nomadreader

The basics: Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion  is a collection of essays, all written for this specific collection, that explores life and our reactions to its events. From the introduction: "I wanted to look at why we so often feel guilty or even ashamed when we don’t feel the way we’re “supposed to feel” about the big (and sometimes even small) events of our lives. I wanted to examine the ways in which so many aspects of contemporary American life—where we live, who we love, when or if we choose to settle down with a partner, what we eat, why we appreciate the art and music and literature that we do, how we expect to die and what we expect of the dying—seem to come shrink-wrapped in a layer of bathos." My thoughts:  2014 is the year I realized how much I love personal essays. Meghan Daum is an author I've followed for years, and I've always enjoyed the essays I've read in collections and periodicals. Why in the world did it take me so long to di...

The basics: Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned" is part memoir, part thematic collection of essays, part humor, part advice, and part self-help vignettes. My thoughts: I'll start with the disclosure: I'm a huge fan of Lena Dunham. Although I know of no actual relation to her Dunhams, I still try to claim her (and I'm only a Dunham by marriage.) So it was with huge excitement that I started Not That Kind of Girl  the moment I picked it up from the library. It's no secret Lena Dunham can write dialogue, but how would it transfer to prose? She can build a scene beautifully in prose too: "On Saturdays my friends and I load into somebody's old Volvo and head to a thrift store, where we buy tchotchkes that reek of other people's lives and clothes that we believe will enhance our own. We all want to look like characters on the sitcoms of our youth, the teenagers we admired when we were still kids." And she...

The basics: The Empathy Exams  is an essay collection. Each essay, including the titular one, addresses empathy, although some focus more on it than others. My thoughts: I've really been enjoying essays lately, and The Empathy Exams  is the most buzzed about collection this year. Having read several edited collections, it was delightful to dig more deeply into a thematic collection of essays by a single author. The first (and titular) essay is astonishingly good. It details Jamison's time working as a medical actor, where her job was to act out symptoms for medical students, who were then judged not only on their diagnostic skills, but also their empathy, both verbally and visually. The essay is simultaneously a fascinating glimpse into an experience and a deep meditation on health, wellness, humanity, and empathy. As I read this collection, which I didn't expect to be about empathy after the first essay, I realized how much I'm drawn to essays about personal e...

The backstory: I've really been enjoying collections of essays lately, and MFA vs. NYC  is perhaps this year's most buzzed about edited volume. It's theme also echoes many of the essays in  Goodbye to All That , which I adored . The basics: Divided into two large sections (MFA and NYC) and three smaller ones, MFA vs. NYC takes its name from an essay editor Chad Harbach originally wrote for n+1 . The other essays are a mix of those written for this collection and those adapted from earlier pieces. My thoughts: Part of what has drawn me to personal essays lately is the fascination with what it means to be a writer. In MFA vs. NYC , that theme is on full display, but it's bigger picture is the current state of American fiction. Obviously, writers are critical to that, and each essay offers different ideas and insights into what exactly it means to be a writer. I've never seriously thought about enrolling in an MFA program, and what surprised me most about thi...

The basics: This collection of essays takes its inspiration from Joan Didion's famous essay of the same name and invites a younger generation of writers to write about their love affairs with New York. My thoughts: I lived in New York City for only one summer, between my first and second years of college, but it was one of my favorite summers. I always imagined I'd end up living there, and when I met Mr. Nomadreader, a native upstate New Yorker, in Atlanta, we both figured we'd end up there. When we moved to Albany for me to go to graduate school, I still thought we'd end up in New York or Boston or somewhere nearby, but then reality charged in, and I realized the difference between academic librarian salaries varied little based on where you live, and as much as I love New York, I did not pick a job that would let me have any real quality of life if we lived there. Still: New York City is magical for me, and I knew this collection would be filled with people who s...

The basics: Labor Day: True Birth Stories by Today's Best Women Writers , edited by Eleanor Henderson and Anna Solomon, brings together an impressive group of contemporary female writers from a variety of genres to share their experiences giving birth. The essays are as varied as the women who write them. My thoughts: Admittedly, before I got pregnant (and even early on in my pregnancy), I shied away from birth stories. Rarely do I favor ignorance, but in this case, I was scared of labor and childbirth, yet I knew I would be going through it, and I wasn't ready to deal with it. At some point in my pregnancy, I became eager for birth stories. I'm still frightened, of course, but I find comfort in imagining myself in a variety of different scenarios, both the positive and negative. I'll be honest: this collection of essays often veers to the negative and sad. There are some heart-breaking stories told in these pages. I shed many, many tears as I read, yet even the mo...

The basics: This collection of personal essays from a varied collection of writers (mostly women) illuminates the a-ha moments when feminism "clicked." Edited by J. Courtney Sullivan and Courtney E. Martin, the idea for this collection arose when J. Courtney emailed a group of friends asking what their a-ha moment of feminism was so she could give a character in Commencement  ( my review ) a particularly powerful one. My thoughts: I've been meaning to read this essay collection for years, but now I'm glad I read it while I'm pregnant. A common theme running through many of these essays was the impact of a mother's (or mother's and father's) feminism on a personal embrace of the word, if not its meaning. As one half of a feminist couple about to have a baby, I kept wondering when my baby's "click" moment would be. And, yes, I also found myself browsing collections of feminist onesies as I read. One of my favorite things about this c...

The backstory: Ann Patchett is one of my favorite authors. See my reviews of her novels The Magician's Assistant , Bel Canto , Run , and State of Wonder . The basics: This is the Story of a Happy Marriage is a collection of personal essays. My thoughts: Longtime readers know nonfiction is not my favorite genre to read. Yet I adore reading the personal thoughts of fiction writers I admire, and I was eager to read Ann Patchett's collection of essays, even though I'd read a couple of them before. In the twenty-four hours I spent with this collection, I felt as though I was staying up all night drinking wine and talking to a friend. Patchett's essays are fearless. While individually they address different moments and themes, collectively, they read as a personal history. These essays are all autobiographical, and while some are more personal than others, I turned the last page feeling as though Patchett is my friend. While I think of her as a friend, the relationship be...

The backstory: Venice is one of my favorite cities in the world. I first visited it in the summer of 2004, on my way to Athens, Greece for the Olympics. I fell in love. Two years later, Mr. Nomadreader and I opted to spend our Christmas and New Year together in Venice rather than decide whose family to visit. Despite my love of both Venice and mysteries, I still haven't read Donna Leon's much-acclaimed series set there. It's near the top of my list, but in the meantime, I had to read her essays about Venice as soon as I got my hands on a copy. The basics: My Venice and Other Essays  is a collection of essays and vignettes divided into these sections: On Venice, On Music, On Mankind and Animals, On Men, On America, and On Books. My thoughts: I've often bemoaned how difficult it is to review a collection of short stories, and here I find myself with the same problem as I attempt to cohesively talk about a collection of essays that itself is not terribly cohesive. As I...