Showing posts with label nonfiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nonfiction. Show all posts

25 May, 2018

REVIEW: BOY: TALES OF CHILDHOOD by Roald Dahl

Title: Boy: Tales of Childhood
Author: Roald Dahl
Series: -
Genres: Nonfiction, Autobiography
Publisher: Puffin Books
Release: 2001 (First published 1984)
Source: Paperback
Pages: 176

// Goodreads // BookDepository // Amazon //

BLURB: In Boy, Roald Dahl recounts his days as a child growing up in England. From his years as a prankster at boarding school to his envious position as a chocolate tester for Cadbury's, Roald Dahl's boyhood was as full of excitement and the unexpected as are his world-famous, best-selling books. Packed with anecdotes -- some funny, some painful, all interesting -- this is a book that's sure to please.

18 January, 2018

REVIEW: THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT by Oliver Sacks

Title: The Man Who Mistook Hist Wife for a Hat
Author: Oliver Sacks
Series: -
Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Release: January 1st, 1985
Source: Kindle Edition
Pages: 328

// Goodreads // BookDepository // Amazon //

BLURB: In his most extraordinary book, "one of the great clinical writers of the twentieth century" (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.

If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales remain, in Dr. Sacks's splendid and sympathetic telling, deeply human. They are studies of life struggling against incredible adversity, and they enable us to enter the world of the neurologically impaired, to imagine with our hearts what it must be to live and feel as they do. A great healer, Sacks never loses sight of medicine's ultimate responsibility: "the suffering, afflicted, fighting human subject."

20 June, 2017

REVIEW: THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL by Anne Frank


Title: The Diary of a Young Girl
Author:  Anne Frank
Series: -
Genres: Nonfiction, Classics, Holocaust
Publisher: Bantam
Release: 1993
Source: Audiobook
Pages: 283

// Goodreads // BookDepository // Amazon //

BLURB:
Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank's remarkable diary has since become a world classic—a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit.

In 1942, with Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, they and another family lived cloistered in the "Secret Annexe" of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death.

In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns thoughtful, moving, and amusing, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short. 


13 January, 2017

REVIEW: TALKING AS FAST AS I CAN by Lauren Graham

Title: Talking as fast as I can
Author: Lauren Graham
Series: -
Genres: Nonfiction, Biography
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release: 2016
Source: Audiobook
Pages: 224

// Goodreads // BookDepository // Amazon //

BLURB:
In this collection of personal essays, the beloved star of Gilmore Girls and Parenthood reveals stories about life, love, and working as a woman in Hollywood—along with behind-the-scenes dispatches from the set of the new Gilmore Girls, where she plays the fast-talking Lorelai Gilmore once again.

In Talking as Fast as I Can, Lauren Graham hits pause for a moment and looks back on her life, sharing laugh-out-loud stories about growing up, starting out as an actress, and, years later, sitting in her trailer on the Parenthood set and asking herself, “Did you, um, make it?” She opens up about the challenges of being single in Hollywood (“Strangers were worried about me; that’s how long I was single!”), the time she was asked to audition her butt for a role, and her experience being a judge on Project Runway (“It’s like I had a fashion-induced blackout”).

In “What It Was Like, Part One,” Graham sits down for an epic Gilmore Girls marathon and reflects on being cast as the fast-talking Lorelai Gilmore. The essay “What It Was Like, Part Two” reveals how it felt to pick up the role again nine years later, and what doing so has meant to her.

Some more things you will learn about Lauren: She once tried to go vegan just to bond with Ellen DeGeneres, she’s aware that meeting guys at awards shows has its pitfalls (“If you’re meeting someone for the first time after three hours of hair, makeup, and styling, you’ve already set the bar too high”), and she’s a card-carrying REI shopper (“My bungee cords now earn points!”).

Including photos and excerpts from the diary Graham kept during the filming of the recent Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, this book is like a cozy night in, catching up with your best friend, laughing and swapping stories, and—of course—talking as fast as you can.