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Two More Read Harder Tasks Down, with a Shared Theme of Adulthood: Tasks 8 and 9

2 Jun

In my last post I wrote about how vacation and illness gave me time to read four books for the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge. These are the two latest books, All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg and An Age of License by Lucy Knisley, which are about two characters wondering if they’re acting their ages.

These two books are different but share the theme of adulthood, and the theoretical questions that come with it. Am I an adult yet? Am I doing things “right”? Am I where I want to be in this point in my life? I realized the books had similar themes as I was writing this post, a pleasant coincidence.

To read past posts about my experience with the Read Harder challenge, click here.

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All Grown Up, by Jami Attenberg

Task 8 was Read a book that is set within 100 miles of your location, for which I chose All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg.

My hold request in Cloud Library for this title came through while I was on vacation, and I downloaded the book to the Cloud Library app on my iPhone. (Click here to learn more about what devices support Cloud Library.) The app has a nice, user-friendly interface. In particular, I like the subtle page-turning animation when reading the eBook. I also used the Cloud Library app to listen to How to Murder Your Life, which I wrote about last month. That foresight proved helpful as I finished another book (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, which doesn’t fulfill any of the Read Harder Challenge Tasks, but is still a terrific nonfiction read) on the flight home and was able to read All Grown Up on my phone.

All Grown Up follows Andrea, a woman in her early 40s living in Brooklyn (geographically 3 miles from Hoboken) who fumbles her way through men, a job she’s terribly bored at but won’t leave because it pays well, and her evolving friendships–feelings many adults around the world have. Her Brooklyn neighborhood is undergoing gentrification, and she is sad to lose the Empire State Building view she once had from her apartment that is now obscured by a new building. I can relate to that, as two giant cranes now blight the view from my window.

Andrea is a complicated character, and sometimes her behavior can be appalling. For example, she is upset when her mother moves from Manhattan to Vermont to help her brother and sister-in-law care for their severely handicapped child.

Through flashbacks we learn more about Andrea’s experiences, which have shaped who she is in the present and allows the reader to sympathize with her. She aspired to be an artist but abandoned that dream and regrets. This a spare, beautiful novel that features a character with whom you may identify but dislike.

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An Age of License, by Lucy Knisley

For Task 9, Read a Travel Memoir, I chose to read An Age of License by Lucy Knisley. After being invited to participate in a comic con in Norway, Lucy decided to travel through Europe to meet up with friends and pursue a love interest based in Sweden, and her experiences are documented in this graphic memoir.

Lucy features many drawings of food she ate on her travels, which appealed to me as I love trying new food when I travel. (Remember how I wrote about in my last post that reading Crazy Rich Asians has inspired me to travel to Singapore and eat at the food stalls in street markets?) Her drawings of cheese and wine and baguettes she ate while in France made me recall my trip to Paris, which was the best food destination I’ve visited so far. (Maybe until I get to Singapore…)

The title An Age of License comes from what Lucy believed was a French saying about youth being a time when you’re free to do whatever you want. Although the phrase turned out to be folly, it’s an interesting idea to ponder.

I liked this book and following Lucy’s travels through Europe, and plan to read more of her work soon. The author was in her late twenties when she wrote it, and she had a lot of Deep Thoughts about her age and life etc. I will celebrate my 35th birthday later this year and have little patience for the navel-gazing that afflicts many twenty-somethings, so my eyes involuntarily rolled while reading some of these sections. Was I as insufferable at that age? When I’m in my forties will I roll my eyes at thirty-somethings? Time will tell.

Stay tuned for my next post on another completed task.

-Written by Kerry Weinstein, Reference Librarian

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Read AND Listen to Your Favorite Books: And, Task 5 in a Librarian’s Read Harder Challenge

3 May

Whenever I enjoy something, I want to do it again. This applies to experiences, travel, food, and most importantly books! If I really like reading a book, I seek out the audiobook to experience the story again. In this post I will share books that I have both read and listened to because I enjoyed them so much. This post also ties into the Read Harder Challenge I’ve been following this year (click here for more about that journey).

Back in 2011 Jane Pratt, the legendary editor of Sassy and Jane magazines, established a website called xoJane. I was a fan back then, mostly for the edgy and entertaining beauty articles written by Cat Marnell.

No offense to Vogue and Glamour and Marie Claire et al., but their beauty content doesn’t usually include references to hip-hop songs that hearken back to my childhood, or advise readers to get lip injections for a “sexy baby” look, or publish enthusiastic reviews for a drugstore brand lipstick where the dek (or subhead) repeats the word “OBSESSED” seven times in all caps.

These are all pieces by Cat Marnell.

She definitely influenced my beauty purchases when she wrote regularly for xoJane. Out of the previous articles I cited:

a) I purchased one of the BB creams mentioned in the article but gave it to a friend because it didn’t suit my skin tone.

b) As of now I am not interested in injecting fillers in my lips or anywhere else in my face, but Cat’s garter tights are awesome and I bought those.

c) Cat Marnell inspired to me to buy nearly all the Kate Moss for Rimmel lipsticks, and she’s totally right, they’re the real deal.

Cat was also known for being outspoken about her drug use on xoJane. This article she wrote after Whitney Houston died of a drug overdose in 2012 went viral. Her erratic behavior landed her on Page Six and was much discussed in the media gossip sphere. She eventually parted ways with xoJane (which folded in December 2016), but left with a book deal. Her memoir, How to Murder Your Life, was published this past January.

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How to Murder Your Life: A Memoir, by Cat Marnell

I requested the book as soon as it was available. After my copy arrived at the library, I received a very concerned phone call from a colleague who was worried that I borrowed the book for ideas on how to murder my own life. I assured my colleague that How to Murder Your Life is just a title and is someone else’s story, and all is well with me.

Cat is very honest about growing up in a dysfunctional family and how her drug abuse started with a Ritalin prescription she received as a teen. At times the book is hard to read. Cat encountered some awful men in the depths of her addiction and it was painful to read the parts where she recounted how the men took advantage of her and abused her.

If you’re like me and love magazines you will enjoy reading about Cat’s time working at Conde Nast. She dishes about sharing an elevator at 4 Times Square with Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, and about the editors of Lucky magazine, which I loved reading in the 2000s when Kim France and Andrea Linett were at the helm. (I owned and loved the book The Lucky Guide to Mastering Any Style written by France and Linett, which includes an appearance by Cat.) But it was frustrating to see how Cat threw away an amazing career in which she excelled as a result of her addiction, despite having a supportive boss who forgave her after making many mistakes on the job.

Cat is a gifted writer–her writing in this book is light years beyond this xoJane piece where one paragraph includes the word “vanilla” repeated over and over. In the book she admitted to writing many xoJane pieces while high. She is self aware, and owns the messy parts of her life and how her actions impacted other people. Namely, her coworkers who had to pick up her slack, her sister who tolerated much bad behavior, and her roommates who also had to deal with Cat’s addict friends.

When I saw that she narrated the audiobook, I borrowed it from CloudLibrary and listened to it over a few days. (You can also borrow the audiobook on CD.) Hearing Cat tell her story made me enjoy it even more. And I was also able to fulfill my fifth task on the Read Harder Challenge: Read a book you’ve read before.

I look forward to reading more from Cat Marnell, be it longform narratives or beauty writing. I am always looking for amazing new lipsticks to try.

Following are some other books that I have both read and listened to on audio.

Amy Poehler, Yes Please  (I’ve written before about this book for the blog.)

Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking (What a broad! Carrie, you left this world too soon. RIP.)

Side bar: These were two picks from the Lady Memoir Book Club I lead at Little City Books. We’re meeting next on Wednesday May 17 at 7 PM to discuss Hope Jahren’s Lab Girl. Join us!

Lucy Sykes and Jo Piazza, The Knockoff (I read this with the Library’s Mile Square City Readers Book Club and enjoyed it. This author duo will be back this summer with Fitness Junkie, which I plan to read.)

Aziz Ansari, Modern Romance (Dating in these times: the struggle is real. Although Aziz is a comedian, he teamed up with a sociologist to write this book, which has well-researched data and thoughtful insights on dating in these modern times, where singles swipe left or right on their phones through what seems like endless potential love interests.)

For those who are concerned that listening to audiobooks isn’t reading: IT IS READING! Remember, book printing didn’t exist until the printing press was invented at the start of the Renaissance, and most stories were told orally. I believe that audiobooks are part of that oral tradition. So, if you like audiobooks, this librarian totally supports you in your enjoyment of them.

What’s your favorite audiobook?

-Written by Kerry Weinstein, Reference Librarian

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