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Wishful Drinking
Wishful Drinking
Carrie Fisher | 2009 | Biography
9
7.5 (6 Ratings)
Book Rating
Actually quite sad reading it post-death
This is almost a bittersweet memoir about the great Carrie Fisher who battled mental health issues, substance abuse, and being brought up in a slightly dysfunctional family. It is witty, snarky and sarcastic despite all the upheavals. It begins with her experience with electroshock therapy and her subsequent loss of memories. The book is also short and filled with interesting images from her life, so it's a treat to read.
  
I Am, I Am, I Am
I Am, I Am, I Am
Maggie O'Farrell | 2017 | Biography
10
9.0 (3 Ratings)
Book Rating
Inspiration can come from practically anywhere. Maggie O’Farrell’s latest book is a memoir where she describes the 17 near-death experiences she had throughout her life. While that sounds like it could be scary or even distasteful, I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. Find out what you’ll get if you read this book in my latest review on my blog now.
https://tcl-bookreviews.com/2018/08/03/continuing-to-be/
  
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ClareR (5681 KP) rated Black and Blue in Books

Jan 24, 2022  
Black and Blue
Black and Blue
Stuart Prebble, Parm Sandhu | 2022 | Biography, Crime, Law
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
This was a fantastic memoir about Parm Sandhu - the most senior woman of colour in the London Metropolitan Police at the time she retired. She’s clearly a woman with drive, determination and ambition. The discrimination that she had to deal with within the Met Police is both unbelievable and wholly believable (sorry, Met Police 🤷🏼‍♀️).
It was a book that flowed really well, and a quick read, even if it wasn’t an easy one in parts.
  
Horror Stories: A Memoir by Liz Phair
Horror Stories: A Memoir by Liz Phair
Liz Phair | 2019 | Biography
5
5.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
I wanted so badly to like this book, I really did. I've loved Liz Phair's music since the 90s, and I was pretty excited when I heard she'd written a memoir. But this.....this is not great.

It's a memoir, I KNOW it's a memoir, but there's no cohesive narrative and it kind of drives me nuts. It reads more like a collection of essays detailing specific pieces of her life, and it jumps all over the place. More disappointing, however, is that she comes across as kind of an asshole. I could forgive that, because hey, listen, we were all kind of assholes in our youth, no? But she seems so completely self-centered, self-involved, and spoiled that it rendered some of this very hard to get through, especially as I'd been fangirling about this book for a long time. I wanted to read about a bad ass indie rock queen, not a jerk who cheats on her husband for no discernible reason, thinks that throwing money at a cultural misunderstanding (that she caused) will make it go away, and whines about how the cute stock boy she's flirting with at Trader Joe's is actually engaged.

That being said, one of the final stories in the book very much got to me: she's at a lecture with her aging parents, and she's noticing how many of the attendees have trouble getting around due to their age and mobility issues. One of the older gentlemen attempts to get up to go outside, and he ends up falling in front of everyone, repeating over and over (with tears in his eyes) how embarrassed he is. She sees this, and once the gentlemen is seated next to her, she goes out of her way to bolster him (tells him he "fell like an athlete," then asks if he ever was an athlete), and holds a conversation with him throughout the remainder of the lecture to get his mind off of the entire incident. This act struck me as so kind that it almost redeems her for everything else in the book. And that is how Liz Phair was nearly able to bring me to tears at the tail end of a fairly lackluster memoir.