I am a 90s girl. And my definition of the 90s spans about 1992-1997. Everything before is the 80s, everything after is who cares. While a lot of GenX women like to color their nostalgia…
Posts tagged Memoir
A Little Less, Please
Some actors are best appreciated in small quantities; they’re great in supporting roles, but wear out their welcome when they’re center stage. For me, Amy Poehler is one of them. I picked up her semi-autobiography,…
Lit life in the 1960s, er, 90s
It’s the setup to Joanna Rakoff’s memoir that confuses time and space. She’s got thousands of girls in skirts and sweaters, weighed down by manuscripts in totes. They are assistants in New York City literary…
Vaguebooking by a Famous Person
Rob Lowe’s latest memoir Love Life is as dull and disappointing as the first one, Stories I Tell My Friends, was charming and delightful. Sad trombone. It feels super snotty to say, but Love Life…
Yep, That’s 7th Grade
Ugh, seventh grade. Do you remember it? That awful year when everything is changing at a pace you aren’t quite sure of — your body, your friends, the rules of society. Kevin Brockmeier nails it…
Nice & Good, but Not Exciting
I’ve spent the past year or so gobbling up books by and about female singers. Ann & Nancy Wilson of Heart, Pat Benatar, The Runaways, and now you can add Rosanne Cash’s Composed to the…
Getting to know Gary
Gary Shteyngart was still wearing his awkward U.S. newbie ID when he received the nickname Gary Gnu and built an entire quirky schtick around it. This was an upgrade from second-most-hated in his classroom, a…
Another 80s Delight
When it came to the Two Coreys. I was always much more Haim than Feldman. I mean, “Lucas?” Come on! Sure, Feldman had “The Goonies” and the whole “This one, this one right here, this…
Not Really All I Ever Wanted
My rosy feelings for Belinda Carlisle’s memoir Lips Unsealed come from equal parts twenty-five-year-old nostalgia and love for Christa’s review of the book. Her review is one of my favorite pieces ever published on MN…
It’s not so easy for readers who aren’t hardcore Ronstadt fans
Until a couple weeks ago my knowledge of Linda Ronstadt consisted of “Somewhere Out There; those duets she did with Aaron Neville; and the recent news that she was suffering from Parkinson’s and could no…
With my whole entire heart
If you are smart enough not to follow me on Twitter you really have no idea how annoying I was while listening to the audio version of Heart’s memoir Kicking & Dreaming: A Story of…
When we were young
A funny thing happened when I was reading Mary Cantwell’s Manhattan, When I Was Young, a memoir built around the places the writer lived in New York City during the 1950s and 60s. I first…