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Now Reading
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Tag Archives: biography and autobiography
Prisoner of Tehran / Marina Nemat
3 July 2008 – 10:30 am
By no means am I an expert on Iran. Even though my knowledge of the country and its politics since the 1979 revolution is limited, I can’t say I learned a whole lot from this memoir. And Ms. Nemat’s writing style is fairly dry and devoid of emotional affectation. Sometimes that’ good and helps a work avoid the maudlin. And in this case, it meant I never had a solid emotional reaction to the horrors Ms. Nemat endured. More clinical I guess. (…)
Lita / Amy Dumas
30 June 2008 – 12:50 pm
Have I mentioned before that I like the fake fighting? I do. However, I probably wouldn’t have purchased Amy Dumas’ autobiography because she didn’t stick around the business all that long (I think a total of about 7 years, 3 after the publication of this book). But when it came available free, I figured why not? (…)
Lift Every Voice / Lani Guinier
27 April 2008 – 11:54 pm
My Sunday Salon reading this week is Lani Guinier’s Lift Every Voice. But I started off the day updating this site to run on Wordpress 2.5. I like a lot of the new features, but a few things are kind of annoying. In the middle of my upgrade work, I participated in this week’s episode of the Wordsy Podcast, where Hans Dekker, Erik Hare and I discussed a few of the top literature stories on Wordsy. (…)
A Lion’s Tale / Chris Jericho
20 March 2008 – 12:09 am
My favorite professional wrestler in the world is Lance Storm, but my second favorite is Chris Jericho. He dropped out of pro wrestling for a couple of years, and during that period he wrote A Lion’s Tale, his autobiography. I figured… why the hell not? Sometimes reading a celebrity’s biography takes the facade away, but as much personality and charisma as Chris Jericho has, I doubted there was much chance of that.
Chris Jericho is really Chris Irvine, son of N.H.L. (…)
Infidel / Ayaan Hirsi Ali
26 January 2008 – 8:00 am
A few years ago Ayaan Hirsi Ali was thrust into the worldwide news when a Muslim fantatic murdered Theo Van Gogh for a film Van Gogh and Hirsi Ali made. She is a Somali native, and a Dutch citizen. Her second brush with international fame came after she nearly lost her Dutch citizenship, despite being a member of parliament. All off this hullabaloo came about because Hirsi Ali publicly denounced major parts of Islamic culture and dogma as a person who was raised to believe it. (…)
For God and Country / James Yee
6 July 2007 – 3:24 pm
I tend to be a sucker for stories of the righteous being downtrodden and still winning. It’s no surprise that I liked this story. In particular, I liked it because I am really tired of reading stories about those the Bush administration and it’s flunkies beat down, and when called to task the Bush administration wins. Well, this time they didn’t win. Legally, James Yee won on all points. (…)
Bad As I Wanna Be / Dennis Rodman with Tim Keown
7 March 2007 – 4:22 pm
Walking out to my car one day last fall, I saw that someone had put a large number of books on the free shelf in the back lobby of my building. Being the book person that I am, I walked over and poked through them. What stood out at me was Bad As I Wanna Be! How could I pass up this gem? Mine!
Dennis Rodman is a walking train wreck. And I don’t mean his penchant for wearing women’s clothes. Rodman is a freak on the court, a one-man rebounding machine. (…)
Prisoner of Trebekistan / Bob Harris
9 October 2006 – 3:21 pm
Shocker of shockers! I’ve read and am reviewing a book that is recently out instead of something a few years old. Although I suppose the recent Resnick book I read is recent too. Still Resnick isn’t going to get wide reading and this one probably will get some decent buzz. It deserves to.
Prisoner of Trebekistan is first and foremost a memoir of author Bob Harris’ four stints on Jeopardy! On the first, he became a five game winner. (…)
One L / Scott Turow
22 January 2006 – 11:21 pm
Scott Turow has become well-known mostly for his legal mysteries. Warner Brothers turned his first novel, Presumed Innocent into a well-received movie starring Harrison Ford. His books since then are well-liked, but none have been made into movies that I recall. IMDB says that two more have been made into T.V. movies. I haven’t seen them. Anyway, I’m impressed with his work. He doesn’t crank out his books quickly. Typically three years pass between his novels. (…)
Blinded by the Right / David Brock
15 October 2005 – 5:00 pm
Read Blinded By The Right: The Conscience Of An Ex-Conservative, the memoir/tell-all by David Brock this summer. Brock wrote for Insight and American Spectator, and also wrote an attack book on Anita Hill shortly after the Clarence Thomas nomination fight. However, in 1996 he published a book on Hillary Clinton that was widely expected to be an attack piece. When it turned out to be relatively balanced, the right wing disavowed him. (…)
