Category Archives: Non-Fiction

A Writer’s Paris: A Guided Journey for the Creative Soul

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There are always reasons not to write. They appear as wantonly as toadstools after the rain. Entertaining those reasons even for a split second is the path to uncreativity. Write, even if you have a twinge, a doubt, a fear, a block, a noisy neighbor, a sick cat, thirteen unpublished stories, and a painful boil. Write, even if you aren’t sure. Come to Paris, even if you don’t speak French.

Why I Chose This Book:
The small mustard covered volume was staring at me from an end cap full of France-themed books, mostly novels (and I did pick up two of them) but this book as well. It’s designed to look like a moleskine notebook, with a two-inch-wide paper band its only real decoration. I liked the title, it seemed to speak to me.

About the Book:
A Writer’s Paris is part guide book and part writing guide, using the rhythm and flow of the City of Light as a source of inspiration, as much as a recommended place to spend a month writing. The author is a writing coach/life coach kind of person, and has written many works that encourage readers to pursue their creative urges. The particular book is gentle when it needs to be, firmer when it must be, and completely entwined with the seduction that is Paris.

Much of it was common-sense reminders that we all, as writers, need to hear: write every day, make the time, skip tv and write, don’t talk about it, just do it, etc. A good portion of it, however, recommended various neighborhoods in Paris, told you to visit the Louvre, yes, but remember that you were there to write, and even to stop passers-by and ask, “Which of these two things would you rather read a novel about?” then offer two things, to help choose one of the topics in your head. (The improviser part of my personality finds this exercise really appealing.)

Do I recommend this book?
Yes, absolutely. If you are a writer, or think you want to be, you need to read this. If you are involved in any other creative pursuit, you might also benefit from it.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

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by Malcolm Gladwell

There books you read that are mildly entertaining, which is great, but there are also books that completely change your perception of the world. For me Blink is one of the latter.

Describing it is difficult. It’s about improv, criminology, psychology, marriage counseling, body language and human interaction…sort of. But it’s also about – more than anything – the split second judgements we make all the time. The first impression that occurs before a first impression is even registered.

And it’s fascinating.

Gladwell’s informal style and self-effacing humor helps, of course, but mostly it’s the material that intrigues.

And, unfortunately, defies description.

My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands

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by Chelsea Handler

Chelsea Handler’s tongue just might poke itself through her cheek, if the tone of this collection of anecdotes and vignettes is anything to judge by. A funny, candid, and at times tragically pathetic glimpse at single life with just a touch of neuroses, Ms. Handler’s work is incredibly readable, and compelling in the “I can’t wait to see what she does NEXT” sort of way.

It’s adult content, but that’s as it should be, because to tame it would be to ruin it.

Great beach reading.

Teach with your Heart

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Teach with Your Heart: Lessons I Learned from the Freedom Writers by Erin Gruwell

Erin Gruwell, the teacher who inspired the Freedom Writers, wrote her own memoir, which was published in January, 2007. Much of it echoes what we learned about her in the movie – that she was a new teacher saddled with kids labeled “unteachable,” that she used her own funds to keep them interested and motivated, that her marriage suffered for it.

What the movie doesn’t show, but shines through in Gruwell’s writing, is the wonder she feels as each thing she needed clicked into place. A contact made once leads to funding for a computer lab, some of her kids getting jobs, etc., and every time something happens she’s squealing with as much – if not more – delight than the students in her classroom.

Gringos in Paradise

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Gringos in Paradise: An American Couple Builds Their Retirement Dream House in a Seaside Village in Mexico

by Barry Golson

I found this book in the new fiction section at my local B&N, and brought it home even though it’s not fiction, because my parents also did the cash-out and move to Mexico thing. You would think I’d therefore be predisposed to like it, and while it wasn’t a bad read, the truth is that I spent more time being pissed because I feel my mother could tell her, similar story, with more humor and less of a patronizing tone.

Granted, Golson’s mission is NOT to be patronizing, and I’m sure any other reader probably wouldn’t see it as such. He relays slice-of-life stories about how difficult it really is to adjust to the Mexican culture, and provides an appendix with useful information.

It’s interesting how our own experiences color even the most innocuous books.

Freedom Writers Diary

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by The Freedom Writers and Erin Gruwell

It is rare when a book moves me to tears. It’s not that I’m not sentimental about things that have meaning to me, but that I can generally separate myself from what I’m reading enough to retain necessary distance. So when I say that The Freedom Writers Diary, made me cry, that’s saying a lot.

If you’re one of the five people in the country who hasn’t seen the film, read the book first, then rent the DVD. The book has 150 or so diary entries, designated solely by number, by the students in Erin Gruwell’s English classes from Wilson High School in Long Beach, CA, during the late nineties. They are frank, often brutal, glimpses into the lives of real kids living in a city that MTV dubbed “the gangsta rap capital of the world,” and they will tear at your heart strings.

Bookending the kids’ diaries are journal entries from Erin herself, the young teacher who manages to turn a bunch of disenfranchised teenagers into first a class, and then a family, teaching them about tolerance by using the diaries of Anne Frank and Zlata Filipovic as well as other works she finds relevant to their lives.

It’s a moving book, made more so by the knowledge that these kids, now college graduates, have turned around and continued to teach the lessons Gruwell taught them.

The Devil’s Teeth

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The Devil’s Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America’s Great White Sharks by Susan Casey

The Farallones, an island group just 30 miles west of San Francisco, and nicknamed The Devil’s Teeth because of their jagged profiles and unforgiving terrain, are also surrounded by waters which are the stomping grounds, so to speak, of one of our greatest apex predators: The Great White Shark.

Author Susan Casey managed to convince two biologists in residence to let her visit the island, and shadow their work for a compelling look at these great fish, and the men and women who study them in an environment that leaves them free to remain wild, and largely untainted by humanity.

The book’s only flaw was that it ended too soon, otherwise it was compelling, interesting, and exciting, offering a fresh look at these sharks who are so often Discovery channel fodder.

Love is a Mix Tape

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Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time by Rob Sheffield

This book was hanging out on the “new fiction” shelves at my local Barnes and Noble, and when I picked it up, I was hoping it was similar to a recent read I’d picked up at Half Price Books – <i>Liner Notes</i>. It wasn’t. First, it’s not fiction, but the autobiographical tale of the author’s life prior to, and during, his brief marriage to the first love of his life, a woman named Renee. Second, in this book the music isn’t incidental – it’s an integral part of the author’s personality, Renee’s personality, and the fabric of their relationship, cut short by her sudden death.

It is a beautiful book, never once becoming maudlin or depressing. Instead, it is as lyrical and uplifting as many of the tunes mentioned, albeit with a gritty backbeat only reality can provide.

I’ve Been Around

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I've Been Around

Tania Aebi first sailed across my personal horizon years ago, with her book Maiden Voyage, the first-person account of her
solo circumnavigation of the world, and the people and places she encountered during here year or so asail with her intrepid cat, Tarzoon. While I may fantasize about doing something similar, the reality is that I’m much too fond of internet access, espresso bars, and regular showers to really enjoy such an experience. Still, reading about it let me escape for a few hours, and I heartily recommend that book, as it’s the perfect thing to read while tucked up in a warm quilt on a cold, stormy day. (I also recommend strong tea and crisp apples to go with the experience.)

This book, I’ve Been Around, is not a narrative, the way Ms. Aebi’s first volume was, but rather a series of essays about her life on and off the water, many of which were written for sailing-related magazines, most specifically, Latitudes & Attitudes. It’s enjoyable, thoughtful, and often entertaining, and while it is not the cozy stormy-day read that Maiden Voyage was, it is a lovely glimpse into the author’s life since then. (It’s been at least a decade, possibly two.)

Aebi’s conversational tone and obvious love of both her crafts (writing and sailing), make this an excellent read.

My Keyboard for a Cutting Board

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My Kingdom for a Cutting Board: Adventures in a French Kitchen v1.0, by Laura Pauli

Part luscious food-porn and part letter home from abroad, Laura Pauli’s first book is both engaging and compelling, telling the story of her initial experiences cooking in France after leaving a corporate cubicle job in Silicon Valley. Culled from her blog, and letters she actually wrote to friends and family, it shares her story – including descriptions of food that make the mouth water, and far less appetizing descriptions of things like the shoebox apartment she rents, that could fit inside one room of her former residence in the Bay Area.

Originally Reviewed 13 September 2006