Tag: Book Review

book, Book Publishing, fiction, Food, Travel, Culture, News & Publishing, Non-fiction, Politics & Public Policy

Books that resonate

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I believe divine intervention happens in library stacks. Something beyond a captivating cover leads you to certain books that you didn’t even know you wanted to read. During my last library visit, I left with two surprisingly related titles in my book bag — one nonfiction, one fictional: 

Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America, by journalist Beth Macy, recounts her reflections on Urbana, Ohio, her hometown. 

And Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver, which is a retelling of Dickens’ David Copperfield, set in Appalachia during the height of the opioid crisis. It earned the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2023.

Both are stories about places where hope dissipates over time and across tragedies. Jobs move out. Drugs move in. Despair abounds. Local newspapers shutter, while social media conspiracies run rampant. Politics becomes pastime and pew fodder. 

Education becomes devalued. Truancy goes up. For example, in Paper Girl, Macy recounts how Ohio lifted the rules and benchmarks for home-schooling students. Parents struggling with their own addictions and paying the bills simply took their kids out of school while providing no formal education at home, essentially ensuring a generation of drop-outs and if-they’re-lucky minimum-wage earners. 

Even with best-laid plans, people in communities like these run the risk of becoming mired in their circumstances, not by virtue of geography but by fear and poverty. Both stories articulate how often it takes aligned stars to escape — someone to see you, someone to recognize your talent, someone to believe in you, someone to give you a fair shot, plus a little dumb luck.

In both books, I recognized glimpses of my own hometown in the late-1960s and 1970s. It was easy to circle the drain there if you were a teenager. We spent our weekends at the skating rink, or cruising the downtown circuit in some senior’s car, drinking and driving (do not do this, kids), and getting loaded on whatever we could put our hands on — mostly dirt weed and liquor our parents wouldn’t notice missing from their wet bars. I smoked my first cigarette in my friend Pam’s attic bedroom when we were in 7th grade. I developed an affinity for weed and pills before I entered the 8th.

Now, kids contend with synthetic drugs and opioids, including cheap, accessible and deadly heroin and fentanyl. 

In my hometown, one of the biggest events of the year was the town fair. There was a midway with rides, junk food and dizzying lights. As tweens and teens, we’d get high or drunk and walk around the fair every night for a week — our parents assuming we were off pigging out on fried foods and having wholesome fair fun. On one of those occasions, my friends dragged us into a fortune teller’s tent. For a few bucks, she’d read your fortune via tarot cards or a crystal ball like the Wicked Witch’s. When it was my turn, she snatched my cash and didn’t bother consulting either. She simply said, “You’re going to die before your 21,” and pointed me toward the exit. 

That’s how far gone I was. 

Much of my self-destructive behavior, I learned later in life, can be traced to childhood trauma I won’t recount here, but a lot of it was also culture. We had our share of kids who aspired, who got voted “Best This” or “Best That” in the yearbook, who played sports and avoided the allure of drugs, some whose parents socked away college funds as if it was a given. 

But for so many of my peers, aspiration was as pragmatic as a daydream. 

Like Journalist Beth Macy and the fictional Demon Copperhead, I had the good fortune of people who helped me transcend what could have been a wasted, brief life. There were my parents, who moved us out of the town — partly to be closer to their jobs in the D.C. suburbs, and partly to save me from the wrong crowd. 

There was Debbie Riley, a court-appointed social worker assigned to me when I got busted for grand theft auto at 15 (I was a runaway who went joyriding in my friend’s brother’s car. He pressed charges, which were dropped on condition of counseling.) 

Debbie Riley asked my parents to come to our first session. My father spent the hour red-faced and irate that he had to be there — and because he couldn’t seem to discipline me with tough love, nor keep me from running away from home. My mother sat stone faced and said nothing. She didn’t know what to say or do with me. At the end of the session, Debbie Riley told them they didn’t have to come to any more of our meetings; she’d meet with me alone from then on. 

I never had to tell Debbie Riley about my childhood trauma, not specifically, anyway. Back then, I couldn’t have choked out the words. It took me decades to process it and to talk about it, even today, somewhat superficially. I don’t like to go too deep into those rough seas. 

But it was like Debbie Riley — who probably spent every day with kids like me — could read me, or smell it on me. She knew I was broken and spiraling, but that I might be salvageable, if I wanted to be. 

Way more than a decade before Robin William’s famous scene in “Good Will Hunting,” Debbie Riley took my hands in hers across her cold-metal police-department desk, and looked me in the eyes and said, “It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.” 

That scene with Matt Damon brings me to my knees every time. I see us in that moment, me and Debbie Riley — as much a breakthrough for young Will Hunting as it had been for me. 

Just feeling seen lifted me a fraction of the way out of the dark pit. I started thinking about a future, about who and what I wanted to be. But I still had a long way to go.

(Spoiler alert: Beth and Demon make it out of their hometowns, too, though not unscathed.)

Sometimes the tides shift for communities like these. In the case of Urbana, new industry came to town, and there were jobs again and a little more disposable income, Macy recalls. That happened in my hometown, too. Washington, D.C.’s sprawl crept in, bringing with it new taxpaying residents who cashed big paychecks signed by defense contractors and lobbying firms. The main street transformed. No more drunken high schoolers cruising the circuit. No more 5-and-10 store once owned by my great-grandmother. Now, there were art galleries and microbreweries and restaurants with Top Chefs in their kitchens. 

People who survived the leaner years now sit-pretty on homes worth 10x what they paid for them. But for so many rural communities, there’s no D.C. sprawl to swoop in like a superhero to save the day. And for too many kids, there are too few Debbie Rileys who care.

You may buy the books here, but please consider checking them out from your local library. One of the best ways to support your library is by signing up for a free library card and then using it. 

Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America, by Beth Macy

Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver

book, Book Publishing, Music, News & Publishing

The rock-n-roll beat

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“Any journalist will tell you. Sometimes you hear something so quotable that you can see the words in print in real time, right before your eyes. The room changes when deep truths are being spoken, when raw honesty is in the air.”—Cameron Crowe, “The Uncool: A Memoir”

If you’re a journalist who likes to see other journalists’ approach to the craft, I recommend Cameron Crowe’s autobiographical “The Uncool: A Memoir.” Crowe is a fascinating person. There is his undeniable storytelling talent, proven by his many decades as an accomplished music journalist, screenwriter and director.

There’s his encyclopedic knowledge of music from the 1960s-1980s — and perhaps beyond. There’s his almost Forrest Gump-like fortunes and happenstances, where he casually meets and vibes with so many important figures of those decades, from the worlds of music, industry, Hollywood. It’s a collage of pop culture.

The reader gets a sense of Crowe’s perspective on journalism, and the lessons he learned from mentors along the way. He wrestles with editorial dilemmas and relationships with sources. You sense the pressures he felt answering to editors, rock stars, publicists and readers — especially remarkable when he was a teenage reporter. That kid (then) had precisely what it takes to make a name, to build a byline and a brand: courage, resilience, introspection, fortitude, a great vocabulary, an inquisitive nature, and a little dash of naïveté.

The author says this is a story about family. Crowe’s family takes center stage throughout the book. Their connections are complicated, and he doesn’t sanitize them. He peels back the curtain on their shared tragedies and idiosyncrasies. It’s all relatable.

Naturally, in the memoir there’s the running theme of Crowe’s early life, which he so astutely, delicately captured in the semi-autobiographical film, “Almost Famous.” That is, his absolutely passionate love for music and reverence for the people who make it. You feel it. It’s almost tactile, vibrating off the printed page.

Book Publishing, Music, TV, Radio, Audio

Rebel Girl

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I preordered Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk by Kathleen Hanna. I felt it mandatory reading. I’d listened to the band(s) back in the day. I was fascinated by the lore and that Kathleen married my second favorite Beastie Boy. I wanted the backstory on it all, especially what it was like to be a woman in a band in the midst of a nearly all-male punk moment. I certainly knew what it was like to be a woman in the clubs, basements and warehouse shows where women were relegated to the perimeters by virtue of slamming male bodies and fear of being trampled or groped. 

What I didn’t know to expect was the constant struggle, the poverty, the family dysfunction, the sexual abuse, the rapes, the violence, the loneliness, despair, the anger and hatred (especially from other women), which Hanna reveals in bite-sized chapter chunks. Sometimes it’s all you can swallow before snapping the cover shut and trying to process it, wondering how the author ever did. 

Did she? 

Can you? 

It’s a question I ask myself all the time. Do we actually heal? Or do we just learn to be temporarily okay in the moment and then string those moments together to make a day, a week, a year, a decade, a lifetime? 

Hanna’s storytelling kept me captivated. I read the book in two days. After all, it’s what a memoir should be — raw, candid, honest and deeply introspective. 

Book Publishing, Music

Even rock stars mature

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A couple of weeks ago, I threw out my back while leaning over in the shower, merely shaving my legs, though no one nor the light of day cares if I did. This is what it means to be 50-something.

In time, I’ve rehabbed my way back to a comfortable seated position after weeks standing or walking – the only way to manage the pain. I looked at my sleepless nights as time to read some books I’d had on my desk for a while, including Flea’s memoir, Acid for the Children (2019, Grand Central Publishing).

You may know Flea by his parasitic stage name and for his bass-thumping beats behind Red Hot Chili Peppers’ catalog of work. He’s a founding member of the band. Unexpectedly, Flea – born Michael Balzary – ends his memoir just as the band begins its trajectory toward decades-long fame and international popularity. He begins it where he started – suburban Australia, his birthplace – and leads the reader on a wild journey from Australia to Rye, New York, and settles in the hedonism of late-’70s/early-’80s Los Angeles. 

We ride along as his family splinters, through his parents’ divorce, and as his Dad retreats to Australia. He speaks of a childhood spent in search of a father figure, and how his mother hitched herself to a struggling substance-abusing musician – who, despite having some redeeming qualities (like introducing young Flea to jazz) was never a stable substitute.  

His childhood story is partly about discovery – discovering rhythm, musical genres and musical instruments, new bands, and the chicks who swooned for them. We see Flea’s musical tastes evolve, expand, become refined. He opines on the virtues of complex jazz. He confesses to being a late-comer to rock and an unapologetic Led Zeppelin fanboy. For the rest of us who weren’t part of the L.A. music scene, he makes us feel like we were there, alongside him, in the pit, experiencing bands like X, Circle Jerks, Dead Kennedys, and FEAR – a local band that made him anecdotally famous before RHCP hit the big time. He recalls his first listen to Sugarhill-produced hip-hop and what it felt like in his very core the first time he heard Public Enemy’s bass drop. 

In a way, the memoir is also a tale of untraditional family and forgiveness. Flea narrates his story by linking together formative years and influential characters he encountered along the way. He speaks of lifesaving friendships with passion, reverence, gratitude, and awe. He learned to seek out relationships that transcend superficiality, that have their own rhythm and palpable energy, like what he’s had with RHCP front man, Anthony Kiedis. 

Contrition is a running theme throughout the book, and Flea – the middle-aging man today – has clarity about his shortcomings, mistakes, and unbridled recklessness of his youth. His wild-child antics read more like street-kid felonies. 

And, of course, there were the drugs. Copious amounts, readily available, a smorgasbord of drugs, alluring, emotion-tamping, mind altering, psychotic-episode inducing drugs – many of them injected into his veins with shared needles. 

By the time Flea sat down to pen Acid for the Children, he was 27 years sober. 

Like with any rock star or musical icon, fans likely think they know Flea by the music he makes and his on-stage funkified persona, but he peels layer upon raw layer back for the reader to see here. In defiance of his good fortune, his has been a hard life, a hard-lived life. It could’ve, should have, hardened him. But that is not how the story ends.