The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer

XVIII. The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer

Okay, so I *might* have alluded to the notion that I hate  “my childhood sucked” type memoirs. Then why on earth did I pick up this book, and, more operatively, why was I so surprised by the story I found? Maybe it was the book cover, or a Hook-The-Reader type description somewhere, but I thought this was going to be a memoir about a kid who literally grew up in a bar. I mean, what kind of parent brings their kid into a bar? However, this is not the story I found, and I found myself pleasantly surprised.

J.R. Moehringer grew up in Long Island. He didn’t know his father, but he could hear him on the radio, broadcasting from The City. And who needs a dad when you have beer-swilling, bar-inhabiting uncles and their gaggles of children? J.R. looked to Uncle Charlie in particular, a man who worked at Dickens, the quintessential, Cheers-esque hometown bar of his family and every person he met in Manhasset. This is the bar of yore which J.R. titles his book, and despite name changes and other monstrosities, the bar is the one constant in J.R.’s tumultuous life. He tags along to Dickens with his sunburnt uncles, takes his first drink there, recovers from heartbreak with scotch after scotch. Eventually, J.R. comes to treat the bar as he treats his family member: near to him, dear to him, but sometimes its best just to stay the hell away from them. I found J.R.’s relationship with this inanimate character to be romantic and touching. And the rest of his life story is okay too

Buy this for: Your nephew who couldn’t possibly be 21 yet but holy crap there he is, your dad who occasionally calls for a ride home from his favorite drinking establishment, or your favorite might-as-well-be-your dad Uncle.

J.R. Moehringer Online | NPR Interview | Amazon Link

Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama

XVII. Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama

So after I read this book, I decided that it was my patriotic duty to read some liberal propaganda as well. Just to be even about it. It was… oh… October 26th when this happened, so trotting past the new books shelf, all I saw was Obama Obama Obama. According to my dear father, these had to be the most liberal books on the planet! I would probably crack the spine and feel a wave of communism come over me. I eschewed The Audacity of Hope (which probably would have more suited my purposes) because I’m annoyingly chronological. And speaking of Ghostwriters, I decided that if Barack himself was not the author, I wouldn’t read it. I searched high and low for my answer, but all roads led to He Wrote It. I include it on this list because before I’d finished the intro I was back on the web, TRYING to find evidence that somebody other than our next President of the United States of America wrote this. I just didn’t believe that a politician could write this well!

As everyone on the planet must already know, Barack Obama was born in Hawaii to an African father and a white mother. He was raised primarily by his mother’s parents. He had a limited relationship with his father. He was a community organizer in Chicago and went to Columbia Law School. But this story isn’t just about the ins and outs of Barack Obama’s life. His story begins with his grandparents, and how they perceived racial relations in various parts of the country, how they raised their daughter in this regard. As he matures, the story shifts to how a multiracial boy can find his identity, and what it’s like to grow up without a father. The story concludes with Barack Obama in law school, visiting his father’s family for the first time in Kenya, and hearing the stories of the other half of himself for the first time. As previously mentioned, the book is remarkably well-written. I mean, if I could open a Word Doc and pop out something like that, I’d be a very happy lady. And since this is a man who is now Front and Center in the political world, it’s nice to read something about his life, and the elements of race and family that shaped it.

Buy This For: Ardent democrats, grown-up children of two or more races. Maybe a McCain voter if you want to stir up some animosity around the Christmas Tree. I have evidence to believe that my own father tried to hide this book from me on more than one occasion, so if you have someone to piss off, here’s a great gift!

Amazon Link…  I don’t think I need to link you to anything else. Ya’ll know how to use Google. Or read a newspaper.

Helping Me Help Myself by Beth Lisick

XVI. Helping Me Help Myself by Beth Lisick

Looking at the cover, reading the description, you might expect this book to by schticky to the max. Cashing in on the latest “I Did This Weird Thing For A Year Craze,” Beth Lisick decided to follow a different self-help strategy for almost every month of the year, and write about how they did or did not help her life. Schticky. But Beth Lisick, author of the loopy and enjoyable collection of autobiographical essays, Everybody Into The Pool, conquers this particular subgenre by presenting her life to the reader as plainly as possible.

Beth reaches a crisis point one New Years Day. Her life is fine – jobs are always there, even if she’s pretending to be a lesbian poet or dressing in a banana suit to make ends meet, her marriage is solid even if she never spends any time with him, and her son seems to be well adjusted despite a slight discipline problem. But just like every other American, it’s those “buts” and “even ifs” that get under Beth’s skin. On the first day of 2006, she decides to stop trying to fix herself on her own, and turn to The Experts. Consulting everyone from Suze Orman to a delgihtfully droll Richard Simmons Cruise, Beth documents her trials honestly, even admitting defeat from time to time. Not everything is a grand learning experience; sometimes even the best laid plans end up sucking.

Buy this for: Dave Sedaris aficianados, Chick Flick Lovers, and anyone who owns a copy of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.

Beth Lisick Online | Author MySpace | Amazon Link

Escape by Carolyn Jessop

XVIII. Escape by Carolyn Jessop

Blame NieNie. Blame Big Love. Blame Jared, Jacob, and Justin Zonts. Something came over me this summer, and I like to call it Mormon Fever.

I don’t want to talk religion, as my own feelings on the topic are so convoluted and confusing that I make my own head hurt.  I respect 95% of all people who have strong religious faith of any denomination, and my interest in the LDS church in particular probably has to do with how different it is from every other breed of Christiany. And I don’t think all Mormons are polygamist crazies. However, apparently some of them are.

This is the story of a woman, Carolyn, who was born and raised inside a fundamentalist compound. She survived a familiarly clique-ridden high school experience and dreamed of going to med school. However, her parents (and her community) had something different in mind. She would be married to a 50-year-old man who already had 3 wives and a gaggle of children, including some of her schoolmates. After mothering eight of his children, Carolyn finally found the resources and motivation to gather her offspring and leave – a monumentally difficult task for any single mother of an abusive husband, much less one whose entire family and community would be looking for her.

When it comes to memoirs, I usually have a No Ghostwriters policy. No offense to those hardworking, unspoken authors. I just think if someone’s life is worth writing a book about, you better have something interesting to say, and if you can’t think of what that is yourself, wtf are you doing getting someone else to write it for you? This book is an exception. This isn’t Joe The Plumber. This is a woman who has done something remarkable, has seen things most Americans didn’t know existed in their own country, and deserves to tell her story, even if she couldn’t write it herself.

Buy this for: people who don’t consider themselves “readers,” since the writing isn’t particularly challenging and the topic quite… uh… topical, or your best friend who watches too many LifeTime movies for her own good.

Amazon Link | Time Magazine Interview | What the official LDS church has to say about it

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

XVII. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Ah, the memoirs. A genre I have enjoyed, possibly ever since I read Roald Dahl’s delicious recount of his childhood, Boy, in the fifth grade. I read quite a few of them this year, and this and the posts that follow will feature my favorites.

That being said, I didn’t particularly want to like The Glass Castle. I heard it was a very good book, and it was on many of those lists of Great! Books! Everyone! Should! Read! but while I enjoy memoirs, I’m not entirely enamoured with the whole “my childhood was weird and mostly rotten so let me write about it.” Yes, I liked Running With Scissors, but I liked Burroughs’s other books better. I couldn’t bring myself to finish The Liar’s Club.

But with The Glass Castle, I didn’t entirely realize I was reading this particular subgenre until I was sucked in. Jeannette Walls was an adventurous and tenacious child, inventing not only games to entertain her and her three siblings, but to survive as well. Her parents, Rex and Rose Mary were loving and creative and free-spirited, instilling the American ideals of ingenuity and self-reliance, but things like paying the bills and putting food on the table fell second to painting, writing, or planning a machine to pan gold. The Walls’s lived on a shoestring, and moved whenever creditors caught onto their various debts.

Each chapter of this book is a story unto itself, and each story is told with a suprising amount of warmth – you would think that the child of parents who couldn’t provide three square meals or a heated home would harbor some resentment, but Jeannette seems to almost accept her parents’ limitations. However, this is truly the story of Jeannette’s exodus from the family, how she rose to her own life and career despite all her parents did to hold her back.

Buy this for: Fans of the aforementioned Running With Scissors or The Lia’r's Club, or teenagers who think their parents are JUST AWFUL OH MY GOD I HATE THEM.

Amazon Link | NY Times Review | MSNBC Report