it true you actually read all this stuff? Um, yeah. This morning, I took Crush It! out on the sunny porch to read. It is the best-selling brainchild of social media maven Gary Vaynerchuk. I originally heard about him from his no-nonsense wine videos which he parlayed into a fortune, and still does.http://tv.winelibrary.com If you've been wondering how to cash in on your passion, read it. http://www.crushitbook.com Look for fun photos (including me) on Facebook of his fans with the book http://www.facebook.com/crushit
I thought for the holiday season magazines would be sporting more red and they are, but with yellow.
The "Room With a View" series has come to an end. Well, at least until the first snowfall or tornado or something.
The cloak of green privacy has been stripped to reveal all three unfriendly neighbors across the road: the one playing ball with his son, the neighbor with an OCD obsession for lining his long driveway with dozens of Christmas trees, the ones with a million cars in the driveway, you get the picture...
One of my favorite writers, Augusten Burroughs has a new book of stories out just in time for Christmas. You Better Not Cry is a perverse pleasure. I read it in the bath tub and tears of laughter turned the water salty. He mines his life, especially his childhood like scraping barnacles off a boat. Of course he has the grooviest website http://www.augusten.com
From one one extreme mood shift to another is Nothing Was The Same by Kay Redfield Jamison, the renowned psychiatrist who happens to be bi-polar. Her books on the link between madness and artistic temperament are beyond brilliant. Her latest is a memoir about the death of her husband. I can't wait to dive in and read, but I hope the comparisons between her book and Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking aren't true. Just because two writers chronicle their grief about a dead spouse doesn't make the books the same. Didion is a fiction writer for starters...
So, Layla, is it true you actually read all this stuff? Um, yeah. This morning, I took Crush It! out on the sunny porch to read. It is the best-selling brainchild of social media maven Gary Vaynerchuk. I originally heard about him from his no-nonsense wine videos which he parlayed into a fortune, and still does.http://tv.winelibrary.com If you've been wondering how to cash in on your passion, read it. http://www.crushitbook.com
The "Room With a View" series has come to an end. Well, at least until the first snowfall or tornado or something.
The cloak of green privacy has been stripped to reveal all three unfriendly neighbors across the road: the one playing ball with his son, the neighbor with an OCD obsession for lining his long driveway with dozens of Christmas trees, the ones with a million cars in the driveway, you get the picture...
Posted by Layla Morgan Wilde at 11/28/2009 7:45 PM 
Categories: A Room With A View, Writing, What I'm Reading This Week
Tags: Crush It Augusten Burroughs Kay Redfield Jamison
Categories: A Room With A View, Writing, What I'm Reading This Week
Tags: Crush It Augusten Burroughs Kay Redfield Jamison
Eclectic really is your middle name. Who is going to win best cover design? I bet Santa
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So they say. I'm thinking of giving official awards for my favorite cover design. Augusten's book is a shoe-in for December, but I posted it in November so does that count?
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I love Burroughs, too. Gritty and real. btw, Didion is a lousy fiction writer in my opinion (couldn't stand Play it as it lays) and she made her name on my fave all-time book "Slouching Towards Bethlehem", a non-fiction book on the Haight-Asbury scene in the 60s, and then again, in her incredible, "The White Album", 1980 or thereabouts, roughly about the failures of the American Dream in Golden California.
I have read parts of her memoir about the death of her husband, and was singularly unimpressed. But I do want to read the one about...where she is from...all that old California and 19th Century trek from the East rings bells with me.
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You may be interested to know I had a nice private chat with Didion recently and will blog about it this week.
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oooh cannot wait. She's been my idol since I was a teen, late teen - in 1969...
off to Amherst soon.
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After you previous critical comment, this one gave me pause. I guess idols aren't always placed on pedestals.
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