🌟🌟🌟🌟 Jenny Finney Boylen, a self-proclaimed bookish, goofy (outwardly male) college professor, knew from an early age that she was a girl inside — a transgender path she did not follow until she reached her forties. Exactly how that journey unfolded, the changes encountered and the spaces left unfilled cannot…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 For anyone who has ever considered their body, and judged it not “good”, without really stopping to wonder — Not good for what? Or whom? — this memoir, written by a woman who has explored that question, painfully and from birth, will definitely set your head spinning. Diagnosed with…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 An immensely readable discussion of the U.S health care system and its treatment of mental health illness, as seen by a practicing physician and psychiatrist. Damon Tweedy, M.D has penned a book that is not only informative and thought provoking, but easy to read, blending the insightful story-telling of…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 For those of us who have found it hard (no, impossible) to ignore that little voice, (coming from inside, but imagined to be coming loud-and-clear by those outside of us) telling us to work unremittingly harder, faster, smarter for after all, we are just not good enough (yet?) -…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ Endlessly fascinating, this treasure trove of wisdom easily takes the place as my absolute favorite non-fiction read of 2024 (and likely beyond). Written by a retired academic, the author’s quest for answers sees him following connections crossing over into so many fields the result is a veritable cornucopia of…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ Turning the final page on this literary memoir I find my head spinning, mind struggling to form an articulate, coherent summary beyond an overwhelming and incontrovertible — Wow. So here we are - my own “fusion” of somewhat disconnected (utterly blown-away) impressions underlying this incredible work. First, with sheer…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ I listened to the (excellent) audio version of this memoir, narrated by Julia Roberts and Riley Keough, and interspersed with audio clips from Lisa Marie Presley that she recorded as part of her book preparations. Lisa Marie, having reached out to her daughter, Riley, for help in pulling the…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 A raw and powerful memoir, a story of a life lived with trauma, written by an author who is very well known for her fiction, and who cannot resist playing a trick or two on the reader, beginning with her identification as a perhaps inevitably “unreliable” narrator. The author’s…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 For anyone who has experienced (make that, suffered) fat-shaming - the internalized mortification and inadequacy resulting from a life long barrage of society’s humiliations, disapproval, and disgust - this book may just be the very beginning of something transformative. “What I hated was less my body than the way…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ Every now and then one of those books comes along that makes you stop, take a beat, and reset. This is just such a book - a heartbreaking, gorgeous compendium of interviews, journal entries, and notes concerning who must be (and still is) “the greatest Canadian hero ever”. This,…